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Standard human was Int 7,
Eldar were 8
Gretchen were 5
Zoats were 9
Genestealers were 3

But this was when Genestealers were distinct from Tyranids. Tyranids were Int 10 across the board

At least they were cool

Yeah but back in rogue trader days they were part of the chaos army and were basically big cockroaches in space hulks

I’m not sure when a GSC was first mentioned

Charax wrote:
Standard human was Int 7,
Eldar were 8
Gretchen were 5
Zoats were 9
Genestealers were 3

But this was when Genestealers were distinct from Tyranids. Tyranids were Int 10 across the board

And some low end examples:

Orks were 6
Ambuls were 4
Catachan devils were 2
Dinosaurs were 1
Horses were 2
Ptera-squirrels were 3

What about lictors?

 Arschbombe wrote:
What about lictors?

Intelligent but utterly devoid of individuality, personality or even a consciousness.

 Tyran wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:
What about lictors?

Intelligent but utterly devoid of individuality, personality or even a consciousness.

I’d broadly agree. But we again have that odd quality where just as a GSC necessarily gains the knowledge of its victims, so do Lictors, as they scoff the brains and gain knowledge.

Which raises the question is the Lictor gaining intelligence from its victim, or is the hive mind gaining it, allowing it to better direct its drone? And indeed quite a lot of things in between.

Imho depends on the nature of the intelligence. Intelligence that is immediately valuable to the lictor regarding its tactical situation, environment and target stays with the lictor. Intelligence that is important to the strategic situation and other large scale considerations go to the hive mind and rerouted to the relevant strategy oriented leader-beast (probably a hive tyrant).

Gonna raise a new argument on the Lictor thing.

For the most part, Tyranid creatures are more akin to individual brain cells (neurons?) in a single organism of unfathomable scope and scale.

But a Lictor is more akin to nerve ending on a finger. Something that, with time, can differentiate temperature, texture, consistency and all that sensory input. But being but one part of the whole, the Lictor like a nerve ending isn’t, in itself, intelligent by any measure. Just a very, very well developed sensory organ, yet still one with no native ability to interpret the input it’s receiving without the wider guiding brainy things it’s feeding into.

I'd disagree with that. Vanguard organisms like Lictors, Genestealers are often shown operating in areas with very little to no hive-mind influence.

So they are far more than just a finger, they are fully able to operate within the direct will of the whole of the Hive Mind whilst retaining a high enough level of intelligence to achieve their objectives for which they were created.



I think the issue here is we think in terms of independent thought and identity being one and the same thing. To us it kind of is, but to Tyranids I think they are very different things. I think that for Tyranids many of them can be fully independent. They can think, feed, hunt, strategize etc... all on their own. Even a lowly isolated gaunt is still a very effective hunter-predator on its own.

It's an individual creature with a mind, will, and structure of its own able to operate according to its instinct.


However when it comes into range of synapse it becomes united with the rest of the swarm; which is then able to dictate larger directives. Those gaunts become even more deadly when they've a real time direct feed of information on the lay of the land from space. When they can move and strike at key locations with information and direction outside of their own sphere.

I feel it necessary to separate Genestealer infestation from Lictors being out and about.

The former are super far ranging, and equipped to do so.

The latter however, to the best of my knowledge, don’t range anything like as far ahead of a Hive Fleet.

Yes a Lictor might well be the first organism to hit the ground, and go about its gribbly mission, sooking up brains and gathering intel - but never enjoying anything like the freedom a Genestealer might enjoy.

Which brings me to my next speculation. Lictors must, logically, be able to “record” whatever it is they’ve sussed out, so when the Hive Fleet moves into range, it can be uploaded to the wider consciousness. Or, alternatively, the Lictor always has at least a faint connection, so should it land on a barren, airless void rock it can at the very least transmit back “sod all here, don’t bother” over a very narrow bandwith. Or make the equivalent of a dinner bell ring should their location be made entirely from Sosig Rolls and Beer.

Where as Genestealers are really far ranging species. And unlike Lictors, they’re able to infiltrate ever deeper, as their reproduction doesn’t depend upon the Hive Fleets. Just suitable host species and sufficient time.

And so Genestealers have a necessarily greater level of independence, hence their Broodmind.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Gonna raise a new argument on the Lictor thing.

For the most part, Tyranid creatures are more akin to individual brain cells (neurons?) in a single organism of unfathomable scope and scale.

But a Lictor is more akin to nerve ending on a finger. Something that, with time, can differentiate temperature, texture, consistency and all that sensory input. But being but one part of the whole, the Lictor like a nerve ending isn’t, in itself, intelligent by any measure. Just a very, very well developed sensory organ, yet still one with no native ability to interpret the input it’s receiving without the wider guiding brainy things it’s feeding into.

Except that neurons do have some measures of intelligence. They recieve a combination of different inputs and transform that into an output. That is intelligence, that is choice and interpretation even if a very simple level that utterly lacks any cognition.

The issue here is that intelligence, the ability to make decisions and solve problems according to an input, is separate from cognition, thought and consciousness.

A lictor is intelligent, is capable of learning, capable of making decisions and solving problems. But it has no real consciousness and cognition, at least not to the extent a human has.

An arguably better example is our immune system. It is intelligent, it is capable of identifying and remembering patogens it encounters and making decisions in how to deal with them. It is constantly adapting and learning.
And we are utterly unaware of it up until the point it for some reason feths up and we become aware of the consequences.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That a Genestealer, pre-cult, can learn to operate doors, that suggests problem solving skills. As does rapid adaptation to effective hideyholes pre-cult establishment.

I have seen dogs and cat use doors, properly. Is there actually animals too dumb to understand that ? I mean, animals physically able to do it but not intelligent enough ?

Given we typically see key code doors or wheel lock doors in 40K, they’re more complex than household doors.

So the Genestealer would need to be able to recognise first that you press the buttons, then figure out its specific buttons, in a specific order, and from there work out which buttons in which order. Presumably without prior cultural type knowledge of “oh, that’s a keypad, I know what those are”.

According to Index Xenos: Ultimate Predator (White Dwarf 266 (UK), pgs. 42-47), genestealers 'are possessed of considerable intelligence, comparable to that of Lupus Fenrisii'; with a Patriarch 'developing a level of intelligence comparable to that of a human'.

The real-world application of this is the crow intelligence test they did years back. You sit a 7 year old human and a crow in front of a table. The table has a graduated cylinder half full and a float attached to a toy/food. There are weights near the cylinder. Now, it's obvious to an adult what to do, but the kids want the object and try the direct method of forcing their fingers down, or trying to move the table. The crow will eventually use the weights to displace water and get the food.
Now, in that moment and test the crow is smarter than a human, but only for problem-solving intelligence. Crows are not our evil overlords because we have things like written/ vocal communication, etc.
So, Genestealers are the same way, and the comparison is better with the Jurassic park raptors. People underestimate them, but they are predatory animals and their instincts are to breed and survive. Pants Thieves also take in pieces of DNA from hosts, so they are probably at or above human intelligence on their own. They've been bred to survive away from the hive mind, but it seems they prefer to have "buddies" and will wait to infect the population for generations vs. try and call the hive fleet first chance they get. Once again, humans can't go into hibernation or have no pre-set growth/age limit but nids can and do. This is why your Genestealer patriarch is usually larger and smarter than your average "troop" pants thieves.

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
They've been bred to survive away from the hive mind, but it seems they prefer to have "buddies" and will wait to infect the population for generations vs. try and call the hive fleet first chance they get.

The whole purpose of the Genestealer Cult is two faceted

1) To weaken the host population within a given region of space. The more the cult grows the more it controls and the more it can influence and damage. Taking out defence systems; destroying or stealing supplies; falsifying records; diverting resources to the wrong places; filtering messages etc.... Basically the more the Cult can grow the more it weakens the host.

2) The call a Hive Fleet. This happens through weight of numbers. The more higher level cult members (and purestrain stealers) the greater the call it has in the HiveMind. Thus the greater chance that a fleet will come. A handful of even purestrain stealers just isn't enough of a population to really make a Hive Fleet pay attention too it. It's nothing in the grand scheme of things.


As you can see the two compliment each other well - the weaker the call the less likely the Cult has control; the stronger the call the greater the chance that the Cult will aid the efforts of the invading forces.

Furthermore the Cult doesn't stop if it doesn't get taken out by part 2. It just continues to infect more and more of the host. Going from planets to systems; to sectors and more.

A Cult is also a very different beast from just a Genestealer Brood.

A well developed Cult will have plenty of infected and hybrids which have their host species' (usually human) level of intelligence, and a few specialized leadership and logistic hybrids like the Magus, Primus, Nexos, etc. which are above their host species intelligence at their respective specialization.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Patriarch is the Genestealer first responsible for infecting a human.

The Cult itself is a gestalt consciousness, like a localised version of the Hive Mind. So, like The Borg, once a human is infected and under its sway? Their knowledge is added to that of the collective Cult.

Now there is an open question as to how a mind as alien as a Genestealer would interpret or understand knowledge gained. But, that may be where the Hybrids really come into their own, with successive generations (first to fourth) serving as useful translation steps?

Can I ask where you got this info Doc?

It's certainly not the case in the novel Day of Ascension. A lot of that is written first-person with a few hybrids, and you don't get the impression of a gestalt/shared consciousness at all.

My impression is that the cult has tiers.

One level at the upper end very much is under full sway of the Patriarch, which will also include any purestrain genestealers that are bred within the cult as it matures.

From their it varies on the amount of control and influence. The recent book Deathworlder certainly suggests that many in the upper ranks rely on the mental signals from the Patriarch to remain "in line" and once killed it causes a temporary shattering of unity and coordination within the Cult. In theory the Cult will create another (it doesn't happen in the book because the Hive Fleet is already invading at the very start).

Certainly the lower ranks of the Cult will be made up of people who aren't even tainted, but who have family who are and who are believers in the movement and all. Higher up you go and the more mutation and the more generations of breeding and you get those who are more and more Tyranid willed.


That said even the most upper human ranks appear to still retain humanity. There's a bit in one of the Codex talking about how the most highly ranked are sometimes saved and are taken to the "world" that is being built by the Tyranids to commune with it and there they gain an even greater level of connection to the Hive Mind (and are then sent on to infect other worlds).

So it appeares that even just below the Patriarch there's variation in how much "control" the Hive Mind has. Indeed it seems to be more a level of control that wills/guides/entices a person to follow than outright pulling all the puppet strings of controlling their direct actions.

 Pacific wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Patriarch is the Genestealer first responsible for infecting a human.

The Cult itself is a gestalt consciousness, like a localised version of the Hive Mind. So, like The Borg, once a human is infected and under its sway? Their knowledge is added to that of the collective Cult.

Now there is an open question as to how a mind as alien as a Genestealer would interpret or understand knowledge gained. But, that may be where the Hybrids really come into their own, with successive generations (first to fourth) serving as useful translation steps?

Can I ask where you got this info Doc?

It's certainly not the case in the novel Day of Ascension. A lot of that is written first-person with a few hybrids, and you don't get the impression of a gestalt/shared consciousness at all.

The Cain books have a few interactions with genestealers and has them all sharing a psychic link.

Between an IG "comedy" book in which Genestealers are the enemy of the week and a GSC novel released alongside the codex and with a Genestealer protagonist, I'm going to favor Day of Ascension's interpretation.

That being said, a psychic link isn't quite the same as a gestal consciousness.

If we look at another 'Nid the kinda has the same purpose of being a precursor to the hive fleet, but different in aspect the Lictors are MUCh smarter than Genestealers. Whereas the pants thieves infect and get a cult together so's they can call the hive mind, a Lictor is a single operative and can eat brains of prey to collect knowledge and force distribution. But, it always seemed like Lictors were prelude to a Hive anyways, IE: they're shot out to make sure there's biomass to take. But even with the gestalt psychic link, time and experience it feels like an elder Patriarch will never be as "smart" as a base Lictor, let alone a Death Leaper.
But again, it depends on a lot of things- chief of which is your definition of "Intelligence". If it's just survival instinct, every 'Nid has that and reverts to their animal brains without synapse creatures. Problem solving, like with the crow example, yeah Genestealers have that more than your average 'gaunt (Maybe even Warrior in some instances). But knowing what to do and WHY you're doing it? That seems unlikely. Genestealers have the genetic drive to ovipositor, sit and wait for generations and build up a following. The DNA injection and pheromones make their "Marks" more willing to raise obvious hybrids, but it's up to the populace to start the meaning of this or a basis of religion:
Why are some of our children 3-4 armed and clawed? Well, I feel no abhorrence to them- so it must be a gift from the Emperor! Yes, the 3-4 armed Emperor! Praise the Brood Sire.. I mean, Emperor!

See I think confusing intelligence and independent will is a mistake. The two are different

question about a heretek magos who in fact being a Genestealer-familar-like "thing":(you know who it is)


How did he get infected?as a tech-priest,although he had more mechanic than flesh,but still can be infected by Genestealer?do that genestealer taken the risk (he was a well-armed cyborg anyway) of opening his metal skull and taking a bite on his fleshy brain just to infect him?

the real Hermiatus already died,this one just a Familar-like copy who created by the Malstrain Patriarch————so that Malstrain Patriarch just mutated in body but still possesses sane and intelligence?

this guy is a entity like a familar who made by pure psychic energy,so can we say he is something like daemon or a legion of the damned?

Does this imply that the broodmind of Genestealer cult can resurrect its members, just as the Hive Mind can resurrect intelligent individuals such as the Hive Tyrant any of its bioships that can create combat organisms though "download" their soul into their new body?——————or is this just an extraordinary ability gained through horrible and radical mutation, something that ordinary Genestealer cults can't do?

Very few tech priest undergo complete mechanical replacement and still have plenty of organic bits that can be infected.

As for the rest? Maybe but the Maltsrain is extra weird so maybe it doesn't apply to more standard GSC.