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So I heard a friend who is deep into Nids lore talking about switching over to GSC recently, and he was telling me about how they are the sort of "prophets of the Great Ones" (Tyranids) and how they make a lot of references to bringing back the "father's Father.

They also mentioned that they seek to keep the Emperor Alive as The Astronomicon is what is drawing the hive Fleets into the galaxy? Is this true? Is the Emperor one big Electric Mosquito Zapper?

Also, if they unplugged the Emperor, would the Hive fleet go away like a flock of moths? I'm honestly trying to find this lore, and only the Lexicanum talks about the priests of the GSC as such:

"Often the cults call the Tyranids Star Children[14] or describe them with similarly grandiose-religious titles like Father's Fathers[26] or Emperor's angels.[28a] The Cult views the coming Hive Fleet as a long-awaited prophecy, its arrival heralding their lifting into the light forever"

Is there anything in the OLD fluff that talks about how the GSC use a twisted version of the Imperial Church lore?

You mean like the Four Armed Emperor.

There are LOTS of Imperial religious cults; so yes many Genestealer Cults will twist the Imperial Religion in a region into their own thing; just the same as Chaos will often do.

Re: the Astronomican, Lexicanum quotes the 5e Tyranid Codex as a reference for the belief that the Astronomican is what is drawing the Tyranids to our galaxy, but I think that was in the context of "Imperial scholars believe..." - I don't have the codex handy to confirm.

I would assume they would keep coming even if Big E bit it for realsies, since there'd be enough momentum in the hive fleets to draw any latecomers in the right direction (think a swarm of ants where each follows the one in front, or pheromone traces of it, without necessarily knowing the destination), but that's a presumption on my part.

Yeah I think the 3rd edit and 4th ed also say that. It's what makes Tyranid lore fiddly because more than any other faction; a lot of it is guesswork or facts from in-world characters. All of which can be totally wrong.

They can also be only partly right and based on observations of behaviour and then be mistaken because they don't fully understand what's going on.

Eg the Atstronomican could be "drawing" them like a moth to a flame or it could be more that the Tyranids see it as a major power point in a food source and thus their pacification systems are drawn to it to destroy the greatest source of power as they see it.

The astronomicon wasn't enough to wake them and direct them to the milky way, the Sotha engine did that. They might lock onto the astronomicon now they're in the galaxy, but turning it off wouldn't make them go away. The hive mind knows food is near.

Dudeface wrote:
The astronomicon wasn't enough to wake them and direct them to the milky way, the Sotha engine did that. They might lock onto the astronomicon now they're in the galaxy, but turning it off wouldn't make them go away. The hive mind knows food is near.

I was about to ask if that wasn't a much more recent lore addition, but then I looked up the publishing date of the Pharos novel and, well...I'm not sure we can call 2015 "recent" any more, and that was only ~5 years after the 5e Tyranid 'dex.

i quickly reread through the pseudo-codex that GSC got in RT, and their mentions in the 2nd edition nids codex, and there's nothing of emperor worship there, so I suspect that it was added with the revival of the army in 7th (I'm not reading every tyranid codex in-between, but the army was a footnote in that time so it's unlikely)

GSC cults being, well, cults has always been the lore, and the RT book describes it as being like how there are tons of small chaos cults hidden throughout the galaxy as well. there isn't a big point put on that tho, and most of the focus for the fluff is talking about the makeup and lifespan of cults (a lot of which is either superseded or no longer relevant)

side note, when is GW bringing back chaos genestealers. maybe i need to make that a thing when i get around to playing necromunda...

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
i quickly reread through the pseudo-codex that GSC got in RT, and their mentions in the 2nd edition nids codex, and there's nothing of emperor worship there, so I suspect that it was added with the revival of the army in 7th (I'm not reading every tyranid codex in-between, but the army was a footnote in that time so it's unlikely).

No, it's definitely older than 7th.
I skipped the latter half of 6th, all of 7th, and the 1st half of 8th - & knew about it well prior to 6th.
In fact I've known it for most of my 40k experience.
So it's probably mentioned in some 2e era WD.

As mentioned somewhere above they twist the Imperial cult so that the Emporer the masses are worshiping isn't the one they think they are....

okay, i did some digging:

here's a line from Space Hulk talking about how GSC cults will use the emperor as a guise for acceptance on imperial worlds


and here's a direct reference to the Four-Armed Emperor from Deathwing


i'm stopping here. it's possible there are other sources on the subject, but considering Space Hulk was the only place genestealers for focus for decades, this is likely where it originates from

GSC naturally adopt religious elements of their host civilization. There is a bit in Day of Ascension where the protagonist (a Genestealer hybrid) wonders about the similitaries between her religion and Imperial doctrine.

And that's because GSC don't really know anything about the Tyranids. They know that they are waiting for something larger than themselves, that their own genome and alien traits can be traced back to that distant deity and that they must prepare for its arrival, and they usually don't know much more than that.

There are exceptions of course, but the average GSC cultist is very in the dark about the whole thing.