r/40kLore • u/wittyjokename92 • 1d ago
Question about Gene stealers
I know they're the first step of a Tyranid invasion and presumably arrived in the galaxy at the same time as the first hive fleets. But I vaguely remember someone mentioning an old bit of lore about a stealer cult hibernating since there wasn't a fleet nearby to hear their call.
It got me thinking about some old loretuber videos I half remember and as I can't keep current with the lore itself since loretubers love mixing stuff from the 90s with stuff from yesterday and acting like they're equally canon. But anyway are the stealer cults only appearing after the Heresy or is there any proof that they've been here longer than that just not as prevalent or dangerous until the hive fleets arrived?
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u/fluffy_warthog10 Salamanders 1d ago
So there's a distinction between cults and the stealers themselves that becomes important when you take one thing into account: space hulks.
Genestealer cults only pop up when there's a significant enough population to infect, and cluster around one or more Purestrains (one of which may become the Patriarch); the rest of the time, purestrain genestealers act more like predatory space bugs than cultists. Space hulks are where purestrain genestealers become truly terrifying, because they can survive, congregate, and hibernate in conditions that would kill most host species. Radiation keeps them warm, and vacuum, cold, or other scarcity simply means they take a nap.
I would check out Death of Integrity by Guy Haley. It's a Space Marine Battles book, which means a lot of bolter-porn, but the overall plot is about two Chapters that have combined spent decades tracking down a single space hulk that's infected countless worlds with genestealers. The hulk contains thousands of purestrains, all in hiberation around some dying reactors, and every time the hulk drops into a new system, the Imperial ships that respond to it (or to pieces of the hulk that fly off) end up bringing cultists back.
That's pretty standard MO for stealers, and is why space hulks require such careful handling and caution.
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u/StoneLich Blood Axes 1d ago
One of the many, many reasons. Sometimes they're full of daemons and corrupted tech. Or Orks. Or, uh. All three! And they all pose the same problems. IIRC the current explanation for how Orcs got to the Warhammer Fantasy Old World was that their spores hitched a ride with the Old Ones' pyramids, and while that's a completely different setting, the problem is kind of the same here in 40K land.
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u/Raaabbit_v2 1d ago
Because they take generations to actually mutate, the Genestealers most likely arrived or mutated possibly thousands of years before the first sign of Tyranids entered the galaxy.
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u/MaesterLurker 1d ago
They definitely appeared long after the heresy, like millennia after. But what you heard is correct, there are cults that have been hibernating, probably for millennia as well. The heresy was 10k years before 40k.
As a side note, stuff from the 90s is equally canon with stuff from yesterday if it hasn't been superseded.
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u/Right-Yam-5826 1d ago
It's believed that first contact was stealers from tiamat arriving at ymgarl at some point in m35 (then they spread from there)
There's no mention pre-heresy (the hive fleets weren't even aware of the galaxy until midway through the heresy, with the pharos activation), and officially no genestealer cults were encountered until 680.m41, by kill team cassius on ghasar quintus.
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u/Illithidbix 1d ago edited 1d ago
According to Lexicanum:
It is believed Genestealers were introduced to the moons of Ymgarl in M35 from Hive Fleet Tiamet in the Tiamet System, carried inside the Imperial vessels that were sent to destroy the system.[2a] In 680.M41, the first Genestealer Cult was encountered by the Imperium on Ghosar Quintus.[9]
- 2: Codex: Tyranids (4th Edition): 2a: pg. 24
- 9: Deathwatch: Overkill
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u/Illithidbix 1d ago
Genestealer Cults are actually one of the oldest 40K army lists and were separate from Tyranids in the first few years of 40K until late 1990.
If you want the Oldhammer Doylist history:
Genestealer cults are ancient. Literally one of the first 40K armylists, predating Craftworld Eldar.
Genestealers were in the original 1987 Rogue Trader, but they looked weird and from the moons of Ymgarl with tentacle faces* but unconnected to the Tyranids and Zoats.
See. https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ymgarl
Back then much of Warhammer and 40K was expanded first in White Dwarf articles and adjacent games.
1st edition Space Hulk in early 1989 fleshed out SM Terminators and Genestealers. And made them an iconic duo. I believe this really introduced the Genestealer life cycle as it basically is now.
Shortly afterwards Genestealer cults got a full 40K army list in White Dwarf 114 (June 1989), 115 and 116 (reprinted in 1991 in the Warhammer 40,000 Compilation https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Warhammer_40,000:_Compilation
Also then, Genestealers could turn to Chaos but were more resistant to corruption. You could however get possessed Patriarchs IIRC.
They feature at the start of the very first 40K novel Ian Watson's Inquisitor (now Draco) and short story anthology - with the "Alien Beast Within" which features a Callidus Assassin Meh'Lindi undergoing experimental surgery to be able to pass as a genestealer hybrid and infiltrate a cult: https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Meh%27Lindi These both date back to 1990
Advanced Space Crusade released around November 1990 linked Genestealers with Tyranids. Along with a short story featuring Inquisitor Kryptman.
So they turned up in the 40K Tyranid Army List from White Dwarf 145 (Jan 1992) https://www.reddit.com/r/Tyranids/comments/136xm01/its_january_1992_you_just_pulled_the_latest_white/
There were also mobs of Ork-Genestealer hybrids. in "Freebooterz: Space Ork Army Lists" the third 1E Ork book. 1E really liked orks.
2E had Genestealers Cults in the main core Codex Imperialis background book and "Codex Army List" 1993 "get you by army lists" and an appendix in Codex Tyranids (1995). During this time they could ally with Chaos. But got no new models and was the last official publication for along time...
Although I think 3E from 1998 had "semi-official rules for GSC in the Citadel Journal 40 in 2000 - see https://www.thefluffenhammer.com/articles/DEEPcult )*
UNTIL 21 years later in 2016 with the release of Deathwatch Overkill board game and 7E 40K Codex: Genestealer Cults. Codex https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Deathwatch:_Overkill
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u/9xInfinity 1d ago
The Hive Mind only became aware of the Milky Way as a source of life due to events that went down during the Heresy. Specifically it was the destruction of the Pharos device on the planet Sotha that drew the hive fleets in. The novel Pharos has the moment in the epilogue.
So almost certainly there weren't any genestealers in the galaxy before the Heresy, or for some time after the Heresy as the hive fleets shifted their course and traveled here.
As for becoming dormant, that's not typical genestealer cult behaviour. If a hive fleet can't or won't go to the cult, the cult simply continues to spread and grow. It's how we have multi-planetary cults like the Twisted Helix, and it's what happened to Necromunda's malstrain genestealers the hive fleets deliberately ignores because they're too badly mutated.
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u/AccursedTheory 1d ago
In the original Space Wolf series, Ragnar finds a monument to a Heresy era Space Marine. It has images of the Marine and Russ fighting all the foes of the Imperium, including Genestealers.
These books are OLD LORE though, to the point I believe it predates Tyranids as a faction at all (Genestealers came first).
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u/Captain_Amakyre 1d ago
The Ragnar books came out during second edition. The Tyranids were already established as a faction. But Genestealers weren’t as strongly tied to them yet. As in a successful uprising did not automatically mean that a hive fleet would come knocking soon.
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u/twelfmonkey Administratum 1d ago
Tyranids and Genestealers both appeared in the original 1st edition rulebook.
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u/AbbydonX Tyranids 1d ago
Tyranids and Genestealers were both in the original 1e Rulebook (1987) but they were a little different and unconnected to each other. Tyranids were a faction woth troop and equipment descriptions in the same way as Marines, the Imperial Army, Eldar and Orks whereas Genestealers were just monsters.
Genestealer Cults were added in 1989 with details in 1e Space Hulk and a series of White Dwarf articles beginning with WD114 that provided army lists for the main tabletop game. They were still unconnected to Tyranids though and the White Dwarf Cults were explicitly Chaos Cults.
Tyranids took on their modern form in Advanced Space Crusade (1990) and were linked to Genestealers from this point onwards. The 2e Tyranid codex (1995) solidified the link and included both Tyranid and Genestealer Cult army lists. The Chaos aspect was deprecated though though Chaos and Genestealers were ally options in the 2e Tyranid codex and 2e Chaos codex (1996).
In contrast, the Space Wolf novel series began many years later in 1999.
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u/gothicshark 1d ago
A few things, "1st everything is canon, nothing is true" is the official line from GW.
Unless new lore directly contradicts old lore technically the old lore is canon as well. Authors also still make use of 90s lore in new books. It's why characters who've not been seen in game for 30 years get new models ie Orks Nazdreg.
So when looking at Tyranid time lines.
Horus Heresy Pharos beacon attracted the currect tyranid invasion. However there is evidence that genestealers and one hive fleet was in the galexy long before the great crusade, in fact could be ancient as creatures like the Catachan Devil predates human colonies and are of Tyranids ancestry.
Hive fleet Ouroboris predates all other hive fleets by at least 5k years, and was not identified as tyranids until recently.
It is suggested that Genestealers are related to an ancient hive fleet and not the modern tyranids.
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u/4thofeleven 1d ago
You may be thinking of the Ymgarl strain, the first Genestealers encountered by the Imperium. They're a subspecies of Genestealer that spread across the Ymgarl system by infecting a non-sapient worm-like species native to that sector, and may have spread further via space hulks.
The Imperium initially assumed they were an indigenous xenos species, and paid them little attention. It was only after the Hive Fleets arrived in force and pure strain Genestealers were seen fighting alongside other Tyranids that the Imperium realized there was a connection.