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[MetalSlimeHunt]

The thing about Genestealers is that they're almost perfectly niched to survive in Imperial society. The purestrains prey on the weak and unnoticed at the fringes of society, who give birth to the 1st gen, who are horrifying mutants. And where do horrifying mutants go? The underhive. They and the purestrains hide out there doing their thing until the 3rd gens are born, who can pass for abhuman and start making their way up in society through the concentrated resources of the cult. Then comes the 4th gen and the magus, and by that point the rot has gone so far that they're already utterly primed to usurp control of society.

[Tack]

Unless you get in there with holy promethium.

[Loud Whispers]

Genestealers themselves are instinctively programmed to flee the hive fleets and scatter to the stars in the name of self preservation. The Norn Queens made them that way to make them function as a vanguard organism that needs no direct oversight.

By the fluff I know, it's the opposite. Genestealers are the scouting vanguard that deliberately exploit social spacefaring races in order to find worlds to mark for consumption. Thrown at random into the void, finding space hulks (that in turn get thrown randomly through the warp), whenever encounters with spacefaring and corruptible species is possible the genestealers hitch a ride and find their way to someone's planet. As the genestealer cult proliferates and the genestealer population swells, their psychic beacon to the hive increases proportionally, like a version of the astronomicon only a version that indicates there is enough biomass to support the population therefore = good target. I've not seen any fluff where the genestealers flee hive fleets, and when the hive fleets arrive in all fluff the genestealers attack the defenders from within instead of attempt to escape.
In a way I think everyone tends to overlook how the tyranids don't have a starmap of any kind of the milky way, being the only extra-galactic faction in the 40kverse. Without genestealer beacons they'd have no idea where the fuck they're going and would have to aim for the astronomicon / risk starving to death by walking into a barren quarter

The thing about Genestealers is that they're almost perfectly niched to survive in Imperial society. The purestrains prey on the weak and unnoticed at the fringes of society, who give birth to the 1st gen, who are horrifying mutants. And where do horrifying mutants go? The underhive. They and the purestrains hide out there doing their thing until the 3rd gens are born, who can pass for abhuman and start making their way up in society through the concentrated resources of the cult. Then comes the 4th gen and the magus, and by that point the rot has gone so far that they're already utterly primed to usurp control of society.

Survive in Imperial Hive society, but it's kinda funny to think how they have to struggle to get to the top, because the sheer level of bureaucracy, villainy and backstabbing galactic aristocracy is actually enough to slow down their advance. Woe too if zealous elements are not subverted too, lest much burninating occur (until lictors arrive anyways), as burn the xenos/mutants and all that. Seems that agri worlds have the worst lot of them all. Unlike Hives, genestealers have little to no inquisitorial/arbitarial/ecclesiastical/mob/bureaucratic oversight, no rival mutants/dickheads to fret about, plenty of biomass to warrant marking the planet, and lots of isolated but heavily populated communities ripe for systematic subversion. Unless some inquisitive individuals figure out what's what, the genestealers could go undetected by imperials up until some bureaucrat notices tithe resources are being diverted towards a rebellious faction, at which point it could be too late (and the threat could be attributed to humans).

Tau core worlds wouldn't really have that problem due to their strong caste system and centrally managed reproduction, meaning Tau that do get infected would be screened and removed by Tau officials at the first generation (unless they got an ethereal or something, which may not be possible due to Tau honour guard sticking to them like flies). They could probably take over a Tau vessel isolated in space, or Tau auxiliary species, that's about it. Eldar of any kind, nope, uninfected Eldar would pick up on the infected behaving psychically different and are already paranoid about that shit because slaanesh. What would a genestealer infection of a chaos world look like?

[Rolepgeek]

Depends on if it's been Daemon-ified or not, is my guess. If Daemons: fuck that shit we're out

If no Daemon World: Hopefully Tzeentch finds this funny enough to make one of our cult leaders a Champion?

I think that they are sent out from the Hive Fleets, but I don't think it's fleeing, and I believe LW is right as to the psychic thing, but I feel like them having a fair amount of free will, rather than just being psychic slaves, fits in. Also helps them fit in.

Though don't forget, of course, that the genestealer brood can use promethium too. Several thousand gallons of it makes an for an excellent way to sabotage a defense.

As for Tau: Don't forget Nagi. Reading/probing minds is great for screening people, and it takes a brain-infiltrator to know a brain-infiltrator.

Ork genestealer cults are certainly a thing, but I don't know how successful they are or aren't. The two bioweapons of 40k always seem to have a back-and-forth. Orks spring from nothing infinitely, seemingly, while Tyranids come in infinite numbers from out of nowhere.

Question for someone who knows more about Hrud than I: Would the Tau theoretically be able to ally/assimilate the Hrud in a fashion reminiscent to the Kroot?

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Nids and Chaos just don't mix. Aren't they very susceptible to corruption?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Question for someone who knows more about Hrud than I: Would the Tau theoretically be able to ally/assimilate the Hrud in a fashion reminiscent to the Kroot?

Not like the Kroot, and doing it at all would be an exercise in frustration. The Hrud's deal isn't that they're violent primitives (they are, but that's secondary), it's that they're living entropy. The reason they're so garbage is that they are in fact metaphysical garbage. Everything around them decays and breaks down endlessly. The Hrud conception of society is pretty alien when compared to humans, eldar, and tau. They don't wage war and they don't have organization above the tribe, and yet they do effectively destroy entire worlds in the Imperium just through migrating. Entire armies wither and collapse trying to root them out; in this regard they're even hardier than the Orks. They also may or may not be the degenerate disciples of the old god Qah, He Who Lingers, a role they share with the Umbra.

Nids and Chaos just don't mix. Aren't they very susceptible to corruption?

Negative, Nids are immune to corruption. In fact, there was a famous battle where the Nids attacked a planet that was being drawn into the warp and slayed all four flavors of Greater Daemon by drowning them in Nids.

[Neonivek]

Nids immunity to corruption is their strength and also kind of their weakness, as they can't use warp travel.

[nenjin]

Yeah but Tyranids are the monolithic tide washing across the galaxy whose intelligence cares nothing for the passage of time. They don't have deadlines, mortality or battle plans to worry about. So drifting through space for a few millennia to get where they need to go is fine for them. If they get bored they can just shove a few thousand organisms into the bio-pits and whittle away the years making new and funky organisms.

[Teneb]

Not only that, but they seriously screw with the warp wherever they are.

[Loud Whispers]

Depends on if it's been Daemon-ified or not, is my guess. If Daemons: fuck that shit we're out
If no Daemon World: Hopefully Tzeentch finds this funny enough to make one of our cult leaders a Champion?

I tried to see if there's any fluff about nids and chaos worlds, and there is one - but it seems the nids only invaded it because they thought it was an imperial world full of biomass. They were half right, because it was an imperial world full of biomass with a gigantic chaos fortress buried underneath

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Nids didn't have fun
Looks like they can fight chaos and win, it's just that they get absolutely no biomass out of a lot of effort, so like cron worlds they just go around them because there's not much point. It would be cool if the Doom of Malan'tai taught the rest of the nids how to harvest souls/warpstuff for power, so they wouldn't have a biomass energy crisis anymore

Actually thinking on it further, it's a shame the Doom isn't developed on. You have the first tyranid organism capable of feeding on souls instead of biomass, that then eats an entire eldar craftworld... Then it just disappears? What is the giant nerd up to? We'll never know. Hive fleet Doom will never see the light of day :[

I think that they are sent out from the Hive Fleets, but I don't think it's fleeing, and I believe LW is right as to the psychic thing, but I feel like them having a fair amount of free will, rather than just being psychic slaves, fits in. Also helps them fit in.

I don't think it's free will, just more autonomy, because they lack the ability to rebel against the hive. Effectively all tyranid creatures follow protocols set out by the hive mind, and then default to biological instincts if they are out of synapse. The exceptions to this are the commanders, the lictors and genestealers. Those three are given commands which they must fulfill, but are allowed to independently form the protocols they think would achieve those objectives

As for Tau: Don't forget Nagi. Reading/probing minds is great for screening people, and it takes a brain-infiltrator to know a brain-infiltrator.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Traumatic

Ork genestealer cults are certainly a thing, but I don't know how successful they are or aren't. The two bioweapons of 40k always seem to have a back-and-forth. Orks spring from nothing infinitely, seemingly, while Tyranids come in infinite numbers from out of nowhere.

I think genestealer ork hybrids wouldn't work because they can't subterfuge their way to the top of Ork society; they have to krump the biggest and toughest ork around. Which is a problem, because there's no such thing as a weak ork warboss, and given how orks regularly share space hulks with genestealers, means genestealers aren't very good at not getting krumped

Yeah but Tyranids are the monolithic tide washing across the galaxy whose intelligence cares nothing for the passage of time. They don't have deadlines, mortality or battle plans to worry about. So drifting through space for a few millennia to get where they need to go is fine for them. If they get bored they can just shove a few thousand organisms into the bio-pits and whittle away the years making new and funky organisms.

They are fleeing something in their own galaxy and they are running in the whole tragedy of the commons where they have to keep finding new biomass, so they're not exactly like crons or chaos which have near indefinite shelf lives

[TempAcc]

Orks, while being the ideal prey for nids due to their almost magical ability to keep comming back (meaning cheap, almost free biomass), happen to be nigh impossible to infiltrate and even harder to beat without an actual army, meaning genestaler cradles have no chance of doing anything against them, and since genestealers seem to be the only nids that bother with creating hybrids, we'll never see any ork-nid hybrids, I'm afraid.
In fact, if the imperium actualy starts thinking about things, somehow redirecting a hive fleet into a big ork waaagh! might be the best way to deal with or at least greatly diminish two problems at the same time.

[pisskop]

Its not supposed to be almost free mass.  Or at least I was always under the impression they pull their fungal/meat mass from somewhere.  The orks are pulling their own from the air, from maybe the rocks, from organisms around them?

So I would assume that even though orks are easier or more basal for tyrannids to fight than any tech-race, they are worse than nothing.

[Loud Whispers]

In fact, if the imperium actualy starts thinking about things, somehow redirecting a hive fleet into a big ork waaagh! might be the best way to deal with or at least greatly diminish two problems at the same time.

That is a bad move

[nenjin]

They are fleeing something in their own galaxy and they are running in the whole tragedy of the commons where they have to keep finding new biomass, so they're not exactly like crons or chaos which have near indefinite shelf lives

This has never been definitively proven, has it? I don't think it has. It's just the best assumption based on the available data.

[TempAcc]

In fact, if the imperium actualy starts thinking about things, somehow redirecting a hive fleet into a big ork waaagh! might be the best way to deal with or at least greatly diminish two problems at the same time.

That is a bad move

You mean the best move.