Genestealer Patriarch - Role: Like the monarch of a dark underworld the Patriarch squats in its lair, glowering and licking its claws in anticipation of the day when it will rise up to make every sentient creature on the planet it now calls home its devoted gene-slave.Once, the beast was but a standard Purestrain Genestealer, likely one of an identical brood and no more remarkable than any of the uncounted billions of such Tyranid organisms abroad in the galaxy.Once cut off from the Hive Mind, a new genetic imperative takes over. Upon reaching its prey world, perhaps as a stowaway on some nameless freighter or piece of stellar debris, the nascent Patriarch creeps from its vector vessel into the darkness of its new domain.There, it learns of the planet it has taken as its new home, and abducts the first of its victims. With the Genestealer's Kiss, the monster becomes the first of its brood to bestow its foul legacy upon a native host. In this rapacious action, it takes the first step to becoming a Patriarch.As the strange alchemy of the alien's life cycle takes hold, that first creature to infect a host on a new planet grows ever larger and more potent. Much as an alpha simian of Terra becomes heavier and grows outward signs of dominance to mark its ascendance, the Patriarch's body bulks out, its claws lengthening until they are more like bony sabres than simple talons.The creature's mind develops too, filling with strange telepathic energies until its engorged cranium bulges fit to burst. At first, its instincts are only to survive and to procreate, and its abilities develop accordingly. Eventually, however, the Genestealer's uncanny ability to enthrall its prey burgeons into a suite of telepathic abilities that can bind a person to its service with but a flicker of its cold, inhuman eyes -- the Broodmind has been born.To gaze into the eyes of a Patriarch is to gaze into the void and feel a fraction of the Tyranid Hive Mind staring back. One who faces such terrible power realises that he is no more than a speck of cosmic dust adrift in an uncaring universe.His shattered mind is then easily bound -- he will accept the Patriarch as the harbinger of an irresistible new order or be driven to insanity, his doomsayer rantings those of just another madman broken by the endless grind of life in the Imperium of Man.Those few individuals strong-willed enough to resist the Patriarch's dominion might raise a hand or blade to strike it, but this will invariably be their last act before the beast rips them limb from limb.In powerful leaps and bursts of speed, the Patriarch hurtles towards its prey. More massive than a Space Marine Terminator, this gigantic Genestealer is possessed of whipfast reflexes, and it is horribly strong, but its most powerful and unsettling weapon is the ability to take over lesser minds. The Patriarch's hateful yellow eyes bore into those of its prey, hypnotising the victim and binding him to its will even in the heat of battle.When the cult rises up for war with the approach of a local Tyranid hive fleet, the Patriarch's years of skulking unseen are over. Its instincts are no longer geared towards survival, and its urge to spread its curse far and wide is spent.With its cult revealed, the creature's intent is now only to kill. In battle it is an unholy terror, ripping its prey apart with razored claws or stabbing its tail through armour and cloth to plunge into warm flesh beneath.Worshipped as a living deity, the beast is the nexus of a blasphemous new order, the blood-soaked lord of a planet-wide uprising. The Patriarch's minions fight to the death in its name, reducing their host world to a nightmare of corpse-strewn ruins where the only survivors scream out devotion to an alien god.