The Hivemind mind may be one entity, but it has many facets. Come and learn about one of the greatest psychics of the hive; the Tyranid Maleceptor.
The average Nid has many ways to take down a foe. Tallons, teeth, and poison are great ways but the Maleceptor has a very unique way of dispatching its foes.
Via: Lexicanum
The Maleceptor is the purest embodiment of the Hive Mind’s psychic power. As it advances into battle, psychic energy spears from its cranium and vaporizing all in its path. Bullets and energy bolts fired at the Maleceptor are consumed by a formidable psychic barrier, or deflect harmlessly from its thickly armored hide. Ethereal pseudopods reach forth from the creature’s glistening brain-array and the merest brush from one of these psychic tendrils overloads the victim’s consciousness with a fraction of the Hive Mind’s unimaginable energies, causing their heads to explode.
Maleceptors are the response of the Hive Mind to some of the more psychically gifted races that populate the galaxy. Embedded in the beast’s torso are glistening orbs of encephalic tissue, from which protrude twisting coils of shadowy energy. These tendrils are manifestations of the Tyranids’ nullifying psychic presence – the Shadow in the Warp – and to touch one is to come into contact with the horrifying immensity of that psychic phenomenon. For nearly every living creature, this spells a spectacularly violent end.
It is fortunate that Maleceptors are such complex and valuable organisms that the Hive Mind rarely deploys more than a few such creatures. A single Maleceptor is capable of obliterating the minds of several enemy psykers and gathered in sufficient numbers they possess the power to tear entire cities to the ground. To enhance their already prodigious abilities, Maleceptors are often accompanied into battle by drifting hosts of Zoanthropes and Neurothropes. The resultant neural nodes not only bolster the resilience and ferocity of the swarms surrounding them, but also focus and direct the baleful effects of the Shadow in the Warp, unleashing roiling tides of psychic force.
Maleceptors are completely blind, and navigate via a combination of extrasensory psychic perception, and by utilizing their powerful synaptic link to the Hive Mind to sense the subtle psychic impulses of nearby Tyranids. Thus, while they lack the individualism and wealth of combat experience that a Hive Tyrant possesses, they are still able to react to emerging threats with startling speed.
To these creatures the chaos of a battlefield is a phenomenally complex neural network, and they are able to instantly translate this maddening web of information, redirecting and redeploying lesser beasts in a fraction of a second. When faced with heavy resistance, such the hive fleets have deployed Maleceptors with notable success. The thick armour plating of those mighty war engines, so effective at repelling the massed attacks of a Tyranid swarm, is rendered almost useless in the face of a Maleceptor’s psychic assault.
