Psychneuein

Psychneuein are insectoid creatures that resemble huge, spindly wasps. Thankfully rare, Psychneuein are vile Warp entities drawn to the mental emanations of unprotected, badly injured or nascent psykers whose minds they attack for the obscene purpose of gestating their progeny. Psychneuein have been known to evidence various distinct genus, of which two have been identified - the Mara strain and the long extinct Prospero strain.

History
Psychneuein are foul creatures that normal reside in the Immaterium. These insectoid creatures have plagued Mankind since at least the Age of Strife era, where there was an explosion of psychic abilities amongst the various populations of humanity during this tumultuous period. What makes this creature so dangerous is its reproductive cycle. The female psychneuein is drawn to psychic emanations and has a rudimentary fusion of telepathic and telekinetic powers. When fertile, the female psychically projects a clutch of its eggs into the brain of a host being with an unprotected mind, vulnerable to the power of the aether. The eggs are small, no larger than a grain of sand, but by morning the following day, they will hatch and begin to feed on the host's brain. At first the victim feels nothing more than a mild headache, but by afternoon he will be in agony, raving and insane, as his brain is devoured from the inside out. By nightfall, he will be dead, his skull a writhing mass of plump maggots. In the space of a few hours, the grubs have picked the carcass clean and will seek a dark place to hide in which to pupate. By the following day, they will emerge as adults, ready to hunt and reproduce.

Once in adult form they are relatively easy to destroy, having no compulsion to hid. However, they are still dangerous because they are capable of breeding more of their kind within the minds of nearby unprotected psykers. Over short distances (of up to 100 metres) all psykers are vulnerable whether protected or not. The adult Psychneuein is vividly coloured in yellow and black, its wings are transparent. Grubs are white and generally maggot-like in appearance. The adult is two-and-a-half metres long, grubs reach a maximum size of half-metre before they pupate.

Mara Strain
Of the two known genii identified by Imperial scholars, the Mara strain is deemed among the most dangerous. The Mara Strain was first identified by Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Ark-Ashtyn during a heavy infestation at the mining penitentiary on the Ice World of Mara in the Calixis Sector, three centuries ago. Although the Mara facility was subsequently decommissioned, the tale of the "ice station massacre" remains a favourite dark fable among the sector's spacefarers. Since then, confirmed incidents of Mara infection have occurred on the sector worlds of Dusk, Lachrymae and Pellucida V as well as several vessels transiting near Mara, although these incidences remain thankfully very few.

Prospero Strain
The second strain of Psychneuein positively identified by the Ordo Xenos is the long extinct Prospero Strain that resided on the now barren homeworld of the Thousand Sons Space Marine Legion. These creatures were also insectoid and utterly repellent to the human eye. This alien predator was native to Prospero. The planet's ancient capital city of Tizca was the last outpost of civilisation wiped out thousands of years ago, a city where the survivors of a planet-wide cataclysm found refuge from the psychneuein. The Thousand Sons suspected some freak upsurge in the Warp triggered an explosion of uncontrolled psychic potential within the population, driving the psychneuein into a reproductive feeding frenzy. The civilisation of Prospero collapsed and the survivors fled to the city in the mountains. For thousands of years, the people of Tizca endured, while all they had built in the millennia since leaving Terra fell to dust. The surface of Prospero was dotted with the remains of their dead culture. Empty cities were overgrown with forests and vines, the palaces of their kings overrun with wild beasts.

The survivors survived by salvaging knowledge and equipment from the destruction to construct techno-psychic arrays and sustainable energy sources, which then allowed them to build giant hydroponic gardens deep in the caverns of the ventral mountain ranges. They survived the psychneuein threat by developing the very powers that made them so vulnerable. The psychneuein were drawn to Tizca in their thousands, but the survivors were able to train their most gifted psykers to use their minds to erect invisible barriers of pure thought (known as "kine shields"). They were primitive, bombastic powers compared to the subtle arts employed by the Thousand Sons, but they kept the creatures at bay. Arid so, the practitioners of the mysteries remained locked in their limited understanding of the Immaterium's power until the coming of the Thousand Sons' Primarch Magnus the Red.

When Magnus came to Prospero, it was said that it had borne him to the ground, for the impact he had on them was as great. The Tizcan commune, which was the name the survivors of the psychneuein gave to their little enclave, was a place rooted in tradition, but they had some skill in wielding the power of the aether. Of course, they didn't know it by that name, and the powers they had, while enough to keep the psy-predators at bay, were little more than the enchantments of idiot children. The young Primarch was schooled in the ways of the commune, and he quickly learned everything they had to teach. In truth, Magnus had outstripped the learning of their greatest scholars within a year of his arrival. Their teachings were too dogmatic, too linear and too limiting for the Primarch's mind’s potential. His intellect was superior in every way to those that taught him. With his teachings, he knew they could be so much more.

To increase his understanding of his powerful psychic abilities, Magnus took a walk into the desolation of Prospero. True power comes only to those who have fully tested themselves against their greatest fears. Within the commune, the Primarch knew no fear, no hunger or want and had no drive to push his abilities to their full potential. Magnus needed to be tested to the very limits of his powers to see if he even had limits. Out in the wilds, Magnus knew he would either find the key to fully unlock his powers or die in the attempt. A year after his coming to Prospero, the Primarch walked from the gates of Tizca and marched into the wilderness for nearly forty days. Through his observations, Magnus learned to harness his powerful abilities during his long trek. He also met Amon, the future Captain of the 9th Fellowship. Despite their discoveries, as was the way of history, nothing of import was ever achieved without bloodshed. Tragedy soon struck Tizca in the form of the psychneuein menace.

Temporaily lax in their mental discipline the psychneuein were drawn to the large commune of psykers in their thousands, blackening the sky with their numbers as they descended like a plague from ancient times. They swarmed from their darkened caves, organically shifting clouds of deadly clades, the relentless buzzing of thousands of crystalline wings the sound of inevitable doom. The males swarmed in, a hurricane of snapping mandibles and tearing claws, and fifty men died in the time it takes to draw breath. Behind the males came the females, engorged with clutch upon clutch of immaterial eggs. Their furious reproductive hunger was insatiable, and dozens of my friends fell to their knees in horror as they felt the psychneuein eggs take root in their brains. The beasts swirled around them, battering the Prosperines with psychic thrusts, scrabbling at their mental barriers to seed their minds with their eggs, and only the strongest of us remained. Amon and eight of the masters of Tizca stood with the Primarch, and as the psychneuein attacked again, Magnus knew this was what he had been seeking all along, a true test of his abilities. He would finally discover whether he had limits. Magnus would see if he was the master of his powers or was to be found wanting.

As the psychneuein came at the defenders again, something magnificent happened. The Primarch felt something move within him, feeling changed, as though an immense power that had lain within him, dormant and untapped, surged to life. As Magnus contemplated the moment of his death, raging fires erupted from his hands. The Primarch hurled torrents of flame into the sky, as though he had always known he had such powers, and smote hundreds of psychneuein to ruin with every gesture. Soon, the other defenders displayed hence-unknown abilities as well, as walls of flame sprang up at their command. Others were able to pluck beasts from the air and dash them on the rocks with the power of their minds. Some of the other defenders were able to will the vital fluids within the psychneuein to boil within their exo-skeletons. Amon saw images of the future and imminent danger seared though his mind, and he cried words of warning to his fellows, telling them of dangers to come and of how they might avoid them. Some of the other defenders sensed the lust within the psychneuein to plant their psychic seed within their minds, the relentless animal hunger that drove them to feed and propagate. They reached into the minds of the beasts and twisted their perceptions so that they became blind to the humans. With these newfound abilities, the cults of the Thousand Sons were born. The threat of the Prospero Strain of psychneuein were henceforth rendered inert.