Maleceptor

A Maleceptor is a horrific new creation of the Tyranid Hive Mind. Combining the brute strength of an Exocrine with the psychic might of a Zoanthrope brood, the Maleceptor can crush its enemies both with its claws and with the formidable power of its mind.

The Maleceptor is an adaptation of the Zoanthrope genus, a Tyranid familial grouping that uses psychic powers to manipulate, terrify and destroy their foes. Like Zoanthropes, the Maleceptor is a psychic powerhouse, its whole upper body given over to the vast organic processor through which it conducts the power of the Hive Mind. Unlike its smaller cousins, the Maleceptor’s mind-node is so vast it can’t levitate under its own psychic power, a problem easily solved by the Hive Mind; it simply built the Maleceptor a body able to carry its vast cranium, a tough, bonded exoskeleton and crown-like carapace also providing protection from enemy fire.

Role
If proof were ever needed of the sinister intelligence of the Hive Mind, the Maleceptor is surely it. As the Hive Fleets maraud deeper into the galaxy, the Hive Mind learns and adapts, spawning new monstrosities as specific, considered responses to the resistance it meets.

The Maleceptor is the ultimate answer to the problem posed by the psykers of the Tyranids’ prey-races; it is a grotesque living conduit for the Shadow in the Warp. Indeed, the Maleceptor’s revolting bulk is little more than an armoured container for said conduit -- a massive, six-lobed, brain-like organ, engineered to destroy flesh and metal alike by manifesting horrific psychic powers. What -- if anything -- survives its mental onslaught will then surely fall beneath the fury of its massive scything talons and clawed feet, for the Maleceptor is as adept at pulverising its foes in close combat as it is exterminating them with a flex of its alien mind.