"A lone hormagaunt is little more than target practice; a hundred, however, is a different beast entirely..."
- — Battle-Brother Darstan, 10th Company Storm Wardens
Tyranid Hormagaunts attacking en masse
A Hormagaunt is one of the most dangerous Tyranid creatures in a Hive Fleet. Not because of their size or particular viciousness, but because they multiply out of control. When attacking a planet, Hormagaunts are seeded onto the target world by Mycetic Spores. They quickly reproduce and then rampage across the planet killing anything they find.
The Tyranid Hive Mind does not need to direct the Hormagaunts to attack targets since they will instinctively feed on anything they can find. This is due to the ravenous appetite that defines them from the moment they are spawned.
Role[]
A seemingly stable bio-mutation of the Gaunt genus of Tyranid war-beast, the Hormagaunt is a biological machine, a living weapon designed and bred with but a single purpose in mind: to close with a living enemy as rapidly as possible and eviscerate it with its long-bladed talons and do so again, and again, and again without remorse or relent until nothing living opposes it.
Unleashed in huge, restless swarms made up of close packed ranks of rippling claws and hard-edged chitinous plates, Hormagaunts move across the ground like lightning quick shoals of deadly fish. Drawn to the scent of blood, they close in for the kill, leaping, screaming, and scuttling. They leave nothing alive in their wake.
Weapons[]
- Scything Talons - These ridged, chitinous claws are the main weapon of the Hormagaunt. They allow the Hormagaunt to disable its prey before the feeding begins.
- Toxic Sacks - These tick-like organisms inject virulant toxins which coat the Tyranid's claws and teeth.
- Adrenal Glands - Adrenal Glands are found on many variants of the front-line tyranids. The biomorph floods the creature with a host of chemicals and hormones which serve to speed up the metabolic processes, causing the Tyranid creature to enter a hyperactive state of frenzy.
Sources[]
- Codex: Tyranids (4th Edition)
- Codex: Tyranids (5th Edition)
- Deathwatch: Core Rulebook (RPG), pg. 371