Broodlord lore question

[HiveFleetExotica]

I’m trying to make a narrative for my broodlord and I want it to be the last survivor of a crashed space hulk would it be able to act independently? Or would he look for people to turn into genestealers and if so wouldn’t that make him a patriarch and not a broodlord? I know broodlords are made for vanguard assaults and patriarchs are genestealers who became an alpha. Can’t find much about them on wikis. My inspiration is from named tyranids like Old one eye

[niiai]

I am a bit unsure if a Broodlord and a patriarch is the same thing. I think so, and it is mostly a naming difference by the imperium.

Broodlord are under the will of the hivemind I belive. I am unsure how much independence they have.

Genestealers have an instinct, instruction or order to infiltrate. They try to get onto ships that leave planets to spread. Once a Genestealer gets onto a new planet there is a change. The cause is unknown as far as I know (proximate, instinct, belief that you are the only one.) If more make it presumably only one of them change. They change in sieze and become a patriarch. Patriarch starts doing a Vlad Tempest impersonation and over time builds up a cult around him.

When a cult grows big enough it acts as an active beakon and tyranids nearby come to harvest it. Once the tyranids come close enough the Broodlord plugs back into the system. Independency falls back to what level it was on before. The cult fights the oppressors. Once victory is ashured the illusion drops and they get eaten.

Your Broodlord can hardly qualify as a Patriarch if he finds nobody to take over. However, it could be justefied that after beeing stranded on a Space Hulk long it develops into a Patriarch/Broodlord in hopes of finding people. (See the end boss in space hulk boardgames.)

As for sticking around long. Tyranids tend to not live very long. Once and invasion is over it is into digestion pits to become more building materials. Think of it as perfect recykeling or just childer building things from play-dough. Once you are finished playing you mash it together.

However, the Swarm lord seems to have what we could define as consciousness. The DOW2, while not official, treats the hive tyrant you play as having some form of conciusness and it is within my head cannon. Think of souls lacking a body, so they create a body for them. Like altered carbon books and movies, gods(?(god energy forces?)) and avatars in hindu religion, or agents in the matrix. Now in DOW2 they do this to give mission structures the same feel as other races. But I really liked it.

I am unsure how many nids have personalities that survive between reincarnation. Canonically it is mostly the swarmlord. However there are examples of patriarch and other GSC beeing kept alive for longer for pragmatic reasons. Also one patriarch tryed to delay the arrival of nids because it wanted personal revenge on aplanatery governor.

Just make something up.

[Kilmor]

My understanding is a Patriarch is basically a Broodlord that develops from being the progenitor of a cult. A normal broodlord is a genestealer leader grown purely for combat. So basically they are the same chassis but diverge on skills slightly due to implementation.
Genestealers are designed to operate independently. They do not suffer from being outside of the hivemind control but will fall under it when they get into range. My crusade Broodlord is basically a patriarch that was taken in when the hive approached the planet but developed the ymgarl mutation and has kept his independence.

I like that some of the more unique tyranid creatures are somewhere between reincarnations or replicated brain pathways that make them reappear all over the galaxy.

[HiveFleetExotica]

Mar 26, 2021 14:08:33 GMT Kilmor said:

My understanding is a Patriarch is basically a Broodlord that develops from being the progenitor of a cult. A normal broodlord is a genestealer leader grown purely for combat. So basically they are the same chassis but diverge on skills slightly due to implementation.
Genestealers are designed to operate independently. They do not suffer from being outside of the hivemind control but will fall under it when they get into range. My crusade Broodlord is basically a patriarch that was taken in when the hive approached the planet but developed the ymgarl mutation and has kept his independence.

I like that some of the more unique tyranid creatures are somewhere between reincarnations or replicated brain pathways that make them reappear all over the galaxy.

how does the ymgarl mutation make it independent?

[HiveFleetExotica]

Mar 26, 2021 8:16:16 GMT niiai said:

I am a bit unsure if a Broodlord and a patriarch is the same thing. I think so, and it is mostly a naming difference by the imperium.

Broodlord are under the will of the hivemind I belive. I am unsure how much independence they have.

Genestealers have an instinct, instruction or order to infiltrate. They try to get onto ships that leave planets to spread. Once a Genestealer gets onto a new planet there is a change. The cause is unknown as far as I know (proximate, instinct, belief that you are the only one.) If more make it presumably only one of them change. They change in sieze and become a patriarch. Patriarch starts doing a Vlad Tempest impersonation and over time builds up a cult around him.

When a cult grows big enough it acts as an active beakon and tyranids nearby come to harvest it. Once the tyranids come close enough the Broodlord plugs back into the system. Independency falls back to what level it was on before. The cult fights the oppressors. Once victory is ashured the illusion drops and they get eaten.

Your Broodlord can hardly qualify as a Patriarch if he finds nobody to take over. However, it could be justefied that after beeing stranded on a Space Hulk long it develops into a Patriarch/Broodlord in hopes of finding people. (See the end boss in space hulk boardgames.)

As for sticking around long. Tyranids tend to not live very long. Once and invasion is over it is into digestion pits to become more building materials. Think of it as perfect recykeling or just childer building things from play-dough. Once you are finished playing you mash it together.

However, the Swarm lord seems to have what we could define as consciousness. The DOW2, while not official, treats the hive tyrant you play as having some form of conciusness and it is within my head cannon. Think of souls lacking a body, so they create a body for them. Like altered carbon books and movies, gods(?(god energy forces?)) and avatars in hindu religion, or agents in the matrix. Now in DOW2 they do this to give mission structures the same feel as other races. But I really liked it.

I am unsure how many nids have personalities that survive between reincarnation. Canonically it is mostly the swarmlord. However there are examples of patriarch and other GSC beeing kept alive for longer for pragmatic reasons. Also one patriarch tryed to delay the arrival of nids because it wanted personal revenge on aplanatery governor.

Just make something up.

thanks that was really helpful but I’m ok with his narrative leading to him getting reabsorbed with a hive fleet but would he keep his traits and original color scheme or would it change into the hive fleet that absorbed it like with Old one eye doesn’t he always come back as the behemoth color and missing an eye? Or the swarm lord being in leviathan color

[Hive Bahamut]

I did a huge lore dive recently on Genestealers and there are a few things discovered:

thetyranidhive.proboards.com/thread/58610/grim-dark-theory-data-collection

Ymgarls are nothing more than another species hybrid with, their mutability isn't due to instability like even I assumed before, but the Ymgarls were a form of leech.

The only defining difference between a Patriarch and Broodlord is prerogative. Patriarchs are "flight" and given survival priorities, that is enhanced by the ever-growing gestalt consciousness created by the cult.

Broodlords are essentially the cookie cutter "fight" version of that, that has been reabsorbed into the Hive Fleet. Tyranids can't make Patriarchs, but they can production line Broodlords.

The short "the things" could be a perfect basis for your stranded Genestealer, but explaining the cut off nature of the Fleet could be as simple as cerebral trauma.

Now STARTING with a Broodlord could be interesting, almost as a last survivor of a Nid Fleet, but the problem here is severing Synapse means no underlings, and no reverting to "flight" mechanic.

Ultimately you can do whatever you want. To stick to narrative you would just have to find a way to corrupt or sever the fight mechanic, and it would revert to "flight."

[killercroc]

Pretty much what was said here, the Broodlord is like an Alpha Genestealer and the Hive Mind actively grows them and they're typically made to lead large shock forces of Genestealers. While they're still sneaky like most stealers they don't seem to be as overly cunning and plan forming as the Patriarch. Patriarchs are a genetic evolution when the first Genestealer implants on a target species, it's suppose to be some biological/psychic trigger that starts the evolution and it somehow stops other Stealers from evolving too. Possibly to stop huge amounts of infighting in the cults but I don't believe there has been any hard lore exactly as to why.

So Broodlord is a big bad alpha Stealer bred for combat and leading the brood, Patriarch is an evolution caused from the Genestealer kiss when a Genestealer is cut off from the Hive Mind and is cautious and uses subjugation tactics to take over. So as it is lore wise, if it is a lone Broodlord it wouldn't turn people into Stealers necessarily, it would have to be a lone Genestealer that infects people then mutates into a Patriarch and new Genestealers will come from his family. I don't know lore wise what a lone Broodlord would do exactly, it might just go to ground and wait, make a nest. Typically when non-synapse or odd Tyranids become abandoned that's when they can mutate and end up being big bad named interesting creatures, but it doesn't always trigger and it's always been mostly a one-off thing for unique stories. There are other named Tyranids besides the ones in the codex, you might want to read up on them to get some ideas. Such as "What lies beneath" and "Laius Horror"

If a Broodlord got reabsorbed into the fleet it should break down completely and the biomass used to create any number of new creatures. His Biomass wouldn't specifically be used to bring him back each time, it just kinda becomes a blank template from that point on.

As far as the named/colored Tyranids go, when a creature gets reabsorbed besides the biomass becoming template gruel again the memory of that creature gets uploaded to the Hive Mind, now most Tyranids are really basic drone bee kind of templates so the Hive Mind doesn't have much reason to recreate any of the millions of generic tax-form bio lives. When it comes to named creatures, they almost always form when a Tyranid has lived a very interesting life, and has done so many unique things it stands out and the memories are kinda kept more important than the others. The Swarmlord is special because it was, if I remember correctly, a Hive Tyrant that the Hive Mind kept making and adding the DNA blueprint of other unique Hive Tyrants over many many battles, so he is like an "all famous generals of history rolled into one" creature. Now the Hive Mind has a blueprint for the Swarm Lord at that point in its career, though because that much info takes a lot of bio-mass to create (idk how but that's the lore, more smarter bug, more biomass needed) the Hive Mind very rarely makes them unless it really needs them. As to the specifics as of why the Hive Mind recreates named Tyranids in their native hive fleet color, it's a trigger of psychological warfare. The Hive Mind knows "Ahh the humans know what OOE is, so I'm going to make this special Carnifex without an eye and with this unique color cause they will recognize it and it will be more effective!" That's the short and simple of it, named Nids come back as their original form in appearance as a terror weapon above what the Nid itself is. Which is also why different Hive Fleets can make the same named Nid and there are reports of them from all over the galaxy.

[afewveiws]

The swarmlord also has all the memmories if his past lives and is normally left in complete control of the fleet he is created for.

The on going war between the orcs and the nids became such a distraction that the hive mind made swarmy so that he could deal with it. This allows the hive mind to differt its attention every where else while swarmy handles the orcs that never stop coming.

As for biomass requirements, intelligence requires more biomass in general but not much, the real reason he takes more biomass then a typical tyrant is because he's twice as big and far more psychicly powerful.

As for the stealers thing... im sure a broodlord outside of synapse wouldnt be much different from a regular stealer. Bigger for sure, but stealers are independent thinking creatuses, outside of synapse they experince pain and fear as much as a typical human. All stealers have a natural desire to live and are arguably more intelegent then the typical human.
These are traits the hive mind likes them to have because they spread them selves around to other worlds so that it doesnt have to.

I dont think a broodlord is going to be all that different from a patriarch, and if it is just a larger stealer and a patriarch is a "evolution" of a stealer, then theres no reason to assume that a broodlord couldnt do a genstealers kiss and evolve into an incredibly powerful patriarch.

Patriarch and a broodlord are both about 2x the size of regular stealer so a broodlord that turns patriarch could end up being comparable in size to a tyrant... that be a scary beast.... id follow/worship him.

[HiveFleetExotica]

Mar 26, 2021 20:04:14 GMT Hive Bahamut said:

I did a huge lore dive recently on Genestealers and there are a few things discovered:

thetyranidhive.proboards.com/thread/58610/grim-dark-theory-data-collection

Ymgarls are nothing more than another species hybrid with, their mutability isn't due to instability like even I assumed before, but the Ymgarls were a form of leech.

The only defining difference between a Patriarch and Broodlord is prerogative. Patriarchs are "flight" and given survival priorities, that is enhanced by the ever-growing gestalt consciousness created by the cult.

Broodlords are essentially the cookie cutter "fight" version of that, that has been reabsorbed into the Hive Fleet. Tyranids can't make Patriarchs, but they can production line Broodlords.

The short "the things" could be a perfect basis for your stranded Genestealer, but explaining the cut off nature of the Fleet could be as simple as cerebral trauma.

Now STARTING with a Broodlord could be interesting, almost as a last survivor of a Nid Fleet, but the problem here is severing Synapse means no underlings, and no reverting to "flight" mechanic.

Ultimately you can do whatever you want. To stick to narrative you would just have to find a way to corrupt or sever the fight mechanic, and it would revert to "flight."

I just read your entire thread and holy (please do not swear) what a read and very very informative thank you for doing it I’m fairly new to 40k so getting to know all that was really helpful