The Horror of The 41st Millennium: Genestealer Cults

​Way, way back in the primordial era of the 1980s, when Games Workshop was just beginning to blossom into the international juggernaut of tabletop wargaming we know today, the Warhammer 40 000 universe was a many-headed, consumptive beast, lashing out and consuming anything within reach (not unlike the Tyranid race that would become such a staple of the universe in years to come) in order to evolve and extrapolate itself. 


The “Genestealers” originally occurred in a throw-away mention of the original background books which defined them as another species of alien that might be encountered by humanity out there in the vastness of space. Back then, they'd yet to even accrue the H.R. Giger, “Alien” inspired elements that would make them such a popular and iconic gribbly on the tabletop. 


It wasn't until the release of the science-fiction/horror boardgame Space Hulk that they evolved aesthetically and in terms of background into something closer to what we recognise today. As with most things 40K of the era, the Genestealers included in that game underwent something of a transformation from the original pencil sketches to be found in their earliest renderings (images which might be surprising to those who only know them from their more recent incarnations): heavily influenced by the design work of artist H.R. Giger for the film Alien, they became 40K's equivalent of that biomechanical monstrosity; alien entities that operated in a strange, insect-colony fashion, infesting vast, derelict spacecraft -the eponymous “space hulks”-, multiplying and evolving within over generations before being drawn into the gravity of populated worlds. ​

It's here where the horror of the Genestealers truly takes a turn for the Cronenbergian: like the xenomorph they resemble, the Genestealers are parasitic entities; they infect indigenous lifeforms with their DNA, drawing them into a cycle of gradual infestation in which they slowly, insidiously become part of a  civilisation's -or entire world's- lifecycles and eco-systems. This strange species of parasitism was given a notably 40K, dystopian twist by the introduction of “Genestealer Cults;” an army option in Warhammer 40 000 that allowed players to take control of the disenfranchised underclasses of worlds within the galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man that have embraced the alien into their midst or been drawn into the slow, parasitic cycles of the Genestealers, successive generations giving birth to hybrid mutants of human and Genestealer and eventually what are known as “purestrain” Genestealers; examples of the original organism that are not only legendarily lethal but also have the means of perpetuating the cycle. 


Beyond the obvious body-horror of this process -the cycle of generational mutations produces some notably monstrous offshoots, including the truly disturbing “Aberrants;” failed hybrids of human and Genestealer whose bodies are racked by mutations and deformities-, there's also a political dimension to the Genestealer Cults that emphasises the dystopian nightmare of 40K itself: 


The Imperium of Man is a place of grinding attrition where humanity is a resource to be utilised, bled dry and ultimately expended. Human beings are fed into vast, industrial meatgrinders of war and production where their entire purpose in being is to serve until expiration, some worlds and societies even taking the extreme steps of actively altering their citizens; lobotomising or surgically mutilating their minds to fulfil particular functions, replacing limbs and organs to make them more pliable and appropriate for their assigned functions. Misery, despair and suffering are part and parcel of existence on these worlds. As such, the Genestealer Cults have found a particular ideological niche to exploit; the nature of their parasitism isn't merely biological: each individual cult fosters its own strange beliefs and ideologies, much of which revolves around an appointed day of salvation when celestial saviours from the heavens will descend and liberate humanity from the yolk of slavery. 


These beliefs are fostered and encouraged within the cult structures, used to draw more and more disenfranchised Imperial citizens into the organisation. Each “cult” emphasises different versions of these beliefs, based on a variety of factors (not least of which are the circumstances in which the cults originally came about, the cultures of the worlds they infest etc). Owing to the absolute, hopeless horror of existence within the Imperium, there are hundreds -if not thousands- willing to latch onto any promise of better tomorrows, which is the principle means by which such organisations thrive and increase their influence. It is the dystopian nature of the Imperium itself that fosters this enemy within; that makes its citizens so willing to surrender everything they are, even down to their own flesh and genetic conditions. 


Of course, this often brings the cults into conflict with Imperial authorities; not only are local systems likely to investigate and suppress them, but institutions whose mandates are somewhat wider-ranging -and entirely more horrific- such as the Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition, are very likely to bring their attentions to bear. This can result in open conflict between the cults and the societies they would ostensibly “save.” Lacking the specialised technology and military training common to other forces in 40K, the Cults are often left to fight with whatever they have to hand: those embedded within industrial or mining worlds modify their tools and equipment into crude but effective weaponry. Meanwhile, the Genestealer element of the cults produce more and more potent biological, living weapons and genetic modifications for them to utilise. The wars they fight are often guerilla in nature, based on sabotage and canny utilisation of local knowledge, rather than the more martial conflicts common to the battlefields of the 41st Millennium. Here, another aspect of the true horror of the Genestealer Cults raises its mutated head: 


They are the classic “enemy within;” a satirically extreme expression of the cultural paranoia that informs science fiction of the early 20th century: they not only exist within our own societies, but within our own tribes, churches and family groups; people can be genetically inculcated into the Cults and not even realise it until they've been too altered to do anything. They are Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing From Outer Space, Alien and so many other examples of paranoia-inspired science fiction expressed in a single species. In particular, they emphasise a peculiarly anglophonic form of science fiction; that which exhibits paranoia regarding not only others and outsiders, but deviant ideology corrupting us from within. In the Genestealer Cults, that factor is taken to another extreme via the introduction of a genetically parasitic element: the alien infestation not only alters us in terms of the abstract, but also at our most biologically fundamental. 


But, even given that, the ultimate horror of the Cults lies in their latter-day evolutions: 


Originally a species unto themselves, the Genestealers later evolved in terms of their background to be part of the intergalactic Tyranid race: vanguard organisms of a much wider -and far more apocalyptic- species of biological alien horrors from beyond the known universe. The purpose of the Cults, it transpires, is to prepare planets for the coming of the Tyranid Hive Fleets by undermining local systems and defences, making the citizens thereof welcoming of their own imminent demise. 

---

The Tyranids, it transpires, are not the agents of celestial salvation the cults promote. Rather, they are akin to an intergalactic swarm of locusts: a species driven by a singular, collective consciousness whose abiding imperative is to consume every inch of biological matter in creation, and use that information to continually evolve and alter itself. Worlds attacked by the Tyranids are left as barren husks; rocks that have even been sucked dry of every inch of biomass; even oceans and minerals, meaning that nothing can ever live or evolve there ever again. 


It therefore comes as something of an unpleasant surprise to the Genestealer Cults when the prophesied day of salvation occurs, when the great leviathans of the Tyranid's living vessels arrive in orbit around their home planets, and what descend are not shining agents of alien Nirvana, but swarms of rapacious horrors; creatures that mindlessly, endlessly consume until there is nothing left. Even the overlords of the Cults often don't realise that this is to be their fates, trying to flee or defend themselves against the entities they once saw as blessed children or faithful kin. 


Ultimately, the fate of the Genestealer Cults is to be either discovered and exterminated or to achieve their aims, bring down the “Star Gods” they spend entire generations venerating and end up being consumately devoured for their troubles. They are the gallows irony of the 40K universe at its most overt: an example of the existential despair that underpins every aspect of the mythology. There is no hope for common-or-garden humanity here; only endless abuse, privation and disgrace, then a violent end at the hands of one of the universe's many, many horrors. 


This mingling of the subjectively and ideologically horrific is what makes the 40K universe so notable amongst its contemporaries: taking every element of its background to the utmost extremes and beyond suffuses it with a bleak and morbid irony; a satire born of its own absolutism. Certain aspects of the universe are so ridiculously dark, despairing and hopeless, they foment an especial species of horror; one that elicits as much laughter as it does dread. The image of the Cult Magus's face as they beatifically welcome their celestial saviours only for prayers to become whimpers of terror as realisation dawns is as bleakly humorous as it is horrific; even moreso when one considers that the Genestealer Cults operate across spans of generational time: they can exist for centuries or millennia within human societies before the Tyranids arrive at their doorstep, slowly evolving, transforming; experiencing their own internal schisms and transformations in culture, only to be devoured alongside the rest of their civilisations. There's also the very real chance that the Tyranids will never come, leaving the Cult to expand and swell until it either consumes its host culture completely or fractures into myriad sub-groups, all with their own especial beliefs, agendas and ideologies. 


In this, the 40K universe provides not only a less-than-flattering dystopian dissection of how ideologies and resultant institutions form, but also a satire of the -often obique and corrosive- agendas that underpin their cultivation. As always, when at its best, the 40K universe is a petrie dish of mythology, storytelling and metaphorical examination, and the Genestealer Cults are one of its most poignant, despairing commentaries on humanity and its cultures in a mythology replete such macabre autopsies. ​

TODAY ON THE GINGER NUTS OF HORROR WEBSITE ​

BOOK REVIEW: WHERE DECAY SLEEPS BY ANNA CHEUNG

THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR FEATURES