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Genestealer

4 bytes added, 18:30, 19 March 2013
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Physiology: copy editing
Genestealers are stronger and hardier than [[Human]]s, able to withstand even the most hostile environments unprotected, including hard vacuum, and are capable of living for centuries {{Fn|6}}. They are a highly intelligent species with a disproportionately large and adaptive brain that is housed in a bulbous head {{Fn|1b}}. They combine extraordinary intelligence and subtlety of mind with remarkable strength and quickness of body.
Genestealers are bipedal, standing in a perpetual crouch, and have two sets of arms, one equipped with Human-like hands, one with powerful ripping claws The . Their dense musculature and the distending hinge of their jaw allows the generation of incredible bite-pressure.{{Fn|4}}
Their olfactory organ is linked at its base to the rear of their palettepalate, combining their scent and taste for possible use as a sophisticated air-analysis method. They also display respiratory gill systems along the dermis/valves between their fused exo-ribs. This system is then somehow linked to breathing holes on their limbs and cranium.{{Fn|4}}
However these characteristics may not be general across all Genestealers, as they are one of the most mutable Tyranid specimens species and often exhibit a wide and varying range of different traits. It has been hypothesised that these traits manifest dependent depending on the particular host species the infection discovers; but this theory has been disregarded by some experts, citing that the traits are more likely different Genestealer subspecies altogether, which are separate from the host.{{Fn|2c}}
Purestrain Genestealers are Genestealers which have been spawned not through the process of infecting hosts but rather by the hive ships themselves in great bio-factories and birthing vats. Not polluted or altered by “inferior” genetic material, they are markedly stronger and faster than a normal Genestealer and possess a wider variety of adaptive biomorphs. This is intentional, as Purestrain Genestealers are the creatures from which all other Genestealers are born, and even a single Purestrain Genestealer can create a vast brood from a local population given time and enough raw material.{{Fn|7}}
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