Even for a planet as unilaterally bleak and unforgiving as Necromunda, the twisted and irradiated depths of Hive Secundus are especially unforgiving. This is the domain of the Malstrain, the corrupted brood of a once-captive Genestealer Patriarch subjected to proscribed experiments by a Heretek Magos Biologis. The Malstrain survived the worst that the Imperium could throw at them, but not unchanged – and now they rule what remains. Here’s what went into designing them…
Rob: The most important thing to note is that the Malstrain are nothing like regular Purestrain Genestealers. They are still beyond frightening to encounter, but they are a corruption of the Tyranids’ very being – and as a result, the Hive Mind (or even other Genestealer cults) wants nothing to do with them.
Alex: We were able to express this visually by breaking the main Tyranid design language. They had to look bombarded and irradiated, like they have evolved in a horrible way – so we tried to find an aesthetic that changed them for the worse. You can still recognise them as Genestealers, but there’s definitely something that went horribly wrong. When we started, we looked at fungal insectoid parasites – things that have a negative impact on the host. The creepier the better – we wanted to play on survival horror, monsters that are even more deformed and dangerous.
Rob: The most important thing was that they should be warped, twisted, and tainted, but not by Chaos. They very explicitly required a different aesthetic to their mutations.
Alex: Due to all the bombardment by irradiating warheads, plus generations of inbreeding, they’re twisted and feral. They’re missing limbs or they have extra ones, with sloughed skin and exposed organs. All these elements show degeneration and deterioration.
Miguel: The colour has been sucked out of them, and they’re very anaemic and faded.
Alex: When it came to painting, we discussed angler fish, and other creatures that live at the very bottom of the deep sea – really pale, with huge eyes. The colour scheme played in that same area – they’re beasts from the dark depths.
In classic Tyranid design, there is biological symmetry and evolved perfection. The arms are placed in the same way, and they always have the same number of limbs. You can count the armour plates – they always have six ridges on their heads, for instance.
One of the first things we did was to break that symmetry. On the Malstrain, one hand has three claws while the other might have five. Faces can have one eye and three eyes on the other side. There were quite a few decisions made in this regard to break the connection between Purestrain and Malstrain.
Miguel: That angler fish look is paralleled in the artwork. I looked at a lot of deep sea artefacts for mood setting – things that looked like they’d been submerged for a very long time. The hive has a similar feel to it – it’s been warped by the graviton weapons to become a bit more spinal. It’s the same with the colours – the light has been sucked out of it, and it’s very dark.
Everything in the box uses this palette – even the logo breaks the standard rules. I knew the vibe from the outset was very horror-esque, and I really wanted a very different feel from the ash wastes. When drawing the wastes, you go for the desolate and isolating vastness that Necromunda can deliver – so I wanted to create the opposite, somewhere claustrophobic, with the sense that you can't see more than a few metres in front of you. You perceive lights as if they're underwater; it feels very murky, tight, and insulated.
Alex: The Tyramites are thralls to the Malstrain broodmind, but they themselves are not Tyranid creatures. They are local insects that have fed on the dead and become mutated, like a tick that has evolved.Rob: Brood Scum are what you get when humans are infected by the Malstrain curse, whereas Tyramites are insects which have had the same treatment. They are the kind of thing a healthy Broodmind wouldn’t bother with, but in these desperate straits it turns to what it can get. Things like this aren’t seen in other Genestealer uprisings – they’re purely in existence in Hive Secundus, simply because they need all the help they can get.
Miguel: Necromunda is a bit like the Madagascar of the Imperium – an isolated island where improbable wildlife can thrive. Under that analogy, Hive Secundus is the Madagascar of Necromunda…
Alex: You get two Genestealer frames in the box. On each one, you have enough to build three Genestealers and two Tyramites, with five Brood Scum heads. This allows you to build quite a large Malstrain contagion. The fittings were designed to work with the Hive Scum sprue, but with little to no work they can fit on most other bodies too. The heads work very well on Orlock bodies, for example, so there is room for kitbashing if you want to personalise your brood scum.
Rob: Malstrain Infected gangs are a new gang type in the Book of Desolation, so you could easily make an Orlock gang that’s been taken over by the Malstrain, for instance. The pure Malstrain gang is very much designed for Hive Secundus, and the Underhells campaign in the new book – they aren’t meant to reach out beyond that arena.
That’s partly because you can’t have a Genestealer visit the trading post, but partly because the Secundan Exclusion Zone is quite hard to breach! An arbitrator may wish to change things, of course, but Malstrain Corrupted gangs are what you should see outside Hive Secundus. These are normal House gangs that may be suspiciously bald and goggle-eyed, with a Genestealer or other monstrosity hidden away somewhere in the attic.
It’s important to stress that the Malstrain cults and regular Genestealer cults are very much at odds with one another. The Malstrain fully emerged after the fall of Hive Secundus, once things had gone crazy – the other Genestealer cults on the planet were spread by the same Patriarch before the rot set in, or by other Genestealers entirely. They view each other as anathema, and new miniatures like the Malstrain Alpha, Hermiatus, and the Coalescence aren’t available to a regular Genestealer Cult gang. If the Malstrain managed to establish a psychic beacon, the Hive Mind would be horrified. Bizarrely, that means that Hermiatus actually succeeded in his task – he found a way to save a planet from the Genestealer curse.
Alex: The signal is so twisted that the Hive Mind is simply like ‘nope’.
Rob: The original Hermiatus is long dead – but the Malstrain still have his genetic code, and they occasionally throw versions of him up again. There are many reports of him being killed, and a new being seems to be created every time. Is he a father figure, is there a real bond there? Whether the goal is for ‘Hermiatus’ to cure the Malstrain or to accelerate their change, no one really knows…
Thanks again, guys! We’ll return tomorrow with an investigation of the Van Saar Tek-hunters.