An interesting breed of warp predator, the psychneuien in the Dark Heresy core book. But I really wonder how they attack and feast on the minds of psykers.

How do the larvae enter one's brain?
Are they present in the physical world or do they enter the brain as a warp shadow thing?
How do they gestate?
what do they look like?
and should the adult psychneuien really have a Toughness of 86 ánd Unnatural Toughness????

A creature of the same name appears in the Horus Hersy novel Thousand Sons. They were an insect like species native to Prospero (the Thousand Sons homeworld). They were drawn to psychic energies. The females psychicly projected their eggs into the brains of psykers. After a day, the eggs hatch and the larvee eat the hosts brain. At first the host feels a mild headache, by afternoon, the larvee have driven the host insane and by nightfall they break out of his head, eat the remaining body and then slinking off to pupate. In another day, they emerge as full grown adults ready continue the cycle.

They are phsyically described as beatle like, with a segmented body, six limbs, large mandibles, a feeding proboscus and wings. Individually, the psychneuein of Prospero aren't that physically formidable... a single Fire Bolt from a Thousand Sons pyrokine is enough to take one down. The fact that they attack in swarms and physically attacking is secondary to the goal of psychokinetically seeding their eggs is another matter.

Hi LaughingGod,

yep, the "86 AND unnatural toughness" puzzles me as well. Perhaps time for a rules question in this other sub forum with a clear-cut-question topic

Anyway, I have no rules evidence for the following, but I think they are meant to enter the targets brain as part of a psychic phenomena.

WARNING! THE FOLLOWING SPOILS "DEAD STARS!"

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Dead Stars features an Astropath NPC that gets infested after a failed attempt to use his powere (or as she whined "I tried to use my powers, but this place denied me!"). I know that a phenomena isn´t stopping the power from happening, but I could imagine a modified entry on the "Perils of the Warp" table that is used if a psyker uses his powers in an area infested with Psycheneuein. After all, they already do it in [DS] with substituting daemon attacks with Psycheneuein attacks.

Well, seeing as not much has been done with the Psycheneuein since the old Rogue Trader (Warhammer 40k 1st ed) days, some of that information still might apply:

"The Psycheneuein resembles a huge, spindly wasp: it is not intelligent, and is a voracious hunter and killer. It is also possessed of unique, sickening, reproductive habits. Like many other warp creatures, the Psycheneuein is sensitive to psychic emanations. Although capable of responding to any such emanations, the most attractive and powerful come from the unprotected human psyker. Female Psychneuein use these emanations to materialize a clutch of eggs directly into the mind of their victims. The normal range of this ab8ility is only 100 meters, but is increased to ten light years in the case of unprotected human psykers. Each egg is tinny, and no initial discomfort is felt by the psyker, but, as the eggs grow into larva, they begin to feed on the psyker's brain. So rapid is their growth from that point , the victim may suffer no more then a mild headache in the morning, yet by evening he would be dead, his skull writhing with plump maggots. Insanity, agony, and death fallow in rapid succession. Within hours, the grubs will have picked the carcass clean, and will seek a safe, dark refuge in which to pupate. By the fallowing day, they are ready to emerge as adult Psychneuein -carnivorous winged predators. Once in adult form, they are relatively easy to destroy, having no compulsion to hide. However, they are still dangerous because they are capable of breeding more of their kind within the minds of nearby unprotected psykers." Rogue Trader pg 205

So, going by that, they weren't orriginaly all that physically formidable and they psychically projected their eggs into their victim's mind (sometimes over vast distances). Of course, not only dose the Mara Strains description mention that there are many different breeds of this warp predator, but the above info comes from a book which as had most everything else in it reworked over the past 20+ years, so make of it what you will.

Just myself personally, I'd think the high T is a bit out of place on them and would knock it down to the 40's (so it has an 8 TB with it's unnatural because, well, it's all warpy, possibly not entirely physical, and it's got that whole hard bug thing going for it). Likewise, when it comes to the reproduction, I rather like to look at the heavy warp nature of the Psychneuein and consider the eggs not to be any kind of physical thing. Instead, Psychneuein eggs, in my 40k world view, would be thoughts and ideas psychically projected into the victim. Sometimes, these thought-eggs can be hidden in other more mundane ideas, in certain phrases, in particular mental image and emotion combinations, even recorded in books and scrolls, waiting centuries for someone to read it, think it, and get the disastrous Psychneuein producing idea. Once the idea that contains the thought-eggs is in a victims mind, it needs to be incubated by higher then normal psychic emanations, the kind that come from psykers or anyone else with at least a psy-rating of 1 (like sorcerers, people on spook, etc). This incubates the thought-eggs as the idea takes hold of the victims mind, coaxing the larva out of the idea to begin devouring the victims thoughts slowly gaining substance until they burst forth as semi-physical thought-worms that will devour the host and slink off to pupate into an adult Psychneuein.

Such has a nice absurd edge to it while reinforcing the dangers of thought -just about perfect for 40k ;-)

Graver said:

That is a very nice take. I would like the buggers to be all insubstantial and warpy and not some mind-hunting variant of Tyranids.