Inquisitorial Synopsis : Purii
The Purii are frightfully intelligent, with both autopsy and vivisection demonstrating an enlarged skull, greatly increased neural density and activity compared to that seen in human or intelligent Xeno tissue (with the exception of the Ork, whose fungiform brain tissue exhibits no activity but thinks anyway). Beyond the essential confirmation of sentience by physiological measurements, less reliable forms of evidence also concur. Purii Genestealers are able of frightful combat ambushes, or showing dramatic tactical insight, and of expertly picking targets for infiltration and coercion.
The Purii's disposition is a trivial matter. Like all Xeno, they are universally hostile to humanity, universally corrupt, and universally malicious. Unlike most of the other genestealer forms, they are not prone to deception. Realizing that their foul visage would repel every human, the purii will always resort to violence, and should be terminated at every opportunity.
From the Private Notes of Shexia, Interrogator, Cultist, Revolutionary; Damned by her Own Desire and the Universe's Folly
To any who has seen the picts of a Genestealer in action, the idea of the Purii as anything but monsters might seem folly. Even amongst the genestealer cults, the Purii stalk as barely disguised predators, a thin disguise most assuredly shed when they tear apart the cults that host them on the day of Ascension. It was with some trepidation then, that I decided to plumb the mind of one such creature, to try and see what communication could be established, if they could be reasoned with, and what perhaps they could desire.
I had prepared to see many things when diving into the mind of such a creature. Endless horror, pain in pleasure. Religious adoration to a distant stargod. Eternal hunger, to devour ever more. What I did not expect to find, and what I did find, was nothing.
Central, in the vast mind plain of the purebred Genestealer, there is nothing. Oh of course, there were the isolated pillars, the neural defenses, the baseline functionality that keeps the creature moving, breathing, eating. But beyond that, the gene stealer does not possess that driving spark that can be seen in every life form. More than the cultists, more than a servitor, the gene stealer is a tool. It has a brain, it has the knowledge to conceive of everything we can think of as human. It can comprehend fear, as the Inquisition has long deduced. It can comprehend every feeling, even the very language that people speak but it can not pronounce. But there is nothing to provide any intrinsic drive.
Nothing beyond the cult, and the distinct echoes of the Tyranid superorganism.
From the Private Notes of Shexia, Interrogator, Cultist, Revolutionary; Damned by her Own Desire and the Universe's Folly, Addendum
Of the many things one does not expect to find within the mind of a genestealer, oneself is perhaps the most surprising. This, to clarify for any future reader, is not a metaphorical discovery. Whatever personal revelations I experienced at the hands a genestealer, I did not find them within it's mind. Instead, within the mind I found myself, a crude psychic echo of my actions in the days past and future, reinforced by my own repeated travels within it's mind.
Examination of a different specimen found similar patterns.
The genestealer is not, as I stated earlier, an empty box. It is a tool, a perfect organism for mimicking and extraction. And to achieve this, it does not merely copies a species's genome. It taps into the species psychic imprint, the genestealer itself a shallow mirror of the collective soul, and from that soul it learns it's fears, it's anxieties, those primal spots where others would not dare to look, and there the parasite nestles. From there, it knows how to recruit a cult, how to undermine defenses, how break into riot and bring it all down on ascension.
It would be a grave mistake to assign human identities to the Purii. They lack our drives almost entirely.
And yet, they comprehend us on a level we might not know ourselves, and in a fashion completely alien to us.
