The Zoat are a rare and mysterious xenos species, centauroid in form, with a reptilian lower body and a broad, four-armed torso rising above it. Their true origins have long baffled Imperial scholars, though the strongest evidence links them to the Tyranids — for the Zoat appear to share the great swarms' bio-engineered heritage, as though grown from the same alien design. Yet unlike the mindless bio-forms of the Hive Mind, the Zoat possess intellect, individuality, and a strange, melancholy gentleness.
According to the fragmentary records that survive, the Zoat once approached humanity not as invaders but as would-be allies, seeking to warn of a coming devouring horror from beyond the galaxy's edge. Some scholars believe they were creatures fleeing the very Hive Mind that spawned them, escaped tools that had slipped their maker's control. Their warnings, if they were ever truly given, went unheeded in the paranoid darkness of the Imperium.
What became of the Zoat is unclear, for they are seldom encountered in the present age and may be all but extinct. They stand as one of the galaxy's great enigmas — a race that may have severed itself from the Tyranid gestalt, clinging to selfhood and purpose against the tide that made them. Whether any Zoat still wander the stars, or whether the Hive Mind has long since reclaimed its errant children, none can say.
The bestiary continues
