If the termagant is bred for endurance, the hormagaunt is bred purely for speed. Long-limbed and disturbingly agile, these creatures cover open ground in a blurring, loping sprint that has broken the nerve of disciplined regiments who expected to trade fire at range and instead found claws at their throats within moments of first contact.
Hormagaunts carry no ranged bio-weapons worth speaking of; their entire evolutionary purpose is to close the gap between the swarm and its prey as violently and as quickly as possible, using enlarged claws and boneswords fused to their forelimbs to shred through flesh and light armor alike. They are frequently the first bio-form an enemy sees clearly before the killing begins, arriving in loose, chaotic-seeming packs that nonetheless converge on weak points with unsettling precision.
Their aggression is a double-edged trait even the Hive Mind must manage carefully. Without a synapse creature's steadying influence nearby, hormagaunt broods can outpace their own support and hurl themselves into slaughter far ahead of the swarm's main body, a flaw the Hive Mind seems content to accept in exchange for the terror they sow.
Order of battle
