Culexus

You done fucked up

"That which is unknown and unseen commands the greatest fear."

– Motto of the Culexus Temple

Culexus (Games Workshop-Latin of "Culex," meaning "Mosquito", sucking warp power instead of blood) is an Assassin temple of the Officio Assassinorum in Warhammer 40,000. They are all psychic blanks (aka Pariahs or nulls), meaning they have no signature in the Warp and generally mess with psykers.

To regular humans, their aura is filled with some degree of sickness both figuratively and literally which makes them rare as most of the time they are killed during childhood. Those who survive become some of the deadliest assassins in the Imperium. A blank is the worst thing a psyker could encounter, as their mere presence is enough to cause considerable pain and even death to weak-minded psykers. The Eldar harbor a particular hate and fear of blanks, what with every Eldar being a psyker and whatnot. Furthermore, blanks are totally invisible to daemons due to their lack of warp signature. The Culexus assassins therefore target exclusively psykers, as most psykers would rather chew their own arteries out and slowly bleed to death than face one.

And not only psykers, like that time a full Execution force (4 assassins, one of each kind) was sent to kill Tau VIPs...and the only one to succeed was the Culexus. And Tau don't even have psykers! Still, even against non-psychic targets, the Culexus has the advantages of a maddening aura of distilled fear and pseudo-invisibility, their Pariah gene allowing them to be ignored so hard by both the living, the machines and the neverborn that this one "sneaked" inside a transport by merely not bumping into the passengers, like a fa/tg/guy in a disco.

Because they're pretty much forced outcasts of society they really don't have much of a social life outside the Officio Assassinorum.

Culexuses Culexii These guys also somehow manage to have no soul so hard (nah, they just have a weird sort of anti-soul, and psyker's reaction to them is kinda like an anti-matter and matter reaction) that they're able to fire beams of not-soul (anti-soul) out of the gun attached to their heads and assuming there's enough psykers around, this beam can become arguably one of the best anti-infantry guns in the game.

On the tabletop these guys are absolute death, given that they have pseudo-invisibility (all attacks are WS/BS1, even after Markerlights). In addition, all psykers get -3 leadership, cannot get warp charges, manifest on a 6, and all malediction or blessings are cancelled within 12'. These guys ignore armor and have instant death vs psykers, so eldar, GK, and Daemons will cry.

They may have been part of the Deceiver's plans to fuck with the Old Ones, but maybe not. Who knows.

On the Tabletop

With the advent of a new edition, the Officio Assassinorum is undergoing a fire sale (no, of course not in model prices)! The culexus is no exception. Still the same psyker-screwing, hard-to-hit unit it always was, it is now even harder to target with shooting thanks to being a CHARACTER. Solo operatives indeed. The downside is the boatload of special rules that made assassins feel special are just available to everyone now. At least you throw your grenade and shoot your... speculum... in the same phase. And you thought your last cancer screening was uncomfortable.

Its stats are as awesome as all the other Assassins:

	Pts	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	A	Ld	Sv
Culexus Assassin	140	7"	2+	2+	4	4	5	4	9	6+/4++

Special Rules/Equipment

Standard Assassin

• Independent Operative
• Lightning Reflexes
  • A model with this special rule has a 4+ invulnerable save. In addition, they do not suffer the penalty to their Initiative for charging enemies through difficult terrain. That said, initiative is gone now.
• Independent Operative
  • Now deep strike/infiltrate.

Culexus

• Life Drain
  • All attacks made by the Culexus in close combat ignore armor saves. Yeah, that's right. No AP -4, no AP -5, no armor at all. That said, there are maybe 2 units in the game that this matters for and neither of them are psykers, so why are you wasting your time with them?
• Abomination
  • Now gets the credit it deserves for being disliked by everyone, not just psykers. In addition to total immunity to psychic powers, it now just gives a flat -2 to most enemy psychic rolling within 18".
    • Add all these abilities up, and you've just successfully created a bubble with a 18" radius that no smart player using psykers will enter.

Equipment

• Animus Speculum
  • Much more normal in 8th, now just gets a better number of shots if within 18" of psykers. Still S5, still not really that concerned about armor.
• Psyk-Out Grenades
  • Now just kinda-crappy grenades with that on-6+-to-hit-deal-a-bonus-mortal-wound rule that replaced rending. Sadly limited only to psykers. As if psykers needed help receiving mortal wounds.
• Etherium
  • All units targeting the Culexus Assassin, in close combat or range, have to shoot or hit at BS and WS 6+. Psykers hate Culexi by default, but this is why everyone hates him. Be wary of stuff that can ignore this like Kharn hitting on 2+ in CC (why you would try to fight Kharn in assault with a Culexus is beyond us).
• Psychic Assassin
  • Can ignore the CHARACTER targeting limitations that it so greedily benefits from when trying to shoot at psykers.

Summary

All in all, the Culexus is for killing Psykers, and he is horrifyingly good at it. Unless you charge them into the Daemon Primarch Magnus, in which case you deserve the results you'll get.

Gallery

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  Culexus assassins are psyker's worst nightmare, though they are very friendly.

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  Culexus-kun has no friends.

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  Culexus will bring LOLWUT to the enemy.

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  Nobody likes you.