Gargoyles

Gargoyles are the swarm given wings, a variant of the humble gaunt whose upper body has sprouted leathery pinions while its lower legs have withered to little more than dangling stumps. They are creatures of the air, and they come in numbers so vast that their passage can blot out a system's sun, a shrieking, fluttering canopy of chitin sweeping ahead of the ground assault.

Their purpose is terror and disruption. Gargoyles form the first wave of many invasions, harrying and unnerving the defenders, keeping their attention fixed skyward and their nerves frayed while the truly dangerous bioforms close the distance below. Like their earthbound cousins they can be grown clutching a range of symbiotic weapons, most often fleshborers, and they can spit a corrosive venom directly into a victim's eyes, blinding their prey an instant before the claws fall.

Even in death a Gargoyle serves the fleet, for the biomass it gorges upon while devouring the creatures of the sky is reclaimed when it falls. Fragile and all but helpless alone, in their wheeling thousands they become a plague of living blades from which no stretch of open ground can shelter an army.