#Drawlloween #Inktober 19 - Creature from the Black Lagoon

The Ichthyan people are a strange anomaly in the Darkhive. The vast majority of them prefer a humid warm climate in the open space between the mid shels and the outer shells. Those Ichthyans who have more pure ancestral blood not only prefer the humidity, they need it for survival. These people have gills and are quite different genetically to other survivors in the hive.

Where most mutations have seemingly random effects on various survivors, when Ichthyans mutate, they tend to follow a specific pattern toward a tentacled toad-like form called the "Lagoon Creature". Some scholars believe that this may actually be the natural form of the Ichthyan race. Ichthyans deny this hypothesis, but since the race have only recently managed to break free from millennia of enslavement by the Shellbrood, there are none who remember what their natural form actually is. The common counterclaim from Ichthyan scholars states that there is a genetic encoding in their DNA implanted by Shellbrood Broodqueens, and Faceling Genetic Engineers, it is this encoding that is awakened when mutation would take effect.

No one is really sure, and so far none have been able to study these "Lagoon Creatures" as they remain elusive when alive and rapidly decompose into a clear jelly once they die.

Icthyan half-bloods, and those who possess limited Ichthyan heritage tend to follow more erratic paths of mutation when exposed to the mystic energies and biogenetic fluids that can cause changes in a living being. Sometimes they manifest "Lagoon Creature" traits, but more often they are random like everyone else in the Dark Hive.