Alien Necromorph

The Alien Necromorphs were Necromorph forms created from the long-dead alien species that had once been native to Tau Volantis. Towering and powerful, they closely resembled the human-created Brutes in size and behavior, and they were the dominant strain of Necromorph found in the frozen ruins of the world. Many had lain encased in the planet's ice for millennia, surviving in that state until human expeditions thawed them and brought them back to violent life.

Form and biology#

The adult Alien Necromorph stood around seven to eight feet tall, a little over two meters, making it very similar to the human Brutes in overall size, appearance and behavior. Its torso had been split open to allow it to eject Crawlers at its prey. Its skin was mottled and rotten, and the digits on its arms had decayed down to the bone to form scythe-like claws. A distinctive trait of the creature was the eerie, high-pitched whistling sound it made while attacking, a noise derived from the resonating chambers possessed by its alien host.

Where the human Brutes were armored with plates that deflected attacks, the alien variant lacked such protection, and damage could be inflicted anywhere on its body. The trade-off was its sheer momentum: once it began to charge it was nearly impossible to stop short of tearing away a limb or killing it outright. The creatures were extraordinarily heavy, and even the strongest survivors could barely budge their corpses.

Forms of the infection#

The alien dead were reshaped into several distinct forms. The most common were the brute-like adults, almost identical to their uninfected selves but with their bellies burst open to spew their recombined offspring. They charged at any prey they found, using their mass to topple it before tearing it apart with their clawed forelimbs.

The offspring themselves were the Crawlers, built from the bodies of the aliens and taking the place of the ranged attacks used by Necromorphs elsewhere. They gave shrill, high-pitched screams like their adult counterparts and attacked by surrounding a victim and exploding. A single adult could burst out a swarm of them, releasing them both at close range and from a distance to spread chaos.

Among the largest of the alien dead, several were reformed into gigantic Hive Mind forms, similar to the one encountered on Aegis VII, capable of redirecting the Marker signal and acting as mobile command centers that sharpened the intelligence of the lesser creatures around them. The most significant of these surviving specimens was the one the Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces research teams named the Nexus, a vast organism with a stomach, eyes and internal Nests, often filled with enhanced Feeders that had been devouring its insides to make themselves stronger.

Discovery on Tau Volantis#

The frozen state of the aliens preserved them across an immense span of time. During the initial expedition to Tau Volantis, several Alien Necromorphs were discovered frozen within the planet's surface. When these apparently dead creatures thawed, they returned to life and slaughtered members of the science team, a grim demonstration of a physiology that could survive thousands of years encased in ice. When Isaac Clarke and the later expedition descended into the alien city beneath the planet, the Alien Necromorphs were the chief threat they faced among the ruins.