Enhanced Necromorphs: The Blackened Sub Breed of the Infection

Enhanced Necromorphs were a sub breed of the Necromorph infection, distinguished from their ordinary counterparts by blackened or slimy dark green necrotic tissue and glowing yellow eyes. No certain cause for the divergence was ever established, though the leading explanation held that the infection was simply more advanced in these specimens than in the common forms. The sub breed appeared in every major outbreak on record, from the corridors of the USG Ishimura and the Aegis VII colony to the Sprawl and the frozen bunkers of Tau Volantis.

Nature and appearance#

The enhanced sub breed obeyed the same anatomy as the ordinary infection. An enhanced Slasher carried the same blade limbs as a common one, an enhanced Leaper the same whipping tail, and each enhanced creature hunted, ambushed, and killed by the same habits as its base strain. What set the sub breed apart was its condition. Enhanced Necromorphs struck with greater force and endured far more harm than their counterparts, shrugging off wounds that would have felled a common specimen and requiring sustained dismemberment before they finally stopped moving.

Their appearance announced the difference. Where common Necromorphs retained the pallid, bloody flesh of their hosts, enhanced specimens were either black or a slimy dark green, with yellow eyes that glowed in the dark. The coloration was more than a marker. In unlit spaces, the blackened tissue rendered the creatures very hard to see until they were nearly upon their prey, and survivors learned to dread it in exactly the places where light failed, such as the darkened corridors of the USG Ishimura and the buried bunkers of Tau Volantis.

Why some corpses rose enhanced while others did not was never settled. The prevailing view held that the infection was more advanced in these specimens, and the pattern of the outbreaks supported it. In the early hours of an infestation the common forms dominated, but as the event matured, enhanced variants steadily displaced the standard creatures until the blackened forms were the rule rather than the exception.

The first recorded specimens#

The earliest enhanced Necromorph on record was Captain Benjamin Mathius of the Ishimura. His corpse lay untouched in the morgue of the Medical Deck until Isaac Clarke came to retrieve the dead captain's RIG, at which moment an Infector leaped upon the body and remade it as an enhanced Slasher. Clarke destroyed the creature and took the RIG, but Mathius had become both the first person Clarke ever witnessed transform and the first enhanced specimen anyone had faced.

The connection between Infectors and the sub breed recurred throughout the Ishimura's fall, where the corpses those creatures converted usually rose as enhanced Slashers rather than common ones. The most deliberate case was Dr. Challus Mercer, the Unitologist scientist who had nurtured the outbreak aboard the ship. After the destruction of his regenerating experiment, Mercer allowed an Infector to kill and convert him, and his body rose as an enhanced Slasher missing its head. Clarke put the changed Mercer down quickly.

Known strains#

Three strains produced enhanced variants in every recorded infestation. Enhanced Slashers were the most widespread, blackened versions of the infection's signature killer. Enhanced Leapers haunted the same shafts and hulls as their base form. Enhanced Lurkers kept the small body of the common strain but were entirely black and launched more lethal barbs from their tentacles, and like all Lurkers they favored weightless environments. On Tau Volantis, where the Lurker form took canine hosts, the enhanced variant took the same shape.

Other strains rose enhanced only in particular outbreaks. Enhanced Pukers and enhanced Stalkers appeared on Titan Station and again on Tau Volantis, the Puker distinguishable from its base form only by the glowing eyes and the slick black and green tissue. Enhanced Infectors were recorded solely during the fall of the Sprawl. During that same disaster, the Unitologist saboteur known as Vandal fought enhanced Pregnants and the only enhanced Exploders ever documented. Enhanced Pregnants also stalked the Ishimura late in its outbreak, and when their swollen bellies were ruptured they loosed enhanced Lurkers upon their attackers instead of a swarm of Swarmers. Enhanced Fodder and enhanced Feeders belonged to the Tau Volantis catastrophe and its aftermath aboard the CMS Terra Nova.

Place in the outbreaks#

Every major infestation followed the same arc. The enhanced sub breed was scarce at the outset and abundant at the end, so that survivors who lived long enough found themselves facing blackened creatures almost exclusively. Aboard the Ishimura the pattern held from the morgue of the Medical Deck to the ship's final hours, and it repeated on the Sprawl, where some records of the Titan Station outbreak referred to the creatures as uber variants, and again in the bunkers and warehouses of Tau Volantis.

Tough as they were, the enhanced forms did not mark the ceiling of the infection's strength. Unique specimens surpassed them, as when the corpse of Captain Robert Norton rose during the flight from Tau Volantis as a Slasher more resilient than any enhanced example of its strain. The sub breed remained instead the infection's reliable second wave, the harder, darker shape an outbreak assumed once it had consumed enough of the dead, and its glowing yellow eyes in an unlit corridor were among the surest signs that an infestation had passed the point of containment.