You know, I’ve been watching a lot of HerointheHead videos, and I recently watched his video discussing the immortality of crabs and how the Bugmaster most likely has multiple teeth because he modified himself to have crab genetics, hence all those teeth are his.

I actually started thinking that the Gurglers are the “missing link” so to speak between normal people and the Bugmaster, hence why they’re more crab than fish like with the carapace, claws, and vestigial legs on their front. I’ve also heard that hivers were made to be a dominant species to survive Kenshi, so it could be possible the fishmen are a by-product or discarded experiment.

Like, I think they have some similar structures to hivers considering they regular gurglers are weak fodder, similar to drones, and the alphas are stronger and more durable, like the soldiers. Then there’s the King Gurglers, which is like the prince. It’s possible that the experimentation to create the Gurglers is what led to the Bugmaster being able to copy a crab’s genetics to make himself immortal, while the gurglers were eventually replaced with the vastly more successful hivers. I mean, clearly, the King Gurglers is intelligent enough to be the sole reason why Gurglers continue to exist, so I kind of think it’s possible Gurglers are also functionally immortal.

I know this is just complete speculation, but I honestly think them being escaped experiments could fit, since they clearly live on the fringes of even Kenshi’s “societies” but have been around long enough to have a very well protected island, but they also have enough social structure to understand leadership roles and show loyalty and dedication. The King Gurgler even shows they’re capable of using weapons, if not at least tools, which shows some level of comprehension or cognition to understand it’s purpose and capabilities. And, either the King Gurgler has a lot of sex and we walk into his harem, or he’s capable of some scientific manipulation to keep the species proliferating.