Headcrabs and humans

ríomhaire

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Since I seem to be complaining about people's complaints recently I have now made a thread about human mawmen (zombies)

People saw it's weird that headcrabs can couple so perfectly with humans. It is far from perfect. the claws are grewsome extensions of the skeleton that are covered in blood and rip the skin open and curl up in a way that dosn't look intentional. They are covered in their own blood from the mutations. The arms get mutated in a way that makes them look weaker as they actualy get scrawnier.
The fast crabs ones are doomed to die as they have no way of feeding and they are ripped apart
The poison mawman is purple with it's mutations. That dosn't seem useful at all.

I think that vortigaunt anatomy is similar to a human's alowing a crab to take it over. They eat meat (the headcrab eating vort) the atmosphere of Xen and Earth is changeable to the two world's creatures and they both have water (Xen aquatic life can live in Earth waters). So the 3 main things neaded for life on Earth is also on Xen so it is reasonable to asume that Vorts nead the same things to survive as humans so they would also nead similar organs.

A normal headcrab vortigaunt mawman has neat claws and no gone-wrong mutations.
A fast crab neads to be able to jump around Xen's platforms so digests any useless organs. Not knowing human anatomy it regards almost everything as useless which is why human ones have no organs.

The poison ones inject their eggs into the mawman causing it to swell up. It also mutates it for potection of the babies. The babies eventually burst out of the mawman and kill it. Humans react badly to these mutagents and cause the ugly mutations.
 
I've never seen a Vortigaunt mawman, but I'd assume it can happen. As far as I can see, all a creature needs is a nervous system, be bipedal, and vaguely human sized, and then they're fair game for crabs.

-Angry Lawyer
 
I wonder wat a mutated Vortigaunt Head crab zombie will look like...
 
Sid Burn said:
I wonder wat a mutated Vortigaunt Head crab zombie will look like...
rather frightening, i'd imagine...
 
Works for me.

I'd like to see a vort mawman, though.
 
Cool... I hope they include that on HL3!!! its gonna be awesome!!! Do you think they can still use their lightning powers?
 
Sid Burn said:
Do you think they can still use their lightning powers?
No. But they can walk (and run) properly.
 
ríomhaire said:
No. But they can walk (and run) properly.

Whats the stop them from using the Vort's powers? And personally i think the fast mawmen are actually mutated dogs or animals of some kind, it explains their beast-like behaviour and mannerisms, a beasts mind is simple, so it would be easy for the headcrab to take control and assert dominance, but it would seem that the beast still has a modicum of control, e.g. the withdrawel and beastial roar after a successfull attack.
 
I always thought fast mawmen were already buried bodies and the headcrabs took over their skeletons.
 
Fast Zombies are created with a Fast headcrab, which takes control of the host, rips out all internal organs and changes the fat into muscle, so they can leap far distances.
 
I think the vorts were immune to the headcrab threat when Nihilanth was around, which is why headcrabs didn't attack them and there aren't any vort zombies in HL1.
I'm pretty sure Nihilanth was using Gonarchs in sort-of the same way the combine are, except with teleportation instead of rocket pods.

And if Nihilly was weaponizing the headcrabs that way, that could very well explain their anti-human specialization.
 
head crabs must also be able to attach to other things, otherwise why would they have that skill. I mean it wouldn't be very useful to be able to latch onto a race that you've never seen b4. Unless its just a coincidence.

o wait, its a game, therefore an explanation isn't needed
 
DeusExMachinia said:
I always thought fast mawmen were already buried bodies and the headcrabs took over their skeletons.
Well, they looks more burned to me that buried.
 
If headcrabs can couple to one species they can couple to any.
 
FireCrack said:
If headcrabs can couple to one species they can couple to any.
I doubt they could couple with Earth insects or other small creatures. Pretty much anything smaller than the headcrab is probably safe.
 
Black Ops4 said:
I doubt they could couple with Earth insects or other small creatures. Pretty much anything smaller than the headcrab is probably safe.
Not realy as Lamarr eats a crow.
 
jebus, imagine headcrab cows... headcrabbed whales... heh...

Basically, anything that dosn't have a knobbly sort of head is safe. Except for the animals that are *slightly* smaller than headcrabs.
 
I'd say they don't. But it does need to be a Bipedal style animal. I reckon Primates are fair game, as well as Race-X shock troopers.
 
I was actualy going to sketch a race-x troop mawman for my website (which I am not putting up properly till everything is done, no coming soons) but I can't be arsed
 
they need a crature with a good clamping surface, and somthing that wont bite them in half as soon as they latch on.
 
It's a parasite from another dimension, so I don't think it's too far of a reach to assume it will be able to deal with aliens as hosts. Many parasites here on earth use a big variety of hosts (while some are very very specialized).
 
I wonder how a headcrabbed stalker will look like? I think it'll be much powerful than those fast zombies.
 
Well, technically, it shouldn't be able to headcrab a stalker, because the laser is *supposed* to come from the stalker's eyes.

I know it comes from it's feet but that's just programming.
 
I hated hl2's low variety in mawmen/zombies.. Bothered the hell out of meh
 
HL1 only had 1 type of headcrab, and I thought they were much scarier than the fatter version of it in HL2.
 
Headcrabs are Combine living weapon created on Xen. They parasiting only on humans.
 
I personally would think that the headcrabs were originally lifeforms evolved on Xen, and used to attaching onto Vortigaunts. However, i disagree with the picture Ríomhaire drew, (http://img237.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img237&image=y6sc.jpg).

If you look closely at the head shape of a vortigaunt and the shape of the headcrab, you see that the headcrab is perfectly shaped to cover the vortigaunt's many (or one) eye, without covering its' mouth. Therefore, there would be no chest cavity mouth like the human zombies have, since the mouth would be accessible, possibly even with the headcrabs front legs acting as mandibles.
Since a headcrab completely controlls its' hosts' nervous systems, i don't think it would have much trouble using the vortigaunts' electric attack, but i'm not to sure on this...

The vast chest cavity on humans would be generated by the headcrab's basic food instinct, as the human mouth would be entirely covered by the headcrab. Since the humans are moaning, i woudl think that either the headcrabs are triggering random impulses in the brains, or that the humans' head is left intact and the headcrab controls everything from the neck down.

-DaMaN
 
so they can couple to an ANT ?? and a fish and a frog and a whale?
 
Well, Kleiner mentions that Lamarr has been 'debeaked'. Chances are, it physically bites into your skull and probes into your brain.
I'd assume that Headcrabs can couple with anything with a skull similar in size to them. It's also probable that they can feed on vegetable matter, as Kleiner has a note to remember collecting 'more melon for Lamarr'.

-Angry Lawyer
 
DaMaN said:
Therefore, there would be no chest cavity mouth like the human zombies have, since the mouth would be accessible, possibly even with the headcrabs front legs acting as mandibles.
So the headcrab can figure out a new hosts body and perfectly mutate it to suit it's neads within a few hours?
Not a chance.
 
I actually agree with Riomhaire, which is odd, considering we have differering views on the Combine.

-Angry Lawyer
 
So, how does Headcrabs reproduce? Do they even reproduce???
 
ríomhaire said:
In HL1 they actualy had 4 eyes (at least in BS)

yeah but they use sonic waves like a bat, thats why their leaps arent teribly accurate, still good though.
 
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