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Water Hag is a term humans have developed to describe an advanced humanoid race of alien creatures, native to the planet Strepto. However, all but one of them (Sally Blackteeth) vanished without a trace. At the time she was away from the planet, travelling, when she returned to where her planet should have been it had literally just vanished. Until the 21st century she was the last of her kind, an endangered species, though now the water hags are thought to be extinct.
However Sally only thought her race was endangered because of the dissapearance of Strepto and because Strepto is one of the Missing planets it is likely that her race remains safe and unharmed back on Strepto, albeit in the Medusa Cascade. Therefore he Water Hags should not be counted as an extinct or endangered species.
Physiology
Water hags look like normal humans but with a few modifications. They have talons instead of fingr nails sharp enough to slice someone in half. Inded this is a characteristic marker of a Water Hag killing. Thei skin is emaciated and the colour of mud and their eyes are yellow with black slits for pupils. They also bear some similarities to the Carrionite. In fact because of their abilities and similarity to classic witches Water hags may often be mistakenly termed Witches. They are also often called a Grindylow.
Reproduction
They appear to be a female only species and their only method of procreation is to infect humans (an presumably any other organism with a humanoid throat) with a virus of sorts. This "Virus" acts in the oesophagus, where it it divides and mulitplies presumably from the mucous in the goblet cells so that it disguises itself as cells that would naturally occur in humans.
The things continue to increase in number with the end result being a foetus shaped organism that's made mostly of phelgm and vegetable matter. At this stage the creature is called "Homunculus" and is not given the title of "Water Hag" until it reaches maturity until which the Homunculus will continue to incubate and grow in the throat. The final stage is marked unconsciousness caused by the Homunculus draining all the energy from its host (and probably a a mild case of oxygen starvation due to the Homunculus' size) ready for its birth and escape. At this point the Homunculus will attempt to extract Testosterone from the host in orderto catalyse its growth. If it suceeds in obtaining the required amount of testosterone it eventually grows so large that it finally bursts forth from its throat in way reminiscent of the aliens in the "Alien" series of films.
However, if the Homunculus does not get the required amount of testosterone needed to catalyse its growth to the point of birth then during the host's short spell of unconsciousness, the Homunculus will die and be vomited by the host, "stillborn" as it were. This means that it is nigh on impossible for the homunculus to prcreate inside a female, human hostunless injected with testosterone. Likewise, if the Homunculus has chosen a male host and that host is injected with a mix of Oestrogen, Emetics and Antibiotics, then the paracite will die and be thrown up as if the homnculus had been inhabiting a female host.
Here is a list of the symptoms and stages of an Homunculus infection in their respective orders of appearance, according to Toshiko Sato the symptoms aren't dissimilar to plutonium poisoning:
- 1. Sore throat
- 2. Minor coughing
- 3. Coughing continue, gradually worsening, "like there's something in the back of your throat and you just can't clear it"
- 4. Cough gets progressively more painful
- 5. Start running a temperature
- 6. Eventually you start to cough up blood
- 7. Mucus begins to be coughed up along with the blood
- 8. As time passes you feel weaker and weaker to the point where you can barely muster the energy to move
- 9. Finally you lose consciouness. During this point the Homunculus begins to extract testosterone for growth catalysation
- 10.1. If there is enough testosterone in the patients body, the Homunculus growth to the point where it escapes from he hots throat by splitting it open and the patient subsequently dies.
10.2. If oestrogen is present in the host body, death and eventually stillbirth (cvomitng of the homunculus remains) occurs and the patient returns to normal.
Abilites
Water Hags possess many superhuman abilities even from birth that make them difficult to evade or kill and excellent hunters. They have superior strength, are incredibly quick (to the point where their motion becomes highly blurred to the human eye), the ability to fly using a cloud of water, abiltiy to breathe both underwater and on land and possibly are able to partially dissolve into water. Bullets are also virtually useless against them.
Thy also each maturity extremely quickly from birth (within the spa of a day, actually) and are able to speak their native language (which sounds like "A cross between a curse and someone choking on custard") and English to a fluent degree. Despite their savage attitude though they are sentient beings to the level of human intelligence are able to naviate the rift through unknown means.