FishmanReport

English：Fishman　·　Races

Also called Gurglers. Amphibious predators inhabiting an isolated island at the southern tip of the continent, with a completely unknown origin — possibly the only sapient species native to this planet.

Fishmen appear in game almost exclusively under their nickname — Gurglers, after the only sound they make. They hold the Fishman Island at the southern tip of the continent, their behaviour closely mirrors that of the Fogmen, and their origin is the single most complete blank in the game.

Nonsense, let me handle those fishmen... I am fluent in crustacean. — Rumi, Fishman Island

Physiology

Fishmen are organic. They bleed exactly the same colour as a Greenlander and they need to eat. They fight entirely with their claws, which mechanically means Martial Arts.

Their most distinctive trait is the gap between water and land:

• Immune to acid rain, acid ground and gas, and able to swim in acid — but not immune to sun damage or sandstorms
• They have the highest swim speed multiplier in the game (5x), yet are actually configured not to swim, only to walk along the seabed at a fixed pace
• Movement on land is extremely slow; almost any character can simply outrun them
• Their legs have noticeably more health than other parts, yet are the hardest part of them to hit

The reinforced Alpha Fishman is numerically double an ordinary individual: 300 HP per body part, 400 HP on each leg, and double the blood pool. One on its own can overwhelm most opponents.

Taking the rotten meat off a corpse counts as having killed it — the same design as the Fog Prince and the crab-head mechanics.

Behaviour: The Same Script as the Fogmen

A lone Fishman is no threat, but they never operate alone. Patrols on Fishman Island routinely run 20 to 40 Gurglers plus several Alphas.

Their combat logic is identical to that of the Fogmen: swamp the target with numbers, then once the opponent is unconscious carry them back to the nest, tie them to a post and eat them alive. The only difference is that Fogmen live in craters and Fishmen live by the sea.

Fishmen appear to hatch from Gurgler eggs and sleep on fish beds. Besides fish and eggs, their nests are littered with high-technology debris — Skeleton Repair Kits, robotics components, books and copper alloy plates. These are obviously not things they made themselves; they accumulate from devoured travellers and occupied ruins.

Kill King Gurgler and the whole of Fishman Island stops spawning new Fishmen.

Fishman Island

Fishman Island lies south of the Bonefields. Despite the name, no swimming skill is needed to reach it: a metal arch bridge connects it to the mainland on the north side, and the style of that bridge is identical to the one linking Black Desert City to Scraphouse, and to the one crossing the Wend north of Blister Hill. In other words, this island was once part of some ancient polity's transport network.

At the island's centre are the ruins of Fish Isle. Judging from the surviving structures, it began as a small walled outpost, was later judged worth investing in and expanded, and then abandoned extremely abruptly — supplies nobody took with them are strewn everywhere. No text explains what happened.

The island's south-west corner holds the Island Lab, an ancient laboratory site where AI Cores can occasionally be found. King Gurgler sits there.

King Gurgler

King Gurgler is the ruler of the Fishmen, and carries a Meitou-grade Combat Cleaver — the highest weapon grade in the game. The United Cities has posted a bounty of 60,000 Cats on it, and the wanted notice is more precise than any scholarly description:

Wanted for: the kidnapping and eating of the residents of Catun. Neither man nor beast, the giant King Gurgler resembles a cross between a Hiver and a crab, at ten times the size.

The notice adds that it possesses "an ancient weapon of a fallen empire", and states explicitly that whoever makes the kill may keep the weapon.

One detail worth noting: the FCS files contain a never-used race group called "King Fishman", suggesting King Gurgler may originally have been designed as a separate race before being implemented on the Alpha Fishman template instead.

Origin: Accounts Differ

The Fishmen's origin is one of the most open mysteries in Kenshi, because no text in the game discusses them at all. Three hypotheses are currently in circulation:

1. Native species — the true indigenous inhabitants of this moon, living underwater for ages and only recently beginning to come ashore. Their configuration as creatures that "walk underwater" and are "immune to acid" fits this direction, and it explains why no imperial record ever mentions them. This is also the side several lore readers lean toward^{[V1 0:15:59]}.
2. Products of genetic engineering — the output of an imperial laboratory in the same way as the Hive and the Shek, only aimed at an aquatic race. The concrete physical evidence for this thread is on the island itself: the First Empire laboratory in its south-west corner^{[V1 0:15:59]}. The wanted notice's "cross between a Hiver and a crab" is often cited in support, but that is a bounty poster, not a scientific observation.
3. Unclassifiable — even mainstream lore readers admit there is not enough information and can only list possibilities; a good number of people regard Fishmen as the hardest thing in the game to categorise.

The question matters because it connects to a larger argument: if all playable races ultimately descend from humans, then what species is native to this moon? One inference offers two candidates — the Fishmen and the Leviathan^{[V2 0:10:18]}.

World States: Fishman Expansion

Fishmen do not only stay on their island. Two world states push them onto the mainland:

Interestingly, the fall of Catun is unaffected by whether King Gurgler is alive: even if the player has already beheaded their king, the takeover still happens.

Fishmen maintain a relations value of 0 with the crabs and the Skin Bandits, coexisting with them, and are hostile to everyone else. They do not appear on the faction list at all, which means the player can never ally with the Fishmen.

See Also

• Fogmen
• Crab Raiders
• Skin Bandits
• Races

Video citations

1. Kenshi Lore Master AMAHeroInHisHead
2. All Life Came From Humans (Sort of)HeroInHisHead