Karkian

The karkian is a transgenic creature in Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Background
Karkians are one among the transgenic species created by researchers under the control of Majestic 12. The karkian can be described as a large brown reptilian creature, approximately six feet long and two feet wide when fully grown. Its head resembles that of a crocodile. Karkians raised in captivity generally exhibit aggression toward humans.

Karkians are studied in multiple Majestic 12 facilities, including the Liberty Island MJ12 lab, the VersaLife facility in Hong Kong, the MJ12 Sub Base in California, and the Pasadena Ocean Lab. According to Dr. Corwell, a researcher at the sub base who operates a karkian tank, MJ12 has been performing studies on creature morphology, resulting in horribly deformed creatures. On one occasion, in Hong Kong, a researcher transporting Karkian eggs was injured by a blast that destroyed a tunnel. The eggs then hatched into infant karkians. Due to hunger, the stronger members of the litter consumed the weaker ones.

Post-collapse
Karkians were researched in secret, and were rarely sighted by the public. This changed after the Collapse, which allowed karkians and greasels to thrive in the resulting chaos. Even in major urban areas such as Seattle, they can be found roaming the sewers and tunnels.

Deus Ex
In Deus Ex, Karkians are part of the Animal class. Both full-sized and "baby" karkians are seen in the game, with the adult version being significantly more resilient to damage but slightly slower in movement speed.

Adult karkians have 400 HP, higher than any human NPC. Moreover, damage multipliers that apply to human NPCs, such as the headshot multiplier, are not applicable to karkians. Both adult and baby karkians are capable of swimming underwater and have full immunity to riot prod and all gas damage types.

Adult karkians possess two types of melee attacks:


 * A "bite" attack, implemented in gameplay as a melee weapon that does relatively high damage, at 15 base damage.
 * A "bump" attack, which a special property of inflicting damage dependent on the current movement speed of the karkian. If the karkian is moving at a velocity of more than 100 and touches the player, damage is inflicted on the player's legs in the amount of (velocity / 5). Since the karkian has a maximum ground speed of 400, the bump attack can inflict up to 80 damage.

Baby karkians do not have the bump attack, but can still perform the bite attack, to the same effect as adult karkians.

Deus Ex: Invisible War
Karkians in Invisible War are slightly scaled-down size-wise, but are nonetheless still highly aggressive. They can be found fairly early in Seattle, but are less common later on, with some appearing in Antarctica.

Prerelease concepts and cut content
In Deus Ex design document version 13.12, karkians are said to be a "genetically manipulated, nano-augmented crocodile." The concept of nano-augmented animals was proposed for several types of animals, but was generally cut from the final game. The detail of being derived from crocodiles is not explicitly mentioned in the final game. Cut content in Deus Ex: Invisible War similarly references the karkian's origin in crocodiles, as well as its symbiotic relationship with greasels. Baby karkians were planned to return in Invisible War, but were never featured. Dialogue for NPCs fighting baby karkians exists in the SchemaMetafile_HardDrive.csc file.