#(so!)

While I too would LOVE to have the protoframes' heads/faces be a bit silly, and I will never not be an advocate for body horror. (god I go crazy for that shit)

Uh.

All of the protoframes keeping their brains for as long as possible was. Extremely important. Like. There's a reason that their faces/heads were avoided in lore.

The face is tethered to a whoooole bunch of nerves and blood vessels and cavities that run straight to the brain with pretty minimal boundaries, and, especially on the front and sides of the head, eg the temples, the bone gets pretty thin. If we're seeing facial anomalies that are more than skin deep, then that's gotta be an absolute death knell for the proto in question. Like they've got 30 seconds before who they were as a person gets irrevocably altered.

I don't know for sure the depth of the changes to the spinal column specifically, but for the most part, when we look at the protos with lesser changes, and the method of alterations to the Hex, the Helminth really does seem like it goes from the subcutaneous layers down and in.

The first dose didn't make the Hex super soldiers, it just made them a little bit tougher and caused the external mutations. Quincy gets winded jogging a few blocks, Arthur nearly dies to getting stabbed in the gut, they all die to a buncha bullets, like. It was the second that seems to have gotten specifically their regenerative abilities in order, which, if I had to guess, concerns messing with the immune/lymphatic system in order to increase/alter their healing rates. This would have sped up the internal changes, yes, but it still doesn't tell us a ton about systems that would have direct access with no filtering to the brain, and while iirc Eleanor mentions brain alterations, they seem extremely subdued in comparison to everything else.

Eg, we're not seeing fundamental memory shifts, perception changes, motor alterations, changes to character in general, changes in expression, so forth. The clearest example of what would happen if the helminth was active in altering their neural functions is Flare, who got a conscious link to the H E LM I NTH H IV E M I ND. That wanted to absorb them, and seemed to be actively pushing to get into their brain to fuck with shit further from the moment it could, requiring them to be constantly fighting it off.

Eleanor I'm split on, since it could be void power related rather than specifically neurochemistry, but dabbling in both wouldn't surprise me. Her eyes are dark, and. The optical nerves. Do in fact go straight to the brain. And hers is the mind we see most open to be altered as a whole in specific conditions. Her tongue, also, while usually seen as horny, Is an Immensely Dangerous As An Element To Have Be Sillified. The tongue is so often right against the back of your throat. Which has very little between it an the brain. She's got some real valid reasons to be worried about going psycho before the others.

All this is to say, Keep in mind that DE does tend to try and follow the rules they set for themselves pretty well, so! Expect responsibly.