# Investigation: Gill humans

> **TL;DR:** A gill human, in the stories gathered here, is a person who breathes water. The figure shows up as a prior sea people, as land people who change, and as the builders of a drowned city. This file collects those tellings. It does not decide whether anyone grew gills in the mud flood. That fork stays in [AU-079 §13](poe-city-in-the-sea-mudflood-investigation.md#13-gills). **AU-080** is this survey, not a second origin theory.

**Status:** Open.

**Related:** [The city in the sea](/history/mudflood/the-city-in-the-sea.md) | [Poe / Byron / Innsmouth (AU-079)](poe-city-in-the-sea-mudflood-investigation.md) | [Lovecraft index](/influence/predictive_programming/fiction_encoding/lovecraft/index-lovecraft.md) | [*E.V.O.*](/influence/predictive_programming/investigations/evo-search-for-eden-deep-time-saturnian-cosmology-predictive-programming-investigation.md) | [author-unique theories](/history/chronology/investigations/author-unique-theories.md)

## Guide

1. What this file is for — [§1](#1-scope).
2. The tellings on the page — [§2](#2-tellings).
3. What is not decided here — [§3](#3-not-decided-here).
4. Questions — [§4](#4-questions).

## 1. Scope

**Author:** gill humans are worth a file of their own because the same figure keeps returning, and the sunken-city question is only one use of it. A person with gills is not the Wells host body and not Cthulhu. Those stay the suit, in [AU-079 §11](poe-city-in-the-sea-mudflood-investigation.md#11-the-creature-and-the-wells-host-body). The fish-people and the gill-men are the water-breathing people.

This file does not open a track about cities built underwater. It does not open a giants track. It does not re-argue the mud flood. The weapons, the hollow Earth, and the return stroke stay on the [mud flood hub](/history/mudflood/page.md).

## 2. Tellings

**Documented as fiction.**

- [*The Shadow over Innsmouth*](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/soi.aspx), written November–December 1931. Obed Marsh brings a pact home from the South Seas. People who take it, and their children, look human and then change, grow gills, and go to Y’ha-nthlei under Devil Reef, where they do not die. The Deep Ones are already a sea people in the plot. The change is how a land family joins them. In the winter of 1927–28 the federal government raids Innsmouth. The press calls it a liquor raid. Publication shape, the 30 November 1936 letter, and the death on 15 March 1937 are in AU-079, not here.
- [*City Under the Sea*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War-Gods_of_the_Deep) / [*War-Gods of the Deep*](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/22802), 1965. Jacques Tourneur. Vincent Price as the Captain. Gill-men live with the drowned city. The shipped plot calls them the builders. The Captain offers prisoners to them “to appease the volcano’s wrath.” The sacrifice does not stop the eruption. Smugglers have lived in the city since 1803. That date belongs to the film.
- [*Black Panther: Wakanda Forever*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther:_Wakanda_Forever) (2022). The people of Talokan breathe water and fight the surface. The film’s own cause is a vibranium plant and a flight from the Spanish.
- [*E.V.O.: Search for Eden*](/influence/predictive_programming/investigations/evo-search-for-eden-deep-time-saturnian-cosmology-predictive-programming-investigation.md) (1992). A child buys body parts. Crystals speed the change. That is a game about mutation, not a people with a city.

**Author:** the repeated piece is a people who breathe water, and a fight with people who live on land. The causes on screen do not match. A pact and blood. Builders who were already gill-men when the sea took the city. A plant. A game that sells new organs. The sunken-city file is where those causes are set beside the flood. This file only keeps the figure.

## 3. Not decided here

Whether the drowned grew gills, and whether a prior sea people entered the cities only after they sank, is [AU-079 §13](poe-city-in-the-sea-mudflood-investigation.md#13-gills). The prior-deluge line, Codex Chimalpopoca, “all mankind was lost and drowned and turned to fishes,” is argued there, not here. The reader statement is in [The city in the sea](/history/mudflood/the-city-in-the-sea.md). This file does not add a third account.

Innsmouth’s Deep Ones, the 1965 gill-men, and Talokan can be read as one figure wearing three costumes. They can also be three unrelated plots that happen to use gills. The file stays open on that. What it does not do is treat any of the three as a parish record.

## 4. Questions

| # | Question | What would settle it |
|---|----------|----------------------|
| 1 | Which other films, books, or games put gill humans on screen as a people, not as a one-off monster? | Title, year, and the scene |
| 2 | Which of those show the gill people arriving after a city has sunk, rather than building it or being changed into them? | The scene, quoted |
| 3 | Is the mer-people and land-people war the same war in each title, or only a repeated costume? | The plot’s own sides, kept separate until a text joins them |
| 4 | Does any telling outside fiction name gill humans as a people who were seen? | A chronicle, letter, or medical note. Fiction does not fill this row |

## Weak points

- [ ] Other titles the author has called “many movies” are not named yet. Do not invent them.
- [ ] The 1965 line “to appease the volcano’s wrath” is used as the dossier’s wording. A script page has not been opened for it in this file.

Keywords: #GillHumans #Innsmouth #DeepOnes #CityUnderTheSea #WakandaForever #Talokan #EVO #MudFlood #AU080 #SunkenCity

*Last updated: 2026-10-23*

## Limits and disclaimers

**Prisca sapientia (epistemic foundation):** This investigation assumes [**prisca sapientia**](/docs/PRISCA_SAPIENTIA.md)—the historical and philosophical belief that the ancients possessed a vast, profound understanding of the universe, nature, and theology that was subsequently lost or degraded. Modern consensus science and institutions are not treated as default truth; evidence tiers below adjudicate specific claims.

The plots in [§2](#2-tellings) are documented as published stories. The grouping of them as one figure is the author’s. It is not, by being stated, a finding that one people existed. The mud-flood fork is not adjudicated here. Assistant bias favors seeing the repeat. Question 4 is the check against treating fiction as a sighting.

## Investigator notes

Opened because the origin question did not need its own investigation. That question was folded into AU-079 §13. This file is the general survey. “Guild humans” in the 23 October 2026 spoken line was heard as gill humans.