Heyya,
As everyone knows, the Wasteland is full of dangerous critters, the type that can tear your balls off if you don’t know what you are doing. Usually folks go fucking around like true jackasses, without any second thought to what kind of beasts they might go across, and then it’s time for regretting and bleeding. That’s why I have decided to consecrate my life to be a boffin about all this, a respected Official Bugger and Mutardologist from the Scrapbridge Methane and Meat Electro-proteic Guild (in which I am founding member, as well as president, secretary, treasurer and field specialist). I am doctor Sarious, and I will try in this Guide to the animals, critters and mutations of the Wasteland to make a cool study about the animals that populate our world.
I bet my balls you have sometimes felt one of those horrible headaches, like someone was punching a hole trough your brains, including dizziness and a heavy urge to throw up. Maybe sometimes, although I find it hard to believe, those headaches were for no reason and not due to some heavy drinking the night before. Hear this, buddy, because all those suffering is nothing compared to the effect a big migrant can cause on you if it is nearby.
Description
Migrants are like badass cousins of regular ants, at least the size of a dog. A real dog, I mean, not one of those pussylickers like the one my aunt Martha has at home. I mean, if you want to get a dog, you just get a decent dog, not one of those nasty rats with airs and glances, hornier than a Junker who just discovered a vault from the World of Before. Here, I’m wandering now. These critters are big-ass ants with black bodies with some reddish hues (hey, you liked that word, uh? Hues). From the back of their heads protrude forward what appera to be a pair of pincers, but not they are, as they don’t use ’em for fightin’ nor eatin’. Almost every scholar I asked agree that they use ’em as some antennae of sorts to cast their migrainish signal. Inside their mouth they have some smaller teeth they use to bite at things. And well, they have these big white-ish eyes with a look like they were always frowning at everything you do. Just like when I go visit my mom.
Habitat
Usually migrants live in very dry areas, which being honest covers most of the surroundings of Scrapbridge, although they are more common to the west, near the Shrine of the Watch or even Luckyland. They don’t tend to get near to inhabited places, as they don’t really like crowds, which is certainly a very good news to us. I have recorded some stories about settlements where everyone suffered horrible headaches during a whole single night. That’s because a migrant crossed nearby for sure.
Behavior
If we have one thing to thank migrants for is that, unlike their smaller cousins, they are loney creatures. They wander along minding their own business, grazing dry grass and just doing what the fuck they want to do. They just can afford to, as their main defense system works perfectly. Anyone that gets near a migrant will start to suffer heavy headaches, which just keep getting stronger the closer the creature gets to the ant. There is a point where the pain in your head is so extreme that the only thing you cand do is fall to the ground holding your head in your hands and throwing up like there was no tomorrow. The guy I personally saw getting the closest to a migrant was about 12 feet away from the beast when he went down screaming in pain. Even to this day, when the poor fella makes a sudden move or crouches too fast he feels a sharp pain in the back of his head, just like a neverending hangover. The distance where these effects are began to be felt varies depending on the migrant, as not all of them seem to have the same “potency”, and the constitution of the victim, as there are people more prone to suffer this aches than others. Anyway, the range of effect varies from 30 to 50 yards, distance in which almost everyone start to feel discomfort. And it affects humans and beasts. I have seen a bird fall to the ground shaking like my hand when I am alone at night, just for flying above one of those.
I must note here that migrants don’t seem to be able to use or void this power at will, so they always have it active whatever the situation. You won’t ever see an angry, frightened or even upset migrant in your life, as they are quite confident that not a single living being will be able to get near them to hurt them. Even more, I have never seen two migrants together, so this power might also affect others of their kind altogether. I don’t know if they are immune to all other migrants’ powers or just their own. Logic says they should be able to tolerate otheres of their kind, because they have to fornicate somehow (hey, I used the polite word, assholes). Among Watelanders abound rumours about a huge-ass migrant queen laying eggs to breed all the migrants that exist in the Wasteland, which can extend her strange psyquichkist power miles away from her nest. Some say such migrant queen controls the minds of those living in the Shrine of the Watch, but personally I find those fellas quite likeable. Very annoying, but likeable. And no one ever felt specially strong headaches around the place. Others say she lives in the middle of the Acidic Lands and others talk about the center of the Final Waste.
Uses
It’s hard to use a creature you can’t even get close to. You can hunt down one of them with a weapon with enough range, and I have seen the dead corpse of a bunch of these ants. And well, it’s clear they have to be alive for their powers to work. Once dead they just are big-ass dead ants. The guys I were with argued big time for its head, to use it as a trophy. But you have to bolt it fast to the wall, because I tell you those heads are big as fuck, even bigger including the pincers. There are also some wackos that want their bodies to experiment about mind control powers, or even to connect them to a radio receiver and tune in Radio Scrapbridge.
And indirectly, if your partner wants to get laid and you are not in the mood, saying that a migrant must be close is still a very used excuse all across the Wasteland.