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.
Have I ever told you about that time I was swallowed whole by a mouther? Was I travelling with a group of scholar colleagues near Samanthia and one of those beasts came out of nowhere… well, not exactly nowhere, because those critters are big, obvious and clumsy… but it came out of… of… Ug, ok, fine, I’m just making this thing up just to leave you eager to read more! The fact is that mouthers are just another one of the many nasty creatures you can stumble upon in the Wasteland and get killed by. In a single bite.
Description
No doubt the mouther is one of those beasties you will definitely recognize when put in front of one. If you have ever been told about them, you will absolufuckingly identify it for what it is.
It’s quite a big creature, a bit taller and longer than a buffamel but much, much bulkier. Their skin is thick and leathery and protects them from most of the Wasteland predatores. A whole colony of biters could jump on top of a mouther and just have to leave later out of sheer boredom without being able to bite a single chunk of flesh out of it. It’s a good thing for them to have that bigass skin, because their colors range from fluor yellow to radiactive green, and when the sun shines on them (which is almost always in the Wasteland) the glow like fucking lighthouses in the middle of nowhere.
Given their name, it’s obvious that their main feature is their huge mouth in their faces. They are very capable of swallowing whole a person without a second thought. And they seem to be very proud of their face holes, because they usually walk around with their mouths completely open wide, which also gives them the looks of a complete dumbass. Another weird thing about mouthers are their teeth. When first seen, you just see row after row of big-ass teeth with sharp edges and think about the carnage those things could do to a living being. But they are all fake, dudes. Their teeth are bland and soft, as if they were actually made of rubber! Yeah, I swear! Flexible and shit!
On top of their mouthes there are two holes for the nose and their eyes are usually at the same height, two on each side of their heads.
Habitat
The ain’t very common and it’s rare to see one, but they usually roam about flat and clear areas. That’s probably because they are not very agile beasts, so there is no point in getting into trouble in fucked-up terrain zones. As long as you meet those requirements, you migh encounter a mouther from Fatwind to the Living Forest.
They don’t stay in one place, but are always on the move. It is part of their hunting tecni… tekn… techini… plan, but that I will explain further on. When travelling in groups they usually form herds of four to six individuals. These gropus are usually composed of a male (which can be tell apart mostly by its dong, not much else), two or three females and maybe a baby mouther.
Behavior
Mouthers are slow and not very nimble, and can be seen from miles away. So you might be wondering ‘How the hell do they manage to catch any prey?’ Well, by being such a pain in the ass chasers. More or less like my brother-in-law Gilbert, but without the ‘bashing you ear with theories about crabosaurs being a distraction made up by mutards to control our minds’ thing. They are to all extents tireless. Once they spot a prey they like, they start chasing it. From that momento on there will be no other thing in their minds and they don’t care the time it takes to reach their target: they can walk on forever without a single break. At first their prey will get away easily and may even forget about the mouther… but as soon as it stops again, there it will be their pursuer. And the poor creature will have to stop to rest, eat or drink at some point. Usually, when mouthers finally catch up with their preys, the later are so tired that won’t even resist. They wil grab it in their mouths and swallow it whole. Even if the victim still has some strengths to figh back, the soft teeth of the mouther will hold it in place, muffling their sounds and absorbing its attacks like a padded armor. They are also somehow sticky, so it’s already to late to avoid its fate.
Once the mouther swallows its prey, it begins to be dissolved inside their bellies thanks to some mixture of very aggresive doby acids. But not the whole of it. After some hours it throws its meal up and another mouther in the pack will devour it and be fed. That process is repeated several times until not even the bones survive.
With this hunting method mouthers are always on the move after their targets. But every living creature eventualy needs to sleep, will you say. It took me quite a while to find out how they did it or if they were immune to weariness. And that explains why they usually travel in packs. While the cruise across the Wasteland there are one or two mouthers on point leading the pack, totally awake, but the rest just follows while slumbering. It’s like they were sleepwalkers capable of following their guide in some unconscious way.
Uses
Alive they don’t have any fuckin’ use, but once dead… that’s a different story altogether. As I said, their skin is really tough and resistant. It’s hard as fuck being able to treat it enought to get some patches of mouther leather suitable to work with But if you are a master tanner and manage to do it, you will have stuff hard enough to stop a bullet at a certain distance and resistant to almost all edge weapons. And mouthers are not small creatures, so you will have raw material to live like a king for quite a long time… or maybe you are just killed to be robbed of your items by some mean bastard. Armors made of mouther skin usually keep the original bright color of the animal, because if you have such a cool and expensive piece of inventory you just want to show it off.