Critters
The wasteland teems with mutated fauna that survivors collectively call critters. They are not pets. They are not companions. They are threats that will tear a person apart, gore them, or eat them, and the smallest ones move fast enough to do it before the target draws a weapon.
Every critter is defined by three dimensions. Scale determines its threat tier, ranging from Tier 1 Nuisances that a few armed survivors can handle to Tier 5 Apocalyptic creatures that demand full mobilization of all available resources and represent existential risks to entire settlements. Scope defines its behavioral archetype: Armored, Carnivorous, Diseased, Infected, Parasitic, Psionic, Radioactive, Regenerative, Stealthy, or Swarming. Environment determines its habitat adaptation, whether Aquatic, Forest/Jungle, Irradiated Wasteland, Mortis Amaranthine, Spore-Filled Overgrowth, or Urban. Combining one option from each dimension produces over 250 unique creature profiles, each of which can be skinned as any specific animal or mutant appropriate to the region.
Critters follow an inverse speed-to-size relationship. Nuisance-tier creatures move at a run or sprint, small and darting and difficult to pin down. Apocalyptic-tier creatures are limited to a slow walk, but each step hits with a force that compensates for the lack of speed. This pattern mirrors the behavior of zombies, though critters are distinct biological fauna driven by reproduction, migration, territory, and hunger rather than the pull of the Mortis Amaranthine. Creatures native to the Mortis environment are restricted from the Radioactive scope and exist only within the Mortis itself, in Festering Morgues, at Necrology Stations, or in areas where the boundary between the living and the dead has been worn thin. Domestication of critters does not exist in live play; pets are strictly off-camera narrative. In the wastes, the only relationship between a survivor and a critter is predator and prey, and which one is which depends on the day.
Every critter is defined by three dimensions. Scale determines its threat tier, ranging from Tier 1 Nuisances that a few armed survivors can handle to Tier 5 Apocalyptic creatures that demand full mobilization of all available resources and represent existential risks to entire settlements. Scope defines its behavioral archetype: Armored, Carnivorous, Diseased, Infected, Parasitic, Psionic, Radioactive, Regenerative, Stealthy, or Swarming. Environment determines its habitat adaptation, whether Aquatic, Forest/Jungle, Irradiated Wasteland, Mortis Amaranthine, Spore-Filled Overgrowth, or Urban. Combining one option from each dimension produces over 250 unique creature profiles, each of which can be skinned as any specific animal or mutant appropriate to the region.
Critters follow an inverse speed-to-size relationship. Nuisance-tier creatures move at a run or sprint, small and darting and difficult to pin down. Apocalyptic-tier creatures are limited to a slow walk, but each step hits with a force that compensates for the lack of speed. This pattern mirrors the behavior of zombies, though critters are distinct biological fauna driven by reproduction, migration, territory, and hunger rather than the pull of the Mortis Amaranthine. Creatures native to the Mortis environment are restricted from the Radioactive scope and exist only within the Mortis itself, in Festering Morgues, at Necrology Stations, or in areas where the boundary between the living and the dead has been worn thin. Domestication of critters does not exist in live play; pets are strictly off-camera narrative. In the wastes, the only relationship between a survivor and a critter is predator and prey, and which one is which depends on the day.
Mutated post-apocalyptic fauna built from a modular Scale/Scope/Environment framework producing over 250 unique creature combinations. Threat tiers range from Nuisance to Apocalyptic.
Type
fauna
