Rumble Dogs
The caravan driver's bane is not a raider, not a shambler, and not a Bone Rattler. It is a three-foot rodent that never wanted a fight in the first place.
Rumble Dogs are burrowing creatures descended from a cross between prairie dogs and the larger nutria, scaled up by mutation into nearly three-foot-long specimens that dig vast underground tunnel networks beneath the Lone Star wastelands. The tunnels connect large hollowed chambers, expanding communities that can stretch beneath the surface for hundreds of yards. The Rumble Dogs themselves are not aggressive. They eat roots and grubs, they sleep in their burrows, and they have no interest in picking a fight with anything that stays above ground.
The tunnels are the weapon. A caravan rolling across what looks like solid earth can punch through the surface into a hollow beneath without warning. Horses snap their legs in the collapse. Wagons tip. Iron horses pitch sideways into holes that were invisible a second before. And then the biting starts. A Rumble Dog confronted with a foreign limb crashing through the ceiling of its home does what any cornered animal does: it attacks. Teeth designed for roots and burrowing are more than sufficient to shred flesh and tendon. Drivers who cannot free their animals quickly enough have watched Rumble Dogs chew the legs off horses before anyone could intervene.
The cruelty of it is the randomness. There is no way to detect a Rumble Dog tunnel from the surface. No scouting, no testing the ground, no warning sign. The earth simply gives way, and a routine supply run turns into a salvage operation with bleeding animals and broken axles. Every caravan driver in Lone Star has a story about Rumble Dogs, and none of them are fond memories.
Rumble Dogs are burrowing creatures descended from a cross between prairie dogs and the larger nutria, scaled up by mutation into nearly three-foot-long specimens that dig vast underground tunnel networks beneath the Lone Star wastelands. The tunnels connect large hollowed chambers, expanding communities that can stretch beneath the surface for hundreds of yards. The Rumble Dogs themselves are not aggressive. They eat roots and grubs, they sleep in their burrows, and they have no interest in picking a fight with anything that stays above ground.
The tunnels are the weapon. A caravan rolling across what looks like solid earth can punch through the surface into a hollow beneath without warning. Horses snap their legs in the collapse. Wagons tip. Iron horses pitch sideways into holes that were invisible a second before. And then the biting starts. A Rumble Dog confronted with a foreign limb crashing through the ceiling of its home does what any cornered animal does: it attacks. Teeth designed for roots and burrowing are more than sufficient to shred flesh and tendon. Drivers who cannot free their animals quickly enough have watched Rumble Dogs chew the legs off horses before anyone could intervene.
The cruelty of it is the randomness. There is no way to detect a Rumble Dog tunnel from the surface. No scouting, no testing the ground, no warning sign. The earth simply gives way, and a routine supply run turns into a salvage operation with bleeding animals and broken axles. Every caravan driver in Lone Star has a story about Rumble Dogs, and none of them are fond memories.
Three-foot burrowing rodents whose tunnel networks collapse under caravans without warning.
Type
pest
