T-049 Toxic wolf

Threshold Institute · Case file T-049

Number

T-049 in the catalogue

Kind

Creature

Class

Class II: dangerous, and held in a cell

Found

Year 45, month 5, day 8

Where found

A forest on the main island, where the pollution had run deepest since the winter

Status

Uncontained; it roams the worst of the polluted ground in the open world

Now

In the open world

Part

Part IV: The planet and the pollution

Containment procedures

None: no live one has been held. Carcasses are brought in sealed bags and cut on the sealed level, under masks.

Field guidance for the open world: toxic wolves keep to the worst of the polluted ground. They hunt in smaller packs than their kin, four where wolves would be eight, and come on without a wolf's caution. Every bite carries the poison into the blood; treat a bite as a dose of foul air, and take antitox pills at once. Their glands can be taken from the carcass and are worth more to a chemist than the meat is to anyone.

Description

A wolf gone wrong in the foul air: dark-hided, with weeping green sores, and at dusk a faint glow. Where the pollution runs deepest, the wolves come back changed, and their kind does not change back.

Discovery

Hunters coming in from the main island's forests spoke of wolves that glowed. Erik Halden's field team, moved there after the towns fell (T-048), found a pack of four on the edge of the forest's worst ground and shot one.

One of the hunters, a woman named Greta Vinter, gave the team its first account: "They came to the edge of the clearing where the trees had died and stood there in the dusk, and I could see them without a lamp. I have hunted wolves for thirty years. A wolf does not glow, and a wolf does not come at three hunters with guns." She would not go back to the forest, and drew the team a map of where the trees had died.

Addenda

Addendum T-049-1

Incident report, Year 45, month 5, day 8

Filed by Erik Halden.

They came at us across open ground in daylight. Wolves do not do that. Four, no more. Brandt and Kowalczyk were bitten before we had them down. Both wounds went bad within the hour, and both men had the signs of a dose of foul air: the cough, the sweat, the shaking. Our medic treated them as for the air, and both lived. The pack kept to the worst ground. The wolves outside it, three kilometres north, are still wolves; we saw them run from us.

Addendum T-049-2

Dissection notes, Year 45, month 5, day 12

By Tomas Rehn.

The glands under the jaw are swollen to three times their size and full of a fluid the Institute's chemists have not seen before. It concentrates the poison and holds it. The chemists can work with it.

The pollution changes an animal the way it changes a man. A beast that has lived in it long enough comes back as something else. The change follows the field: it is worst where the field is thickest, and nothing outside the field has it.

Note, Year 45, month 12: survivors trade the glands among themselves now, and pay well for them.

Addendum T-049-3

Memo, Year 45, month 6, day 1

Halden to Rehn: are the wolves the only ones?

Rehn to Halden: I do not think so. Go back to the same forest and look (T-050).

Previous fileT-048 InfectedPart IV: The planet and the pollution Next fileT-050 Toxic boarPart IV: The planet and the pollution

In the file

• People: Tomas Rehn, Erik Halden, Greta Vinter, Brandt and Kowalczyk.
• Places: The sealed level.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 45, month 5, day 8. Found in a forest on the main island, where the pollution had run deepest since the winter, after hunters coming in from its forests spoke of wolves that glowed. Erik Halden's field team, moved there after the towns fell, found a pack of four on the edge of the forest's worst ground and shot one.

A wolf gone wrong in the foul air: where the pollution runs deepest, the wolves come back changed. Dark-hided, with weeping green sores and a faint glow.

It hunts in a smaller pack than its kin, and every bite carries the poison into the blood. Its glands are worth more to a chemist than its meat is to anyone.

Status: uncontained; it roams the worst of the polluted ground in the open world.

Today it is found in the open world.

It goes down after losing 2000 ml of its 3500 ml of blood. How it hunts and where it turns up: see the wildlife page.