T-050 Toxic boar

Threshold Institute · Case file T-050

Number

T-050 in the catalogue

Kind

Creature

Class

Class II: dangerous, and held in a cell

Found

Year 45, month 8, day 30

Where found

The same forest as the toxic wolves (T-049)

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: the Institute did not try to hold a live one.

Field guidance for the open world: a toxic boar does not flee. It charges, and it does not stop when it is hit; step aside rather than stand. Every bite carries the poison into the blood. It roams the worst of the polluted ground.

Description

A boar gone wrong in the foul air: dark-hided, sore-marked and faintly glowing, like the toxic wolf. Where a boar would run, it charges. Its sores weep the same green fluid as the wolf's, and its tusks are stained with it, so that a graze from one poisons as a bite does.

Discovery

Halden's team went back to the forest of the wolves at Rehn's word and walked its worst ground for three weeks. On the last day a boar that should have fled came at them in the open.

Addenda

Addendum T-050-1

Incident report, Year 45, month 8, day 30

Filed by Erik Halden.

It came out of the brush at a run, straight at us. It took Brandt off his feet, back from his first bite in May, and then Okafor's new recruit, Sami Lehto. We put eleven rounds in it before it fell. Lehto carries its bite home with the poison in his blood. He will live.

Addendum T-050-2

Survivors' talk, collected by Halden's team, Year 45, month 9

A farmer on the forest's edge, who would not give his name: the wild pigs used to run from the dogs. This summer they killed the dogs. Then they came into the yard at night and stood there, glowing, looking at the house. We moved to the coast.

A second farmer: our own sows, the ones that got out into the dead ground, came back the same. We shot them. Nobody would eat the meat.

Addendum T-050-3

Research note by Tomas Rehn, Year 45, month 9

The boar tells us nothing new about the pollution. It tells us something about the animals. A wolf is a hunter, and in the foul air it stays one, worse. A boar is not a hunter, and in the foul air it has become one. The pollution does not only harden an animal. It turns what the animal does.

Addendum T-050-4

The joint map, Year 45, month 11

Halden's team has mapped where the changed animals are. Rehn's team has measured the pollution field since the launch site (T-047). The two maps agree: where the field is thickest, the changed animals are.

One point on the map is worse than the rest by far. The nuclear plant on the coast was abandoned in the first winter of the pollution. The field around it is thick enough that the instruments cannot read it. Survivors who have passed it say the infected there are bigger than men.

Halden has asked for a team in sealed suits. The Directorate has given him one (T-051).

Previous fileT-049 Toxic wolfPart IV: The planet and the pollution Next fileT-051 Mutant brutePart IV: The planet and the pollution

In the file

• People: Tomas Rehn, Mara Okafor, Erik Halden, Sami Lehto and Brandt.
• Places: The launch site and The nuclear plant.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 45, month 8, day 30. Found in the same forest as the toxic wolves, on the last day of three weeks that Erik Halden's team walked its worst ground at Tomas Rehn's word, when a boar that should have fled came at them in the open.

A boar gone wrong in the foul air where the pollution runs deepest. Dark-hided, sore-marked and glowing faintly.

It no longer flees: it charges, and every bite carries the poison into the blood.

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 2400 ml of its 4000 ml of blood. How it hunts and where it turns up: see the wildlife page.