What fantasy creatures migrate with the seasons?

[Voadam]

Orcs will migrate south for the winter to warmer climates where the raiding is better.

Vikings did the reverse for the good time to sail and raid.

 

[kigmatzomat]

A Treant can animate two non-sapient trees for an entire day. So 10 Treants can move 20 normal trees up to 30 miles a day (assuming huge trees aren't concerned about making perception checks while fast traveling). Or more accurately, can move 20 trees 30 miles every other day after walking back.

If 15 miles is far enough, that's 20 trees a day. That's a week for 10 treants to move the 150-odd mature trees in an acre up 15 miles. Not a swift thing.

Of course, treants are sentient, so they could learn spells like Awaken. Or do the adventuring thing, like stop bandits to sell their gear for Pots of Awakening so in 20 years they have a forest of Awakened trees that can migrate themselves.

 

[the Jester]

They aren't in 5e, but in my campaign, digesters (which I have converted) migrate in massive herds every seven years, making the plains temporary extreme danger zones.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

PSA: During pegasus migration season, don't leave your washing out on the line.

 

[aramis erak]

This morning, I woke up to the honking of Canada geese visiting my neighborhood, as they do twice a year. And that got me to thinking, maybe an easy way to do a quickie one-shot adventure when not everyone showed up for regular game day would be to have the characters' current home base be visited by migratory creatures that pass through each fall and spring.

Birds migrate, Butterflies migrate. Whales and sharks migrate. In a fantasy world, what sort of interesting migratory creatures might wander through for a few days or weeks, especially ones that might be worthy of some sort of adventure?

I suspect Quippers might migrate into/out of caves... (carnivorous not quite amphibious leaping fishhyper predators the size of a yearling dolly. Swarm critter in 5e.)

I would expect both mimics and cloakers to migrate.

In my last at-home D&D game (damn, 8 years ago!), I had the ambush drakes seasonally migrate for reproduction, but they're NPCs, not monsters, in my book.

I would expect Skysharks to migrate as well... man, my players HATED THEM...

I expect most goblin and orc tribes are, much like the Yupiq and Inupiaq, village based, but the village has 3 or 4 locations: Winter village, hunt camp, fish camp, sometimes an additional spot when time isn't sufficient to go Winter⇒Hunt⇒Winter⇒Fish⇒Winter, instead having Winter⇒Hunt⇒Summer⇒Fish⇒Winter. Some even leave permanent stuctures at Winter, FIsh, and (if they have one) Summer villages. But it's one village with 4 locations, and the winter location also keeps the infirm there year round.

Oh, and the dinosaurs. We know real world ones which survive often migrate (tho' we call that subset of survivors "Birds"), and it's suspected that the predecessors likely did, too. And there's a bunch of dinos in the books. My players were deucedly unhappy to encounter a pack of raptors... Tho' the T-rex was not too badly received. I couldn't answer "Do they taste like chicken?" in any authoritative way, but I suspect more like goose or swan.

One nuisance creature in the TFT ITL §Bestiary (1st ed ITL) has a consistent annual migration in some subpopulations.

Spoiler: Which?

Children. Many human subpopulations migrate. Some of my former students migrated... 2nd week of september to about 3rd week of May, in Anchorage; then summer in hunt camps with their parents for spring hunts of caribou. In August, at the village's fish camp, stocking up salmon and (when they find it) gar. inbetween caribou and fish camp, in the village with grandparents. Both those Yupiq and Inupiaq.

 

[Clint_L]

I like the idea of animated rugs migrating to nicer homes.

And of a flock of rocs migrating south as a cataclysmic yearly event that the entire continent has learned to adapt to.

 

[J.Quondam]

Someone in another thread posted a pic of the rust monsters in the D&D movie. They were depicted as rat-sized critters up in the rafters eating a lock or something. A neat take on the rust monster, imo.

What if such little rust monsters have a complex life-cycle? In "good" times, they're mostly harmless, extracting their minerals in small quantities from the soil. But during some sort of stress event (maybe something geologic), they change color and grow tough chitinous wings to become rust-locusts that take to the air in vast swarming clouds in search of food. After the critters have come and gone from field and farm, the crops are perfectly okay, but all the buildings and wagons have fallen apart as nails and bolts have been reduced to dust, and all the plows and hoes have been eaten.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Someone in another thread posted a pic of the rust monsters in the D&D movie. They were depicted as rat-sized critters up in the rafters eating a lock or something. A neat take on the rust monster, imo.

What if such little rust monsters have a complex life-cycle? In "good" times, they're mostly harmless, extracting their minerals in small quantities from the soil. But during some sort of stress event (maybe something geologic), they change color and grow tough chitinous wings to become rust-locusts that take to the air in vast swarming clouds in search of food. After the critters have come and gone from field and farm, the crops are perfectly okay, but all the buildings and wagons have fallen apart as nails and bolts have been reduced to dust, and all the plows and hoes have been eaten.

A modern-day Ecology of the Rust Monster that had them go through a whole insect-like life cycle, maybe even including them becoming rust moths after pupation, would be amazing.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Githyanki migration...