Monster Migrations

[uzirath]

While browsing through my kids' copy of the May 22 issue of The Week Junior, I came across a great spread about bird migration. It included lots of interesting scientific tidbits along with a blurb about how mysterious migration has been throughout history:

In the past, people could only guess why birds disappeared and where they went. Aristotle, an ancient Greek thinker, thought birds transformed into different species and that some hibernated, like bears. In 13th-century Europe, people thought that one kind of goose grew on trees and suddenly appeared, like a crop, in winter. In 1822, a German hunter shot a white stork. He discovered that the creature had been shot before, with an arrow from central Africa. Scientists realized the stork must have flown for thousands of miles.

This got me thinking about how rarely I've featured any sorts of migrating creatures in my fantasy games. Maybe the birds fly south for the winter, but most of the "monsters" don't. This could provide interesting opportunities for world design. Monsters, spirits, undead... any of these things might move around in semi-predictable patterns. Perhaps farmers in Farborea rush to harvest their crops before the ravening snidges pass through. Or everyone in the badlands has a heavy iron-bound door for their cave to protect against the summer incursion of beetlevores.

This isn't new, of course (the modrons come to mind), but I'm curious if any of you have had success with this in your campaigns. What sorts of things might migrate? Have you had legends or myths about the migration(s) that were false? (Or true...? maybe the gulls really do turn into ankhegs in the winter?)

Finally, the tidbit about the arrow in the stork seems like it could be reworked into a fun adventure seed, especially if the arrowhead was magical or made from an exotic substance. "You've been hired to find out where an arrowhead like this comes from. The prince wants his archers arrayed with similar arms!"

 

[Dioltach]

While it's an interesting possibility for an RPG, 2 minutes on Wikipedia shows that people have known about (though not necessarily universally accepted) bird migration for at least 3000 years.

Now I want to run an adventure where farmers with very big hats are preparing their fields for fertilisation by the migrating pegasi.

 

[the Jester]

This isn't new, of course (the modrons come to mind), but I'm curious if any of you have had success with this in your campaigns. What sorts of things might migrate?

Oh man, several of my groups just deal with this! There's a 17-year cycle of migration for digesters (a 3e monster that I've converted), and there have been several encounters with them over the last dozen games or so that I've run.

 

[LordEntrails]

Gnolls....
See Xanathar's or Volos article on roaming gnoll bands. They could easily be migratory.

You could well do the same with any creatures that don't build elaborate towns/dens like goblins, orcs, etc. Probably some more interesting things you could do with more unusual creatures, but I can't think of such at the moment.

 

[reltastic]

I've long thought it would be fun to run a seasonal game, where depending on the time of year, the threats the players face change greatly. Migrating would be a natural part of both Autumn and Spring - what happens when that flock of vrocks needs a place to roost and the only good place is a little too near town for comfort? What happens when all of the major predators go into hibernation during the winter, and are awoken a little too early by some ignorant group of adventurers? Do the nearby rivers rise and fall during spring and summer - and if so how does that affect travel and trade? Does bandit activity increase when there are fewer predators around? When is the most dangerous time to travel, relatively?

Lots of fun things you could do with that.

 

[aco175]

Is that an African or European Swallow.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Is that an African or European Swallow.

 

[Khelon Testudo]

Pretty much any species of monster with two arms, two legs, and no agriculture would be migratory. Trolls come to mind.

 

[uzirath]

Pretty much any species of monster with two arms, two legs, and no agriculture would be migratory. Trolls come to mind.

I’ve also wondered about fantastical burrowing creatures like bulettes and purple worms.

Sea creatures could be interesting too. Maybe the rich fisheries off the coast attract seasonal sea monsters so there’s a month (or more) with no sea trade or fishing. Could have interesting ramifications.

 

[uzirath]

In the real world, of course, many cultures migrated along with terrestrial prey animals. In a fantasy world, this might happen with other types of creatures too. Perhaps some creatures have developed a symbiotic relationship with avian, aquatic, or subterranean species, traveling with them on their periodic journeys. "Aye, the purple worms are bad, but it's the rock mites that really mess things up for us."

Depending on the details of a world's metaphysics, it could also be interesting to have migrations that can take hitchhikers along. Imagine those island-sized turtles with people hitching rides to get to the other side of the sea (maybe the sea is too dangerous for ships to cross). This could be interplanetary or interplanar too. Perhaps the only way to go from world to world is to hitch a ride on an astral serpent. Or, maybe they leave literal wormholes behind them that slowly close up. (Fetch the MacGuffin before the wormhole closes... or you can follow the celestial worms on their 200-year migration through the multiverse.)