1001 Enemies That Ought To Be In A Fallout Game

[Selfsurprise]

...or any other game with a post-apocalyptic setting

The real purpose of this thread isn't so much to bemoan the diversity of species and factions in Fallout (which I think is actually pretty decent, especially if one takes "monster mod" packs into account) than it is a place for myself and others of an equally overactive temperament in the imagination department, to share and discuss ideas for monsters, mutant flora and fauna, power groups, communities and other assorted entities that could potentially reside in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting. Feel free to post as many of your own ideas as you like, as well as lavish praise/pour scorn on my deranged concepts as you see fit. I'm probably going to ineptly shoehorn-in various bits of Fallout lore and background information into many of the following creatures and characters, but it isn't essential to adhere to the game's lore if you want to post your own or expand upon ideas.

xjager513, Ape Mutant

• 1. Cold War Thought Forms
  The result of pre-war psionic research into the Tibetan concept of the tulpa, or "thought-form", funded by the US Commonwealth's propaganda department that attempted to literally create an archetypal communist figure to inspire hate and fear in the American public. Having neared finalization and refinement as the bombs fell in 2077, the CWTF's largely managed to escape their places of internment and over the course of two centuries grew in power and willfulness. Though rare compared to most pre-war remnants, CWTF's are typically leaders of sinister power groups and usually in the middle of a nefarious plot that draws on all the imagined evils inherent in paranoid democracies.
  
• 2. Toy Soldiers
  Yet another pre-war survival, albeit much more numerous and considerably less powerful - at least small numbers. In the previous age of capitalism and robotics, robotic self-aware iterations of teddy bears, dolls, stuffed animals, action figures and vehicles were produced in vast numbers. When the bombs fell many of the toys suddenly found that their limited programming left them with little purpose or direction. Over time the toys congregated and eventually evolved into myriad militant factions (often based on the type or design of toy they were) and inevitably fell into internecine conflict and warfare, offering a warped and cartoonish reflection of human society and it's untenable prejudices. They are typically as well-armed and dangerous as raiders, and can be dangerous in large groups.
  
• 3. Fast Food Golem
  These once jovial and rather sizeable pre-war droids were designed to effectively be mobile self-contained fast food dispensers that may or may not resemble goofy versions of the exeunt chains employees or the ex-company's mascot. Time hasn't been been kind to these ambling monstrosities. The rigours of a post-apocalypse wasteland, the cessation of anything even remotely resembling civilized behaviour, and just the general wear n' tear inflicted by the last two centuries have caused the FFG's to become completely unhinged and indiscriminately violent. Upon seeing anyone or anything, the FFG's may start howling corrupted and deranged slogans, offering to serve their victims whilst blasting them boiling oil or attempting to make burgers out of their bloodily pulped remains. If you actually manage to destroy one of them, they are filled with a veritable haul of fatty pre-war foodstuffs and remarkably well preserved (yet somehow really gross) ingredients.
  
• 4. Giant Invertebrates
  Radscorpions, Radroaches, Bloatflies, Stingwings, Bloodbugs and the like are all well and dandy (they are some of my favourite enemies in Fallout 4, I'm a sucker for oversized insects) but I felt like the series could do with more giant mutant invertebrates. Even if they had added four or five different species on top of the game's enemies, that would have gone a long way to making the Commonwealth's irradiated ecology seem more alive and encompassing. But I'm not here to gripe, here's some other invertebrates that could seriously benefit from the "gigantification" treatment - in alphabetical order: ant-mimic spiders (or maybe a radroach-mimic spider, in this instance) antlions, assassin bugs (some species even use the dessicated remains of prey to conceal themselves), butterflies and moths, camel spiders, cochineals, deer ticks, lobsters, pacific geoducks, silverfish, snails and slugs, trapdoor spiders, velvet worms, water bears ("giant" tardigrades would probably be no bigger than housecats) whip spiders, woodlice, etc...
  
• 5. Concrete Jelly
  I always thought it was a missed opportunity that the Fallout games never had (to the best of my knowledge) any ooze-type monsters, an irradiated urban wasteland surely ought to have birth one or more varieties hideous formless abominations. One I had in mind was a kind of mobile hungry slurry created by the digestive action of countless extremophile bacteria feeding on the wrecked concrete of the old world's decrepit roads and building. It could behave like a non-Newtonian fluid, being highly malleable in its "relaxed" state, but upon being hit or whilst attacking it literally turns rock-solid.
  
• 6. Taurocanis Sapiens ("Bull Terrier Folk")
  A race of anthropomorphic dog people of mysterious origins, specifically descended from Bull Terriers which were originally bred as ratting and pit fighting dogs. Putting them on this list of imaginary enemies is rather disingenuous on my part, as I'd imagine that they wouldn't be fundamentally dangerous, with about the same raider/settler ratio as humans - towards whom they might have a healthy and understandable degree of distrust. In terms of personality they tend to be extremely vicious when provoked, unyieldingly loyal and caring towards companions, and painfully afraid of being alone. In a Fallout context giving them rough-sounding English accents might be an amusing touch.
  
• 7. Cybikers
  Demented and often solitary raiders that have taken bodily modification to extreme lengths. In the pursuit of martial capability and physical power, some particularly insane yet inventive raiders have gone to extreme measure of amputating their own limbs in order to accommodate the kind of fixtures that really ought to have stayed on the rusting remains of civilian and military vehicles vehicles, mortars and sentry bots. Cybikers derive their name from the souped-up motorcycle wheel/s they are disconcertingly replaced their legs with, though jerry rigged tank tracks and Mister Gutsy jet turbines aren't unheard of.
  
• 8. Gates Of Hell
  An absolutely appalling mutant vomited-forth from a long lost and unnamed glowing crater that may of once been a thriving ecosystem. Resembling a titanic tumour with an indeterminate amount of madly swiveling gelid eyes, this monster gains it's moniker due to the absolutely enormous mouth filled with jagged uneven shards of teeth that dominates most of it's mass - comprising at least 75% of it's somewhat indiscernible body. It occupies an unusual niche in the food chain of the wasteland, devouring practically everything (organic or artificial) in it's path, and spewing up short-lived and partially-developed genetic clones of any living matter it's ingested within the previous twenty-four hours. Occasionally one of these attendant changelings will be born with a little more potential and (more importantly) a degree of fertility it's sterile siblings lack. The Gates Of Hell have been responsible for the existence of many new and terrible species, making them arguably one of the most aptly named horrors of the Commonwealth.

I think I'll stop there for now, I definitely have more ideas brewing for another time. Feel free to add your own to the list or ruminate upon what's already been posted. Sweet dreams!

 

[Selfsurprise]

• 9. Vorpal Crawlers
  A lurid nightmare inspired by conspiracy theories involving Walt Disney's frozen head being buried beneath his themepark and the Norris-head-spider scene from the 1982 sci-fi horror classic The Thing. Vorpal Crawlers are an unfortunate result of an experimental pre-war cryogenic technique that involved the severing of the clients head in order to focus all preservation of the brain, with the understanding that said clients would be given life-like synthesized bodies upon revival. However between the bombs falling in 2077 and the unfortunate fact that the cryogenic firm in question was actually a front for a shady psychometabolic research program, the clients would never be the same again. Awoken centuries later, psionically altered and understandably traumatized by their physical predicament, the clients transformed into disembodied monstrosities that skitter around on legs composed of appropriated cranial and cerebral matter. Dextrous and surprisingly strong for their size, Vorpal Crawlers attack any humanoid they stumble upon in an ultimately futile attempt to acquire a body.
  
• 10. Twitcher
  Colloquially and less politically-correctly referred to as "Spazzers" by the Commonwealth's inhabitants, Twitchers are ex-human mutant drug addicts (typically jet and psycho dependent raiders and scavengers) who under ordinary circumstances would have succumbed to their affliction, but somehow due to some perverse kind of natural selection transformed into a frightening inhabitant of the post-apocalyptic landscape. Twitcher's move at alarming speeds and, as their name suggests, are constantly subject to unnaturally violent tics, bodily contractions and spasms. Capable of closing upon prey with terrifying speed, Twitchers will often inadvertently sidestep ranged attacks and masterful close-quarter strikes, or failing that shrug off blows that would down (or at least subdue) most creatures.
  
• 11. Pigeon Roc
  Vermin get everywhere. Rats and roaches would no doubt gnaw their way into the cosy interiors of military compounds and vaults given enough time, and I don't see why those multitudes of the sky more commonly known as pigeons would roost inside these structures along with their earthbound equivalents. Through some unknown and accidental means of consumption of F.E.V. tainted material and good old fashioned accelerated natural selection, one of the most fearful predators of the Commonwealth thus arose - the Pigeon Roc. Thankfully exceedingly rare, the Concorde-sized Pigeon Roc's pose a threat to even Deathclaws and will actively predate humans the same way hawks hunt rabbits if given the opportunity. It even retains it's miniscule ancestors distinctive "cooing", albeit of a thunderously deep and sonorous tone that echoes for miles around the wastes.
  
• 12. Elvis Impersonator Bandits
  For no reason other than my own infantile sense of amusement. Their in-game combat dialogue would consist of "unh-uhhs" or otherwise be half-arsed references to lyrics meant as threats and taunts.

 

[TheTron852]

• 10. Twitcher
  Colloquially and less politically-correctly referred to as "Spazzers" by the Commonwealth's inhabitants, Twitchers are ex-humans mutant drug addicts (typically jet and psycho dependent raiders and scavengers) who under ordinary circumstances would have succumbed to their affliction, but somehow due to some perverse kind of natural selection transformed into a frightening inhabitant of the post-apocalyptic landscape. Twitcher's move at alarming speeds and, as their name suggests, are constantly subject to unnaturally violent tics, bodily contractions and spasms. Capable of closing upon prey with terrifying speed, Twitchers will often inadvertently sidestep ranged attacks bullets and masterful close-quarter strikes, or failing that shrug off blows that would down (or at least subdue) most creatures.

oh noes not those guys please no ;_;

<== played Afraid of Monsters, hence why is so freaked out

 

[Selfsurprise]

• 13. Unfinished Shapeshifter
  The unforeseen result and rude survival of scientific experimentation conducted by shadowy factions of the Commonwealth with access to sinister pre-war technology. In an attempt to engineer a multipurpose espionage/assassination units to rival the Institutes synths, an unknown power group set about the task of creating polymorphic doppelgängers. Although on the cusp of a breakthrough in regards to giving the creatures a form of discrete and physical control over their amorphous organic forms (labeled "cellular stabilization memory") before they could complete their task the Institute raided their laboratories and put the faction on the run. Unfortunately some of these unfinished units slithered out of confinement in the resultant chaos and set about multiplying. --- These protean abominations possess a human level of sapience, but without the blessing of a single "true" form and thusly the lack of behavioural models to inform their own experience, the thoughts of US's are by every other living things standards utterly alien and irretrievably insane. If a typical appearance can be attributed to them, US's tend to resemble sinewy writhing puddles of indiscernible matter and textures (both organic and inorganic) out of which project hundreds of chaotically arranged limbs and bodily features of humans, ghouls, wildlife, even robots; alongside apparent fragments and isolated elements of the wastes artificial and natural landscapes.
  
• 14. Tooth Fairies
  As an example of the gallows humour common to wasteland survivors, Tooth Fairies are a nasty and unusual mutant vespid species with an unusually high degree of sentience - i.e. not quite human levels of intelligence but a touch more sapient than most animals. Resembling a cat-sized ichneumon wasp covered in a morass of rough wiry filaments, Tooth Fairies acquired their nickname from their bizarre predilection for collecting and armouring themselves with the teeth of anything they can temporarily petrify with their paralytic stings. Many a campfire horror story has been told about lone settlers wandering the wastes, bedding down for the night, only to wake up unable to move a muscle, whilst a much afeared Tooth Fairy extracts it's victims gnashers.

oh noes not those guys please no ;_;

<== played Afraid of Monsters, hence why is so freaked out

I did wonder if I should just stick the name Spazzers, as referred to in the creature's description, but I was worried it might cause offence. Turns out I caused offence anyway!

 

[BidetoftheDead]

I was going to say Guars from morrowind but mutated but...Far Harbor kinda did that

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Gulper

 

[curt+wraithpantz]

Those are some awesome ideas Selfsurprise. I take it I need to put numbers to my ideas. I have only watched my sister playing the Fallout games starting from number 3 but I think I have some original ideas.

15]More ghoul types. Fallout 4 had a bunch of different ghouls, but I think some weird elemental frost, lava, mud, smoke, salt and diamond ghouls would be pretty sweet.

16]A Crazy Cat Lady who throws live cats at you. Maybe has some way of 'generating' more cats? Disturbing when you think about it.

17]Zombie giant bugs that are affected by that fungus (I forget the name) that makes insects behave weirdly and eventually bursts out of their heads.

18]Bandits that are just trying to form a crust or d-beat band.

19]A race of squat burrowing supermutants that, rather than attacking you, just want to become your companion.

20]Mobile vegetables created by the institute as a punishment for anyone who did not eat their greens as a child.

21]Crocodile + dolphin hybrids.

That is all I got right now.

 

[BidetoftheDead]

22) Fungi People, these people are much like Harold but instead of a tree they have FEV-mutated fungi growing on them and they made a symbiotic relationship with them. Overall they're still like humans so not all of them will be hostile

23) Dead Walkers, a tribe of humans stuck in an area where they're surrounded by feral ghouls. They will tan and hide the feral skins and wear them as a way to sneak past ferals. Regular ghouls are suspicious of them but the tribe only goes after ferals as they're rather peaceful given that the ferals also act as a shield from the outside world for them, well, of course if the outsiders stay away from the sacred areas of their area. They live in a town the size of concord with a large museum in the center that acts as their home and temple for a pantheon of shadow-covered gods.

24) Neo-Reavers, a tech-obsessed cult that broke off from the Reaver cult in the mid-west due to the Mid-western BoS. This group has become more tech-obsessed and violent with a "trust no one but your fellow cultist" they attack any group with technology they want, which is everything from advanced technology to a simple calculator.

 

[Selfsurprise]

@ curt+wraithpantz: Thanks mate! I believe that fungus that you mentioned is called cordyceps. Cordyceps infected zombie bugs would definitely spice the occasional Bloatfly and Radscorpion encounter. The "Crazy Cat Lady" concept is rather terrifying...

@ BidetoftheDead: I appreciate the faction angle you went with, I was secretly hoping you post some more idea on here

You could call those fungi people Myconids, and I'm imagining some sort of specialist agricultural community that can grow abundant crops in extremely hostile environments. Your "Dead Walkers" idea is very inspired, both from a uniquely tribal and morally ambiguous perspective. I can imagine them being highly reviled and misunderstood by both non-feral ghouls and other human settlements, the Dead Walkers might even believe that non-feral ghouls are somehow transient semi-divine figures, avatars of their "shadow-covered gods".

 

[BidetoftheDead]

Dead Walkers were actually an idea I came up with from watching the Walking Dead's idea of covering yourself in zombie guts will hide people from the zombies. Something I'm amazed they barely touch on.

 

[Selfsurprise]

@ BidetoftheDead: I'm not at all familiar with the series I'm afraid. It strikes me as a rather risky strategy, I don't know how the "contagion" in the series spreads (assuming it does indeed propagate itself like that) but surely even if you have mild non life threatening injuries on your person you run the risk of contracting the undead bug, or at best some other unrelated infection?

 

[Selfsurprise]

25. I Poveri Sono Matti

Even before the war, in the Commonwealth the best of intentions could result in dire consequences. This peculiar strain of mutation can trace its progeny to the pre-War entrepreneur, neo-avant gardist and self-styled "renaissance man" Epifanio Battistelli. Both a utopian idealist and a major investor of the already burgeoning pharmaceutical industry, Battistelli (nicknamed "Eeebee" by the mainstream press) was always looking for ways to improve the lifestyle and prestige of the often impoverished Italian-American minority; and more troublingly seeking ways to sleaze his way around ethicacy and testing laws that his numerous supplemental products ought to have been subject to.

In a typically hubristic flash Battistelli believed he had devised a solution to his "Italian-American problem". Why not engineer a drug that activates the parts of the human brain responsible for creativity and intellectual curiosity? Surely if such a thing were given out to the poorer and artistically uninformed masses, then the innate but repressed urge to better themselves and their lot in life would finally break free? Clearly having no issues regarding the manipulation of his own kin and overriding anything resembling sane medical practice, Battistelli distributed his new product to an overworked and wilfully disregarded working class with promises that it would make them feel happier, more carefree and optimistic - he christened it Moũsai (ancient Greek for "muse").

In its early stages of prescription those who had taken Moũsai claimed to feel much more positive and displayed a willingness to live the day to it's fullest. Observational tests revealed that the drug improved the social intelligence, speaking and oratory ability, and erudition of its subjects. Another noticeable benefit was that it almost always sparked some newly acquired creative pursuit in the subject, typically of various crafts and artistic mediums, but potentially it could range from all kinds of literary and performative disciplines. Minor causes for concern were raised about the marginally increased levels excitability and irritability in some subjects - as well as the abnormal amount of nosebleeds recorded - but Battistelli and his team were more than happy to swat away these results into their official analysis of Moũsai.

Unfortunately after about a year of this "proactive" approach to marketing the new wonder drug, the first deaths occurred. One particularly inspired warehouse worker who was an avid part-time performance artist and regular imbiber of Moũsai, decided that he could symbolically demonstrate the praise lavished upon the biblical character Abraham by the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard by taking his own teenage son to the top of a fast food restaurant and decapitating him - but only so he could use his blood to daub an enormous stylized painting of bearded gods on the venue's parking lot, as well as a recurring motif depicting Jangle's The Moon Monkey on fire.

Despite Battistelli's most convincingly charming attempts at hushing up this untimely tragedy, not even he could sugarcoat the post-mortem analysis of the warehouse workers bout of artistic insight - and especially not after dozens of other such incidents of varying degrees of severity. Not only had Moũsai both sent its subjects irretrievably insane and dependent on the drug, more fundamentally it has altered the brain chemistry and DNA of those it "inspired". Worse still these genetic and cognitive deviations were soon found to pass on into the addicts fully fertile offspring. In a fit of poetic (though no less hubristic) despair Battistelli christened these new ab-humans of his unintentional conception "I Poveri Sono Matti"; from the title of a Cesare Zavattini novel The Poor Are Mad. Presumably as his financial and cultural empire began to show cracks and more of the Povera were born some effort would of been made to contain or even cure these people. Sadly this happened around about 2075-2077 and whilst this controversy raged-on among numerous other global crises, the bombs fell.

The modern day post-apocalyptic descendents of the Povera are unmistakable, both in their behaviour and appearance. Povera have a distinct sickly blue-grey colouration to their veinous skin, wildly oscillating black-rimmed eyes, fingertips gnawed and scraped into scabrous points and a permanently set rictus grin on their leering faces filled with discoloured teeth dripping with stinking ichor - their noses also bleed copiously heavy amounts of black blood. Either found solitarily wandering the wastes or living in small closely-knit packs, the Povera still occupy their time satiating their endless curiosity and working on their obsessive creative projects. They also have a habit of gregariously talking about all manner of subjects and philosophical inquiries, if they don't have other Povera or potential victims to converse with they'll talk to themselves. Anybody exploring the wastes may find evidence of their passing in distressingly surreal graffiti and disturbing remains of their performances. Pray you don't become their chosen medium.

 

[Selfsurprise]

26. Knuckle Dragger

Theorized to be the product of stem cell research and the preservation/revival of organic materials, Knuckle Draggers are most likely the adaption of a self-propelling laboratory bred limb that ought to have been disposed of upon creation. Resembling a kind of radially symmetrical arrangement of five overdeveloped, club-like and distressingly human-like "arms" (like some bizarre land-bound parody of a starfish) these dangerous monsters lack any discernible sensory organs or orifices that any natural mammalian creature would require in order to survive. They are believed to be extraordinarily sensitive to vibrations caused by sound and movement, giving them an unerring ability to orientate themselves and hunt prey despite their apparent lack of senses. Two distinctive varieties of Knuckle Dragger have been documented by "experts in the field". There is a larger more solitary hairless species of Knuckle Dragger in possession of prodigious strength and resistance to injury, as well as slightly smaller but alacritous hirsute species that typicaly operate in small packs of four to six individuals.

27. Mitsukurina Sapiens ("Shark Goblins")

Undisputable masters of surviving in irradiated waters, Shark Goblins have an origin as mysterious as the aforementioned Bull Terrier Folk (see #6). It is unknown whether they were the product of genetic meddling or some extraordinary mutation, Shark Goblins are amphibious short-statured humanoids believed to to have evolved from the Japanese Goblin Shark who migrated to relatively less austere environment of the Commonwealth. They have developed have a distinctive culture and a unique racial weather-based animist religion in which rain, storms, clouds, lightning, sunlight, wind and much more besides are given personalities and aspects over the Goblin Shark lives, and of course over all living creatures and peoples of the wastes. Despite their fearsome appearance and reputation thanks to unfortunate human bias, the Goblin Sharks are a overwhelmingly peaceful people and prefer quiet introspection to combat.