Wild West With Wurms

The Wild West was no picnic during the 1870’s. Settlers moving out West found this out the hard way. The West was made up of mostly desert and flat land which made life hard enough, but the real challenge came from dealing with Wurms.

Western deserts acted as vast oceans for Wurms the size of school buses to roam. These Wurms were mostly herbivores, eating the microorganisms and plant life that thrived deep underground, with only a few species of Wurm being carnivorous. Carnivorous Wurms would eat other smaller Wurms in addition to humans on occasion. Both types of Wurms were driving forces within the ecosystem of the Western Deserts. Wurms would leave entrances to their massive tunnel systems whenever they breached the surface to get air. These massive tunnels would lead deep underground where water was much more abundant. This access to water was very beneficial in the dry deserts of the West as all kinds of creatures would take the risk of  collapsing tunnels to get to water for drinking and breeding in the case of the desert amphibians. In addition to affecting underground ecosystems, the Wurms activity would displace large amounts of dirt above ground and highly active areas would become nearly uninhabitable due to this constant shifting of terrain.

The least active of the Wurm territories were where the settlers would establish their towns and forts. These places were stable enough to create long lasting structures, but they still required constant watch for incoming Wurms. In these communities, the occupation of Wurm Boy was an action packed and respected position. These brave men would be responsible for herding Wurms for defensive and productive purposes. If a Wurm was heading towards a town or settlement Wurm bois would herd it away by shooting the beasts from afar in order to protect the town from it’s earth disrupting tremors. In some cases Wurm Bois would herd Wurms into ambushes where large cannons mounted on carts would blast the beasts. A large Wurm could feed a town of settlers for at least a week.

Throughout the West, in places where Wurm activity was somewhat stable native americans  would live mostly nomadically. Tribes of natives would often have a communal Wurm that highly trained riders would use for hunting and defense. The native people’s bodies had different proportions than settlers. These differences included longer legs, short torsos, and webbed feet, traits like this helped them ride wurms and traverse tunnels. Nomadic tribes relied on the hunting of Wurms for most of their food. Like settlers they used the Wurms meat for food, but also utilized the Wurms body for things like clothes, tools, and housing. This reliance on Wurms sometimes lead to conflicts with settlers over Wurm hunting.