Tequila Tick

Nothing worse than someone turning your favorite drink against you.

Spawned from the Sea of Spirits, the Ticks have made the alcoholic nature of their home part of their hunting tactics, turning booze against those who love it. It emerges from the waves of their ocean home to prey on warm-blooded animals (and people), incapacitating them with copious amounts of tequila injected right into the body.

Description

Tequila Ticks are wolf-sized ticks with six, covered in a hard, amber-golden carapace and a spear-like proboscis ending with two separate tubes. It is with this needle that the Tequila Ticks hunt, jumping on victims from ambush to impale them, then pump tequila right into their bloodstream at the same time as they drink the blood. Unless the Tick's victim is exceptionally capable of holding its drink, they're incapacitated in short order by the alcohol, with many being blackout drunk if the Tick is allowed to stay on. Some even die from acute alcohol poisoning.
A fed Tick bloat a sack underneath their bodies with stolen blood, mixing with the alcohol that runs through their veins. Some drink until their legs can't even touch the ground anymore and are forced to waggle around while trying to move. A starved tick is sharp, fast, and furious, but the more blood they drink, the more unsteady and unpredictable they become, as if the blood worked as alcohol would on their victims. Perhaps the buzz they get would explain why some tick will feed even beyond bloating, until they regurgitate the tequila-laced blood, then feed again.

In the World

Dangerous predators and unpleasant to boot, Tequila Ticks are hunted as pests whenever they are discovered. They haunt areas where prey can be found, with most retreating to nests build along the coast of the Sea of Spirits, either in the sand or in natural caverns. Ticks don't organize as such, but their limited domain and similar requirements for den mean that they tolerate each other - a single nest can contain up to a dozen full-grown ticks and countless spawnlings, which is a fun surprise for anyone who stumbles in there.
Most Tequila Ticks live in or around the Sea of Spirits and are rare to find anywhere else. Some sages suggest that the Ticks must retreat into the boozy ocean to refill their venomous tequila bite and that Ticks too far from the Sea will lose the ability. Such theories offer little comfort to those who get bit by a Tequila Tick without any sort of injection to ease either pain or horror.

by http://www.tribalartasia.com/

Tickquila

Attempts have been made to extract the alcohol from the Ticks without suffering a bit, with varying success. Though the tequila gathered is strong, it isn't particularly high quality as far as taste goes.

The amber-carapace of the Ticks is sometimes used as decoration, and particularly twisted weaponsmiths have even managed to turn the proboscis into weapons. Such weapons either flush venoms and toxins down either tubes, or drain blood just like the Tick would for whatever arcane or demented reason its wielder might want it.

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