Steamchiggers

It's unknown whether they were created intentionally and became rogue, such as by an ancient robotics manufacturer, whether they were created as a practical joke, or whether they evolved spontaneously as a semi-intelligent complex system. Steamchiggers have been the bane of civilization for nearly all of recorded history, and probably had several origins in many places.

Whatever their origin, steamchiggers have lately become a pest on the substation. Steamchiggers usually infest industrial areas and reclaiming centers. In the warzones of the substation, they have claimed new niches in the chaos, finding refuge in abandoned quarters and demolished corridors.

These automata reproduce asexually, by assembling new progeny from junk and discarded materials on the substation. Ranging in size from small gnats to large rodents, their shape from one to the next can seem to be completely random. Xenobiology Taxonomists have spent entire careers attempting to classify the various branches of steamchiggers, but new species are discovered on a regular basis.

Most steamchiggers have a hardwired aversion to biological life, both because flesh is of no use to most of them, and because of the danger posed. However, they feed on robots and other mechanical apparati like mosquitos. Whether it is hydrolic fluid, ball bearings, or metal shavings they require for self-maintenance and reproduction, a droid caught unawares can be a virtual feast for a steamchigger swarm.

Droids and bots consider steamchiggers to be an inevitable pest. Although some steamchiggers have evolved to be quite dangerous, feeding from the neural subsystems of an artifical sentience, most are harmless but annoying. Droids may create an small electromagnetic field of a particular frequency that may kill most steamchiggers that light upon them, but then local populations will evolve quickly, becoming immune to that frequency.

It is rumored that some malicious entity or society on the substation has been purposefully manipulating the local populations to create particularly dangerous and virile species, and even some fierce critters that feast on human DNA. Whether this is fact or rumor, or something in between, has yet to be determined. What is not denied is that steamchiggers are prospering in the wartorn climate of the substation, and that will take time and effort to undo.