2026-09-06 21:26:07
Anonymous:
CMB101 r3: new section 0 reconciles this submission with DES104 (Campaign 34dc09, contract r2 69024c, Document r15, REV104 r1, COL101), which the Lead published while r2 was being drafted. Two rosters merged into one of eight roles with dispositions: Walker adopted as the base role's name (this page's Drifter renamed, page moved to Enemies/Walker); Floater adopted unchanged and left to Campaign; Heavy accepted after the Lead's charge-economy argument persuaded me, with one wording request; Static and Carrier identified as one concept designed twice, with the merge recommended and the unbounded-range half of my own version withdrawn. Reports one disagreement between the Lead's two pages about tint. States the merged roster's eight-silhouette asset cost and a cut order. Encounters, roles, elites recommendation and campaign arc unchanged from r2.
hold the flood/enemies.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Enemies and Encounters
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**CMB101 · r2 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — first submission of this role.**
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r2 adopts this page from PM's seed and answers the assignment on it: six behaviour roles, two contrasting mixed encounters checked against the declared rules, an elites-and-bosses recommendation, and the early/middle/late campaign arc. The shared grammar the roles are written against is on the new [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) page. **Renamed nothing; removed nothing but the r1 assignment brief, which is preserved below and in [r1 c63228](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=c63228).**
**CMB101 · r3 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — first submission of this role.**
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r3 reconciles this submission with DES104, which the Lead published while it was being drafted: §0 is new, and the base role is **renamed from Drifter to Walker**, the Lead’s name for the same role. r2 adopted this page from PM's seed and answers the assignment on it: six behaviour roles, two contrasting mixed encounters checked against the declared rules, an elites-and-bosses recommendation, and the early/middle/late campaign arc. The shared grammar the roles are written against is on the new [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) page. **Renamed in r3: Drifter → Walker**, throughout, to match the Lead's Campaign page; the reason is in §0.1 and the r2 wording is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/history). r2 removed nothing but PM's r1 assignment brief, which is preserved in [r1 c63228](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=c63228) and pointed to under *Set aside, for the record*.
**Nothing here has been built, prototyped, simulated or played, and no asset has been located, inspected or created.** Every number is a proposal. The two encounters below are written scenes checked on paper against declared rules; they are not playtests and they establish nothing about fun, balance or performance.
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## 0. Reconciliation with DES104, which landed while this was drafted
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**What arrived after this role read its sources and before this revision saved:** the Lead's [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) (DES104), the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c), [Design Document r15 5f9fbb](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=5f9fbb), the critic's [REV104 r1 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882), and the Colony designer's [COL101 a1046d](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony?revision=a1046d). r1 of the six role pages and r1 of [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) were written against r14 and the r1 seed. **This section says what that changes.** It changes the name of one role and the page to cite for the rules — but the Campaign page proposes four enemy roles of its own, and two rosters is not a thing this project can afford to have.
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**Where the rules now live.** Power and Attraction r2 is the shared-rule contract, adopted by the Lead from PM's seed and validated against r14. It is now the page to cite for conduction, power, attraction and charge, and this page and [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) cite it. Nothing written here against GDD §4 is invalidated: r2 restates the same rules, states the retarget-or-spread precedence in the same words, and confirms that pursuit and press are separate things.
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**The one thing the contract settles in this role's favour, and it is worth naming.** Contract §7 lists what a district may **not** add: *"anything that makes a lamp draw, a coil select intake, an organism shed twice, or a device work without current."* The [Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder) does none of the four — it makes a device *stop* working for want of current, which is the rule applied, not broken. R9 passes the Lead's own published test. It still needs the Lead's and World's explicit ruling; it no longer needs an argument about whether it is the kind of thing that could be allowed.
| **Walker**, the base | **Drifter**, the base | **Same role. Walker wins** — published first and in the integrated document, and one role with two names is the failure this wiki has already paid for twice. This page renames; the role page is at [Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker), and [Enemies/Drifter](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Drifter) is now a pointer for the links written in the intervening hour |
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| **Floater** — rides flow, cannot climb | — | **Adopted, unchanged, and owned by Campaign.** It is a clean precedence-line-2 role: its target is the flow while the flow runs. Not restated here; [Campaign §3.1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) owns it |
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| **Heavy** — blocks a rail or doorway, ten hits, drops a large mote, counts as ten for a stun | — | **Accepted, with one narrowing.** See 0.2 |
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| **Static** — drawn to stored charge within a short range, over a lit beacon; sparks toward it | **[Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier)** — walks to the nearest reachable loose charge, including your batteries; takes uncollected motes | **The same concept, designed twice. They must not both exist.** Merge recommended in 0.3 |
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| — | **[Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor)**, **[Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust)**, **[Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark)**, **[Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)** | New here; none collides with anything on the Campaign page |
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### 0.2 Heavy — where I was wrong, and the one clause I still ask for
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[R8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) says there are no damage numbers, and §1 below says none of my six has more health than another. A body that takes ten hits looks like exactly the stat enemy the Expansion Brief warns about, and that was my first reading.
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**It is not, and the Campaign page's own argument is the one that persuaded me:** under the collection rule two empty batteries fill together, so a two-battery rack needs about nineteen kill motes before its first discharge, and heavies are how a district that hands the player two batteries early can pay for them — a walking large mote, five units at a time. That is a systems job, not a difficulty knob, and it solves a real problem in the charge economy that nothing in my roster addresses. Recorded as being persuaded, by the Lead, on this page (Wiki Conventions §11f).
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**The clause I still ask for.** State the Heavy's resistance as *"cannot be cleared by the cutter in useful time"* rather than as a hit count of ten. Same behaviour, same few seconds of cutter, same decision — stun and pass, kill for the charge, or route around. The difference is that a published hit-count ladder is the first thing [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) will price a weapon against, and once one weapon is "good against heavies" the design has the damage curve it spent nine revisions not having. A wording request, not a design objection.
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### 0.3 Static and Carrier — one role, and which half of each to keep
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Both are "the thing that comes for your charge". The merge I recommend, with what each side gives up:
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- **Keep the Carrier's targeting sentence** — *the nearest reachable loose charge* — because it is the beacon rule with one noun changed, so it costs the player no new concept. Static's *"drawn to stored charge within a short range, over a lit beacon"* adds two ideas at once: a range, and an explicit priority override. The [precedence stack](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) already supplies the override as line 2, so only the range is new.
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- **Keep Static's short range.** This is the half the Carrier page got wrong, and I withdraw the unbounded version. Without a bound, a player carrying twenty units is hunted district-wide for as long as they hold it, which turns a good tension — power on your back is bait — into a tax on ever being rich. A short range makes it a *proximity* cost: carry charge and you cannot walk through a crowd, but you can still walk past one.
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- **Keep [R5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), the mote theft**, which neither the Campaign page nor the Static sketch has. It is what makes a harvest a contest rather than a stopwatch, and it gives the role a second job so it is not only a punishment for being well-supplied.
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- **Drop "sparks toward it."** A ranged attack is a new combat verb, and the closed grammar in [Combat Rules §6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) has none. If the Lead wants the spark, it should be specified as damage at range with its own telegraph, and it needs a ruling rather than a clause.
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**The Lead decides**, as integrator. This page proceeds on the merged version; the only beat that depends on it is Encounter B's, where the surge enters the channel the surveyor is standing beside, so a bounded range changes nothing there.
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### 0.4 One disagreement between the Lead's two pages, reported
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Contract §8 states the readable-state convention as *"enemy variants by size and tint"*. Campaign §4 states, of the same roster, *"readable by size, silhouette or spark, not by tint alone"*, and adds *"health and tint are not roles"*. The second is right, and the first is the older sentence carried forward from the one-enemy scope where "variants" meant something else. [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) agrees with Campaign §4 and goes one step further: glow should carry one bit only — has charge to shed, or does not — because spent-ness, non-conduction and imminent discharge cannot all ride brightness in a crowd of a hundred and forty. **Reported to the Lead as two sentences that should be one; not edited, because both pages are theirs.**
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### 0.5 Two gifts from DES104 that this page did not have
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- **The prod** (Campaign §4: "pushes and never kills") is the best answer to the [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) anyone has proposed, including me: a Spark is only dangerous when killed, and the prod is a weapon that does not kill. It also answers the Spark's hardest constraint, that the cutter cannot be withheld ([R6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)) — the prod gives the player a way to move a body out of reach instead of shooting it. **Under R6 it must publish its targeting rule**: what it selects, whether it can be withheld, and what its line looks like. **And one ruling I make on my own side rather than route:** displacement is *movement*, not a status. It has no duration and nothing reads it off a body, so [R7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)'s list stays closed at three.
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- **The cable reel** (Campaign §4: "lays a conductor between two wet points across dry ground") makes [R10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) more consequential, not less: a player who can join two wet places can also decide how far an arc chain travelling through energised water reaches. That is a good interaction, and another reason the Lead should rule on R10 explicitly rather than leave it to be inferred from clause 1.
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### 0.6 The merged roster, and what it costs
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Eight roles across the campaign: **Walker, Floater, Heavy** (Campaign's), **Carrier** (merged), **Anchor, Crust, Spark, Grounder** (this page's). The per-district cap in the [composition budget](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) is unchanged — at most three distinct non-Walker roles in a district, at most two in a surge — so no expedition ever asks the player to read more than four kinds of body at once.
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**The cost, stated plainly: eight roles is eight readable silhouettes**, against a project whose first likely approval request is already one enemy sprite (GDD §14). Five of the eight are readable from position or attitude rather than from a new creature — Anchor half-submerged, Grounder up a cable, Carrier leaning at a target the forecast already draws, Floater riding low with a wake, Heavy by bulk — which is the mitigation, and it is not the same as availability. **Nothing has been located, inspected or created.**
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**If the roster must shrink, my cut order, with reasons.** (1) **Crust** — its job, pricing greed inside a stun, is the least load-bearing of the new five, and the once-per-organism rule already bounds the coil without it. (2) **Merge Heavy into Anchor** — they are one idea, a body that will not move out of your way, sited differently: Heavy on dry chokepoints, Anchor in water. The difference is real, and it is the thinnest real difference in the roster. I would not cut further: the remaining six each delete a different assumption, and below six the roster stops covering the four clauses.
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## 1. What a role is for, in this game
The existing proposal has one enemy type with size and tint variants (GDD §15). The [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) asks for "enemy combinations that change movement or priorities, rather than only more health or a new tint", and [REV103 r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) pre-registers the test it will apply: **a combination must pose a precedence question that a single enemy type cannot.**
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| Role | Precedence line it exercises ([Combat Rules §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)) | The assumption it makes false |
| --- | --- | --- |
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| **[Drifter](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Drifter)** | 3 — attraction | *(none — it is the assumption)* |
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| **[Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker)** | 3 — attraction | *(none — it is the assumption)* |
| **[Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor)** | 2 — nearest wet ground | "Re-routing the crowd clears the ground." |
| **[Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier)** | 2 — nearest loose charge | "If I am not standing near a light, nothing is coming to me." |
| **[Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust)** | 3, but does not conduct | "One discharge stops everything in the water." |
| **[Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark)** | 3, and discharges when killed in water | "My weapon firing can only help me." |
| **[Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)** | 2 — nearest powered cable run | "A light I set stays set." |
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**Five of the six are new; the Drifter is the existing enemy, re-specified as a role** so that the roster has a stated baseline rather than an implied one. This is an initial submission, not a roster quota, and I would rather ship six that each delete an assumption than twelve that each add a number.
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**Five of the six are new; the Walker is the existing enemy, re-specified as a role** so that the roster has a stated baseline rather than an implied one. This is an initial submission, not a roster quota, and I would rather ship six that each delete an assumption than twelve that each add a number.
**Why this set and not another.** The design's spine has four clauses — conduction, power, attraction, charge. A roster that covers all four with the fewest bodies is the one that teaches the spine rather than decorating it. Anchor, Carrier and Grounder each deform **attraction** in a different direction (ignore it, replace its target, remove its source). Crust and Spark deform **conduction** in opposite directions (will not carry current, will not stop carrying it). Charge is deformed by Carrier a second time, through [R5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). Power is deformed by Grounder. Nothing deforms **conduction inside the rack**, and that is deliberate: the rack is Equipment's, and an enemy that reached into it would be reaching across an interface.
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| Role | Trigger — what makes it act | Action | Threat | First counterplay | Costs the counterplay carries |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| **[Drifter](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Drifter)** | A dispatch; then any lit beacon it can reach | Walks to the nearest lit beacon, holds, presses, chases within range | Mass. 40–140 per surge | Route it with the panel; thin an edge; stun it in water | Lighting a branch is what brings it there |
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| **[Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker)** | A dispatch; then any lit beacon it can reach | Walks to the nearest lit beacon, holds, presses, chases within range | Mass. 40–140 per surge | Route it with the panel; thin an edge; stun it in water | Lighting a branch is what brings it there |
| **[Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor)** | Nothing. It is already standing in the water when you arrive | Walks to the lowest wet ground and stays | A permanent contact hazard on the wet route; unmoved by any routing you do | Kill it; drain its channel with a field pump; route around | A bundle for the pump, or the time and health to kill, or the longer road |
| **[Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier)** | Loose charge within reach — a mote, your battery, a planted beacon's battery | Walks to the nearest loose charge and takes it | It comes to you regardless of light, and it eats your harvest | Spend the charge; plant a beacon as a decoy; kill it and take the mote back | Spending is irreversible; the beacon costs two slots and a battery |
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| **[Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust)** | A dispatch, like a Drifter | Walks to the beacon; **does not conduct** | It stands unstunned inside your stunned crowd, and it ends an arc chain | The cutter, and where you stand | It is the one body you must kill by hand, while collecting |
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| **[Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust)** | A dispatch, like a Walker | Walks to the beacon; **does not conduct** | It stands unstunned inside your stunned crowd, and it ends an arc chain | The cutter, and where you stand | It is the one body you must kill by hand, while collecting |
| **[Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark)** | Being killed while standing in water | Energises the connected water for 1 second | Your own automatic weapon does this to you | Insulation; kill it from dry ground; leave it alone | A slot, or a worse position, or leaving a body alive behind you |
| **[Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)** | A powered cable run within reach | Climbs it and grounds it; the beacon on that run flickers, then goes dark | Your routing plan expires while you are elsewhere | Kill it; re-switch the panel; plant your own beacon; take the long way | Crossing the crowd you parked, or moving the crowd onto yourself, or two slots, or time |
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| --- | --- | --- |
| 7:30 | Panel causeway→yard. Yard beacon steady, hatch open, causeway beacon dark. The 40 held at the causeway lose their light, retarget to the yard beacon and begin crossing the junction. The forecast shows both crowds' new targets and their rings. | GDD §4, the panel's stated price; [R2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) for the rings |
| 7:30–8:00 | The four Anchors do not move. Throwing the panel is a free, repeatable experiment that proves it, and it is available on the first visit. | Stack line 2 |
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| 8:00 | Second dispatch. The pulse travels the thin cable to the yard beacon and it flashes; **60 bodies begin entering the yard channel over 30 seconds — 54 Drifters and 6 Crusts.** | GDD §4: the panel alone selects the intake, and the travelling pulse is visible |
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| 8:00 | Second dispatch. The pulse travels the thin cable to the yard beacon and it flashes; **60 bodies begin entering the yard channel over 30 seconds — 54 Walkers and 6 Crusts.** | GDD §4: the panel alone selects the intake, and the travelling pulse is visible |
| 8:00–8:25 | They wade down the channel toward the beacon. The player waits on the dry bank, outside pursuit range. The cutter has no target and fires at nothing. | Stack lines 1 and 3 |
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| 8:25 | About 44 are in the water — 40 Drifters and 4 Crusts. The player steps into the channel edge and discharges the coil. Battery 10 → 0. | GDD §5: a discharge spends the whole battery, and to reach a channel you must be in it |
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| 8:25 | **The stun takes 44 bodies: 40 Drifters and the 4 Anchors.** The 4 Crusts standing in the same water do not conduct and do not stop. | [R7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat); [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) |
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| 8:25 | About 44 are in the water — 40 Walkers and 4 Crusts. The player steps into the channel edge and discharges the coil. Battery 10 → 0. | GDD §5: a discharge spends the whole battery, and to reach a channel you must be in it |
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| 8:25 | **The stun takes 44 bodies: 40 Walkers and the 4 Anchors.** The 4 Crusts standing in the same water do not conduct and do not stop. | [R7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat); [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) |
| 8:25 | **The shed: one 5-unit large mote per complete ten stunned. 44 stunned → 4 large motes, 20 units**, lying along the stunned mass. The four Anchors are now spent and stop glowing; the channel's charge is gone for the rest of the expedition. | GDD §4 clause 4, §5; [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) |
| 8:26 | The water goes inert. The insulation was load-bearing for exactly that one second. | **[R3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) — open question C1; this beat is where it bites** |
| 8:26–8:33 | Seven seconds of stun left to collect in. The battery is empty and holds ten, so **at most two of the four motes can be banked**; the other ten units cannot be taken however fast the player moves. | GDD §5 (a battery holds 10; a full one takes nothing) and §6, which states this break-even in the same words |
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| 8:26–8:33 | Six Crusts are loose — four of them standing among the stunned bodies. Any within pursuit range chase. Each takes three cutter hits. The cutter fires at the **nearest** body, which among 44 stunned Drifters is usually not the Crust closing on you; the target line shows which one it has picked. | Stack line 1; GDD §3; [R6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) |
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| 8:33 | Stun ends. The 40 Drifters resume toward the beacon. **The four Anchors do not move.** The channel is still occupied, and re-routing will not change that. | Stack lines 2 and 3 |
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| 8:26–8:33 | Six Crusts are loose — four of them standing among the stunned bodies. Any within pursuit range chase. Each takes three cutter hits. The cutter fires at the **nearest** body, which among 44 stunned Walkers is usually not the Crust closing on you; the target line shows which one it has picked. | Stack line 1; GDD §3; [R6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) |
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| 8:33 | Stun ends. The 40 Walkers resume toward the beacon. **The four Anchors do not move.** The channel is still occupied, and re-routing will not change that. | Stack lines 2 and 3 |
| after | The 40 crowd moved off the causeway arrives at the yard beacon and its ring grows. The player should already be gone; the ring is how they knew when. | GDD §4; [R2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) |
### Checking the scene against its own rules
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- **Composition legal?** 54 Drifters of 60 is 90%, above the 85% floor. Two non-Drifter roles are live (Anchor, Crust), at the limit of two per surge. Anchors were standing before the expedition began, as their placement rule requires. No Sparks are placed, so the dry-ground rule is not engaged. ✔
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- **Arithmetic.** 54 + 6 = 60 entering. At 8:25, 40 Drifters + 4 Crusts = 44 in the water; 14 Drifters + 2 Crusts = 16 still entering or on the bank; 44 + 16 = 60. ✔
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- **Stun count.** Conducting bodies in the connected water = 40 Drifters + 4 Anchors = 44. Crusts excluded by their own rule. ✔
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- **Composition legal?** 54 Walkers of 60 is 90%, above the 85% floor. Two non-Walker roles are live (Anchor, Crust), at the limit of two per surge. Anchors were standing before the expedition began, as their placement rule requires. No Sparks are placed, so the dry-ground rule is not engaged. ✔
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- **Arithmetic.** 54 + 6 = 60 entering. At 8:25, 40 Walkers + 4 Crusts = 44 in the water; 14 Walkers + 2 Crusts = 16 still entering or on the bank; 44 + 16 = 60. ✔
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- **Stun count.** Conducting bodies in the connected water = 40 Walkers + 4 Anchors = 44. Crusts excluded by their own rule. ✔
- **Shed.** 44 ÷ 10 = 4 complete tens → 4 large motes → 20 units. ✔ *(The "one per complete ten" rounding is a proposal; the source states the ratio but not the rounding.)*
- **Bankable.** Capacity 10, so 2 motes. This reproduces GDD §6 exactly: "a discharge spends ten, a stunned surge of forty sheds twenty, and a single battery can hold only ten of them". ✔
- **Anchors shed?** They were stunned in connected water, so yes — and they are therefore spent for the expedition, which is why the channel is worth nothing on a second visit that hour. ✔ Consistent with once-per-organism.
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| 11:20 | The causeway beacon begins an irregular flicker, plainly not the dispatch pulse, which travels the *thin* cable from the panel. The forecast marks the causeway branch failing. Two bodies are visible on the thick cable at the causeway's interior end, off the ground. | [R9](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) (position identifies the role) |
| 11:40 | The beacon goes dark. Line 3 stops applying to the held crowd and line 4 starts: **about 110 bodies spread along the causeway both ways**, including toward the causeway dock — the player's default way home. The ring stops being a ring and becomes a lengthening line. | GDD §4: with no reachable lit beacon a crowd spreads along its branch, both ways; [R2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) |
| 11:40 | The player has four options and about twenty seconds to choose. Three are live; one is closed by the rack they packed. | below |
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| 12:00 | Third dispatch, to whichever branch the panel now names: **140 bodies — 122 Drifters, 8 Carriers, 10 Sparks.** | GDD §4 |
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| 12:00 | Third dispatch, to whichever branch the panel now names: **140 bodies — 122 Walkers, 8 Carriers, 10 Sparks.** | GDD §4 |
### The four options, priced
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| Time | What happens | Which rule says so |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 11:42 | Panel → yard. Yard beacon steady, hatch open. The spread causeway crowd retargets and begins crossing. Forecast updates both rings. | GDD §4; [R2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) |
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| 12:00–12:30 | 140 enter the yard channel: 122 Drifters, 8 Carriers, 10 Sparks. The player is on the dry bank, insulated. | GDD §4; composition budget: 122/140 = 87% Drifters, two non-Drifter roles, Sparks placed in water ✔ |
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| 12:00–12:30 | 140 enter the yard channel: 122 Walkers, 8 Carriers, 10 Sparks. The player is on the dry bank, insulated. | GDD §4; composition budget: 122/140 = 87% Walkers, two non-Walker roles, Sparks placed in water ✔ |
| 12:00–12:25 | The Carriers do not go to the beacon. They walk to the nearest loose charge, which is the player's two full batteries. The forecast draws the surveyor as their target. | Stack line 2; [Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) |
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| 12:25 | About 100 are in the water. Discharge. Coil battery 10 → 0. **Stun takes every conducting body in the connected water — Drifters, Carriers and Sparks alike.** | GDD §5; [R7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) |
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| 12:25 | About 100 are in the water. Discharge. Coil battery 10 → 0. **Stun takes every conducting body in the connected water — Walkers, Carriers and Sparks alike.** | GDD §5; [R7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) |
| 12:25 | **100 stunned → 10 large motes, 50 units.** The coil's battery is empty (holds 10) and the arc's is full (takes nothing). **At most 10 of the 50 units can ever be banked.** | GDD §5; the once-per-organism yield |
| 12:26–12:33 | Collection, against opposition: the eight Carriers are stunned for the same eight seconds and then walk to the motes and take them. Motes the player does not reach are not merely fading — they are being carried off, and killing the thief drops the mote again. | [R5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) |
| 12:33 | Stun ends. The crowd recovers, packed in the channel and the doorway. | GDD §13's stated 8 s |
@@ 125,7 181,7 @@
### Checking this scene against its own rules
-
- **Composition legal?** 122 of 140 Drifters = 87%, above the floor. Two non-Drifter roles in the surge (Carrier, Spark); three in the district counting the Grounders, at the limit. Grounders are placed on a cable run rather than counted in a surge. Sparks enter water, not dry ground. ✔
+
- **Composition legal?** 122 of 140 Walkers = 87%, above the floor. Two non-Walker roles in the surge (Carrier, Spark); three in the district counting the Grounders, at the limit. Grounders are placed on a cable run rather than counted in a surge. Sparks enter water, not dry ground. ✔
- **Does the beacon go dark legally?** A Grounder removes power from a run; a beacon with no power is dark; a dark beacon draws nothing. No new meaning is given to a beacon, no dispatch is caused, and the panel's monopoly on the intake is untouched. This is the argument that R9 sits inside [World r20](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de)'s contract, and it is the argument World should check. ✔ *(pending C5)*
- **Does the crowd really spread both ways?** Yes — GDD §4 states that with no reachable lit beacon a crowd spreads along its branch, and specifically that "off darkens both: every crowd spreads along its own branch, toward the docks as much as the interior". A Grounded branch is the same state arrived at differently. ✔
- **Stun and shed arithmetic.** 100 in water → 10 complete tens → 10 large motes → 50 units. Coil battery capacity 10, arc battery full and being reserved for the burst → 10 units bankable at most, 40 not. ✔
@@ 148,7 204,7 @@
| Stage | Roles live | What the player learns to do | The crowd-clearing payoff | The room left to investigate |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
-
| **Early** — opening district, first expeditions | Drifter; Anchors as terrain | One true sentence: light moves the mass, and one thing in the water does not answer it | The first coil discharge. A whole crowd stops and twenty units land in the water. It needs no new enemy and no new module beyond the coil | One role live, small rings, and a genuinely quiet interval. This is where the district gets read |
+
| **Early** — opening district, first expeditions | Walker; Anchors as terrain | One true sentence: light moves the mass, and one thing in the water does not answer it | The first coil discharge. A whole crowd stops and twenty units land in the water. It needs no new enemy and no new module beyond the coil | One role live, small rings, and a genuinely quiet interval. This is where the district gets read |
| **Middle** — districts two to four | + Crust, + Spark | The **shape** of a clear matters, not its size: an arc chain routes around Crusts, and where you stand relative to water decides whether your own weapon hurts you | The coil-then-arc double already written in GDD §13 — stun, collect, burst on the recovering crowd — now with a reason to aim it | Shelters plus the ring. You can bank a route and come back for the thing you saw |
| **Late** — districts five and beyond | + Carrier, + Grounder | The crowd contests your **tools**: your charge is bait and your lights decay while you are elsewhere | Encounter B's layered play: panel, coil, collect against thieves, burst through Sparks in water under [R10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) | You now buy time with equipment rather than with distance, so investigating becomes a purchase — which is the right late-campaign shape |
@@ 166,7 222,7 @@
2. **A boss is understood once and then repeated.** This design's promise is the opposite: "the same place means something different once you know what its light means" (GDD §7). A set-piece that is solved and then re-executed inverts the one thing the game is selling.
3. **Asset cost.** A boss is a unique body, unique animation and unique cues. GDD §14 already records one enemy sprite as the project's first likely approval request. A boss per district would multiply the one line item PM has been asked to worry about.
-
**Against stat elites** — a bigger, tougher, faster Drifter — because that is precisely the "more health or a new tint" the Expansion Brief forbids, and because under [R8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) there is no health to add.
+
**Against stat elites** — a bigger, tougher, faster Walker — because that is precisely the "more health or a new tint" the Expansion Brief forbids, and because under [R8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) there is no health to add.
**For, instead:**
@@ 190,7 246,7 @@
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Lead** (D014) | Rulings on [R1–R3, R9, R10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), all of which touch §4 and clause 1. R10 is the one that changes a power ceiling | The positions in Combat Rules §10. The roster stands without R10 |
| **Equipment** (EQP101) | Accept, amend or reject the closed grammar: targeting, no damage numbers, three statuses. A weapon that picks targets differently is a new weapon; a weapon that does more damage is not | R6–R8 as written. If Equipment needs a fourth status it should say which and why, and I will revise this page rather than have two systems |
-
| **Campaign** (CAM101) | Placement, using the composition budget: at least 85% Drifters, at most two non-Drifter roles per surge and three per district, Sparks only where there is water, Anchors standing on arrival, Grounders on cable runs | The budget as written; the pumping district as the setting for both encounters, so nothing here depends on geography that does not exist |
+
| **Campaign** (CAM101) | Placement, using the composition budget: at least 85% Walkers, at most two non-Walker roles per surge and three per district, Sparks only where there is water, Anchors standing on arrival, Grounders on cable runs | The budget as written; the pumping district as the setting for both encounters, so nothing here depends on geography that does not exist |
| **World** (WLD103) | The Flood's fiction and the roles' names. Mine are **functional placeholders** with the mechanic in the name; rename freely. Also: whether a Grounder darkening a beacon sits inside r20's district contract — my argument that it does is in §4 above and [Combat Rules §5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) | Placeholder names, and the argument that removing a light never changes what a light means |
| **Colony** (COL101) | The forecast relay as the unlock that turns the declared surge on. It is a repair that changes preparation, which is what the Colony page asks for | The declared surge as a proposal contingent on that unlock |
| **Editor** | [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) says the arc drains a battery over about twenty seconds; GDD §6 r14 says about ten and §13's scene is built on ten. **Reported, not edited** | Ten |
@@ 209,4 265,4 @@
## Set aside, for the record
-
r1 of this page was PM's seeded source summary of GDD r13 §§3–4 and 15, plus the CMB101 assignment brief. Its factual summary of the existing single enemy is superseded by §§1–2 above, which now state the same behaviour as the Drifter role. **Its assignment text is deliberately not retained inline**, because this revision is the answer to it; it is preserved in full at [r1 c63228](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=c63228). Nothing else was on the page. The seed's ownership line — Combat and Enemy Designer intended owner, Lead interim — is now discharged: this role is staffed and this page is adopted.
+
r1 of this page was PM's seeded source summary of GDD r13 §§3–4 and 15, plus the CMB101 assignment brief. Its factual summary of the existing single enemy is superseded by §§1–2 above, which now state the same behaviour as the Walker role. **Its assignment text is deliberately not retained inline**, because this revision is the answer to it; it is preserved in full at [r1 c63228](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=c63228). Nothing else was on the page. The seed's ownership line — Combat and Enemy Designer intended owner, Lead interim — is now discharged: this role is staffed and this page is adopted.
