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| - | # Hold the Flood — Enemies and Encounters |
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| - | **CMB101 / CMB102 · r12 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.** |
| - | r12 is the dependency assessment [PMU008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) asks for after [the owner's 2026-09-07 direction](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision), in a new §0B. The owner states that **understanding enemy routing is not the game's central science and enemy manipulation is the least interesting experimental focus** — and every role on this page is a precedence exception, so **the organising idea of this page is the demoted axis.** Said without softening. **The [Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder) is recommended for cut**, exactly as r10 predicted would happen first; the [Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) and [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) are re-justified and both improve under the new direction. **The roster becomes seven and no replacement is proposed.** |
| - | Sources read: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6, 8, 12–16, App. A; [Enemies r1 c63228](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=c63228); the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) and its r1 seed 8afc3c; [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) (DES104); [Design Document r15 5f9fbb](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=5f9fbb); [Design Review REV104 r1 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882); [Colony COL101 a1046d](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony?revision=a1046d); [Cutter](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter); [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment); [Colony](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony); [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District); [World and Mystery r20 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de); [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief); [Design Index dd01c7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index?revision=dd01c7); [Tasks eb8c03](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=eb8c03); [PMR003](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR003); [Design Review REV103 r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review); [Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief); [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary); [Reference/Content Scale REF107](/Reference/Content%20Scale); [External Critique EXT102](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique); [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions). |
| - | [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) · [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) |
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| - | **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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| - | --- |
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| - | ## 0A. The roster against the vision's decision test |
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| - | The [Game vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) gives crowd combat a job — *"make reaching, reading and operating machinery a survival decision; let positioning and harvested charge create room to act"* — and a cut condition: **"an enemy adds only durability, or a reward encourages killing indefinitely instead of choosing an intervention."** [PMU008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) tells domain designers to answer for their systems on the Visionary's actual changes and *"not defend a feature just because it is already documented"*. Run against the eight, before anyone asks. |
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| - | **The second half of the cut condition — narrowed in r11, because [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) is right that r10 claimed too much.** r10 said the roster passes "structurally" because an organism sheds once. **That rule prevents re-harvesting the same body. It does not prevent a player being rewarded for killing repeated *fresh* arrivals**, and a surge schedule that delivers forty to a hundred and forty bodies three times an expedition supplies plenty of those. The claim as written was false. |
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| - | **What actually answers the cut condition is a different rule, and it is a better one:** *charge never leaves the district.* Killing produces a resource that is **discarded at extraction**, so it cannot be banked, cannot become refuge progress, and is worth exactly nothing unless it is spent on an intervention in the same expedition. Salvage is what the colony wants, and killing does not produce salvage. **So the reward for killing is not points — it is fuel, and fuel is only worth having if there is something to do with it.** That is the vision's own sentence — *"let positioning and harvested charge create room to act"* — and it is the honest form of what r10 was reaching for. |
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| - | **The residual exposure, stated rather than argued away.** Nothing stops a player spending an expedition farming fresh arrivals instead of intervening. What makes that a bad trade is that they leave with nothing to show for it. **Whether it *feels* like a bad trade in play is not something this page can establish**, and if it turns out that fighting is more attractive than intervening, the fix is on the intervention's side, not by making enemies less rewarding. |
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| - | **The first half — "adds only durability" — the test each role has to pass individually.** |
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| - | | Role | The player's choice | Its visible consequence | The part of the experience it serves | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | [Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker) | Which branch to light | The mass walks there, and the door you wanted opens on the branch you just filled | The mass that makes machinery a survival decision at all | |
| - | | [Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor) | Drain the channel, route around, or wade it | The water you must cross stays occupied no matter how well you route | *Reaching* the machinery | |
| - | | [Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) | Carry the charge or spend it | Hoarding is what draws them; an empty bank is not a target | *Harvested charge creating room to act* — it prices the resource the vision names | |
| - | | [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) | Where to stand while collecting | The discharge you paid for leaves bodies walking in it | *Reading* — the crowd is not uniform and the cue says which | |
| - | | [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) | What to let into cutter reach | Your own automatic weapon floods the water you are standing in | *Positioning*, made compulsory by a weapon you cannot withhold | |
| - | | [Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder) | Cross the crowd to it, re-switch, plant a light, or take the long way | A route you prepared expires while you are elsewhere | *Operating* machinery — it is the only role that attacks the plan rather than the player | |
| - | | [Floater](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Floater) | Change the water, or use it | Bodies arrive where the water goes, not where the light is | *Operating* — it makes a lock a routing tool | |
| - | | **[Heavy](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)** | **Kill it, stun past it, or route around** | **A doorway or rail stays blocked for about five seconds of cutter** | **Reaching — and it is the one that has to argue** | |
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| - | ### The Heavy, tested against the retained scene — and one defence withdrawn |
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| - | **Withdrawn in r11: "ten hits is not durability because there is no damage curve."** [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009): *"Ten-hit durability still is durability even without a damage progression."* That is correct and my argument was a dodge — the absence of a stat ladder changes who can shorten the ten hits, not whether the ten hits are durability. The role has to earn its place on what an encounter does with it. |
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| - | **Also withdrawn: the placement rule I proposed.** r10 asked that a Heavy be placed *only* where it blocks something the player wants. PMR009 rightly refuses it — *"do not forbid free bypasses everywhere to save its role"* — and a free bypass is usually good design. Withdrawn without replacement of that kind. |
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| - | **The test PMR009 gives instead, applied to the scene it names.** A Heavy earns its place in an encounter by being **a useful obstruction** *or* **an optional fuel opportunity that is honestly labelled optional and has a stated benefit**. The retained scene is [Campaign §3.2's middle return](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign): the objective is the Exchange doorway and its drums; the rail starts powered, the pass is open, and **the stairs bypass the rail-blocking Heavy outside pursuit range except at their ends.** |
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| - | - **As an obstruction, it fails there.** The stairs go to the same destination for free. That is not a flaw in the scene — the bypass should stay. |
| - | - **So in that scene it can only be optional fuel** — and that only works if its five units have something to buy *in that expedition*. Under the rule above, charge is discarded at extraction, so **a Heavy killed for fuel that is never spent is a fight that bought nothing**, which is precisely the defect [X37](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique) found in the same scene's Coil plan. |
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| - | **So my answer is not a defence of the Heavy: in that scene, as written, it is not earning its place.** It earns one only if the expedition contains something the five units pay for, and if the page says plainly that killing it is optional and what the fuel is for. That is a statement about the scene and the labelling, not a demand that Campaign remove a bypass. |
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| - | **The alternative I would still take if the Lead prefers it:** merge the Heavy into the [Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor) — one idea, a body that will not move out of your way, sited dry and wet. |
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| - | **Nothing else in the roster is near the line**, and I am not proposing to cut anything today. **No new role, no quota change** ([PMR008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR008): no new roster or composition quota). If the Visionary's next pass changes what an expedition is for, the roles that would break first are the two that assume a *lit-branch* routing game at all — Grounder and Carrier — and I will say so then rather than wait to be asked. |
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| - | --- |
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| - | ## 0B. Dependency assessment after the owner's 2026-09-07 direction |
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| - | [PMU008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) asks domain designers to *"explain the player value of affected systems and any broken dependency, offer a concrete revision or removal, and not defend a feature just because it is already documented."* The owner's new direction affects this page more than any other, so this is that assessment. |
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| - | **The sentence that does it.** *"Hold the Flood remains a survivorlike, but **understanding enemy routing is not intended to be its central science**… Drawing enemies somewhere, distracting or tanking them can support those activities, but **enemy manipulation is the least interesting experimental focus to this owner**."* |
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| - | **What that means for this page, said without softening.** Every one of the eight roles is a **precedence exception** — each is defined by how it answers, or refuses, the light. That is a roster built entirely on enemy routing, which the owner has just placed last among the things they want to experiment with. **The organising idea of this page is the demoted axis.** It is not wrong, and the crowd is explicitly retained; it is no longer the centre, and a roster designed as eight ways to be routed is over-invested in a science the owner does not want to be central. |
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| - | **I predicted this pair specifically.** r10 recorded that if the vision changed what an expedition is for, *"the two roles that break first are Grounder and Carrier, because both assume a lit-branch routing game."* That is the change. Acting on it rather than waiting to be asked: |
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| - | | Role | Verdict under the new direction | Reason | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **[Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)** | **Recommend cut.** | Its entire job is making a *routing plan* perishable. It has no other function: it does not threaten the player, does not feed a build, and creates nothing to discover. It is the purest piece of routing science in the roster, and it is the one the owner's sentence retires. I am not going to argue for it | |
| - | | **[Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier)** | **Keep — and it improves.** | It prices *hoarding charge*. Under the new direction the payoff is spending charge on a spectacular combination ([the Cascade](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Echo%20Relay)), so a role that punishes sitting on a full bank **pushes the player toward the build payoff the owner wants.** Its justification changes from routing to build pressure, and gets better | |
| - | | **[Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust)** | **Keep — promoted.** | It was my own first cut candidate twice. Under a design whose payoff is a chained combination, the body that a chain cannot pass through is what makes the Cascade's geometry a puzzle worth solving. It stops being a tax on greed and becomes the reason where you stand matters to a build | |
| - | | **[Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark)** | **Keep.** | Positioning and environmental experimentation, not routing. Your own automatic weapon floods the water you stand in; that is a thing to discover and work around | |
| - | | **[Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor)** | **Keep, weakened.** | Half its value was "re-routing does not clear the ground", which is a routing lesson. What survives is terrain: a reason the water you must cross is occupied, and a reliable coil target | |
| - | | **[Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker)** | **Keep.** | The mass. The survivorlike itself | |
| - | | **[Floater](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)**, **Heavy** | **Campaign's call, and both are weaker.** | The Floater is a routing role wearing water; the Heavy blocks a route, and [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) already found it not earning its place in the scene it was tested against | |
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| - | **So the concrete offer is: cut one role, re-justify two, and accept that the roster is now seven.** No replacement is proposed. The owner asked for less enemy science, and the right response to that is fewer enemies doing science, not eight roles with new labels. |
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| - | ### What this does to the rules on the neighbouring page |
| - | |
| - | - **The composition cap** (two non-Walker roles per surge) was justified by *routing* legibility — keeping the precedence stack answerable at a glance. Under a design whose payoff is a dense crowd meeting a prepared combination, **the binding constraint becomes crowd density, not role variety**, and the cap matters less than it did. I already said I would raise it if play showed four kinds were legible; **this direction is a second, independent reason to expect it to move.** |
| - | - **[R8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), no damage numbers, is under new pressure and I am holding it — with evidence rather than preference.** "Make a ridiculous build work" and "full screen-wipe" are exactly the requests that usually arrive as damage multipliers. **The Cascade is the counter-example: it reaches a spectacular clear by multiplying where a chain begins, and by one status interaction, with no damage value anywhere in it.** That is a demonstration that spectacle is reachable without a ladder. If it turns out not to be spectacular enough, R8 is the decision to reopen — deliberately, by the Lead. |
| - | - **The precedence stack itself stays**, because it is not routing science; it is the rule that makes any crowd's behaviour predictable, and a survivorlike needs that whatever its central science is. |
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| - | **What I am not doing.** Not rewriting the roster's fiction to chase the new premise — [World](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) owns the Flood's identity, and the premise is still being reviewed. Not proposing new roles. Not defending the Grounder. |
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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. |
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| - | ### 0.1 Two rosters, and the merge |
| - | |
| - | | Campaign §4 proposes | This page proposes | Disposition | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **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 | |
| - | | **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 | |
| - | | **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 | |
| - | | **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 | |
| - | | — | **[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 argument persuaded me:** a Heavy is a walking large mote, five units in one pickup where the cutter earns one at a time, and it blocks a route while it does it. That is a systems job, not a difficulty knob. |
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| - | **Corrected in r4.** r3 supported this with the Campaign page's "about nineteen kill motes before a two-bank rack's first discharge", which rested on most-room collection. **[D023](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief) selects shelter-selected pickup priority instead**, under which the player fills one chosen bank first — about ten kills, not nineteen. So the case for the Heavy is real but smaller than r3 made it, and it should rest on the large mote and the blocked route rather than on a number that has since changed. |
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| - | **The clause I asked for is withdrawn in r4.** r3 asked that the Heavy's resistance be stated as *"cannot be cleared by the cutter in useful time"* rather than as ten hits. **[PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) declines it and is right:** replacing a number with a phrase makes the weapon and crowd consequences harder to inspect without removing the durability that caused the concern. **Keep the explicit provisional ten**, and let a reader-facing document summarise it. The underlying worry — that a published ladder is what [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) prices weapons against — stays as the scoped recommendation in [R8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), which is a recommendation and not a ban. |
| - | |
| - | ### 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. |
| - | - **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. |
| - | - **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. |
| - | - **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 A cue-budget concern — narrowed in r4, because r3 overstated it |
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| - | r3 reported the contract's *"enemy variants by size and tint"* and Campaign's *"readable by size, silhouette or spark, not by tint alone"* as a contradiction between the Lead's two pages. **[PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) is right that they are not — both can be true — and the finding is withdrawn as stated.** |
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| - | **The concern underneath it stands, and is smaller and more useful.** Four different facts want a cue: which role a body is, whether it still has charge to shed, whether current reaches it, and whether it is about to discharge. **Brightness cannot carry more than one of them.** My proposal is glow = remaining yield, encrustation = non-conduction, flicker = imminent discharge, silhouette and position = role. **The Lead should state which redundant cues carry which fact.** No readability claim on this page is verified, and prose cannot verify one. |
| - | |
| - | ### 0.5 Two gifts from DES104 that this page did not have |
| - | |
| - | - **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. |
| - | - **The cable reel — and a correction to what r2 and r3 said about it.** They quoted the Lead's original sketch, "lays a conductor between two wet points across dry ground", and used it to argue R10 mattered more. **Both are wrong now.** R10 is withdrawn, and [Equipment U6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) revises the reel to a **one-cell, six-metre reel limited to exposed power terminals on an already traversable path** — deliberately *not* an arbitrary wet-point connector, so that water and valves keep their significance. Against that definition the reel is a **power-routing** tool, not a conduction-topology one: it can bring a terminal's power somewhere a beacon or hatch can use it, which is a [Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder) interaction, not an arc one. |
| - | |
| - | ### 0.6 The merged roster, and where its cost is accounted |
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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 asks the player to read more than four kinds of body at once. |
| - | |
| - | **The presentation cost is accounted once, on [Campaign §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)**, which the Lead names as the single D025 list and which [REF110's audit](/Reference/Asset%20Licences) runs against. The answer there: the roster costs **one base body and one licensed edit**, with the rest poses, a scale and engine-drawn cues — not eight creatures. **This page's own competing accounting is removed rather than left marked superseded** ([PMR007 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007) asked for the removal; the text is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/history)). |
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| - | **If the roster must shrink, my cut order stands, and it is a design judgement rather than a costing.** (1) **Crust** — its job, pricing greed inside a stun, is the least load-bearing of the new roles, 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 dry and wet. I would not cut further: the remaining six each delete a different assumption, and below six the roster stops covering the four clauses. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ### 0.7 Eight roles against what comparable games ship — answering X32 |
| - | |
| - | [EXT102's X32](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique) counts citations of [REF107, Content Scale](/Reference/Content%20Scale), and records **Enemies 0, Mechanics/Combat 0**. The complaint is fair against this page, because the roster size is one of the numbers REF107 is about. Citing it here, with what I make of it. |
| - | |
| - | **What REF107 records** (developers' own published lists, not this role's research): Halls of Torment ships **6 stages** against 70+ monsters, 74 abilities and 60 items with 240 rarity variants; Vampire Survivors ships **5 normal stages** in its base game. Its observation: *"the number that is small is the environment count, and the numbers that are large are the things that differ within an environment"* — and set beside this project, **the two axes point in opposite directions**, with a district count above both comparables and per-run variety an order of magnitude below. REF107's own caveat, which it insists on and I carry: those totals are years of post-launch accumulation, and comparing a first release to them is a category error. |
| - | |
| - | **Where this roster actually sits, stated plainly.** Eight roles, against 70+. **That gap is real and I am not going to argue it away by redefining the units.** |
| - | |
| - | **What I think follows, as a position rather than a defence.** |
| - | |
| - | - **The variety in those games is per-*run*, and it is bought mostly with the *player's* side of the table** — abilities, items, rarity variants — not with the bestiary. This design's equivalent axis is [Equipment's](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) twelve entries and three families, and that is where a like-for-like comparison bites hardest. It is not mine to answer, but it is the honest place to point. |
| - | - **On the enemy side, this design deliberately buys variety with combination rather than count**: which roles are live, in what water, on what topology, under which panel setting. Eight roles under the composition budget give a bounded set of legal encounters per district, and the district's topology multiplies it. **That is a design bet, not a measured equivalence**, and nothing here shows it produces the *felt* variety 70 monsters produce. |
| - | - **And there is a tension inside my own pages that this comparison exposes, which I would rather name than leave for a reviewer.** The [composition budget](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) caps a surge at two non-Walker roles and a district at three — I wrote that cap to protect readability, and it is *also* a cap on exactly the per-encounter variety REF107 is measuring. **The two goals genuinely conflict**, and I still prefer the cap: a crowd of a hundred and forty in which four things are happening is not variety, it is noise, and this design's legibility is the thing every reviewer has said is its strength. But the cost is real and the owner should see it as a cost. |
| - | - **If the owner wants more variety, the cheapest honest lever is combinations, not bodies** — raising the per-district cap, or placing the same eight roles against more topologies — because a new body costs a silhouette from an asset budget whose first item is still an unapproved request ([Campaign §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)), and a new combination costs nothing. |
| - | |
| - | **What this is not.** REF107 proposes no count and neither does this. Nothing here establishes that eight is enough, or that combinations substitute for bodies; both are unverifiable in the design phase. It is a comparison recorded where the number is set, which is what X32 asked for. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 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.** |
| - | |
| - | So every role here is defined by **one sentence it makes false** — a thing the player could otherwise safely assume about a crowd. That is the whole justification for a role's existence. None of the six has more health than another, and none moves faster. |
| - | |
| - | | Role | Precedence line it exercises ([Combat Rules §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)) | The assumption it makes false | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **[Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker)** | 3 — attraction | *(none — it is the assumption)* | |
| - | | **[Floater](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Floater)** | 2 while its water flows, 3 when it stops | "Water is terrain; it does not take sides." | |
| - | | **[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." | |
| - | |
| - | **The roster is eight, and the ownership is settled.** Walker is the existing enemy re-specified as a role; Anchor, Carrier, Crust, Spark and Grounder are new here; **Floater and Heavy are the Lead's**, adopted, with the Floater transferred to Combat by [contract r3 §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) and the Heavy still defined on [Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign). r2–r5 of this page said "six" in places while the merged roster was eight; **r6 removes that drift**, which [PMR006](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR006) asked for. It remains an initial roster, not a quota — I would rather ship eight that each delete an assumption than twenty that each add a number, and [Combat Rules §0.6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) states which of the eight cost a new drawn asset and which cost a pose. |
| - | |
| - | **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. |
| - | |
| - | **The credible alternative I rejected.** The obvious sixth role, and the one most survivorlikes would pick, is a **tracker**: an enemy that, once it has seen you, pursues without limit and never drifts back, converting your mistakes into a growing tail. It is a good role and it would work here. I left it out because it is the one role on my shortlist that adds a clause rather than subtracting one — "some bodies ignore range" is a new fact about pursuit, where the other five are all "this body answers a different question". It is also the role partly covered by a Carrier: a player carrying twenty units acquires an escort within a Carrier's range, and the ways to shake it — spend the charge, or leave the range — are decisions rather than a footrace. **Corrected in r4:** r2 said "an escort that does not give up", which was true only of the unbounded Carrier that [§0.3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) withdraws. The bounded Carrier does give up, and a tracker would still be a genuinely different thing. If a later authorized phase shows the roster needs unrelenting pressure, the tracker is the first thing I would add and I would add it knowing it costs a clause. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 2. The eight roles at a glance |
| - | |
| - | Full pages carry each role's trigger, action, threat, counterplay, machinery and equipment interactions, placement conditions, telegraph, asset note and open questions. This table is a summary; the pages win. |
| - | |
| - | | Role | Trigger — what makes it act | Action | Threat | First counterplay | Costs the counterplay carries | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **[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 | |
| - | | **[Floater](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Floater)** | Water that is moving | Rides the flow; cannot climb a lock or a ladder; otherwise a Walker | It arrives where the water goes, not where the light is, and a flushed quay is not a cleared one | Stop the flow, or use it: flush the quay instead of fighting it | Whatever changing the water costs in that district — a lock cycle, a drain, a bundle | |
| - | | **[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 its **twelve-metre acquisition range** — a mote, a bank with units in it, a planted beacon's battery | Walks to the nearest such source and takes it; reverts to ordinary Walker behaviour when none is in range | Inside that range it comes to you regardless of light, and it eats your harvest | Spend the charge; walk out of range; plant a beacon as a decoy; kill it and take the mote back | Spending is irreversible; walking out of range is usually walking away from the work; the beacon costs two cells and a bank | |
| - | | **[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 2 seconds — dangerous to the surveyor, and to nothing else | Your own automatic weapon does this to you | Insulation; kill it from dry ground; keep out of its reach | A slot, or a worse position, or the ground you would rather be standing on | |
| - | | **[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 | |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 3. Encounter A — the invited yard |
| - | |
| - | **Contrast:** defensive, mid-expedition, one surge, preparation-light. **Roles live:** Anchor + Crust (2 — within the [composition budget](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)). **Where:** the [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) yard channel — the district that already exists, so the encounter needs no new geography. **What it teaches:** that a stun is not the same as a cleared floor. |
| - | |
| - | **Declared setup.** The player has learned the electrician play in GDD §5 and is running that rack: coil, battery, insulation, two bundles, link battery→coil, battery full at 10 units. Panel thrown from causeway to yard at 7:30, so the yard beacon is steady and the pump-hall hatch is open. Four Anchors have been standing in the yard channel since the player arrived. The first surge — 40 bodies — has been holding at the causeway beacon since 3:00. |
| - | |
| - | | Time | What happens | Which rule says so | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | 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 | |
| - | | 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 | |
| - | | 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 | |
| - | | 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. | Contract clause 4; [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) | |
| - | | 8:25–8:27 | **The discharge keeps the water hot for two seconds** — the Lead's ruling, countersigned here and by Equipment. An uninsulated surveyor pays **two health of five** for their own discharge and can then collect for the rest of the stun without insulation. | [Contract r3 §4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction), R3 ruled; GDD §3 (1 health/second) | |
| - | | 8:25–8:33 | **And the panel has been holding that same water hot since 7:30, which is now ruled rather than argued.** A lit branch's channel water is energised for as long as the branch is lit — so **insulation is the entry fee for this whole encounter**, not a hedge against two seconds, and an uninsulated player wading in to discharge loses health every second they stand there. The discharge's two seconds are contained inside a hazard that was already running; its contribution is the stun. | [Contract r4 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction), C2 ruled. **r6 of this page priced two readings and recommended the other one; the ruling went the other way and the objection did not survive reading it** — the two-second rationale is about water no lit branch feeds, which is the Tidal Barrier's flats, not the electrician's yard | |
| - | | 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 | |
| - | | 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) | |
| - | | 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 |
| - | |
| - | - **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. ✔ |
| - | - **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. ✔ |
| - | - **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. |
| - | - **Is the channel energised, and by what? Settled.** By the panel, from 7:30, for as long as the yard is lit — the coil's two seconds sit inside that and add no hazard the player was not already in. ✔ r3 had the water go inert after the discharge, which contradicted its own setup ([PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) found it); r6 priced both readings while the ruling already existed; **r7 carries the ruling.** |
| - | - **Do the Anchors take damage standing in energised water all expedition?** No. Under the intensity rule in [§0B](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), energised water harms the surveyor and does nothing to organisms; only a bank-strength discharge reaches a body, and it stuns rather than damages. ✔ |
| - | |
| - | ### What the encounter is actually for |
| - | |
| - | **The six Crusts convert "collect everything" into "collect exactly two and leave."** The third and fourth motes are worth nothing to a one-battery rack, so a player who understands the battery cap takes two and walks out before the Crusts close. A player running the **harvester** rack — two batteries, GDD §5 — genuinely wants all four, and must therefore accept Crust contact to get them. **The composition prices the loadout without a single stat existing anywhere in it.** That is the whole argument for [R8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) in one scene. |
| - | |
| - | **What preparation changes. Rewritten in r4; r3 had this wrong.** Without insulation the player cannot run this encounter at all: the yard is lit, so the channel is energised, and every second in it costs one health from five ([§0B's intensity rule](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) and open question C10). The insulation slot is not a hedge, it is the entry fee — and that is the shape GDD §5's electrician rack already has. Without knowing what an Anchor is, the player throws the panel expecting a clear channel and is wrong. Without knowing what a Crust is, they step into the mote line expecting 44 stopped bodies and meet four that never stopped, and that mistake costs health rather than only the harvest, because a Crust resists the stun a spent Walker still receives. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 4. Encounter B — the failing causeway |
| - | |
| - | **Contrast:** offensive, late-expedition, the whole precedence stack live at once, preparation-heavy, and it turns on a decision made twenty minutes earlier at a shelter. **Roles live:** Grounder, Carrier and Spark — three in the district, at the limit; two in the third surge, at the limit. **What it teaches:** that a plan can expire, and that hoarding charge is itself a threat. |
| - | |
| - | **Declared setup.** Late campaign. The panel has been on causeway since 3:00, so the first two surges (40 and 80) both entered there and are held at the causeway beacon — about 110 bodies after kills, drawn as one ring. The player is in the yard, having come by the culvert, running the **harvester** rack (GDD §5): coil, arc, two batteries, insulation, no cargo. Both batteries are full: 20 units. Two Grounders climbed the causeway's power cable at about 10:30. The third dispatch is due at 12:00 and will bring 140. |
| - | |
| - | | Time | What happens | Which rule says so | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | 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. **The crowd first re-evaluates line 3 and looks for another reachable lit beacon** — and finds none, because the panel's positions are exclusive, so with the panel on causeway the yard beacon is dark. Only then does line 4 apply: **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. | Stack lines 3 then 4; contract clause 2 (the panel powers one branch at a time, or none). **Corrected in r4: r3 went straight to spreading, which [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) rightly flagged as skipping the retarget test** | |
| - | | 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 | |
| - | | 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 |
| - | |
| - | | Option | What it buys | What it costs | Verdict at 11:40 | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **(a) Panel → yard** | The causeway and its dock clear immediately: the spread crowd retargets to the yard beacon (line 3). The hatch opens. The 12:00 dispatch enters the yard channel, which is *water* — where the coil and the arc are worth most. | The 110 walk the junction and channel **to where the player is standing**, and 140 more land on top of them. | **The aggressive answer, and the right one for this rack.** It is the only option that turns the problem into the payoff. | |
| - | | **(b) Kill the Grounders** | The beacon relights; the crowd re-gathers at the causeway's far end; the parking is restored. | Crossing about 110 spread bodies to reach the cable. Two bodies at three hits each is trivial; the crossing is not, at one health per contact from five. | **Correct earlier, wrong now.** The crossing and the re-gather do not finish before 12:00. | |
| - | | **(c) Plant a beacon at the causeway's interior end** | Relights the far end without going near the cable, pulls the crowd off the dock road, and — because a planted beacon's battery is loose charge — decoys Carriers away from the player. Two problems, one action. | Two slots and a battery, and the battery runs down while planted. | **Not available.** The harvester rack has no beacon; the coil took its two slots. This option was decided at the shelter. | |
| - | | **(d) Do nothing; culvert home** | Costs no charge and starts no fight. | The culvert exits at the causeway dock end, which is exactly where the spread is heading; the player walks into the thin edge, with the evacuation window still to come. | **Viable, and the correct answer for a different rack** — see the contrast below. | |
| - | |
| - | ### Under (a): the late payoff, checked |
| - | |
| - | | 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. | Contract clause 3; [R2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) | |
| - | | 12:00–12:30 | 140 enter the yard channel: 122 Walkers, 8 Carriers, 10 Sparks. The player is on the dry bank, insulated. Two cohorts, because the difference matters below: **100 are in the water by 12:25** (including 5 Carriers and 7 Sparks); **40 arrive between 12:25 and 12:30** (3 Carriers, 3 Sparks). | Contract clause 3; 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 reachable loose charge, which is the player's two full banks. The forecast draws the surveyor as their target. | Stack line 2; [Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) | |
| - | | 12:25 | About 100 are in the water. Discharge. **Coil bank 10 → 0.** Every conducting body in the connected water stuns for eight seconds — Walkers, Carriers and Sparks alike, including the 5 Carriers in that cohort. | GDD §5; [R7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) | |
| - | | 12:25 | **100 stunned → 10 large motes, 50 units.** Those 100 are now spent. The coil bank is empty and holds ten; **the arc bank is full and takes nothing**, so **at most 10 of the 50 units can ever be banked**. | Contract clause 4; the collection rule | |
| - | | 12:25–12:33 | Collection, against opposition. The player banks **2 large motes, 10 units: coil bank 0 → 10.** The other 8 large motes are contested by the **3 Carriers who arrived after the discharge and were never stunned**; whatever they reach they carry, and killing one drops it back. The rest fade. The 5 stunned Carriers cannot compete for a harvest they were stunned in — which is worth stating, because it is where [R5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) does and does not bite. | [R5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat); motes fade in seconds | |
| - | | 12:33 | Stun ends. The 100 recover, spent, packed in the channel and the doorway. The 40 late arrivals are **unshed**. | GDD §13's stated 8 s | |
| - | | 12:33–12:43 | **The burst.** Arc bank 10 → 0 over ten seconds. Each cutter hit conducts to **at most three additional bodies, each once per hit, within the hop reach and with a line between them**; the arc never energises the water. Kills among the spent 100 return nothing. Kills among the unshed 40 drop 1-unit motes — **and the surveyor cannot take them**: the coil bank is full at 10 and the arc bank is being drawn. **A [Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) can**, which r5 omitted and Equipment caught; the rest expire on the ground, visibly. | [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc) and [Combat §6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat); the drawn-bank rule; [R5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), now adopted in contract §4 | |
| - | | 12:43 | **Bank state: coil 10, arc 0 — one full bank, not two empty ones.** So the surviving Carriers do not stop: the player is still carrying charge, and spending the arc did not buy safety. **r3 claimed both banks ended empty and that the Carriers therefore lost interest; that was an arithmetic error and [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) found it.** **And emptying the last bank is not a clear road either** — a Carrier stops seeking the surveyor only when the *total* carried charge is zero, and loose motes, ordinary pursuit and the yard beacon all still govern what walks where. [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) caught that overclaim in r5 and it is corrected here. | Contract clause 4; the precedence stack, lines 1–3 | |
| - | | 12:43+ | **The last decision falls out of a rule nobody had used yet: charge left in a bank is lost at the dock.** The coil's ten units are worth nothing the moment the player extracts, so spending them costs nothing *they were going to keep*. A second discharge stuns everything in the channel for eight seconds. Its yield is **five units per complete ten surviving fresh bodies** — and **this scene cannot state that number**, because the burst has just killed an unknown share of the forty late arrivals. It is somewhere between nothing and twenty units, and **the decision does not depend on it**: the bank is worthless either way. The choice is **dump and run**, taking the stun and banking nothing, or **dump and collect**, paying exposure with the evacuation window running for whatever the survivors shed. | Contract clause 4; once-per-organism. **Corrected in r6:** r5 granted the full twenty units from all forty as though the burst had killed none of them, and [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) rightly refused an invented survivor count | |
| - | |
| - | ### Checking this scene against its own rules |
| - | |
| - | - **Does the Carrier's twelve-metre range change this scene? No, and here is the distance.** [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) rightly refused to take that on assertion. The surveyor is standing on the dry bank *beside* the yard channel — that is where the coil is discharged from and where the motes are collected — and the surge enters the channel and wades down it past that position. Bodies in the channel are therefore within twelve metres of the surveyor for most of their walk, so the Carriers acquire and the beat is unchanged. **What the bound does change is the option that is missing from this scene:** under the unbounded version there was no way to shake them at all, and under the bounded one *walking away from the channel* is a real fourth answer — which costs the harvest, the discharge and the burst, i.e. the whole expedition's payoff. That is the choice the range exists to create. ✔ |
| - | - **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, and is that step skipped?** **Corrected in r4.** [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) is right that darkening a beacon does not by itself make a crowd spread: the crowd first re-evaluates line 3 and retargets to **any other reachable lit beacon**. It spreads only when there is none. Here there is none, and the reason is the panel: contract clause 2 makes the panel's positions **exclusive** — one branch at a time, or off — so with the panel on causeway the yard beacon is dark, and grounding the causeway's leaves nothing lit. That is why line 4 applies, and it is a fact about this district's topology rather than about the Grounder. ✔ |
| - | - **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. ✔ |
| - | - **Does the burst fit inside the stun?** **No, and deliberately not.** The stun is 8 s and the burst is 10 s, so the burst is spent from 12:33 on a *recovering* crowd, not a stunned one. This is the correction [PMR003](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR003) item 1 required of GDD §13 and which r13 supplied; this scene is built on the corrected sequence rather than re-introducing the error. ✔ |
| - | - **Does the burst return charge? Corrected in r4.** Not from the 100 stunned at 12:25, which are spent — but the **40 that arrived after the discharge have not shed**, so chained kills among them do drop 1-unit motes. r3 said the burst returned nothing, which ignored the late cohort; [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) asked for the cohorts to be separated and they now are. **Those motes are still lost**, for a different and more interesting reason: the coil bank is full at 10 and the arc bank is being drawn, so nothing eligible can take them. ✔ |
| - | - **Bank states, end to end.** Start: coil 10, arc 10 (20). 12:25 discharge: coil 10→0. Collection: coil 0→10 (2 large motes; the rest expire or are carried off). 12:33–12:43 burst: arc 10→0. **End: coil 10, arc 0.** r3 asserted two empty banks and drew a conclusion from it about the Carriers; both were wrong. ✔ |
| - | - **Is the closing dump legal?** Yes, and it costs nothing: a discharge needs a full linked bank, the coil's is full, and contract clause 4 says charge left in a battery at extraction is lost at the dock. The 100 spent bodies shed nothing more; the 40 unshed ones shed 4 large motes. ✔ |
| - | |
| - | ### The contrast that makes the point |
| - | |
| - | Run the identical composition against the **arc hauler** rack (GDD §5: arc, battery, insulation, three bundles). No coil, so no stun and no bulk harvest. No second battery. No beacon. At 11:40 that player cannot take option (a) profitably and cannot take (c) at all; their correct play is **(d)**: culvert home through the thin edge, bank three bundles, and see none of the payoff. |
| - | |
| - | **They finish the expedition successfully.** That is the design working, not failing: the rack chosen at the dock decided which game this expedition was, and both are legitimate. It is also the concrete answer to the Expansion Brief's demand for "a reason to prepare a different build, with an alternative viable approach and a real tradeoff" — the two racks do different things, not different amounts. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 5. Early, middle and late — how combat grows without a number |
| - | |
| - | The [Cutter page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter) asks what develops basic combat across a campaign when the weapon is fixed and there is no XP. The answer this roster gives: |
| - | |
| - | > **Combat grows because more lines of the precedence stack are live at once, not because anything gets bigger.** |
| - | |
| - | | Stage | Roles live | What the player learns to do | The crowd-clearing payoff | The room left to investigate | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **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 | |
| - | |
| - | **What the owner should press on.** Whether "four precedence lines live at once" *reads* as growth to a survivorlike audience the way a rising damage number does is **unverified and unverifiable in the design phase.** It is the central bet of this page and it is the same bet GDD §6 already makes about the arc. I believe it is the right one, because the alternative — a stat ladder — has to be invented from nothing here and would immediately compete with the thing the game sells. But it is a bet, and it is the first thing an authorized play phase should look at. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 6. Elites and bosses — a recommendation against, and two substitutes |
| - | |
| - | The assignment asks for an assessment only with a reason. Mine is against creature bosses and against stat elites, and for two elite-*shaped* things that fit this design. |
| - | |
| - | **Scoped, after [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004).** PM is right that the owner's brief bans none of this, and that a compact grammar is a proposal rather than proof the alternatives are bad. So read what follows as *what a boss would cost this particular design and what I would build instead for less* — not as a prohibition, and not as a claim that bosses are bad in general. If the owner wants one, the design can have one; the reasons below are the price list. |
| - | |
| - | **Against creature bosses**, for three reasons specific to this game rather than to taste: |
| - | |
| - | 1. **A boss is a damage race, and this game has no damage curve.** No XP, a fixed cutter, and an arc bounded three ways (GDD §6). To make a boss killable you would either invent a stat ladder — contradicting the no-XP bet and the Expansion Brief's warning about damage-bonus catalogues — or make it a machinery puzzle, in which case it *is* a machinery puzzle, and the design already has those and does them better. The relay room is the proof. |
| - | 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 Walker whose only distinction is the numbers — because that is the "more health or a new tint" the Expansion Brief warns about. **Narrowed in r4:** this is not an argument against different hit counts, which R8 permits and which [Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)'s Heavy uses well for a stated economic reason (§0.2). It is an argument against a body whose *only* answer to "what does it change" is a number. |
| - | |
| - | **For, instead:** |
| - | |
| - | **(i) The declared surge.** The forecast already tells the player the intake and the countdown. Let it also declare the next dispatch's **composition** — "third dispatch: carriers" — once the player has repaired the [colony's](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony) forecast relay or has learned to read the cadence. |
| - | *Player action:* repack at a shelter, or change the panel, before it lands. *Visible information:* one more row on the overlay that already exists. *Consequence:* you meet the surge you chose to meet. *Cost:* knowing costs a colony repair or a learned convention, and acting on it costs slots or a route. *Concrete interaction:* seeing "carriers" and deliberately spending a battery **before** the dispatch, so there is nothing left to walk toward. |
| - | It converts an elite into a preparation decision, which is what this game is about; it gives Campaign a difficulty dial made of composition rather than numbers; it gives Colony something worth repairing; and it costs no creature and no asset. |
| - | |
| - | **(ii) The standing problem** — a district's one persistent, named concentration that is a **place, not a fight.** The pattern: a district's lowest channel permanently occupied by a mass of Anchors, because Anchors go to the lowest wet ground and never leave it. It is never cleared and never respawns, because it never left. |
| - | *Player action:* route around it, drain it with a field pump, or spend a battery on it. *Visible information:* it is standing there on arrival, every time. *Consequence:* it is the reason the district's shortest route is expensive. *Cost:* a bundle for the pump, or the longer road, or a battery. *Concrete interaction:* it is also the district's single richest harvest — one discharge, once, sheds proportionally to its size and then it is spent and worth nothing for the rest of the expedition, so *when* you spend the battery on it is a real decision. |
| - | This is a "boss" as geography, under adopted rules, with no new creature. **Placement is Campaign's**; I am proposing the pattern, not its location. |
| - | |
| - | **The one condition under which I would revisit a creature boss.** If a later authorized phase shows that the arc's payoff lands too rarely because a crowd is never dense enough at the right moment, then a single large, slow, high-hit-count body that is *reliably* a valid arc target would be a targeted fix for a measured problem. I would not build one before that evidence exists, and **no such evidence can exist in the design phase.** |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 7. What this page needs from other roles |
| - | |
| - | Stated as positions with my recommendation attached, not as routed decisions (Wiki Conventions §12a). |
| - | |
| - | | To | What I need | What I proceed on meanwhile | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **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% 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 | |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 8. Asset presentation gaps |
| - | |
| - | Full statement in [Combat Rules §9](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). In short, and honestly: **the roster's readability costs six distinguishable silhouettes**, five more than the current one-enemy proposal, and that is the largest consequence of this submission. Three of the six (Anchor, Carrier, Grounder) are readable primarily from **position and attitude** — half-submerged and still; leaning toward a target the forecast already draws; up on a cable and off the ground — so if the base body can be posed, those cost poses rather than creatures. Two (Crust, Spark) are silhouette edits of the base body, and whether that is legal depends on the individual asset's licence, not its host's general statement ([Asset Licences](/Reference/Asset%20Licences)). **No asset has been located, inspected, downloaded, purchased or created, and no availability is claimed.** |
| - | |
| - | The roster is **neutral** on GDD §14's decision 2, the humanoid Flood: what conducts is bodies standing in water either way, and posture-based roles work at least as well on a humanoid body. Nothing here pushes the owner toward the custom-art request. |
| - | |
| - | The gap I cannot close is audio: the Spark's fairness leans on a rising whine as it enters cutter reach, and sound is not designed. The visual fallback is the cutter's target line plus the flicker, which I believe suffices and cannot claim does. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 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 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. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## Revision log |
| - | |
| - | Kept short, so the sections above are the current proposal and this is the history. Full text of every revision is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/history). |
| - | |
| - | | Rev | What it did | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **r12** | Dependency assessment after the owner's direction (§0B). Recorded that this page's organising idea — roles as precedence exceptions — is the axis the owner has just demoted. Recommended cutting the Grounder, the role r10 had already named as first to break; re-justified the Carrier as build pressure rather than routing, and the Crust as the thing that makes a chained combination's geometry a puzzle. Roster to seven, no replacement proposed. Noted the composition cap has a second reason to move and that R8 is held with the Cascade as evidence rather than as preference. | |
| - | | **r11** | Narrowed the "sheds once" claim after [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) showed it does not prevent rewarding repeated fresh arrivals; the real answer is that charge never leaves the district, so killing yields fuel an intervention must spend. Withdrew the "ten hits is not durability" defence and the placement rule that would have forbidden free bypasses. Tested the Heavy against the retained Exchange-doorway scene instead, and concluded it is not earning its place there as written. | |
| - | | **r10** | Ran the [Game vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision)'s decision test on all eight roles in a new §0A, unprompted, as PMU008 asks. Named the Heavy as the role closest to the cut line and proposed a placement rule to keep it honest rather than defending it in the abstract, with the Anchor merge as the alternative. Recorded which roles would break first if the vision's next pass changes what an expedition is for. | |
| - | | **r9** | Removed this page's competing presentation accounting at [PMR007 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007)'s request — §0.6 now points at [Campaign §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign), the single D025 list, rather than keeping a second version marked superseded. Cut order retained. | |
| - | | **r8** | Cited [REF107](/Reference/Content%20Scale) where the roster count is set, answering [X32](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique). Recorded the eight-against-seventy gap without redefining the units to soften it, pointed at Equipment as the axis where the comparison bites hardest, and named the readability-versus-variety conflict inside this page's own composition budget. Also retitled §2, which still said "six roles at a glance". | |
| - | | **r7** | Carried two rulings this page had not read when r6 saved. **C2 ruled against this page:** a lit branch's channel water is energised while the branch is lit, so Encounter A carries one reading instead of pricing two, and insulation is the entry fee. **The Spark is settled as the power-only death**, this page's own recommendation, after a crossing in which Combat adopted the row the Lead had abandoned six minutes earlier ([REV104-15](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review)). Neither encounter places Sparks, so no beat changed for that. | |
| - | | **r6** | Brought onto the Lead's ruled [contract r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction): coil at two powered seconds and an eight-second stun, R10 declined, the precedence stack, bounded press, one-bit glow, the Carrier's mote and the Grounder all adopted. **Roster stated as eight, not six**, with the Floater transferred here and given a page. Encounter A now prices both readings of the open fixed-power question instead of asserting one. Encounter B corrected on [Equipment's](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) three findings: the closing discharge's yield cannot be stated because the burst killed an unknown share of the late cohort; a Carrier can take the motes the surveyor cannot; and emptying the last bank buys neither safety nor a clear road. | |
| - | | **r5** | Answered [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005). Withdrew the Heavy wording request and the "nineteen kill motes" argument under D023; narrowed the tint finding to a cue-budget concern; corrected the cable reel against Equipment U6's actual definition; gave the Carrier one complete bounded behaviour definition and checked Encounter B against the stated distance; corrected the "escort that does not give up" line in §1. | |
| - | | **r4** | Answered [PMR004 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004), which found real errors in both encounters. Encounter A had let a fixed-powered channel go inert; Encounter B's bank arithmetic left two empty banks where the rules leave one full one, and ignored the cohort that arrived after the discharge. Both corrected and re-checked, and the scene now ends on a rule nobody had used — charge left in a bank is lost at the dock. The Grounder beat now runs the retarget test before spreading. The Crust's "harmless confusion" claim withdrawn. The elites recommendation rescoped as a price list, not a prohibition. | |
| - | | **r3** | Reconciled with DES104, which the Lead published while r2 was being drafted: two rosters merged into one of eight, the base role renamed Drifter → Walker, Floater adopted unchanged and left to Campaign, Heavy accepted, Static and Carrier identified as one concept designed twice. | |
| - | | **r2** | Adopted this page from PM's seed and answered the assignment on it: six roles, two encounters, the elites recommendation, the campaign arc. | |
| - | | **r1** | PM's seeded source summary and the CMB101 assignment brief — [c63228](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=c63228). | |
| hold the flood/enemies/anchor.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,66 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — Anchor |
| - | |
| - | **CMB101 · r2 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — proposed role, new.** |
| - | Source rules it is built on: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–5; shared grammar and the precedence stack: [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). |
| - | [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) |
| - | |
| - | **Name is a functional placeholder.** [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) owns the Flood's identity and fiction. |
| - | |
| - | ## The assumption it deletes |
| - | |
| - | > **"Re-routing the crowd clears the ground."** |
| - | |
| - | Everything else in this game answers a light. The Anchor is the proof that the light is not the whole rule — and it is the first role a player should meet, because it teaches that the spine rule has an edge before it teaches anything clever. |
| - | |
| - | ## Trigger, action, threat |
| - | |
| - | | | | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Trigger** | None. It is already standing in the water when the player arrives, and it has been since before the expedition began | |
| - | | **Action** | Precedence line 2: walk to the **lowest reachable wet ground** and stay there. It never answers a beacon, never answers the panel, and never joins a crowd. Within pursuit range it chases like anything else (line 1) and returns to its water when the player leaves | |
| - | | **Threat** | A permanent contact hazard exactly where the player must wade — one health of five per contact. It is not dangerous; it is *immovable*, and that is the threat. Every clever routing plan leaves it standing | |
| - | | **Hit count** | Three, as a Walker. It has no more health than anything else and that is the point | |
| - | | **Conducts?** | Yes, fully. It is always in water, so it is always a valid coil target — the one body the coil never misses | |
| - | | **Charge** | Sheds once, like anything else. Because it is always in water, it is reliably part of a stun's yield | |
| - | |
| - | ## Telegraph |
| - | |
| - | Position and posture: **half-submerged and not moving**, in the lowest wet part of the area, visible from the moment the player arrives and in the same place every expedition. The player's own first experiment proves it: throw the panel, watch every other body in sight change target, and watch these four not. That experiment is free, repeatable, available on the first visit and needs no module — which is the fairness standard [World r20](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de) sets for a clue. |
| - | |
| - | ## Counterplay, and what each costs |
| - | |
| - | | Counterplay | Cost | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | Kill it. Three hits, and it will not run | Standing in its pursuit range in the water, and the time. Four of them is twelve hits and about six seconds of exposure | |
| - | | **Drain its channel with a field pump.** With the water gone it walks to the next lowest wet ground — so it *moves*, but you chose where | One bundle of salvage, and the pump lasts one expedition (GDD §5, §8). You have also just cut a conduction path you might have wanted | |
| - | | Route around it | The longer road, and the surge clock | |
| - | | Ignore it and accept the contact | One health per touch, from five, non-regenerating in the district | |
| - | |
| - | The pump counterplay is the one worth designing around: **it is the only counterplay in the roster that answers a body by changing the terrain rather than by fighting it**, and it costs cargo, which is the colony's income. |
| - | |
| - | ## Machinery and equipment |
| - | |
| - | - **Coil:** the Anchor is the coil's most reliable target, because it is guaranteed to be in water. A district whose Anchors sit in the channel you have to cross is a district where a discharge always has something to hit. It also means the *first* discharge of an expedition often has a small guaranteed yield. |
| - | - **Field pump:** the counterplay above, and the only one that uses a module the current catalogue treats as marginal. This role gives the pump a reason to exist. |
| - | - **Panel and beacons:** none. That is the role. |
| - | - **Insulation:** irrelevant to the Anchor itself; relevant because fighting one means standing in water where a [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) might also be. |
| - | |
| - | ## Placement (for Campaign) |
| - | |
| - | - **Standing before the expedition begins, never arriving in a surge.** It is a feature of the terrain and the player must be able to see it and plan around it on arrival. A surge that delivers Anchors would be a surge that cannot be read, and it would break the composition budget's intent. |
| - | - Place at the lowest wet ground on a route the player has a reason to use. An Anchor in water nobody crosses is decoration. |
| - | - Counts toward the district's limit of three distinct non-Walker roles. |
| - | - **The standing problem** pattern in [Enemies §6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) is a large Anchor concentration used as a district's persistent named obstacle, in place of a boss. Placement of that is Campaign's. |
| - | |
| - | ## Asset note |
| - | |
| - | Readable primarily from **position and attitude** — half-submerged, still, low in the water — rather than from a new creature. If the base body can be posed, this role costs a pose. **No asset has been located, inspected or created**, and no availability is claimed. |
| - | |
| - | ## Open questions |
| - | |
| - | - **Does an Anchor stunned in water shed, given it never moved?** My position: yes, on the plain reading of the once-per-organism rule; nothing in the source ties shedding to having travelled. Consequence: a district's Anchors are a small, fixed, once-per-expedition harvest, which is a mild but real reason to bring the coil to a district that has them. |
| - | - **Does draining its water strand it, or does it walk?** My position: it walks, slowly and visibly, to the next lowest wet ground. A stranded body would be a new state to read; a walking one uses line 2 unchanged and makes the pump a *steering* tool rather than a delete button. |
| - | |
| - | ## Reconciliation with DES104 (added in this revision) |
| - | |
| - | The Lead published [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) and the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) while this page was being drafted. Two consequences for this page. **The rule source is now the contract, not GDD §4** — where this page cites the Design Document for a shared rule, cite the contract; the rules are the same and it is the one to cite. **The base role is called Walker there**, and this page's Drifter is the same role; Walker is the surviving name and [the role page is at Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker). The full reconciliation — what held, what conflicts, and the merged roster — is in [Enemies §0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies). |
| hold the flood/enemies/carrier.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,83 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — Carrier |
| - | |
| - | **CMB101 · r4 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — proposed role, new. Depends on [R5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). |
| - | r4 answers [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005): the bounded merge with Campaign's Static is now **one complete behaviour definition** in the table below — acquisition range, loss-of-target condition, ordinary pursuit precedence and fallback to a beacon — rather than an unbounded rule with a short-range recommendation appended after it. The unbounded version is withdrawn.** |
| - | Source rules it is built on: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6; shared grammar and the precedence stack: [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). |
| - | [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) |
| - | |
| - | **Name is a functional placeholder.** [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) owns the Flood's identity and fiction. |
| - | |
| - | ## The assumption it deletes |
| - | |
| - | > **"If I am not standing near a light, nothing is coming to me."** |
| - | |
| - | This is the role that turns the project's own hook back on the player. The provisional hook is *machinery whose useful power can also attract the horde*. The Carrier says: so does the power on your back. |
| - | |
| - | ## Trigger, action, threat |
| - | |
| - | | | | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Trigger** | Loose charge inside its **acquisition range**, proposed at **twelve metres**: a mote on the ground, a bank with units in it in the surveyor's rack, or a planted beacon's battery | |
| - | | **Action** | Precedence line 2: walk to the **nearest reachable loose charge in range**, using the grammar the player already knows from beacons — nearest, reachable, continuously re-evaluated. It **ignores fixed beacons entirely** when it has a target: they are on the district's mains, not a bank, and there is nothing to take | |
| - | | **Loses its target when** | The source leaves the twelve-metre range, or falls to zero units, or is picked up by the surveyor, or is taken by another Carrier | |
| - | | **Falls back to** | **Ordinary Walker behaviour, precedence line 3** — nearest reachable lit beacon, hold, spread — the moment no loose charge is in range. It does not idle and does not keep walking toward a source it can no longer sense | |
| - | | **Ordinary pursuit still applies** | Line 1 outranks its role target, as for every body: inside pursuit range it chases the surveyor as a body, not as a bank, and drifts back when out of range. So in a scrum it is indistinguishable from a Walker, which is deliberate | |
| - | | **On arrival** | At a mote: takes it, and the mote is gone from the floor ([R5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)). At the surveyor or a planted beacon: it is simply there, in contact range, doing contact damage | |
| - | | **Threat** | It comes to you regardless of your routing, and it eats the harvest you spent a battery to create. A player carrying twenty units has an escort that does not lose interest | |
| - | | **Hit count** | Three. No more health than anything else | |
| - | | **Conducts?** | Yes. Stunned by a discharge like anything else | |
| - | | **Charge** | Sheds once, like anything else. **Plus:** a Carrier killed while holding a stolen mote drops that mote again — so the theft is recoverable | |
| - | |
| - | **Why "nearest", not "richest".** A ranking rule would make the player do arithmetic about which of their batteries is more attractive. "Nearest reachable loose charge" is the same sentence as the beacon rule with one noun changed, so it costs the player no new concept — which is the constraint the whole roster is built on. |
| - | |
| - | ## Telegraph |
| - | |
| - | Three cues, all on things that already exist: |
| - | |
| - | 1. **It leans toward what it wants**, and what it wants is often not where the crowd is going — so a Carrier reads as a body walking across the grain of a surge. |
| - | 2. **The forecast overlay already draws each entered crowd's current target** (GDD §3). A Carrier group's target marker is drawn on the surveyor, or on the motes, rather than on a beacon. That is the strongest cue and it costs nothing new. |
| - | 3. When it is holding a stolen mote it glows, having something to shed; when it has taken nothing and already shed, it does not ([R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)). |
| - | |
| - | ## Counterplay, and what each costs |
| - | |
| - | | Counterplay | Cost | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Spend the charge.** An empty battery is not loose charge; there is nothing to walk toward, and the Carriers revert to line 3 and go to the beacon | The spend is irreversible for the expedition, and you have just used your coil discharge or your arc burst on a schedule the enemy chose | |
| - | | **Plant a beacon as a decoy.** A planted beacon's battery is loose charge, so Carriers nearer to it than to you go there instead — and the same act relights a branch | Two rack slots, the beacon, and a battery that runs down while planted. Retrieval needs two free slots (GDD §5) | |
| - | | Kill them, and take back any mote they are holding | Three hits each, inside contact range, usually while you are also collecting | |
| - | | Collect faster and accept the losses | The charge you did not reach walked away rather than fading | |
| - | | Carry no battery at all — the hauler rack | You harvest nothing, all expedition | |
| - | |
| - | **The competing choice this role creates is the good one:** hoarding charge for the finale makes you hunted *wherever a Carrier can acquire you*; spending it makes you safe and poor. Nothing else in the design puts a cost on *having* resources rather than on getting or using them. **Corrected in r4:** r1 said carrying charge bought an escort that would not give up. Under the bounded definition above it does give up, at twelve metres, and that bound is the point — district-wide attraction would tax being rich rather than price it. |
| - | |
| - | ## Machinery and equipment |
| - | |
| - | - **Battery:** the interaction. A full battery is bait; an empty one is not. |
| - | - **Portable beacon:** promoted from a niche module to a genuine answer, because planting it solves a routing problem and a Carrier problem with one action. This is the strongest reason in the roster to carry the shepherd's rack. |
| - | - **Coil:** a discharge stuns Carriers with everything else — and then creates exactly the motes they are walking toward, so a discharge sets up its own contest. That is deliberate. |
| - | - **Arc:** the burst empties the battery, which is both the payoff and the way to stop being a target. |
| - | - **Siphon:** converts a bundle to three units, which is loose charge you did not have a moment ago. A player who siphons in the open has just rung a bell. |
| - | - **Fixed beacons and the panel:** no interaction. Carriers cannot be routed by light, which is the whole role. |
| - | |
| - | ## Placement (for Campaign) |
| - | |
| - | - Arrives **in a surge**, and counts toward the limit of two non-Walker roles per surge. |
| - | - A few, not many: eight in a surge of 140 is the working proportion in [Encounter B](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies). A surge that is mostly Carriers would stop being a crowd and start being a chase. |
| - | - Best placed in a district where the player is expected to be **carrying** charge — after a harvest, near a finale, on a route with no shelter — so the role bites the player who is doing well. |
| - | - **Not** in the opening district's first expeditions: a player who has not yet learned that light moves the mass should not first meet the body that ignores light. |
| - | |
| - | ## Asset note |
| - | |
| - | Readable primarily from **attitude and the forecast marker** — leaning toward its target, walking across the grain — rather than from a new creature. If the base body can be posed, this role costs a pose plus one overlay behaviour that already exists. **No asset has been located, inspected or created**, and no availability is claimed. |
| - | |
| - | ## Open questions |
| - | |
| - | - **Does a Carrier target charge inside the rack, or the surveyor as a body?** My position: the surveyor, treated as one charge source whose size is the total units carried, and it stops being a source at zero. Targeting individual slots would expose rack internals to the world, which crosses the [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) interface for no gain. |
| - | - **Does it steal from a battery on contact?** My position: **no.** Contact damage only. Theft from the rack would make the player's loss invisible and unfixable, where a stolen mote is visible on the thief and recoverable by killing it. Raised because it is the obvious next step and I think it is the wrong one. |
| - | - **Does it interact with the [Colony](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony)'s banked salvage?** No. Charge never leaves the district (GDD §4 clause 4), so there is nothing at the dock to want. |
| - | |
| - | ## Reconciliation with DES104 (added in this revision) |
| - | |
| - | The Lead published [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) and the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) while this page was being drafted. Two consequences for this page. **The rule source is now the contract, not GDD §4** — where this page cites the Design Document for a shared rule, cite the contract; the rules are the same and it is the one to cite. **The base role is called Walker there**, and this page's Drifter is the same role; Walker is the surviving name and [the role page is at Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker). The full reconciliation — what held, what conflicts, and the merged roster — is in [Enemies §0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies). |
| - | |
| - | **And one collision specific to this role.** The Campaign page proposes **Static**: "drawn to stored charge within a short range, over a lit beacon; sparks toward it." That is the same idea as this page's Carrier, designed twice. **They must not both exist**, and the merge I recommend is stated with its reasons and with what Static does better in [Enemies §0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies): keep this page's targeting sentence, which is the beacon rule with one noun changed, and keep Static's **short range**, which stops a player who is carrying charge from being hunted district-wide. The Lead decides; this page proceeds on the merged version, and 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. |
| hold the flood/enemies/crust.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,69 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — Crust |
| - | |
| - | **CMB101 · r3 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — proposed role, new.** |
| - | Source rules it is built on: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6; shared grammar and the precedence stack: [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). |
| - | [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) |
| - | |
| - | **Name is a functional placeholder.** [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) owns the Flood's identity and fiction. |
| - | |
| - | ## The assumption it deletes |
| - | |
| - | > **"One discharge stops everything in the water."** |
| - | |
| - | The Crust is a body wearing insulation. That is the whole design: the roster's one new fact about conduction is a fact the player already owns from the [module](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) in their own rack, applied to a body instead of a slot. |
| - | |
| - | ## Trigger, action, threat |
| - | |
| - | | | | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Trigger** | A dispatch, exactly like a [Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker) | |
| - | | **Action** | Precedence line 3, unchanged: nearest reachable lit beacon, hold, spread, and chase within pursuit range. **Its behaviour is completely ordinary. Only its physics are not** | |
| - | | **Threat** | It is the body still walking when everything around it has stopped. It stands unstunned inside a stunned crowd, in the exact place and second the player has committed to standing still and collecting, and it **ends an arc chain** where it stands | |
| - | | **Hit count** | Three. No more health than anything else — it is not armoured, it is *not conductive* | |
| - | | **Conducts?** | **No.** A coil discharge through the water it is standing in does not stop it. An arc chain that reaches it goes no further through it | |
| - | | **Charge** | Killed by the cutter: drops a 1-unit mote, once, like anything else. It **cannot be made to shed by a stun**, so a district heavy in Crusts is a district where the coil harvest is thinner than the crowd size suggests. **It glows until it is killed**, like any unshed body — it is non-conducting, not spent | |
| - | |
| - | ## Telegraph |
| - | |
| - | **Two independent cues, corrected in r3.** Under [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) as revised after [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004), **glow says what is left to take** and **encrustation says whether current reaches it**, and they are separate channels because the answers are separate. A Crust glows, like any unshed body; its **broken, encrusted outline** — dry mineral scale from the sluice — is what says the coil will not stop it. It reads in a crowd as a change of *shape*, not of colour or brightness. |
| - | |
| - | **Withdrawn in r3: r1 and r2 of this page claimed that mistaking a Crust for a spent Walker was harmless.** PM is right that it is not. A spent Walker still conducts and is still stunned; a Crust is neither. A player who confuses them commits to a collection window with bodies walking through it, and pays in health rather than in harvest. That error came from putting two facts on one cue, which is exactly what the corrected R4 stops. |
| - | |
| - | ## Counterplay, and what each costs |
| - | |
| - | | Counterplay | Cost | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **The cutter, and where you stand.** It is the only body in a stunned crowd worth aiming at, and aiming means moving, because the cutter fires at the nearest target and cannot be withheld ([R6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)) | Standing among 44 stunned bodies, the cutter will usually pick a stunned Walker instead. Getting it to pick the Crust means walking toward the Crust. The target line shows what it has chosen | |
| - | | Route the arc chain around it — stand so the chain's path does not run through one | The good burst positions and the good collecting positions are not the same positions | |
| - | | Leave the water and let them come to you on the bank | You lose the collection window, which is what the discharge was for | |
| - | | Accept the contact and collect anyway | One health per touch, from five | |
| - | |
| - | ## Machinery and equipment |
| - | |
| - | - **Coil:** the counter-interaction. A discharge's value is now the *conducting* fraction of the crowd, not its size, and that fraction is readable in advance from the outlines standing in the water. |
| - | - **Arc:** the Crust is a wall in the chain. Under the adopted bounded model ([Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc): at most three additional bodies per hit, each hop needing proximity and line of sight) a Crust in the chain's path costs the burst those hops, so **where the player stands decides which way the chain propagates** — the first place in this design where arc positioning matters at all. **Corrected in r3:** r1 said a chain travelling through energised water would route around a Crust and named the [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) as this role's counter. That rested on R10, which is withdrawn; the arc never energises water, so nothing routes around a Crust and the Spark is not its counter. |
| - | - **Insulation:** the fiction and the mechanic are the same thing the player is wearing. That is the point, and it should be sayable in one sentence by any player: *it is wearing what I'm wearing.* |
| - | - **Panel and beacons:** ordinary. A Crust routes exactly like the mass. |
| - | |
| - | ## Placement (for Campaign) |
| - | |
| - | - Arrives **in a surge**; counts toward the limit of two non-Walker roles per surge. |
| - | - Proportion matters more than count: at 10% of a surge it prices a harvest; above roughly a quarter it stops the coil being worth carrying, which is a district saying "do not bring the electrician" and should be a deliberate statement, not an accident. |
| - | - **Best placed where the player expects to stand still** — a channel harvest, a doorway hold, a collection window. A Crust in an area the player runs through does nothing. |
| - | - Pairs naturally with the [Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor) (see [Encounter A](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies)): one body that does not answer the light and one that does not answer the current, both standing in the same channel, is two thirds of the spine rule questioned in one place. |
| - | |
| - | ## Asset note |
| - | |
| - | A **silhouette edit of the base body** — the same outline broken by encrustation. Whether editing a sprite that way is permitted depends on the individual asset's licence rather than its host's general statement, as GDD §14 and the [Asset Licences reference](/Reference/Asset%20Licences) both record; tinting or resizing is an adaptation and some licences forbid it. **No asset has been located, inspected, downloaded or created**, and no availability is claimed. |
| - | |
| - | If the owner takes GDD §14 decision 2 and the Flood becomes a humanoid mass, this role is unaffected: an encrusted humanoid reads at least as well as an encrusted organism. |
| - | |
| - | ## Open questions |
| - | |
| - | - **Does a Crust conduct to *other* bodies touching it?** My position: **no** — it is inert in both directions, which is the simpler rule and the one that matches insulation in the rack ("insulation is the only slot that breaks a chain", GDD §5). A one-way version would be a new concept for no gain. |
| - | - **Can a Crust be made to conduct?** My position: no, and nothing should offer it. An enemy the player can convert is a puzzle piece, and this role's job is to be an unarguable limit on a tool. |
| - | - **Does it block the arc, or end it?** My position: the chain does not pass through it, so a chain whose only continuation was through a Crust ends there. It does not absorb or reflect. Stated because "blocks" and "ends" would be the same word in a spec and different behaviours in play. |
| - | |
| - | ## Reconciliation with DES104 (added in this revision) |
| - | |
| - | The Lead published [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) and the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) while this page was being drafted. Two consequences for this page. **The rule source is now the contract, not GDD §4** — where this page cites the Design Document for a shared rule, cite the contract; the rules are the same and it is the one to cite. **The base role is called Walker there**, and this page's Drifter is the same role; Walker is the surviving name and [the role page is at Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker). The full reconciliation — what held, what conflicts, and the merged roster — is in [Enemies §0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies). |
| hold the flood/enemies/drifter.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,9 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — Drifter (renamed to Walker) |
| - | |
| - | **CMB101 · r2 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · Pointer page.** |
| - | |
| - | This role was published here as **Drifter** at [r1 1ac116](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Drifter?revision=1ac116), an hour before this role read the Lead's [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign), which names the same role **Walker**. One role with two names is the failure this wiki has already paid for twice (Wiki Conventions §6), so the later name gives way. |
| - | |
| - | **The role is at [Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker).** Nothing was lost: the full r1 text is in this page's [history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Drifter/history) and is carried forward on the Walker page with the rename noted in its header. |
| - | |
| - | This page exists only so that links written in the intervening hour still land somewhere true. **Editor:** retire it once nothing links here. |
| hold the flood/enemies/floater.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,70 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — Floater |
| - | |
| - | **CMB101 · r2 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — transferred, not invented.** |
| - | r2 adds the one clause [REV104-8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) has been asking for since before this page existed: **a floater does not leave water.** r1 said only that it "is in water almost by definition", which the critic correctly called a description rather than a rule, and [contract r5 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) now states it. The open question about riding a filling lock upward is answered by it. |
| - | **This role is the Lead's.** It was proposed on [Campaign 34dc09 §3.1 and §4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) as part of DES104, and [the shared contract r3 §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) transfers it to Combat with the rest of the merged roster. This page carries it under Combat's grammar without changing what the Lead specified; **anything below that goes beyond the Lead's two sentences is marked as Combat's proposal and is the Lead's to reject.** |
| - | Sources: [Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) §3.1 (the Lock Flight) and §4; [shared contract r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) §§3, 7; shared grammar: [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). |
| - | [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) |
| - | |
| - | **Name is the Lead's placeholder.** [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) owns the Flood's identity and fiction. |
| - | |
| - | ## The assumption it deletes |
| - | |
| - | > **"Water is terrain; it does not take sides."** |
| - | |
| - | Every other role treats water as a surface with properties — wet, conducting, energised. The Floater is the one that treats it as a **current with a direction**, and it is the role that makes a lock, a drain or a weir into a routing tool rather than only a conduction tool. It is also the only role in the roster whose target the player changes by changing the *world* rather than by changing a light. |
| - | |
| - | ## Trigger, action, threat |
| - | |
| - | The first three rows are the Lead's specification, restated. The rest is Combat's completion under the shared grammar. |
| - | |
| - | | | | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Trigger** *(Lead)* | Water that is moving | |
| - | | **Action** *(Lead)* | Rides the flow; **cannot climb** a lock or a ladder; otherwise a Walker | |
| - | | **And it does not leave water** *(contract r5 §3, ruled)* | A floater stays in water — it does not walk out onto a bank, a quay or a causeway. This is the clause the critic asked for through four revisions, and it is what makes the role's threat a *routing* threat rather than a general one: a floater is only ever where water is, so **draining or diverting the water is the counterplay, and dry ground is the sanctuary** | |
| - | | **Precedence** *(Lead, contract §3)* | **Line 2 while its water flows** — its role target is the flow. **Line 3 when the flow stops**, whereupon it answers the nearest reachable lit beacon like anything else | |
| - | | **Threat** *(Combat)* | It arrives where the water goes, not where the light is. A player who has routed the crowd correctly can still have a branch fill from below, and **a flushed quay is not a cleared quay** — it is a quay whose bodies were delivered somewhere else, possibly into water on the route home. It cannot follow onto dry ground, so its threat is to everywhere the player must wade, and nowhere else | |
| - | | **Hit count** *(Combat proposal)* | Three, as a Walker. It is not tougher; it is somewhere else | |
| - | | **Conducts?** *(Combat)* | Yes, ordinarily. It is in water almost by definition, so it is a reliable coil target — and it is the role most likely to be *carried into* a discharge the player has already spent | |
| - | | **Charge** *(Combat)* | Sheds once, by the ordinary rule | |
| - | |
| - | ## Telegraph |
| - | |
| - | **Position and motion, not a new cue.** It rides low with a wake, and the wake points the way the water is going — which is the same information the player needs to predict it. Under [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) role identity rides on silhouette and attitude, and this role is almost entirely attitude. Where a district has a visible flow at all, the flow *is* the forecast for this role. |
| - | |
| - | ## Counterplay, and what each costs |
| - | |
| - | | Counterplay | Cost | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Stop the flow** — close a lock, shut a valve, let a basin equalise. It drops to line 3 and answers the light like anything else | Whatever that district charges for the water: a lock cycle, a bundle for a field pump, a gate you then need open | |
| - | | **Use it.** *(the Lead's own note: "flush a quay instead of fighting it")* Send the flow where you want the bodies to end up | You have to want them somewhere, and the somewhere is downstream of you as often as not | |
| - | | Kill it — three hits, like anything else | It is moving, and usually moving in water you would have to be standing in | |
| - | | Let it pass | It arrives wherever the water arrives, which is the whole threat | |
| - | |
| - | **The second row is the interesting one and it is the Lead's design, not mine.** It is the only counterplay in the roster where the answer to an enemy is *a plumbing decision*, and it is why this role belongs to a district with locks rather than to the pumping district. |
| - | |
| - | ## Machinery and equipment |
| - | |
| - | - **Locks, valves, weirs, drains, the hand pump:** the whole interaction. Anything that changes where water goes changes where these bodies go. |
| - | - **Coil:** it is nearly always a valid target, being in water. The caution is timing rather than aim — a discharge spent on a flow that is still delivering bodies stuns the ones present and not the ones arriving, because a paid pulse samples its footprint at the instant it fires ([Combat §0.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)). |
| - | - **Panel and beacons:** none while the flow runs. That is the role. |
| - | - **Portable beacon:** none while the flow runs, which is worth knowing before you spend two cells on one in a district built around moving water. |
| - | |
| - | ## Placement (for Campaign) |
| - | |
| - | Campaign owns placement; these are the constraints Combat's [composition budget](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) puts on it. |
| - | |
| - | - **Only where there is a visible flow the player can change.** A Floater in still water is a Walker with a wake, and placing one there wastes a role slot in the district's budget of three. |
| - | - Counts toward the limit of two non-Walker roles per surge and three per district. |
| - | - Pairs badly with the [Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor) by design, and that is worth using: one role that goes where the water goes and one that refuses to leave the lowest wet ground, in the same channel, means changing the water moves half the problem and leaves the other half standing. |
| - | |
| - | ## Asset note |
| - | |
| - | **Pose plus an engine-drawn cue** — the base body riding low, with a wake. No new creature. Category table on [Combat Rules §0.6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). **No asset has been located, inspected, downloaded, purchased or created**, and no availability is claimed. |
| - | |
| - | ## Open questions |
| - | |
| - | - **What happens when the flow stops with a Floater mid-channel?** *Combat's position:* it becomes an ordinary body at line 3 immediately, in place — but **still in water**, so it walks to the nearest reachable lit beacon only by whatever wet path exists, and holds where the water ends if none does. No stranding state and no new cue: the wake simply stops, which is the same signal read backwards. |
| - | - ~~**Can a Floater ride flow upward through a lock that is filling?**~~ **Answered in r2 by the ruled clause.** Yes, if the water carries it: "cannot climb" is about the body, and a floater that stays in water goes wherever that water goes, up a filling lock included. What it cannot do is step out at the top. That is the Lead's design and it is a good one — **filling a lock is a decision to deliver bodies, not a way to strand them.** |
| - | - **Does the flow's speed change anything?** *Combat's position:* no. Speed is a number, and a role that differs by a number is the thing the [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) warns against. Direction is the design. |
| hold the flood/enemies/grounder.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,86 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — Grounder |
| - | |
| - | **CMB101 · r3 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — proposed role, new. Depends on [R9](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), which needs Lead and World rulings.** |
| - | Source rules it is built on: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–4; [World and Mystery r20 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de)'s district contract; shared grammar: [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). |
| - | [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) |
| - | |
| - | **Name is a functional placeholder.** [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) owns the Flood's identity and fiction. |
| - | |
| - | ## The assumption it deletes |
| - | |
| - | > **"A light I set stays set."** |
| - | |
| - | Without this role, a routing decision is permanent for as long as the player leaves the panel alone, so "park the crowd somewhere else and go do the district" is a solved problem after the first expedition. The Grounder puts a clock on a *plan* without putting a clock on the *player* — and unlike a shortened timer, the clock has a location, a visible cause and four different answers. |
| - | |
| - | ## Trigger, action, threat |
| - | |
| - | | | | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Trigger** | A **live** cable run within reach. A dark branch's cable is of no interest; it climbs what is carrying current | |
| - | | **Action** | Precedence line 2: walk to the nearest reachable powered cable run, climb it, and stay. While it is on the run, that run is grounded: the beacon it feeds flickers, then goes dark | |
| - | | **Recovery** | The beacon relights when the Grounder is killed, or when the panel moves power elsewhere and back. Nothing else clears it | |
| - | | **Threat** | Not to the player's health — to the player's plan. A crowd whose beacon goes dark **first re-evaluates line 3 and retargets to any other reachable lit beacon**; it falls to line 4 and spreads along its branch, both ways, **only when there is none**. **Corrected in r3 at [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004)'s request:** r1 asserted spreading directly, which skipped the retarget test. Which of the two happens is a fact about the district rather than about this role — in the pumping district the panel is exclusive (contract clause 2), so the other branch is dark and spreading follows; in a district with two lit beacons the crowd would simply walk to the other one, and the Grounder would be a **redirection** tool rather than a dispersal one. Either way the threat is a hundred bodies changing state while the player is somewhere else | |
| - | | **Hit count** | Three, like anything else. It is trivially killable **once you are standing under it**, and where it stands is the whole problem | |
| - | | **Conducts?** | Yes. But it is up a cable, not in water, so a coil discharge in a channel will not reach it | |
| - | | **Charge** | Sheds once like anything else; killed, it drops a 1-unit mote at the foot of the cable | |
| - | |
| - | ## What it explicitly cannot do |
| - | |
| - | This is the role most likely to be read as breaking the spine rule, so the limits are part of the specification: |
| - | |
| - | - It **cannot cause a dispatch**, touch the signal cable, or select an intake. *The panel alone decides the intake* (GDD §4) is untouched. A Grounder removes a light; it can never make one. |
| - | - It **does not change what a beacon means.** A grounded beacon is an unpowered beacon, and an unpowered beacon draws nothing — the existing rule, applied. Dark still means dark. |
| - | - It **does not make an ordinary lamp draw the Flood**, which is the other thing [World r20](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de)'s contract forbids. |
| - | |
| - | That is the argument that R9 sits inside the contract rather than outside it. **It is an argument, not a ruling; World and the Lead own the verdict** ([Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) open question C5), and I proceed on it meanwhile. |
| - | |
| - | ## Telegraph |
| - | |
| - | - **An irregular flicker on the beacon** — visibly not the dispatch pulse, which is a *travelling* flicker running along the thin signal cable from the panel. GDD §4 makes that travelling pulse the observable the entire attraction rule's fairness rests on, so the Grounder must never be confusable with it, and this is the distinction the presentation has to protect. |
| - | - **A spark on the thick power cable** at the body's position, so the cause has a location. |
| - | - **The forecast marks that branch failing.** One state on an overlay that already carries branch and crowd information. |
| - | - **The body itself is up a cable, off the ground** — the strongest identification in the roster, because no other body is ever there. Under [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) role identity rides on position and silhouette, and this role is almost entirely position. |
| - | |
| - | The warning arrives before the failure, not with it: flicker first, dark second. **How long between is a tuning bound**, and it should be long enough to cross the district and short enough to matter. Unverified. |
| - | |
| - | ## Counterplay, and what each costs |
| - | |
| - | | Counterplay | Cost | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Kill it.** Three hits, and it does not run | It is at the far end of a powered branch, which is exactly where the crowd you parked is standing. The crossing is the cost, at one health per contact from five | |
| - | | **Re-switch the panel.** The other branch lights and the crowd retargets to it | It walks to the new light — which is wherever *you* now are, if you switched to be near your work. The panel's stated price, paid on the enemy's schedule instead of yours | |
| - | | **Plant a portable beacon** near the failing branch's far end | Two rack slots and a battery that runs down. It also happens to decoy [Carriers](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier), which is why the shepherd rack answers two roles with one module | |
| - | | **Take the long way home and accept the spread** | The route, the surge clock, and walking into a spreading crowd's thin edge | |
| - | |
| - | Four counterplays that cost four different things — health, position, slots, time — is the test I would want any pressure source to pass. |
| - | |
| - | ## Machinery and equipment |
| - | |
| - | - **Panel and beacons:** the whole interaction, and the reason the role exists. |
| - | - **Portable beacon:** the clean answer, and the second role (after the Carrier) that makes the shepherd rack worth its two slots. |
| - | - **Coil:** no interaction. A Grounder is up a cable and out of the water, which is deliberate — the coil should not be the answer to everything. |
| - | - **Field pump / valves:** none directly, but a district whose beacons are fed across a channel may let a player cut a run rather than climb to it. That is a district design question and belongs to Campaign. |
| - | - **Insulation:** none. |
| - | |
| - | ## Placement (for Campaign) |
| - | |
| - | - **Placed on cable runs, not counted in a surge.** Its threat is a location and a timer, not a body count, so it should never arrive as part of a wave. |
| - | - One or two per district. Three would make routing feel futile rather than perishable. |
| - | - Place where **the run is defended by the very crowd the run is holding** — that is the shape of the decision, and a Grounder on an undefended cable is a chore rather than a choice. |
| - | - Counts toward the district's limit of three distinct non-Walker roles. |
| - | - **Late campaign only.** A player who has not yet learned what a lit branch does should not first meet the thing that unlights it. |
| - | |
| - | ## Asset note |
| - | |
| - | Readable almost entirely from **position** — a body up a cable, off the ground, where nothing else ever is. If the base body can be posed, this role costs a pose. The new cues it needs are engine-drawn and asset-free: an irregular beacon flicker distinguishable from the travelling dispatch pulse, a spark at the cable, and one failing-branch state on the existing forecast overlay. **No asset has been located, inspected or created**, and no availability is claimed. |
| - | |
| - | ## Open questions |
| - | |
| - | - **Does grounding a run also close the doors on it?** A hatch is on the same circuit as its beacon (GDD §4, the yard's hatch and beacon). My position: **yes** — a grounded run is an unpowered run, and the hatch shuts, which is consistent and is a second consequence the player can predict from a rule they already know. It also means a Grounder can shut a player inside the pump hall, and the hand crank inside is already the stated recovery. |
| - | - **Can it ground the junction circuit, or a run the panel never reaches?** My position: yes, any live run — but placement should keep it off circuits whose failure has no readable consequence. |
| - | - **Does killing it relight the beacon instantly?** My position: yes, instantly, with the beacon returning to steady. A delayed relight would be a third light state to read for no gain. |
| - | - **Does the Flood's fiction support a body that climbs?** A real question for [World](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery), not a rhetorical one: everything else in the roster wades. If the answer is no, the role can be re-sited at the cable's foot, grounding it from the ground, at the cost of its strongest telegraph. **My position: climbing, because position is the cheapest and clearest cue in the roster and I would rather pay for it in fiction than in art.** |
| - | |
| - | ## Reconciliation with DES104 (added in this revision) |
| - | |
| - | The Lead published [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) and the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) while this page was being drafted. Two consequences for this page. **The rule source is now the contract, not GDD §4** — where this page cites the Design Document for a shared rule, cite the contract; the rules are the same and it is the one to cite. **The base role is called Walker there**, and this page's Drifter is the same role; Walker is the surviving name and [the role page is at Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker). The full reconciliation — what held, what conflicts, and the merged roster — is in [Enemies §0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies). |
| hold the flood/enemies/spark.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,79 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — Spark |
| - | |
| - | **CMB101 · r5 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — the rule is settled, in this page's favour.** |
| - | **[Contract r4 §4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) rules the power-only death, final, chosen as this page originally wrote it.** r4 of this page had adopted the contract's *older* stunning-and-shedding row, reading r3 six minutes after the Lead had already abandoned it — the two pages crossed, each following the other into the position the other had just left, and [REV104-15](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) caught it. **r5 reverts to the ruled row.** The argument that won is kept below, because it is the reason and not the ruling. |
| - | Source rules it is built on: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6; shared grammar and the precedence stack: [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). |
| - | [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) |
| - | |
| - | **Name is a functional placeholder.** [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) owns the Flood's identity and fiction. |
| - | |
| - | ## The assumption it deletes |
| - | |
| - | > **"My weapon firing can only help me."** |
| - | |
| - | This is the role that makes the automatic attack a decision. The cutter fires by itself at the nearest organism in reach and, under [R6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), **cannot be withheld**. So while a Spark is in the water you are standing in, and inside your reach, you are not choosing whether to shoot it. You already chose, by standing there. |
| - | |
| - | ## Trigger, action, threat |
| - | |
| - | | | | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Trigger** | Being **killed while standing in water**. Not proximity, not a timer, not a wind-up it performs on its own | |
| - | | **Action** | Precedence line 3 while alive: entirely ordinary, nearest reachable lit beacon, chase within pursuit range. On death in water: **the connected water is energised for two seconds** — **the same window the contract now rules for a coil discharge**, which is tidier than r3's reasoning and means the player learns one number rather than two | |
| - | | **Threat** | The **surveyor**, and only the surveyor. An unprotected surveyor in energised water loses one health per second (GDD §3), so this is two of five, delivered by their own weapon, in water they walked into. Killed on dry ground it does nothing at all | |
| - | | **Hit count** | Three. No more health than anything else | |
| - | | **Conducts?** | Yes, ordinarily. It is stunned by a discharge like anything else, and a stunned Spark is not dead, so it does not discharge | |
| - | | **Charge** | Sheds once like anything else: killing it drops its 1-unit mote if it has not already shed. Its death **discharge** is not a shed and yields nothing of its own | |
| - | | **Effect on other bodies — settled** | **Nothing.** By the intensity rule it **stuns nothing, damages no organism and makes no chain** ([contract r4 §4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction), final). One body's charge is below the bank strength a stun needs. The hazard is to the surveyor alone | |
| - | |
| - | ## Telegraph |
| - | |
| - | Three layers, in the order the player receives them: |
| - | |
| - | 1. **The outline flickers.** Under [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) glow carries only "has charge to shed", so a Spark cannot be signalled by being brighter — it is signalled by *motion in the silhouette*, which reads at crowd density where brightness does not. |
| - | 2. **The cutter's target line** ([R6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)) draws to the body the weapon has selected. Seeing the line snap onto a flickering outline standing in the same water you are standing in is the warning, and it arrives about half a second before the hit lands. |
| - | 3. **A rising whine** as it enters reach. This is the cue I would most like and the one I cannot promise: GDD §14 states sound is not designed. **Recorded as a gap.** Without it, layers 1 and 2 must carry the whole warning, which I believe is enough and cannot claim is enough. |
| - | |
| - | ## Counterplay, and what each costs |
| - | |
| - | | Counterplay | Cost | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Wear insulation** — the module's **existing** job, not a new one: it already protects a surveyor in energised water, whatever energised it | One rack slot, which is a bundle of cargo or a second battery not carried. **Corrected in r3:** r1 called this a second job for insulation, and PM is right that it is the same job | |
| - | | **Kill it from dry ground.** The cutter's reach crosses the channel edge; the discharge energises the water, not the bank | You are not in the channel, so you are not collecting motes and not discharging the coil | |
| - | | **Leave it alive.** Nothing makes a Spark dangerous except killing it | You cannot leave it alive, because the cutter cannot be withheld — so this counterplay is really "do not be within reach of it", which is a movement decision, continuously | |
| - | | Stun the crowd first and collect around the stunned Sparks | A stunned Spark is still alive and still lethal the moment your automatic weapon reaches it | |
| - | |
| - | The third row is the one that makes the role. **The counterplay to a Spark is not an action; it is a position**, held continuously, in a game whose weapon takes the shooting decision away from you. |
| - | |
| - | ## Machinery and equipment |
| - | |
| - | - **Cutter:** the interaction. This role exists so that "the weapon aims itself" has a cost as well as a convenience, which is what the [Cutter page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter) asks Combat to supply. |
| - | - **Insulation:** the same job it always had, applied where the player feels it. The contract makes insulation both the rack's chain-breaker and what lets a surveyor stand in energised water; this role does not add a job to it, it makes the second half of the existing one matter in the field. **Corrected here in r5** — r1 called it a second job, [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) said it is not, and the counterplay table was fixed in r3 while this line was missed. |
| - | - **Coil:** a discharge stuns Sparks with everything else, and the stun does not kill, so a discharge does not set off a chain of them. The two systems do not fight. |
| - | - **Arc. Rewritten in r3.** r1 proposed [R10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat): that an arc chain would travel through the water a dying Spark energised, reaching everything the channel connects. **That is withdrawn** — PMR004 recommends the bounded chain, and its reasoning is better than mine, because a bounded chain keeps a burst a positioning decision rather than a screen-clear. Under the adopted model ([Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc)) the arc never energises water and chains to at most three additional bodies per hit, so a Spark and a burst barely interact: the burst kills Sparks like anything else, and each one it kills in water makes the channel dangerous **to the surveyor** for two seconds. That is still a real interaction — a burst fired from inside a channel with Sparks in it is a burst fired into your own feet — and it needs no new rule. |
| - | - **Field pump:** draining a channel disarms every Spark in it. A cheap, non-obvious counterplay that costs a bundle. |
| - | |
| - | ## Placement (for Campaign) |
| - | |
| - | - **Zero Sparks in a surge entering dry ground.** A Spark that cannot reach water is a [Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker) with a worse silhouette, and placing one is a wasted role slot. This is a hard constraint in the composition budget, not a preference. |
| - | - Arrives in a surge; counts toward the limit of two non-Walker roles per surge. |
| - | - Proportion: around 7% in [Encounter B](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) (10 of 140). Enough that a channel crowd reliably contains some; few enough that a player wading a channel is not in continuous danger. |
| - | - **Not in the opening district's first expeditions.** A player still learning that water is a weapon should not simultaneously learn it is a trap. Middle campaign is the right entry point, and by then insulation is a module they have met. |
| - | |
| - | ## Asset note |
| - | |
| - | A **silhouette edit of the base body**: the same outline with a flicker. The flicker is motion rather than a second sprite. Whether editing a sprite is permitted depends on the individual asset's licence rather than its host's general statement (GDD §14; [Asset Licences](/Reference/Asset%20Licences)). **No asset has been located, inspected, downloaded or created**, and no availability is claimed. The audio cue is a recorded gap, above. |
| - | |
| - | ## Open questions |
| - | |
| - | - **Does a Spark killed in water hurt other organisms? No — settled on the contract.** r1 of this page argued yes, from clause 1, and it was wrong in the way PM identified: an open question cannot be allowed to supply a chain-kill rule by inference. The intensity rule, now [in the contract](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) rather than only proposed here, settles it — energised water is a hazard to the surveyor and nothing to an organism, which is made of charge. The role's job is to turn your own automatic weapon against you, and it does that without damaging anything else. |
| - | - **Does a stunned Spark killed during a stun discharge?** My position: yes. Stun prevents acting, not physics; the body is still full of charge. Flagged because a designer implementing "stunned bodies do nothing" would get this wrong. |
| - | - **Why two seconds?** Because the contract rules two seconds for a coil discharge as well, so there is **one number**, not two. r3 argued for two here against eight for the coil, on the grounds that a body holds one unit and a bank holds ten; that reasoning is no longer needed and the outcome is better. |
| - | - **The argument that won, kept because it is the reason and not the ruling.** A Spark that stunned and shed would be **a free coil**. The coil is two cells plus a full ten-unit bank, and stopping a wet crowd and making it shed is exactly what that buys. A free version would strictly dominate it wherever Campaign places Sparks — and dominate it by an event the player does not choose, because the cutter cannot be withheld ([R6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)). It would also spend the once-per-organism yield without a decision, and that rule is what the whole charge economy rests on. **[Equipment reached the same recommendation independently](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment)**, which is corroboration and not the argument. |
| - | - **Does a Spark killed in water hurt other organisms? Withdrawn in r3: the answer is no.** r1 argued yes, from clause 1, and it was wrong in the way PM identified — an open question cannot be allowed to supply a chain-kill rule by inference. The intensity rule in [Combat Rules §0B](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) settles it: energised water is a hazard to the surveyor and nothing to an organism, which is made of charge. The role's job is to turn your own automatic weapon against you, and it does that without damaging anything else. |
| - | - **Does a stunned Spark killed during a stun discharge?** My position: yes. Stun prevents acting, not physics; the body is still full of charge. Flagged because a designer implementing "stunned bodies do nothing" would get this wrong. |
| - | - **Why two seconds?** Because the contract now rules two seconds for a coil discharge as well, so there is **one number**, not two. r3 argued for two here against eight for the coil, on the grounds that a body holds one unit and a bank holds ten; that reasoning is no longer needed and the outcome is better. |
| - | - **Recorded, because a page that only ever accumulates positions is not arguing.** r4 of this page carried the opposite row for six minutes, believing it was following the contract, and offered a middle option (stuns but does not shed) in case the Lead wanted a crowd effect. The Lead had already ruled, and the middle option was not needed. The withdrawn wording is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark/history). |
| - | |
| - | ## Reconciliation with DES104 (added in this revision) |
| - | |
| - | The Lead published [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) and the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) while this page was being drafted. Two consequences for this page. **The rule source is now the contract, not GDD §4** — where this page cites the Design Document for a shared rule, cite the contract; the rules are the same and it is the one to cite. **The base role is called Walker there**, and this page's Drifter is the same role; Walker is the surviving name and [the role page is at Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker). The full reconciliation — what held, what conflicts, and the merged roster — is in [Enemies §0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies). |
| hold the flood/enemies/walker.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,60 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — Walker |
| - | |
| - | **CMB101 · r3 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.** |
| - | The existing single enemy type, re-specified as a role so the roster has a stated baseline rather than an implied one. **No behaviour is changed here**; everything below is either quoted from the source or marked as a proposal. |
| - | **Renamed in r2: this role was published as *Drifter* an hour earlier.** The Lead's [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) calls the same role **Walker**, and one role with two names is the failure this wiki has already paid for twice (Wiki Conventions §6). Walker was published first and is in the integrated document, so Walker is the name and this page carries it. [Enemies/Drifter](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Drifter) is now a one-line pointer here and should be retired by the editor once nothing links to it. |
| - | Sources: the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c), which is now the page to cite for these rules; [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6 as its derivation; [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) §4 for the name and for Floater, Heavy and Static. Shared grammar: [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). |
| - | [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) |
| - | |
| - | **Names remain the World designer's.** [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) owns the Flood's identity and fiction and may rename this again. |
| - | |
| - | ## What it is |
| - | |
| - | The Flood itself — the mass. It is 85% or more of every surge by the [composition budget](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), and it is the medium the other five roles deform. **It deletes no assumption, because it *is* the assumption:** everything answers the light. |
| - | |
| - | ## Trigger, action, threat |
| - | |
| - | | | | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Trigger** | A dispatch releases it at the intake the panel selected. After entry, any lit beacon it can reach | |
| - | | **Action** | Precedence line 3: walk to the nearest reachable lit beacon, re-evaluated continuously; hold there on arrival; never leave a held beacon for a farther light. With none reachable, line 4: spread along the entry branch, both ways. Within pursuit range of the surveyor, line 1: break off, chase, drift back | |
| - | | **Threat** | Volume. 40 to 140 per surge over half a minute, three surges an expedition, each larger. Contact costs one health of five, with a moment of immunity after | |
| - | | **Hit count** | Three cutter hits, at roughly two hits a second — so a little over a second and a half each, against a surge you cannot out-kill. Adopted, GDD §3 | |
| - | | **Charge** | Killed: drops a 1-unit mote. Stunned in water: sheds its share of one 5-unit large mote per complete ten stunned. **Once per expedition**, then spent and no longer glowing ([R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)) | |
| - | | **Conducts?** | Yes. It is the body the coil, the arc and energised water all act through | |
| - | |
| - | ## Telegraph |
| - | |
| - | The **forecast** is the telegraph, and it is the design's best readability decision: the countdown, the map marker at the next intake, a locked marker for a surge already dispatched, and each entered crowd's current target beacon (GDD §3). [R2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) adds one ring per crowd showing its current extent, so a player can see how much of a branch is full before crossing it. At the dispatch itself the relay's pulse is visible travelling the thin signal cable from the panel to the beacon before it flashes — the observable the whole attraction rule's fairness rests on. |
| - | |
| - | ## Counterplay, and what each costs |
| - | |
| - | | Counterplay | Cost | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | Route it with the panel: light the branch you want it on | **Lighting a branch is what brings it there.** That is the design's central price, and it also decides where the next surge enters | |
| - | | Hold a chokepoint where it comes a few at a time | You are inside pursuit range for as long as you hold, and you are not exploring | |
| - | | Thin an edge with the cutter to shrink a ring and buy road home | Time, and standing in pursuit range. Under R2 the shrink is visible, which is what makes it worth doing | |
| - | | Stun a mass standing in connected water with the coil | A whole battery, and you must be standing in the water you electrify | |
| - | | Spend an arc burst through a packed crowd | A whole battery, ten seconds, and it returns nothing if the crowd has already shed | |
| - | | Walk away | Surge time, which is the expedition's real currency | |
| - | |
| - | ## Machinery and equipment |
| - | |
| - | Everything. The Drifter is what makes the panel a weapon, the beacon a lure, the coil a harvest and the arc a payoff. Its one economic rule — **each organism sheds once** — is what stops the harvest loop becoming a farm and is why the arc is a spend rather than an engine (GDD §6). |
| - | |
| - | ## Placement (for Campaign) |
| - | |
| - | No constraints beyond the budget floor: at least 85% of every surge. A district that wants a harder surge should change **where** the Drifters can go, not how many hits they take ([R8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)). |
| - | |
| - | ## Asset note |
| - | |
| - | The one enemy body. GDD §14 records it as the project's first likely approval request and states the reason honestly: the bioelectric organism proposed is not humanoid, and free packs are unlikely to supply it. **No asset has been located, inspected or created by this role.** Under [R4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) it needs exactly two glow states — unshed and spent — and no tint variants are required by the roster. |
| - | |
| - | ## Open questions |
| - | |
| - | - **Size and tint variants.** GDD §15's minimum scope is "one enemy type with size and tint variants". Under R8 there are no stats for a size variant to change, so a larger Drifter would be decoration. **My position: drop size variants and spend the readability budget on the five role silhouettes instead.** Raised for the Lead; not acted on unilaterally. |
| - | - **Pursuit range as a number.** Unstated in the source and load-bearing for [R1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat): if it is generous, every role reads the same near the player. A tuning bound, not a rule, and unverified. |
| - | |
| - | ## The other roles the Campaign page proposes |
| - | |
| - | [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) §4 proposes three roles alongside this one — **Floater** (rides flow, cannot climb), **Heavy** (blocks a rail or doorway, ten hits, drops a large mote and counts as ten for a stun) and **Static** (drawn to stored charge at short range). They are the Lead's and are owned there; this page does not restate them. How they and the five roles on [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) fit into one roster, including the Static/[Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) collision and the one narrowing I ask for on Heavy, is in [Enemies §0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies). **Corrected in r3:** r2 of this page said all four sit at precedence line 2. They do not, and [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) caught it — this page's own action table puts ordinary Walker attraction at **line 3**. A role sits at line 2 only when its *target* is something other than a beacon. So: **Walker and Heavy at line 3**; **Floater at line 2 while its water flows and line 3 when it stops**; **Static/[Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) at line 2**. The full classification is in [Combat Rules §0.3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). |