Hold the Flood — Floater
CMB101 · r1 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — transferred, not invented. This role is the Lead's. It was proposed on Campaign 34dc09 §3.1 and §4 as part of DES104, and the shared contract r3 §7 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 §3.1 (the Lock Flight) and §4; shared contract r3 §§3, 7; shared grammar: Combat Rules. Enemies · Design Index · Expansion Brief · Glossary
Name is the Lead's placeholder. World and Mystery 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 |
| 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 onto the route home |
| 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 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).
- 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 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 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. 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. No stranding state, 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? Combat's position: yes, if the water carries it, because "cannot climb" is about the body and not about the water. This is the one place where the Lead's two sentences and a lock's actual behaviour might disagree, and it is a district-design question for Campaign as much as a rule.
- 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 warns against. Direction is the design.