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.

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** | 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 Drifter. 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 |

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 | 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.

- **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.

- **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-Drifter 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.

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.

- **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.