Hold the Flood — Drifter
CMB101 · r1 · 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. Source: Design Document r14 ec1b6c §§3–6, and Power and Attraction. Shared grammar: Combat Rules. Enemies · Design Index · Expansion Brief · Glossary
Name is a functional placeholder. World and Mystery owns the Flood's identity and fiction; rename freely.
What it is
The Flood itself — the mass. It is 85% or more of every surge by the composition budget, 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) |
| 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 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).
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 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: if it is generous, every role reads the same near the player. A tuning bound, not a rule, and unverified.