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 §§3–5; shared grammar and the precedence stack: Combat Rules. Enemies · Design Index · Expansion Brief · Glossary
Name is a functional placeholder. World and Mystery 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 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 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 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 and the shared-rule contract Power and Attraction r2 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. The full reconciliation — what held, what conflicts, and the merged roster — is in Enemies §0.