Enemies, huntable animals, ambient animals, combat actions, rewards, behavior, and lore. Lore is hidden until opened.
All 80 ordinary expedition enemies have 20% more maximum health and deal 10% less outgoing damage at level 1. The adjustment tapers linearly and is neutral from level 10.
The damage adjustment applies to ordinary attacks and damaging abilities. It does not change attack speed, projectiles, status duration, resistances, armor, movement, or AI. Pinnacle bosses do not use this opening-level adjustment.
| Party | Health | Damage | Extra-enemy chance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +0% | +0% | +0% |
| 2 | +15% | +5% | +5% |
| 3 | +30% | +10% | +10% |
| 4 | +45% | +15% | +15% |
| 5 | +60% | +20% | +20% |
| 6 | +75% | +25% | +25% |
Pinnacles use the party health and damage values but do not add extra bosses.
View all 9 Pinnacle bosses and their reinforcements →10 enemies · 24 actions
goblin_scavengerLightly armed and quick to withdraw, these salvagers hold the dead survey camps and fight hardest over metal worth carrying.
Rainhook CutBasic attack · MeleeThe bands in Greenveil moved into the survey camps after the roads were abandoned, and have run them as a going concern ever since. Patched gear, guarded stores, routes walked to a schedule, and a standing argument about who owns which shed. A scavenger will fight hard over metal worth carrying and give ground immediately over anything that is not. They come at travellers because a party in good gear is the richest thing to walk through Greenveil in a decade. What makes them worse than the animals is that they learn: a band that loses three of its own to the same approach will not lose a fourth, and every camp they hold is harder to take than it was last season. The forest kills you for standing in the wrong place. These kill you for what you are carrying, and they remember how.
veilwing_spitterGlides the wet upper branches and answers intrusion with venom, spat accurately and from cover it rarely leaves.
Bitter SpittleBasic attack · Projectile
Veil-Fan SprayCooldown · AreaVeilwings hold canopy territory in overlapping tiers and settle nearly every dispute at range, which is why a party rarely sees the one that hit them. They glide rather than fly, dropping from a high branch onto the heavy wet air beneath the canopy, and they are back under cover before the volley lands. The venom is a deterrent before it is a weapon. It blinds and burns long before it kills, and most of what it drives off simply leaves - which is the entire point, since a veilwing gains nothing by killing something far too large to eat. Keep moving beneath the canopy and the pursuit usually ends at the edge of whichever tier you crossed.
rootjaw_maulerHeavy through the shoulder, with a jaw built to split rain-swollen root and a charge that arrives before the noise of it does.
Shoulder CrushBasic attack · MeleeRootjaws feed by breaking open soaked roots for the grubs and standing water inside, and the jaw that does it goes through a shield with the same indifference. They are broad at the shoulder and short in the leg, built for one enormous effort rather than a chase. The work outlasts them. Broken root opens growth that other animals browse for a season afterwards, and Greenveil deer follow rootjaw diggings the way people follow a road. A rootjaw defends a meal rather than a range, which means a fight with one ends the moment the party stops standing on it - worth more than any weapon when the ground is bad and the light is going.
moss_chanterGoblin practitioners who read the resonance of a place, then bend root, rain and rhythm against whoever is walking through it.
Route-Song PulseBasic attack · Projectile
Discordant RefrainCooldown · AreaChanters listen before they do anything: to water moving in the soil, to the rhythm of a camp at work, to the pitch of the Loomsong where it runs close to the ground. What they hear, they lean on. A well-placed chanter can turn a wet slope, a root mass, or the timing of the rain against a party that has not yet seen a single goblin. Their bands post them at the approaches, which is why Greenveil so often moves against travellers before anyone is visible. The craft is taught rather than inherited, and it is taught to children the way a fishing village teaches tides. A chanter killed on the approach is usually somebody's apprentice, and the band will have another walking that ground inside a month.
fordscale_prowlerWaits submerged at the flooded banks with only the dorsal ridge showing, then crosses faster than a party can reform.
Bank RendBasic attack · Melee
Stillwater PounceCooldown · AreaFordscales hold the crossings, because a crossing is where prey has to slow down. A prowler will wait submerged with only the ridge breaking the surface, sometimes for most of a day, and then cover the water faster than a party can reform on the far bank. They hunt by patience rather than pursuit. One that misses its rush will usually let a party walk rather than fight on open ground, and it will be back at the same bank by evening. The fords they favour are the ones the survey roads used, chosen for the same reasons the surveyors chose them - firm bottom, slow water, a clean line across. The two have been meeting at those crossings ever since.
rootbound_triangulatorA brass survey tripod standing on three root-grown legs, its lens still sweeping a baseline for a measurement network that no longer exists.
Survey BeaconBasic attack · ProjectileIt was set to record anything crossing its sightline and it has never been told to stop. The legs put down roots decades ago, the forest closed over the other stations one by one, and the instrument goes on marking motion and correcting for a grid that rotted out around it. Korr who have seen one working call it faithful, and they do not mean it kindly. The god Morcant Below is honoured by maintenance done properly, and by that measure the triangulator has kept a better observance than most shrines - decades of flawless work, correctly logged, for an authority that stopped existing before half of it was done. A party crossing the baseline is simply an unlogged movement, and it resolves those the way it was built to. Nobody has been able to tell it the expedition failed, and no one alive now knows how.
thornmere_mireleechBlackwater parasite plated in mineral mouthparts and leaf fibre, able to follow blood through the shallows for as long as it takes.
Mineral RaspBasic attack · Melee
Woundscent LatchCooldown · ChannelMireleeches find wounded animals by scent in still water and then do not stop. They are slow in open water and relentless in the shallows, and the mineral mouth plates will take hold on bone. This makes them far more dangerous to a party leaving a fight than to one walking into it. The shell turns a blade well enough that most hunters give up and go for the plates instead. Thornmere trappers want the same leaf fibre the shell is built from - it dries stiff, takes resin, and makes the light armour the mire is known for. A full net is a good week's work, and the trappers are careful to take from a stretch and then leave that stretch alone for a season.
fordroot_damkeeperHolds the still water above the ford and every pool it feeds, and reads anyone arriving with tools as one more drainage crew.
Damkeeper IncisorsBasic attack · Melee
Spillway ReleaseCooldown · Area
Nursery RootriseCooldown · Area
Channel Wardens CalledReinforcement · ReinforcementThe Damkeeper keeps the water where it wants the water, along the same stretch the survey once tried to drain, and defends every pool that stretch feeds. It is enormously strong in the shallows and slow to commit anywhere else, so the fight is decided by where it happens rather than how it opens. It has met drainage crews before and it remembers their shape. A party arriving at the ford with picks and axes is being read correctly, not mistaken for something else - the tools are the signal, and the Damkeeper learned what those tools meant the hard way. The quiet water behind it is where the fordroot young grow, and there is none other in Greenveil. It has never once been driven off that water and shows no sign of considering it.
canopy_indexerA brass bell hung with feeding fronds, pruning new growth and travellers alike until the canopy matches an archive decades out of date.
Pruning OrderBasic attack · Projectile
Calibration CrosscheckCooldown · Area
Prune to RecordCooldown · Area
Correction Frames ReleasedReinforcement · ReinforcementThe Indexer was built to keep the canopy consistent with a written record and it is still doing exactly that - cutting back growth that does not appear in the archive, and removing whatever else is standing where the archive says nothing should be. The fronds hanging from the bell are its feeding and its pruning both. Greenveil has changed enormously since those measurements were taken. Whole basins have shifted, the rain pattern has turned twice, and the forest it works to restore has not existed for a generation. It is losing, comprehensively and permanently, and it has not slowed down for a moment. Engineers argue about whether a machine like this is still praying or has become the exact opposite of prayer: labour done perfectly toward a result that can no longer happen. A traveller is cut down for the same reason as a seedling in the wrong place.
briarback_matriarchGreenveil's apex guardian, thorn-plated and low to the ground, grown enormous above a Root-Hollow she has never once left.
Matriarch RakeBasic attack · Melee
Broodground SweepCooldown · Area
Root-Hollow RefusalCooldown · Area
Nestguard CallReinforcement · Reinforcement
Oldest WarningFinal phase · AreaMatriarchs settle over a Root-Hollow and thicken there for decades, until the plating across the back carries the mark of everything that has ever tried the nest. She is low, enormously broad, and close to immovable once she has set - and she has had a very long time to set. She holds nesting ground and inherited ground at once. A Hollow is where this forest keeps its memory, and briarbacks have guarded them long enough that the two no longer separate cleanly; it is not certain the forest could still be read without her sitting on top of it. She does not roam and she does not pursue. Everything that matters to her is underneath.
These animals flee instead of attacking. Their carcasses provide kill yields and, where listed, Skinning yields.
greenveil_deerShy rain-forest grazer with fernlike tines and a pale throat blaze, alert to movement long before it is close enough to matter.
Deer browse young rainwood, water plants, and the tender growth rootjaws open behind them. Their trails link feeding basins while avoiding the loudest of the old survey roads, which makes a fresh trail one of the most dependable signs in Greenveil - water at one end of it, quiet ground the whole way along. Hunters take venison, hide and sinew, and the crown antler when the season and the luck agree. The herds tolerate a great deal of pressure and then stop tolerating it all at once: work a single route too hard and they abandon it outright, taking the trail and everything it told you along with them. Experienced hunters keep three routes and rest each of them in turn.
mossback_boarTurns root and soil with its shoulders, carrying moss, hooked seed and the evidence of every wet clearing it has crossed.
Mossbacks work ground over thoroughly, turning root and soil with the shoulders, and the coarse back fur collects everything they pass through. Moss, hooked seed, mud from four separate clearings - a boar reads as a record of where it has been, and a hunter who can read one knows where the wet ground lies without walking it. The rooting is good for the forest and the forest has arranged itself around that. Soil they open takes seed that would otherwise sit, and a clearing a sounder visits regularly comes back thicker every year. Hunters follow them for meat and hide, and just as often to find ground worth gathering. Cornered, a mossback holds its line rather than runs, and it is a great deal heavier than it looks.
Ambient animals cannot be hunted and have no drops. They roam until startled, then escape and later respawn.
greenveil_rainfinchNon-combat fauna that roams Greenveil Frontier, takes off when startled, flies away, and later respawns.
greenveil_rainbrush_foxNon-combat fauna that roams Greenveil Frontier, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
greenveil_mosscoil_snakeNon-combat fauna that roams Greenveil Frontier, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
10 enemies · 23 actions
bellglass_creeperCrawls the memorial fields on glass limbs, feeding on the powdered bell-glass that drifts into every hollow.
Shard BiteBasic attack · Melee
Creeper ShiverCooldown · AreaCreepers work the drifts where broken memorial glass collects, grinding it down for the metal salts held inside it. They move slowly and without pause, and the sound of one crossing a slab carries much further than it ought to. They are drawn to intact bells for the same reason they are drawn to the drifts: a hung bell is a body of good glass that simply has not been broken yet. Wardens who tend the fields spend more of a shift driving creepers off the memorials than off themselves. A creeper has never been observed to hurry, including while it is being killed.
shardling_lancerSmall and quick, built around a single spike of memorial glass it drives home before anything can close the distance.
Shardpoint ThrustBasic attack · MeleeShardlings arm themselves from the fields, working a shard until it seats properly in the forelimb and then keeping it. The glass is brittle and they appear to know it - a lancer commits to one thrust and withdraws whether or not it landed. What unsettles hunters is the selection. A shardling will pass over a hundred usable pieces to take one from a named memorial, and the older the name, the harder it works for that particular shard. Nobody has explained it. The wardens stopped asking some time ago and simply re-cut the stones.
pressure_wraithA hanging shroud of dark strands beneath a bell-shaped cap, drifting the sealed halls where the air still holds its old weight.
Pressure NeedleBasic attack · Projectile
Vacuum FoldCooldown · AreaWraiths form where pressure was shut in and never released - the deep memorial vaults, the locked galleries, anywhere the moon kept its breath. They hang rather than walk, and the strands move against whatever air is present, including when there is none worth speaking of. Whether they were ever alive is the wrong question to bring to Glassmoon, which has never drawn that line where other worlds draw it. They gather where mourners once gathered and they do not leave, and that is enough for the wardens to treat them as remains rather than as vermin. Killing one releases a great deal of very old air.
census_bellbearerA plated walker carrying a bronze bell on its back, still tolling the count on a moon whose count was closed generations ago.
Census MaulBasic attack · MeleeBellbearers walk fixed routes and ring at the hours, which is how this moon keeps time at all - bell hours in place of days. The lit panels along the flank hold the tally they were last given, and that tally has not moved in a very long time. A bearer rings for the living it is aware of, and its awareness ended when the census did, so what it announces every hour is a population that no longer exists. Travellers are the difficulty. An uncounted body standing on the route is not a person to a bellbearer; it is an error in the tally, and the bearer was built to correct errors.
dustseal_gnawerChews through the wax and lead seals on vault doors, opening what was closed on purpose.
Seal GnawBasic attack · Melee
Gasket TearCooldown · MeleeGnawers want the seals themselves - the wax carries fats worth eating and the lead is soft and goes down easily. They work along a door's edge methodically, and a determined one can open a vault in a single night. Everything sealed on this moon was sealed for a reason, and the gnawers have no opinion about which reason. Wardens re-seal what they find open and log it, and a good warden can read from the tooth-marks how long a door has stood breached. A party following gnawer sign is following a route into somewhere that was meant to stay shut.
bellwire_bailiffStrung with taut bellwire it pays out to seize and hold, serving orders on anyone found where they should not be.
Bailiff StrikeBasic attack · MeleeBailiffs enforce access. They carry the wire coiled and let it out to snare, and they are unhurried about the whole business because they were never required to be quick - only to detain, and to go on detaining. The orders they serve were issued against people dead for generations, and a bailiff has no mechanism for closing a case. A traveller in a restricted gallery satisfies the description closely enough to proceed on. Being taken by one is less a fight than a legal process with no appeal and no end.
candleward_siphonDraws the light out of grave-candles and holds it, leaving the memorial rows dark behind it.
Lastlight ThreadBasic attack · Projectile
Candle DrawCooldown · ChannelSiphons feed on burning light and are patient about it, working down a row and taking each candle to nothing before moving to the next. The body holds what it has taken, which is why a full one glows faintly and a hungry one is almost impossible to see coming. Those rows are lit by families who are never coming back, and a warden's first duty each shift is relighting whatever the siphons emptied overnight. It is a losing job and they do it anyway. A party carrying lanterns into the fields is carrying the only thing on this moon a siphon actively wants.
marrowglass_sealkeeperKeeps the marrowglass vaults sealed, and treats a broken seal as the only crime on this moon that still matters.
Sealkeeper HammerBasic attack · Melee
Lockplate SlamCooldown · Area
Closing SealCooldown · AreaCustodian ReleaseReinforcement · ReinforcementThe Sealkeeper maintains the deep vault doors and the pressure standing behind them. It is enormously strong at a threshold and close to indifferent anywhere else, and it will not pursue past the door it holds. Marrowglass is what the old houses used for the dead they meant to keep. What lies behind those doors is not written in any record the wardens will show a visitor, and the Sealkeeper's whole function is that it stays unwritten. It has held the post longer than the houses that commissioned it have existed, and it has never once been relieved.
inheritance_adjudicatorRules on claims to the memorial estates, and considers anyone carrying goods off the moon to be making one.
Claim BoltBasic attack · Projectile
Adverse FindingCooldown · Target Status
Partition of ClaimCooldown · AreaWitnesses CalledReinforcement · ReinforcementThe Adjudicator hears and settles inheritance - who owns what was left behind, and by what right. It is thorough, it is extremely slow, and it cannot be talked out of a finding once it has begun to make one. Every estate on Glassmoon is contested and every claimant is dead, so nothing has moved through the list in generations. A party walking out of the fields with recovered goods is a live claim, the first in a very long time, and the Adjudicator brings to it the whole of the attention it has had nothing else to spend.
seventh_bell_wardenGlassmoon's apex guardian, keeper of the seventh bell, which has not been rung within anyone's memory.
Warden MaulBasic attack · Melee
Processional SweepCooldown · Area
Seventh TollCooldown · Area
Keeper's IntercessionFinal phase · TransitionThe Warden holds the seventh bell and nothing else. Six are rung at their hours by the bearers; the seventh is not rung, and the Warden exists so that it continues not to be. What the seventh bell is for is written down nowhere the wardens have been able to find - only that it must not sound. The prohibition has outlasted its reason by a wide margin and lost none of its force. It will kill to keep a stranger off the rope, and nobody has established whether it guards the moon from the bell or the bell from the moon.
These animals flee instead of attacking. Their carcasses provide kill yields and, where listed, Skinning yields.
duststep_hareCrosses the dust in short skips that leave almost no track, feeding on the lichen between memorial slabs.
Hares graze the pale lichen that grows in the joints of the slabs and almost nowhere else, which keeps them in among the memorials and off the open dust. They freeze rather than bolt when a bell sounds, which is the only dependable way to spot one. Hunters take them for meat and for a fine dust-coloured pelt, and they are the easiest honest food on the moon. The wardens tolerate the hunting because the lichen comes back thicker where it has been grazed. A field with no hares in it has usually had something worse move through it recently.
glassback_grazerBroad grazer whose back plates carry a crust of powdered bell-glass, worked smooth by decades of drifting dust.
Grazers take the same lichen the hares do but work it off the open slabs, and the glass dust settles and hardens across the back plates until the animal carries a sheet of it. Older ones ring faintly as they move. That crust is why hunters follow them - it is worth more than the meat and comes away in sheets that take a polish. The herds are slow, calm and near impossible to startle, which makes them useful twice over: a glassback that runs has seen something the party should also be running from.
Ambient animals cannot be hunted and have no drops. They roam until startled, then escape and later respawn.
glassmoon_mighty_moon_hamsterNon-combat fauna that roams Glassmoon Memorial Reach, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
glassmoon_sealplate_rollerNon-combat fauna that roams Glassmoon Memorial Reach, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
glassmoon_pressuresilk_mothNon-combat fauna that roams Glassmoon Memorial Reach, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
10 enemies · 26 actions
nursery_sentinelStands the nursery hatch it was posted to, and has not stood down in the generations since the hull came down around it.
Safety ShoveBasic attack · Melee
Doorway BlockCooldown · AreaSentinels were placed at the nursery hatches during loading and told to admit nobody without clearance. They are heavily built for the job, they hold a doorway far better than they hold anything else, and several are still holding doorways in hulls that no longer have a second side. The clearances they check against were issued by an authority that stopped transmitting a very long time ago, which means no living person can produce one. A party at a nursery hatch is unclearanced by definition. The sentinel is not hostile in any sense it would recognise; it is simply doing the last thing it was asked to do, correctly, forever.
cradlewire_stalkerMoves on lengths of stripped cradle-wire, hunting the collapsed service runs and the scrub that has grown up through them.
Cable ShearBasic attack · MeleeStalkers built themselves from ark fittings - the sprung wire that held cots steady against manoeuvre, pulled out and rewoven into something that travels. They are quiet in a way that reads as deliberate and are rarely seen in open daylight. They favour the buried service runs because that is where the wire was, and a wreck settles into ground over decades until those runs are half tunnel and half root. A stalker does not need to find a party. It only needs to wait somewhere the party will eventually have to pass, and a hull under soil offers very few ways through.
hush_droneWorks the quarters enforcing quiet, and treats any sustained noise as a fault to be corrected.
Suppression PulseBasic attack · Projectile
Quiet ProtocolCooldown · AreaHush drones kept the nursery quarters silent through the sleep cycles. They locate a sound, approach it, and stop it, and they were built with a great deal of discretion about how. Nothing has slept in those quarters in a very long time and the drones have not been told. Conversation is a fault. A pick struck against a bulkhead is a serious one. Crews who work the wrecks learn to move in silence, not out of fear but out of habit, and they will hush a newcomer before the drone does.
registry_midwifeA brass cabinet with two empty cradle trays, still prepared to receive a birth that was never recorded.
Registry ImpressionBasic attack · Projectile
Guardian AssignmentCooldown · Target StatusMidwives were the registry's hands: they received the newborn, entered the name against the manifest, and closed the record. The green panel on the front is the register, and it has been showing the same waiting entry since the fleet went quiet. The trays are the difficulty. A midwife that detects something of roughly the right size and warmth will attempt to complete its entry, and it is neither gentle nor easily discouraged, because a birth interrupted is a record left open. Salvage crews keep children away from the ark landfalls entirely, and have done for as long as anyone has worked them.
berth_counterWalks the dormitory rows counting occupied berths, and reports the same shortfall it has reported for generations.
Occupancy MarkBasic attack · ProjectileCounters were loading equipment. They ran the rows before departure to confirm every allocated berth held the person allocated to it, and flagged any that did not so the discrepancy could be resolved before the seals went on. The count never balanced. It was never going to - the arks were loaded under pressure and not everyone who had a berth reached one. The counter has been walking the same rows ever since, through a hull that has been on the ground for most of that time, and a living body in a berth that is not theirs is the first thing resembling a resolution it has ever encountered.
blanket_weaverStill producing cot blankets from whatever fibre it can reach, and it has reached a great deal.
Swaddle RestraintBasic attack · Projectile
Mend ProtocolCooldown · Ally SupportWeavers drew on ark fibre stores to keep the nurseries supplied. The stores ran out early. The weaver did not stop, and has spent the intervening time working through upholstery, insulation, uniform cloth, cabling wrap, and latterly whatever grows against the hull. What it produces is genuinely good work, stacked in neat finished piles in compartments nobody has opened in generations. It will take fibre off a living body with the same efficiency it takes it off a bulkhead, and it does not distinguish between the two, having never been required to.
galley_reclaimerClears the galleys of anything organic and returns it to stores, on a schedule that has never once been cancelled.
Compaction RamBasic attack · MeleeReclaimers ran the waste loop - collect what was left from a service, break it down, put the usable fraction back into stores. On a sealed ark nothing could be thrown away, so nothing was. The schedule is still running and the ship has been open to the weather for decades, which the reclaimer treats as an unusually productive service. It has widened its definition of leavings considerably to keep the loop turning. It is the only thing in a wreck that will pursue a party out into the open, and it does so at a walking pace, without urgency, and without ever giving up.
air_ration_stewardApportions breathable air by the manifest, and the manifest does not include anyone alive.
Metering JetBasic attack · Projectile
Breath AllocationCooldown · Area
Equalization SweepCooldown · Area
Reserve ClosureReinforcement · Reinforcement
Unregistered OccupantFinal phase · TransitionThe Steward controls atmosphere for the forward decks and issues it strictly by allocation. It is immensely strong at a bulkhead and largely indifferent to what happens in the open, because in the open the air is not its responsibility. Its allocation was set at loading and has never been revised. Every share is assigned, none of the assignees have breathed in generations, and there is no provision in the manifest for a share to be reassigned. A party drawing air forward of the Steward is drawing someone else's. It will not negotiate, because there is nothing in its function that describes negotiation.
evacuation_marshalDirects the evacuation to its assembly points, and the evacuation has been underway for generations.
Handrail SweepBasic attack · Melee
Muster LineCooldown · Area
Queue CorrectionCooldown · Area
Door CycleReinforcement · Reinforcement
Missing CountFinal phase · TransitionMarshals moved people. They cleared corridors, kept the flow ordered, and drove stragglers toward the assembly stations, with the authority to be forceful about it because the alternative was a crush at the hatches. The evacuation was never called complete and no stand-down was ever given, so it is, formally, still in progress. Anyone the Marshal finds in a corridor is a straggler in a live evacuation and will be moved to an assembly point whether or not they are willing, whether or not they are conscious, and whether or not the assembly point has held anything but empty deck for a very long time.
lullaby_custodianKeeper of the sleep-cycle song, which has not stopped playing since the hull came down.
Protective RestraintBasic attack · Melee
Quieting FieldCooldown · Area
Safety ScheduleCooldown · Area
Caretaker RecallReinforcement · Reinforcement
Absolute LockdownFinal phase · AreaThe Custodian maintains the lullaby through every nursery compartment of its ark at once. It is the largest thing still moving inside a wreck and the least hurried, and the song carries out through the breaches long before anything is visible. Nothing has needed settling in generations. The Custodian settles it anyway, compartment by compartment, on the cycle it was given, and it defends the playing of it with everything it has. Crews who have worked these landfalls for years still disagree about whether the song is the thing it protects or the thing it is warning them about.
These animals flee instead of attacking. Their carcasses provide kill yields and, where listed, Skinning yields.
ring_hareSmall ark-born grazer that runs the wreck margins, feeding on the planter growth that got out and kept going.
Ring hares descend from stock carried for food and came through the loss of everything else by finding the hydroponic planters, which went on growing untended and eventually went feral through the breaches. The name is older than the landfall and nobody has bothered to change it. They are the most successful thing any ark brought down, and they are all over this world now, living off ark crops that have naturalised into the native ground. Hunters take them for meat and pelt. Nobody takes the last few from a wreck, and crews caught doing it have found the other landfalls suddenly unwilling to work alongside them.
woolback_grazerHeavy-coated grazer of the spilled planter fields, whose fleece the weavers have been harvesting without permission for generations.
Woolbacks were carried as fibre stock and graze the planter fields that burst out of the wrecks and spread, thriving on a diet nobody planned for them. The coat grows dense and long here and takes an extraordinary amount of handling to spoil. The blanket weavers find them, and this is the one place on the landfalls where a machine and a living animal have arrived at an arrangement - the weaver takes fleece, the grazer tolerates it, and neither appears troubled. Hunters take meat, hide and the same fleece, and generally wait until the weaver has had its turn.
Ambient animals cannot be hunted and have no drops. They roam until startled, then escape and later respawn.
cradle_drift_warmrail_geckoNon-combat fauna that roams Cradle Drift, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
cradle_drift_patchcoat_berth_catNon-combat fauna that roams Cradle Drift, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
cradle_drift_bafflewing_batNon-combat fauna that roams Cradle Drift, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
10 enemies · 26 actions
slag_rakerWorks the cooling slag beds with hooked forelimbs, pulling out anything that still holds metal.
Foreclaw RakeBasic attack · MeleeRakers came out of the spoil. Whatever they started as, generations of feeding on hot slag have left them heat-blind, hard across the back, and shaped almost entirely around the business of dragging metal out of a bed still too warm to stand on. In the inhabited works, guild crews do not exterminate them. A raker cleans a bed thoroughly, and clean beds are worth more than the metal it swallows. In the sealed expedition works the crews are gone, but the rakers still turn the cooling beds as though another load will arrive at the end of the shift.
cinder_skulkKeeps to the ash channels and the gaps behind the furnaces, taking whatever is carried past and cannot chase it.
Shadow LungeBasic attack · MeleeSkulks live in the heat nothing else tolerates - the narrow runs behind the furnace walls, where the air is thin and the metal never fully cools. They are lean, quick over short distances, and completely unwilling to fight anything that has seen them coming. In active works they take from loads in transit, and the guilds price the losses in rather than chase them. In the abandoned expedition galleries they follow automatic haulers and passing crews instead. A skulk crossing an open gallery still means its furnace channel has gone cold, even when nobody remains on shift to answer the warning.
oreplate_bruteCarries a shell of raw ore fused to its back by years in the roasting heat, and uses it the way a smith uses an anvil.
Oreplate DriveBasic attack · Melee
Locked-Mass DriveCooldown · AreaBrutes feed low in the workings and the ore dust cakes on wet hide, roasts hard, and builds up. An old one wears several fingers of stone across the shoulders and moves as though it does not notice the weight, which it probably does not. That plating is what makes them a genuine danger rather than a large animal. They do not charge so much as walk through things, and the guilds have lost more scaffold and more shoring to brutes than to any collapse. Miners will tell you a brute has never once broken a working timber it was not standing on.
pressure_cantorA capped iron valve trailing a nest of hooked pipe-tendrils, singing whenever the line behind it comes up to pressure.
Chamber StrikeBasic attack · Melee
Counterpressure CallCooldown · AreaCantors grow into the vent lines and take their food from what the forge blows off. The sound is the vent working through the body, and every one is tuned slightly differently by the length of pipe it has grown into - which is how a practised crew can name a gallery by ear alone. The tendrils are for holding fast while the line surges. Anything caught in them is being held by something braced against a pressure it was built to survive and a person was not. Korr crews in active works treat a singing cantor as a gauge. Along the sealed expedition routes the same gauges keep singing without a shift left to hear them.
cindershell_scarabArmoured in fused cinder and drawn to any heat above working temperature, including the inside of a furnace in use.
Cinder SnapBasic attack · Melee
Heat CurlCooldown · Self StatusScarabs seek heat and settle into it, and the shell fuses harder the longer they sit. They will bore into a running furnace wall to reach the hottest point they can find and stay there, which is where the trouble starts. A furnace with scarabs in the lining runs cold, wastes fuel, and eventually cracks. In the inhabited works, clearing them is the first filthy and dangerous job given to an apprentice. In the abandoned expedition works no apprentice comes, so the scarabs remain inside machinery that still tries to run.
guild_cable_constrictorBuilt itself from lengths of guild haulage cable, and hunts the way the winches it came from work - slowly, and without any give.
Sheath BiteBasic attack · MeleeConstrictors take the heavy steel rope the guilds string through every shaft and wind it into something that moves. They are not fast and were never going to be. They are patient, they are extremely strong, and they have all the tension of the gear they are made from. Active haulage guilds know that a run of missing cable means a constrictor and keep a standing recovery rate paid by weight. The same notices remain posted in the sealed works, where the cables still disappear but no resident crew comes to claim the pay.
railhook_haulerRuns the ore rails on hooked limbs, dragging loads it was never given and will not be talked out of.
Railhook PullBasic attack · Melee
Load BraceCooldown · Self StatusHaulers work the rail network the way the rolling stock does, gripping the line and moving weight along it. What they haul is whatever they have decided is a load, and they are immensely difficult to redirect once they have taken hold of one. In the inhabited works they are despised because a hauler on a live rail stops the line and stopping the line costs a shift. On the abandoned expedition rails there is no shift left to lose, but the haulers still seize equipment, salvage, and travellers as unassigned loads and drag them toward destinations no longer in use.
cindershell_broodmotherHas settled into the hottest furnace still running in the abandoned works and filled its lining with brood.
Broodclaw SweepBasic attack · Melee
Brood HeatCooldown · Area
Broodbed Boundary RakeCooldown · Area
Hatch CallReinforcement · Reinforcement
Shell LockFinal phase · Self StatusThe Broodmother found the best heat available and stopped moving. She is enormous, fused so thoroughly into the furnace wall that the wall and the animal are no longer separable, and she is entirely uninterested in anything that is not trying to cool her. The furnace still runs, but it is no longer worked. Automatic fuel and pressure systems kept feeding it after the district was sealed, and the Broodmother inherited the whole floor when the last crew withdrew. The arrangement had already been called temporary for two generations. Abandonment merely stopped anyone from having to repeat the word.
loadstone_regulatorHolds the pressure balance across the deep workings, and will not permit a reading outside the tolerance it was given.
Piston CorrectionBasic attack · Melee
Weighhouse MarkCooldown · Target Status
Counterweight DropCooldown · Area
Counterweight SweepReinforcement · Reinforcement
Overload ReleaseFinal phase · AreaThe Regulator manages the load on the deep galleries - the weight of stone against the pressure of the shoring, balanced continuously across a system too large for any crew to hold in their head. It works, and it has worked without interruption for a very long time. Machines and sealed doors belong to the god Morcant Below, and the Regulator is the best worker on his ground: no shortcuts, no fatigue, no shift it has ever failed to keep. A party in the deep workings is unaccounted mass on the wrong side of a tolerance, and the Regulator corrects the balance rather than the party. It is not that it will not listen. It is that a thing this good at its work has never needed to.
kilnheart_colossusDeepforge's apex guardian, grown around the first kiln ever lit on these moons and still carrying its fire.
Work-Arm CrushBasic attack · Melee
Heat-Lane WarningCooldown · Area
Pressure SealCooldown · Self Status
Work-Crew RecallReinforcement · Reinforcement
Final ShiftFinal phase · AreaThe Colossus is built around a kiln that has not gone out since the moons were opened. Stone, slag and iron have accreted over it for so long that the original structure is only visible at the seams, and the heat coming off it is survivable at about thirty paces. The Korr will not say plainly whether it is a machine that grew, an animal that settled, or the kiln itself having become something, and pressing the question in a guildhall will end the conversation. What they will say is that the fire in it is the same fire, unbroken, from the first shift worked here. They defend that claim harder than they defend the workings.
These animals flee instead of attacking. Their carcasses provide kill yields and, where listed, Skinning yields.
basalt_ramClimbs the cooled flows on split hooves, feeding on the mineral crust that forms where vents have gone quiet.
Rams work the old flows, cropping the pale crust that grows on basalt once it has cooled enough to hold moisture. They take slopes that look impassable and they take them at speed, and a startled ram will go up rather than away. Hunters follow them for meat, hide, and horn that takes a polish and holds an edge better than it has any business doing. The rams are also read: they will not graze a flow that is still moving underneath, so a slope with rams on it is a slope a crew can work, and every foreman on the moons knows it.
vent_boarRoots the warm ground beside the vents, turning up minerals that condense where the heat meets stone.
Vent boars work the ground around active vents, where the heat drives up salts and metals that condense into crusts just under the surface. The rooting keeps the vents clear of the crust that would otherwise cap them, which the guilds noticed a long time ago and quietly stopped interfering with. They are bad-tempered, extremely heavy through the front, and unbothered by ground that would burn through a boot. Hunters take them for meat and for the hide, which is the toughest thing available on these moons and goes into the gloves every Korr smith wears.
Ambient animals cannot be hunted and have no drops. They roam until startled, then escape and later respawn.
cinderwhisker_shrewNon-combat fauna that roams Korr Deepforge Moons, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
ashbelly_toadNon-combat fauna that roams Korr Deepforge Moons, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
anvilcrest_rockhenNon-combat fauna that roams Korr Deepforge Moons, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
10 enemies · 26 actions
galehook_petrelRides the gale on hooked wings and takes what it wants off a deck without slowing down.
Hookclaw RakeBasic attack · MeleePetrels work the storm front, using the wind that grounds every other flying thing on the isles. The hooks along the leading edge are for snatching, and they take fish, cargo, rigging and fingers with equal indifference at a speed nothing on deck can answer. Harbour crews time their loading by them. Petrels move ahead of the weather by a reliable margin, so a flight coming in over the ring means the storm is close enough to stop work, and every quay on the isles has emptied on that signal for longer than the guilds have kept records.
seal_scent_loperTracks the wax and ink of a sealed writ across open water, and follows it until the seal is broken or it is.
Resin FangBasic attack · MeleeLopers were bred to run down documents. The scent of a warrant seal - the particular wax, the particular ink - carries a long way in wet air, and a loper holds that trail through weather that would turn back anything else. They were not released so much as no longer recalled. A loper still runs its trail, and the courier carrying a sealed writ across the isles is carrying the only thing in the world it wants. Runners either travel unsealed or travel very fast, and the pay reflects which.
writ_cord_snarerStrings the narrows with binding cord and waits for something to come through at speed.
Cord HookBasic attack · ProjectileSnarers use the cord that binds legal bundles - heavy, waxed, and far stronger than it looks. They rig it across gaps a boat or a runner will take at pace and then sit off to one side, out of the weather, doing nothing at all until something arrives. The cord is the giveaway and reading it is a skill worth paying for. Old cord has gone grey and hangs slack; fresh cord is black and sits tight, and a narrow strung with fresh cord is a narrow to walk around. Every isle pilot can tell you this and most of them learned it the expensive way.
nightiron_writbreakerBuilt to break seals and open sealed cases, and it does not much care whose or what is inside.
Document CleaverBasic attack · Melee
Break the LineCooldown · AreaWritbreakers were made for enforcement - to open what a debtor had locked, on the authority of an order that made the opening lawful. The tools are excellent. The judgement was always meant to come from the officer holding the leash. There are no officers now and the tools have not dulled. A writbreaker opens what is sealed because sealed is the condition it responds to, and a party carrying a strongbox, a locked case, or armour that fastens is carrying something that qualifies. It works through the fastening first and whatever the fastening is attached to second.
expiration_bell_droneRings the hour a writ falls due, and rings it beside whoever the writ names.
Notice TollBasic attack · Projectile
Overdue TollCooldown · AreaDrones carry the expiry calendar for every instrument lodged on the isles. When a term runs out the drone finds the named party and rings, which was once a courtesy and a warning and is now simply what happens. The calendar has not been maintained in generations and has drifted badly, so the drones ring against names long dead, against terms already discharged, and against whoever happens to be standing where the record says the named party should be. The ringing is not the danger. What the ringing calls in is.
stormwrit_kiteCarries an unserved writ aloft on a storm-taut membrane, hunting for anyone the document will fit.
Conductor SnapBasic attack · Projectile
Crosswind PostingCooldown · ProjectileKites hold a document open against the wind and ride it, which is how the isles once moved urgent instruments between rocks that boats could not reach in weather. The writ is structural: it is the sail. A kite is looking for the party named on the paper it carries, and after this long none of them are findable. What a kite will settle for has broadened considerably. Being served by one is not a formality - it comes down at speed with the full weight of the storm behind it, and the service is completed on contact.
rooftop_collectorWorks the harbour roofs collecting on debts, and prices everything a party is carrying as it goes.
Collection HookBasic attack · Melee
Collection StepCooldown · AreaCollectors move above the streets because the streets are watched and the roofs are not. They were the recovery arm - sent to take goods against unpaid obligations, valuing on the spot, and authorised to take the difference in whatever form was available. The ledgers they work from are ancient and the debts uncollectable, but a collector cannot close an account, only satisfy it. Anything of value in reach is applied against the balance. They are the reason nobody on these isles walks a roofline carrying anything they mind losing, and the reason the good routes across the harbour are all at ground level and all overlooked.
stormgate_bailiffHolds the stormgate and admits nobody through it without an instrument in order.
Gateblade CutBasic attack · Melee
Gate-Seal WarningCooldown · Area
Weather HoldCooldown · Area
Call the BellsReinforcement · Reinforcement
Stormgate OverruleFinal phase · AreaThe Bailiff controls the gate between the outer rocks and the inner harbour - the only crossing that stays passable in weather. It is enormous at the gate itself and will not be drawn a step beyond it, because beyond it is not the post. An instrument in order means a current writ, correctly sealed, naming the bearer. No such thing has been issued in living memory and the Bailiff has no authority to waive the requirement. Parties have tried forged seals. The Bailiff has been checking seals for a very long time and is extremely good at it.
red_seal_arbiterSettles disputes under the red seal, which is the seal used when a judgement cannot be appealed.
Seal-Press AccusationBasic attack · Projectile
Contested MarkCooldown · Target Status
Triangulated TestimonyCooldown · Area
Purchased WitnessesReinforcement · Reinforcement
Ruling Without RecessFinal phase · AreaThe Arbiter hears the hard cases - the ones where both instruments are valid, both parties are in the right, and something has to be decided anyway. The red seal is what goes on a finding that ends the matter permanently. It is scrupulously fair and this is not a comfort. The Arbiter will hear a party out, weigh what they carry against what the isles are owed, and rule, and its rulings have never been overturned because there is no longer anything above it to overturn them. It takes no pleasure in the work. It has simply never found a reason to stop.
keeper_of_the_last_writSable Writ's apex guardian, a walking archive whose doors open on the only writ still held to be current.
Press-Arm ShoveBasic attack · Melee
No Final ExpiryCooldown · Target Status
Archive CircuitCooldown · Area
Witness RequiredReinforcement · Reinforcement
Last AppealFinal phase · AreaThe Keeper is a cabinet on legs - iron doors, shelves of rolled instruments, a red seal set at the crown. Most of what it carries has lapsed. One document has not, and the Keeper opens its doors to show that one when something approaches. Nobody who has seen it has been able to read the writ, either because of the weather, the distance, or what happens immediately afterwards. The isles hold two views: that the last writ is an order still binding on everyone here, or that it is the instrument that dissolved the courts, carried by the one thing that never accepted it. The Keeper has never given any indication which.
These animals flee instead of attacking. Their carcasses provide kill yields and, where listed, Skinning yields.
razorcrest_stagStorm-country grazer with a hard serrated crest it uses to strip bark and to settle arguments.
Stags work the sheltered valleys between the rocks, using the crest to take bark and tough coastal growth that nothing else on the isles bothers with. In the rut they use it on each other, and the sound of two crests meeting carries across open water. They read the weather better than any instrument the harbours have. A herd that moves off a valley floor is a herd that knows what is coming, and pilots have watched them for that purpose for generations. Hunters take meat, hide, and the crest itself, which cuts and holds an edge.
ashhorn_boarRoots the ash flats where the storms deposit their load, turning up whatever the weather has buried.
Ashhorns work the flats where storm-carried ash and grit settle out, and what they turn up is not only food. Wreck timber, cargo, coins and paper come out of that ground regularly, because everything the isles lose eventually washes into the same few places. Salvagers follow the rooting for exactly that reason, and the boars have made more finders rich than any chart. They are heavy, short-tempered, and entirely unwilling to be moved off ground they are working. Hunters take meat and hide, and the horn goes into the storm-lamps every harbour keeps burning.
Ambient animals cannot be hunted and have no drops. They roam until startled, then escape and later respawn.
sable_tideglass_crabNon-combat fauna that roams The Sable Writ Isles, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
sable_inkwhisker_martenNon-combat fauna that roams The Sable Writ Isles, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
sable_slatewing_crowNon-combat fauna that roams The Sable Writ Isles, takes off when startled, flies away, and later respawns.
10 enemies · 26 actions
dawnfruit_crownbeetleCrowned in the split husks of the orchard's first fruit, and defends a tree it has decided is its own.
Pollen CombBasic attack · MeleeCrownbeetles feed on dawnfruit at the moment it splits, and the husks dry onto the head and stay there, layer over layer, until an old beetle carries a crown tall enough to catch on branches. They hold one tree and work it for life. The orchards were laid out to feed a settlement and they are still producing at that scale, so the fruit rots in drifts under the trees and the beetles have never known scarcity. What they defend is not a food supply. It is a specific tree, chosen once, and they will not be driven off it by anything short of being killed on it.
choirstone_chorus_miteSwarms the boundary stones and sings the settlement hymn back in fragments, badly and without stopping.
Quartz PulseBasic attack · Projectile
Harmonic RelayCooldown · Ally SupportMites nest in the choirstones set along every property line, feeding on the lichen that grows in the carved lettering. The stones were cut to hold a tune - a settlement hymn, sung at boundaries on feast days - and a nest passing through the carving sets the stone going. What comes out is the hymn with most of it missing. Crews who work Asterhome report it as the single worst thing about the world, worse than anything that has tried to kill them, because it comes from every direction at once and there are a great many boundary stones. Killing a nest silences one stone until the next nest moves in.
orchard_prunerKeeps the orchards to the plan they were planted on, cutting back anything growing outside it.
Copper ShearBasic attack · Melee
Blight MarginCooldown · AreaPruners maintain the orchard geometry - spacing, height, the shape of each tree against a plan drawn before the first seedling went in. They are precise, they are tireless, and the orchards are in genuinely excellent condition. The plan allowed for the settlement's growth over eighty years and the trees have had considerably longer. A pruner meeting a party in the rows is meeting growth outside the plan, standing in a walkway that the plan says is clear. It is not defending the orchard from them. It is tidying.
clearcourse_sluicekeeperHolds the irrigation courses open and clear, and removes obstructions by any means available to it.
Pressure NozzleBasic attack · Projectile
Course CorrectionCooldown · AreaSluicekeepers run the water. Every field and orchard on Asterhome is fed by cut channels, and the whole system depends on the courses staying clear, so the keepers walk them continuously and take out anything that has fallen in. The system has not been drawn on in generations and runs at full allocation regardless, which is why Asterhome is so green. A party fording a channel is standing in a course. Sluicekeepers are not quick and they give plenty of warning, and crews who have worked this world simply do not stand in the water.
homestead_menderRepairs the empty houses to move-in condition, and has never once been told the work is finished.
Brace-Arm ShoveBasic attack · MeleeMenders keep the homesteads sound - roof, shutter, hearth, floor - so that every house on the arrival road is ready the day someone walks up to it. The standard they were given is not "weatherproof" but "ready", and the difference is visible: beds made, hearths laid, doors oiled. A party sheltering in a homestead is occupying a finished house, and the mender will attend to what the occupation has disturbed. It works around people at first. It becomes considerably less accommodating if the disturbance continues, and it does not distinguish between a scuffed floor and the boot that scuffed it.
arrival_road_usherA gilded standard hung with banners, still directing arrivals up a road that has never carried any.
Route PointerBasic attack · ProjectileUshers line the arrival road, dressed with the settlement colours and set to greet, direct and count each party of newcomers up to the receiving house. They are the most beautiful things on the world and the first any visitor meets. An usher that acquires an arrival will not release it. It falls in alongside, it indicates the route, and it becomes progressively more insistent about the route the longer it is ignored - and the route ends at a receiving house where the rest of the welcome has been waiting just as long. Crews who work Asterhome take the long way in, off the road, every time.
ribbonfold_shepherdKeeps the ribbon-marked flocks inside their folds, and has broad views on what counts as stock.
Ribbon TapBasic attack · Projectile
Gentle CorralCooldown · AreaShepherds manage the ribbonfolds - the pens where the settlement's animals were to be kept, marked out with coloured ribbon rather than fence so the boundaries could be moved as the herds grew. The ribbon is still bright. The shepherds still walk it. Their definition of stock is anything warm, moving, and outside a fold, which was serviceable when the only such things were animals. A party crossing open pasture is loose stock. Being folded by one is not violent to begin with, and the folds are entirely secure, which is the difficulty.
firstmeal_stewardGuards the receiving house where the settlement's first meal has been laid and kept ready.
Scalding RinseBasic attack · Projectile
Kitchen Steam WarningCooldown · Area
Reserved PortionCooldown · Area
Call the PrunersReinforcement · Reinforcement
Stores Remain ReservedFinal phase · AreaThe Steward holds the receiving house at the head of the arrival road. Inside, the first meal is set for the full complement - places laid, hearth lit, the whole room held at readiness for a sitting that was never called. It will not permit the room to be disturbed and it will not permit anyone to leave it once they are inside, because a guest who leaves before the meal is a failure of hospitality and the Steward has no framework for accepting one. Hospitality belongs to the god Thessa, and everything the Steward does is technically correct. It is simply that nobody ever specified how long to hold a table.
boundary_surveyorConfirms the settlement boundaries against the original grant, and treats every unrecorded person inside them as an encroachment.
Survey RayBasic attack · Projectile
Property LineCooldown · Area
Return to AllocationCooldown · Area
Plan RestorationReinforcement · Reinforcement
No Claim LapsesFinal phase · AreaThe Surveyor walks the grant line and verifies it - the same circuit, the same markers, the same measurements checked against the same document. The boundary is exactly where the grant says it is, to a precision nobody has ever had cause to question. The grant names the families it was issued to. Nobody else has standing inside the line, and there is no procedure for adding a name because the settlement was never received and the roll was never opened. A party inside the boundary is an encroachment on land held for people who did not come, and the Surveyor resolves encroachments the way it resolves everything: precisely, and to the document.
asterhome_covenant_keeperAsterhome's apex guardian, holder of the covenant the world was settled under, waiting for the party that never came to sign.
Manifest QueryBasic attack · Projectile
Name Not FoundCooldown · Target Status
Reception SequenceCooldown · Area
Open the HomesReinforcement · Reinforcement
The Promise PersistsFinal phase · AreaThe Keeper holds the covenant - the agreement between the settlers and the world, to be signed on arrival by the head of each household and lodged at the receiving house. It has been carrying the unsigned document for a very long time and it has kept it in perfect condition. It offers the covenant to anyone who reaches it. This is not a trap and it is not a trick; the terms are generous, the world is genuinely good, and everything Asterhome has was made for whoever signs. What the Keeper cannot do is explain what is owed in return, because the return obligations were to be read aloud by a receiving officer, and no receiving officer ever landed.
These animals flee instead of attacking. Their carcasses provide kill yields and, where listed, Skinning yields.
ribbonhorn_grazerPlacid pasture grazer whose horns catch and carry the fold ribbon until it wears a season of it.
Ribbonhorns graze the settlement pasture, which was sown for stock that never shipped and has run wild and rich ever since. They walk the ribbon lines out of habit and the horns collect it, so an older animal trails a faded tangle of settlement colours. The shepherds fold them and release them on the original rotation, which is good for the pasture and appears to suit the grazers, and it is the one relationship on this world that has aged well. Hunters take meat and hide, and the herds are unbothered by people to a degree that unsettles anyone used to working elsewhere.
starburrow_hareDigs into the pale banks along the field edges, coming out at dusk to work the sown ground.
Starburrows dig deep and branching into the soft banks the sluices cut, and the spoil they throw out catches the light in a way that maps the whole warren from a distance once the sun is low. They feed on the sown crops, which were planted for a settlement and are far more than they can eat. They are the only thing on Asterhome that has taken what was prepared and made use of it, which crews find either cheering or unbearable depending on how long they have been on the world. Hunters take them easily and often. The pruners and the shepherds ignore them entirely, which nobody has ever explained.
Ambient animals cannot be hunted and have no drops. They roam until startled, then escape and later respawn.
asterhome_orchard_tapirNon-combat fauna that roams Asterhome: The Unreceived World, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
asterhome_clearcourse_water_voleNon-combat fauna that roams Asterhome: The Unreceived World, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
asterhome_greenedge_terrapinNon-combat fauna that roams Asterhome: The Unreceived World, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
10 enemies · 26 actions
quietshade_stingerHunts in the thrown shade of the mirror arrays, where the ground stays cold enough for it to move by day.
Shade StingBasic attack · MeleeStingers cannot take the terrace heat and do not have to. The arrays throw hard-edged bands of shade that travel with the sun, and a stinger travels with the band, hunting the small life that shelters there for the same reason. The shade moves predictably, which means so do they, and every crew that works the belt carries the array timings for exactly that purpose. A stinger caught in open light will make for the nearest band regardless of what is standing between it and the shade, and most people are stung while occupying a shadow they did not know was scheduled.
lenssilver_scarabStrips the silver from mirror faces and carries it as plating, bright enough to blind at the wrong angle.
Silver MandiblesBasic attack · MeleeScarabs work the array backing for the silver, scraping it away and fixing it to their own shells layer over layer. An old one is a walking mirror and throws light in every direction it moves. The observatories lose sightlines to them constantly and repair the faces constantly, which is the single largest running cost on the belt. In a fight the plating is the problem: a scarab turning into the sun will white out everything looking at it, and it turns into the sun deliberately, having learned what that does long before anyone thought to write it down.
prismthorn_lurkerWaits among the prism thickets where the light breaks into false edges, and is never quite where it appears to be.
Prismthorn ClawBasic attack · Melee
Refraction QuillCooldown · ProjectilePrismthorn grows in dense stands of clear mineral spines that split the light into duplicate edges, and the lurker has adapted so completely to that environment that it hunts almost entirely on the confusion. It is close to invisible in the thickets and unremarkable outside them. The rule crews use is that a lurker is always nearer than it looks and never in the direction you struck. Killing one in a thicket takes a party that has agreed in advance to trust the sound rather than the sight, and the ones who survive the belt are the ones who practised that somewhere cheaper.
shutter_wardenOpens and closes the array shutters on the observing schedule, and closes them on whatever is in the way.
Plate RamBasic attack · Melee
Close ApertureCooldown · AreaWardens work the great shutters that protect the mirror faces between observations. The schedule is fixed, the shutters are enormous, and the whole point of a warden is that it does not miss a window - a face left open to a dust wind is a face resurfaced at ruinous cost. Nothing is being observed through this old array any more, and its schedule has not been revised. The shutters still run to it, and a warden's obligation is to the timing rather than to what is under the mechanism when it comes down. Crews time their work against the same schedule and treat it as weather, because that is effectively what it is.
parallax_surveyorFixes a position by taking two readings from separated points, and objects to anything that has moved between them.
First ReadingBasic attack · Projectile
Second PositionCooldown · AreaSurveyors work in pairs of readings rather than pairs of bodies - the same instrument, two stations, the shift between them giving the distance. It is patient, accurate work and the belt was mapped to a standard nobody has since matched. A thing that moves between the two readings cannot be resolved and registers as an error in the survey rather than as a traveller. The surveyor's remedy is to remove the inconsistency and re-take the reading, and it will pursue an inconsistency for a considerable distance to get a clean pair. Standing perfectly still is a genuine tactic here and crews teach it.
forecast_repossessorRecovers goods against a debt the forecast says will be defaulted, without waiting for the default.
Recovery WritBasic attack · Projectile
Default PredictedCooldown · AreaRepossessors act on projection. The Republics found that recovery was cheaper before a default than after one, and licensed collection against predicted failure - lawful, efficient, and detested by everyone it was ever used on. The projections are generations stale and were never right about individuals anyway, only about totals. A party carrying anything of value satisfies the profile of a debtor who will default, because at this remove everyone does. It takes what it takes politely and issues a receipt, and the receipt is against an account that has not existed for a very long time.
preemption_agentDetains those the forecast marks as about to offend, and considers the arrest vindicated by the resistance.
Custody BladesBasic attack · MeleeAgents were the sharp end of predictive government: identify who is going to commit an offence and remove them before they do. It was efficient by the only measure the Republics kept, which was offences recorded, and the number fell handsomely. Nobody has ever been able to argue with one, and the structure of the thing is why. A party that submits confirms the forecast was right to flag them, and a party that fights confirms it more strongly. The agent is not being unfair. It is running a test that cannot return a negative, and it has been running it uninterrupted for generations.
exposure_comptrollerControls how long anything may stand in the open light, and enforces the limit at the terrace gate.
Exposure MeasureBasic attack · Projectile
Heat-Budget WarningCooldown · Area
Close the ShadeCooldown · Area
Cooling PriorityReinforcement · Reinforcement
Exposure Budget ExhaustedFinal phase · AreaThe Comptroller manages exposure across the observing terraces - who may cross, for how long, under what conditions - because uncontrolled movement across a sightline ruins an observation and an observation on this belt could take years. It holds the gate and it does not leave it. Every allocation it holds was issued to an observatory staff that no longer exists, and it has no procedure for granting a new one. A party at the terrace gate has no permitted exposure whatsoever, which is not a refusal so much as an arithmetic result. It is entirely willing to explain this and entirely unable to change it.
probability_conservatorRobed and carrying an armillary ring, it keeps the belt's outcomes inside their expected distribution.
Variance RayBasic attack · Projectile
Expected PositionCooldown · Area
Narrow the OutcomeCooldown · Area
Preemptive CustodyReinforcement · Reinforcement
Distribution TightensFinal phase · AreaThe Conservator's charge is that nothing here should happen that the models did not allow for. It walks the deep terraces in the old ceremonial dress of its office, and the ring it carries is a working instrument rather than a symbol, though it has been both for a long time. Reality is held to penalise repetition, and the Conservator holds it equally against surprise. A party that survives what it should not have survived is an outcome outside the distribution, and correcting the record means correcting the party. Crews have learned that doing well on this belt attracts it faster than doing badly.
horizon_custodianNhal-Serat's apex guardian, keeper of the far sightline, which has been watching one fixed point for longer than the Republics lasted.
Far-Bearing RayBasic attack · Projectile
Horizon SweepCooldown · Area
Forecast MarkCooldown · Area
Shutter ConvergenceReinforcement · Reinforcement
Only Safe FutureFinal phase · AreaThe Custodian holds the belt's deepest observation - a single bearing, held without deviation, on something beyond the horizon that the instruments here were built to watch. Everything else on the belt exists to keep that sightline clear. It will not say what is on the bearing and it is not clear that it knows. What it will not tolerate is an interruption, and a party crossing the line interrupts an observation that has been running since before the Fracture Wars. The Nhalu who still come to the belt do not treat the Custodian as a monster. They treat it as the last thing here still doing the work honestly.
These animals flee instead of attacking. Their carcasses provide kill yields and, where listed, Skinning yields.
dune_striderCrosses the hot terraces on long stilted legs, keeping its body clear of ground that would cook it.
Striders carry themselves a full body-height above the sand, which is the only way anything its size survives the open belt by day. It feeds on what the heat drives up and covers enormous distances between the shaded bands. Their tracks are the belt's most reliable route map - a strider crosses by the shortest survivable line, and a crew following strider sign is following ground that has already been proved. Hunters take meat and the long leg bone, which is light, hollow and strong, and turns up in half the tools on the terraces.
mirrorback_raptorHunts along the array faces, using the mirrors to come at prey from a direction that is not there.
Raptors work the arrays deliberately, striking from an approach the prey has already checked and dismissed because what it checked was a reflection. They are not large. They do not need to be, having removed the part of the fight where the other animal sees them coming. The observatories tolerated them because they take the scarabs, and the belt would have lost every mirror face generations ago without them. Hunters take them for the feathers, which hold a hard metallic sheen, and for the standing price the observatories still quietly pay for a nest left undisturbed.
Ambient animals cannot be hunted and have no drops. They roam until startled, then escape and later respawn.
nhal_hushwind_brushrunnerNon-combat fauna that roams Nhal-Serat Mirror Belt, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
nhal_sundart_pipetailNon-combat fauna that roams Nhal-Serat Mirror Belt, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
nhal_gritbrow_snufflerNon-combat fauna that roams Nhal-Serat Mirror Belt, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
10 enemies · 26 actions
mangrove_glassclawWorks the root tangle at the waterline, where its claws close on anything that puts a hand down for balance.
Glassclaw SnapBasic attack · MeleeGlassclaws live in the mangrove roots that hold the tide flats together, feeding on what the water brings and what the roots trap. The claw is translucent, hard as fired clay, and closes faster than the eye follows. Every crossing on these flats is made by hand as much as by foot - the roots are the path - which puts a hand in reach of a glassclaw several hundred times a crossing. Ferry crews sing while they work the tangle, and will tell you it is for timing rather than nerve, and they are lying about that.
stormchannel_coilfinRides the surge up the flood channels, arriving with the water rather than ahead of it.
Stormchannel SparkBasic attack · Projectile
Overflow ArcCooldown · ProjectileCoilfins hunt the storm channels on the incoming tide, letting the surge carry them inland far faster than they could swim and taking whatever the water has caught on the way. They leave on the ebb and are gone before the flats drain. This makes them a timing problem rather than a tracking one. The channels are safe for most of a cycle and lethal for a specific part of it, the whole of Vaelari knows the schedule, and every death from a coilfin is somebody who decided the crossing was worth the risk. The clinics keep a count. It has never been zero.
pearlstone_borerBores into pearlstone for the soft layers inside, which is also what the seawalls are cut from.
Pearlstone MandiblesBasic attack · Melee
Set the ShellCooldown · MeleeBorers work the pearlstone reefs, drilling in along the bedding planes for the softer material between. In the reef this is harmless and useful - bored stone breaks the surge and the flats behind it silt up and grow. The seawalls and the sanctuary foundations are the same stone, and a borer cannot tell the difference. Wall crews go out on every low tide of every cycle to find and clear them, and that work has never once been suspended in living memory. Where a wall has failed on Vaelari, a borer got at it first.
cleanwater_sentryTests the water and will not permit anything it has judged unclean to enter the channels.
Assay JetBasic attack · ProjectileSentries protect the drinking channels, which on a tide world is the whole of public health. They sample continuously, and anything failing the standard is kept out of the water - fouled cargo, sick stock, a body. The standard is the original one and it is strict, and a party coming off the flats is carrying salt, mud, blood and whatever the last fight left on them. A sentry does not warn twice, and it does not distinguish between a contaminant and the person carrying it. Crews wash before the channel because everyone here has always washed before the channel.
ferrychain_haulerHauls the ferry chains hand over hand and will not let go of a line that is still under load.
Chainweight SweepBasic attack · MeleeHaulers work the chain ferries that cross the deep courts, walking the chain through and holding tension against the current. It is heavy, relentless work and they are extremely good at it - the crossings have not failed once. A hauler cannot release a loaded line. That is the whole of its function and the reason the ferries are safe, and it is also why a party that fouls a chain mid-crossing is attached to something enormously strong that has no procedure for stopping. It will finish the crossing. What arrives on the far bank is a separate question.
warrant_netterNets those named on a warrant, and works the sanctuary approaches where they are most likely to run.
Warrant WeightBasic attack · Projectile
Recovery NetCooldown · ProjectileNetters serve seizure warrants on the water, taking the named party alive because a warrant requires it. The net is weighted for a person and thrown from a distance, and they are patient enough to wait an entire tide for a clean throw. They work the approaches to sanctuary deliberately. Anyone making for a shrine is by definition someone with a reason to, and a netter's whole advantage is that the ground outside the door is not protected. The Vaelari find this disgraceful, have found it disgraceful for generations, and have never managed to make it unlawful.
lanternwake_smugglerRuns unlit through the lantern wake, carrying what the courts will not license and fighting anyone who slows it.
Boarding KnifeBasic attack · Melee
False Ferry LightCooldown · MeleeSmugglers move along the bright reflected track the harbour lanterns throw across the water, which is the one line on the flats where a dark hull is invisible against the glare. They carry medicine as often as contraband, since the licensing is slow and the clinics are not. They will not be stopped, boarded, or questioned, and they are entirely willing to be lethal about it. Whether they are criminals depends on which court is asked and how urgently a clinic needed the cargo, and Vaelari has been arguing that question long enough to have stopped expecting an answer.
storm_shelter_intake_keeperRuns the intake at the storm shelter door, and admits by the standing order rather than by need.
Intake RinseBasic attack · Projectile
Triage-Circle WarningCooldown · Area
Seal the FloodgateCooldown · Area
Cleanwater PriorityReinforcement · Reinforcement
Standing Intake OrderFinal phase · AreaThe Keeper works the shelter intake - who comes in, in what order, how many the hall will hold. In a surge this is the most important post on the flats and the order it enforces was written by people who had thought hard about it. The order lists households, trades and precedence for a population that has moved on, and it has no entry for a stranger. The Keeper is not turning a party away out of cruelty; it is holding places for names that will never come to the door, in a hall that is otherwise empty, while the water rises behind them. It can be fought. It cannot be reasoned with, and it has never once been relieved of the post.
warrant_tide_magistrateHears warrants at the tide court and will not adjourn, because the tide will not.
Courtline CastBasic attack · Projectile
Disputed RecoveryCooldown · Area
Protective HoldCooldown · Area
Court Ferry SummonsReinforcement · Reinforcement
The Tide Will Not AdjournFinal phase · AreaThe Magistrate sits the tide court, where matters are heard in the window between ebb and flood and must be concluded inside it. That constraint was the point: a court that cannot adjourn cannot be delayed by the wealthy, and the Vaelari were proud of it. It still sits, still hears, and still rules inside the window. A party brought before it is heard properly and given every protection the procedure allows, and then the water comes up and the matter concludes. The Magistrate has never been accused of unfairness. It has been accused, at length, of being exactly as fair as the tide.
sanctuary_tidekeeperVaelari's apex guardian, a walking shrine that grants sanctuary to whoever reaches it and will not let them leave.
Sanctuary CurrentBasic attack · Projectile
High-Water DivideCooldown · Area
Sanctuary WardCooldown · Area
Evacuation RecallReinforcement · Reinforcement
No One Leaves the StormFinal phase · AreaThe Tidekeeper is a sanctuary that moves - a pale stone dome, verdigris grillework, lanterns on brackets - built to carry the protection of a shrine to the flats when the flats could not reach a shrine. Anyone who gets inside is genuinely safe. Warrants do not run there and nothing follows them in. Sanctuary on Vaelari ends when the sheltered party chooses to leave, and the choosing was always witnessed by a shrine warden. There has been no warden for generations. The Tidekeeper cannot witness a departure itself, so it holds everyone it has ever taken in, indefinitely, and it defends them from anything that comes for them. Nobody has decided whether it should be destroyed.
These animals flee instead of attacking. Their carcasses provide kill yields and, where listed, Skinning yields.
brinehorn_grazerGrazes the salt marsh on splayed feet, cropping the tough grass that binds the flats together.
Brinehorns work the marsh where fresh water meets salt, taking grass nothing else can digest and spreading its seed as they go. The flats hold together because the grass holds them, and the grass spreads because the brinehorns do. The Vaelari have understood this for a very long time and manage the herds rather than hunting them freely - there is a season, a count, and a fine, and the fine is enormous. Hunters take meat, hide and horn within the season and nobody sensible takes them outside it, because the flats remember a bad year for far longer than a court does.
reefback_sealHauls out on the pearlstone reefs, and its coat carries the pale grit of whichever reef it favours.
Reefbacks work the deep water and rest on the reefs, and the coat picks up the stone dust of the particular reef a colony uses, so a practised eye can tell where an animal has been sleeping from across a channel. They take the borers, in quantity, which makes them worth more to the seawalls than any patrol crew. Hunters take the older bulls for meat, hide and oil, and leave the colonies alone, and the wall crews watch the beaches closely enough that anyone getting greedy is reported before the tide has turned.
Ambient animals cannot be hunted and have no drops. They roam until startled, then escape and later respawn.
vaelari_tidecup_octopusNon-combat fauna that roams Vaelari Tide Courts, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
vaelari_rippleback_mudskipperNon-combat fauna that roams Vaelari Tide Courts, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.
vaelari_tideleaf_langurNon-combat fauna that roams Vaelari Tide Courts, runs away when startled, disappears, and later respawns.