RingBRP/tools/bestiary-water.mjs

/**
 * WATER, COAST AND THE DROWNED.
 *
 * Twenty-five anomalies filed against standing water, tidal water and the things
 * that were put into either. The department's water file is the oldest one it has,
 * because a river does not forget and a harbour keeps everything.
 *
 * Two notes on the shape of these, both deliberate:
 *
 *   BODIES. Eleven of the twenty-five are not two-armed humans. A drowned horse on
 *   the strand, a flock off the tip, a lamprey the length of a lock gate — none of
 *   those have an arm to shoot and the hit tables say so. Where a long, limbless
 *   thing is written as `quadruped` the reason is in a comment on the entry: it is
 *   the only plan in anatomy.mjs with a neck, a body divided fore and aft, and no
 *   arms, and that is closer to an eel than a man with a chest is.
 *
 *   DROWNING. Nearly everything here kills by holding you under, and "it drowns you"
 *   is not a rule. Every POWER states the roll, the number, the penalty per round and
 *   the thing that stops it. Where a creature's method is asphyxia the tactics line
 *   says to run the ASPHYXIA rules rather than a combat round, the same way the
 *   kelpie entry in content.mjs does.
 *
 * No key here collides with content.mjs or bestiary.mjs — checked, including the
 * aquatic ones already filed (kelpie, grindylow, nuckelavee, washer at the ford,
 * the lantern man, the knockers).
 */

export const BESTIARY_WATER = [

  /* ---------------- THE COAST ---------------- */

  { key: "harbour_dog", name: "Harbour dog", role: "FOLKLORE. The wet dog on the quay that nobody on the quay owns",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 3, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",  // a dog, not a man
    ch: { str: 17, siz: 13, con: 18, int: 6, pow: 15, dex: 16, cha: 5, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"scent",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"track",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:80}],
    weapons: ["bite"],
    tactics: "It is always soaking and there is never a trail of water behind it. It works the quay, the fish market and the car park above the slip, and it is friendly until somebody is between it and the water. POWER: HEEL. Anyone it has touched must roll POWx5 at the end of every scene spent within sight of that harbour; on a failure they walk to the edge of the quay before they notice they have stood up, and a second agent must physically stop them. Two failures in one night means they go in. Getting the subject more than a mile inland ends it permanently and they do not remember any of it." },

  { key: "sea_mare", name: "Sea mare", role: "FOLKLORE. The drowned horse that came up the strand with the tide still on it",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 4, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",  // a horse, and a dead one
    ch: { str: 24, siz: 20, con: 19, int: 5, pow: 16, dex: 12, cha: 3, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:35},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"track",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["trample"],
    tactics: "Not a kelpie and not pretending to be a horse anybody would ride — it is plainly a drowned animal walking, and it comes up the wet sand at a trot. It runs people down rather than grappling them. POWER: THE TIDE IT CAME IN ON. Below the high-water mark it takes half damage from anything and recovers 2 hit points a round. Above that line it takes full damage and recovers nothing, so the fight the agents can win is on the sea wall, on the road, or on the car park — anywhere the sea does not reach. It will not cross a freshwater outfall; the department has driven two of these into a storm drain and lost neither." },

  { key: "tangie", name: "Tangie", role: "FOLKLORE. The thing under the weed at the low-water line, wearing the weed",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 6, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",  // four-limbed, low, no arms worth the name
    ch: { str: 22, siz: 17, con: 21, int: 8, pow: 17, dex: 14, cha: 2, edu: 2 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It lies in the wrack at the bottom of the beach and is indistinguishable from it until somebody stands on it. First strike is always a surprise attack. It grapples and reverses, dragging the subject seaward at about two metres a round. POWER: WEED. Its hide is a metre of bladderwrack: edged and piercing weapons do HALF damage rounded down, blunt weapons do full. Burning the wrack off takes a round of open flame and drops its natural armour to 1 for the rest of the scene. It cannot pursue past the high-water mark — the weed dries and it will not." },

  { key: "selkie", name: "Selkie", role: "FOLKLORE. The one on the rocks that has a skin and knows where it is",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 2, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",  // a seal for most of the interview
    ch: { str: 15, siz: 14, con: 16, int: 15, pow: 19, dex: 15, cha: 18, edu: 6 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"persuade",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"insight",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"bargain",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:65},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["bite"],
    tactics: "It will not fight and it does not have to. It negotiates, and it negotiates from the position of somebody who has already found out what you want. It is a Borrowed Authority problem and a bargain problem, not a combat. POWER: THE SKIN IS THE CONTRACT. Whoever physically holds its skin may give it one instruction per day and it must obey the letter of it; every such instruction costs the holder 1 Coherence and the selkie is choosing the letter. If the skin is returned, destroyed, or taken by somebody else, every instruction it ever gave is void and the selkie is owed whatever it decides it is owed. Nobody in Registry will sign for a skin." },

  { key: "wrack_gull", name: "Wrack gull", role: "FOLKLORE. The flock off the tip that follows one person and not the bins",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 1, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 9, siz: 6, con: 12, int: 4, pow: 18, dex: 20, cha: 3, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:30}],
    weapons: ["beak"],
    tactics: "Run the flock as ONE creature with the statblock above — forty birds acting as one animal, one initiative, one set of hit points. It does not fight to kill. It fights to move somebody: every round it engages, the subject is pushed 3 metres in a direction of the GM's choosing and that direction is always towards water. POWER: BY ACCLAMATION. While the flock is on a subject, that subject's Dodge and Athletics are at −30%, because they are covering their face. Kill or drive off half of it — 8 or more points of damage in a single round does this — and the whole flock breaks for the sea and does not come back that day. Killing individual birds achieves nothing; there are always forty." },

  { key: "sea_crow", name: "Sea crow", role: "FOLKLORE. The black bird on the wreck buoy that is counting something",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 1, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 7, siz: 5, con: 10, int: 12, pow: 20, dex: 18, cha: 4, edu: 8 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:35},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:95},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:55},
             {fam:"knowledge",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["beak"],
    tactics: "It is harmless, it is one bird, and it is the worst thing in this file. It sits on the buoy over a wreck and it has the drowned by name. POWER: THE COUNT. Every time the agents lose somebody to water in this case, the crow says that person's name once, aloud, in their own voice, and adds it to a list it recites at dusk. Any agent who hears their own name on the list loses 1 Coherence immediately and is on the list from then on, whether they drowned or not. The list can be ended only by salvaging and burying the remains the crow is counting; shooting the bird moves the list to the next buoy along and the department has chased one list across nine miles of coast." },

  { key: "shellycoat", name: "Shellycoat", role: "FOLKLORE. The rattling thing in the burn, hung with everything the water took",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 4, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 16, siz: 12, con: 15, int: 10, pow: 16, dex: 13, cha: 4, edu: 3 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:50},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:65},
             {fam:"sleight_of_hand",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "Shells, keys, watch cases, a door handle, three phones. It rattles when it moves and it moves constantly, so it can never surprise anybody and does not try. Its method is misdirection: it makes the sound of somebody in the water, twenty metres upstream, and waits at the place people will run to. POWER: SOMETHING OF YOURS. It steals one carried object per round from anyone it touches — GM picks, and it picks the useful one — and hangs it on itself. Everything it holds is on its body: kill it and everything comes back, and until then the item is simply gone. It will trade the lot for one object that was taken from the water without asking, returned to it." },

  /* ---------------- RIVER, FEN AND CUT ---------------- */

  { key: "peg_powler", name: "Peg Powler", role: "FOLKLORE. The green arms in the weir pool that children are warned about",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 2, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 23, siz: 15, con: 17, int: 9, pow: 18, dex: 16, cha: 3, edu: 2 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It never leaves the water and it cannot be fought on land, so the whole engagement is about who is standing where. It reaches from the pool, takes an ankle, and pulls. POWER: UNDER. A successful grasp is not damage — it is a grapple at STR 23 and the subject is under the surface at the end of that round. Breaking free is STRx5 or Athletics, at −20% per round already held. From the second round under, run the ASPHYXIA rules. Anyone standing within two metres of the water's edge can be reached; anyone three metres back cannot, and saying that out loud to the players is the point of the entry. It releases a subject instantly if a second person enters the water, because it would rather have two." },

  { key: "greenteeth", name: "Jenny Greenteeth", role: "FOLKLORE. The weed mat on the still water that is not a weed mat",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 3, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 19, siz: 16, con: 20, int: 11, pow: 17, dex: 10, cha: 2, edu: 3 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:25},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:45}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "A hundred square metres of duckweed on a millpond, and it is all one animal. Nothing about the surface reads as a creature; a thrown stone sits on it. POWER: IT LOOKS LIKE GROUND. Anybody who steps on it goes through and is held: STRx5 to get out, −20% per round, and duckweed closes over the hole in one round so nobody watching can see where they went. From the second round under, run the ASPHYXIA rules. It has no interest in fighting and will not pursue onto the bank — it cannot leave the water it grows in. Draining or poisoning the pond kills it over a week; a pole and a rope recovers the subject in two rounds and the department would rather the agents used the pole." },

  { key: "fen_hound", name: "Fen hound", role: "FOLKLORE. The low thing that runs the droves between the drains",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 2, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",  // a lurcher, wrong at the joints
    ch: { str: 16, siz: 11, con: 15, int: 6, pow: 15, dex: 19, cha: 3, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"scent",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"track",spec:"",val:90},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["bite"],
    tactics: "It is fast, it is thin, and it hunts by driving — it does not engage, it turns people, and it turns them off the drove and into the drain. Two or three work a field together. POWER: OFF THE PATH. Any agent who runs from it must make an Athletics roll each round; a failure puts them in water up to the chest and they drop one carried item, GM's choice. Walking, at a walk, needs no roll at all and the hound will not close on somebody walking. It breaks off at a hard light — a vehicle's headlamps, a roof lamp — and does not come back to a lit field." },

  { key: "cut_walker", name: "The cut walker", role: "HORROR. What uses the towpath at the hour the towpath is empty",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 1, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 18, siz: 13, con: 16, int: 13, pow: 18, dex: 12, cha: 7, edu: 7 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"persuade",spec:"",val:45}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It walks the same two miles of canal every night in the same direction, and it has right of way. It does not chase, does not hurry and does not turn round. If the agents stay out of its path it passes within arm's reach and keeps walking. POWER: PASSING PLACE. Anybody still on the towpath when it arrives at them must give ground into the hedge, the water, or a moored boat before it gets there — a Dodge roll or an Athletics roll, declared. Fail and they are in the cut, 1d3 from the fall and the ASPHYXIA rules if they cannot get out, which in a lined canal with no ladder is an Athletics roll at −20%. It will not enter a bridge hole with a person standing in it; the department has used that twice." },

  { key: "wrackman", name: "Wrackman", role: "HORROR. The shape made of everything the flood left in the hedge",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 5, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 20, siz: 18, con: 22, int: 5, pow: 14, dex: 8, cha: 2, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:20},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:45},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:35}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "Straw, fence wire, a child's coat, half a pallet and forty feet of baler twine, standing up. It is slow — it gets one action to most people's two if the GM is tracking that — and it is enormously hard to stop, because there is nothing in it to break. POWER: FLOOD LINE. Any wound that is not fire heals at 3 hit points a round while it stands in standing water, and the fens are standing water. Fire does full damage and it does not heal that at all; one round of sustained flame on a dry part of it does 1d6+2 and sets the whole thing going. It does not pursue anybody uphill and it never has." },

  { key: "net_mender", name: "The net mender", role: "HORROR. The woman on the harbour steps mending something that is not a net",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 0, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 9, siz: 10, con: 12, int: 16, pow: 19, dex: 18, cha: 12, edu: 9 },
    skills: [{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:25},{fam:"sleight_of_hand",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"insight",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"persuade",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"bargain",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"occult",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:75}],
    weapons: ["dagger"],
    tactics: "She is on the steps in all weathers with a lap full of brown twine and she will talk to anybody. What she is repairing is somebody's return — she mends the fact that a named person came home, and she can unpick it. POWER: UNPICKED. Name a person to her and pay her price, and within a day the record and the memory of that person's last return from water is gone: they went out and did not come back, and everybody believes it, including the department. Reversing it requires the physical net, which she keeps, and an hour of somebody unpicking her work while she watches. She cannot be made to do either by force — she has 12 hit points and dies like a woman of sixty — and her price is always another name." },

  { key: "mudlark_child", name: "The mudlark", role: "HORROR. The child working the foreshore at a tide that was three hours ago",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 0, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 8, siz: 6, con: 11, int: 12, pow: 20, dex: 17, cha: 15, edu: 4 },
    skills: [{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:30},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"persuade",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"sleight_of_hand",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"insight",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "It is a barefoot child on the mud, it asks for help, and it is not lying about needing it. It never touches anybody. POWER: COME AND SEE. It shows an agent something genuinely valuable to the case — a real clue, and the GM should give a real one — that is a hundred metres further out on the foreshore than it looks. Anyone who goes to it is on soft mud: an Athletics roll to leave, at −20%, and the tide in this estuary comes in at walking pace, so the second failure means the ASPHYXIA rules with both legs held. It is not malicious. It does this because it has been doing it since 1878 and it would like the company. A line thrown from hard ground cancels the whole thing." },

  /* ---------------- WRECK, HULL AND HARBOUR ---------------- */

  { key: "hulk_haunt", name: "Hulk haunt", role: "FOLKLORE. What stayed aboard after the vessel was condemned and beached",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 4, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 17, siz: 14, con: 19, int: 8, pow: 20, dex: 11, cha: 4, edu: 5 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:30},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:50},
             {fam:"repair",spec:"mechanical",val:40}],
    weapons: ["boarding_axe"],
    tactics: "It is aboard and it does not leave the hull, so a boarding party is fighting on its ground and knows it. It fights with what is aboard, which is an axe off the bulkhead, and it fights in the dark by hearing. POWER: WATERTIGHT. While the agents are inside the hull it can shut one door, hatch or scuttle per round from wherever it is standing; a shut door is a Repair (Mechanical) roll or 20 points of damage to open, and it shuts the one behind them first. Anything it shuts on a flooding compartment stays shut. It cannot touch a door that has been physically wedged — the department issues door wedges for exactly this and this is the entry that explains why. Taking the hull apart, or cutting it up for scrap, ends it." },

  { key: "drowned_crew", name: "The drowned crew", role: "HORROR. Five of a crew of nine, still working the watch they were on",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 2, species: "cadence",
    talents: ["distributed", "quorum"],
    ch: { str: 14, siz: 12, con: 14, int: 8, pow: 17, dex: 11, cha: 5, edu: 4 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:35},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"repair",spec:"mechanical",val:45},
             {fam:"navigate",spec:"",val:50}],
    weapons: ["prybar"],
    tactics: "Five bodies, one watch, one initiative. They are not hostile and they are not stoppable: they are turning the vessel out for sea, and anything in the way of that gets moved, including people. Each body works its own station and they hand tools to each other without looking. POWER: ALL HANDS. Every round an agent is aboard and in their way, that agent rolls POWx5 or joins the watch — they pick up the nearest tool and work, for 1d3 rounds, and they do not hear anybody. The roll is at −10% per body still upright. Get them below five bodies and the watch is short and the whole thing stops. Speaking the name of the vessel's master, aloud and correctly, stands the whole crew still for one round." },

  { key: "lock_keeper", name: "The lock keeper", role: "HORROR. The man at the gates who has worked the lock since before the lock",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 1, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 19, siz: 14, con: 17, int: 14, pow: 19, dex: 12, cha: 9, edu: 8 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"melee_weapon",spec:"prybar",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},
             {fam:"repair",spec:"mechanical",val:80},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"bargain",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:65}],
    weapons: ["prybar"],
    tactics: "Polite, employed, and the paperwork agrees with him. He will not attack anybody standing on the bank. He works the gates and the paddles, and the chamber is his weapon. POWER: THE CHAMBER. Anyone inside the lock — in the water or on a boat in it — is subject to his hand on the paddle gear: he can raise or drop the chamber 2 metres a round. A boat rising to the cill takes 2d6 hull damage a round; a person in a dropping chamber is against a wall with no ladder and gets an Athletics roll at −30% to get out before the ASPHYXIA rules apply. He stops the moment he is shown a written instruction to stop, on any letterhead, signed. He has never questioned one." },

  { key: "the_undertow", name: "The undertow", role: "FOLKLORE. The current in the harbour mouth that goes the wrong way and chooses",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 8, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 26, siz: 22, con: 24, int: 4, pow: 21, dex: 15, cha: 1, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:95},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:35}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "There is nothing to see and nothing to shoot; the statblock is there so a GM can run it as a creature, not a hazard, because it selects. It takes the strongest swimmer in the water, every time. POWER: SET. Anybody in the water in the harbour mouth is moved 5 metres seaward a round and held under from the second round — STRx5 to surface, at −20% per round, and the ASPHYXIA rules run from there. Armour and weapons do nothing to it. What does work is taking it out of the water: it exists only in moving tidal water, so it is dead at slack water for forty minutes either side, and the tide table is the intelligence product that wins this case. A subject who stops swimming and lets it carry them is released after four rounds, 200 metres out, alive. Nobody does this." },

  /* ---------------- RESERVOIR AND DEEP WATER ---------------- */

  { key: "the_sump", name: "The sump", role: "HORROR. What is at the bottom of the reservoir where the village was",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 6, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 21, siz: 20, con: 26, int: 10, pow: 22, dex: 7, cha: 3, edu: 6 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:15},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"occult",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It is forty metres down in the dark on top of a drowned street, and it has never come up. Nothing in this entry is a combat unless the agents dive, in which case it is a very short one. POWER: DRAWDOWN. While the reservoir is above 60% capacity the sump reaches the surface: any agent within 20 metres of the water's edge at dusk rolls POWx5 or hears the village — bells, a dog, their own family — and must then roll again to not enter the water, the second roll at −20%. Two failures and they are swimming out, and the ASPHYXIA rules apply at 200 metres from shore. Below 60% it cannot reach past the waterline at all, so the case is a conversation with the water company about drawing the reservoir down, and that conversation is the scenario. Nobody has ever fought it and lived to file." },

  { key: "drowned_parish", name: "The drowned parish", role: "HORROR. A congregation that was compulsorily purchased and never left",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 2, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 12, siz: 11, con: 13, int: 12, pow: 21, dex: 9, cha: 11, edu: 7 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:25},{fam:"persuade",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"religion",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"status",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "Run this as one creature standing for about sixty people. They are wet, they are civil, and they want the paperwork corrected: the parish was never properly closed. They will not strike first and they cannot be dispersed by force — dropping the statblock puts down whoever is nearest and the rest are still there. POWER: THE SERVICE IS AT SIX. Any agent who is inside the parish boundary at six in the evening must roll POWx5 or attend: they walk to the drowned church, and walking to it means walking into the reservoir. −20% on the roll for each previous evening attended, and the ASPHYXIA rules apply once they are past the shallows. Reading a formal deconsecration aloud, with a real date and a real signature on it, ends the parish permanently. Obtaining one is a Clearance problem and that is the whole case." },

  { key: "the_fathom", name: "The fathom", role: "FORWARD. Something in the deep water that is measuring the deep water",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 12, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 25, siz: 26, con: 28, int: 18, pow: 24, dex: 13, cha: 2, edu: 20 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:95},{fam:"science",spec:"physics",val:80},{fam:"anomaly_lore",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"transposition",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:80}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It sits at 90 metres off the shelf edge and pings. It is not from here, it is not hostile, and it is conducting a survey that has been running for longer than the department. It will not attack a vessel and has never attacked a diver. POWER: SOUNDING. Once a scene it takes one reading of anything in the water above it: that subject's exact depth, mass and remaining air, and every agent within earshot in the water takes 1d4 from the pressure pulse with no roll to avoid and no armour, and is deafened for the rest of the scene. Ear defenders reduce it to 1 point and cancel the deafness — the department has lost divers to not issuing them. It answers a sonar transponder set to repeat its own last ping, and answering it is the only way anyone has ever got information out of it. Leave it alone. That is the standing instruction and it is in writing." },

  { key: "eelmother", name: "Eel mother", role: "FOLKLORE. The long thing in the sluice pool that the eel men used to feed",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 5, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    // A four-metre eel, hit-located as a quadruped: the only plan in anatomy.mjs with a
    // neck, a body divided fore and aft and NO arms. It has no legs either, so treat the
    // four leg locations as the body's four quarters; that is closer than a man's chest.
    ch: { str: 22, siz: 19, con: 22, int: 7, pow: 16, dex: 17, cha: 2, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"scent",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["bite"],
    tactics: "Four metres of eel in a brick chamber under a pumping station, and it has been fed by hand for two hundred years. It is used to people and it is not used to people stopping. It takes an arm, reverses, and rolls. POWER: THE ROLL. Its ordinary attack is the bite. The roll is a separate manoeuvre that follows a bite which held: on top of the bite's own damage the subject takes 1d3 and makes a STRx5 roll or they are face down in the pool, whereupon the ASPHYXIA rules apply and breaking free is at −20% per round. Blood in the water adds +20% to everything it does for the rest of the scene. It will not leave the chamber — there is nowhere for it to go — and a fed eel is a calm eel, so a dead sheep in the pool buys the agents fifteen minutes of it being entirely uninterested in them. Draining the chamber kills it in a day." },

  { key: "lamprey_host", name: "Lamprey host", role: "HORROR. What was in the intake screen when they finally cleared it",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 3, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    // Hit-located as a quadruped for the same reason as the eel mother: a long body with
    // a head at one end and no arms. The four "legs" are the quarters of the mass.
    ch: { str: 18, siz: 16, con: 20, int: 3, pow: 15, dex: 14, cha: 1, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"scent",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:35}],
    weapons: ["bite"],
    tactics: "Run it as one animal. It is about nine hundred lampreys holding onto each other, and when it is damaged it comes apart rather than dying. POWER: IT COMES APART. Any single hit of 8 or more damage splits off a second, smaller host: halve the parent's current hit points between the two, and each half keeps the parent's skills. Below 4 hit points a fragment is just eels on the floor and stops acting. So the fight gets worse with every good hit and better with every poor one, and the correct answer is a hose, a grille and a lot of patience rather than a weapon. Fire does not split it and does full damage. It cannot leave water for more than three rounds; a body dragged onto dry concrete is a body that stops." },

  { key: "washland_cattle", name: "Washland cattle", role: "FOLKLORE. The herd that was left out when the washes flooded, still grazing",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 4, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 25, siz: 24, con: 20, int: 4, pow: 14, dex: 8, cha: 4, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:20},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"scent",spec:"",val:65}],
    weapons: ["gore","trample"],
    tactics: "Eleven head, waist deep in floodwater a mile from the road, grazing something that is not there. Statblock is one animal; run as many as the GM needs. They ignore people entirely until somebody tries to move them, and then they move as a herd and in one direction. POWER: DRIVEN. A single animal fights with horn or by trampling one person down, as the statblock's weapons say. DRIVEN is the whole herd going at once and is heavier than any one animal's trample: anybody in front of the herd when it goes takes 2d6 and is knocked down, no roll to avoid if they are in water above the knee — an Athletics roll at −20% to get clear if they are on dry ground. The herd always goes towards deeper water, because that is where it was going in 1947, and anybody knocked down in front of it is under eleven animals and the ASPHYXIA rules. They cannot be turned, shot down usefully, or frightened. They can be waited out: they stop after four rounds and graze again, and the department's advice is to stand still and let them pass." },

  { key: "the_heron", name: "The heron", role: "HORROR. The grey thing standing in the reservoir margin that has not moved since Tuesday",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 2, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 13, siz: 12, con: 13, int: 9, pow: 21, dex: 16, cha: 6, edu: 3 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:95},
             {fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:90},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:65},
             {fam:"insight",spec:"",val:50}],
    weapons: ["beak"],
    tactics: "It stands in eighteen inches of water at the margin and it waits, and everything it has ever caught it caught by waiting. It gets one attack, the bill, and it does not miss things that are still. POWER: THE STRIKE. Against any target that did not move on its previous turn, its attack is at +30% and does double damage. Against a target that moved it is at −20%. That single rule is the entire fight and the players will work it out in a round, which is the intention. It is a flyer: put a hole in either wing and it is on the ground and cannot reach the middle of the water, which is where the rest of the case is. It does not defend a territory and will simply move to the next reservoir if driven off." }

];