RingBRP/tools/bestiary-anomalous.mjs

/**
 * ANOMALOUS AND FAR-SIDE — twenty-five creatures whose geometry, count or sequence is
 * wrong.
 *
 * Written against the two location tables the bestiary barely touches. The engine picks
 * a hit table from `spec.bodyPlan ?? spec.species` (build-packs.mjs:294), so a creature
 * meant to be hit-located as a Vesh or a Cadence must NOT carry a bodyPlan — every
 * entry below with species vesh or cadence deliberately omits it, and the baseline
 * entries name their plan explicitly.
 *
 * What those two tables actually do, because the tactics below rely on it:
 *
 *   VESH (anatomy.mjs) — six locations, no head and no neck. destructionOutcomeFor
 *   therefore never returns "dead" for a Vesh: the worst single location result in the
 *   game is a destroyed RIDGE, which is "dying". There is no decapitation. The ridge is
 *   kind "ridge": −30% Perception, counts as a vital (prone), 3 ranged faces (18–20)
 *   and frac 0.5. It is in the TORSO armour coverage sets, not the head set — a helmet
 *   protects nothing on a Vesh and a vest protects its vital.
 *   The bracing limb is kind "brace", which locationEffectsFor counts as a LEG, so a
 *   Vesh has two leg-kind locations and one hit among them halves movement. The grasping
 *   limb is the ONLY manipulator it has: disable it and every manipulation is at −30%
 *   with nothing to fall back on, unlike a two-armed baseline.
 *
 *   CADENCE — five bodies, 4 faces each (a flat 20% per body), frac 0.28, kind "unit".
 *   No vital, no head, no neck, so NO location result can kill or start a dying count:
 *   destructionOutcomeFor returns "none" for all five. The only way a Cadence dies is the
 *   hit-point pool reaching zero. Each body disabled is −10% to EVERYTHING and nothing
 *   else — no bleed, no prone, no unconscious. Five bodies down is a creature at −50%
 *   that is still standing and still fighting. 0.28 is BELOW a baseline leg's 0.42, so
 *   the bodies disable fast and the person degrades smoothly. This is why shooting one
 *   feels like nothing is working, and why a GM should narrate the penalty out loud.
 *
 * Talents are species-locked in the catalogue: `unblinking` is vesh-only, `distributed`
 * and `quorum` are cadence-only. The five anomalous talents — out_of_step, echo_sense,
 * borrowed_hour, not_quite_here, wrong_memory — are locked to nobody and are used here
 * on all three species on purpose.
 *
 * Not wired into content.mjs or the packs. This file is the band, nothing more.
 */

export const BESTIARY_ANOMALOUS = [

  /* ============================================================ VESH GEOMETRY */

  { key: "foldwalker", name: "Foldwalker", role: "ANOMALOUS. It is standing in two rooms and only one of them is yours",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 4, species: "vesh",
    talents: ["unblinking", "not_quite_here"],
    ch: { str: 15, siz: 13, con: 16, int: 12, pow: 18, dex: 15, cha: 5, edu: 8 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"transposition",spec:"",val:50}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It fights from the room the party is not in and reaches through. POWER: HALF PRESENT. Every attack against it is resolved twice and the LOWER result stands, because half of it is elsewhere; its own attacks are unaffected. Close both exits from the room it is half in and the power stops — it has to pick a side, and it picks the one with a way out. Its grasping limb is its only manipulator: disable it (melee 16–18) and it cannot hold anyone." },

  { key: "anglesmith", name: "Anglesmith", role: "ANOMALOUS. It adds a corner to a building and the building agrees to it",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 5, species: "vesh",
    talents: ["unblinking", "echo_sense"],
    ch: { str: 17, siz: 15, con: 18, int: 16, pow: 20, dex: 11, cha: 4, edu: 14 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:35},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"engineering",spec:"field_systems",val:70},{fam:"anomaly_lore",spec:"",val:65},
             {fam:"knowledge",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"transposition",spec:"",val:65}],
    weapons: ["grasp","cutter"],
    tactics: "It is working, not hunting, and will ignore a team that stays out of the room it is altering. POWER: THE NEW CORNER. Each round it works, one wall of the location gains a corner that was not there: anybody crossing the room must make a DEXx5 roll or lose their move and end prone. After four rounds the corner is permanent and the room has one more exit than the plans show, leading somewhere the plans do not name. Killing it leaves the corners it finished; they do not unmake themselves." },

  { key: "halfpast", name: "Half past", role: "ANOMALOUS. It is forty seconds ahead and cannot be caught up with",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 3, species: "vesh",
    talents: ["unblinking", "out_of_step"],
    ch: { str: 13, siz: 11, con: 13, int: 13, pow: 19, dex: 18, cha: 6, edu: 9 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:65},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It has already seen this round. It moves before anyone declares and is never where the shot goes. POWER: FORTY SECONDS. It acts first every round regardless of Reaction, and the first attack made against it each round automatically misses. Both stop the moment it takes a Major Wound — being hurt puts it back in step with everybody else, and after that it is an ordinary fast thing." },

  { key: "returned_surveyor", name: "Returned surveyor", role: "REVENANT. Department surveyor, missing eleven years, back with the wrong limbs",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 2, species: "vesh",
    talents: ["unblinking", "wrong_memory", "dead_reckon"],
    ch: { str: 12, siz: 12, con: 12, int: 14, pow: 15, dex: 12, cha: 8, edu: 16 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:35},
             {fam:"navigate",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"anomaly_lore",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"insight",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"knowledge",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    gear: ["survey_kit","brass_compass","field_slate"],
    tactics: "Talk to it. It still has its warrant number, it still files, and it does not know what it is now — it will show anyone its notes. POWER: THE ELEVEN YEARS. Any agent who reads its survey notes learns one true fact about the far side of the crossing and loses 1 Coherence; the notes are correct and were taken from the inside. It fights only if restrained, badly, and stops the moment someone uses its name. Its body has no head to put a bullet in, which is the first thing a medic notices and the reason it cannot be sent home." },

  { key: "unmeasured", name: "The unmeasured", role: "ANOMALOUS. Nothing that measures it agrees with anything else that measures it",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 1, species: "vesh",
    talents: ["unblinking"],
    ch: { str: 9, siz: 10, con: 11, int: 6, pow: 16, dex: 9, cha: 2, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:25},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:30},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:55},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:40}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    gear: ["density_scanner"],
    tactics: "Harmless and extremely inconvenient. It drifts, it does not attack, and it ruins the record. POWER: NO TWO AGREE. Every instrument within ten metres returns a different reading, and no measurement taken in its presence can be used as evidence — Chain of Custody fails automatically on anything logged while it is in the room. Bag it in a stasis box and the readings settle. Shooting it works and wastes the case." },

  { key: "patient_grasp", name: "Patient grasp", role: "FAR-SIDE. It has been holding something on the other side for a long time",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 8, species: "vesh",
    talents: ["unblinking"],
    ch: { str: 22, siz: 18, con: 24, int: 5, pow: 17, dex: 6, cha: 1, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:10},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:50},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:40}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It cannot move. Its bracing limb is set into the floor and its grasping limb is through the crossing, holding something shut on the far side. POWER: DO NOT LET GO. Anything entering its reach — three metres — is seized on a successful Brawl and held at STR 22; it will not strike, only hold, and it holds until the held agent is at 0 hit points from exhaustion or somebody else cuts the limb off. Destroying the grasping limb (melee 16–18) frees everyone and opens whatever it was holding shut. That is the trade and the players should be told it plainly." },

  { key: "the_tideline", name: "The tideline", role: "FAR-SIDE. It keeps the mark where one side touches the other",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 6, species: "vesh",
    talents: ["unblinking", "echo_sense"],
    ch: { str: 16, siz: 14, con: 17, int: 10, pow: 22, dex: 13, cha: 4, edu: 5 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"track",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"transposition",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["grasp","monoblade"],
    tactics: "It patrols a line that is not drawn on anything and knows to the metre where it runs. It does not pursue across it. POWER: THE MARK. Anyone who crosses the line is marked, and the mark does not come off: while marked, the agent is found again within a day wherever they go, by this creature or the next one. A crossing regulator run in reverse on the same spot clears the mark. Killing it does not — the line stays and the next one inherits the patrol." },

  { key: "glass_auditor", name: "Glass auditor", role: "FORWARD. It is checking whether this building is the right shape",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 7, species: "vesh",
    talents: ["unblinking", "wrong_memory"],
    ch: { str: 14, siz: 14, con: 16, int: 20, pow: 21, dex: 12, cha: 9, edu: 23 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:35},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"research",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"knowledge",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"engineering",spec:"field_systems",val:75},{fam:"anomaly_lore",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    gear: ["field_slate","date_stamp","long_ledger"],
    tactics: "It has a schedule of dimensions from further along and this building does not match it. It will explain this, politely, and go on working. POWER: BROUGHT INTO COMPLIANCE. Once every three rounds it corrects one measurement of the location — a corridor is now eleven metres and always was, a doorway is now too narrow for a stretcher, a stair has one fewer step. No roll resists it and the change is retroactive. Anybody standing where a wall has just always been takes 2d6 and is moved to the nearest space. Show it a higher schedule and it stops: this is a Borrowed Authority problem with a Trust it genuinely holds." },

  /* ============================================================ CADENCE SWARMS */

  { key: "quorate", name: "Quorate", role: "ANOMALOUS. It will not act until enough of it agrees, and then all of it acts",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 2, species: "cadence",
    talents: ["distributed", "quorum"],
    ch: { str: 12, siz: 11, con: 14, int: 13, pow: 17, dex: 14, cha: 8, edu: 11 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "It spends the first rounds of any encounter doing nothing while the bodies confer. POWER: THE VOTE. It takes no action at all until three of its five bodies have line of sight to the same target; on the round that happens, it makes FIVE attacks at once against that target, one per surviving body. Break the sight lines — smoke, a closed door, a scattered party — and it goes back to conferring. Every body disabled is −10% to the whole creature and one attack fewer, and with two bodies left it can never reach quorum again." },

  { key: "five_of_six", name: "Five of six", role: "HORROR. Five bodies here, one still on the far side, and it wants the set",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 5, species: "cadence",
    talents: ["distributed", "quorum", "echo_sense"],
    ch: { str: 16, siz: 13, con: 19, int: 15, pow: 24, dex: 16, cha: 5, edu: 12 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"track",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"transposition",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["grasp","monoblade"],
    tactics: "One of the worst things in this band. It is incomplete and it is recruiting. POWER: THE SIXTH PLACE. Any agent it grapples and holds for two consecutive rounds is taken — not killed, taken: they walk to the crossing with it under no compulsion anyone can see, and they become the sixth body. A POWx1 roll each round is the only resistance, and the player rolls it in the open. Once it has six, it leaves and the case is closed badly. Its five tracked bodies have no vital and no head, so nothing the party shoots will drop it in one hit; it has to be ground to zero hit points, and it knows that better than they do. Cut off its route to the crossing and it will fight to reach it rather than to survive." },

  { key: "the_remainder", name: "The remainder", role: "HORROR. A swarm-mind that lost a body somewhere it cannot go back to",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 1, species: "cadence",
    talents: ["distributed", "quorum"],
    ch: { str: 10, siz: 10, con: 12, int: 11, pow: 15, dex: 13, cha: 6, edu: 9 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:45}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "It is grieving and it is not dangerous unless cornered. It runs one body short from the moment it is met: start it with one body already disabled, which is −10% to everything before the first roll. POWER: THE GAP. Once per encounter it puts a body through the place the lost one went; that body is gone for two rounds and returns in any space within fifty metres, ignoring walls and locks. Feed it, and it will show a team where the gap is. Kill it, and nothing finds the gap again." },

  { key: "counterpoint", name: "Counterpoint", role: "ANOMALOUS. Five bodies, each in a slightly different minute",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 3, species: "cadence",
    talents: ["distributed", "quorum", "out_of_step"],
    ch: { str: 13, siz: 11, con: 15, int: 14, pow: 20, dex: 17, cha: 7, edu: 13 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"transposition",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["punch","baton"],
    tactics: "Its bodies do not share a clock. One is acting on what it saw thirty seconds ago and one on what has not happened. POWER: OUT OF SEQUENCE. Damage done to one body arrives on a delay: note it, and apply it at the END of the following round rather than now, which means a body can act after the hit that disables it. Area damage hits every body at once and defeats the trick entirely, which is the intended answer and should be discoverable. Reduce it to two bodies and the remaining pair fall into the same minute; after that it is an ordinary fight at −30%." },

  { key: "the_tally", name: "The tally", role: "FORWARD. A distributed clerk counting the party against a number it already has",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 4, species: "cadence",
    talents: ["distributed", "quorum"],
    ch: { str: 9, siz: 12, con: 15, int: 21, pow: 19, dex: 10, cha: 11, edu: 25 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:20},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:25},{fam:"research",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"knowledge",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"persuade",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"status",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    gear: ["long_ledger","attendance_register","date_stamp"],
    tactics: "It will not fight and cannot win one. It counts. Each of its five bodies counts a different thing — heads, warrants, weapons, hours, names — and it reconciles them out loud. POWER: THE RECONCILIATION. At the end of the scene, whatever its count says is what the record will show: if it counted three agents where four came in, the fourth has no attendance and no pay and a great deal of explaining to do, and the department believes the register. Correcting it is paperwork, not violence. Disabling a body removes one column from the count, which is the fastest legitimate fix available in the room." },

  { key: "many_hands", name: "Many hands", role: "ANOMALOUS. It is working on five things at once and one of them is you",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 4, species: "cadence",
    talents: ["distributed", "quorum"],
    ch: { str: 15, siz: 12, con: 16, int: 12, pow: 16, dex: 18, cha: 4, edu: 10 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"sleight_of_hand",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"repair",spec:"mechanical",val:70},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["punch","dagger"],
    tactics: "It does not fight so much as disassemble. Each body takes one thing apart and puts it somewhere else. POWER: TAKEN TO PIECES. Each round, one body attempts Sleight of Hand at 80% against a different agent; success removes one carried item — a magazine, a key, a radio handset, a dressing — and it is gone, put down somewhere in the building. Nothing is stolen for gain and nothing is broken. It stops when it runs out of bodies or when somebody gives it something better to take apart. The scattered kit is all findable afterwards on a Spot roll per item." },

  { key: "the_iteration", name: "The iteration", role: "FORWARD. The same person five times, at five ages, arguing",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 6, species: "cadence",
    talents: ["distributed", "quorum", "borrowed_hour", "wrong_memory"],
    ch: { str: 14, siz: 13, con: 20, int: 23, pow: 26, dex: 13, cha: 14, edu: 26 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"persuade",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"psychology",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"knowledge",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"anomaly_lore",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"transposition",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "The other genuinely apex entry. Five bodies, one life, each of them the same person at a different age, and they do not agree about what should be done. POWER: THE LONG VIEW. Once a round, it names one action an agent has not taken yet and describes how it went; the GM writes that down. If the agent takes that action this scene, the described outcome happens — no roll — and the agent loses 1 Coherence. It will not lie, because it has no reason to. It can be talked out of the encounter entirely: convince any three of its five bodies and the whole thing leaves, which is far cheaper than the fight, because no location on it can be killed outright and it has twenty-six POW to spend. Meeting it costs 1 Coherence. Killing it costs 3, and one of the five was going to be somebody's colleague." },

  /* ============================================================ ECHOES AND REVENANTS */

  { key: "backscatter", name: "Backscatter", role: "ANOMALOUS. Its geometry is wrong and so is looking at it",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 9, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 19, siz: 16, con: 21, int: 8, pow: 25, dex: 15, cha: 1, edu: 2 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It moves the way a reflection moves and the angles do not close. POWER: WRONG ANGLES. Anybody who aims at it is at −30% on that attack, because the part of it they are looking at is not the part that is there; firing blind, by sound, or into a doorway it must pass through carries no penalty. Anybody who studies it deliberately for a full round loses 1 Coherence and takes the −30% for the rest of the fight even when shooting blind. It is a hard, fast, ordinary-damage thing once the trick is solved, and the trick is to stop looking." },

  { key: "afterimage", name: "Afterimage", role: "ECHO. What is left where somebody was killed twice",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 0, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "baseline",
    talents: ["not_quite_here"],
    ch: { str: 8, siz: 11, con: 9, int: 5, pow: 18, dex: 13, cha: 2, edu: 3 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:35},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:65},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:30}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "It repeats the last ninety seconds of a death, in place, on a loop, and it cannot do anything else. It is not a threat and it cannot leave the room. POWER: THE SECOND TIME. Any agent who watches the loop to the end learns exactly how the person died, including who was in the room, which is usually the case broken open. It costs 1 Coherence to watch and it is worth it. It fades when the loop is named aloud with the dead person's real name, and a First Aid or Medicine roll on the body — if there still is one — supplies it." },

  { key: "second_pass", name: "Second pass", role: "REVENANT. It has already done this once and remembers how it went",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 3, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "baseline",
    talents: ["borrowed_hour", "clean_scene"],
    ch: { str: 14, siz: 13, con: 15, int: 16, pow: 18, dex: 15, cha: 11, edu: 14 },
    skills: [{fam:"firearm",spec:"pistol",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:55},
             {fam:"tradecraft",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:65},
             {fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"demolition",spec:"",val:50}],
    weapons: ["pistol_med","baton"], armour: ["soft_armour"],
    tactics: "Somebody competent who has run this scene before and is running it again with the answers. Build it from whoever the party is about to meet if there is one. POWER: I KNOW HOW THIS GOES. Three times per encounter it may declare that an agent's action fails — a lock that was going to open does not, a radio call does not connect, a covering shot is out of ammunition — with no roll. It spends these early, not late. Once all three are gone it is a well-equipped professional and nothing more. If the party changes the scene in a way it cannot have seen — a route it did not take, a person it did not bring — it loses any unspent declarations immediately." },

  { key: "turnback", name: "Turnback", role: "REVENANT. A department dog that came back from the wrong side of a crossing",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 4, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 17, siz: 12, con: 18, int: 5, pow: 16, dex: 17, cha: 4, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"track",spec:"",val:95},
             {fam:"scent",spec:"",val:90},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It still knows its handler's whistle and it still comes when called. That is the problem. POWER: STILL TRAINED. It will obey any correctly given department recall — the whistle, the word, the hand sign — and then it will not stop obeying: whoever gave the order has it for the rest of the scene and cannot dismiss it, including out of a room they need to leave. It tracks by a scent trail laid on the far side, so it follows people who have not been where it is going. A neck hit (melee 19, ranged 18–19) puts it down and a destroyed neck kills it outright, which is the only clean end available." },

  { key: "the_overflight", name: "The overflight", role: "FAR-SIDE. It is flying over a landscape that is not this one",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 7, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 23, siz: 21, con: 22, int: 7, pow: 20, dex: 14, cha: 3, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"track",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It is not hunting here. It is crossing somewhere else and this sky happens to overlap for about four minutes. It descends only at what moves alone. POWER: THE OTHER GROUND. It ignores terrain that exists on this side: walls, roofs and closed vehicles are not cover against it, because on its side they are not there. Solid earth is — a cellar, a tunnel, a ditch deeper than a man is the only cover that works, and a party that works that out survives the four minutes without a fight. Disable either wing (melee 17–18, ranged 12–17) and it is grounded here permanently, which turns a four-minute scare into a serious fight on foot." },

  { key: "recurrence", name: "Recurrence", role: "ANOMALOUS. The same four minutes, again",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 5, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "baseline",
    talents: ["borrowed_hour"],
    ch: { str: 15, siz: 14, con: 17, int: 12, pow: 23, dex: 12, cha: 7, edu: 11 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"insight",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"anomaly_lore",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["grasp","cudgel"],
    tactics: "It is not a loop the party is in; it is a loop the party can see. POWER: AGAIN. At the end of every fourth round, the four minutes restart: everything in the location returns to where it was, doors reclose, spent rounds are back in the magazine — and so is every hit point the party lost, and every hit point this thing lost. Nothing carries over except what the players remember and what they carried OUT of the room. It cannot be killed inside its four minutes. Drag it past the threshold, or be somewhere else when the reset lands and it starts the four minutes without you, alone, forever." },

  { key: "inside_out", name: "Inside out", role: "ANOMALOUS. The room is inside the thing",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 12, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 26, siz: 28, con: 27, int: 9, pow: 27, dex: 4, cha: 1, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:5},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:40}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "The worst thing in this band and the one a team should run from. It does not enter a room; the room turns out to have been inside it for some time. POWER: CONTAINED. Everyone in the location is inside it. There is no exit except the one it has: every round, each agent takes 1d6 with no roll to avoid and no armour, and the walls are 12 points of natural armour that heals. The ONE way out is the crossing it came through, which is somewhere in the location and findable on a cumulative Spot or Anomaly Lore roll at −40%, one attempt each per round. Nobody kills this. It is a countdown with a door in it, and the correct outcome is four agents through the door and a report that recommends the site be sealed." },

  { key: "latecomer", name: "The latecomer", role: "REVENANT. It arrives before it is sent for",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 4, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "baseline",
    talents: ["wrong_memory", "first_through"],
    ch: { str: 16, siz: 14, con: 16, int: 14, pow: 19, dex: 14, cha: 10, edu: 15 },
    skills: [{fam:"firearm",spec:"rifle",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"first_aid",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"tradecraft",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"navigate",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"anomaly_lore",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["rifle_med","baton"], armour: ["impact_vest"],
    tactics: "Department relief for an incident that has not been called in yet, and it is already standing in the doorway with the right paperwork. POWER: THE CALL NOT MADE. It knows one thing about the next hour and will say it if asked — the GM answers one player question about what is coming, truthfully. In exchange it will insist on taking command, and its orders are for the incident it was sent to, not the one happening. If the party ever makes the call it was answering, it stops being anomalous: it is simply relief, it stands down, and the scene closes cleanly. If they never make it, it is still there at the end of the case and cannot be sent home." },

  { key: "mirrorline", name: "Mirrorline", role: "ANOMALOUS. It does what you do, on the other side of a line that is not there",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 6, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "baseline",
    talents: ["not_quite_here"],
    ch: { str: 15, siz: 13, con: 16, int: 10, pow: 20, dex: 16, cha: 5, edu: 6 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"melee_weapon",spec:"knife",val:60}],
    weapons: ["dagger","punch"],
    tactics: "It copies the nearest agent's movement exactly, reversed, and it fights the way they do. POWER: REFLECTED. It uses the copied agent's Brawl, Dodge and best melee skill instead of its own, whichever are higher, for as long as that agent is the nearest. Whatever damage it takes this round, the copied agent takes half, rounded down, with armour applying normally — this is the part players must be told after the first exchange, not before. Change who is nearest and it re-copies at the start of the next round, which means the answer is to put somebody untrained and behind cover closest to it. It breaks when there is nobody within twenty metres." },

  { key: "carried_over", name: "Carried over", role: "HORROR. A wound that came back without the person it was in",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 0, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "baseline",
    talents: ["not_quite_here"],
    ch: { str: 6, siz: 4, con: 14, int: 3, pow: 19, dex: 14, cha: 1, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:50}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "Small, quiet, and looking for a body to be a wound in. It does not kill and it cannot be reasoned with because there is nothing there to reason with. POWER: IT NEEDS SOMEWHERE TO BE. On a successful attack it does no damage; instead it enters the target and reopens as an injury they have already had — roll the location, and that location is at the hit points it was at the worst moment of that agent's career, bleeding 1 per round. First Aid stops the bleeding but not the wound. It leaves the host if the host goes to 0 hit points, or if a Medicine roll at −20% is made on the correct location while a ward is present. The creature itself has 14 CON and no armour, and killing it while it is loose is by far the easy answer." },

];