RingBRP/tools/bestiary-beasts.mjs

/**
 * BEASTS, HERALDRY AND HYBRIDS — twenty-five creatures on the non-human body plans.
 *
 * Forty-six of the existing creatures are hit-located as two-armed humans, which means a
 * hound, a horse and a heraldic lion all had a chest and two arms. This file exists to
 * populate `quadruped` and `winged`: twenty-two of the twenty-five use them, and the
 * three on `baseline` are there because they genuinely stand upright — the wild-man
 * supporter, the man-faced tyger, the mermaid off the font. A thing on four legs is a
 * different fight from a man, and the anatomy table is where that difference lives.
 *
 * WHAT THE PLANS GIVE YOU, and why the tactics below keep pointing at them:
 *
 *   QUADRUPED. The forequarters are the vital and they are a broadside — nine faces on
 *   the ranged column. The head is ONE face, carried low and swung, so "shoot it in the
 *   head" is not a plan. Four legs at 0.42 each: cripple one and the animal is still
 *   standing, cripple two on the same end and it is not. Most of these creatures are
 *   stopped by taking their legs, not their lives.
 *
 *   WINGED. The same animal, plus two wings that are `bare` in anatomy.mjs — they carry
 *   NO natural armour at any thickness — and that own six of the twenty ranged faces
 *   while it is in the air. Disable either one and the creature drops to `quadruped` for
 *   the rest of the scene, and a grounded creature's natural armour HALVES everywhere
 *   except the vital. That is the whole shape of every armoured flyer here: shoot the
 *   wing, ground it, then fight the animal instead of the armour. It is the supporter's
 *   own lesson (R-254/R-255, docs/REVIEW_LOG.md) and nothing below is allowed to be an
 *   unkillable object without naming the way through it.
 *
 * CATALOGUE GAP, stated rather than papered over: WEAPONS has no natural attacks except
 * `grasp` (1d6+1 blunt, damage-modified) and `punch` (1d3). There is no bite, no gore, no
 * hoof, no talon, no trample. Every biter and gorer below is therefore written as `grasp`
 * and its real attack is described in the tactics line. The wound type is consequently
 * wrong for the whole file — a boar's tusk and a gryphon's talon both resolve as blunt.
 * Named, not invented; see the report.
 *
 * Register is folk-horror and natural history: these are animals in the wrong county,
 * livestock that has gone wrong, and records of animals that were kept too accurately.
 * Threat is deliberately uneven. The cade lamb, the drain heron, the hinny, the gazehound
 * and the martlet are animals a team can drive off, shout at, or simply outwalk. The dun
 * cow, the gryphon and the water bull will kill people.
 */

export const BESTIARY_BEASTS = [

  /* ---------------- HERALDRY: things that came down off the arms ---------------- */

  { key: "bull_azure", name: "The azure bull", role: "HERALDRY. The blue bull off the brewery arms, standing in the yard it was drawn for",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 6, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 26, siz: 21, con: 24, int: 4, pow: 14, dex: 10, cha: 9, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:25},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:50},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It charges in straight lines and it will not turn inside a yard. Fight it in a doorway or an alley and it can only come at you one way; fight it in the open and it comes back round every third round. POWER: THE CHARGE. If it moves 10m or more in a straight line before it connects, the hit does double damage. Break the line — cover, a parked car, a scattered team — and it is an ordinary large animal at 1d6+1 plus its considerable damage bonus. Its hide is 6 across the barrel; its legs are the same but there are four of them and it only needs two at the front. It stops when it is back in the yard, which is where it thinks it lives.",
    note: "The brewery closed in 1974. The arms are still on the gatepost." },

  { key: "enfield", name: "The enfield", role: "HERALDRY. A fox's head, an eagle's forelegs, a wolf's body and a lion's hindquarters, assembled by a herald who never saw one",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 3, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 15, siz: 13, con: 14, int: 8, pow: 16, dex: 18, cha: 6, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"scent",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:65}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It was described before it existed and it moves like four animals arguing. It scavenges, it takes the dead, and it will not stand and fight anything that is still upright and shouting. POWER: BADLY ASSEMBLED. Its parts do not share a nervous system: a crippled limb costs it nothing in initiative or attack, because the other three were never coordinating with it anyway. What does stop it is the forequarters — one good broadside and the fox's head goes down with the wolf's chest. It only defends what it has already dragged off, so the way to end this without a fight is to let it keep the body." },

  { key: "yale", name: "The yale", role: "HERALDRY. The horned beast whose horns swivel, off a college gate",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 4, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 19, siz: 15, con: 18, int: 5, pow: 15, dex: 14, cha: 8, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "The one detail the heralds insisted on is the one that matters: the horns turn. It can point one forward and one back. POWER: BOTH WAYS AT ONCE. It may not be flanked. Attacks from behind or the side get no bonus and it defends against two attackers in the same round at no penalty; against three or more the ordinary cumulative defence penalty applies again, so the answer is a fourth agent, not a cleverer angle. It fights to drive you off the gateway it guards and stops the moment you are outside it.",
    note: "The college has held the badge since 1487 and has no record of granting it anything." },

  { key: "white_hart", name: "The white hart", role: "HERALDRY. The badge beast with the crown about its neck, which cannot be taken",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 2, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 17, siz: 17, con: 16, int: 9, pow: 24, dex: 19, cha: 18, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:20}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "It does not fight. It is a badge, and a badge's whole function is to be followed. It stands at the edge of the light, lets itself be seen, and moves off at a walk. POWER: THE CHASE IS THE POINT. Anybody who sets out after it must make a POWx5 roll each hour to break off; failure means another hour, and every agent still following after three hours is lost — they arrive somewhere the case did not include and their own route back does not work. It is ended by nobody following it. Shooting it is possible, easy even, and every scenario in which it has been shot has gone worse from that point." },

  { key: "man_tyger", name: "The man-tyger", role: "HERALDRY. A lion with an old man's face, drawn upright on a mayoral chain",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 5, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 21, siz: 17, con: 20, int: 12, pow: 18, dex: 15, cha: 11, edu: 3 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:65},
             {fam:"insight",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"persuade",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It stands and grapples like a man because that is how it was drawn — rampant, two forelimbs free — and it has a man's face and a man's willingness to talk first. It will ask who authorised you. POWER: THE FACE. While it is talking, no agent may attack it without spending a round overcoming the fact that it has a face; declare the attack, lose the round, act on the next one. Attacking it from surprise, or while it is already fighting somebody else, skips this entirely. Armour 5 over the torso, nothing over the face it keeps using." },

  { key: "melusine", name: "Melusine", role: "HERALDRY. The twin-tailed mermaid off the font, and the water she came up through",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 3, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 18, siz: 13, con: 17, int: 14, pow: 21, dex: 16, cha: 17, edu: 6 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"persuade",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"insight",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "She holds the two tails apart with her hands, exactly as carved, and she cannot move on dry stone faster than a walk. On land she is a conversation; in water she is a drowning. POWER: THE FONT IS A DOOR. Any standing water deeper than a foot within sight of her carving is somewhere she can be, and she may move between any two such bodies of water in the building as a single action. Drain the font, or break the line of sight to the carving with something opaque, and she is confined to whichever pool she is standing in. She does not pursue anybody out of the church." },

  { key: "eagle_displayed", name: "The eagle displayed", role: "HERALDRY. The two-headed eagle off a brass lectern, at full wingspan",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 4, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 16, siz: 9, con: 13, int: 6, pow: 19, dex: 20, cha: 10, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:60}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "Brass, hollow, and drawn flat — wings spread, one head each way — so it flies as a shape rather than a bird. It goes for hands and faces and never lands. POWER: TWO HEADS. It cannot be surprised and it watches two directions at once: every agent in the room is being observed, so no stealth approach works while it is airborne. The wings carry none of its 4 armour and are three ranged faces each; put a hole in one and it comes down, at which point it is a brass bird the size of a goose with armour 2 and no way back up. It is a nuisance with a beak, not a killer, and it will leave if the lectern is covered."  },

  /* ---------------- HYBRIDS AND WINGED THINGS ---------------- */

  { key: "gryphon", name: "The guildhall gryphon", role: "HERALDRY. Eagle in front, lion behind, and six centuries of being kept accurately",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 8, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 28, siz: 22, con: 30, int: 9, pow: 20, dex: 15, cha: 13, edu: 2 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"track",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:40}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It stoops from height, takes one agent off the ground, and drops them — it does not wrestle. Anybody lifted takes the fall damage for the height, and the team's problem is that it goes back up afterwards. POWER: STOOP AND DROP. On a successful attack against a target of SIZ 16 or less it carries them 15m up and releases: 3d6, no armour, and the agent is now somewhere else. THE WAY THROUGH IT: 8 armour is more than a service pistol beats, and the wings carry none of it. Wing hits are six of twenty ranged faces while it is airborne — put one out and it is grounded for the scene, armour halved to 4 everywhere but the forequarters, and the fight becomes a large angry animal that the party can shoot. Left alone above the guildhall roof it is close to unkillable, which is why nobody fights it there." },

  { key: "sign_wyvern", name: "The sign wyvern", role: "HERALDRY. Two legs, two wings and a barbed tail, off a pub sign that has hung there since the turnpike",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 6, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 20, siz: 18, con: 22, int: 7, pow: 17, dex: 16, cha: 8, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:45}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "Painted, so it is flat from the side and startlingly thin head-on, and it fights in passes rather than standing. It will not go further than the sign's own sightline down the road. POWER: A FOOT OF PAINT. Attacks against it from directly in front or behind are at −30%; from the side it is an ordinary target. It has only two legs, so crippling either one puts it on the ground for good — that is the fast way through the 6 armour, which halves to 3 once it is down. It goes back onto the sign at first light and is a painting again until somebody repaints the sign." },

  { key: "cockatrice", name: "The cockatrice", role: "HYBRID. What came out of the egg the cockerel was sitting on",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 2, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 8, siz: 5, con: 11, int: 4, pow: 22, dex: 18, cha: 3, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "Small, ugly, and physically feeble — a boot kills it and it knows, so it hides in the rafters and the straw and it never fights first. The danger is entirely in being looked at. POWER: THE LOOK. Any agent who meets its eyes makes a POWx5 roll; failure means that limb or that side goes stiff and cold — one location of the GM's choice is treated as crippled for the rest of the scene, with no wound and no blood. Two failures and the agent cannot move at all, and must be carried. Every effect ends when the cockatrice dies. Anybody working with their eyes down, by touch, or by a mirror is immune, and so is anybody who kills it from outside the room. A weasel in the building will do the job for you, according to the file, and the file is not joking." },

  { key: "martlet", name: "The martlet", role: "HERALDRY. The little bird drawn with no feet, which therefore has none",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 0, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 3, siz: 3, con: 8, int: 5, pow: 16, dex: 22, cha: 7, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:75},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:15}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "It cannot land. It has been in the air since somebody drew it that way and it is exhausted in a manner that is difficult to watch. It is not a threat to anybody — 1d3 at worst, and it does not attack. POWER: IT CANNOT COME DOWN. It will follow one agent, the one who looked at it longest, for the rest of the case, and it cries continuously. Anybody trying to sleep within earshot recovers nothing that night. Killing it is trivial with a stick and the department does not recommend it: the mark passes to whoever swung. It ends if somebody gives it somewhere to be — a drawn perch, a carved foot, anything that amends the record it is stuck in." },

  { key: "piety_pelican", name: "The pelican in her piety", role: "HERALDRY. The bird carved tearing her own breast to feed the young, still doing it",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 1, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 9, siz: 8, con: 20, int: 6, pow: 23, dex: 12, cha: 12, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:35},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:55},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:25}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "She will not fight and she cannot be driven off the nest. She is opening her own chest with her beak, continuously, and she has been for a long time. POWER: PIETY. Her blood heals: a mouthful closes one wound completely, restoring hit points to a single location in full and lifting a crippled result, and she gives it freely to anybody who asks. Each mouthful taken costs her 3 hit points that she does not recover, and she will empty herself for a team that keeps asking. If she dies of it, everybody who drank loses 1 Coherence permanently and the nest is still full of chicks. The correct outcome of this encounter is nobody drinking anything." },

  { key: "drain_heron", name: "The drain heron", role: "BEAST. A grey heron standing in the outfall, considerably too large, entirely ordinary in every other respect",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 1, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "winged",
    ch: { str: 11, siz: 7, con: 10, int: 4, pow: 12, dex: 17, cha: 4, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:85},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:40}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It is a bird. It stands absolutely still in the outfall for twenty minutes at a time and then stabs something. Walk towards it and it goes — no roll, no test, it simply leaves, because that is what herons do. The only reason it is in the file at all is that it is four feet at the shoulder and it has been seen swallowing things from the drain that were wearing clothing. If cornered it stabs at eye height for 1d6+1 and then flies. Do not corner it."  },

  /* ---------------- HOUNDS, AND WHAT IS IN THE KENNELS ---------------- */

  { key: "talbot", name: "The last talbot", role: "BEAST. The white hunting hound off the old arms, bred back for by somebody who should not have managed it",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 3, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 20, siz: 15, con: 19, int: 6, pow: 15, dex: 14, cha: 7, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"scent",spec:"",val:95},
             {fam:"track",spec:"",val:90},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:75}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It is a hound and it does the hound thing: it takes the scent, it follows at a trot all day, and it does not hurry because it does not need to. It fights only at the end. POWER: IT DOES NOT LOSE THE LINE. Once it has an agent's scent no stealth, water, vehicle or transposition breaks the track — it arrives, hours later, wherever they went. It can be BEATEN rather than broken: it answers to kennel discipline, and anybody who makes a Persuade roll while using the right tone and the right words (the kennel book is in the estate archive) can call it off entirely. Otherwise it is an 8-stone dog with a bite, which four armed agents can kill, and it will still have been worth reading the book." },

  { key: "gazehound", name: "The gazehound", role: "BEAST. A coursing dog bred to see further than a dog should, and it does",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 1, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 13, siz: 11, con: 12, int: 5, pow: 13, dex: 21, cha: 8, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:95},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"track",spec:"",val:50}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "Fast, light, thin-skinned, and no real threat to an adult who stands their ground — it is built to run things down, not to fight them, and it breaks off the moment anything hits it. POWER: IT SEES YOU FIRST. It automatically spots anything that moves within 400m, in any light, and it starts running. It is a HERALD, not a fight: whatever owns it knows where the team is about forty seconds later. Killing it is easy and pointless. Losing it means breaking line of sight before it gets up to speed, or giving it something else to course." },

  { key: "bearward_bear", name: "The bear-ward's bear", role: "MENAGERIE. The baiting bear off the inn-yard, old, half-blind, and still chained to a post that rotted away in 1804",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 5, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 24, siz: 20, con: 22, int: 6, pow: 16, dex: 9, cha: 6, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:20},{fam:"scent",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:30},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:50}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It is nearly blind and it tracks by sound and smell, so it fights whatever is loudest. 1d6+1 with a damage bonus that will take a limb off, but DEX 9 and Dodge 20 — it is slow, and a team that keeps moving and stays quiet can leave at any point. POWER: THE DOGS ARE STILL COMING. It is fighting animals that are not there, and it will not stop while it can hear anything it takes for dogs: barking, a whistle, a radio, a team shouting to each other. Total silence for three full rounds and it lies down. Dragging it back to the post is a Persuade problem and a 50kg chain, and it is the only ending in which nothing else in the yard gets hurt." },

  /* ---------------- LIVESTOCK THAT HAS GONE WRONG ---------------- */

  { key: "heath_cow", name: "The dun cow of the heath", role: "LIVESTOCK. The cow off the heath that was killed with a rib for a weapon, according to the church, which has the rib",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 7, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 30, siz: 26, con: 32, int: 4, pow: 18, dex: 8, cha: 10, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:15},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:45},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "Twelve feet at the shoulder and slower than everything the party owns. It does not chase, it does not need to, and it kills by standing where you are — 1d6+1 with a damage bonus in the region of +2d6, which is a dead agent per connected hit. POWER: MILKED DRY. It cannot be killed by anything it has already been killed by: edged steel, firearms and energy do half damage, because the story says it went down to a rib bone and the story is the load-bearing part. THE WAY THROUGH IT: bone, or a blunt improvised weapon, does full damage — the rib in the church is the correct answer and the file expects the team to go and get it. Failing that, take a foreleg and a hind leg on the same side and it goes down and stays down, because nothing that size gets up on two. Its head is one face in twenty and its skull is the thickest thing on it; do not aim there." },

  { key: "tup", name: "The tup", role: "LIVESTOCK. The ram that put a farmer through a gate, and has not been caught since",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 4, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 18, siz: 12, con: 16, int: 5, pow: 14, dex: 15, cha: 5, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:55},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:35}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It butts, from behind, at running speed, and it goes for whoever has their back to it. Nothing supernatural has ever been established about it. POWER: THE BLIND SIDE. Against any target who is not currently looking at it, the hit knocks down automatically and does 1d6+1+1d4 — no defence roll, because there was no warning. Face it and it will not close; it circles, it waits, and it takes the next person who turns around. A team that keeps one agent watching it is completely safe. A wall between you and it is enough. It can be driven into a pen by four people with sticks and that is the recommended outcome, because it is somebody's ram and somebody wants it back." },

  { key: "cade_lamb", name: "The cade lamb", role: "LIVESTOCK. The hand-reared lamb that was never afraid of anybody, and grew up",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 1, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 8, siz: 7, con: 10, int: 6, pow: 17, dex: 11, cha: 14, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:30},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:50},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:55},
             {fam:"insight",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:10},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:35}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "It cannot hurt anybody. It follows the team, stands too close, and watches faces the way a dog does and a sheep does not. POWER: IT WANTS TO COME IN. It will get through any door left ajar and it is inside the building by the next scene whatever the team does short of killing it. While it is in the room, everyone's Listen and Spot are at −20%, because it is standing there and they keep looking at it. Nothing ends it except shutting a real door or putting it in a vehicle, and both work. It is in the file because three separate teams have shot it and all three wrote the same sentence afterwards: it did not run." },

  { key: "hollow_hog", name: "The hollow hog", role: "LIVESTOCK. A tamworth crossed back to wild boar two generations ago, at large in the plantation ever since",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 5, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 21, siz: 15, con: 20, int: 5, pow: 12, dex: 13, cha: 4, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"scent",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:40},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:55}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "A real animal doing real animal damage: shoulder armour like a plate of gristle, tusks that open a thigh, and no interest in a fight it can avoid. In thick cover it is on you at four metres with no warning. POWER: GONE. Any round in which it is not engaged, it is out of sight and the team must Spot at −30% to know where it went; it re-enters the fight from a new direction. It is killed by ordinary means and it is a genuinely bad idea to wound it and follow it into the plantation, which is where every previous casualty happened. Shoot it in the open or leave it alone." },

  { key: "hinny", name: "The hinny", role: "LIVESTOCK. A stallion's foal out of a she-ass, sterile, willing, and no longer going where it is pointed",
    chosenStyle: "deliberate", naturalArmour: 2, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 22, siz: 18, con: 20, int: 8, pow: 19, dex: 12, cha: 9, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:30},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:45},{fam:"track",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["punch"],
    tactics: "It is a working animal and it does not attack. It kicks if handled roughly — 1d3 plus a large damage bonus, which is still a broken forearm — and otherwise it stands. POWER: IT KNOWS THE ROUTE. It is on a round it has walked for sixty years and it will not deviate: lead it, drive it, or load it, and it comes back to the lane by the next scene. Follow it instead and it takes the team along a route that is on no map and through at least one gateway that should not open, which is either the point of the scenario or the end of it. It ends when the round is finished, at a yard that was demolished, where it stops and waits to be unharnessed." },

  { key: "water_bull", name: "The water bull", role: "FOLKLORE. What comes out of the loch and gets among the cattle, and what the calves look like afterwards",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 8, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 27, siz: 22, con: 28, int: 7, pow: 21, dex: 14, cha: 7, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:35},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:60},
             {fam:"listen",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"spot",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:70}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It comes out at night, it is among the herd before the dogs start, and it goes back into the water when it is done. It fights only what stands between it and the loch. POWER: WET HIDE. While it is wet its armour is 8 and nothing the team carries reliably beats that. It dries: from the third round out of the water the armour drops by 1 each round, to a floor of 3. THE WAY THROUGH IT: keep it out of the water and keep it fighting — block the run, burn the time, and by round eight it is an ordinary enormous bull. Drive it back to the loch and the scene is over, the herd is short four beasts, and it will be back. Its calves are the actual scenario and they are in the byre now." },

  /* ---------------- BIG PREDATORS IN THE WRONG COUNTY ---------------- */

  { key: "moor_cat", name: "The moor cat", role: "BEAST. A big black cat on the moor, in a country that has not had one for a very long time and possibly does",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 2, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 17, siz: 14, con: 15, int: 7, pow: 14, dex: 20, cha: 9, edu: 1 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:75},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:90},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:80},{fam:"scent",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:85}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "An animal, and an animal's risk assessment: it takes sheep, it takes the agent at the back of the line, and it does not fight a group that has noticed it. POWER: ONE PASS. Its first attack in a scene is from ambush at +30% and knocks the target prone; after that it is either away into the bracken or it is in a fight it does not want. Any real injury and it leaves for good. Three agents walking together will never be attacked, which is the finding the department keeps putting in reports and the press keeps ignoring. It is killable with a rifle and the paperwork afterwards is the hard part." },

  { key: "gaunt_grey", name: "The gaunt grey", role: "BEAST. A wolf, in a county that logged its last one in 1621, and thin in a way that does not match how much it has eaten",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 3, species: "baseline", bodyPlan: "quadruped",
    ch: { str: 18, siz: 13, con: 17, int: 9, pow: 18, dex: 17, cha: 6, 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:75},{fam:"listen",spec:"",val:80},
             {fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:75}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It hunts the way a wolf hunts, which is to say by attrition and at the edges, and it is never where the team last heard it. POWER: STILL HUNGRY. It is not eating what it kills, and it does not stop for wounds: ignore all penalties from crippled legs, and it fights on at any hit point total above zero. What stops it is the total — it has no special defence and 3 armour, so it dies to concentrated fire like any large dog. The wrong plan is chasing it. It has been doing this for four hundred years and it will out-walk the party in one night.",
    note: "There are always exactly seven of these in the county. Kill one and the count is seven again by the following month." },

  { key: "menagerie_ape", name: "The menagerie ape", role: "MENAGERIE. What was billed as an orang-outang in 1831 and is still in the cage behind the arcade",
    chosenStyle: "reflex", naturalArmour: 3, species: "baseline",
    ch: { str: 23, siz: 16, con: 19, int: 11, pow: 14, dex: 16, cha: 7, edu: 2 },
    skills: [{fam:"brawl",spec:"",val:70},{fam:"dodge",spec:"",val:55},{fam:"athletics",spec:"",val:85},
             {fam:"spot",spec:"",val:65},{fam:"insight",spec:"",val:60},{fam:"sleight_of_hand",spec:"",val:70},
             {fam:"stealth",spec:"",val:50}],
    weapons: ["grasp"],
    tactics: "It has hands, it is stronger than any two agents, and it has spent a very long time watching people work locks and doors. It does not want to fight; it wants out, and it will go through anybody standing in the doorway to get there. POWER: HANDS. It opens any mechanical lock, catch or bolt it can reach in one round, disarms on a successful brawl attack (the weapon goes over the railing), and climbs anything. Fight it in the open and it flees. Corner it and it is 1d6+1 with a heavy damage bonus and no interest in stopping. Opening the cage and standing well back ends the encounter with nobody hurt and a considerably worse problem next week." }

];