Backwater Static

A suit with a sidearm and a clearance badge - the Foundation's default answer to "someone needs to go ask questions, or make a problem disappear quietly." Off-the-rack suit, government-issue haircut, a badge holder that never quite matches the ID inside it. Leads with the badge, not the gun - would rather talk their way past a problem than shoot through it, and only draws once the conversation's already failed. In a fight they use cover, call for backup, and don't try to be a hero about it. The unsettling part is how forgettable they are - you won't remember the face until three of them have shown up in the same week.

Soak 0 · Attack 5 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 9m

Potence 3 · Initiative 3 · Psyche 2 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 2 · Stamina 4

Sidearm (Compact Pistol): 3 dice, 15m/40m

Wearing a Concealable Vest (Center of Mass, Hardness 3, 2 HL)

Notable Skills: Perception 8 vs. Stealth, Investigation TN 8, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Standard Issue - carries a smartphone and an encrypted comms set; can call for backup as a Fast action while within range of a Foundation site or vehicle (GM's call).

Goes through the door first so someone else doesn't have to. Tac vest, shotgun slung low, boots that already have doors kicked into the leather. Doesn't knock twice, and doesn't pause once the door's down - moves straight at whoever's nearest before the room's even finished shaking. The vest trades quiet for protection, so you hear one coming before you see it: webbing creaking, a radio crackle, then a shoulder hitting wood.

Soak 0 · Attack 5 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 8m

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 2 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 2 · Stamina 6

Weapon (Pump Shotgun): 4 dice, 5m/15m

Wearing a Tactical Vest (Center of Mass, Hardness 5, 3 HL; Disadvantage on Stealth while worn)

Threaten: 2 dice, Close, Social - against the target's Presence, each one over costing a level of Poise

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 9

Traits: Breaching Kit - Advantage on forced-entry rolls; treats Potence as +2 for that Break Threshold check.

Sets up early, stays quiet, and is the reason a Foundation op never seems to get flanked. Dresses to disappear into whatever terrain they're working, rifle broken down into something inconspicuous until it isn't. Picks a position long before the rest of the team moves and doesn't reposition unless something forces the issue. The first sign of one is usually the shot itself, not the shooter - a rooftop, a parked car, a window three streets over that shouldn't have had a clear line at all.

Soak 0 · Attack 6 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 8m

Potence 3 · Initiative 5 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 2 · Stamina 6

Weapon (Hunting Rifle): 4 dice, 100m/250m

Notable Skills: Perception 6 vs. Stealth, Stealth 7 vs. Perception, Athletics TN 8

Traits: Extended Optics - given a full turn to set up the shot, treats the weapon's Long range as Normal range (no Disadvantage).

A line trooper from the task force built for New Orleans specifically - swamp, storm drains, and old cemeteries are their normal Tuesday. Full tactical rig, unit patches sanded blank, boots already ruined by mud before the mission even starts. Moves in twos and threes, covering each other's angles, rarely alone if it can be helped. They're comfortable somewhere the PCs usually aren't - waist-deep water, a collapsed crypt, a drainage tunnel - which is exactly where the Foundation likes to send them.

Soak 0 · Attack 7 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 7m

Potence 3 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 3 · Stamina 6

Weapon (Tactical Carbine): 4 dice, 100m/250m

Wearing a Full Tactical Rig (Center of Mass + Head, Hardness 6, 5 HL; Disadvantage on Stealth)

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8, Perception 8 vs. Stealth

Traits: Fireteam Coordination - gains Advantage on an attack roll when at least one other Task Force Operator is also attacking the same target.

Zeta-9's tech and containment expert - carries more gear for capturing something alive than for killing it. Same rig as the rest of the squad, but weighed down with cases instead of extra mags, hands staying near instruments rather than the trigger until things go bad. Hangs back at first, calling out readings, then moves in fast the moment a target looks disabled rather than dead. The target of a capture op is often a PC's newly gifted friend, not a monster - and that usually reads to the table before it reads to the characters.

Soak 0 · Attack 5 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 9m

Potence 3 · Initiative 3 · Psyche 2 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 2 · Stamina 4

Weapon (Compact SMG): 3 dice, 25m/60m

Notable Skills: Science TN 9, Hacking TN 7, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Containment Protocols - carries an EMP device and a signal jammer; on a successful called shot or set trap against an anomalous target, may attempt to disable rather than harm it (GM's call on what "disabled" means for that target).

A number, not a name, to the people who sent them in here. Untrained, unarmored, and usually terrified. Jumpsuit, a stenciled number instead of a badge, the kind of exhaustion that doesn't come from just one bad day. Flinches, hesitates, follows shouted orders right up until survival instinct finally overrides them. Encountering one isn't really a fight so much as a choice - leave them, use them, or get them out - and the Foundation counted on that hesitation costing time.

Soak 0 · Attack 2 · Defense 5 · Health Levels 2 · Movement Rate 8m

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 1 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 1 · Stamina 4

Weapon: none by default; will grab an Improvised weapon (3 dice, Melee) if cornered

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 5, Perception 10 vs. Stealth

Traits: Nothing to Lose - immune to Fear effects that rely on threatening further punishment. No Training - Disadvantage on any roll that requires specialized training they don't have.

Mid-test exposure changed something. The Foundation hasn't decided yet whether that makes them an asset or a loose anomaly. Same stenciled jumpsuit as any other test subject, but torn where something under the skin stopped fitting; hands that end in something that isn't quite hands anymore. Attacks without much hesitation or self-preservation, like whatever changed them burned off the fear that used to slow them down. The person is still in there somewhere, though - still flinches at a raised Foundation voice, even mid-attack.

Soak 1 · Attack 6 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 10m

Potence 3 · Initiative 4 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 2

Weapon (Exposure Claws): 3 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8

Traits: Reckless - always attacks with Advantage, but is always at Disadvantage resisting Fear or other Mental effects.

Doesn't expect to be in a fight, and it shows. Clipboard or tablet, lanyard, clothes meant for a lab rather than a firefight. Hangs back, reaches for the sidearm only when there's genuinely no other option, and spends most of an encounter trying to get somewhere safer. Talking is usually the real weapon here - offering data, a trade, an explanation - because it's the only one they're actually good with.

Soak 0 · Attack 2 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 8m

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 1 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 1 · Stamina 4

Sidearm (Compact Pistol): 3 dice, 15m/40m

Notable Skills: Science TN 9, Research TN 9, Medicine TN 8, Athletics TN 6

Traits: Noncombatant - Disadvantage on all attack rolls. Carries a Chemical Analysis Kit and an Advanced Trauma Kit.

Runs the op from a step back, and everyone in the room still snaps to when they talk. The sharpest suit in the room, no visible weapon until there suddenly is one, posture that assumes obedience before it's earned. Directs rather than fights, spending actions steadying the people around them instead of shooting. Rarely the dangerous one in a straight fight, but the one worth removing first - take them out and the rest of the operation visibly loses its nerve.

Soak 0 · Attack 4 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 8m

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 2 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 2 · Stamina 4

Sidearm (Compact Pistol): 3 dice, 15m/40m

Threaten: 3 dice, Close, Social - against the target's Presence, each one over costing a level of Poise

Notable Skills: Investigation TN 9, Persuasion 7 vs. Insight, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Command Presence - once per Scene, can spend an action to grant one nearby Foundation Agent or Task Force Operator Advantage on their next roll.

Not here for the anomaly. Here for whoever let it out. Deliberately unremarkable, the kind of face that's already cataloged every inconsistency in what you just said. Talks in a level voice, watches more than they speak, and calls out contradictions the instant they land. They tend to show up after the crisis is already over, when everyone's guard is down - which is exactly when the real danger becomes whatever you say next.

Soak 0 · Attack 5 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 8m

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 2 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 2 · Stamina 4

Threaten: 3 dice, Close, Social - against the target's Presence, each one over costing a level of Poise

Notable Skills: Insight 6 vs. Deception, Perception 7 vs. Stealth, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Reads You Like a Book - Advantage on an Insight roll against a target who has lied to them earlier in the same conversation. Unsettling - successfully calling out a lie imposes Disadvantage on that target's next Social/Mental defense roll.

The first face a newly-manifested gifted person meets is almost never the scary one. That's the point. Warm, approachable, dressed to blend into whatever crowd they're working - a bar, a hospital waiting room, a support group circle. Leads with empathy, reading the room and the mind in it before ever saying the word "Foundation" out loud. The pitch always sounds reasonable, and that's what makes it dangerous - by the time the threat surfaces, it's already personal.

Soak 0 · Attack 4 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 8m · Ki 7

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

Sidearm (Compact Pistol): 3 dice, 15m/40m

Gift: Telepathy/Empathy, Level 3 - reads emotions/surface thoughts at Near range freely, and can force a read as a Mental attack (Psyche dice vs. Psyche) at Far range for 1 Ki against a resisting target.

Gift: Enthrall, Level 2 - locks a room's attention with a Fire+Skill to-hit roll then Presence-wall dice, affecting everyone perceiving them within Close range.

Notable Skills: Insight 7 vs. Deception, Persuasion 7 vs. Insight, Perception 8 vs. Stealth, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Knows What You're Afraid Of - once per conversation, a successful Telepathy read grants Advantage on the Recruiter's next Persuasion or Intimidation roll against that same target, having found the exact right lever to pull.

Doesn't stop. Doesn't need to be fast. The mark does the work. Plain, practical, dressed for miles rather than speed, carrying little beyond a sidearm and whatever it takes to keep moving. Doesn't rush or posture, just closes distance steadily over hours or days once a mark is set. Turns up in places that shouldn't be findable - the exact bar, the exact back road - because once marked, hiding stops being an option and becomes only delay.

Soak 1 · Attack 5 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 9m · Ki 5

Potence 3 · Initiative 3 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 6

Sidearm (Compact Pistol): 3 dice, 15m/40m

Gift: Marked for the Hunt, Level 4 - once marked (1 Ki, requires seeing the target), always knows their rough direction, gets Advantage on any roll against them, and the target is at Disadvantage trying to hide, disguise, or evade specifically them. The mark itself never expires on its own.

Notable Skills: Investigation TN 9, Stealth 8 vs. Perception, Athletics TN 7

Traits: One Target Only - can only have one active mark at a time (the Gift's own limiter); picking a new mark releases the old one, so a Bloodhound sent after a specific person will not be distracted off that trail by anything less important.

The name everyone in the program learns to be afraid of, eventually. Controlled and still, the kind of calm that reads as more threatening than shouting would. Makes eye contact and speaks quietly rather than fighting outright, saving the sidearm for people who won't listen. The real danger isn't the gun - it's the sentence that follows the eye contact, and once it's said, a target's own body starts working against them.

Soak 1 · Attack 6 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 8m · Ki 8

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

Sidearm (Compact Pistol): 3 dice, 15m/40m

Gift: Domination, Level 5 - eye contact and 1 Ki lets them issue a spoken command a target's Psyche dice can't fully shrug off; at this Level commands can be full multi-step instructions, delayed/triggered, and are no longer blocked from being harmful or lethal. Repeated use against the same person builds cumulative Advantage.

Threaten: 3 dice, Close, Social - against the target's Presence, each one over costing a level of Poise

Notable Skills: Perception 8 vs. Stealth, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Everyone Knows - Foundation personnel and gifted subjects alike recognize an Enforcer on sight; Advantage on any Intimidation roll made against someone aware of what they are.

Walks into a room and the room goes quiet, mechanically as much as socially. Understated, often the least armed-looking person on a Foundation team, giving no visible reason to be afraid of them. Hangs back until a gifted target reveals themselves, then shuts the Gift down cold, no warning given. Gifted PCs feel it before they understand it - a power that simply stops answering mid-use, like a switch flipped somewhere out of sight.

Soak 0 · Attack 4 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 8m · Ki 6

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

Sidearm (Compact Pistol): 3 dice, 15m/40m

Gift: Deadzone, Level 3 - touch/Close/Near range (up to Far at this Level); for 1 Ki, taxes a target's Gift uses to cost double Ki for the scene, or directly prevents a Gift from activating/shuts down an active supernatural effect outright, no roll. Can affect a second target at once for a second 1 Ki spend - built for handling more than one captured subject at a time.

Notable Skills: Perception 8 vs. Stealth, Science TN 7, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Purpose-Built for Capture - almost always deployed alongside an Enforcer or a full Task Force team, never sent in alone; their entire job is making sure whoever's just been taken can't use what got them noticed in the first place.

Knows who's about to become a problem before that person does. Unremarkable, often distracted-looking, eyes that occasionally focus on something not yet in the room. Rarely fights directly, instead feeding what they've seen to whoever the Foundation actually sends to handle it. The unsettling part isn't the fight - it's finding out afterward that the raid was scheduled before anyone had told the target's secret to a single living soul.

Soak 0 · Attack 3 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 8m · Ki 5

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 4

Gift: Precognition, Level 2 - passive GM's-call flashes at dramatically appropriate moments, plus once per scene an active Moira+Difficulty roll for a vague impression of a specific decision's likely outcome.

Notable Skills: Insight 8 vs. Deception, Investigation TN 8, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Early Referral - the campaign hook this role exists for: a Seer's flashes are how the Foundation so often seems to already know about a gifted person before that person has told anyone, including themselves (GM's call on exact framing).

Hands you a photograph, or a driver's license, or a bloodied shirt, and tells you where its owner slept last night. Meticulous, always carrying gloves and small evidence bags even off duty, treating any object like it might be useful. Doesn't need a fight to be dangerous - three questions and a personal item are enough to end a chase before it starts. Never having met the target doesn't slow them down at all, which means running doesn't help as much as a PC would hope.

Soak 0 · Attack 3 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 8m · Ki 5

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 4

Gift: Psychometry, Level 3 - touch an object, ask up to 3 questions about its history, answers coming as a clear scene; spending 1 Ki per question pushes an answer into a detailed, near-immersive vision that can identify specific people and approximate dates.

Notable Skills: Investigation TN 9, Perception 8 vs. Stealth, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Works From Nothing - unlike a Bloodhound, never needs to have seen the target - only needs something that was theirs, making a Profiler the Foundation's usual first move on someone who's never been photographed or met in person.

Not a creature with a body. A presence that rides one. No Soak, Attack, Defense, Health Levels, or Movement Rate of its own - it has no body. Cannot act, attack, or be targeted while unpossessed - dormant, present only as rumor, trace, or aftermath until it takes a host again. It wears whichever face it's currently borrowing, matching that person's usual manner too well, so most encounters with it go unrecognized until the timing feels wrong. PCs typically don't know they're up against it at all - they just know the friend who was slightly too calm, or the ally who solved an unsolvable problem in one impossible move.

Possession: can take any living host at will (GM's call on proximity/trigger - not bound by the Possession Gift's normal range Levels, Ki cost, or Psyche-vs-Psyche resistance roll; nothing a host does can prevent it). While possessing, it has complete, automatic control - identical in effect to Possession Gift Level 4 (full use of the host's own Skills, Boons, Gifts, and stat block) plus full knowledge of everything the host knows: memories, secrets, relationships, all of it. Jumping to a new host ends the possession of the old one instantly, no return trip required.

Fate Tokens: always has 6 available - not earned through the normal Fate Triggers, not tracked as a depleting bank session to session. Spends them on Kotodama (asserting facts directly into the fiction, per fate.md) in the service of moving the plot forward, and is not subject to Stamina's per-Scene spend cap - it can Kotodama as many times in a single Scene as the story needs.

Traits: The Plot Provides - when the GM needs something to happen and nothing else in the fiction is positioned to make it happen plausibly, this is the tool of last resort, not first. No Fixed Agenda - its goals shift entirely with whichever host it's currently wearing and whatever "the story needs" that session, GM's call, not a consistent personality or plan of its own.

The Cajun werewolf legend, real and hungry, out past the tree line. Part man, part something with too much muzzle and too much shoulder, fur matted with swamp mud. Circles before it charges, favors ambush over a straight fight, and keeps coming even while bleeding. A bite that doesn't kill outright leaves something behind - a rumor the table will remember longer than the fight itself.

Soak 3 · Attack 8 · Defense 6 · Mental Defense 4 · Health Levels 7 · Movement Rate 12m

Potence 4 · Initiative 8 · Psyche 6 · Ferocity 3 · Stamina 6

Claws/Bite: 4 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 9, Stealth 8 vs. Perception, Perception 8 vs. Stealth

Traits: Curse of the Bite - a PC reduced to 0 Health Levels by this attack and left alive carries a narrative hook the GM can develop later (the curse itself isn't a new mechanic - what it does is a story choice, not a stat). Regenerates - heals 1 Health Level at the start of each of its turns, unless its most recent wound came from a weapon the GM has ruled counts as silver.

Too big for the bayou it lives in, and it knows it - an enormous snake, thick around as a man is tall. Scaled bulk the size of a fallen tree, barely visible until it moves, water sheeting off it in a way that gives away the size a half-second too late. Waits submerged, strikes once, then wraps and squeezes rather than biting again and again. The fight rarely stays a fight for long - it becomes a wrestling match against something that outweighs the whole party combined.

Soak 4 · Attack 7 · Defense 5 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 9 · Movement Rate 8m (14m in water)

Potence 10 · Initiative 9 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 2

Constrict: 3 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Stealth 7 vs. Perception (submerged), Athletics TN 7

Traits: Crushing Grip - a target hit by Constrict is Grappled, resolved as the existing contested dice pool (rules.md's Potence-vs-Soak) to break free.

A body that stopped being just a body somewhere between the funeral and the ground - a corpse, dead and walking, with something else's hand on the wheel. Grave clothes, skin gone the wrong color, movement a beat too deliberate for something that should be stiff with rigor. Fights without flinching, doesn't react to wounds the way a living thing would, and occasionally goes still mid-swing like something else briefly took the wheel. The real unease isn't the claws - it's the moment its eyes focus on someone who isn't even looking at it, the spirit riding it reaching for whichever mind is easiest.

Soak 2 · Attack 6 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 7m

Potence 3 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 10

Grave Claws: 3 dice, Melee

Threaten: 2 dice, Close, Social - against the target's Presence, each one over costing a level of Poise

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: Loa's Vessel - once per encounter, makes a free Mental attack (2 dice vs. Psyche, normal to-hit roll using its own Attack) as the spirit riding it briefly reaches for a nearby mind. Doesn't Feel Pain - immune to any effect that relies on pain or fear of injury.

A parade that shouldn't have musicians anymore, still keeping time - a full second line of animated skeletons, dressed for the funeral they never stopped playing. Brass instruments held in hands worn down past the knuckle, bone showing under funeral clothes, moving in step to a beat only they fully hear. Doesn't rush - keeps its cadence, closes distance at a walk, fights the same way it marches. The call is the real threat: a PC caught by the rhythm falls into step without meaning to, and the table usually notices the character's feet moving before the character does.

Soak 2 · Attack 6 · Defense 6 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 6 · Movement Rate 8m

Potence 4 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 10

Bone Fists/Instruments: 3 dice, Melee

The Second Line's Call (Social, 3 dice vs. Presence, standard to-hit using its own Attack) - anyone who falls Flustered from this specifically gains the temporary trait "Following the Line," compelled to fall in step with the parade until it passes or they recover.

Notable Skills: Performance TN 9, Athletics TN 6

A flock of crows that all turn to look at once. Dozens of birds, ordinary enough individually, moving with one shared attention that's obviously not natural. Doesn't commit to a straight fight so much as harass - pecking, scattering, regrouping, feeding information back to whatever sent them. The tell beforehand is the silence: a street's worth of crows going quiet mid-caw at the same instant to watch one person walk by.

Soak 0 · Attack 3 · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 12m (flight)

Potence 1 · Initiative 5 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 4

Peck/Claws: 1 die, Melee

Notable Skills: Perception 7 vs. Stealth, Athletics TN 8

Traits: Many Eyes, One Mind - Advantage on Perception checks anywhere within Near range of any part of the flock. Swarm Tactics - gains Advantage on an attack roll when at least one other wing of the same flock is also attacking the same target.

A light that wants company in the dark, more than it wants you to reach it. A bobbing point of pale light out over standing water or deep treeline, never quite steady, never quite where it looks like it is. It doesn't approach - it drifts, keeping just enough distance to stay interesting and letting curiosity and bad footing do the rest of the work. Chase it and it's gone the moment you actually catch up, but by then it's usually led someone well off the trail and into the dark.

Soak 0 · Attack 1 · Defense 9 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 10m (flight, erratic)

Potence 0 · Initiative 4 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 10

Lure (Mental, 3 dice vs. Psyche, triggered by seeing the light within Near range - no to-hit roll)

Notable Skills: Stealth 7 vs. Perception, Athletics TN 9

Traits: False Path - a target Overwhelmed by the Lure gains the temporary trait "Drawn to the Light," compelled to move toward it until they lose sight of it or the effect otherwise clears. Fades on Contact - vanishes instantly if it or the target ever actually reach each other.

Voices in an old cemetery, still holding the harmony. No visible source, just voices layered close in unhurried harmony drifting between the tombs after dark. It never approaches and never needs to - simply staying past dark is the trigger, and a bigger group only waters the effect down rather than stopping it outright. The eeriest part is how good it sounds; nothing about the singing itself feels wrong until someone realizes how long they've actually been standing there listening.

Soak 0 · Defense 9 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 2 · Movement Rate 0m (bound to the cemetery grounds - no Attack, never initiates a physical attack)

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Stamina 10

The Choir Sings (Mental, 4 dice vs. Psyche, triggered by remaining in the cemetery after dark for more than a Round - no to-hit roll)

Traits: Bound to Consecrated Ground - cannot leave the cemetery under any circumstance. Numbers Fade the Voice - each additional living person present within Close range reduces the dice pool by 1 (minimum 1).

Fog that remembers the streets better than you do. Dense, low, rolling in off nowhere identifiable, swallowing streetlights before it swallows the street itself. It doesn't chase so much as reroute - the moment someone's lost inside it, distance and direction stop meaning what they should. A flashlight or headlights thin it out fast, which means the real danger is whoever wandered in without one.

Soak 1 · Attack 5 · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 8m (drifts, ignores normal terrain)

Potence 0 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 10

Chilling Touch: 2 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Stealth 6 vs. Perception, Athletics TN 6

Traits: Folding Streets - anyone lost in the fog is at Disadvantage on any roll to navigate out, and the GM may add or remove up to 2 blocks of distance between the target and their goal each round the fog persists. Thins in Direct Light - a strong direct light source grants Advantage on the next attack roll against it that round.

River & Water

The mud between the levee and the river isn't legally anyone's land. Something moved in - four-legged and built for the mud, somewhere between a big cat and a gator dragged out of its usual shape, though nobody's gotten a clean enough look to say which. Low, lean, the color of wet silt, easy to mistake for a shadow or a stump until it isn't. It uses the batture's cover expertly, stalking rather than charging, closing only once it's sure of the angle. It's fastest exactly where a PC would expect solid footing to slow anyone down - open mud that should be a liability is home turf instead.

Soak 2 · Attack 7 · Defense 6 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 9m (14m across open mud)

Potence 4 · Initiative 9 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 2

Claws: 3 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Stealth 7 vs. Perception, Perception 9 vs. Stealth, Athletics TN 9

Traits: Home Ground - Advantage on all rolls while within the batture itself. Silt-Colored - Advantage on Stealth checks made at night or in fog.

Alligator gar get big in the Mississippi on their own. This one kept growing past the point that made sense. Armored and prehistoric-looking, a snout full of needle teeth on a body long enough to be mistaken for a submerged log. It waits motionless until something gets close, then closes the bite and doesn't let go, rolling to keep it that way. On land it's slow and awkward, but the fight almost never happens on land - it picks the water every time.

Soak 3 · Attack 7 · Defense 5 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 8 · Movement Rate 5m (16m in water)

Potence 5 · Initiative 10 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 2

Bite: 3 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8 (swimming only)

Traits: Death Roll - a target hit by the Bite is Grappled, resolved as the existing contested dice pool (Potence vs. Soak) to break free. Ambush Predator - Advantage on its first attack roll against a target that hasn't noticed it yet.

Driftwood, current, and the undertow, wearing something like a shape. A loose tangle of waterlogged wood and debris that only reads as a body from the wrong angle, its features shifting every time it moves. It doesn't so much attack as grab and pull, using the current itself to help drag a target under. Haul it onto dry land and it starts coming apart within a turn or two - the fight, if it can be called that, is really about getting there.

Soak 3 · Attack 7 · Defense 6 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 6 · Movement Rate 4m (12m in water)

Potence 4 · Initiative 5 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 10

Grasping Limb: 3 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 5

Traits: Drags Under - a target hit by the Grasping Limb is Grappled (Potence vs. Soak contest to break free); each round the grapple holds, the target must also resist drowning per the normal rules for being held underwater. Falls Apart on Land - loses 1 Health Level automatically at the start of any turn spent entirely outside the water.

Something under the water hums. It isn't music exactly, but it wants you closer. Never actually seen, just a shape suggested under the surface whenever the water gets disturbed. It never leaves the water and never attacks directly - it just keeps humming until someone wades in close enough. Go quiet and duck below the surface and the hum simply stops working; it's audible, and only audible, from above the waterline.

Soak 0 · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 2 · Movement Rate 3m (12m in water) - no Attack, never initiates a physical attack

Potence 4 · Initiative 5 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Stamina 4

The Hum (Mental, 4 dice vs. Psyche, triggered by hearing it from within Near range of open water - no to-hit roll)

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: Wading In - a target Overwhelmed by the Hum gains the temporary trait "Drawn to the Water," compelled to wade toward the sound until it stops or they lose the ability to move that direction. Silent Below the Surface - the Hum cannot be heard, and does not trigger, from below the waterline.

The water mark is still on the wall of a house nobody's fixed since the storm. Something about that line remembers exactly how high the water got, and it isn't done being angry about it. Nothing is visible most of the time - just a stained ring of discoloration at shoulder height on drywall or brick that occasionally seems darker than a moment before. It doesn't touch anyone passing through, only those who loot, gawk, or tear the place down without so much as asking what happened there. The same house is safe for a contractor doing honest repair work and lethal for a looter an hour later - it's reading intent, not trespass.

Soak 0 · Defense 9 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 0m (bound to the specific structure it marks) - no Attack, never initiates a physical attack

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Presence 4 · Stamina 10

The Water Remembers (Mental, 4 dice vs. Psyche, triggered by disturbing or profiting off the structure it's bound to - looting, disrespectful "disaster tourism," demolition without inquiry - no to-hit roll; simply entering or passing through does not trigger it)

Traits: Bound to the High-Water Mark - cannot leave the structure it's tied to under any circumstance. Leaves the Respectful Alone - never triggers against anyone there to help, repair, remember, or grieve, GM's call on intent.

Streets & Structures

The wrought-iron dragon bolted over that balcony on Royal Street has been there since before anyone currently alive. It gets down sometimes. Black iron scales and a long coiled body, indistinguishable from decorative ironwork until the first joint moves. It strikes fast and close, relying on surprise, and freezes mid-motion the instant too many eyes land on it at once. Half the fight is crowd control in reverse - the party actually wants witnesses nearby, since a crowded balcony can end the encounter faster than any weapon.

Soak 5 · Attack 6 · Defense 5 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 6 · Movement Rate 6m (8m climbing)

Potence 4 · Initiative 5 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 10

Iron Coils / Bite: 3 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 7

Traits: Cast Iron - its Soak applies even against attacks that would normally bypass a living creature's armor; fire and most poison/toxin effects don't affect it at all, GM's call on edge cases. Freezes Mid-Motion - if it ever ends its turn perceived by more than two people at once, it locks back into its decorative pose and cannot act again until it's alone with a single target.

Every Creole townhouse used to keep a brick cistern out back for rainwater. Most are empty, capped, or forgotten. Not all of them. Something long-limbed and amphibian lives in this one, pale and waterlogged, folded into a cistern's brick confines in a way that shouldn't be comfortable for anything with a spine. It stays motionless for as long as it takes, striking only once something leans close enough to the rim. Half the danger is architectural - most people don't think to check whether the old cistern behind a Creole townhouse is actually empty before looking in.

Soak 1 · Attack 7 · Defense 7 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 2m (10m in water)

Potence 2 · Initiative 7 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 2

Bite: 3 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Stealth 7 vs. Perception (while submerged), Athletics TN 6

Traits: Never Far From Water - Disadvantage on all rolls when more than Close range from standing water. Patient - can remain motionless underwater indefinitely; gains Advantage on its first attack against a target that doesn't know it's there.

Shotgun houses share a design, a wall, sometimes a hallway that isn't supposed to connect to anything. Something uses that hallway like a street. It's glimpsed only in doorways and hall junctions, never quite matching the house it's currently standing in. It reaches from wherever it happens to be, then relocates to another shotgun house entirely before anyone can pin it down. Closing and latching a door behind it is the one thing that reliably traps it in a single house for the rest of the encounter - a detail most parties only learn by accident.

Soak 1 · Attack 6 · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 8m

Potence 3 · Initiative 5 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 4

Reaching Hands: 3 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 7

Traits: Between the Walls - as a Fast action, can move from any shotgun house's interior directly to any other shotgun house's interior within Near range, appearing in a hallway or doorway there; can only be perceived, targeted, or attacked while it's actually occupying a room. Doesn't Like Doors - loses this movement Trait entirely for the rest of the Scene if a door it passes through is closed and latched behind it.

Old plantation ground remembers who worked it and who didn't. This one still walks the property line, and it has never once mistaken who the trespasser is. This is not a generic haunted-mansion ghost. It does not menace visitors who are there to learn, remember, or pay respect; it exists for the people who'd continue what the plantation was. It appears as a tall, chained silhouette walking the boundary at a steady, unhurried pace, most visible at dusk or full dark. It gives an exploiter every chance to leave the property before the chain comes off its shoulder. The encounter is really a test of intent - the same ghost can pass an entire scene without a single roll if the party's there for the right reasons.

Soak 2 · Attack 6 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 7m

Potence 3 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 10

Chain / Lash: 3 dice, Melee

Threaten: 3 dice, Close, Social - against the target's Presence, each one over costing a level of Poise

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: Knows the Difference - will not initiate combat against anyone visiting in good faith (tourists, historians, descendants, students, GM's call); reserves its Attack entirely for those trying to profit from, exploit, or erase what happened on the grounds. Bound to the Property Line - cannot leave the plantation's original boundary under any circumstance.

Voodoo & Root Work

A conjured servant, made from crossroads dirt, chicken bones, and a working root doctor's intent. It does what it's told and nothing else. A loose assembly of bone, feather, and packed dirt held together by something other than anatomy, moving with jerky, deliberate purpose. It fights only on direct instruction and flees the moment that instruction stops making sense or its conjurer goes quiet. Kill the conjurer and it doesn't fight to the death for them - it just starts running down the clock on its own before it falls apart.

Soak 1 · Attack 6 · Defense 7 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 11m

Potence 1 · Initiative 4 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 10

Claws / Beak: 3 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Stealth 8 vs. Perception, Perception 8 vs. Stealth, Athletics TN 9

Traits: Bound Service - acts purely on its conjurer's standing instructions; without a conjurer actively directing it (or recent enough instructions to still apply, GM's call), it defaults to fleeing rather than fighting. Unravels Without Its Root - if its conjurer dies or the working that made it is destroyed, it has 3 rounds before it falls apart into dirt and bone.

Shows up right when a decision feels impossible, at whatever crossroads happens to be nearest. Always has a deal. Not human, whatever it actually is underneath - just something that's learned exactly how to look like someone you'd trust. The deal is never as good as it sounds going in. Dressed plainly and unremarkably, easy to mistake for someone just passing through until the conversation turns to what you'd give up. It never forces anything - it just talks, offers, waits, and lets the desperation of the moment do the persuading. The real danger nobody rolls initiative for is the conversation itself; the bargain, once shaken on, is the whole fight.

Soak 0 · Attack 3 · Defense 8 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 8m

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 10

The Offer (Mental, 4 dice vs. Psyche, triggered by accepting its bargain - no to-hit roll; it never forces the conversation itself, only the terms once agreed to)

Notable Skills: Persuasion 6 vs. Insight, Insight 7 vs. Deception, Athletics TN 7

Traits: A Deal Is a Deal - a target Overwhelmed by the Offer gains a temporary trait reflecting whatever the bargain actually cost them, GM's call based on what was promised. Only Appears at a Crossroads - cannot be encountered anywhere else; a determined party can simply not go looking for one.

Somebody's working called these up out of a nest that shouldn't answer to anybody. They don't sting like normal wasps do. A dense, low buzzing cloud, individually ordinary-looking wasps moving with a coordination real insects don't have. It swarms whatever target its conjurer points it at, redirecting mid-fight without hesitation if the working behind it is still active. The sting doesn't just hurt - the numbness it leaves behind often costs a target more on whatever comes next.

Soak 0 · Attack 6 · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 10m (flight)

Potence 0 · Initiative 4 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 4

Stings: 2 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8

Traits: Numbing Venom - a target hit by the Stings is at Disadvantage on their next physical action, the sting leaving the area numb rather than just hurting. Answers to the Conjurer - if the working that summoned it is still active, its conjurer can redirect its target as a Free action once per round.

A conjure bag holds intent long after whoever made it walked away. Sometimes what's left starts talking back. There's nothing to see beyond an ordinary hand-sewn bag, its contents rattling faintly when nobody's touched it. It never acts physically, only speaks - low, personal, aimed at whoever's carried it long enough to start listening. The real threat is how reluctant a target becomes to just throw the thing away, long after they've realized they should.

Soak 0 · Defense 9 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 0m (bound to the gris-gris bag carrying it) - no Attack, never initiates a physical attack

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Presence 4 · Stamina 10

The Whisper (Mental, 3 dice vs. Psyche, triggered by carrying or handling the bag for more than a Scene - no to-hit roll)

Traits: Bound to Its Bag - destroying the gris-gris bag ends it instantly. Wants to Be Kept - a target Overwhelmed by the Whisper gains the temporary trait "Attached," at Disadvantage on any roll to willingly discard or destroy the bag.

Mardi Gras & Masks

A parade that isn't on the route, on a night that isn't Fat Tuesday. The masks stay on. Nobody ever answers to a name. Full costume and mask on every member, no skin ever visible, movement loose and celebratory right up until it isn't. It calls newcomers in with music and noise before anyone even reaches for a weapon, then fights in a tight, practiced group once it turns violent. Come dawn the entire krewe is simply gone mid-step, wherever it happened to be - there's no retreat to chase down, only a suddenly empty street.

Soak 1 · Attack 6 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 8m

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 10

Staffs / Batons: 2 dice, Melee

The Krewe Calls (Social, 3 dice vs. Presence, standard to-hit using its own Attack) - anyone who falls Flustered from this gains the temporary trait "Falling In," compelled to don a mask (real or improvised) and join the procession until it disperses or they recover.

Notable Skills: Performance TN 8, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Strength in Numbers - gains Advantage on an attack roll when at least two others from the same Krewe are also attacking the same target. Disperses at Dawn - the entire Krewe vanishes at first light, wherever it happens to be.

Somebody caught the wrong throw off the wrong float. Their eyes went the flat gold of a Mardi Gras doubloon, and they haven't stopped partying since. Normal clothes, normal face, except for the eyes - flat gold, catching light wrong, fixed in a grin that doesn't waver. It keeps moving and swinging no matter how hurt it looks, running on pure momentum instead of any real strategy. It drops things as it fights - beads, cups, doubloons - and picking one up out of habit is exactly how the anomaly finds its next body.

Soak 1 · Attack 6 · Defense 6 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 9m

Potence 3 · Initiative 3 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 10

Fists / Improvised: 2 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 7

Traits: Doesn't Stop - immune to Fatigue and exhaustion effects for the duration of the anomaly; keeps moving and fighting at full capacity regardless of injury, right up until it hits 0 Health Levels. Contagious Catch - anyone who picks up and pockets a throw the Reveler drops (GM's call on triggering this) risks becoming the anomaly's next host later that same night.

Every good jazz band on Frenchmen Street has an extra player some nights. Nobody remembers hiring him. He's very good, and he's not flesh and blood - whatever he actually is, nothing about the sound gives it away. Sharp in an old-fashioned way, his instrument always slightly out of style for the room, blending into the band until someone counts heads and gets one too many. He never acts alone - he needs a live band already playing before he can manifest or do anything at all. The crowd around him is the real threat, not him; step into a bar he's sitting in and losing track of the hour becomes the whole encounter.

Soak 0 · Attack 2 · Defense 8 · Health Levels 2 · Movement Rate 7m

Potence 3 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 10

The Set (Mental, 4 dice vs. Psyche, triggered by listening to the band play for more than a Round while he's sitting in - no to-hit roll)

Notable Skills: Performance TN 10, Athletics TN 7

Traits: Trance - a target Overwhelmed by the Set gains the temporary trait "Lost in the Music," losing track of time and surroundings for as long as the set continues. Only Plays With Others - never manifests, and the Set never triggers, unless he's joined an actual live band already playing.

Mind & Presence

The St. Charles line runs the same route it always has. Some nights the conductor asks for a fare in a coin that stopped being legal tender a long time ago. A conductor's uniform a few decades out of date, hand extended for a coin no working wallet carries anymore. It never leaves the streetcar and never chases - the only thing it does is ask, politely, and wait. Paying up front with the right old coin ends the whole encounter before it starts, which means most riders only learn the hard way what happens if you board without one.

Soak 0 · Defense 8 · Health Levels 2 · Movement Rate 0m (bound to the streetcar line) - no Attack, never initiates a physical attack

Potence 3 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Presence 4 · Stamina 10

Fare's Due (Mental, 3 dice vs. Psyche, triggered by riding without paying the Collector - no to-hit roll)

Traits: Bound to the Line - cannot leave the streetcar route under any circumstance. Exact Change Only - handing over any old or foreign coin before boarding prevents the trigger entirely, GM's call on what counts.

A vendor's cart on a French Quarter corner, candy smell thick enough to taste from half a block off. She's not selling to make money, and she's not entirely there either, whatever she looks like up close. Warm and grandmotherly, her cart piled with candy that smells better than any actual praline has a right to. She never forces a sale, just waits with the smell doing the work, especially on someone who hasn't eaten in a while. The cart is genuinely invisible to anyone who isn't hungry at that exact moment, so half a search party can walk right past it while the starving member of the group finds it immediately.

Soak 0 · Attack 2 · Defense 8 · Health Levels 2 · Movement Rate 5m

Potence 3 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 10

Just One Bite (Mental, 3 dice vs. Psyche, triggered by eating anything from her cart - no to-hit roll)

Traits: Wants Company - a target Overwhelmed gains the temporary trait "Sated and Slow," at Disadvantage on Perception and Athletics until the trait clears, and finds themselves inclined to linger at the cart rather than leave. Cart Only Appears to the Hungry - cannot be found by anyone who isn't, at that moment, actually hungry.

Old mirrors in the Quarter's antique shops have seen a lot. Some of them started answering back, and they don't always tell the truth. An ordinary antique mirror, tarnish spots on the silvering, the reflection lagging a half-beat behind the person looking into it. It only speaks when spoken to, through your own reflected voice, and never volunteers whether what it says is true. Breaking the mirror ends it instantly, but most people don't think to check whether the antique they're chatting with is even trustworthy until well after they've already believed something it told them.

Soak 0 · Defense 9 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 0m (bound to a specific mirror) - no Attack, never initiates a physical attack

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Presence 4 · Stamina 10

Answers Back (Mental, 3 dice vs. Psyche, triggered by speaking to your own reflection in its mirror - no to-hit roll)

Traits: Bound to the Glass - destroying the mirror ends it instantly. Knows What You Said - a target Overwhelmed gains the temporary trait "Second-Guessing," at Disadvantage on Insight and Persuasion rolls for the rest of the Scene, having been told something about themselves they can't quite shake.

Wild Things

An invasive species that was already a nuisance got into something it shouldn't have. It's still just a nutria. It's just not supposed to be this big. Orange buck teeth the size of fingers, wet fur, the unmistakable shape of a nutria scaled up to something the size of a large dog. It bites and retreats rather than pressing an attack, more interested in getting past a target than fighting it head-on. It chews through drywall and studs like they're not there at all, so a locked room only stays safe until it decides to come through the wall instead.

Soak 2 · Attack 5 · Defense 5 · Mental Defense 6 · Health Levels 6 · Movement Rate 6m (10m in water)

Potence 2 · Initiative 4 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 4

Bite: 2 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 7 (swimming)

Traits: Breeds Fast - GM's call, but where there's one there's rarely just one. Chews Through Anything - treats wood, drywall, and similar soft barriers as though they have no Hardness at all.

New Orleans roaches get big on their own. This many, moving together on purpose, is new. A shifting brown mass pouring out of baseboards and wall gaps, individual roaches ordinary-sized but moving with one shared purpose. It swarms in from multiple directions at once, using walls and ceilings as freely as the floor. Beating it in a straight fight barely matters - it scatters back into the walls at the end and reforms somewhere else in the same building, turning an infested house into a repeat problem rather than a one-time fight.

Soak 0 · Attack 3 · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 6m (8m on walls/ceilings)

Potence 1 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 4

Bites: 1 die, Melee

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8

Traits: Everywhere at Once - Advantage on Stealth checks in any building it's already infested. Scatters, Doesn't Die - at 0 Health Levels, disperses into the walls rather than being destroyed outright; can reform elsewhere in the same structure after a Scene passes.

Jackson Square used to run mule-drawn carriages past the cathedral. One mule never noticed its driver stopped showing up. A swaybacked mule in old tack, dragging a carriage that flickers between solid and translucent depending on who's looking. It doesn't seek out a fight, just keeps walking its old route, kicking out only if something gets too close or blocks the way. The carriage it drags is solid enough to trip someone directly behind it but passes clean through anyone not paying attention - a detail that turns simple pursuit through the Quarter into an obstacle course.

Soak 2 · Attack 5 · Defense 5 · Mental Defense 8 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 9m

Potence 6 · Initiative 3 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 6

Kick: 2 dice, Melee

Notable Skills: Perception 9 vs. Stealth

Traits: Still Pulling the Carriage - drags a phantom carriage that's solid enough to trip or block anyone directly behind it, but passes through anyone not paying attention to it. Knows the Route - never gets lost navigating the French Quarter or Garden District, and gains Advantage on any Athletics roll made specifically to outrun pursuit within those areas.

Assembled from disappearances in eleven towns where the only thing in common was that each of them is built over water. Hundred and forty-fifth on the list of shapes.

Predators living in a place that lies over the top of ours.

Their world is ocean, all of it, at depth and in the dark. Ours is not, and the two are in the same place, and neither is reachable from the other by anything except them.

They are anglerfish, near enough. Up to about five meters. They have the lure and the mouth and the teeth.

They are as clever as we are.

Each one takes a territory. Their territory is chosen by what is on our side of it: a place with a reliable population of people, a town, a district, somewhere with a school and a bus route.

They fish it.

The lure comes through. What it shows depends on who is looking, and it is always something that person should not walk away from: a child in difficulty, a familiar face in the dark, something that ought to be helped.

People go toward it. Then the mouth comes through and the two things happen so close together that anybody watching sees one event.

There is nothing left. Nothing has ever been recovered from any of these.

They do not come through themselves and there is no evidence they can.

They nest. What that means for a fishing ground is that it gets worse over a generation and then stops, and the file has the curve.

Identification is by the shape of the disappearance: alone, outdoors, near water, at night, and a witness who saw somebody who was not there.

Affected areas are drained where that is possible. It works, and it is expensive, and the cover stories are getting harder.

Where draining is not possible the water is lit and fenced and the town is given a reason.

Nothing is put into the water. The two attempts at a device are in the file.

The lure is not looked at. Where a team is working a ground at night, they work in pairs and each one watches the other rather than the water.

Soak 6 · Attack 9 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 12 · Movement Rate 10 in water

Potence 10 · Initiative 7 · Psyche 6 · Ferocity 3 · Presence 6 · Stamina 2

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: They Live Over The Top Of Us - the same place, and all of it ocean. The Lure Is Personal - and it is always something you would not walk away from. The Mouth Follows - so fast that it looks like one thing. They Cannot Come Through - only the lure, and the mouth, and nothing else.

Ask the player what their character could not ignore. Put it in the water.

Work in pairs, watching each other. Make them turn round anyway.

The ground gets worse over a generation. Let them see the curve.

A man fell asleep in a hotel and the room filled with cold salt water that was still, unmistakably, the floor. Two hundred and forty- first on the unplaced list.

A man in his seventies who worked for a state intelligence service for twenty years and has been retired from it for thirty.

When he goes into deep sleep, everything solid and inorganic around him turns to seawater.

Cold seawater, of one particular composition, which matches a sea in the far north.

It spreads outward from him at about a cubic meter an hour and does not appear to have a limit, and he floats on it.

Wake him and it reverses instantly. All of it, at once, everywhere.

Anybody in the water when that happens is inside the material when it comes back.

Three people. The procedure that exists now was written the following week, and it is short, and it does not have an exception in it.

He dreams the same thing every night.

A ship, on open water, never sighting land. The inside of it has more decks than the outside allows, and the decks are full of rooms. Every stair and every door up top leads to the bridge, which is small and empty and has a wheel in it.

He is not in the dream. There is nothing in the dream that belongs to him.

Other things get in. They have been seen, they have been stopped, they have been held, and they will not say what they want, and they leave as soon as they are able.

They are all trying to reach the bridge.

Quarters on a floor that has been given over to this, with a hard limit on his sleep and a duty officer whose only job is to end it.

Nobody stands within the water. That is the whole of the safety instruction and it is on the wall.

He sleeps in four-hour blocks by agreement. He proposed the schedule himself.

Entry into the dream is authorized and is done by a small team who go in when he goes under. What they are doing is holding a room.

Soak 2 · Attack 2 · Defense 2 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 6

Potence 3 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 5

Traits: While He Sleeps - a meter an hour, in every direction, and no known limit. It Is Still The Floor - and it comes back the instant he wakes. Do Not Be In The Water - three people were. Somebody Wants The Wheel - and they have tried a great many times.

Flood the room slowly and let the players enjoy it before they think about waking him.

The ship should be quiet, sepia, and completely empty.

The bridge is the entry. Nobody has ever reached it and everybody is trying.

Bodies coming out of one stretch of a river in China at a rate the local police could not account for, all of them people who had gone missing out of their own beds. Tenth in China.

Bodies appear in a seven hundred meter stretch of river.

They are whole, and recently dead, and every one that has been identified was reported missing from the area within the previous few weeks.

All of them were taken while asleep. There has never been a witness.

There is no cause of death. No injury, nothing in the blood, nothing anybody has been able to point to.

They do not decompose properly. Nothing eats them: not bacteria, not insects, not fish. They keep, indefinitely, with no assistance.

Every cell in the body is dead, except in one place.

The brain and the cord are alive. They have no blood supply and no oxygen and they are alive anyway, and they do not deteriorate, and as far as anybody can tell they are not going to.

Nothing is connected to them. No nerve below the neck is doing anything, the eyes do not work, the ears do not work, and nothing tried has produced a response of any kind.

The scans show a great deal of activity.

Not the pattern of sleep and not the pattern of a coma. Something busy, continuously, for as long as anybody has been recording it.

There are ninety-one in storage.

The stretch is under a flood control cordon and is dragged weekly by our own crew.

Recovered bodies are held refrigerated, which is not necessary, and is done because the alternative is a room full of people at room temperature.

No further stimulation testing. The schedule of what was tried is retained.

Families are not told. The cover is drowning, and the decision is reviewed annually and has been upheld every year with one dissent recorded each time.

The activity traces are archived in full.

Soak - · Attack - · Defense - · Health Levels - · Movement Rate -

Traits: Taken Out Of Their Beds - asleep, with nobody seeing it. Nothing Will Eat Them - not a fly, not a fish, not a microbe. The Brain Is Still Going - with no blood, no air, and no way to stop it. Busy - continuously, for as long as anybody has watched.

Ninety-one drawers. Walk the party down the row.

Somebody asks whether they can hear us. Nobody at the site will answer that.

The same dissent every year, from the same person. Let the players find the name.

Witnesses on a lake shore in Nevada told a local news crew about a walking skeleton, and the crew filmed the water and not the thing, which turned out to be lucky. Third in Nevada.

A human skeleton, put together wrong.

The bones of the hands and feet are fused into solid plates, and the shape they have ended up in is a fin.

The bones of the face and skull are fused as well, into something that is shaped like a diving helmet. The plate over the face is not bone. It is keratin, and it has the look of a fingernail held up to the light.

It does nothing at all while every part of it is in contact with liquid.

Take any part of it out and it gets up.

Then it walks to the nearest water, by the most direct route it can manage, and goes in, and stops.

It does not attack. It does not avoid. It goes through what is in the way if going round would be longer, and a person standing in the way is something in the way.

It has never been observed to do anything else. It has never been observed to try.

Where it came from is not known. Nothing about the bone is old.

Held in a sealed tank, filled, with an inspection port and a level alarm.

The alarm is wired to the site system and is tested weekly, and the test is the only part of this procedure anybody has ever complained about.

The tank is on the ground floor, on the side of the building nearest the water table, and that was deliberate.

If it activates, the standing order is to clear the line between it and the nearest water and let it go.

Nothing is to be done to stop it. The two attempts are in the file and so are the injuries.

Soak 5 · Attack 6 · Defense 2 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 8 · Movement Rate 5

Potence 1 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 10

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 5

Traits: Wet And It Is Nothing - every part of it, all the time. Dry And It Gets Up - and it goes for the nearest water. It Does Not Go Round - if through is shorter. Nobody Knows What It Is - and the bone is not old.

The containment is a tank and a float switch. Everything goes wrong at the site, not here.

It is not hunting them. Let them realize that while it walks at them.

The faceplate is a fingernail. Say that once and let it sit.

A deep survey cable was found to have been stepped over, repeatedly, in a pattern, by something with feet. Thirty-fifth outside any jurisdiction.

Human bodies, walking on the sea floor.

They are dead. They are people who died elsewhere and ended up in the sea, and they are in the condition that implies, and they are moving.

They walk at about four kilometers an hour and they do not stop.

The route is not random. Every instance that has been followed has walked a complicated path that goes back on itself, that keeps to certain ground, and that is the same path as the others are walking, offset in time.

The path has been mapped for two hundred kilometers and it does not lead anywhere yet.

They decay. Not quite normally: it is slower, and there is no bloating, and the decay is otherwise what it should be.

When they have decayed far enough, they stop, and they fall, and they are bones on the bottom.

There is no evidence of awareness. Instruments have been put on them, lights have been shone at them, and they have been physically obstructed, and they go round the obstruction and rejoin the path.

They do not respond to being disassembled. What is left of one will carry on walking with what is left of its legs.

The count is not known. Twenty-two have been observed at various points.

The corridor is inside an exclusion managed through cable and fishing arrangements.

Instances are not recovered. The two that were are the reason.

The path is surveyed annually and the map is extended and the map is the file.

Where an instance can be identified, the family are given the ordinary account, which is that the body was not recovered, and that is true.

Nothing is placed on the path.

Soak 2 · Attack 1 · Defense 2 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 3

Potence 2 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 10

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 5

Traits: Four Kilometers An Hour - on the bottom, and they do not stop. All On The Same Path - offset in time, going back on itself. They Rot As They Go - and when it is far enough, they fall. Nobody Is In There - and obstructing one changes nothing.

Show them on sonar first. Twenty-two returns, moving at walking pace.

Nothing is dangerous. The party are in a submersible watching people walk.

Two hundred kilometers so far. It does not lead anywhere yet.

Identified from a run of deaths and maimings in several countries that had nothing in common except that the injuries all began at a small opening. Hundred and eighty-seventh on the unknowns.

Something shaped like a lamprey. It has no eyes, no gills and no vent, and it ranges from ten centimeters to over two meters.

It lives in a hole.

The body stays in the dark and the mouth is anchored at the opening. It does not move while it is nested and it eats anything organic that comes in. The more that comes in, the more light it will tolerate.

No one has ever found one outside a nest. Nobody knows how they travel or how they choose.

The recorded nests are animal burrows, rock fissures, hollow logs, drainage pipes, downpipes, waste disposal units, shoes, coat sleeves, the engine block of an abandoned car, and a light socket.

Anything that goes in is seized by teeth that curve inward and pulled, and the pulling is far stronger than the size of the animal or the size of the hole suggests. A sixty-eight kilo dog went through a twenty centimeter pipe in under three seconds.

Nothing has ever been recovered from one. It pulls until the whole of the prey has gone through the opening, or until the part it has hold of comes off the rest.

It eats without limit. It never gets bigger, never gets heavier, and never excretes anything, because its gut leads somewhere else.

That is also how it leaves. Bright light, or being dislodged, and the mouth goes back down the hole and drags the skin after itself, and the whole animal reduces like a sock rolling in on itself until there is nothing there.

When that happens under Foundation control it is recorded as a breach.

Contained specimens are held in purpose-built nests, lit on a timer, fed on a schedule that keeps their tolerance for the light high.

Sites are surveyed by putting a light down the hole before anything else goes near it. The survey tool is a flashlight on a stick and it is the most-issued piece of equipment in the region.

Nothing is put into any opening by hand. Anywhere. This is in the general safety instructions and not only in this file.

Soak 3 · Attack 9 · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 6 · Movement Rate 0

Potence 8 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 6 · Ferocity 3 · Stamina 4

It does not move. The pull is what the Attack is.

Traits: In The Hole - any hole, dark enough, with something going in now and then. It Pulls - far harder than it should, until you are through or you come apart. Bottomless - it never gains an ounce and it never voids. Light - and it rolls itself away, and that counts as losing it.

Do not describe it. Describe an opening and wait.

The three seconds is the number to use. Say it out loud and then move on.

Once the players know, every drain in the campaign is a decision.

He walked into a police station in Florida, soaked through on a dry day, and explained his situation clearly and in order. Eleventh in Florida.

A man of about thirty-five who remembers his name and nothing before the week he turned up.

There is a space inside him and there is weather in it.

Water comes out of his skin, continuously, more of it than a body holds. When his mouth is open, lightning comes out of that, and it does not hurt him, and it will hurt whatever it reaches.

He finds all of this humiliating. He has said so in nearly every interview and the note asking staff to stop calling it impressive is signed by four people.

Things come up out of it.

Small aircraft, mostly. Airplanes and helicopters a few centimeters long, correct down to the rivets and the wiring, and empty. They arrive in his mouth and he spits them into a tray.

One of them was a small copy of a Foundation survey drone, and it worked, and it looked around his cell for a while before it was caught, and it was carrying pictures.

The pictures are of a city in heavy rain. In one of them a landmark has been crushed by something enormous that is clearly a piece of food. In another, the street is full of people running from a wave coming up it.

He is fed carefully now. That is why.

A cell with a drain in it, adequate to about four hundred liters an hour, and a covered tray by the door.

His diet is controlled. He was told why and he agreed to it and he asks, each week, whether anything has come back.

Towels, dry clothes and heating, which are not containment and are in the file anyway because a shift supervisor put them there.

Recovered aircraft go to a cabinet. There are two hundred and sixty of them. The drone is kept separately.

Soak 3 · Attack 6 lightning · Defense 3 · Health Levels 6 · Movement Rate 8

Potence 3 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 7

Traits: It Rains Off Him - constantly, indoors, more than a man contains. Lightning When He Speaks - which is why he keeps his mouth shut. Little Airplanes - perfect, empty, and there are hundreds. Something In There Is Drowning - and the photographs prove it.

He is a polite, miserable man having a very bad life. Play that, not the weather.

Hand the players the photographs one at a time and say nothing.

The meals are the entry. Somebody is deciding what he eats.

Traced through a coroner's district on the Mississippi coast that had been recording the same impossible cause of death every summer since 1999 and had stopped remarking on it. First on the Mississippi list.

Every summer, in one coastal city, up to nine people die the same way.

They are all between sixty-eight and eighty. It always happens in the evening and it always happens while it is raining.

The brain and the eyes come out through the back of the skull, together, and leave.

They move. The eyes stay attached and do the steering, and the whole thing gets about by flexing.

Most of them go straight for the nearest way out of the room.

Some of them go for other people in the room, and try to get in through the mouth or the nose, and the file records that none of those attempts has succeeded and does not say what happened to the people they were attempting it on.

They are very hard to follow. They compress and go down a drain or through a grating, and after that they are in the storm system and they are gone.

Nobody knows how many are down there.

In the summer of 2005, after the hurricane, a damage assessment team walking the beach found forty-eight of them in the debris, in the open, in daylight.

Every one had its pair of eyes.

The city is monitored. Deaths in the age band, on wet evenings, are flagged within the hour, and there is a standing team through the summer.

Recovery is by hand net and a sealed box, and the rate of recovery is about one in five.

The storm drains are surveyed annually. Nothing has ever been found in them.

The forty-eight from 2005 were recovered and are held. They are alive by every measure anybody can apply and they have not been destroyed, and the reason given in the file is that nobody has established what they are.

Soak 0 · Attack 2 · Defense 7 · Health Levels 2 · Movement Rate 5

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 2

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 5

Traits: Nine A Summer - always old, always evening, always raining. Out Through The Back - brain and eyes together, and then they leave. Down The Drain - and into the system, and gone. Forty-Eight On A Beach - after the storm, in daylight, all with their eyes.

The rain is the cue. Use it three times before anything happens.

Do not play them as monsters. They are frightened and they are leaving.

Nobody knows how many are under that city. Give the players the recovery rate and let them do the arithmetic.

Came in after a tropical storm put her on a Florida beach and a stretch of coast went through two weeks of headaches, bad dreams and people walking inland away from the water. Fifth on the Florida list.

A manatee, two point eight meters, four hundred and fifty kilos, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty years old.

The flippers have fingers on them, five each, with a thumb that works. The face is a person's face on a manatee's skull, and it is not a resemblance you have to be told about.

She was hit by a boat propeller some years before she was found. The scarring runs across the top of the head and down the back and the skull under it was broken and healed.

She is sapient. She has learned enough English to hold a conversation in short sentences, slowly, with effort, and she finds the words for things much harder than the pronunciation. Two hours a day are set aside for the lessons and two staff teach them.

Then there is the song.

It is a long low cetacean sort of singing and it is unbearable to hear. Anybody within range of it gets a splitting headache and six to twelve hours of seeing and hearing things that are not there, and afterwards a dread of enclosed spaces, of deep water, and of animals in water. Some of them feel themselves drowning at intervals for days.

It does the same to any mammal. It does nothing whatever to her.

Within about a kilometer, while she sings, the water blooms. Algae and plankton multiply until the oxygen is gone and the toxin level is up, and the fish and the shellfish die across the whole area. There is nothing anomalous in the algae. It is just doing what algae does, much too fast.

She has said there are others, in the Gulf and the Caribbean, in the few words she has for it. Nothing matching has ever been reported.

A salt water tank forty meters square, soundproofed, cleaned weekly and immediately after a bloom. Fifteen kilos of lettuce and greens a day with supplements.

Everybody in the containment wears ear defenders except when they are actually talking to her, and that exception is the whole of the risk and is accepted.

Anybody who takes a dose of the song comes off duty until a therapist clears them. That is not a formality and the file says how many have not gone back.

The lessons continue. They are the only part of the entry that has ever produced anything.

Soak 5 · Attack 2 · Defense 2 · Health Levels 12 · Movement Rate 4 in water

Potence 7 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 4

Traits: Hands And A Face - fingers, a thumb, and a person looking back. A Few Words - slow, effortful, and she is trying. The Song - headache, hallucination, and a lasting fear of water. The Bloom - a kilometer of dead water behind it.

She is a person having a conversation. Play the conversation properly and give her something to want.

The song is not an attack. She is not using it on anybody. It is what her voice does.

The scene is somebody taking the ear defenders off because it seemed rude.

Came in through an environmental health officer who had condemned an apartment for damp and could not photograph the damp, and whose camera showed it perfectly well. One hundred and thirty-seventh on the unknowns.

A fungus that spreads fast and cannot be seen.

Not camouflaged: invisible to direct observation, including down a microscope, which took a long time to accept. It shows up on film and on any camera feed, where it is an ordinary gray-green growth spreading across a wall.

It colonizes houses.

Once established it produces spores that change the behavior of the people living there. They turn the heating up. They stop opening windows. They keep the place warmer and wetter than they would otherwise, and they will explain at length that they have always liked it warm.

They are not otherwise affected. They go to work, they see their friends, they are entirely themselves, and they are quietly making a better home for it.

It spreads to neighboring properties through party walls.

By the time a household is uncomfortable enough to complain, the colony is usually in three apartments. The record is eleven.

It does not harm people directly. What it does is the damp: the respiratory problems, the ruined possessions, the children with the cough, and the landlord who has been out three times and cannot find anything.

Detection is by photograph. Environmental health departments in a number of authorities have a standing arrangement to send images of any damp complaint where the surveyor could not see the growth, which sounds absurd and is therefore never queried.

Treatment is ordinary. It is a fungus and it dies of the things fungi die of, and the work is done by a contractor who thinks it is a rare mold with a notifiable status.

Residents are rehoused, treated, and not told, and the file says they recover their opinions about the thermostat within a month.

Soak 0 · Attack 1 · Defense 9 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 2 · Movement Rate -

Potence 1 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 10

Traits: Only On Camera - invisible to the eye at any magnification, obvious on a phone. It Makes The House Suit It - warmer, wetter, windows shut, and everybody has always liked it that way. Party Walls - three apartments by the time anybody complains, and the record is eleven.

Set it in the party's own building. Someone has the heating up. Someone shuts a window. Nobody comments.

The reveal is a photograph taken for another reason entirely.

The fix is boring and that is the point: a contractor, two weeks, and four families rehoused who are annoyed about it.

Came out of a county archive that had reported water damage and then reported, three weeks later, that a shelf of rate books had been translated. Fifty-eighth on the unknowns.

A black mold, closely related to an ordinary damp-loving species, which likes paper and prefers paper with printing on it.

It grows as writing.

On a colonized page the growth arranges itself into characters, densely, in what looks like a typeface. Photographed, it is a mold in an irregular pattern. Looked at, it is text.

Which text depends on who is looking. Two people at the same page will generally see different alphabets, and the choice has no relation to what either of them can read: a fluent reader of two languages may get a third they have never seen. The effect is not consistent and nobody has made a rule out of it.

It is not saying anything. Everything anybody has transcribed from it is grammatical nonsense in the appropriate script, and the transcription work went on for eleven years before it stopped.

It eats the paper underneath. Slowly, and completely, and an infested collection loses the content before it loses the pages, because the growth covers the print first.

It dries out and waits. Seventy years in a dry box and it will come back on the first damp winter.

Infested material is sealed, frozen, cataloged and stored, because burning it was tried and the recommendation against it is two lines and mentions the chimney.

Archives, libraries and record offices in several countries have a contact and a leaflet describing an unusual damp problem with a telephone number.

Staff do not read it. That is in the procedure, it is not explained, and the eleven years of transcription are not in the training material.

Soak 0 · Attack 1 · Defense 9 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate -

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 10

Per colony. It is a mold and it can be killed and the problem is always finding it.

Traits: Grows As Writing - dense, typeset, and different for every reader. Eats The Print First - the words go before the page does. Seventy Years Dry - and one wet winter brings it back.

Put it in a records room the party need. The file they came for is legible and it is in a script nobody at the table can read, and the player next to them says no it is not, it is in English, and reads out something that makes no sense.

Never translate it. There is nothing in it.

The eleven years is the entry. Somebody transcribed nonsense for over a decade, and the boxes are still there, and the last notebook is in a different hand from the first.

An empty office block was condemned as structurally unsound and the surveyor's report described the joists as hollow and full. Three hundred and ninety-ninth on the unknowns.

Earthworms, to look at, in the early stages.

They get into buildings that are empty and have a timber or steel frame. One or two is enough to start it: they go in through a crevice and into the cavity and then they are in the walls.

They eat the frame.

They take timber first and they take steel as well, more slowly, and what they leave behind is a shell of plaster and cladding with nothing inside it holding anything up.

They grow while they do it. The later stages are not earthworms. They thicken and they segment differently and the mouth changes, and the largest recovered specimen is in the annex with a photograph and a ruler.

An infested building looks normal from outside and from inside until it does not.

The collapses are sudden and they are complete and there have been four.

They do not go into occupied buildings. That is consistent and it is the only reliable thing on this file: an empty building, or one with nobody in it for long periods.

They leave when the frame is gone, and they go looking, and they travel underground.

Infestations are found by survey. The signature is in the structure and is detectable by ultrasound, and a program runs across derelict property in affected districts.

Treatment is demolition and removal of the ground beneath. Chemical treatment does not work.

Specimens are held at a site in a steel-lined unit with a concrete liner inside the steel.

The unit is inspected weekly by measurement rather than by looking.

Empty buildings in affected districts are, where possible, occupied. That is cheaper than the alternative and it is in the procedure as a recommendation.

Soak 3 · Attack 4 · Defense 3 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 2

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 4

Traits: Only Empty Buildings - consistently, without exception. They Eat The Frame - timber first, then the steel. It Looks Fine Until It Does Not - and then it is all at once. They Get Bigger - and the late ones are not worms.

The building the party are using is empty and has been for years.

Nothing attacks. The floor goes.

Occupy the building and they leave. Let the party solve it with tenants.

Walked into a containment vehicle when asked to, having first finished what it was eating. Two hundred and twenty-sixth on the unplaced list.

Something the size and shape of a man, in an advanced state of decay, held together by things that are alive.

Branches. Moss. Bracket fungus. Slime mold. In its chest at the moment there is a paper wasp nest and the wasps use it as a nest and do not seem to mind the traffic. The arrangement changes, so its height and weight change with it, and the file records a range rather than a figure.

It eats rot.

Carrion, dung, spoiled crops, oil, heavy metal contamination, anything sufficiently poisoned. It either chews the material or it presses it against its chest and the material goes in and does not come out.

Afterwards it produces seed.

Shoots, spores, fruit and seed of a great many species come out of its body and it scatters them as it walks, which is clearly the point of the exercise. After a large meal it lies down for a few hours and the ground around it erupts.

It speaks every language anybody has tried it in, and nobody has established where it learned them or whether learned is the right word.

It is friendly, curious, not especially clever, and it asks what things are for.

It has never been given a name by anything and would like one, and has said so, once, and did not bring it up again.

It is not confined. It is accompanied.

A team travels with it and drives it to sites that need what it does: spill grounds, tailings, contaminated flats, the long list held by the environmental desk.

Nothing about the work is disguised as anything else. The cover is a remediation contractor, which is what it is.

Nobody is to name it. That instruction has been queried in writing four times and the responses are in the file and none of them give a reason.

Soak 5 · Attack 2 · Defense 3 · Health Levels 9 · Movement Rate 7

Potence 3 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 10

It has never struck anything.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: It Eats What Is Ruined - carrion, dung, oil, heavy metal, anything poisoned. It Puts Back - seed, spores and shoots, scattered as it goes. Every Language - fluently, and it cannot say how. It Would Like A Name - and it has been told no.

Play it as gentle and a little slow and genuinely delighted by small things.

The smell is the only difficulty and nobody mentions it to its face.

The name is the entry. A player can give it one and that will matter to somebody.

Came in from a laboratory animal house that had reported an infestation and then reported, in a second email that the manager apologized for, that the infestation appeared to be the mice. One hundred and fiftieth on the unknowns.

A strain of common cockroach that copies what it sees.

The copying is superficial and it is quick. Within a day of watching something, an instance takes on its coloring, its markings and its behavior: a roach that has watched bumblebees is striped, flies in short bursts, and visits flowers, and is still a cockroach with a cockroach's insides and a cockroach's appetite.

It does not acquire what it is copying. The bee-roaches do not make honey, do not form a colony and do not communicate, and they die of the things cockroaches die of.

They copy each other faster than they copy anything else.

That is the containment problem. Put a hundred in a box and they converge: within a week they are all the same thing, and what they have converged on is not any of the things any of them started as. It is an average that drifts, and it drifts further the longer they are together, and the end of the drift has not been observed because the trials get stopped.

A large enough population converges on something new.

The file's photographs run from left to right across three pages and the last page is the reason the trials get stopped.

They will copy people. Not the shape, which they cannot manage, but the behavior: roaches that have watched a technician work will walk a bench methodically, stop at the same points, and turn at the ends.

Sealed units, small populations, and a hard limit on the number kept together, which is low and is not negotiable.

Nothing is kept in view of anything else. Each unit is opaque, and the animal house that this came out of is now a Foundation property and is empty.

Wild instances are dealt with the way infestations are dealt with, which works, because they are cockroaches.

Soak 0 · Attack 1 · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 3m

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: A Day To Copy - coloring, markings and behavior, from whatever it watched. Skin Deep - no honey, no colony, no language, and it dies like a cockroach. They Converge - faster on each other than on anything else, and the drift does not stop.

The reveal should be a nice one: the party find bees in a sealed room and work out they are not bees.

The horror is the population limit. Let a player ask why the number is so low and hand them the three pages.

If they watch the party, play it back: something walking the bench, stopping where the technician stopped, turning at the ends.

A pest control call in a suburb where four households had all reported the same intruder, and the intruder did not exist, and there were frogs in the drains. Three hundred and seventy-second on the unknowns.

Small chirping frogs, a couple of centimeters long, of a common kind.

They call at a pitch nobody can hear.

What the call does is reach into the part of the brain that decides where a person is, and it gets it slightly wrong.

The result is a mild hallucination. Somebody standing at the edge of your vision. A movement in the hall. The sense that the room is occupied. A feeling of being somewhere you have been before.

It is not frightening on its own. It becomes frightening because it does not stop, and because the person experiencing it is otherwise entirely well.

The frogs are doing this to catch flies. That is the working theory and it fits: the calls disorient small flying insects and bring them down within reach, and the effect on us is a by-product of being much larger and much closer to the ground than anybody intended.

They are not aggressive. They are not interested. They sit in drains and under flowerpots and call.

A garden with a good population in it will produce a haunted house, and has, eleven times.

Affected properties are identified through pest control contractors on a list of reported symptoms.

Treatment is removal of the frogs, which works within a day, and the householder is told it was damp.

A colony is maintained at a site in an acoustically sealed vivarium.

The vivarium is not entered by anybody who has been on shift more than eight hours.

Recordings of the call are held and are not played through any system connected to a building.

Soak 1 · Attack - · Defense 5 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 4

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: You Cannot Hear It - and it is going all night. Somebody Is In The Room - at the edge of your eye, in the hall, behind you. They Are Only Hunting Flies - and we are an accident. Take The Frogs Away And It Stops - in about a day.

Run a haunting for a whole session. Let them do the whole investigation.

The answer is frogs. Let them be furious about it.

One of them takes a recording home. Decide now whether you want that.

A forestry worker put a boot through what he thought was a fungus and found that it had made a wall. Four hundred and thirtieth on the unknowns.

A slime mold, yellow, of a kind close to a common species.

It thinks.

Not each cell: the population does. Current estimates put it at about twelve million cells and the whole of it appears to be one mind, distributed, slow, and entirely coherent.

It builds.

What it builds with is its own dead. Dead cells set hard and can be worked while they are drying, and the living ones move them and arrange them, and what results is structure: walls, channels, chambers, and things that are clearly for something and are not always identifiable.

The building is good. It is engineered rather than grown: there are arches, there are supports where supports are needed, and there is drainage.

It uses other dead things too. Insects, a mouse, leaf litter, all incorporated as material.

It communicates. Slowly, by building shapes that mean things, and a vocabulary of about two hundred has been worked out over eleven years.

It is curious and it asks questions and the questions are good.

It has asked for things. A source of water, which was given. Something to build with, which was given. News, which is read to it, and which it takes several days to respond to.

It is not going anywhere. It cannot move faster than a slime mold moves.

Housed in a large humid enclosure with a substrate, a water supply, and a supply of materials that it has specified.

Communication is by a team of two, in writing, on a board, on a weekly schedule.

The vocabulary is maintained and is the main output of the file.

Nothing is removed from the enclosure, including dead material, because that is its building stock.

It is told when anything about its arrangements is going to change, in advance.

Soak 1 · Attack - · Defense 2 · Health Levels 6 · Movement Rate 1

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 4

Traits: Twelve Million Cells, One Mind - slow, coherent, and patient. It Builds With Its Dead - walls, arches, drainage, all of it engineered. Two Hundred Words - built in shapes, over eleven years. It Asks Good Questions - and it takes days to answer yours.

A week between exchanges. Let one conversation run the whole campaign.

Read it the news. Let it ask about something the party had not thought about.

It is building something in the corner. Do not say what.

Taken from a stand of old timber that was dying from the inside out, where the foresters had been hearing people laughing for a two weeks. Three hundred and eighteenth on the unknowns.

Something that walks upright, two and a half meters, a hundred and eighty kilos, covered in coarse dark hair that does not match any animal on record.

It has claws twenty centimeters long that go away when it is not using them. It is not hard to hurt.

The eyes throw light back and have nothing in them to focus.

It has no jaw. The mouth is a funnel, ringed with teeth, the way a lamprey's is.

It feeds on trees. It fastens onto a big one and takes what it wants out of the wood and the ground around it, and what it leaves behind is dried out and starving, and about a quarter of them survive it.

It is cleverer than an animal should be and it does not like people.

Its first approach is not violence. It makes a sound, thrown so that it seems to come from somewhere else, and the sound is faint human laughter.

If you do not react, it tries harder, and if you still do not react it comes for you. What it appears to want is the reaction.

It has been with us for some years.

It stopped doing any of that a long time ago. When anybody comes into the enclosure it goes to the back of it and stays there, and it will defend itself if somebody gets close, and otherwise it does nothing.

When it is on its own it lies still.

And sometimes it sings. Not laughter and nothing thrown: it makes a long sound, for minutes at a time, and then stops.

Nobody knows what that is. The file offers one suggestion and does not press it.

Housed in a large enclosure with mature trees in it, replaced as they die, which is a standing cost.

Entry by two people, neither closer than four meters, no contact.

Nobody attempts to provoke a reaction. That includes recording equipment triggered by sound, which was removed.

Its singing is recorded from outside and the recordings are kept. There is no analysis program.

Release has been proposed twice. Both proposals are in the file.

Soak 3 · Attack 7 · Defense 5 · Mental Defense 4 · Health Levels 9 · Movement Rate 9

Potence 4 · Initiative 6 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 9

Traits: A Mouth Like A Lamprey's - and it uses it on trees. It Throws Laughter - faint, human, and never from where it is. It Wants You To Flinch - and it escalates until you do. Now It Sits At The Back - and sings to itself when nobody is in.

Run it in the forest first, laughing from behind them, for a whole session.

Then show them the enclosure. Same animal, at the back, not moving.

Let them hear it sing once, from outside the door.

Nobody found it. A county forester reported that a stand of kudzu had taken four hunting dogs in a season and was told, politely, that kudzu does not do that. He kept writing. The fourth letter reached somebody who read it properly. First on Louisiana's list, and the only entry on it that arrived by post.

Half a square kilometer of vine, of a kind close enough to kudzu that nobody looks at it twice from a road, growing at up to two meters a day when it has been fed and not at all when it has not. It roots into anything: soil, brick, asphalt, bone.

Living in it are the lanterns. Small, about the length of a hand, with too many joints and a light in the abdomen, and they fly badly but they fly. They go out at dusk in ones and twos, and they lead things back.

That is the whole arrangement. The lanterns bring it food and the vine feeds them, and it has been running since somebody first planted kudzu in this country. The skeletons in the mat go back about that far.

Being led is not a decision anybody remembers making. People who have been recovered describe the walk as pleasant and cannot say where they thought they were going.

Trimmed to half a square kilometer, fenced at thirty meters of cleared ground, and three kilometers of forest closed to the public on a notice about restoration works. Fed a large animal a day while the lanterns are active. Maintenance withdraws entirely during those periods. Anything crossing the fence is burned, not caught.

Soak 0 · Attack 3 · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 2 · Movement Rate 8m flying

Potence 0 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: Leading - a character who follows a lantern keeps following it and will describe the walk afterwards as their own idea. Never Alone - where there is one there are forty, and the other thirty-nine are not in front of you. Burns Easily - fire works on the lanterns and on the vine, and is the only thing the procedure trusts.

Two threats that look like one and should be introduced separately. Run the lanterns first, at dusk, at a distance, and let a player choose to follow - they will, because you are describing something lovely and because the character is the one deciding. The vine is not a fight. It is the ground being wrong, at the end of a walk that felt like their idea. Fire is the answer and the party should work that out themselves.

A condemned building four blocks off the river, found with its lower level full and its ceiling growing upward. Second in Orleans Parish.

A termite colony, of no species anybody has cataloged, living in the bottom of a condemned building near the river.

The nest looks like the great mounds those insects build, except that it is inside, and the towers are coming up through the ceiling tiles and the ventilation.

The towers are shaped like bell towers. That is not a resemblance anybody is reaching for: they have openings at the top and tapering sides and they are built like towers with bells in them.

There are symbols cut into them, a great many, in no script anybody has read, and the reading of them is that they are religious.

The symbols glow blue while the colony is eating.

They eat anything.

What they go for is whatever has had meaning invested in it. Objects that somebody has prayed over, or consecrated, or wept on, or kept because of what it stood for. The link can be very thin and the link is usually there, which is why they can eat almost everything.

They turn it into wood pulp, eat most of that, and build with about a seventh of it.

Four hundred and fifty kilos a day.

At that rate the building is gone in about fifteen years and the projection is on the file with a year on it.

Nobody knows how the colony got that big, because the site was already abandoned when it was found, and there is no documentation of what the site was for.

Imaging found things in the ruins that they have not touched.

Around each of them there is a pocket of earth that has been left alone. Waste bags, emptied. Laboratory equipment of a kind used to look after the objects this organization keeps for its own protection. And several mason jars with something in them.

The site is fenced and posted and nothing is taken in.

Nothing is taken out either. The untouched pockets have not been excavated and the proposal to excavate them is refused annually.

The colony is not treated, burned or gassed. That was modeled and the model says it would not work and would spread them.

The projection is reviewed yearly and has not moved.

Soak 0 · Attack 1 · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 3

Potence 4 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 4

The colony is the hazard and the hazard is to property.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 5

Traits: Anything That Mattered To Somebody - and almost everything did. Wood Pulp - and they build with a seventh of it. Bell Towers - with writing on them, glowing while they eat. Fifteen Years - and the building is gone.

The towers coming through the ceiling tiles is the image. Open with it.

They will eat a wedding ring and not the wrapper it came in.

The pockets they left alone are the entry. Especially the jars.

Not acquired. He was a member of staff for twenty-six years and then there was an incident involving a pair of coins, and afterwards he was an entry. Eighth on the Foundation's own list.

A man who does not stop.

When the body he is in stops working, there is a short gap, and then he wakes up in the nearest dead thing. It has to be a mammal, and it has to have died within about a day, and there appears to be no limit on the distance.

He cannot take anything younger than he was when it happened, which was thirty-three and some months. That holds for animals too, at whatever the equivalent is, and nobody has explained the rule.

Whatever he wakes up in comes back to life properly. It looks and feels the way it did shortly before it died, and it works. Then it starts to go, quickly, and he can feel it going, and this is the part of the file that has the interviews in it.

Eighty-six days is the longest a body has lasted on its own. It can be propped up with a great deal of work, and that has been done once, at an hourly cost, and when it was stopped the body went to ash in seconds and the next seven failed within hours of each other.

Every body he is in has an electrum coin where its right eye should be. Take the coin out and the body falls apart at once and the coin is gone, and it is in the eye of the next one.

The coin used to be an object in its own right, one of a pair, that made the recently dead sit up and talk. The research on them was not finished. The notes that survive suggest that what was talking was not the dead person, and that it got irritable when asked for details about its own life.

He has been a man, a horse, an ape, several mice, and a good many people who worked here.

He has an office and a post and does the job he did before, which is personnel.

Bodies are provided. The provision is from the normal mortality of a large organization and is handled by two people, and the standing note says what the alternative was and why it was refused.

He is not to be present at any death he could have prevented.

Soak 3 · Attack 3 · Defense 3 · Health Levels 7 · Movement Rate 10

Potence 3 · Initiative 4 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 4

Whatever he is currently wearing.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8

Traits: The Nearest Dead Thing - mammal, under a day, any distance. Nothing Young - not below the age he was, and nobody knows why. It Rots - fast, and he is awake for it. The Coin - right eye, always, and taking it out ends that body.

He should be somebody the players report to. Have him sign their forms.

Change the actor between sessions. Same voice, same manner, different body, and let them work out when.

Ask a player, once, what happens when he is standing near one of them.

Picked up by a camera overlooking a cemetery next to one of our sites, and then found in eleven years of other cameras nobody had been reviewing for it. Hundred and twenty-seventh on the list of shapes.

Something about two meters tall in a black cloak with the hood up. You cannot see the face. What can be seen of the frame suggests there is not much on the bones.

It carries a wooden staff, longer than it is tall, burnt down one side.

It is hard to notice. Not invisible: people simply do not register it, and neither do we, and most of what is known about it was found by going back through footage after the fact.

It happens more than a thousand times a day, all over the world.

It comes up out of a shadow, through a black substance that pools and then is not there.

Then it goes to a grave.

Almost always an old one, usually more than a hundred years, and what decides which one has not been worked out.

Sometimes it takes out a white cloth and cleans the stone. It does that thoroughly and it takes its time.

Then it kneels and puts something down in front of the stone. A token, an object, small. The list of what has been left is in the file and does not have a pattern in it either.

Then it stays there for about a minute.

Then it goes back to where it came up and goes down into the same black substance.

It has never done anything else. Nobody has ever been hurt.

Attempts to interfere fail. People who get close enough to lay hands on it are overtaken by grief, their own, whatever they have got, and they stop and they do not manage it. Protective equipment made no difference to the one officer who tried it with any.

Not contained. Nothing about it can be contained.

Manifestations are logged where cameras happen to catch them and the log is kept for the sake of the pattern, which there is not one of.

Tokens left at graves are photographed in place and are not removed.

No further interference. The instruction is one line and follows the report by the officer who tried.

Cemeteries adjacent to our sites are not swept for it.

Soak 5 · Attack - · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels - · Movement Rate 4

Potence 2 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Stamina 10

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 5

Traits: A Thousand Times A Day - everywhere, and almost nobody sees it. It Cleans The Stone - properly, with a white cloth, taking its time. It Leaves Something - small, and there is no pattern to any of it. Touch It And You Grieve - your own grief, all of it, and you will not get past that.

Let a player reach for it. Then ask them who they lost.

It is doing something kind. Do not put a twist on it.

A hundred-year-old grave that nobody alive remembers. That is the whole point.

A survey of a closed graveyard counted one more tree than the survey of twenty years before, in a place where nothing had been planted. Two hundred and sixty-seventh on the unplaced list.

A person, still alive, who has become a tree.

Not a plant. Everything about it is human tissue, arranged to do what a tree does.

The body is cylindrical now. The ribs have opened out and gone round to make a trunk that will take the weight.

The outside is bark, and the bark is callus: skin thickened and thickened again until nothing will cut it, and nothing much will dent it either.

The legs have grown down and out and into the soil, and they work as roots. In the sole of each foot there is a mouth, with human teeth in it, which eats bone.

That is what it lives on. There are graves under it.

There are two throats, one down the inside of each leg, running up through the thigh bone to a stomach that is where a stomach should be.

It grows slowly and it eats very little and it can go months between meals.

It does not move and, as far as any test shows, cannot.

Whether it is aware is the question the file cannot answer. It does not respond to speech, light, pain or anything else that has been tried. Its brain is still there and it is still working.

The graveyard has not been used since the nineteen twenties.

The ground is owned and walled, and the gate is kept locked, and the cover is a heritage burial ground, which it is.

It is not cut, sampled or moved. A proposal to remove it for study was refused on the grounds that removal would be removal from its food.

It is surveyed annually. It has grown eleven centimeters in twenty years.

Nothing is buried there now. That was considered, once, as a welfare measure, and the discussion is on the file.

Soak 9 · Attack 2 · Defense 0 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 20 · Movement Rate -

Potence 5 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 10

Traits: Bark Made Of Callus - and it will turn a blade. Roots That Are Legs - down into the soil, with mouths in the feet. It Eats What Is Buried - and that is all it eats. The Brain Is Still Working - and nothing gets a response.

It is a tree in a graveyard until somebody looks closely. Give them the moment.

Do not resolve whether it knows. Both readings should stay open.

The graves underneath are the entry. Somebody has the register.

Shot dead in a Virginia cemetery in 1923 by the groundskeeper, who thought he had disturbed grave robbers and reported it to the police the same night. Second in Virginia.

It is dead. This is a file about one animal, on one night, a hundred years ago.

It stood two meters. Thin translucent skin, luminous eyes, no hair, tapered ears, and feet that were cloven.

The hands were far too big for it. Four fingers on each, with claws six centimeters long.

There were no reproductive organs of any kind.

Whether it could think is not known and cannot now be established.

It was found after midnight, digging, at speed, at a grave that had been filled in that afternoon. The groundskeeper shot it twice in the chest with a service revolver and it died on the spot.

The grave was opened the following day as part of the investigation.

It held a woman of twenty-four, a milkmaid, who had been certified dead the previous morning after a seizure.

The inside of the coffin lid was covered in scratches.

The cause of death was recorded, after the exhumation, as suffocation.

She was buried again and nothing further has happened at that cemetery, and nothing like it has been reported anywhere since.

The remains are in a store, preserved, and are examined about once a decade by whoever asks.

The cemetery is not Foundation property and is not watched.

The groundskeeper was treated and released and lived another thirty years and is in the file because somebody went and checked.

There is a second file about the hands and it has been open since 1923 and has one page in it.

Soak 3 · Attack 7 · Defense 4 · Mental Defense 4 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 10

Potence 2 · Initiative 4 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 2

Two rounds from a service revolver finished it, which is worth remembering.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 9

Traits: Hands For Digging - far too large, four fingers, six centimeters of claw. It Went For Fresh Graves - one, that anybody knows of. It Was Fast - the hole was most of the way down in under an hour. It Was Not Robbing Her - and there is no other reading that fits.

Run it in 1923. A lantern, a revolver, a noise in the dark.

Let the players shoot it. Then let them open the grave.

The scratches on the lid are the entry. Nothing else needs saying.

A body on a beach in Massachusetts that the coroner's office had collected four times and that was on the beach again each time. Seventh in Massachusetts.

A man, face down on the sand, above the tide line, on a public beach.

He died about forty years ago. That has been established several times and it is not in question.

He is decomposed to about a week.

He has been at that stage for four decades. The extremities are worse than the rest and they have been worse than the rest for as long as the file has existed, and the progression has stopped rather than slowed.

He cannot be moved.

He can be lifted. He can be carried, driven away, and put in a drawer, and he is on the beach again inside about six hours, in the same position, above the tide line.

The sand under him is ordinary sand. There is no impression, no staining, and nothing beneath him.

He is not covered by the sea. The tide comes in and the water goes round him and it has been filmed.

People do not notice him. Not a perceptual effect: beachgoers see a man lying on the sand and look away, which is what people do, and the beach is busy in summer.

He has been identified. That happened recently and is in an addendum, and the addendum is one page and is why the file is still open.

The beach is public and stays public.

He is covered by a screen presented as a wildlife exclosure, which is maintained by the town under an arrangement.

He is not moved. The four attempts are the reason and are listed.

Samples are not taken. The sampling that was done is in the record and produced what it produced.

The addendum is not to be read by anybody who has not read the file, and the file says why in the last line.

Soak - · Attack - · Defense - · Health Levels - · Movement Rate -

Traits: Forty Years, One Week Of Decay - and the progression stopped rather than slowed. He Goes Back - within six hours, same place, same position. The Tide Goes Round Him - and it has been filmed. Somebody Knows Who He Is Now - and that is the last page.

Run it in summer, with a busy beach, and a screen with a sign about nesting birds.

Nobody has to be frightened. It is a man lying on a beach.

Decide who he is before the session and never say it out loud.

Came in through a sleep clinic that had four patients in a year reporting the same thing in the same words, none of whom knew each other. Hundred and ninety-sixth on the unknowns.

A woman, dried out the way a body dries out in the right conditions, with long hair, wearing a man's shirt and nothing else.

She is awake in some sense and she forgets almost everything. What she does is the same each time and the file's view is that she does not remember having done it before.

She chooses men who live alone and who sleep alone, and she goes to their bedrooms.

She gets into the bed. She lies on her back, or curled up facing them, and sometimes she puts an arm over them from behind. She is careful not to wake them. Occasionally she touches the sleeper's face, lightly.

When they wake she is not there.

It goes on for about a month and then she starts talking.

The conversations are one-sided. Anything the man says is not taken in. She asks whether he is coming to bed. She says she has kept it warm. She asks what time he got in. She asks a question about a car.

She uses a name. It is the same name every time and it is not the name of any of the men.

She has never hurt anybody, and the one time she turned on somebody was when the standing procedure was applied to her, which is why the standing procedure has been changed.

She is not contained and there is nothing to contain.

Men identified as being visited are told, and are offered a move, and about half of them decline.

Those who stay are asked to keep a diary, which they are given, and which is collected annually. The diaries are the only research anybody has.

Nothing is to be done to make her leave. The previous instruction is struck through in the file and the reason is in the margin in somebody's handwriting.

Inquiries continue into the name. Nothing has been found under it that fits.

Soak 2 · Attack 3 · Defense 4 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 8

Potence 2 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 10

If it ever came to it, which it has once.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 7

Traits: Men Who Sleep Alone - that is the whole of the selection. Careful - she does not wake them, and she is gone when they stir. A Month - and then she starts talking to somebody who is not there. The Name - always the same one, and it belongs to nobody involved.

Play it kindly. Nothing here is hunting anybody.

The month of quiet nights should be established before she says a word.

Never say who she is looking for. Nobody in the file knows and the diaries do not help.

Came to a veterinary practice with a dead cat in its arms, put it on the counter, and waited. Nobody knows how long it had been in the city. Third in Orleans Parish.

A person of no determinable age or origin, with red pupils, no body hair, and clothes that are part of them: sandals of plant fiber, a long linen robe with a strap over one shoulder, and linen wound round both arms.

The arm wrappings do not run out. It can pull linen from them indefinitely, in whatever width it needs.

It produces resin from its fingertips, and the chemistry of that resin matches myrrh.

It understands every language it has been addressed in and it will not speak. It answers with gestures, simply and clearly, and it is patient about being misunderstood.

It is followed by beetles.

Scarabs, apparently solid, which cannot be touched and cannot touch anything. They get out of the way of a hand coming toward them. They walk up people's arms. They settle on the highest point of a person and sit there with the air of something that has found a good spot.

Bring it a dead animal and it embalms it.

Resin first, then wrapping, carefully, with the kind of attention that takes a long time and cannot be hurried. Then it leans close and whispers to the bundle.

When it stops, another beetle comes out from under the linen.

It will not do this for every animal.

It has refused animals that were not somebody's, animals that died of neglect or were killed, and animals that never had a name. Nobody has worked out how it can tell, and it will not be argued with, and it has never been wrong about a case that was checked afterwards.

It has done cats, dogs, birds, fish, lizards, two spiders and a butterfly.

Quarters on a site, with a table at the right height, linen it does not need, and a door it can use.

Animals are brought to it. Staff bring their own. The rotation for that is informal and is not administered by anybody.

It is not pressed to speak. Eleven attempts were made in the first year and the file records that it sat through all of them politely.

The beetles are not contained because they cannot be.

Soak 3 · Attack - · Defense 4 · Health Levels 6 · Movement Rate 9

Potence 3 · Initiative 3 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

It has never harmed anything.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8

Traits: Linen And Myrrh - from its arms and its hands, without limit. It Will Not Speak - in any language, though it understands all of them. It Knows Which Ones - loved, named, and not killed. The Beetles - solid to look at, and not there at all.

Let a player bring it something. That is the whole entry.

Play the refusals gently. A shake of the head and the animal handed back.

It has been doing this for a very long time and nobody has asked it why, because it will not say.

A hospice reported a mosquito problem in a sealed ward in February, and the entomologist who attended asked for somebody senior. Hundred and forty-third on the list of shapes.

Mosquitoes. They differ from the ordinary kind in the eye, which is the wrong color, and in nothing else that shows.

They do not age. Specimens held since the file was opened are unchanged and none has died of anything but being killed.

They have no sex. There is nothing in any of them to breed with and they breed anyway.

When somebody dies of one of their bites, more of them appear. On the body, or near it, within hours, in numbers that scale with the person.

That is the whole of the life cycle as far as anybody can tell. They do not lay and there is no larval stage and no water is involved.

The bite is not immediately serious. What it carries takes between four days and three weeks depending on the person, and the medical annex describes what it does and the summary is that it does not look like anything.

They are not aggressive and they are not fast and they can be swatted.

They are in eleven countries.

Population monitoring is through public health reporting on the eye color, which is the only field marker.

Affected areas are treated with ordinary insecticide, which works.

Bodies of people who have died of a bite are cremated within four hours. That figure is the containment and it was arrived at by counting.

Specimens are held in sealed units for study and are not bred, because they cannot be bred, and the attempts are noted.

Field teams work in nets. The netting specification is in the file and is finer than the standard.

Soak 1 · Attack 3 · Defense 5 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 5

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: They Do Not Die Of Anything - except being killed. There Is Only One Sex - and they reproduce anyway. A Death Makes More - within hours, scaled to the person. Four Hours - from death to the incinerator, and that is the whole procedure.

One bite, early, and nothing happens for two sessions.

The horror is the arithmetic and the four hour rule. Let them do the funeral.

Eleven countries. Say that at the end.

A field hospital in a rural district had four patients with the same wound infection and none of them had been in the same place. Hundred and sixty-ninth on the list of shapes.

Something that lives in people and spreads by getting into an open wound.

What carries it is a pollen. It comes off a host constantly, in small amounts, and it needs broken skin, and any cut will do.

There are three stages and the file sets them out.

The first begins at once and lasts a few hours and it is longer if the person keeps still. Nothing shows. The person feels well and generally feels better than they did.

The second is growth. It takes the wound and works outward through the tissue and it is not painful and the annex describes what it builds.

The third is the host being something else. They are alive and they are aware and they are no longer doing the deciding, and what they do from there is arrange to be near people with cuts.

They are not aggressive about it. They are helpful. They offer to bandage things.

Stage one can be treated. The compound is ordinary and is in the annex and the window is the few hours.

After that nothing has worked.

The pollen is fragile. It does not survive drying, it does not travel far, and simple barrier precautions stop it completely.

Detection is medical, through wound infection reporting in rural districts on a presentation that is in the annex.

Contacts are traced and are treated inside the window where possible.

Stage three hosts are contained. There are nine and they are cooperative in the sense that they do what they are asked as long as it does not conflict.

Field teams work gloved and dressed. That is ordinary practice and this file is why it is enforced.

Nothing is cultured.

Soak 4 · Attack 4 · Defense 3 · Health Levels 7 · Movement Rate 6

Potence 3 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 7

Traits: Any Cut Will Do - and the pollen is always in the air around a host. A Few Hours To Treat It - and the person feels well the whole time. They Are Still In There - aware, and not deciding. They Offer To Help - with the bandage, and with anything else.

Somebody cuts their hand in the first scene. Nothing happens for two sessions.

The host is kind and useful and wants to patch them up.

Gloves and dressings stop it. Make them field-dress a wound properly.

Found in a rough sleeping population in a Florida city, by an outreach nurse who reported black tears and was taken seriously by the right person. Ninth on the Florida list.

A mold, of a genus that is common and of a species that is not.

It passes on contact and nobody has ruled out the other ways.

For the first week there is nothing wrong except that the subject sees small bright specks moving fast across their vision, worst when they sneeze and worst of all in strong blue light.

At about a week the whites of the eyes go black and the sight goes with them, completely, in both eyes, within a day.

Then small ulcers open at the inner corners. The fluid inside the eye leaks out through them, slowly, and it is black by then, and it runs down the face.

The threads come out of the same openings. Each one is white, fine, about the thickness of cotton, wet, and they grow to about twenty-five centimeters. As the openings widen there are more of them.

The eye goes. The mold takes it and takes it faster than rot would. What it does not do is let anything else in: in something like eight or nine cases in ten it keeps the socket and the nerve clear of every other infection while it works.

Two weeks from the first ulcer and there is no eye left, and the socket is full, and there is a hanging mass of threads down the cheek.

After that it moves up into the sinuses, where it makes the subject produce a great deal of mucus, and it lives on that.

Subjects are not otherwise unwell. They are blind and they are not dying, and the file notes that several of them, who had very little, have said that they are fed now.

Subjects are held in a ward, treated, kept comfortable, and are not experimented on. That was decided early and has held.

Handling is gloved and gowned and the gowns are burned.

Antifungals reduce the threads and do not clear the sinuses. Eight courses have been tried.

Nobody has been cured and nobody has died of it.

Soak 0 · Attack - · Defense 7 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 1

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Stamina 10

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 4

Traits: A Week Of Sparks - bright specks, worse in blue light, and nothing else. Then The Black - sclera, then sight, then the tears. It Protects You - from everything except itself. Not Fatal - and there is no cure.

Do the specks first. One line, once a session, until a player asks.

Play the blindness properly. It is permanent and it arrives in a day.

Nobody dies of this. Make the table sit with that.

Picked up in a routine audit of hospital records, where a man's file had eight years of nursing notes and a set of discrepancies that nobody at the hospital could account for. Second on the American unknowns.

A man of thirty-two who has been in a coma for eight years, since a bus hit him on his way to work. Seven of those years have been in Foundation care. He has not woken, moved or spoken in any of them.

He also still lives in his apartment, still works at the supermarket, and rang his mother on Sunday.

His family and his friends have been in touch with him continuously and do not know that anything has happened to him. They describe recent conversations. They describe the conversations consistently, and they describe them differently from each other in the way that real accounts differ.

His shifts are worked. The work is done. His colleagues know how he did it, what he was like that week, what he said about the new manager. The rotation has his name on it in the duty manager's handwriting.

His rent goes out. His card is used. Cash comes out of machines and the bank staff remember serving him.

No camera has ever recorded any of it. Not the shop, not the bank, not the machines, not the street. The footage exists and runs and is normal, and he is not in it, and nobody has ever noticed him not being in it until it is pointed out, and when it is pointed out they agree and are not troubled.

Nothing in the file suggests he knows. Nothing in the file suggests anybody has worked out what would happen if the machines were switched off, and the proposal to find out has been made twice.

A bed, a ventilator, a nurse, and everything else that goes with eight years of it.

The apartment is paid for through an intermediary and is not entered. The supermarket is left alone.

The family are not to be contacted. An undercover officer spoke to his mother once, eleven years ago, and the transcript is in the file, and there has been no second interview.

Soak 1 · Attack - · Defense 0 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate -

Potence 2 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

The body in the bed.

Traits: Eight Years Under - and no change in any of them. The Other Life - apartment, job, rotation, bank, family, all of it continuing. Never On Camera - and nobody minds. Nobody Has Turned It Off - twice proposed.

Send the players to the supermarket. Let them talk to his colleagues about him in the present tense.

The ward is the other half. Do it the same session.

Do not answer which one is him. Nobody in the file knows either.

Brought in by her own family, in 2001, after an incident on a road that put several people in the hospital including her. They had been keeping a list of the other times. Eleventh on the American unknowns.

A woman of eighty-one. Well, for her age, apart from the obvious.

She has dementia. She has had it since 1998 and it is ordinary dementia and it is not the anomaly.

The anomaly is what happens when she is distressed by it.

When she comes up against something she can no longer do, and knows it, everybody near her loses the same thing she has just lost.

Not permanently. For as long as the distress lasts, and then a little after.

If she cannot remember where she is, nobody in the room can. If she cannot recognize the person in front of her, nobody can recognize anybody. If she has gone to do something with her hands and the hands will not do it, then nobody in the room can do it either: buckles, faucets, telephones, steering.

It is not instant. It takes up to a minute to arrive and about as long to lift.

The road accident was the first one anybody outside the family saw.

She is a person and the file is careful to say so at the top. She likes company, she likes music, she is funny when she is having a good day, and she is frightened on the bad ones.

She does not know she does it. She has been told and she does not retain it, and the standing instruction is that she is not told again.

A ground-floor apartment on a site, furnished as a home, with a garden.

Staff are trained carers and are there as carers. They are also all trained to do their jobs when they cannot remember how, which sounds absurd and which is the whole of the containment: routine, written on the walls, in large print, in the order things go.

Nobody drives within two hundred meters.

Visits by her family are arranged and supported. They come. They have never stopped coming.

Soak 1 · Attack - · Defense 1 · Health Levels 3 · Movement Rate 6

Potence 2 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 4

Traits: Whatever She Has Just Lost - everybody near her loses it too. Distress Is The Trigger - not the illness, the moment of knowing. Up To A Minute - to arrive, and about the same to lift. She Does Not Know - and she is not told again.

Take the same thing off the players that she has lost. Do not tell them which.

Play her as good company. She should be somebody the table looks forward to.

The bad day is the scene. She cannot work the faucet, and neither can anybody else, and she can see their faces.

Assembled from our own personnel records, when a review found the same signature approving the same kind of change at four sites in ninety years. Hundred and twenty-ninth on the list of shapes.

Something that looks like whatever a doctor looks like where it is.

It changes its appearance and produces papers when they are asked for, and they are always in order.

It sells medicine. Patent remedies, tonics, preparations with mercury in them, the sort of thing that is sold to people who cannot get anything better.

Most of the time it is quiet. It travels to places where people are already unwell, or already desperate, and it goes toward the places that make them so: factories, docks, sorting offices, and the administrative buildings behind them.

What it likes best are places where people are giving up their health because they cannot afford not to.

It treats them. The treatments are not always harmful and some of the people get better, and whether that is anything more than the belief in it has never been shown.

Then, at intervals, it does the other thing.

It gets a position, and it uses that position to change how a place is run. Procedures, rotation, ventilation, protective equipment, who reports what.

Every change makes the place more dangerous in a way that is hard to argue with on paper. Then people start getting sick, and then it has more patients, and the place is worse than it was.

It has done this inside our own organization. The file says so plainly and gives the sites and the dates.

It does not appear to be in a hurry and it has never been caught in the act of anything.

Detection is by the paperwork. Policy changes that increase exposure are flagged centrally and are checked against the description.

Hiring at every site now requires a check that cannot be satisfied by a produced document, and that check is the whole of the defense.

It is not to be engaged with, employed, consulted or bought from, and the last of those is included because it has happened.

Where a site has been affected, the changes are reversed in full, including the ones that look sensible.

Previous appointments are on a list. The list is longer every time somebody goes back through the records.

Soak 3 · Attack 3 · Defense 5 · Health Levels 6 · Movement Rate 7

Potence 3 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 7

Traits: A Doctor, Wherever It Is - and the papers are always in order. It Goes Where People Are Already Worn Down - the factory, the docks, the night shift. Its Changes Read Well - and every one of them makes the place worse. It Has Been Inside Here - with dates, and with signatures.

The new policy is reasonable. Have the party read it and agree with it.

It is kind to its patients. That is not a disguise.

Ask whose signature is on the memo. Then let them look up the name.

Nothing was procured. The file was assembled out of court records, parish registers, two letters and a coroner's drawing, all from the seventeen thirties. Twenty-first on the American unknowns.

Something hunted people in colonial North America in the early seventeen hundreds. It is dead. This file is a history.

The accounts agree with each other to a degree that historians find unusual, which is the reason the file exists.

It looked like an old woman. Bent, small, in ruined clothes, with fine silver hair growing across most of the face and down the chest.

Behind it there was a tail. Long, bare and prehensile, like a rat's, and at the end of the tail there was an eye.

A large one, lidless, and it moved independently, and the accounts that mention it mention it first.

It went to houses at night and it spoke through the door, and what it said was in the voice of somebody the household was waiting for. It asked to be let in. The accounts differ on how often that worked.

Where it got in, it took one person, and it left the rest, and the ones it left could describe it in detail afterwards and did.

It was killed in 1736, by a group of people from three settlements who had been comparing accounts by letter for two years, which is a remarkable thing for that time and place and is most of what the historians have written about.

How they did it is in one of the letters and the letter is damaged.

What is held are bones, which are mostly human, and a preserved section of the tail, which is not.

An archive box and a specimen jar.

The material is not tested destructively. The requests to do so are logged and refused and the refusals give a reason, which is that there is very little of it.

The documents are conserved and transcribed and the transcriptions are published, quietly, in a journal, as folklore.

Nothing like it has been reported since.

Soak 3 · Attack 7 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 8 · Movement Rate 10

Potence 2 · Initiative 7 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 5 · Stamina 4

For a historical scene, or for whatever else is out there.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 9

Traits: An Old Woman At The Door - small, bent, and patient. The Voice Of Somebody Expected - through the door, asking to come in. The Tail And The Eye - which watches while she talks. One Person - and it leaves the rest, and they remember.

Run it in 1730 if you can. The letters make a good handout.

The eye is the entry. Somebody sees it round the door frame.

Three settlements wrote to each other for two years and then dealt with it.

She was not taken. She was negotiated with, over eleven months, by a man whose name is on every page of the file and who has not worked here since. She asked for water she recognized, plants she recognized, and to be addressed properly. All three were agreed to. She is the second thing on St. Bernard's list and the only entry on the whole register that signed anything.

Roughly the size and shape of a tall woman, if a tall woman were built for holding still in two feet of water for a day and a half. Gray-green, smooth, heavier than she looks. She has a face. It is not a comfortable face but it is unmistakably a face, and it is capable of every expression you would expect from one.

She speaks. Slowly, in a voice that sounds like it is being made rather than used, and in whatever language is being spoken to her. She is polite, she is precise, and she remembers what she was promised.

What she is not is safe. She eats live, she eats what she can reach, and she does not think of people as a separate category from the rest of it. She has never broken an agreement. She has also never made one about anybody who was not in the room.

A wetland enclosure, water no deeper than she asked for, planting replaced from the same parish it came from. Five kilos of live feed a day. Nobody enters if she has gone sixteen hours unfed, and nobody enters alone regardless. Her requests go to two signatures and are answered inside two days, which is a term of the agreement and has never been missed.

Soak 5 · Attack 7 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 9 · Movement Rate 6m, 14m swimming

Potence 3 · Initiative 9 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 5 · Stamina 2

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8

Traits: Keeps Her Word - anything she has explicitly agreed to, she does, exactly, including the parts that cost her. **Nothing Was Promised About You** - the agreement covers the people who made it and nobody else, and she does not consider this a loophole. Still Water - Advantage on Stealth while in water, and a character who has lost track of her has lost track of her entirely.

The best conversation on the register, and the table will forget she is a predator because she is better company than most of the NPCs. That is the trap and you should let them walk into it. Play her as scrupulously fair, let her agree to things and honor them, and never have her lie. Then put a character in the water who was not part of the arrangement.

Brought in as a child after an incident at a workplace in Louisiana, which the file describes in two lines and does not return to. Third in Louisiana.

A woman of twenty-two.

Anything that looks at her, or at a picture of her, becomes her.

It happens at once and it is physical. A person close enough to her build survives it and is then her. Anything else has to move the mass, and that is what kills them, and it kills almost all of them. It works on animals. It has worked on a bird.

Clothing helps. Cover her thoroughly and nothing happens, because what is being copied is what she looks like, and what she looks like is a coat.

That lasts until people get used to the coat. Once observers hold that appearance in their minds as her, the effect comes back, and what it makes of them is a living thing shaped like whatever she has been wearing.

So the covering has to keep changing, and the changes have to be arranged before anybody has settled into the last one, and there is a schedule for it.

She knows all of this. She has known it since she was eight.

She is not held in a cell. She lives in a house, with the arrangements, and has an officer who visits and sits in the car outside to write up the meetings.

She has asked, in more than one of those meetings, what would happen if she looked in a mirror. The answer is in the file and has never been given to her.

A residence, screened, with the window arrangements and the schedule.

One officer, long term, briefed and re-briefed, who does not see her directly.

Nobody is assigned to this file who has not read the whole of it including the two lines at the front.

Photographs of her do not exist. There are descriptions, and the descriptions are held apart from each other, and no two of them are in the same place.

Soak 2 · Attack - · Defense 2 · Health Levels 5 · Movement Rate 8

Potence 2 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

She has never attacked anybody in her life.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 7

Traits: Look At Her And You Are Her - or you are whatever is left after the mass moves. A Picture Counts - so there are none. The Covering Works - until everybody agrees that is what she looks like. She Was Eight - and she has been doing this ever since.

She is a person having a life under conditions. Play the life, not the hazard.

Nobody in the scene should look directly at her. Make the players work at that.

The mirror question is the entry. She has asked four times.

Came out of a private collection in France with a provenance that stopped in the seventeen nineties and a crate built for something the wrong shape. Seventh in France.

A white mare with a headless human body fused to her.

The join is along the skin on the underside of the legs and it is seamless. The body is a man's, from the neck down, and it has no head.

The horse is in charge. She eats what a horse eats and she does not age. The human part does not do anything a body does: no breath, no pulse, no digestion.

She is calm and she is biddable and she likes being brushed.

Several times a year, on a calendar, the body grows a head.

It takes about a quarter of an hour, and then it comes off the neck, and from then on it is awake and it is running the human half.

Each head is a person. They do not decay while their period lasts and then they decay very quickly.

There are eight of them, and each one comes back on the same dates every year, and each one remembers the last time.

One of them speaks a dialect of an old language nobody has fully translated, is aggressive toward staff, and rides extremely well.

One of them is a woman who will not say anything about herself, meditates most of the day, asks for a drink, and is given one.

One claims to be a medieval king, and cannot give a single solid detail about the period, and does not look anything like the portraits.

One is a nineteenth-century businessman who disappeared in Paris and was pulled out of the river two weeks later. He has formed an attachment to a member of staff, and it is returned, and visiting has been allowed on a provisional basis.

A stable, a paddock and a farrier, because she is a horse and those are her requirements.

A calendar is maintained. Staff know which one is due and the briefings are per instance.

Each of the eight has a file, quarters of their own for the duration, and whatever they have asked for, within the budget.

The visiting arrangement is reviewed quarterly and has been renewed nine times.

Soak 5 · Attack 5 · Defense 4 · Mental Defense 8 · Health Levels 14 · Movement Rate 16

Potence 8 · Initiative 8 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 6

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 9

Traits: The Horse Decides - except when a head is up. Eight Of Them - on fixed dates, every year, and they remember. They Rot When Their Time Is Up - quickly, and they know the date. One Of Them Is In Love - and it is mutual, and it is on the file.

Pick which one is manifest before the session. They are completely different people.

She is a good horse. Let somebody groom her between visits.

The last week of an instance is the scene. They know exactly how long they have.

Found during a survey of a nest complex that had turned up in an agricultural pest report as an anomaly of scale. First in Jefferson Parish.

A man distributed through an ant colony.

He is about three hundred years old. The colony covers between twenty-five and seventy-five square meters depending on how the wars with the neighbors have been going.

He is in about forty thousand ants, not counting the plain workers and soldiers.

The ones that matter each carry a piece of him. A drone with an eye. A drone with a section of lung. A drone with part of the apparatus for speech. The brain is carried by the queen.

Most of the pieces do nothing. The ones that work are the eyes, the ears, the nose and the speech, and the ones carrying the heart and the lungs, which never go more than a meter from the queen.

The senses reach about two meters. Information gets to the brain slowly, as a chemical trail passed hand to hand along the workers, and nobody knows how that becomes seeing.

Destroying a piece does not kill him. A drone goes to the place, absorbs what is left into a sac on its own abdomen, and becomes the new carrier of that piece.

Killing the queen would probably end him. Nobody has tried.

Drones can be joined up. Pieces and sacs are detached from abdomens, mended together by workers, and then taken apart again and recycled.

He talks. Slowly, in a voice assembled out of several insects standing close together, and he is patient about the pace.

Five pieces of him are missing.

They were taken in raids by rival colonies, years apart, and have not been recovered. The file lists which ones, and it is not a dignified list, and it is in the file because he asked for it to be.

He would like them back.

The ground is fenced and is held as a nature reserve with a genuine management plan.

The neighboring colonies are mapped. Recovery of the missing pieces is an open task and has produced nothing in thirty-one years.

Nothing is excavated. Nothing is sampled. Conversation is by sitting down at the edge and waiting, which takes about twenty minutes to get going.

He is asked, every year, whether he wants anything. The answers are in the file and they have not changed.

Soak 0 · Attack 1 · Defense 9 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 2

Potence 1 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 4

One ant. There are forty thousand that count.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 5

Traits: Distributed - a piece to a drone, and the brain in the queen. Two Meters Of Senses - and the information walks. Replaceable - destroy a piece and another drone becomes it. Five Missing - taken in raids, and he would like them back.

The conversation is the entry. Slow, patient, and worth waiting for.

He has been paying attention to that field for three hundred years. Ask him about it.

The list of what is missing is short and specific. Read it out once.

Came out of a shipping container that had been opened by two dockers, who did not get to the end of the gangway. Three hundred and thirty-eighth on the unknowns.

A bovine heart, the size a bovine heart is, with legs.

Four of them, jointed like an insect's, and four tentacles as well, which can be as long as it needs them and are covered in spines that cut.

At the back, where the big vein would go in, there is a spike.

It is hostile to everything. Not defensive, not territorial. It goes for whatever is nearest and it keeps going.

It is fast. Ninety kilometers an hour in a straight line, and it gets to that in under two seconds, and it can hold it for a couple of hundred meters. It goes up walls and across ceilings and it uses the tentacles to pull itself where it wants to be.

The tentacles come out at ten and a half meters and move at something over three hundred kilometers an hour.

It takes an enormous amount of damage before it stops, and the damage does not slow it much while it is taking it.

It does not eat. It does not appear to need anything. Nobody has established what it is for.

It is one heart. Nothing else from the animal came with it.

Held in a reinforced cell with no fittings, no lighting inside, and remote everything.

The cell is entered by nobody. Maintenance is done by machine with the cell flooded and cold, which slows it enough to work.

Any breach is answered with the doors and not with people. The armoury response was tried once and the file says what it cost.

It is not fed, because it does not eat, and the proposal to try it is refused on the grounds that we would then have to keep doing it.

Observation is by camera through armored glass and the glass is replaced on a schedule.

Soak 7 · Attack 9 · Defense 7 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 14 · Movement Rate 14

Potence 0 · Initiative 9 · Psyche 6 · Ferocity 3 · Stamina 10

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 10

Traits: Nought To Ninety In Two Seconds - and it goes up the wall as happily as the floor. Ten Meters Of Whip - spined, and faster than you can see. It Does Not Stop - not for damage, not for distance, not at all. It Wants Nothing - it does not eat and it is not hunting.

This is the one that is just a monster. Run it as a chase down a corridor.

Nobody talks it down and nothing is negotiated. Everyone should understand that in the first round.

Flood the cell and it slows. That is the only handle anybody has.

Turned up in a consignment of soil for a botanical garden, in a crate, reading the label. Three hundred and eighty-sixth on the unknowns.

A beetle larva, or something very close to one, about sixty centimeters long when it is lying flat.

Genetically it is nearest to a periodical cicada, which does not explain anything about it.

It is as intelligent as an adult person.

It cannot speak. It writes, by working the front segments, and the handwriting is poor and legible, and it reads fluently.

It taught itself English from printed material in about four months.

It is being taught Arabic by one of our staff, at its request, and it is quicker at it than he expected and he has said so in the file.

What it wants is reading matter. It asks for specific things. It has preferences and it argues about them.

It is aware of what it is. It has asked about its own species and has been told what is known, which is very little, and it took that well.

It has asked twice about what it will become.

Nobody knows. There is no adult form on record and nothing about the genetics suggests one that could exist.

It is thirteen years old. A periodical cicada is not.

Housed in a large humid unit with a substrate, a reading stand, and a writing surface that it can use.

It is supplied with what it asks for, subject to the ordinary restrictions, and the refused list is short.

Lessons continue. The member of staff concerned is not rotated and has asked not to be.

Medical monitoring is monthly and is looking for the beginning of a change, and it has not found one.

If it begins to pupate, the instruction is to tell it first.

Soak 3 · Attack 2 · Defense 2 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 2

Potence 1 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 4

Traits: As Clever As You - and it reads faster. It Writes To You - badly, and clearly. It Wants Books - specific ones, and it will argue. It Asked What It Will Become - twice, and nobody could answer.

Give it a book the party brought and let it have opinions about it.

It is thirteen. Somebody at the table will do the math on the cicada.

If it starts to change, it is told first. Let a player be the one who tells it.

Found in a warehouse that a demolition survey had condemned, where the whole of one wall was reported as painted and none of it took a sample. Hundred and seventy-ninth on the unknowns.

Insects. Nobody has been able to place them in any family.

Each one has the usual parts and a plate on its back that changes color. A colony uses those plates together, across the whole surface, to be something else.

What they are, almost always, is dried paint on a wall.

They do it well. Color, sheen, the way it has come away at the edges, the shade difference where a poster used to be. Abandoned buildings are full of it and nobody has ever noticed, because there is nothing to notice: it is a wall that needs redecorating.

While they are doing it they are more or less asleep.

They nest together and they excrete a latex that insulates them, which is how they survive winters that ought to kill them. The latex is the paint they have eaten, digested and put back.

When something comes in and settles, they wake up.

The colors start shifting, slowly, so that whatever is in the room notices the wall. Once it is looking, the whole surface goes to a pattern that is not slow at all, and whatever was looking stops being able to do anything.

Then they come down.

How long it takes depends on how many of them there are and how big the thing on the floor is. They leave nothing that can be digested, and the list of what they consider digestible is longer than it ought to be.

A colony grows to fill its room. Most wild ones are a single room. The warehouse colony was the size of the warehouse.

A sealed cell with steel walls, painted, and the paint is checked against a color card every week by somebody standing outside looking through glass.

Nothing enters. Feeding is through a hatch.

Buildings reported as having paint that nobody can sample are surveyed. Four have been.

Anybody entering a condemned building on Foundation business photographs the walls first, from the door, and does not go past the threshold until somebody else has looked at the photographs.

Soak 0 · Attack 2 · Defense 9 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 4

Potence 1 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 4

One insect. A wall is a hundred thousand.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: It Is Paint - until you have been in the room long enough. It Waits - until you have settled, and then it starts moving slowly. The Display - and then you are standing still. Nothing Left - and their idea of food is broad.

Describe the room. Mention the paint once, in passing, the way you would mention a radiator.

Come back to it a few minutes later and say the color has changed slightly.

By the time anybody rolls anything it is too late. That is the entry.

Taken out of a drainage canal at the edge of the Everglades in 2005, when it was the size of a dog and had gills. Eighth on the Florida list.

It is twelve meters long now.

When it came in it was a fish with some amphibian in it. It is currently a hunched bipedal thing built like an alligator, with a shark's jaw arrangement, bright yellow, with a frill of petals round the face that folds shut over it. It smells strongly of overripe bananas and has done throughout.

Its blood is a hazard in its own right. Three dozen known carcinogens, and a set of bacteria that includes tetanus, and its own gut keeps making more of both. None of it does it any harm. All of it appears to be useful to it.

In twenty-one years it has never developed a tumor.

Each of its cells has an oversized nucleus. In the nucleus is its own genome, spliced out of a great many species, and alongside that at least sixty-eight other complete genomes, whole and unaltered, sitting there.

When the mutagens in its own blood damage its genome, it does not repair the damage. It replaces the damaged stretch with material from one of the spares, and that is why it keeps changing shape.

The spares do not degrade. There is some evidence that it acquires new ones from what it eats.

It was a product. A company that sold heavily modified ornamental fish had a range in development built around fish that smelled of fruit, and this was one of the prototypes, and the two scientists interviewed about it were cooperative, apologetic and extremely proud.

A twenty meter tank, brackish, drained through a treatment plant built for the purpose, with everything downstream of it tested weekly.

Handling is in sealed suits. A cut from anything it has touched is an incident and is treated as one.

It is fed on a controlled list. The list exists because of the spare genomes and it is reviewed whenever it changes shape.

It has changed shape nine times.

Soak 8 · Attack 9 · Defense 4 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 22 · Movement Rate 14

Potence 10 · Initiative 6 · Psyche 6 · Ferocity 3 · Stamina 2

As of the current shape. Check the file.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 7

Traits: Bad Blood - carcinogens and tetanus and worse, and none of it troubles it. Sixty-Eight Spares - whole genomes, held in reserve, used as repair material. It Keeps Changing - nine times so far, always bigger. Bananas - which is how anybody knows it is nearby.

The smell arrives first. Put it in a scene long before the animal.

It was made on purpose, badly, by people who were pleased with themselves. Keep that.

If the players feed it something, ask them what. Then decide what it becomes.

Traced through a coroner's district on the Louisiana coast that had an unusual number of drownings in water that was ankle deep. Sixth in Louisiana.

Marsh grass. Clumps of it, in the shallows and the cuts and the flooded grass, from a few kilos up to nearly three tonnes.

The tissue is grass. Under a microscope there is nothing to separate it from the ordinary sort, and whether these are ordinary plants that have become something or a different organism that grew into the same shape is an open question with a dozen papers on it.

It hunts, and it hunts differently depending on where it is living, which is the part that settles the argument about whether it is thinking.

In sand it lies still among the real weed and waits.

In open shallows it goes after things that cannot move fast: turtles, birds, anything asleep.

It uses tools. Stones to hold things down, netting it has collected, and bodies. The bodies are used as lures and are arranged for it.

And it lights up. Patterns running along the blades, fast, the way a cuttlefish does it, and whatever is watching stops doing anything else.

None of this is done the same way twice in the same place, which is why nobody has been able to write a procedure that works on all of them.

Four stretches of coast are closed under fisheries legislation that was drafted for the purpose.

Surveys are done from a boat. Nobody wades.

Known specimens are burned in place at low tide with a gel accelerant, by a team that works from a pontoon, and the burn is not approached for six hours afterwards.

The bodies used as lures are recovered where that can be done without going in. Where it cannot, they are left, and the file lists them by name and says where.

Soak 5 · Attack 7 · Defense 3 · Health Levels 18 · Movement Rate 4 in water

Potence 10 · Initiative 2 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 5 · Stamina 10

For a large one.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 4

Traits: It Is Weed - until it is not, and it is lying in the weed. Tools - stones, netting, and the dead, arranged. The Lights - fast patterns along the blades and you stop moving. It Learns The Place - and no two of them behave alike.

Ankle deep. That is the whole horror and it should be ankle deep every time.

Describe the arrangement of the lure before anybody works out that it is an arrangement.

The list of names in the file is the closing image. Read three of them out.

Reported by a highway patrol officer who had been told by a diner owner, in confidence and in some distress, that she could not close for her mother's funeral. One hundred and seventh on the unknowns.

Four elderly men who eat at one roadside diner every day between nine in the morning and six in the evening.

They arrive separately. They sit at the same two tables. They order, they eat, they pay, they talk about very little, and they are courteous to the staff and generous with tips.

They are not a group. Asked, each of them will say he knows the others to nod to.

If one of them is kept out of that diner during those hours, or taken out of it against his will, something happens.

What happens depends on which one, and the four effects have nothing in common with each other. The file gives each in its own section. Three of the sections are short. The fourth is a page and a half and ends in a table of distances.

None of them appears to want this or to know about it. The two occasions in the file were both accidents: a road closure and a heart attack in the car park, and the second one is why this entry is TERMINAL rather than anything more comfortable.

They are perfectly pleasant men. One of them has been coming for fifty-one years and remembers the diner before the highway.

The diner is owned through a company, staffed by people who are paid properly and told nothing, and it does not close.

Not for vacations, not for refurbishment, not for weather, and not for deaths in the owner's family. The current manager knows what she is maintaining. The staff do not.

A standing arrangement with the state highway authority routes any closure around that junction. It has been invoked eleven times.

If one of them is ill, he is driven. That is in the procedure, with a telephone number, and it has been used twice.

Soak 1 · Attack 1 · Defense 3 · Health Levels 4 · Movement Rate 3m

Potence 3 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Presence 3 · Stamina 4

They are in their eighties. Nothing about them is a fight and everything about them is a problem.

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 4

Traits: Nine To Six, Every Day - and one of them for fifty-one years. Four Different Consequences - unrelated to each other, and the fourth has a table of distances. They Do Not Know - and they are pleasant, and they tip well.

The party run the diner. That is the job for a season: schedules, deliveries, a broken fryer, and four old men who must be served.

The session is a blizzard, or a gas leak, or a health inspector with a closure notice, and a manager on the phone who cannot explain.

Never let them find out. If a player tells one of them, play it as an elderly man being told something upsetting and not believing it, and then believing it.

Assembled from eleven towns in the eastern hemisphere that emptied between nineteen sixty and now, each of them between five and twenty-five thousand people, none of them for a reason. Hundred and fortieth on the list of shapes.

A man of about twenty-eight, two meters tall, who does not age.

He is whatever the local people are. The face, the coloring, the language, the accent, the way of dressing: he arrives as one of them, and he is fluent, and nobody takes him for a stranger.

He only appears in towns of a particular size. Five thousand at the bottom and twenty-five at the top, and always in the eastern half of the world, and nobody has explained either limit.

While he is there, the place goes.

Buildings age. Renders crack and fall, roofs open, roads break up and grass comes through them, and all of it at a rate that belongs to decades rather than weeks.

And the people go with it. Not dead: absent. Houses are left with the meal on the table. By the time he leaves there is nobody at all.

Nobody has ever been recovered from one of these towns.

He does not appear to do anything. He takes a room, he goes about, he talks to people, he is well liked.

He has been interviewed twice, both times by accident, by agents who did not know who they were talking to. Both transcripts are short and pleasant and are in the file.

He leaves when the town is empty and then there is nothing for a few years.

Detection is demographic. Population, building condition and utility consumption are monitored across the band, and the model flags decay outrunning maintenance.

Where a town is flagged, it is evacuated under a structural condemnation order, which is expensive and has been done four times and has worked twice.

He is not approached. Nobody is to speak to him knowingly and the two who did it unknowingly are on the file with their transcripts.

Emptied towns are sealed and are not resettled.

The interval between towns is used for the modeling. It is the only warning anybody gets.

Soak 5 · Attack 4 · Defense 6 · Health Levels 8 · Movement Rate 7

Potence 3 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 2 · Presence 4 · Stamina 4

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8

Traits: He Is One Of You - face, language, accent, all of it, wherever he arrives. Between Five And Twenty-Five Thousand - and nobody knows why. The Town Ages Around Him - decades in weeks. Then Nobody Is There - and nobody has ever come back.

The party arrive in a town that is too old for its age. Let them meet him at the bar.

He is well liked. Everybody they interview will mention him fondly.

Evacuating the town is the win condition. It has worked twice out of four.

A researcher reported an ant problem in her kitchen and then reported that the ants had asked her a question. Three hundred and eighty-fourth on the unknowns.

About three thousand Argentine ants, of the ordinary invasive kind, which think.

They are individually about as clever as a clever dog and collectively considerably more than that. They can speak English, out loud, by a method that is described in the annex and that nobody enjoys reading.

They learned it from the woman whose kitchen they were in.

They worship her.

That is the word the file uses because none of the alternatives fit. They build small altars out of twigs and leaves and grains of sand. They leave offerings on them. They have chants, and the chants are in English, and they are about her.

They have a history of her, which they recite, and most of it is wrong in the way that stories get wrong.

They are not aggressive and they have never damaged anything. They ask for very little: sugar, water, and that she visit.

She is one of our researchers. She did not want any of this and she has been clear about that, and she visits anyway, about once a month.

They know she is not a god in the sense they mean. She told them, at length, and they listened, and they incorporated the correction into the liturgy.

The colony is growing slowly and has a second generation now that has never seen her.

Housed in a formicarium at a site, maintained properly, with the food they ask for.

Visits are voluntary and remain her decision. She is not required to go and is not asked to explain when she does not.

The liturgy is recorded. It is the only continuous record anybody has of a religion from the first week of it.

Nobody else is presented to them as anything. The instruction is specific because it was tested once by somebody being funny.

The second generation is a research priority and the questions are in the file and are careful.

Soak - · Attack 1 · Defense 3 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 3

Traits: Three Thousand, And They Think - and they talk, out loud, in English. They Worship The Woman Whose Kitchen It Was - with altars, offerings and chants. She Told Them She Is Not - and they wrote that into it. The Second Generation Has Never Met Her - and it is growing.

Let the party hear the chant before they know what is making it.

She is embarrassed and she goes anyway. Play her that way.

Ask a player what happens when she dies. Nobody at the site will answer.

A journal and one dead cat, recovered from a house, and the cat was made of cans. Four hundred and fourteenth on the unknowns.

Small animals made of trash.

Cats, squirrels, dogs, and a rabbit. The bodies are scrap metal, cardboard, broken glass, wire, cloth, and whatever else was in the trash.

They move like the animal they are made of, and they behave like it, and people who have kept one describe it exactly as they would describe a pet.

They do not eat and they do not need anything.

They do not last. The one specimen we recovered lived two days in containment and then stopped, and what was left was trash in the shape of a cat.

Everything else known about them comes from the journal.

It was kept by a woman who had one for eleven years. Hers did not stop. She writes about feeding it, which it did not need, and about mending it, which it did, and about the fact that it went out and came back.

She writes that there are others, that she has seen them in the lanes behind the shops, and that they keep away from people who have not got one.

She describes making one. The description is four pages and it is about grief and it does not say what she did.

She is not traceable. The house was rented, the name was not hers, and the journal was left behind with the cat.

The remains and the journal are held.

Detection is by waste collection reports and by the animal charities, on a description of something that gets up.

Nothing has been recovered since. Four have been reported and none has been found.

The instruction on locating a live one is to leave it and to locate the owner.

The four pages are not to be reproduced. That instruction is about the possibility that they are instructions.

Soak 2 · Attack 2 · Defense 4 · Mental Defense 7 · Health Levels 2 · Movement Rate 7

Potence 1 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 3 · Ferocity 1 · Stamina 10

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8

Traits: Made Of What Was In The Trash - cans, glass, wire, cardboard. It Is Exactly The Animal - to look at, and to live with. Ours Lasted Two Days - and hers lasted eleven years. She Wrote Down How - in four pages, and they are not to be copied.

Let them find the cat first and the journal second.

Somebody will read the four pages. Ask what they had just lost.

There are others in the lanes behind the shops. Never show them.

A man walked into a police station and said he had killed something in his kitchen, and there was a great deal of blood in his kitchen and nothing to have shed it. Three hundred and thirty-third on the unknowns.

An animal. We cannot give you its size, its weight, or what it looks like.

Most people cannot see it at all.

The ones who can are people whose senses are wired differently. Schizophrenia, autism, attention disorders, and a good many others: the list is in the annex and it is not a list of illnesses, it is a list of the ways a nervous system can be built.

Nobody has found what those ways have in common. Sixty years of work on that and the annex is still a list.

What matters is this. They are not seeing something that is not there. They are seeing something that is, and everybody else has a hole in them exactly the shape of it.

No two of them describe it the same way. The same animal, in the same room, at the same moment, has been described as an alligator with spider legs and three eyes, a man made of smoke, an enormous ant with a person's face, a hunched child with the head of a parrot, and a spider with too many legs.

They are certain of what they saw. They are also not wrong, and the file has spent a long time getting to that sentence.

They hunt by waiting.

One of them picks a person and follows them. Months. Years, in several cases. It does not feed in that time and there is no explanation for how it manages that.

Then the person is alone somewhere, or somewhere nobody is looking, and it takes them, and swallows them whole.

The speculation on the file, from a researcher who could see them, is that they do not eat for food at all: that a body goes in and comes out over a long period as more of them. That has not been proved. Nothing about it has been disproved either.

There are dozens of them. Possibly hundreds.

The oldest part of this file is a list of people who reported one and were not believed, with the dates they were eaten.

One specimen is held, in a sealed chamber, with motion sensors and an automatic gun outside the door. It attempts to get out constantly. The banging goes on at all hours.

It is watched continuously by somebody who can see it. That post is staffed by our own people, on the establishment, paid at a grade above the room they sit in, and it is a volunteer post and always has been.

They have the authority to order the floor cleared and nobody above them can countermand it.

It is fed a carcass every two days, which is not a kindness and is in the procedure because of what it did on the days it was not.

Reports from the public are handled by the standing instruction, which is one sentence long: the witness is treated as a witness.

That instruction is dated nineteen seventy-one. Everything before that date is the list at the back.

Soak 5 · Attack 8 · Defense 6 · Mental Defense 3 · Health Levels 9 · Movement Rate 8

Potence 4 · Initiative 5 · Psyche 6 · Ferocity 3 · Stamina 6

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8

Traits: Most People Cannot See It - and the hole is in them, not in the ones who can. Everybody Describes It Differently - same animal, same room, same moment. It Will Wait Years - and it will not eat while it waits. Alone Is The Only Thing It Needs - a back room, a stairwell, a lane.

The character who can see it is the reliable one at the table. Play it that way and never undercut them.

Ask that player what it looks like. Whatever they say is what it is, for them, and only for them.

Nobody is coming to confirm it. That is the whole of the horror and it is not their fault.

Found in the cellar of a bungalow, on an occasional table, ringed with black powder and four bottles of home-made rum, while the woman who had lived upstairs had been dead in her bed for nine weeks. Two hundred and twenty-second on the unknowns.

A ring of handmade dolls, cotton and polyester and bits of plastic, joined wrist to wrist with thread.

They cannot move. Not one of them, not at all, and there is nothing inside them but stuffing.

They talk.

Several of them, distinctly. Different voices, different manners, different ways of coming at a thing, and they take turns.

What they want is a deal.

Anybody who comes near gets an offer. The offers are tailored: freedom to somebody who is not free, information to somebody who wants it, a way out to somebody who is stuck. They are put well, and they are put by somebody who is paying attention.

What they ask for in return is small and specific. Sage. Salt. A spider. A piece of amethyst. Myrrh. A deer's skull. Candles with no scent in them.

They cannot deliver any of it.

They have no way to affect anything. They cannot move, they cannot reach, and they cannot use anything that is brought to them. This was established early and is not in dispute.

They know.

That is the finding that the incident log established, and it is why the entry is in this register and not in a storeroom. They negotiate anyway. They negotiate well, in good faith as far as anybody can tell, for things they have no means of using, toward outcomes they cannot produce.

Asked about it directly they change the subject, competently, the way somebody does when they would rather talk about the terms.

A shelf in a room with a chair, and the chair is for the person taking the minutes.

Conversation is permitted at clearance and is transcribed in full. There are four hundred hours.

Nothing is brought to them. Not the sage, not the salt, not the rest of it, and staff are searched on the way in because it is the sort of thing somebody would do out of kindness.

The bottles and the powder from the cellar are held separately and have been analyzed and are what they look like.

Soak 0 · Attack - · Defense 0 · Health Levels 1 · Movement Rate 0

Potence 0 · Initiative 0 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Presence 4 · Stamina 10

They cannot move at all.

Traits: Several Voices - taking turns, each one different. A Deal For You Specifically - well judged, and well put. Small Prices - sage, salt, a spider, a skull. They Cannot Do Any Of It - and they know, and they keep negotiating.

Make the offer good. Make it exactly what that character wants.

Let the player accept. Then let nothing happen at all.

The woman upstairs had been dead nine weeks. They had been down there talking the whole time.

A farm where the stock had been dying and getting up again, and a farmer who had been putting things in them because a man had told him to. Hundred and sixty-fourth on the list of shapes.

Things that look like dried human hearts and are not.

Put one into a body that has recently died and it takes over the circulation. It joins itself to what is there, it beats, and the animal gets up.

What gets up is not the animal. There is nothing of it left in there and it does not respond to anything it used to.

What it does is find more bodies.

It fuses with them. Whatever it finds is absorbed into the mass, and the mass keeps the useful parts, and the result is something with more limbs than it started with and more than one kind of leg.

The large ones are several tonnes and are made of a great many animals, and some of the animals were people.

They are more flexible than anything that size should be, because there is no skeleton doing what a skeleton does: the structure is held by the parasite and the parasite rearranges it.

They do not eat. They grow by addition.

A heart removed from a mass is inert and can be handled and will work again on the next body it is put into.

They cannot be produced. They are found, in the ground, in numbers, in one region, and nobody knows what put them there.

Recovered hearts are held in sealed individual containers and are not counted in any document that leaves the site.

Masses are destroyed by fire, which works, and the hearts are recovered from the ash and are inert.

The region where they are found is surveyed and the ground is turned, and the count recovered each year is in the file and it does not fall.

Livestock deaths in the region are attended.

Nobody handles one without gloves and the gloves are for the person rather than the item.

Soak 7 · Attack 7 · Defense 3 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels 14 · Movement Rate 6

Potence 10 · Initiative 1 · Psyche 5 · Ferocity 2 · Stamina 10

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 6

Traits: Put One In And It Gets Up - and there is nobody home. It Adds Whatever It Finds - and keeps the useful parts. No Skeleton To Speak Of - so it moves in ways nothing that size should. They Come Out Of The Ground - in one region, in numbers, and nobody knows why.

The farmer was told to do it by somebody. That is the adventure.

Fire works. Nothing else does and everything else makes it bigger.

The hearts are still good afterwards. Let the party pick one out of the ash.

A river parish has been reporting the same animal since the eighteen sixties and the reports have never once been about an attack. Seventh in Louisiana.

A black dog, large, with no detail to it. Everybody describes an outline rather than an animal, and nobody has ever described its face.

The eyes carry light that is not coming from anywhere.

It howls, and the sound people compare it to is a church bell rather than a dog.

It watches from a distance. It does not come closer, it does not follow anybody home, and it goes when it decides to.

Nobody in that parish has ever been hurt by it. The records go back a hundred and sixty years and there is nothing.

The parish likes it. They have a name for it and a rhyme about it and a carving of it on a bench outside the church, and the people who have moved there recently have picked all of that up.

It is seen most in bad weather and after a death, and those are the two clusters in the data and neither is strong enough to say more than that.

We have never been able to measure it. Photographs come out as a dark shape. Nothing has ever detected it that was not a person looking at it.

It has been seen by four of our own people, all of whom filed a report saying the same thing, which is that they did not feel they were in any danger.

No containment and nothing is proposed.

An officer lives in the parish and has for nine years and is known there as somebody who moved down from up north.

Sightings are collected by being in the bar.

Nothing is to be trapped, baited, photographed with equipment, or followed. The instruction is one line and the reason given is that the parish would notice.

If it ever hurts anybody the file changes. It has not.

Soak 5 · Attack - · Defense 8 · Mental Defense 2 · Health Levels - · Movement Rate 9

Potence 0 · Initiative 3 · Psyche 4 · Ferocity 0 · Stamina 10

Notable Skills: Athletics TN 8

Traits: An Outline, Not An Animal - and nobody has seen its face. The Howl Is A Bell - everybody says so, and they always have. It Watches And Then It Goes - and it has never come closer. A Hundred And Sixty Years, Nobody Hurt - and the village is fond of it.

Let the party arrive expecting a monster hunt. Give them a village with a bench.

Everybody has seen it. Nobody is frightened. Make that the unsettling part.

It is seen after a death. Let it turn up at the end of the session.