Rules: Threats & Bestiary

Native Rules

Threats & Bestiary

Run people, creatures and phenomena through their goals, actions and physical limits. These profiles give you the encounter details at the table.

Running NPCs

GM reference: includes encounter weaknesses and behaviour that characters may need to discover. Native Rules, Chapter 8, pp. 69–79.

Quality NPC. Record one Quality from +0 to +3, objective, morale, equipment, Harm and relevant traits or Fortera facts. Roll 2d6 + Quality for uncertain actions.

Full-build NPC. Use PC statistic types: Skills, Strengths, Techniques, Background, Workings, Capacity, equipment and Harm. Roll the relevant Capability instead of Quality, never both. A full build need not be a starting character. Change detail level when useful, preserving established competence, injuries, equipment, relationships and Fortera ability.

Every relevant individual receives their own Activation: one Move, one Action and one Reaction per round. Move then act, or act then Move; Sprint uses the Action and normally leaves no attack. Set Risk and Effect, roll once, and apply 10+ success, 7–9 success with consequence, or 6 or lower failure and a changed situation. There is no separate defence roll. Guard, armour, Cover, Facing and range still apply.

A human antagonist's importance does not grant boss actions or immunity. Use competence, preparation, allies, resources and position. If individual actions stop making useful choices, change to Battlefield Scale, rather than merging NPCs into a shared attack.

Under fire and when to retreat

  • Reachable substantial Cover normally comes before the Action; the NPC can then fire, Reload or Ready. If safety needs a Sprint, an ordinary NPC usually takes it rather than firing, unless discipline or the objective makes holding worth the danger.
  • With no useful Cover, choose return fire, withdrawal, casualty aid, spreading out, surrender or continued mission from the situation. Trained troops may cover one another's movement.
  • Reassess after a serious casualty, leadership loss, encirclement or an untenable position. Wounded NPCs still act if the injury permits it, often seeking Cover, aid or withdrawal.
  • Obvious morale responses need no roll. If holding, fleeing, surrendering or regrouping is uncertain and consequential, use Quality, or relevant Command, Influence or another supported full-build Capability, with normal Risk and Effect.

Source: pp. 70–71. NPCs do not have to fight until destroyed.

Major Threats and large bodies

  • Ordinary NPCs stay compact: a Capability or two, what they want, and what they can do.
  • A Major Threat may receive multiple Activations in an exchange, acting more than once against the party.
  • Threats are defined by explicit traits, never by generic extra attacks or a universal size ladder.
  • There are no hit-point blocks. A threat ends when the fiction and the clocks say it ends.

Extra Activations must be explicit traits representing speed, scale, distributed systems or other pressure, not generic free attacks. A large body threatens and is targeted from the edges of its occupied footprint, and blocks movement through it unless a specific permission says otherwise.

The bestiary's creatures and phenomena remain at Personal Scale regardless of size. Footprint, Reach, movement, protection and plausible targets change, not an invented size ladder or HP total. Quality is used when a threat directly acts, contests or resists. Where ordinary Harm is absent, use the stated objective, clock, Breakpoint or physical conditions.

Source: pp. 71–72.

Preparing an encounter

These preparation prompts help you put the profile's own Encounter Question into play:

  • What does this threat want, right now?
  • What is it willing to do to get it?
  • What warns the characters before it arrives?
  • What does it do if the characters do nothing?
  • What ends this encounter short of a fight?

Twelve threat profiles

Each entry is a GM encounter reference. Open a profile for its question, mechanics and ways the characters can respond. Unspecified movement, Harm or action counts are left unspecified.

Moon-Affected

What remains of the person, and what is driving the transformation?

A human made unusually Responsive by prolonged Fortera field exposure. Biological change takes weeks, months or longer and needs real nutrition, water and material. Lunar conditions modulate established symptoms, not instant transformation. The condition is not contagious or a supernatural curse; recognition and memory can remain.

At the table

Quality +2. Two Activations in an advanced overbuilt state. Footprint 1 space; Move 5 spaces; ordinary melee Reach 1.

Normal Harm ladder. Improvised or clearly inadequate attacks have Limited or No Effect. Firearms and serious weapons remain dangerous when they can physically harm the body.

Warning signs

Unusual appetite, thirst, progressive muscle or bone changes, altered sleep, sensory sensitivity and tissue growth. Symptoms vary with stress, field and lunar conditions; familiar habits or names may provoke recognition.

Behaviour

May pursue resonance, protect remembered people or places, or react violently to amplified instability. The affected person is not automatically a mindless berserker.

Counterplay

Reduce exposure or change local Fortera conditions. Sense responsive pathways, Read an unclear mechanism, use an appropriate Working, reach recognition or memory, or physically disable the threat.

Native Rules, pp. 72–73.

Source Beast

What is it correcting?

An intelligent, morally neutral Fortera correction phenomenon, independent of its originating Source. It observes, tests hypotheses and follows unresolved signals or resonant people. It may harm innocents who obstruct correction without seeking cruelty.

At the table

Minor manifestation: Quality +1 or +2; one Activation; Breakpoint 10; footprint 1 to 2 spaces. Local, newly formed or partly expressed.

Major manifestation: Quality +2; two Activations; Breakpoint 20; commonly a 2 by 2-space footprint, subject to the actual body. One Activation should often reposition, change terrain, test a response or interfere with an objective instead of dealing Harm.

Source-scale manifestation: Quality +3; two Activations, occasionally three only when the scenario explicitly requires it; Breakpoint 30+; scenario-defined footprint. Exposed vulnerable parts may be affected by personal weapons, but changing the sustaining structure is usually more effective.

For physical disruption or destruction, plausible destabilising actions add Breakpoint progress: Limited 1, Standard 2, Great 3; implausible methods have No Effect. The budgets are adjustable encounter baselines, not hit points. Other goals use an objective or Scale Clock instead.

A confirmed weakness is shared Scene knowledge. Direct exploitation normally gives +1 Effect where appropriate. Once per round, a successful Standard-or-better exploitation may instead Disrupt the Weakness and force Reorientation.

Materially changing sustaining patterns or feedback, or Disrupting a confirmed weakness, causes Reorientation: lose one Activation on the following round. Multiple triggers remove at most one Activation in that round unless the profile explicitly says otherwise. Information alone does not trigger it.

Campaign Correction is separate. Destroying a manifestation may leave the contradiction intact and allow its return; repeated destruction without changing the cause may increase Correction. No combat action or quick six-step clock resolves the underlying phenomenon.

Warning signs

The entry gives no separate warning-sign list. Use its established observation, tests, resonant pursuit and local feedback as the encounter develops.

Behaviour

Observes and tests the local problem. A manifestation can return if the disturbance remains, while campaign Correction adapts.

Counterplay

Destroy the Manifestation, Exploit a Weakness, Sever Local Feedback, Stabilise the Chamber or Escape. Address causal mechanisms, Source relationships, repeating feedback, environmental conditions or false assumptions for campaign Correction. Confirmed understanding can also open communication or coexistence.

Native Rules, pp. 73–74.

Blackwake Ray

How do we make it leave without panicking it?

A large Fortera-sensitive ray attracted to heat, pressure, vibration and machinery. Attachment, agitation and its mass around vessels or structures create danger, not deliberate predation.

At the table

Quality +1; one Activation; large footprint appropriate to its occupied water or space.

Firearms, heavy weapons and vessel weapons can harm a clear target. Ordinary personal attacks may have Limited Effect against its full mass.

Warning signs

Pressure changes, repeated passes near machinery, hull vibration and agitation as engines, pumps, guns or resonant equipment intensify.

Behaviour

Approaches the strongest signal, attaches or circles, reacts violently to abrupt spikes and withdraws when the pattern is reduced or redirected.

Counterplay

Reduce heat, vibration or pressure; isolate machinery; redirect or provide a safer competing signal; or use credible force. Panic increases danger without making the animal malicious.

Native Rules, pp. 74–75.

Drowned Choir

What did this place remember?

A Fortera phenomenon storing and replaying sound, vibration and pressure in flooded or saturated environments, including voices, alarms and machinery rhythms.

At the table

Usually no conventional body or ordinary Harm track. Quality +1 when actively contesting characters.

A 4- or 6-segment objective clock is typical for crossing, quieting, interpreting or isolating it. No Activation count is specified.

Warning signs

Sounds from impossible directions, repeated pressure pulses, voices belonging to the place but not its occupants, and machinery answering absent sounds.

Behaviour

Repeats stored patterns, strengthens when matching sound or pressure is reproduced, and prompts people or machines to treat copies as real.

Counterplay

Read the pattern, identify the original event, isolate its medium, damp the pressure cycle or feed a safer pattern. Shooting the water does not solve stored memory.

Native Rules, pp. 75.

Hushmoth Swarm

What happens when communication fails?

A swarm whose Fortera interference disrupts hearing, signals and patterned information.

At the table

Quality +1; one Activation; usually a 2 by 2-space footprint that may spread or contract.

Inside the active swarm, spoken orders, hearing-dependent Observation and ordinary acoustic signals normally lose one Effect step. Communication that cannot be meaningfully perceived has No Effect. Bodily Harm is not its main threat.

Warning signs

Indistinct nearby voices, failed calls, lost rhythm and groups acting on different understandings.

Behaviour

Clusters around patterned sound or active signalling, breaks coordination and moves when the interference source changes.

Counterplay

Leave or disperse it, switch to visual or physical signals, use prearranged orders, isolate critical communications or drive insects away.

Native Rules, pp. 75.

Bellmouth

What happens if an animal repeats the right signal?

A small creature that precisely imitates learned calls, bells, alarms, whistles and command rhythms, convincing people or systems to accept the copy.

At the table

Quality +1; one Activation; footprint 1 space.

Ordinary small-creature Harm unless the specific specimen has unusual protection.

Warning signs

Signals with no operator, wrong alarm intervals, a command without its speaker or machinery triggered by a nearby animal.

Behaviour

Observes, learns, repeats and uses responses as feedback without necessarily understanding the signal.

Counterplay

Verify source as well as signal, change authentication, remove it from the signalling environment or deliberately exploit its mimicry.

Native Rules, pp. 76.

The Last Crew

What unfinished action is it trying to complete?

A repeating Fortera imprint of a crew in crisis, not surviving people or conventional targets. It repeats fragments of emergency work, evacuation, repair or a final attempt.

At the table

No conventional Harm. Use a 4- or 6-segment sequence clock for the unfinished action, plus a danger clock when staying creates escalating risk.

No Quality, Activation count or fixed footprint is specified.

Warning signs

Footsteps, orders, tools, impacts and doors repeat with small variations despite the absence of living crew.

Behaviour

Restarts when interrupted and draws systems or people into missing roles, preserving the emergency's logic after its context is gone.

Counterplay

Determine the unfinished goal, complete or safely redirect its missing step, isolate the carrying machinery or field, or leave before being recruited into the sequence.

Native Rules, pp. 76.

Reef Shepherd

What disturbance makes coexistence impossible?

An immense native creature whose movement makes it living geography. It reacts to surrounding disturbance rather than hunting people as prey.

At the table

Quality +1 or +2 when directly acting; one Activation; footprint may cover many spaces.

Personal firearms can injure exposed tissue with a credible target, but ordinary volume of fire cannot meaningfully stop the whole body. Heavy weapons, vessels, terrain and objectives matter more.

Warning signs

Reefs or shoals move against the current, animals avoid apparently fixed features, and water or terrain responds as a connected body.

Behaviour

Shifts territory, shelters associated life, reacts to intrusion and uses mass rather than precise attacks.

Counterplay

Identify the disturbance, change route or behaviour, give it space, redirect associated animals or use vessel-scale force only when coexistence has failed. Passage is often the goal.

Native Rules, pp. 77.

Roadback

What is moving beneath us?

A large migratory creature responsive to deep vibration and buried disturbance, easily mistaken for a road, ridge or slow terrain.

At the table

Quality +1; one Activation, two when stampeding or reacting to major disturbance. Large elongated footprint; Reach follows body and momentum, not a precise weapon arc.

Personal firearms can wound exposed parts. Stopping the whole animal often requires changing movement, terrain or the driving stimulus.

Warning signs

Repeating tremors, displaced soil, road surfaces rising out of sequence and animals reacting before people identify the cause.

Behaviour

Follows deep vibration and migratory paths, reacting strongly to buried systems, artillery, excavation or Fortera disturbance that resembles a competing signal.

Counterplay

Stop or redirect the disturbance, clear its route, guide it with terrain or disengage before momentum dominates.

Native Rules, pp. 77.

Rain Saint

What memory is the field repeating?

A Fortera phenomenon retaining a human pattern in rain, runoff, wet surfaces or recurring weather. It repeats gestures, routes or unfinished action, not a person returned to life.

At the table

No conventional Harm. Quality +1 when actively resisting interference.

A 4- or 6-segment understanding or release clock is typical when extended resolution is needed. No Activation count is specified.

Warning signs

A human-like pattern appears in particular rain or flow, repeats a path and ignores conversation unless it matches remembered conditions.

Behaviour

Repeats the retained action, responds to connected objects or people and fades when supporting conditions end.

Counterplay

Identify and reconstruct the action, change water or field conditions, complete or interrupt the sequence, or let it pass without treating it as a hostile spirit.

Native Rules, pp. 77–78.

Keel Leech

Where did the stored pressure go?

A hull parasite producing drag, pressure imbalance and calibration trouble while storing mechanical or resonant stress around its attachment.

At the table

Quality +1; one Activation when disturbed; footprint usually 1 to 2 spaces along a hull.

Direct attacks can injure it, but careless removal can release accumulated pressure or miscalibration.

Warning signs

Drag, repeated trim correction, disagreeing gauges, hull pressure noise and a system that will not stay tuned.

Behaviour

Stays attached while fed, shifts toward stronger pressure or resonance and releases stress when violently dislodged.

Counterplay

Diagnose pressure, vent or isolate the connected system, then detach or drive it off. Engineering, Seamanship, Tune and controlled physical removal matter. Killing it before venting may cause the failure you hoped to prevent.

Native Rules, pp. 78.

Borrowed Tide

Is that actually a survivor?

A deceptive marine phenomenon or distributed organism using human-shaped debris and false survivor silhouettes to draw rescuers into the wrong water.

At the table

Quality +2 while its deception is unrecognised, otherwise +1. One Activation, sometimes two during an established ambush.

Its footprint is distributed through affected water, not centred on the visible bait. No fixed Harm track or clock is specified.

Warning signs

A survivor shape moves incorrectly with waves, debris clings against current, cries lack a credible source and water converges on rescuers.

Behaviour

Presents bait, waits, clings or closes around rescuers, then uses water and debris as the threat. Once exposed, it may form another silhouette elsewhere.

Counterplay

Observe first, test from range, use ropes or poles, follow current, separate debris or attack the located distributed mass. Compassion need not mean reflexively entering the water.

Native Rules, pp. 78–79.

Creatures & Phenomena

The Living World entries below are the authoritative setting descriptions of the Golden Sea’s creatures and phenomena: what they are, how they behave, and the signs that precede them. They are lore rather than stat blocks. This chapter supplies the Native Rules procedure for running them as Threats and Major Threats.

Browse all Creatures & Phenomena

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