Mirror Haunt
- HP
- 8
- Defense
- 11
- AR
- 0
- Mettle
- 1
Attacks
| Attack | Pool | WR | Tempo | Qualities | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reflection Strike | 5 | 3 | 4 | — | Target must be able to see a reflective surface; attack emerges from the reflection; ignores cover. |
| Shatter-Scream | 0 | 2 | 5 | Breaks all glass/mirrors in Near range; shards deal 2 damage to all adjacent, Bleed. |
Traits
- Surface-Bound: The Mirror Haunt exists inside reflective surfaces. It can only attack targets who can see (and are seen by) a reflective surface. No reflection, no attack. Breaking all reflective surfaces in the area renders it powerless.
- Attention Feed: Each round a character spends looking at the Mirror Haunt (making eye contact with the wrong reflection), the Haunt gains +1 to its Pool for its next attack (max +3). Averting gaze imposes −2 on the viewer's attacks but prevents the feed.
- Migratory: The Haunt can move between any reflective surfaces within Near range as a free action. Puddles, glasses of water, polished belt buckles — all are doorways.
- Vulnerability: Destroying the Haunt's current surface (breaking the mirror, shattering the glass, muddying the water) forces it to migrate. If no surface is available within Near range, the Haunt is destroyed.
An entity that exists inside reflective surfaces — water, glass, polished metal, mirrors. Mirror Haunts are fragments of consciousness that slipped through the Veil during the Rupture and found that the thin space between a reflection and its source was a comfortable approximation of the dimension they came from.
A Mirror Haunt manifests as the viewer’s own reflection behaving incorrectly — blinking when you don’t, smiling when you’re terrified, reaching toward you when your hands are at your sides. The effect is deeply, primally unsettling — a violation of the fundamental expectation that your reflection is you.
Mirror Haunts feed on attention. The more you look, the stronger they become. The most effective defense is to break every mirror in the building and cover every surface, which is why superstitious Frontier folk crack their mirrors and cover still water with cloth. This isn’t paranoia. It’s pest control.
Tactics
The Mirror Haunt uses Reflection Strike from unexpected surfaces — a puddle on the floor, a polished tin cup, the glass of a lantern. It migrates to avoid being pinpointed. If cornered in a single surface, it uses Shatter-Scream to create dozens of tiny reflective shards — each one a potential doorway.
Encounter Design
Mirror Haunt encounters are about environmental awareness. The party enters a building where the mirrors are wrong. The water in the basin shows the room from the wrong angle. Their reflections are watching them. The encounter becomes a frantic process of identifying and destroying every reflective surface while the Haunt strikes from unexpected angles. It’s a haunted-house encounter with a clear win condition: break everything shiny.