The Conductor
- HP
- 20
- Defense
- 12
- AR
- 0
- Mettle
- 3
Traits
- Spectral: Immune to mundane physical attacks. Salt, Ghost-Rock, and iron deal normal damage. Psionic attacks deal ×2 damage.
- Rail-Bound: The Conductor only manifests aboard trains. He cannot be encountered anywhere else.
- Inevitable: The Conductor walks from the last car to the first. He cannot be blocked, barricaded, or slowed. Doors open for him. Walls are no barrier. He moves at walking pace — Tempo 6 between cars — giving passengers time to prepare, but not enough to escape.
- Polite: The Conductor does not threaten, coerce, or raise his voice. He asks nicely. This is somehow worse.
Abilities
- "Tickets, Please" (Tempo 4): The Conductor approaches a character and requests their ticket. The character must present a ticket (any physical token will do — a real ticket, a playing card, a piece of paper with writing) or make an ECHO + Resilience check vs. TN 13. Failure: the character is *Removed* (see below). Success: the Conductor moves on.
- Removal: A character who fails the "Tickets, Please" check is displaced. The GM chooses one: (1) Spatial — appears outside the train, 1d6 miles back along the track, unhurt but alone. (2) Temporal — appears in the cargo hold; 1d6 years have passed for them (age accordingly; gain 1 permanent Strain; lose 1 minor memory). (3) Final — disappears entirely; reappears at the next station with no memory of the journey, and 1 Erosion from wherever they were in the interim.
- All Aboard (Passive): While the Conductor is present, the train cannot be stopped. Brakes do not function. The engine runs on ghost-fire. The train travels to its destination at double speed through a landscape that is not entirely real.
- Last Stop (1/encounter): If reduced to 0 HP (through salt, Ghost-Rock, or Psionic attack), the Conductor announces the "Last Stop." The train brakes violently (all passengers: QUICK TN 11 or Prone + 2 damage). The Conductor dissipates — and the train is found to be miles off course, on tracks that don't appear on any map.
The ghost of the Screaming Rails — a spectral figure in a conductor’s uniform that manifests aboard trains traveling through Thin Places. The Conductor appears in the last car, punching phantom tickets and checking watches that run backward. He is polite, soft-spoken, and entirely wrong.
The Conductor is the collective manifestation of every soul lost to rail disasters on the Frontier — hundreds of deaths compressed into a single, recurring haunting. He appears when the rails themselves are stressed: during storms, in Thin Places, when the Tension Pool is high. He walks through the train, car by car, and asks each passenger for their “ticket.”
Those who produce a ticket — any ticket, real or improvised — are left alone. Those who cannot are “removed from the service.” What this means varies: some are found outside the train, miles from the track, with no memory of leaving. Some are found in the cargo hold, aged years in minutes. Some are not found at all.
Speed 7. The Conductor makes no conventional attacks — the
attacks[] array is intentionally empty.
Tactics
The Conductor does not fight. He conducts. He walks through the train, asks for tickets, and Removes those who cannot produce them. The encounter is a ticking clock — how many cars between him and the party? Who has a ticket? Who can improvise one? Can the Psionic weaken him before he reaches the engine? Can someone stop the train?
Encounter Design
The Conductor encounter is a horror set piece aboard a moving train. The party is traveling the Silver Line when the lights flicker, the temperature drops, and the last car goes dark. Passengers begin screaming. The Conductor is coming. Each car he passes through goes silent. The party has minutes to prepare: distribute “tickets” (any physical token), protect the passengers, and decide whether to confront or endure. Fighting is possible but costly — and the train can’t be stopped until he’s dealt with or reaches the engine.