Chapter 10: The Bestiary

“You can tell a lot about a man by what kills him. If it’s a bullet, he was slow. If it’s a knife, he was careless. If it’s something that drank his eyes and wore his skin… well, he was just unlucky.” — Doc “Sawbones” Holliday

The Frontier is an ecosystem of violence. Every shadow has teeth. Every silence has a pulse. The things that crawl out of the Veil are not random — they are symptoms of a wound that will not close, and each one fills a niche in a food chain that puts humanity somewhere in the middle.

This chapter is the GM’s guide to using the bestiary. Individual stat blocks live in the creatures collection. This chapter covers how to read them, how to combine them, and how to make them memorable.

Threat Tiers

Every creature is rated on a four-tier scale. The full threat-tiers reference table gives baseline stats; the framework:

These values are calibrated for starting PCs (HP 9–13, Defense 9–12, Pool 4–7). For sessions 9+, increase enemy Pools by +1 and HP by +2–3 per tier to maintain tension.

Tiers are shorthand for combat weight. Don’t mistake the tier baseline for the whole creature: a Stormcaller is technically a Boss, but it’s also a localized extinction event. The XP rating is the encounter-budget hook; the description and abilities are the narrative weight.

Encounter Budgets

For a party of four PCs (full table in encounter-budget):

Scale proportionally: roughly ×0.75 for 3 PCs, ×1.25 for 5 PCs.

Action economy wins. A Boss alone gets overwhelmed by four PCs’ worth of actions. Always give a Boss 2–4 Minion or Soldier escorts to absorb actions and protect flanks. The Boss’s ability to threaten is multiplied when the party has to defend against several sources at once.

Beyond the Numbers

Encounter math is necessary but insufficient. Terrain, cover, and tension shift felt difficulty more than raw XP. A Minion behind Hard Cover (+4 TN) is as hard to hit as an Elite in the open. A Boss in an open field is worth less than its tier rating, because the party can flank and focus-fire.

Build encounters spatially. Where is cover? Where are the choke points? Where are reinforcements coming from? Where an encounter happens matters as much as what’s in it.

The Categories

Creatures in The Veil & Lead fall into four types.

Human (Faction Forces)

The Consortium Enforcer. The Dust Vulture Raider. The Redeemer Inquisitor. The Ironbrand Mercenary. The Circle of Ash Acolyte.

Humans are the most common enemy. They use weapons the players recognize, follow morale rules (below), and respond to negotiation, intimidation, and surrender. A fight with humans can end many ways — capture, parley, retreat, mutual exhaustion.

Humans are also where the world’s politics live. A successful Dust Vulture raid is not just a fight; it is a statement about who controls a corridor of the Scorchveil this season. Treat human encounters as embedded in faction stories. As the book puts it: killing a Fen-Wraith is survival; killing a Consortium Enforcer is politics.

Veil-Born

The Hollow Man. The Ashborn. The Fen-Wraith. The Stormcaller. The Threadripper. The Skin-Changer. The Walking Dead. The Corpse-Candle. The Mirror Haunt.

Veil-Born are manifestations of the wound — not alive the way humans are, and (with rare exceptions like Fen-Wraiths, who bargain) impossible to reason with. Nearly all of them share three traits:

• Salt Vulnerability — salt disrupts the Current that sustains them; Salt Rounds and rock salt deal ×2 damage, and a salt barrier can stop them cold.
• Iron Sensitivity — cold iron causes them pain; iron weapons deal +1 WR against them automatically, no special ammunition needed.
• No Morale — they don’t understand self-preservation and never check morale. They fight until destroyed.

Veil-Born often have additional specific vulnerabilities: fire, water, daylight, electricity. The party should learn these through play. The first encounter with a Hollow Man should be terrifying. The fifth should feel manageable. The system rewards knowledge over levels.

Constructs

The Clockwork Hound. The Bone Sentinel. The Iron Revenant.

Constructs are mechanical or magical creations that operate by predictable logic. They don’t sense the Current the way Veil-Born do. They are immune to Fear, Poison, Bleeding, Strain, Erosion, and Psionics, and they cannot be healed — only repaired (SAVVY + Craft). Each tends to have a precise weakness instead: electricity and water short out a Clockwork Hound; sabotage and disassembly disable others.

The Iron Revenant is the canonical exception: a construct so old it predates the Rupture, and might predate even the Current itself.

Beasts

The Glass-Walker. The Vein Crawler. The Sand Leviathan. The Tar Widow.

Beasts are Veil-warped fauna — animals changed by exposure to the Current but not technically Veil-Born. They have natural behaviors (territorial, predatory, ambush-driven) the players can exploit. A Glass-Walker can be lured. A Sand Leviathan can be redirected. A Tar Widow can be burned out of its pool.

Beasts also have ecological roles in their regions. Killing all the Vein Crawlers in a mining shaft might solve the immediate problem and create a worse one when the population they preyed on explodes.

Morale

Most human enemies have a breaking point. Morale simulates it. It’s an optional rule. Use it when you want fights to end through something other than total annihilation, and skip it for mindless enemies, cornered foes with nothing to lose, and fights meant to go to the death. Full rules in morale-triggers, morale-checks, morale-results, and morale-by-enemy-type.

When to Check Morale

• Bloodied — an NPC drops to 25% HP or below.
• Leader Falls — the group’s leader is killed or incapacitated.
• Outnumbered — 50% or more of the NPC group is down.
• Overwhelming Display — they witness something terrifying (a Psionic Devastation, a monster, an ally torn apart).
• Cornered — their escape route is cut off while they’re losing.

The Check

Roll ECHO + Resilience against a TN set by the situation:

Common modifiers: defending home or family −2, an inspiring leader still standing −2, promised a significant reward −1, having already witnessed an ally flee +2, facing supernatural horror +2, an escape route available +1.

Faction Traits

Each faction also carries a standing morale trait:

Each faction fights differently even at the same XP budget. Consortium Enforcers retreat to fight another day; Redeemers never break; the Veil-Born can’t.

Results

A leader can Rally a Shaken or Broken ally with a Rally action (SWAY + Force or Persuasion, TN 11); routed NPCs can’t be rallied in combat — they’re gone. Players can also force the issue: an Intimidate action (IRON + Force or SWAY + Force vs. the target’s ECHO + 8) triggers an immediate Morale check at +2 TN, and a Critical makes them fail it automatically.

Morale is what lets parties win fights they could never have killed their way through.

Designing Memorable Encounters

The best monsters are the ones the players remember. Give them voices. Give them habits. Let the Dust Vulture Raider beg for water before she dies. Let the Hollow Man wear the face of someone the party used to know. Numbers kill characters. Details haunt players.

Three principles:

1. Pre-Fight: Make Them Visible Before They Bite

Show the monster before the fight. Footprints. A song heard over the ridge. A body left as a warning. Let the party feel dread long enough to dread it, but not long enough to plan everything away.

2. Mid-Fight: Give the Monster a Choice Point

Every monster encounter should have at least one moment where the party can make a non-combat choice. A captured Vulture might know the route. A Hollow Man might be wearing someone’s coat. A Fen-Wraith might want to bargain. These choices are where stories happen — combat is just where consequences play out.

3. Post-Fight: Don’t Just Loot — Mourn (or Don’t)

After the fight, give the party a moment with the bodies. Did they recognize anyone? Was the Vulture wearing a Consortium pendant? Did the Hollow Man have a wedding ring? The aftermath is where the world fills back in.

Boss Encounters: The Climax Question

A Boss encounter should answer a question that has been building for the entire arc. Not who’s the strongest creature? but what happens when this conflict reaches its breaking point?

When designing a Boss fight:

• The Boss should reflect a theme — the Stormcaller is the Frontier’s anger; the Red Mother’s Maw is the cost of motherhood and survival; the Whispering Man is the temptation of knowledge.
• The arena should matter. A Stormcaller fight in an open plain is different from one in a mineshaft.
• There should be a way to win that isn’t just damage. Sealing a Breach, severing a tether, performing a ritual, freeing a hostage. Give the party a tactical objective beyond reducing HP to 0.
• There should be a way to lose that isn’t just dying. Sometimes the party survives but the Boss escapes; sometimes they kill it but the town burns; sometimes it converts an NPC they loved. Defeat is a continuum, not a binary.

A great Boss encounter ends with the players quieter than they started. The fight was won, but at what cost?

The Bestiary Is a Toolbox

The creatures collection is not a sandbox of “things to throw at the party.” It is a library of mood. Each entry captures a specific flavor of horror that fits a specific region and theme. Use them deliberately. A Skin-Changer is a question about identity. A Threadripper is the tax the Current sends when you channel too much.

Choose your monsters for what they mean. The math will work itself out.