Book IV — The Marshal's Almanac
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:
| Tier | HP | Pool | Defense | AR | XP | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minion | 4–6 | 3–4 | 9–10 | 0–1 | 1 | Disposable. Four together can threaten a party. |
| Soldier | 8–12 | 5–6 | 10–11 | 1–2 | 2 | Standard combatant. Most NPC enemies. |
| Elite | 14–18 | 7–8 | 11–12 | 2–3 | 3 | Named lieutenants. Two Elites stress a party. |
| Boss | 18–24 | 8–10 | 10–12 | 2–3 | 5 | Climax. One Boss is a session-defining encounter. |
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 mix the tier baseline with creature quirks: 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):
| Difficulty | Total XP Budget | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Easy | 4–6 | 4 Minions or 2 Soldiers |
| Standard | 8–10 | 1 Elite + 4 Minions, or 2 Elites |
| Hard | 12–16 | 1 Boss + 4 Minions, or 3 Elites + 2 Soldiers |
| Deadly | 18+ | 1 Boss + 1 Elite + Soldiers |
Adjust proportionally: ×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. The Boss’s ability to threaten is multiplied when the PCs have to defend against multiple 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 is worth more than its XP suggests. 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 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 (see below), and respond to negotiation, intimidation, and surrender. A fight with humans can end in 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.
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. They are not technically alive in the way humans are; they cannot be reasoned with (with rare exceptions like Fen-Wraiths, who bargain) and they cannot be negotiated. They have no morale — they fight until destroyed.
Veil-Born often have specific vulnerabilities: salt, iron, fire, silver, daylight, water. The party should learn these vulnerabilities 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 are not Veil-Born — they don’t sense the Current the way Veil-Born do. They are vulnerable to disassembly, sabotage, and Demolitions checks. They can be turned off, jammed, or repurposed.
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, mating-driven) that the players can exploit. A Glass-Walker can be lured. A Sand Leviathan can be redirected. A Vein Crawler can be starved out.
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 ate explodes.
Morale
Most enemies have a breaking point. Morale is the mechanic that simulates this. Full rules in morale-triggers, morale-checks, morale-results, and morale-by-enemy-type.
The framework:
When to Roll Morale
- After taking 50% casualties.
- After the leader dies or is incapacitated.
- After a Critical hit that drops a key combatant.
- When a Boss-tier threat appears unexpectedly.
- After the first round of unfavorable initiative.
The Check
The enemy commander (or the group as a whole, for leaderless mobs) rolls GRIT + Resilience vs. TN 11, modified by faction trait and situation.
Faction Traits
| Faction | Trait | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Consortium Enforcers | Disciplined (+1) | Trained but human; will retreat to fight another day. |
| Dust Vultures | Aggressive (−1) | Attack-focused; may flee if overwhelmed. |
| Redeemer Inquisitors | Fanatic (−4) | Fight to the death against “witches.” |
| Ironbrands | Professional (+2) | Contract-bound; won’t break unless contract released. |
| Veil-Born | Fearless | No morale checks; fight until destroyed. |
| Hollow Men | Mindless | No morale checks; the body continues until it can’t. |
| Townspeople | Fragile (−2) | Break easily; not fighters. |
Each faction fights differently even at the same XP budget. A fight with Consortium Enforcers ends differently than a fight with Dust Vultures: one will retreat, the other will fight harder when cornered. The Redeemers never break. The Veil-Born can’t.
Morale Results
| Roll | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Success | Continue fighting normally |
| Failure | Fighting withdrawal (retreat with covering fire) |
| Failure by 3+ | Rout (drop weapons and flee) |
| Failure by 6+ | Surrender (if applicable) or panic |
Morale is what makes fights end early. It is also the mechanism that lets parties win fights they couldn’t 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 know what’s coming long enough to feel dread, but not long enough to plan everything.
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 a Stormcaller fight 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 the party kills the Boss but the town is destroyed. Sometimes the Boss converts an NPC the party 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 capturing a specific flavor of horror that fits a specific region and theme. Use them deliberately. A Skin-Changer is not just a tough fight; it is a question about identity. A Threadripper is not just a Veil-Born predator; it is the punishment the Current sends when you channel too much.
Choose your monsters for what they mean. The math will work itself out.