On the Night of Glass the sky rained seed-glass. By spring the Blight had swallowed the city: grey-green growth that climbs, roots, breathes and listens. Where it grows, the electricity dies. Batteries drain overnight, engines cough and stall, radios hiss with something that sounds like singing. Survivors call it the Hush.

The people who are left live in Refuges at the edges of the growth: a church with the doors nailed shut, a tower block with the stairwells cut away, a supermarket that still smells of the old world. They raid into the Overgrowth for what was left behind: tins, medicine, ammunition. And Amber, the resin the Blight weeps, which the desperate trade and the foolish drink.

Spend long enough in the Overgrowth and the Blight roots in you. It gives: senses that aren't human, strength that isn't yours. It takes: your skin, your voice, your sleep. Somewhere beneath it all, something vast is dreaming. The Choir sings to it. They call it the Deep Root.

The Blight is a skirmish game for two players (or more) with a handful of miniatures each. Two Refuges raid the same patch of Overgrowth for the same prize, and the Blight's creatures come for whoever makes the most noise.

Nobody agrees on the date any more. The calendars went with the power, and the people who kept them went with the calendars. Most Refuges count from the Night of Glass, the autumn evening when the sky over the city went the colour of a bruise and began, very quietly, to rain.

It wasn't rain. It fell like sleet and rang like broken bottles: millions of slivers of something clear and faintly green, none longer than a fingernail. Seed-glass. It settled in gutters and on car roofs and in the hair of people standing at bus stops looking up. It was warm to the touch. Children collected it in jam jars.

By morning the slivers had split open. What followed, the weeks when the city went green, everyone calls the Bloom. By the end of the week the gutters were full of pale shoots, and the shoots had found the drains, the cable ducts, the cracks in the motorway, and the people who'd picked the glass out of their hair.

"The first thing I noticed was the birds had stopped. The second thing was that my neighbour's hedge was growing over the street lamp, and the street lamp was off, and it had been on a minute ago."
(from a notebook kept by a reporter at the Fallowmere Refuge)

The authorities had perhaps three weeks of functioning government. Long enough for cordons, curfews, a televised address in which a tired minister said the word "contained" eleven times. Then the televisions went dark, one district at a time, as the growth reached them.

Where the Blight grows, electricity dies. Survivors call it the Hush.

It doesn't happen all at once. A torch dims over a few minutes. A phone's battery drains as you watch. Car engines cough, misfire and stop a few streets into the growth, and won't start again until they're dragged out. Power lines carry nothing. Generators run for an hour, then seize, their windings furred with fine grey filaments. Nobody knows whether the Blight eats the current or simply can't stand it. Both theories have their priests.

So the world went backwards. What works in the Overgrowth is what worked a century ago:

• Springs, levers and muscle: crossbows, bows, crowbars, bicycles, hand-pumps.
• Black powder and brass: guns still fire, because a cartridge doesn't care about electricity. But nobody is making new cartridges, and every round fired is one fewer in the world.
• Fire, which the Blight fears, and which survivors carry like a talisman.

The Hush thins out at the edges. A wind-up radio might pick up a crackle a mile from the growth. A car might run for a few minutes on the ring road. These scraps of the old world are worth more than gold, and they are what Refuges fight each other for.

The radios that do work pick up something else as well. Under the static, on every frequency, there's a sound like a great many people humming the same note, very far away.

The city is drowned in growth now, like a reef. Survivors divide it, roughly, into rings.

The Pale

The outer fringe, where the Blight is thin: grey moss on brickwork, shoots in the potholes, vines feeling along the guttering. Most Refuges are here, or just beyond. The Hush is weak; a careful Refuge can run a generator for an evening. Husks wander in from deeper in, and Thornhounds hunt the alleys at night.

The Thicket

Streets where the growth closes over the road and the light comes through it green. Glass-trees stand where lamp posts did, translucent trunks with something moving slowly inside. Root-mats lift the tarmac in waves. Spore drifts settle in hollows like snow and rise in clouds when disturbed. This is where the good salvage is: the shops and flats that were never emptied, because nobody who went in to empty them came back out. Raids happen here.

The Throat

The heart of the city, where the growth is oldest. Survivors who've seen its edges describe buildings bent like wax, streets that curve back on themselves, and Amber falls: whole faces of tower blocks weeping slow golden resin. Somewhere in the Throat the Choir sings. No Refuge raids there. Some survivors walk in on their own, usually at night, usually smiling.

Blight terrain

On the table, all of this becomes Spore terrain (drifts and clouds that root in your lungs), Lairs (the burrows, nests and splits in the road where creatures wait), and the dense growth that blocks sight and slows movement.

People survive in Refuges: small groups dug into whatever building could be made to keep the Blight out. A Refuge might be thirty people in a Victorian church with the windows bricked up, or six in the top floors of a tower block with the stairs cut away below the ninth. Each one is its own small country, with its own rules, its own grudges and its own way of burying the dead.

They have things in common, because the things that kill Refuges are the same everywhere:

• The Ledger. Every Refuge keeps one: who ate what, who owes what, how many rounds are left. A Refuge that loses track of its stores starves without noticing.
• The Quiet Hours. From dusk to dawn, nobody speaks above a whisper. Doors are opened slowly. Pans are not dropped. The Blight is always listening, and it listens hardest in the dark.
• Burning. The dead are burned, always, quickly. The Blight takes what's left in the ground.
• The Watch. Every survivor takes a turn on the roof, listening for gravel shifting under the road.

Refuges trade with each other, marry into each other, and raid each other. There isn't enough of anything to go round. When two Refuges hear of the same cache, the same working radio, the same unlooted pharmacy, both send their best into the Thicket, and they meet there, among the creatures, with their guns half-loaded and their hearts going like drums.

The Flyover Market

On the ring road, where an elevated junction stands above the growth on concrete legs, there's a market. Every Refuge sends traders; by custom, nobody fights on the Flyover. Here salvage becomes medicine, Amber becomes bullets, and news travels. The Market is run by nobody in particular, which is to say by whoever has the most guns that week.

The Blight gets into people. Through wounds, through lungs, through Amber held too long in a bare hand. A survivor who has spent enough time in the Overgrowth starts to change, and the Refuges have words for each stage.

Touched survivors have a grey-green thread in the whites of their eyes, and wake from dreams of falling upwards. They hear better than they should. Their cuts heal with a faint sheen, like sap.

Bloomed survivors can't hide it any more. Bark-like patches on the forearms, a smell of crushed leaves, pale shoots in the hairline that grow back when cut. They're stronger and stranger: some can call the roots to grab an enemy's ankles, some breathe spores, some move without a sound. They also have bad days: the coughing, the whispering, the hunger for sap that nothing else satisfies.

Overgrown survivors are more Blight than person. Refuges keep them because they're the best raiders anyone has, and fear them for the same reason. Some Refuges won't let them sleep inside.

And then, one day, they Turn. It's fast, once it happens. They stop mid-sentence, tilt their heads as though listening to music, and walk away into the growth. Or they don't walk away. Survivors who have Turned come back as Hollowed: still wearing their faces, still knowing the way home.

Every Refuge argues about the Touched. Cut them out early (the Doctors try; it rarely takes). Use them while they last. Burn them before they Turn. There's no right answer, only the one you can live with.

The Blight weeps a slow golden resin wherever it grows thick. Survivors call it Amber. It's warm, faintly luminous, and smells like honey and wet stone.

Amber is the closest thing the city has to money. It burns hotter and longer than any fuel left in the world. Ground fine, it stops bleeding. Dissolved in spirits, it brings visions. Held in the mouth, it makes the Hush recede for a few minutes: a dead torch will flicker, a radio will clear.

It also carries the Blight. Every Refuge has a story about someone who handled too much Amber and went quiet. And every Refuge has someone who drinks it on purpose: to reach for a Gift, to see what the Choir sees, or because they're already Touched and the hunger has started.

Nobody knows what the Blight is. These are the things survivors whisper.

That the seed-glass didn't come down. It came up, through the sky's underside, from somewhere the sky had been covering.

That the growth isn't many plants but one, and it goes down further than the sewers, further than the clay, further than anyone has dug, and then on, past where down stops meaning anything. At the bottom of it is something that the Choir calls the Deep Root: not a god, not an animal, a place that thinks. It was old when the stars it came from were young. It has been here before, and slept, and the city was built over the bed where it sleeps. It is dreaming. The Blight is what grows in the shape of its dream.

That the Deep Root is not hostile, any more than a tide is. It simply doesn't distinguish between us and the soil.

That it is waking up.

The Choir sings to it. The first one was found in the cathedral in the Throat: perhaps forty Husks fused at the shoulders and hips into a single swaying mass, every mouth open, every throat producing the same low note. Others have been seen since. When a Choir moves, the Husks around it move in time.

A few survivors have started to sing back. They call themselves the Gardeners, and they believe the Blight is a mercy: that when the Deep Root wakes, everyone it has grown into will wake with it. They are tending the growth on purpose. They are recruiting.

The Bloom was not the first time.

The Reporter at Fallowmere found it in the county archive, in a box nobody had opened since the nineteen-thirties: a parish register from 1666 with three pages cut out, and a note in the margin of the fourth. "The glasse rain came agen upon the Feast of St Luke. The Ministers have closed the wells. God forgive us what we have planted." The pages after it are in a different hand, and the hand gets worse.

Once you know to look, the signs are everywhere in the old city. The same seven-pointed mark carved over the doors of the oldest churches, worn almost smooth. Medieval street names that make no sense: Rootgate, Seedwell Lane, the Hushings. A Victorian engineer's report on the sewers, abandoned because the tunnels under the cathedral "descend further than the survey permits, and the men will not go down." A 1974 council planning file on the Fallowmere estate, approved, and then a single typed line: "Foundations not to exceed six feet. On no account to disturb the clay."

Somebody knew. Somebody has always known, and kept a lid on it, and the lid came off.

The Ward-signs

The seven-pointed mark works. Nobody can say why. Chalked on a door, it seems to make Husks hesitate; scratched into a bullet, it seems to make the Stalk flinch. Salt and iron help too, the way the old stories say. The Refuges that use them don't talk about it much. It feels like admitting something.

Wrong places

The Blight does things to space. In the Thicket, a street can be longer walking out than it was walking in. A stairwell can have one landing too many. Survivors who've been deep enough swear the Throat has more inside it than outside it, and that the cathedral's spire points in a direction that isn't up. Compasses spin near the Amber falls. Watches lose time, or gain it.

People who look too long at these things start to understand them, and understanding is the problem. The Blight doesn't only get in through the skin.

They started appearing at the Flyover Market in Year 5: quiet, clean, smiling people with jam jars of seed-glass, offering it free to anyone who'd take it. Most people threw it in the canal. Some didn't.

The Gardeners believe the Blight is not an invasion but a harvest. The Deep Root is waking, they say, and everything it has grown into will wake with it, whole and unafraid. To fight the growth is to refuse the only future left. To tend it is mercy.

Congregations

Gardeners live in Congregations of a dozen to forty, out in the Thicket where no Refuge would last a week. They sleep in the old greenhouses at the botanical gardens, in the drowned leisure centre on Carrow Fields, in the nave of a church that has a tree growing through the altar. The growth doesn't touch them, or touches them gently. Their Touched are honoured, their Bloomed are revered, and when one of them Turns they hold a service and walk them to the Throat.

Each Congregation has its roles:

• Tenders keep the growth: pruning, clearing, protecting it from fire and from Refuges.
• Seed-Bearers carry the seed-glass gathered every Glassfall to wherever the growth is thin, and plant it.
• Hymnwardens sing the Choir's note. Where they sing, the growth listens.
• The Verdant Mother leads. She is always a woman, always older, always somehow kind. Survivors who have met one say she knew their name.

What they want from you

The Gardeners don't want to kill survivors. They want to plant them. A survivor taken Down by a Gardener wakes up with more Blight than they had. A Refuge that loses someone to the Gardeners sometimes sees them again, months later, clean and smiling at the Flyover, offering jam jars.

They take Amber from anyone carrying it; to them it's sacred. They go for the Touched first, the way you'd go for a lost lamb.

Fighting them

Gardeners are people. They bleed. They don't Rout and they don't scare, because they believe. Refuges are divided about killing them: some see them as worse than the Choir, some as just another Refuge with stranger rules, and a few, quietly, start to wonder whether they're right.

"She held my hand and told me I was already halfway home. I've got 7 Blight. I think about it every night."
(a raider from Wharfside, after The Planting at Rootgate)

The Blight makes its creatures out of whatever it finds. Most were something else once.

• Husks were people. The growth fills them and walks them, slowly, along the routes they used to take. They're weak alone and terrible in numbers, and their touch carries the Blight.
• Thornhounds were the city's dogs. They hunt in packs by sound, and a pack has a mother: the swollen Thorn Matriarch, heavy with seed-pods full of Amber.
• Lantern Moths drift in clouds through the Thicket at night, drawn to light and noise. Their dust gets in your lungs and shows you things.
• Strangler Vines and Censer Blooms grow at doorways and stairwells, as though placed there. Perhaps they were.
• Rootmaws move under the road. The tarmac goes soft before they surface.
• The Stalk is too tall, too thin, and always closer than it was. Nobody has seen it walk.
• The Choir, the singing cathedral of the dead.

The Bestiary is where they're described for play. It will grow, draft by draft.

Refuge reckoning, in years since the Night of Glass. Not everyone agrees.

• Year 0, autumn: the Night of Glass. Growth everywhere within a week.
• Year 0, winter: the Silent Winter. The Hush spreads; the city goes dark; the cordons fail. Most of the dying happens now, of cold and hunger as much as the Blight.
• Year 1: the Grey Spring. The first Refuges dig in. The first Husks are seen walking home.
• Year 2: the Flyover Market is founded. Amber becomes currency.
• Year 3: the first Choir is heard from the Throat. Radios in the Pale pick up the humming.
• Year 4: the Thornhound winter. Two Refuges in the north of the city fall in a week.
• Year 5: the first Gardeners appear at the Flyover, offering seed-glass in jam jars. By winter there are Congregations in the botanical gardens and on Carrow Fields.
• Year 6, now: the growth is spreading again, faster. Caches in the Pale are picked clean. Every Refuge is raiding deeper into the Thicket, and meeting every other Refuge there.

"Rules of the House. One: Quiet Hours are sacred. Two: what comes back from a raid goes in the Ledger before it goes in a pocket. Three: if you find glass in your hair, you tell Ma, you don't hide it. Four: we burn our own."
(painted on the vestry door, St Aldric's Refuge)

"Thirty-one rounds of nine millimetre. Fourteen shotgun shells. Two arrows we can't straighten. That's what stands between us and Hollins Estate, and Hollins know it."
(the Ledger, Wharfside Refuge)

"I don't pray for the Blight to go. I pray for it to be quick, when it comes for Danny."
(overheard at the Flyover Market)

"It's not singing to us. That's what nobody gets. It's singing to the thing underneath, and we just happen to be standing in the way of the sound."
(an Overgrown raider, shortly before he walked into the Throat)

The game uses ordinary six-sided dice (d6). A few rolls ask for d3 (a d6 halved, rounding up) or a d66-style roll of two dice, read as described.

Dice pools

Most rolls are pools: roll a number of dice equal to a stat (Fight, Shoot, Wits or Nerve), add or remove dice for the situation, and count successes:

• every 4, 5 or 6 is a success;
• every 6 is also a Crit. Crits count as successes and some weapons and rules give them extra effects. Crits are harder to block (see Armour).

Modifiers always add or remove dice, never change the 4+. If a pool would drop below 1 die, roll 1 die anyway, which only succeeds on a 6 (a desperate roll).

Tests

A test is a pool with a target: "test Nerve (2)" means roll the Nerve pool and score at least 2 successes. A test with no number needs 1.

Re-rolls

No die can be re-rolled more than once.

Blight dice

Survivors with Blight in them can call on it. Use dice of a different colour. Before rolling any pool, a survivor may add up to their Blight tier in Blight dice (1 at Touched, 2 at Bloomed, 3 at Overgrown). They succeed and Crit like any other die, but every 1 on a Blight die gives the survivor +1 Blight. Gifts that say Call the Blight are always rolled as a pool of Blight dice equal to the tier and need 1 success.

Each survivor has a profile:

• Move (M): inches moved by a Move action.
• Fight (F): dice rolled in close combat.
• Shoot (S): dice rolled when shooting or throwing.
• Wits (W): dice for Initiative, Searching and using things.
• Nerve (N): dice for holding your nerve against horror and pressure.
• Health (H): how much damage they can take before they go Down.
• Armour (A): dice rolled to block hits, from what they wear.
• Blight: 0 to 12. How far the Blight has rooted in them.

The base survivor is M5 F2 S2 W2 N2 H2. Their background (what they were before the Bloom) changes some of that, gives them a Knack, and sets the two skill lists they can learn from.

The Leader

[[leader]]

A battle is played in rounds (usually six). Each round has three phases.

1. Initiative

Each Refuge rolls its Leader's Wits as a pool (plus any bonus dice from Home, kit or improvements). Every creature brood on the table has a fixed Initiative number from the bestiary instead of rolling.

Put every side (both Refuges and each brood) in order, highest first. A Refuge's score is its successes. Ties between Refuges: roll off. Ties between a Refuge and creatures: creatures go first. The Blight is patient, and it is always listening.

2. Activations

Starting at the top of the order, the first side activates one model, then the next side activates one model, and so on down the order, then back to the top. A side with nothing left to activate is skipped. The phase ends when every model has activated.

Each creature activates on its own, in its brood's place in the order. Creatures follow their behaviour (see the Bestiary). Whichever player is not their target moves them, honestly.

Down survivors don't activate.

3. End Phase

In this order:

1. The Din: total the Noise made this round and roll that many dice (see Noise). Creatures may come.
2. Spores: each survivor in Spore terrain or a spore cloud rolls a die: on 1–2, +1 Blight.
3. Rout: a Refuge with half or more of its survivors Down or gone tests to stay (see Nerve).
4. Clear: remove all Noise, Hidden stays, fires go out, scenario effects happen.

An activating survivor takes two actions, one after the other. The same action can be taken twice, except that a survivor can only make one attack (Shoot, Fight, or an attacking Gift) per activation.

• Move: up to M inches. Climbing costs double. Moving is Quiet.
• Sprint: up to M+3 inches. Makes 1 Noise. You can't Shoot in an activation in which you Sprint.
• Shoot: attack with a ranged or thrown weapon (see Shooting).
• Fight: attack an enemy in contact (see Fighting). Moving into contact and Fighting in one activation is a Charge: +1 die.
• Aim: +1 die to your next Shoot this activation.
• Reload: refill a weapon's magazine with one Reload you carry (or ready a bow or crossbow).
• Search: at a Loot token in contact, test Wits (1). Pass: pick it up. A survivor can carry 1 Loot; carrying it costs −1" Move. Rich find: each Crit (6) on a successful Search gives that Loot +1 extra Loot roll in the Aftermath (at most +2). The bonus is lost if the Loot is dropped.
• Hide: if in cover and no enemy within 6" can see you, become Hidden: enemies more than 6" away can't target you. You stop being Hidden when you make Noise, attack, or end a move in the open.
• Use: open a door (Wits test), give first aid (see Damage), hand an item to a friend in contact, work an objective, clear a Jam.
• Steady: stop being Shaken.
• Gift: use a Blight Gift that says it takes an action.

Shaken survivors get only one action in their next activation, after which they stop being Shaken.

Pick a target in range and line of sight. Roll Shoot + the weapon's dice, adjusted:

• Aim: +1 die (some rules give more).
• Long range (more than half the weapon's range): −1 die.
• Cover: target partly hidden, −1 die; mostly hidden, −2 dice.
• Moved this activation: no change. Sprinted: you can't shoot.
• Into a fight: −1 die, and each 1 rolled hits a friend in that fight instead (if there is one).

Each success is a hit. The target then rolls armour (see Damage). Every hit not blocked takes the weapon's Damage in Health.

Ammunition

Firearms have a magazine: the number of shots before they're empty. Each Shoot uses one shot. An empty gun needs a Reload action and a Reload carried by the shooter.

Ammunition is scarce. Before a battle, every magazine loaded and every spare Reload carried comes out of the Refuge's stores. Reloads still in pockets afterwards (and magazines never fired from) go back; anything fired from is spent.

Bows and crossbows hold one shot, and every shot uses it: nocking or loading the next is a Reload action that takes an Arrow (bows) or a Bolt (crossbows) the shooter carries, not a Reload. Arrows and Bolts are drawn from the stores at set-up like Reloads, unused ones come home, and fired ones are gone. A Refuge makes them at home: 5 Arrows or 5 Bolts for 1 Salvage, no Errand needed.

Jams

Scrap weapons Jam if the Shoot roll shows two or more 1s. A Jammed weapon can't fire until a Use action clears it.

Noise

Each shot makes the weapon's Noise (see Noise).

Close combat is a contest. The attacker and defender both roll Fight + their weapon's dice:

• Charge: the attacker moved into contact this activation, +1 die.
• Outnumbering: +1 die for each other friend in contact with the enemy (max +2).
• Shaken: −1 die.
• Down defenders don't roll; a survivor who Fights a Down enemy Finishes them: they're taken out of the battle, and their Casualty roll has −1.

Compare successes. The side with more wins, and the difference is the number of hits on the loser (armour applies; Crits among the winner's dice stay Crits). A tie: nothing happens beyond the noise.

Melee weapons make their Noise for both fighters.

Armour

The target of hits rolls its Armour in dice. Each 4+ blocks one ordinary hit. Crits can only be blocked by a 6 (a Helmet makes it 5+). Hits that aren't blocked each take the weapon's Damage from Health.

Down

At 0 Health a survivor is Down: lay the model on its side. Down survivors don't activate, can't be targeted by shooting, and drop any Loot they carry. A friend in contact can drag them along with a Move action (both move at half speed).

First aid

Use on a friend in contact: test Wits (1). Pass: they regain 1 Health, or stand up from Down with 1 Health. Med kits and some Knacks skip the test.

Creatures

A creature at 0 Health is slain. Remove it.

Infection

Every hit from an Infectious creature that isn't blocked also gives its Infectious value in Blight.

Dread

Some creatures have Dread. The first time in a battle a survivor sees a creature of that kind within 12", it tests Nerve (Dread). Fail: Shaken. Fail with no successes and any 1: Panic: move a full Move directly away from it, then Shaken.

Friends within 6" of the Leader may use the Leader's Nerve pool.

Rout

In the End Phase, a Refuge with half or more of its starting survivors Down, Turned or off the table must test the Leader's Nerve (1) (or the highest Nerve standing if the Leader is Down). Fail: the Refuge Routs and loses. Its survivors leave the table with what they carry.

A Refuge can choose to withdraw at the start of any of its turns. That counts as a Rout.

The Blight listens. Every action that makes Noise puts that many Noise tokens by the model:

• Quiet (0): moving, knives, bows, Searching, Hiding.
• Loud (1): Sprinting, most melee weapons, pistols, nail guns, forcing a door, Command Voice.
• Very loud (2): shotguns, rifles, revolvers, flare guns.
• Deafening (3): chainsaws, explosives.

Creatures hunt Noise

Most creatures go for the survivor with the most Noise within their Senses. Noise stays by a model until the End Phase, so the survivor who fires first in a round is the one that gets hunted.

The Din

In the End Phase, total every Noise token on the table. That is the Din. Roll that many dice (maximum 12; some scenarios add more):

• No 6s: the Blight stays still.
• One 6: something heard. Roll on the Lesser Encounter table.
• Two or more 6s: something big heard. Roll on the Greater Encounter table.

The Season can move these thresholds: in the Silence the Blight sleeps, and it takes two 6s to wake anything.

Then clear all Noise.

A survivor's Blight runs from 0 to 12.

Survivors gain Blight from:

• Each 1 rolled on a Blight die: +1 Blight.
• Each unblocked hit from an Infectious creature: + its Infectious value.
• Ending an activation in Spore terrain or a spore cloud: roll a die, on 1–2 gain +1 Blight.
• Casualty roll of Infected in the Aftermath: +2 Blight.
• Carrying Amber home: roll a die for each Amber carried, on a 1 the carrier gains +1 Blight.
• Drinking Amber (an Errand): +1 Blight by choice.

Tiers

• 0–2 Clean: no Blight dice.
• 3–5 Touched: 1 Blight die. One Gift, one Mark.
• 6–8 Bloomed: 2 Blight dice. Two Gifts, two Marks.
• 9–11 Overgrown: 3 Blight dice. Three Gifts, three Marks.
• 12 Turned: the survivor is lost (see below).

Each time a survivor's Blight reaches 3, 6 or 9, they gain a Gift and a Mark, rolled in the Aftermath (or at once, if you prefer it that way and are tracking the battle). Roll two dice for each: the first picks the half of the table (1–3 or 4–6), the second picks the entry. Roll again on a duplicate.

Turning

At 12 Blight the survivor Turns, at once, wherever they are. Replace them with a Hollowed creature that hunts like any other, starting with their old Refuge. They're gone from the roster. The campaign keeps their name, and they come back: see The Hollowed return in the Bestiary.

Creatures belong to nobody. They attack whoever their behaviour points them at, of either Refuge.

• They activate in their brood's place in the initiative order, one creature at a time.
• They never take Nerve tests and never Rout.
• They have no Wits: if a rule needs one, use 1 die.
• When one is slain, the survivor who did it gains its XP in the Aftermath.

Creatures arrive at a Lair or a Blight edge (each scenario says where these are). Use the one nearest the noisiest survivor, unless a rule says otherwise. They activate in their place in the initiative order from the next round; if they arrive during set-up they act from round 1.

The full Bestiary, with behaviours and Encounter tables, is its own page.

Survivors learn skills as they advance, from the two lists their background allows.

Costs are in Salvage. Noise: 0 Quiet, 1 Loud, 2 Very loud, 3 Deafening. Mag: shots per magazine.

• Hunter. Moves towards the survivor with the most Noise within its Senses (ties: the nearest) and Fights it. If nobody within its Senses has Noise, it goes for the nearest survivor it can see. If it can't see anyone, it drifts its full Move towards the centre of the table.
• Stalker. Moves towards the most isolated survivor it can see (the one with no friend within 3", then the furthest from its friends) and Fights it. Noise only draws it if it can see nobody.
• Ambusher. Starts hidden (not on the table). When a survivor makes Noise or ends a move within its Senses of the Lair, it emerges in contact with the noisiest such survivor and Fights at once. Once out, it acts as a Hunter.
• Guardian. Never leaves 6" of where it was placed. Attacks the noisiest model within reach; otherwise does nothing.
• Swarm. Moves towards the noisiest survivor or the nearest light (Lantern, Flare, fire) within its Senses, and Fights every model in contact with it, rolling separately for each.
• Horror. Moves towards the largest group of survivors it can see (the most within 6" of one point) and Fights the one with most Noise. Its special rules say more.
• Tender. Gardeners keep the growth. Each goes for, in order: a survivor carrying Amber or Loot; a survivor with 3+ Blight (they want the Touched); the survivor nearest Spore terrain or a Lair. It Fights if it can reach, and never ends a move more than 12" from Spore terrain or a Lair. Gardeners never attack each other or the Blight's creatures, and creatures ignore them.

Encounter tables

Roll on the Lesser table when the Din shows one 6, and for each creature lurking at set-up. Roll on the Greater table when the Din shows two or more 6s. Both tables use two dice: the first picks the half (1–3 or 4–6), the second the row.

The creatures

Hollowed

A survivor who reached 12 Blight. Uses their Move, Fight +1 and Health +1, armour 1, and keeps their Gifts. Hunts by Noise. It remembers its old Refuge, and goes for them first if it can see them.

The Hollowed return. Whenever an Encounter roll is made in a campaign raid and the campaign has Hollowed who haven't been laid to rest, roll a die first. On a 6, one of them (pick at random) answers instead of the Encounter. A Hollowed that is slain is laid to rest and never returns.

The Gardeners

People who tend the Blight on purpose. They fight as a third party, like creatures, using the Tender behaviour. Roll on the Congregation table when a scenario or event brings them.

1. Table about 3' × 3' (or 4' × 4' for 7+ survivors a side), dense with ruins, wrecks and Blight growth. Mark at least three patches of Spore terrain.
2. Each Refuge deploys within 6" of opposite table edges. The other two edges are Blight edges.
3. Place two Lairs (a burrow, a nest, a split in the road) in the two corners not touching your deployment zones' centres, or roll a die for each corner and use the two highest.
4. Place 5 Loot tokens: one each in turn, more than 6" from any deployment zone and 4" from each other.
5. Draw Reloads from the Refuge stores to load guns and fill pockets (see Ammunition).

Then make an Encounter roll on the Lesser table for each creature the scenario says is lurking, and place them at the Lairs.

Roll for Initiative and begin.

Ending the battle

The scenario says how long the battle lasts and who wins. A Refuge that Routs loses. Survivors still on the table at the end keep what they carry; Down survivors' Loot is lost.

• Start with 150 Salvage.
• Pick a Home (below).
• Recruit 4–8 survivors, paying each background's cost. No more than 2 of any one background.
• Choose one survivor as Leader.
• Buy weapons, armour and kit from the Market. Each survivor carries up to 2 weapons (Molotovs and bombs don't count), 1 armour and 2 pieces of kit. Everyone also has an Improvised weapon and Thrown junk for free.
• At founding, no Rare items and at most 2 Uncommon items across the whole Refuge.
• Buy Reloads at 4 Salvage each.
• The stores start with 1 Ration per survivor and 1 Meds, plus anything from your Home. Salvage left over stays in the stores.

Homes

Every Refuge has a Home: its base of operations, wherever four walls (or a tarpaulin) can be held against the Blight. A campsite in the park, an RV with the windows boarded, a flat on the sixth floor, a corner shop, a shopping mall, an office block, the local pub. The Home is picked at founding. It sets how many survivors the Refuge can hold, gives a perk, and has a drawback, and some Homes are much harder to keep warm or clear of growth when the Seasons turn.

A player can run a Congregation of Gardeners instead of a Refuge. They fight raids like a Refuge (they activate in initiative order, take Nerve tests for Rout, run an Aftermath) but play by the Garden's rules.

Founding a Congregation

• 150 Salvage, 4–8 members, as a Refuge. Backgrounds are who they were before; every member starts Touched: 3 Blight, with one Gift and one Mark rolled at founding.
• One member is the Verdant Mother (instead of a Leader): +1 Nerve, and the Mother's Blessing below.
• Home: the Grove. Holds 10. It never needs fuel in any Season (the growth keeps it warm) and grows +1 Ration each Upkeep, but no Refuge will trade with you: the Market sells you only Common melee weapons, Common kit and armour up to Armour 1, and you can't buy Reloads or sell Amber. Firearms come only from Loot.
• Members who join later are Touched too: 3 Blight, with a Gift and a Mark to roll. They prefer the growth's protection: Thornskin and Pollen Veil may be chosen instead of rolled when they reach Bloomed.

In a raid

• Faithful: members never Panic, and the Congregation tests Rout only when three-quarters of it is Down.
• Grafting: an enemy survivor a member takes Down gains +1 Blight.
• One with the Garden: creatures that hunt by Noise ignore members with no Noise. Members don't roll for Spore terrain.
• The Mother's Blessing: once per round, while the Verdant Mother stands, a member within 6" of her may add one extra Blight die to a pool (and its 1s still add Blight).

The cost

• Members gain Blight faster: every Aftermath, each member who took part rolls a die; on a 1–2, +1 Blight.
• A member who Turns doesn't become Hollowed. They walk into the Throat at the end of the raid and are gone, and the Congregation gains 1 Amber.
• Rescue: in its Aftermath, an enemy Refuge rolls a die for each member it left Down: on a 5+ they join that Refuge (with their Blight, Gifts and Marks), shaken but free, if they're still with the Congregation.

A campaign is a run of raids between Refuges. After every raid, each Refuge works through the Aftermath, then runs Errands before the next raid.

Aftermath

1. Casualties: everyone who was Down rolls on the Casualty table.
2. Experience: award XP. Every 5 XP is an Advance.
3. The Blight: roll Gifts and Marks for thresholds crossed. Survivors at 12 are lost.
4. Loot: roll on the Loot table for each Loot token carried home, plus one extra roll for each Rich find, then add the scenario's rewards. A 6 on the die for how much Salvage, Reloads or Rations doubles it, and every Salvage, Rations and Reloads reward is +10%, rounded up (the reward boost; Meds and Amber are not boosted).
5. Ammunition: Reloads spent come off the stores.
6. Upkeep: meet the Season's need (fuel, spoilage), then feed everyone.

• Every survivor who was Down at the end of the battle rolls a die.
• Finished (taken Out while Down): −1. Hard to Kill: +1. A Doctor who wasn't Down: +1 to one roll.
• Spend 1 Meds to re-roll a result (once per survivor).

Upkeep

[[upkeep]]

Seasons

[[seasons]]

Errands

Between raids each Refuge may run two errands (an Office Block allows three). They come back after the next Aftermath, and unused ones don't carry over. A Trade errand is one trip to the Market, however much is bought and sold on it; each survivor Recruited is an errand of its own. Spending at founding is the founding budget, not errands.

Improvements

[[table:improvements]]

Standings

A win scores 3, a draw 1, a loss 0. Ties are broken by total Experience across the roster.

The round

1. Initiative: each Refuge rolls its Leader's Wits; creatures use their fixed Initiative. Highest first; creatures win ties.
2. Activations: one model per side, in order, cycling, until everyone has gone.
3. End Phase: the Din, Spores, Rout, clear Noise.

Two actions each

• Move · Sprint (M+3, 1 Noise, no Shoot) · Shoot · Fight (Charge +1) · Aim (+1) · Reload · Search (Wits) · Hide · Use · Steady · Gift
• One attack per activation. Shaken: one action, then clear.

Dice

• Every 4+ is a success, every 6 a Crit. Below 1 die: one die, needs a 6.
• Armour: 4+ blocks a hit; Crits need a 6 (5+ with a helmet).
• Blight dice: up to your tier; each 1 is +1 Blight.

Shooting modifiers

• Aim +1 · Long range −1 · Cover −1 / −2 · Into a fight −1

Noise

• 0 Quiet · 1 Loud · 2 Very loud · 3 Deafening. Din: roll total Noise (max 12). One 6: Lesser. Two+ 6s: Greater.

v0.3.0 · 2026-10-24 · The Drowned, the Planting and the Congregation

• Five new creatures: the Drowned, Rotweaver, Carrion Bloom, Spore Hulk and the Mourner.
• The Lesser and Greater Encounter tables are now 12 rows, rolled with two dice (the first picks the half, the second the row). Some rows bring escorts; a Greater row can bring a Congregation.
• Playing a Congregation is no longer a draft: found one in the app. Members start Touched, the Grove needs no fuel, the Market sells them only Common melee weapons, Common kit and armour up to 1, and Thornskin or Pollen Veil may be chosen at Bloomed.
• Congregation costs and rescues in the Aftermath: members roll 1–2 for +1 Blight, a Turned member walks into the Throat (+1 Amber, no Hollowed), and an enemy Refuge rescues a member it left Down on a 5+.
• Scenario objectives are played on the tracker: the Bloom Heart (three Uses or a Fire hit burns it, up to 3 Amber harvested, +2 Din dice while it stands, a clean street next raid), the Radio (carrier at least 1 Noise, −2" Move, no Sprint; drops when Down; the trophy's Initiative re-roll), the Stranger (free on a Fight or Wits test of 2, 2 Health, rescued off your edge) and the Planting's Rite.
• Seed-Bearers and the Thorn Matriarch drop an Amber Loot token when slain; a Crit that breaks the Jar leaves a spore cloud.
• Blast weapons hit everyone in the blast: a Molotov makes a 2-dice attack on each model within 2", a pipe bomb a 3-dice attack within 3".
• Improvements work in raids: the Watch Post's Initiative die in round 1, the Amber Shrine's extra Blight die once a raid, and the Reloading Bench turns 3 Salvage into a Reload without an Errand.
• Market availability is rolled when you look for an Uncommon (3+) or Rare (5+) item; one that isn't there stays gone for the trip.
• Home drawbacks are applied: The Local's cellar die, the Corner Shop's Laid Up roll, the Tower Block's Meds or a second missed raid, and the Hospital Wing's lurking Husks.

v0.2.3 · 2026-10-24 · Rich finds and a richer economy

• Reward boost: Salvage, Rations and Reloads from Loot rolls and Scavenging are +10%, rounded up (Junk 2 → 3). Scenario Salvage rewards raised to match (Cache and Night Raid 6, Bloom Heart 9, The Planting 7); Amber sells for 9.
• Rich find: each Crit on a successful Search gives that Loot +1 extra Loot roll in the Aftermath (at most +2); lost if the Loot is dropped.
• Plentiful: a 6 on the die for how much Salvage, Reloads or Rations a Loot roll gives doubles it.

v0.2.2 · 2026-10-24 · Arrows

• Bows use Arrows like crossbows use Bolts: a new store, every shot uses one, nocking the next is a Reload action; unused arrows come home, fired ones are gone.
• Make arrows at home: 5 Arrows for 1 Salvage, without an Errand (also at founding).

v0.2.1 · 2026-10-24 · Bolts

• Crossbows no longer have endless ammunition: each shot uses a Bolt, and loading the next is a Reload action.
• Bolts are a new store, drawn at set-up like Reloads; unused bolts come home, fired ones are gone.
• Make bolts at home: 5 Bolts for 1 Salvage, without an Errand (also at founding). Bows still gather their arrows back.

v0.2.0 · 2026-10-24 · The Gardeners

• The Gardeners: lore, four new third-party units (Gardener Tender, Seed-Bearer, Hymnwarden, the Verdant Mother) and the Tender behaviour.
• New Congregation encounter table, with escorts.
• New scenario: The Planting. Stop the Rite before a Bloom Heart takes root.
• Playing a Congregation (draft): founding, the Grove, in-raid rules and costs. Not in the app's builder yet.
• The Hollowed return: on an Encounter roll in a campaign, a 6 brings back one of the campaign's Turned survivors instead; slain Hollowed are laid to rest.

v0.1.2 · 2026-10-24 · The Stranger

• Someone in the Weeds: the Stranger joins the winner free in the Aftermath, without an Errand.
• New d6 Stranger table: 1 Office Worker, 2 Student, 3 Waitress, 4 Courier, 5 Labourer, 6 any background costing 20 or less.

v0.1.1 · 2026-10-24 · Errands clarified

• Errands: two between raids (three in an Office Block), reset by the Aftermath; unused errands don't carry over.
• A Trade errand is one trip to the Market, covering all buying and selling (gear, Reloads, Amber) that turn.
• Each survivor recruited is a separate errand.

v0.1.0 · 2026-10-24 · First draft

• Core d6 dice-pool system: roll a pool, every 4+ is a success, every 6 a Crit.
• Blight dice, the 0–12 Blight track, 12 Gifts and 12 Marks, and Turning at 12.
• Alternating activations in initiative order, with creature broods taking their own place in the order.
• Noise per action, the Din roll in the End Phase, and creatures drawn to the loudest survivor.
• Limited ammunition: magazines, Reloads drawn from the Refuge stores, Jams on Scrap weapons.
• 20 backgrounds, 24 skills in 6 lists, the Market (weapons, armour, kit).
• Starter bestiary of 9 creatures, Lesser and Greater Encounter tables.
• 6 scenarios built around two Refuges contesting an objective.
• Campaign: Aftermath (casualties, injuries, experience, advances, Blight, loot, upkeep) and Errands.
• Four Seasons (the Waking, the Long Days, Glassfall, the Silence), each changing raids and asking a survival need of every Refuge.
• 15 Homes (bases of operations, from a campsite or an RV to a shopping mall), each with capacity, perk and drawback.
• The World: setting and lore, modern-day and Lovecraftian.