Bestiary

Training Dummy

Straw lashed to a post in each capital’s training yard. It never falls and never hits back, so it is where a build gets measured before it goes out on the road.

Armored Training Dummy

The same post in an iron breastplate and pot helm. The armor holds half of each hit, so it shows what a build does into a defended target.

Crown Road Mote

A knot of loose shard-light that drifts the approach roads and bumps into whatever it meets. Harmless one at a time. The first thing most Shardbound ever kill.

Shardfed Grazer

A placid grazing animal that has eaten shard-glass long enough to glitter from the inside. It would rather leave than fight, and it is worth killing only because the Crown pays for the glass.

Wayline Prowler

The reason the road between capitals needs wardens. Prowlers work the verges, take stragglers, and thin out only when someone is sent to thin them.

Velis Wisp

Light that behaves like an animal. The Velis Meadows are full of them, and nobody has settled whether they are alive or simply a habit the break got into.

Dorvan Strider

Long-legged and unhurried, it crosses Dorvan Woods stepping over anything shorter than itself. It only fights what refuses to move.

Alfa Roadwarden

An abandoned Alfa border construct. Its hornshot strikes the first body in its path; the ring that follows leaves refuge at its feet.

Shardhorn Stalker

It hunts by the sound of glass under a boot, which out here is most sounds. Found the whole length of the road, and bigger the further you get from your own capital.

Shardhorn Stalker

This Stalker rakes three times in front, then hunts one player with hornshots and a gore. Your partner can block a shot by standing in its path, and halve the gore by standing with the hunted.

Dorvan Strider

This larger Strider guards the western shard clearing. It sweeps in front, then behind, and calls a wisp that mends it. When it bellows, stop it or leave the circle: whoever stays is rooted, and whoever is in front gets tossed.

Dorvan Groveheart

The Dorvan Groveheart calls wisps that attack and mend its roots. Stop their healing while the rest of the group keeps the tree occupied.

Border Watchbreaker

It came for the border watchtowers first, which is how it got the name. Both marches have lost posts to one.

Border Watchbreaker

Marchglass Harrier

Runs in packs across open glass, chasing down whatever is alone. The first thing on the road that genuinely expects you to bring someone.

Corvel Captain

A former Alfa commander who rallies a pair of fusiliers. Their shots stop when they fall; keep their firing lines away from your allies.

Matrix Scarling

The Scar makes these constantly, out of nothing anyone can name. Kill six and six more are along. That is rather the point of them.

Heartglass Reaver

A scarling that kept going. Heartglass grows through it in sheets, and it hits like the thing it grew out of.

Crownless Eidolon

A Shardbound who died too far from either capital and came back anyway, wearing neither Crown. Both sides refuse to discuss them.

Matrix Heart Splinter

A walking piece of the Matrix Heart. Gather to share its marked blow, then leave its repeated pulses. Below half health, fractures separate those two jobs.

Eastern Crown Bulwark

Alfa Citadel’s shield line. It holds the pads out on the line, the breach, and again the dais, and expects to be hit first at every one of them.

Eastern Crown Striker

Alfa’s answer to anything that gets past the shields, and quick enough that most things do not.

Eastern Crown Arcanist

Holds the Crown Court’s processional gate in a pair, from behind the wall. Reaching one means coming through the court’s mouth first.

Eastern Crown Chaplain

The one healer beside Alfa’s dais. Leave it standing and everything else in the court takes twice as long to kill.

Western Crown Bulwark

Omega Citadel’s shield line, forged rather than raised, and no easier to move for it. It holds the same three places: the pads out on the line, the breach, and the dais.

Western Crown Striker

Omega’s counterattack, kept behind the bulwarks until something is worth spending it on.

Western Crown Arcanist

Holds the Crown Court’s processional gate in a pair, fed by power drawn straight off the forge floor. The same rule applies: kill it first.

Western Crown Chaplain

The one healer beside Omega’s dais, and the single most annoying thing between an Alfa raid and the Arc Core.

Eastern Crown Core

The Core under Alfa Citadel. Not a monster — a piece of the thing that broke, still lit, and the reason the east still stands. Breaking it ends the season.

Western Crown Core

The Core under Omega Citadel, the west's half of the same broken thing. It is what the entire road is pointed at.