The Lumen Rupture

One morning the ticker says the boundary tore and four things came through, and by the afternoon there is something standing off a coast near you, the water around it has turned, and the island beside it is cursed. Your war drum does nothing to it. This page is about why it came, what it is, what actually hurts it, and what makes it all stop.

The Black Tide

Whose hoard of Lumen opens the Rupture.

Oceans

The rocks whose ore becomes the shot, and the storm that marks a creature.

Workshop

Where a crate of doctrine shot is cast.

Combat

Why none of the battle rules apply here.

Why it opens

The Black Tide hoards Lumen, and the world watches the hoard climb a ladder of rungs. The first rung is only a warning. Rung 2 tears the boundary, and four of the Risen come through at once, each beside settled waters where Governors have lately been active, and in different oceans where the world allows it. A rung reached while a Rupture is already open does not open a second one: the creatures already standing grow harder to kill instead, which is the answer to why they seem to have got stronger overnight.

The Risen

Nobody knows what they are, and the Council has settled for calling them the Risen. Each one answers to a single doctrine, is hurt by that doctrine's shot and shrugs off the other three, and lays its own curse on the coast it stands beside. None of them is a settlement. There are no walls, no defenders and nothing to plunder or spy on. A creature is hunted, not besieged.

Creature	Answers to	Hurt only by	Lays	Lifted by
The Kraken	attack	Ember Shot, cast from Ember Ore	Blood Frenzy	a Bitter-Shore Tincture
The Leviathan	defence	Aegis Shot, cast from Aegis Stone	the Sour Watch	a War Drum
The Devil Whale	wealth	Sun Shot, cast from Sunstone	the Gilt Rot	an Old Guild Seal
The Akhlut	stealth	Veil Shot, cast from Veilglass	Famine	two Supply Chests

Each was sighted before anyone had a name for it. It came up under a grain convoy off the headland. The convoy did not come back, and neither did the water go still. A long plated back broke the surface for the better part of an hour, and never once showed a head. The tide went out of the bay and did not come back. Something enormous is lying where the water was. Three watchmen swear it was there. The fourth swears the water was empty the whole night, and he was the one looking.

Marks, and why the size of your fleet barely matters

A creature does not have an army to grind down. It has a row of marks, and every mark is a pool of hurt that fills up across every fleet that lands on it, yours and everyone else's. A Rupture that opens at rung 2 gives each creature 5 marks. Drive every mark off it and it dies.

Only the matching doctrine shot fills a mark. It takes 10 crates to fill one, and 10 catapults to throw each crate, so a mark is 100 catapults and 10 crates in one landing. Archers sting it from range, one point of hurt for every 10 archers up to 10 in a strike, and they are counted first so no crate is spent on damage the arrows already did. Every other soldier and every other ship does nothing at all. It is not land you can storm.

One strike never crosses more than one mark line. Land a thousand catapults and a hundred crates and you still take one mark, and the crates the mark did not need sail home with you. So does the wrong doctrine's shot, untouched, and so does any crate you had no catapults to throw. A fleet carries at most 50 crates. If the creature has already gone when you arrive, the fleet turns for home whole and nothing is spent.

Losses are small and fixed: about 2 in a hundred of every stack you land, never the last one. This is not a battle so much as a hunt, and the hunt is priced in shot and catapults, not in ships.

Marshal Voss: Field order

Bring the engines or the shot stays in the hold. A crate without ten catapults behind it is cargo. Count the catapults first, then load exactly the crates they can throw, and send the rest of the fleet somewhere it can do some good.

Where it goes

The moment a mark breaks, the creature flees one ocean, at once, and every fleet still sailing at it turns for home. Expect to chase it. The four also move on their own clock, together, every 6 hours or so, and the world is warned 30 minutes before they do. A move is held back once for a fleet already inbound with shot aboard, so a strike that is nearly there is not cheated of its landing. A creature never comes ashore, never attacks a fleet or an island, and never leaves the sea.

You can see where one is standing without sailing there: the ocean it stands in storms, and the storm clears when it leaves. The storm is a tell, and nothing more; it slows no ship. Oceans has the rest.

Striking from many harbours

A combined attack works against a creature, with one difference: every harbour loads the creature's own shot from its own stores, and the fleets land as a single blow that still takes at most one mark. The shot the blow did not need goes back to each harbour in proportion to what it sent, and every Governor in the blow is credited with their share of the hurt.

What it does to the coast

While a creature stands in an ocean, every settled island there whose Governor has been active lately carries its curse: the Kraken sets the garrison against itself, the Leviathan sours the watch, the Devil Whale drains the counting house and the Akhlut empties the granaries. A newcomer still under protection is spared. The curse lifts the moment the creature moves on, dies, or the Rupture ends, and each one can be lifted early at the shrine with the goods in the table above. The curse shows on Island State like any other, and the shrine mixes the cure.

Reading its wounds

Up close, a creature shows how hurt it is. Its hide darkens and cracks, its own colour seeps from the cracks and pools in the sea around it, and it sits lower in the water and moves more slowly as it weakens. That is a picture of the same health the marks show and nothing more: a wounded creature does no less, flees no slower and drops no more. The wide chart shows none of it; open the creature to see. Nothing is left behind when it dies or moves.

When it dies

The Governor who lands the last blow is named to the world, and everyone who ever struck it is counted. The kill pays back most of what the hunt cost: a pot of the creature's own mineral, worth about 80 in a hundred of the ore the shot took to cast, with 50 in a hundred of it riding home on the killer's fleet and the rest shared among everyone who hurt it, in proportion to the hurt. Every Governor whose crates landed earns the creature's seal in The Rupture set, not only the one who struck last, and every point of hurt goes on the Creature Slayers board in the rankings, which is kept for all time.

Master Quill: Margin note

The last blow is the loudest and the least of it. A creature at its final mark has been carried there by a dozen fleets that will not be named in the ticker. If you want the seal, land shot early; if you want the pot, land the most.

What ends it

The Rupture ends when the last of the four is dead, and the sea is quiet again. It also ends on its own after 14 days whether or not anything is dead, and the Council can close the matter early. Either way whatever is still standing is gone, every curse lifts, and every storm clears.

Reference

Common questions