Raccoon
●○○○○Takes something out of your bag and runs. You get it back by catching it.
The first thing you meet. It is not trying to hurt you and it is still a problem.
Everything in the Fraser Valley that will stop you, and how. One rule behind the whole list: a new enemy has to do something none of the others does — so every one carries what it does and how you get past it, and no two are the same.
Territory. They want you gone rather than dead, and most can be avoided by knowing the country.
Takes something out of your bag and runs. You get it back by catching it.
The first thing you meet. It is not trying to hurt you and it is still a problem.
Makes a patch of ground unusable for a while rather than damaging you.
Area denial. The threat is the space it takes away.
Comes in pairs, and retreats the moment you commit, then comes back.
Never fights you straight. Punishes swinging at the first one.
Cannot be beaten early. Backing away slowly works; running does not.
The first enemy that is a wall rather than a fight.
Stalks you off-screen for a while before it appears. You hear it first.
The one that is already following you when you notice.
Works a pack: circles to put you between them rather than closing head-on.
North bank, in the mountains. Where the coyote is opportunistic, this is organised.
Does not retreat at any health, ever, and will follow you between screens.
High country. Small, and the only thing on this list with no self-preservation.
Harmless most of the year and lethal in the autumn rut. Season decides.
The enemy that is only an enemy in September.
Hurts you for attacking it. Doing nothing costs nothing.
Teaches that swinging at everything is a choice with a price.
Goes for what you are carrying — a fish on the line, a bird you have not recorded.
Steals the thing you were about to bank rather than your health.
Does not move. Warns you first, and the damage lasts after the fight.
The dry rock above Hope is the northern end of their range, and they are really there.
Empties a fishing spot before you get to it, and is delighted about it.
Competition rather than combat. You cannot get that lake back for an hour.
Takes the fish off your line as you land it. Only when you have caught something.
Punishes the good catch specifically, which is worse than punishing you.
Refuses to yield ground. Cannot be killed, cannot be passed, has to be gone around.
Comic and genuinely obstructive, which is a combination nothing else here has.
Charges in a straight line and cannot turn. The fence is the weapon.
Langley. The first enemy solved entirely by terrain.
Owns the water. On land you are fine; the moment you are in it you are not.
Salt water only, and it changes what the ocean is.
Nothing in this family matches that filter.
The living residue of a collapsed boom. They want something, and only one of them is solved by hitting him.
Blocks a route and charges to pass. Paying works and is sometimes right.
The first enemy with a price rather than a health bar.
Takes what you have banked, not what you are carrying.
You find out at the next town. The railway survey is why they are here.
Moves at random and is dangerous by accident. Cannot be predicted or reasoned with.
The only human here with no intent at all.
Cannot be fought. Fines you, confiscates a tool, and is worse next time.
Authority as an obstacle. New Westminster is where they live.
Numbers and mockery. Individually nothing; they follow you and will not stop.
The threat is that they do not go away.
Only hostile if you have seen them. Turning around is a real option.
The border is a line through wild country, and whisky and opium cross it.
Searches you and takes anything you cannot account for, near the line.
The mirror of the smuggler, and no friendlier.
Begs, then follows, then turns. Feeding him ends it; ignoring him does not.
Seventeen years too late and still out here. What the boom left behind.
Never attacks. Buys the ground you were using out from under you.
He knows where the railway is going. Losing to him costs a place, not health.
Only trouble on payday, and then in a group. Otherwise they nod at you.
An enemy with a calendar.
Stops you dead and talks. Costs time and nothing else, which is enough.
The only cost in the game that is measured in daylight.
Nothing in this family matches that filter.
The fill-in-the-blank villain. A kind of thing rather than somebody, which is why there can be another one anywhere.
Follows at a fixed distance and never closes. Standing still is what hurts.
The generic one. Whatever the country is, this is that country with the warmth taken out of it.
Only on water. Comes up under you, so the danger is where you are standing.
The Fraser takes people every year and does not always give them back.
Turns you around. Walking away from it takes you back to it, until you answer it.
Men walked into this timber in 1858 and did not walk out. Some are still going.
Guards one spot and nothing else. It will not follow you a single step.
Somebody died holding this ground and has not been told it is worthless.
Arrives by silencing the birds first, so you always get a warning and never a direction.
The seventeenth, and the only lethal one with no habitat at all — it can be anywhere, which is what the family is for. It also makes the birds mean something outside the collection: a wood that has gone quiet has gone quiet for a reason.
Attacks the ground you are standing on rather than you, and takes it away.
A deadhead log standing on end. Snags sank more sternwheelers on this river than rocks ever did.
Never appears on screen. Comes down on wherever you have stopped moving.
The loggers' word for a broken limb hanging in the canopy, and their word for what it does. Standing still is the mistake.
You fight the sound of axes, and the sound is never where the crew is.
A hand-logging crew still working a claim that was cut over in 1861.
The whole screen moves downhill for the length of the fight. You fight falling.
The mountain came down once above Hope and part of it is still coming down.
Takes the map away rather than your health. It only hurts you once you are lost.
High country weather that decided to stay. Cousin to Misty and much less patient.
Every step you take costs you. It wins by making you take steps.
Sumas ground, which swallows a boot and keeps it, given something like a will.
Your steering goes slowly wrong. The longer the fight runs the less you steer.
The ague came off the Sumas flats every summer and everybody knew to expect it.
Takes a coin from you for every hit you land. Winning is expensive.
Somebody collected on this road once and has never stopped collecting.
Plants stakes that become walls, until the ground you can use is a straight line.
The railway line that was never built, still insisting on being straight.
Stronger for every town you have been through. Punishes having got this far.
It knows where you have been. Nothing else in the valley does.
Many weak bodies that reform unless the last of them goes down in one pass.
Cattle drowned in a Fraser freshet, still moving together.
Grows across the screen. You are fighting to get through it, not to kill it.
Langley is where the valley started being owned, and this is that, insisting.
The floor floods on a timer. The fight has a clock and the clock is made of water.
Salt water keeping its own time, as it does.
Binds you wherever you last stood still, so retreating to cover is the trap.
A drift net that came off a boat and went on fishing.
The river rises through the fight and takes the bank away from under it.
The June flood, which is the one thing everybody on this river is afraid of.
A ring of listeners. You break the circle to leave, and each one you hit makes the rest louder.
A revival that met on this ground once and has not been dismissed.
Nothing in this family matches that filter.
Cannot be fought at all. Weather with legs.
Cannot be fought or outrun. Drains you steadily until you leave the wet ground.
Sumas was famous for them — genuinely, notoriously famous. Weather with legs.
Nothing until something disturbs the nest, and then everything at once.
Punishes hitting scenery.
Spring only, on moving water. Makes fishing worse rather than making you hurt.
Attacks the activity, not the boy.
Nothing in this family matches that filter.
Dungeon bosses, which are a different thing. A ghost is a kind of thing and can be anywhere; a boss is somebody, there is only one, and the fight works differently every time.
a ghost, and a very industrious one
He never comes to you — the shaft does. Every swing of his pick brings more of the ceiling down, so the room you are fighting in gets smaller the longer you take over it.
You can hear him working before you can see anything at all. He is a long way in, he is still going, and he has been at it fifteen years.
a fire that has not gone out
She spreads along anything dry and she is faster over sawdust than you are. The fight is about where you are standing, not where she is.
The mill burned once and has never entirely stopped. She is warm to stand near, which is the worst thing about her.
a hostess with no guests
She is not hostile and she cannot be hit. She is trying to seat you, and every chair she gets you into costs you a turn. You win by leaving politely.
The table is laid for eleven. It has been laid for eleven for ten years. She will be very glad to see you and you must not sit down.
something enormous in four feet of water
You never see all of it. It moves under the floor and you fight the sound — go where the footsteps are not, because where they are is where it already is.
Whatever lives in the flooded barn learned the sound of a man walking on a wet floor, and it has been practising.
a ghost
She is the visibility. The closer she comes the less you can see, until you are fighting by the sound of survey stakes rattling. The glass is how you find her.
The mountain is fog most of the year and she is the fog most of the time. Somebody knew her well enough to give her a name like that, and that is the frightening part.
a ledger with opinions
He copies you. Any tool you use twice, he has an entry for by the second time. The fight rewards doing something you have not done yet.
Everything that has ever come through this fort is written down. He would like to know what you have brought, and he will be writing it down as you fight.
a pilot who will not admit he is aground
He calls out the safe water and he is lying, though not on purpose. Trust the deck you can see and not the voice, on a floor that is tilting throughout.
He is still calling soundings. They are all wrong, they have been wrong for years, and he says them with total confidence.
a cannery still running its season
The machinery is the boss. There is no body to hit — you fight it by stopping the line one belt at a time, while it goes on making more of whatever it makes.
The belts are turning and there is nobody on the line. Something is still filling cans, and it has been filling them for a very long time.