croatoan -- demon-blood rage plague (surge + Rivertown remnant) Azazel's leftover virus. Contaminated rooms raise exposure; quarantine rooms scrub it. Special Children and celestials are immune. Ordinary hunters: stay sealed, use quarantine bays, do not linger in the core. How you play (remnant) 1. Reach Rivertown via taxi / dungeon board, or drive I-5 north Oregon on the America atlas (cell 7,12) and enter rivertown 2. look — watch for [CONTAMINATED], [UNEASY], [PANIC], [OUTBREAK] 3. Isolation / Contaminated / Outbreak rooms raise your load over time 4. Clinic Lobby / Quarantine Bay clear the stain (stand and wait) 5. Quarantine Bay may hold a teaching croatoan vial (get / drink) 6. Fight ferals carefully — melee exposure spreads the stain (only inside the remnant) 7. Patient Zero waits in the Outbreak Core (apex; drops a prime vial) 8. Awakened Special Children: harvest <body> for more vials 9. exit or taxi home when done How you play (live surge) 1. Watch world broadcasts for [PANIC] / [OUTBREAK] copper-taste lines 2. seek event OR seek croatoan (aliases: croatan / outbreak / surge) — Cadence travels to Rivertown, walks hot streets, fights outbreak prey, scrubs at quarantine if stained 3. look in Rivertown — [CONTAMINATED] / panic bands 4. Seek Rivertown Quarantine Bay to scrub load 5. Special Children: private [MARKED] resonate — stain will not root How you play (continued) 6. Wait for [CLEAR] purge (seek completes), or keep hunting carefully Ward patients escalate incubating → symptomatic → feral. Incubating civilians hide and flee ferals. Symptomatic soft-aggro when panic is high. Ferals (and Patient Zero in the Outbreak Core) pursue and fight; connecting hits can scratch or bite-load the stain into you. Special Children who clear the remnant (or drink a croatoan vial) can awaken psychic powers — then harvest stained corpses for catalyst vials (see help special-child). Drinking vials inside the remnant resonates harder ([RESONANCE]). Global surge (Tide/event — not a dungeon queue) When the dark tide runs hard (evil winning, critical+) the virus can erupt in **Rivertown Remnant, Oregon** (River Grove in the show). A rarer maxed-evil wall event (hunter influx sibling) forces a louder outbreak. Lebanon hears broadcasts only — Kansas hubs are not plague streets. Contaminated remnant districts, uneasy civilians, Special Child [MARKED] itch, then a [CLEAR] purge that scrubs stained players. Between surges, Rivertown stays the quiet teaching / vial farm. Soft clear: stand in Rivertown Clinic / Quarantine Bay. Leaving the remnant while no surge is active also scrubs carried stain. Staff: gm croatoan force|clear|status. A containment leak (infection spreading past its intended zone) is a world-wide wipe: gm croatoan purge confirm. Player infection (not a dead-end) Incubating → private [UNEASY] tells. Symptomatic → [PANIC]; voluntary attack spreads scratch load. Feral → [FERAL]; voluntary attack spreads bite load. Quarantine scrubs; surge [CLEAR] scrubs players. Offline Echo / cast: during Winchester pair solo-day (pack cool-off after repeated left-behind splits), awakened Special Children like Sam may binge on their own — seek croatoan, harvest, drink vials, psychic verbs — see help special-child. Tags are plain text (not color alone).