Rift Plate 025 · Lantern Codex
Gutter Hexer
A rain-working hexer rewrites the relationship between names, shadows, streets, and doors.
- Plate group
- Lantern Codex
- Classification
- Humanoid
- Field account
- Recovered
Recovered natural history
What witnesses saw.
The field account preserves what witnesses understood before the encounter became doctrine. It is observation, not certainty.
Field account
Rain began beneath the awnings before it touched the street. A woman crouched on the courthouse gutter, her coat stitched from notices and funeral ribbon, and wrote a name in wet soot. Every drain answered. Water looped uphill around living ankles, shadows stood in the wrong puddles, and the courthouse doors forgot who owned them.
Observed behavior
The Hexer prepares a block through tiny civic errors: a reversed chalk arrow, hair knotted in a grate, a name placed where rain will finish it. Connected water carries the curse. Alter one drainage path or correct one governing mark, and several workings can unravel at once.
Read the environment
The warning arrives before the creature.
Runoff climbs one curb while every other gutter flows normally.
Chalk utility marks rearrange after being washed away.
A downspout repeats private names in a stranger's voice.
Survival doctrine
Recognize the rule. Break the advantage.
These are field principles, not promises. The Rift punishes anyone who mistakes one successful answer for a permanent law.
01
Separate the water
Break connected plumbing and wet surfaces to isolate the Hexer from every curse beyond the nearest drain.
02
Correct the mark
Its workings depend on exact civic and folk symbols. An informed alteration can reverse the route the curse was meant to follow.
Recovered Field Plate
The sketch records its form. The surviving account records what it did.
01
Primary form
A hooded figure crouches beneath a stretched canopy or net hung with small objects.
02
Detail studies
Loose charms, tools, and a compact pack turn the figure into a moving roadside shrine.
Continue through the folio
025 of 100 recovered plates