Blackwater Troops

The Blackwater Crew made its living from docks and waterways; most of its people were fisherfolk and boatmen, and water was simply how they ate — casting nets, poling boats, reading the tide, all learned young and never lost. The leaders of the Crew have names of their own, but it is these men who hold the outfit up.

When the Maskwalkers ran wild, the Crew's blood ran hot: they would fuse their water arts with Perfect Transcension and fight the Maskwalkers in their own element. The fusion held. Gill slits opened along the neck, the eyes bulged, the lips thickened, blue-green scales spread, and day by day there was less man left than fish. Rods, nets and fish-headed diving helms — the tools they once lived by are all still on them, though what those tools are for has changed.

Now they turn up in any pond of a decent size. The grand talk of helping the Mandate rid the world of Maskwalkers is something they themselves seem to have forgotten.

• Blackwater Crew Disciple: Gill slits let him lie under water a long while; he mocks you with grotesque antics to draw a laugh or a charge, then calls his fellows in to close the ring.
• Blackwater Angler: Lives to fish, and joined the Crew for the sake of a good fishing ground; in a fight he treats the rod as a weapon, hooking debris out of the water and flinging it at your head.
• Blackwater Netter: An octopus coils around his neck, his kicks are savage, and the rounds he throws burst into crackling light that leaves a man's limbs numb and slow; the rounds were made, with some care, for blowing up fish behind the boss's back.
• Blackwater Diver: A fish-headed diving helm and a spear; the sweep crashes like a wave, and the throw is meant to pin a man where he stands. The helm was a charm for luck in the water; worn tight all day to hold Sha-Chi down, the head beneath has begun to look like a fish's.
• Blackwater Longblade Diver: A heavy blade with a rounded, paddle-like tip, made for chopping wreathed in Sha-Chi; slammed into water, it sends a wall of it at you.

Do not wrestle them in the shallows. Give ground toward dry land, or force them out of the water, where neither the gills nor the ambush will serve; in the shallows they need only half a body's length to surface for air and start again.

A thrown round can be read before it lands; move the feet first and the blade after. The long blade swings heavy and needs half a breath to come back up, and that half breath is your opening. In water they shift position almost instantly; out of it, they turn slowly. If they close the ring on you, break toward the long blade — that is usually where the gap is.