Exacids are the enforcers of The Dark Peak: biologically engineered crabs with armoured shells and heavy lateral pincers, created by The Nascenti and loyal to them with the uncomplicated fidelity of things built for a single purpose. They appear in bipedal form with some regularity, and the population of Hellsborough has learned to consider this unremarkable, which is a fact worth sitting with. Whether The Nascenti select for diminished cognitive capacity or whether the work produces it over time has not been established - either answer is unsatisfying. They will attempt the same approach three times before pausing, and that interval is your window. The problem was never the Exacid. The problem is what sent it, and why whatever sent it has decided not to show itself yet.

Mentiloth are the war steeds of the xin: moth-shaped, notoriously unstable, and possessed of a poisonous bite so reliable that their masters are considered more dangerous mounted than they would be simply walking. They are said to strike fear into most species without ever needing to take to the skies, which suggests that anyone present when they do take to the skies probably does not file a report.

Nobody made a gutterball on purpose — that is the official position of the nascenti, and it is, as with most official positions, technically accurate and substantially misleading. Spherical, approximately head-sized, rolling through drainage systems and derelict spaces with a vibration you feel before you hear it, each one feeds the hive mind: sound, temperature, dark matter density, the chemical signature of fear. If one finds you — which is materially different from you finding one — Van will want to know.

Cryptobites are the psychic garbage collectors of Hellsborough — massive, slow, almost entirely unkillable, and engaged simultaneously inside and outside the dark net in a manner I have stopped trying to parse. If one has fixed its attention on you, something you have been through has left a residue it finds interesting. The field notes recommend staircases.

Hexikid are the size of bin lorries and they move at roughly the same speed. That's not the problem. The problem is you're on a wet surface in murk-fog, and a hexikid is the exact colour of the road it's cleaning.