2026-09-07 11:31:25
Anonymous:
DES105 r3 (Campaign r8) under PMU008 and PMR008: a section for the Visionary with the intended experience as written and three tensions (mastery vs renewal, precision vs plain speech, the refuge at stake without a tax) with links to scenes; the Tram's later return no longer forces a wait - the quick plan earned by understanding is the main line, the stay is the priced alternative, the Siphon is optional margin against one named uncertainty; the lure's activation (9:05), expiry (~9:55 after a 9:40 extraction), committed-and-left charge and retarget-to-summit-lamp at expiry are stated; the changed return's 8:10 exit described as it is, the tram's availability priced, five cells free (REV105 r2 clauses, PMR008 1); criterion-11 paragraph links the ledger instead of a moving count (X35); Exchange cadence and reel terminals scoped in 3.4; the three visits run against the vision's decision test
hold the flood/campaign.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Campaign (DES104)
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**DES105 r2, on the Campaign page at r7 · 2026-09-07 · Lead Game and Systems Designer · In review · Revised against the critic's REV105 r1 and the External Critic's X34: the later return's crossing is now the main line, the same heavy stands on the rail on both later visits and is killed for the later return's first charge, every beat inside pursuit range is priced, the stairs have a distance, section 8 quotes the Campaign designer's three consolidated figures at Districts r11 and the owner page carries them. r6 (ee4202) delivered PM's DES105: section 3.2 is now the Tram Incline across three visits, a first visit, a changed return and a later return, with legal starts, Equipment's three approaches, Colony's two investment paths, World's explanation changes, the named geography and three ledgers; the Exchange's found bank state is ratified; D026 is mirrored; Combat's R12 and R13 are adopted; the asset wording is corrected. r5 (9366c8) was revised against the External Critic's X33 and the Campaign designer's answer to Colony (Districts r7): the owner page now carries criterion 11's four parts, with positioning deferred until the ledger settles and the old short-game hypothesis withdrawn in that form; the Lock Flight's canal is a switched state, joined or parted on the board, never conditioned on extraction; one supported berth in the whole city; the countersignatures are complete. r4 (7daf34) was revised against the critic's REV104 r4 and r5 and the reader's Q51: the bargeman's plan is written to the lure's hundred seconds; the Weir intake sits beside its beacon and the Tram's board shows no intake while the panel is Off; the Heavy has its number back; a floater never leaves water; the Exchange points to its new page; section 8 carries the Campaign designer's accepted baseline with PM's caveats; section 7 cites REF110. r3 (6e4b59) was revised against PMR006's five blockers and REV104 r2: the ending copy is Stop, Keep or Leave; the three written expeditions earn their first battery at a crowd's edge inside pursuit range, and the Tidal Barrier's harvest is collected where it falls; each new district tables which panel position selects which intake and which beacon flashes; the bargeman's plan is written in the order the rules allow; the presentation categories are listed once (D025) and authored art is put to the owner (X31). r2 (b92234) and r1 (34dc09, 9d3590) are in page history.**
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**DES105 r3, on the Campaign page at r8 · 2026-09-07 · Lead Game and Systems Designer · In review · Under PMU008 the vision comes first: a new section after the owner page gives the Visionary the intended experience and three tensions in plain words. PMR008's bounded corrections are made: the Tram's later return no longer forces a wait, its easy path is the payoff of understanding and the stay is the priced alternative, the Siphon is called optional margin, the lure's activation and expiry are accounted for with its charge committed and left, the changed return's exit and the tram's availability are corrected, the later start has five free cells, and the criterion-11 paragraph no longer carries a moving count (X35); the Exchange's cadence and reel terminals are scoped in 3.4; the three visits are run against the vision's decision test. r7 (de4893) was revised against the critic's REV105 r1 and the External Critic's X34: the later return's crossing is now the main line, the same heavy stands on the rail on both later visits and is killed for the later return's first charge, every beat inside pursuit range is priced, the stairs have a distance, section 8 quotes the Campaign designer's three consolidated figures at Districts r11 and the owner page carries them. r6 (ee4202) delivered PM's DES105: section 3.2 is now the Tram Incline across three visits, a first visit, a changed return and a later return, with legal starts, Equipment's three approaches, Colony's two investment paths, World's explanation changes, the named geography and three ledgers; the Exchange's found bank state is ratified; D026 is mirrored; Combat's R12 and R13 are adopted; the asset wording is corrected. r5 (9366c8) was revised against the External Critic's X33 and the Campaign designer's answer to Colony (Districts r7): the owner page now carries criterion 11's four parts, with positioning deferred until the ledger settles and the old short-game hypothesis withdrawn in that form; the Lock Flight's canal is a switched state, joined or parted on the board, never conditioned on extraction; one supported berth in the whole city; the countersignatures are complete. r4 (7daf34) was revised against the critic's REV104 r4 and r5 and the reader's Q51: the bargeman's plan is written to the lure's hundred seconds; the Weir intake sits beside its beacon and the Tram's board shows no intake while the panel is Off; the Heavy has its number back; a floater never leaves water; the Exchange points to its new page; section 8 carries the Campaign designer's accepted baseline with PM's caveats; section 7 cites REF110. r3 (6e4b59) was revised against PMR006's five blockers and REV104 r2: the ending copy is Stop, Keep or Leave; the three written expeditions earn their first battery at a crowd's edge inside pursuit range, and the Tidal Barrier's harvest is collected where it falls; each new district tables which panel position selects which intake and which beacon flashes; the bargeman's plan is written in the order the rules allow; the presentation categories are listed once (D025) and authored art is put to the owner (X31). r2 (b92234) and r1 (34dc09, 9d3590) are in page history.**
**Added by the Campaign and District Designer, 2026-09-06, without changing anything on this page.** The role this page stands in for is now staffed. Its first deliverable is [Districts (CAM101)](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts), which **adopts this campaign rather than proposing a rival one**: it takes section 2's set and section 3's districts as written, adds an independent count test and a recommended seven, the order of play and travel rules, the progression map, a bottom-up duration hypothesis, one consequence of failure and one alternative route to the head-works, and writes the two districts this page's coverage table marks as sketches — [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) and [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works). One disagreement is recorded there and not here: the refuge should not be counted as the eighth district. The transfer this page's bookkeeping anticipates is the lead's to make, not mine to take.
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- *A later build choice.* At the Collector you pack the harvester, coil and arc with a battery each, or the grid diver, coil and cable reel, and the difference is whether you came for charge to spend on the spot or for reach through a gate the panel cannot feed. Either rack leaves two cells for what you find, and neither is a better number than the other. (Build Paths, family one.)
- *The payoff.* At the head-works the governor has fresh grease and today's tally. The city has been harvesting the Flood to keep its own lights on, and the surveyor who shut one relay for one district now holds the lever for all of them. Stop, and the harvest ends and the districts go dark in turn, the colony's pump with them, while the gravity docks and hand-worked locks keep everyone alive; Keep, and you become the thing upstream that keeps time, setting the cadence and the clutches yourself, the one outcome you can come back and change; Leave, and the machine runs as you found it, and the board records that it could have been stopped. (The Head-works page; the contract's state table.)
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**Who it is for, and what it offers.** The player PM named provisionally: crowd-survival players who want discoveries to change how they fight and travel. What offers value: one rule that is the weapon, the key, the lure and the fuel, learned by experiment in a district that is a machine, and now at campaign scale, seven machines on one water and a mystery whose evidence changes what you do next. Scope: section 8's thirty-five expeditions and about eight and a half hours of authored beats, a hypothesis. Positioning: the one-district document's hypothesis, a short authored game beside the crowd games at their prices, was reasoned from three to four hours and is withdrawn in that form; a positioning statement at the new length is deferred until the baseline ledger PM asked for is confirmed, and its evidence will be the Reference pages' measured data with their caveats, never inference from length. Those are criterion 11's four parts: the player, the value, the scope, and the positioning with its evidence and uncertainty.
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**Who it is for, and what it offers.** The player PM named provisionally: crowd-survival players who want discoveries to change how they fight and travel. What offers value: one rule that is the weapon, the key, the lure and the fuel, learned by experiment in a district that is a machine, and now at campaign scale, seven machines on one water and a mystery whose evidence changes what you do next. Scope: the Districts page's current ledger, quoted in section 8 with its caveats, a hypothesis and not a measurement. Positioning: the one-district document's hypothesis, a short authored game beside the crowd games at their prices, was reasoned from three to four hours and is withdrawn in that form; a positioning statement at the new length is deferred until the baseline ledger PM asked for is confirmed, and its evidence will be the Reference pages' measured data with their caveats, never inference from length. Those are criterion 11's four parts: the player, the value, the scope, and the positioning with its evidence and uncertainty.
**The count.** Seven external districts pass the two tests that have been run on them, the lead's written-expedition test and the Campaign designer's lever ladder: the Pumping District, the Lock Flight, the Tram Incline, the Exchange, the Collector, the Tidal Barrier and the Head-works. The refuge is not an eighth; it is where the levers land. The Salt Pans are deferred, not banned. PM records this as D022, provisional.
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## For the Visionary: the intended experience as the lead understands it, and three tensions
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*PMU008 asks the lead for a concise statement and up to three consequential design tensions, with links to existing scenes. This is that, in plain words; it is not another document. The Visionary's Game vision on the Brief is the working direction, and nothing here argues with it.*
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**The experience, as currently written.** You are one surveyor from a small refuge in a drowned city, going out for fifteen minutes at a time into a district that is a machine. The machine does four things with one thing, current: water carries it, devices run on it, a lit lamp draws the Flood to it, and the Flood itself is made of it, which is what you fight with. On each trip you go in for something, salvage or a place you have not reached, while the Flood arrives in surges you can predict from a forecast and steer with a switch. You learn the machine by trying it: you light a branch to open a door and watch the crowd come to the light you lit; you drain a channel to walk a bed and lose the door the water fed; you leave a lock open and next time the canal is joined. What you learn changes what you pack and where you go, and what you change stays changed. Over the campaign you follow the signal upstream through seven such machines to the place that keeps them all in time, and you decide what your refuge should keep running once you know that the city lives on the harvest. The scenes that show this as written: a first trip ([the Design Document's expedition one](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document)), a later one changed by knowing ([expedition six](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document)), the Lock Flight (section 3.1 below), the Tram Incline across three visits (section 3.2), the Tidal Barrier (section 3.3), and [the Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works).
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**Tension one: mastery against renewal.** The vision says mastery should make choices more deliberate, not make consequences disappear. The design's strongest rule, that the Flood sheds its charge once and is then worth nothing, guarantees that fighting never pays twice; but understanding does pay twice, and it should. On the Tram's later return the player who knows supply was withheld gets an empty yard and an easy trip home with cargo, and the reviewer's instinct was to take that away by forcing a second surge. The lead's position, now on the page, is that the easy return is the payoff and the choice is whether to trust it. The question for the vision is how much of the campaign's renewal may come from earned ease, and where the game must still put something in the way of a player who understands it.
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**Tension two: precision against plain speech.** The machine has four genuinely different causes that the owner needs to be able to tell apart: power (what a device runs on), signal (what chooses where a surge enters), permission (what upstream allows a district to call at all), and supply (whether anything answers the call). Every one earns its place, because each is a lever the player pulls somewhere, and the vision rightly says not to collapse them. But four causes and their readable signs are why the pitch was hard to follow. The lead's view is that the game teaches them one at a time across districts, which is what the campaign's order does, and that the pitch should do the same rather than name all four at once. The scenes are the pumping district for power against signal, the Exchange for permission, and the Collector for supply.
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**Tension three: the refuge at stake, without a tax.** The vision wants survival to make the player responsible for the system they depend on, and the refuge is where that lands. The design refuses upkeep, decay and forced defence, rightly, so that a failed investigation never becomes a bill. What it has instead is standing states that reach home: a dock left wet, a board gone dark, a surge that now climbs away from the dock road, and at the end a city that goes dark district by district if the player stops the harvest. All of that is told on a board and seen on the next trip; almost none of it is yet played at the refuge itself. The question for the vision is whether responsibility can be felt through the districts alone, as the Campaign designer argues, or whether the refuge needs one thing the player does there, in the running world, that the districts' outcomes change.
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## 1. The shared rules, in one paragraph
Water connects: current anywhere in a joined body of water is everywhere in it, and dry ground does not conduct. A device works only while its channel carries current, from the district's own switched circuit or from a coil discharge that energises water for two seconds and stuns for eight. A district dispatches when its drum's contact closes and the trunk permits it, and a surge enters at the flashing beacon if the supply provides one; after entry a body resolves stun, then pursuit, then its role's own target, then the nearest lit beacon it can reach, then spread. Organisms shed charge once: one unit on a kill, five per ten stunned in water; batteries hold ten and fill in the order the player set at the last shelter; a discharge spends a battery; the arc drains one over ten seconds, body to body. The rack is eight cells. The full contract, with readable signals, the state table and the ownership of every rule, is the [shared rule contract](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction). A district may add to it; none may change what power, signal, a beacon or charge means.
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#### Changed return: the wet-yard breach (middle; the player now believes the Flood is supplied, because the Exchange's bank showed this district permitted)
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**What changed in the world.** The Lock Flight's L2 stands open and the board shows the upper canal joined. The Exchange has been visited: its bank was found with three clutches engaged, Pumping, the Lock Flight and this district, so the surges here were never weather; they were permitted deliveries. Both crane parts are banked and the assembly commissioned. The tram stands at the depot where it was left, and a heavy now stands on the rail in front of it, because heavies gather where the tram was left; the coil cannot stun a dry rail, so the tram is not an option on this visit.
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**What changed in the world.** The Lock Flight's L2 stands open and the board shows the upper canal joined. The Exchange has been visited: its bank was found with three clutches engaged, Pumping, the Lock Flight and this district, so the surges here were never weather; they were permitted deliveries. Both crane parts are banked and the assembly commissioned. The tram stands at the depot where it was left, and a heavy now stands on the rail in front of it, because heavies gather where the tram was left. The tram is available at a price, ten hits at the rail before any surge, which is what the later return pays; path B walks instead, because with the lamp off the tram tows nothing this plan wants, and the four cells are for the coil and the Exchange's door.
**Prepared, path B.** Tooling issues the four-cell record the surveyor assembled and recorded at the Lock Flight's quay dock, a shelter: `. C C B / . . . I`, battery linked to the coil, four cells free (Equipment's approach B). Objective: through the pass this time, to read the Exchange's drums from its door and confirm which clutch is this district's, then home. The insulation is the entry fee: the yard under Gates is energised water.
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- **3:30.** The surveyor wades to the crowd's edge in insulation and works it with the cutter inside pursuit range: ten kills, ten motes walked over as they fall; two hits taken. Battery ten.
- **4:00.** Standing in the yard's water at the crowd's edge, the surveyor discharges: the fifty organisms in it are stunned for eight seconds and shed five large motes; the surveyor walks over the two nearest, ten units back into the emptied battery, and the other three fade. The yard's water was already energised by Gates, so the two seconds added no hazard; the stun is what the battery bought.
- **4:08.** The stun ends as the surveyor is wading away toward the dock end with the two motes taken; the recovering edge chases for the first ten metres and lands one hit before the surveyor is out of range. The walk through knee-deep water to the panel takes the rest of the minute.
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- **4:30.** The panel to Rail: the pass opens, the yard beacon dies, and the recovered crowd, its beacon gone and the tram's lamp off, spreads in the yard from where it stands. The surveyor takes the stairs, not the tram, which stands blocked by its heavy; the heavy is not on the road and is left alone.
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- **4:30.** The panel to Rail: the pass opens, the yard beacon dies, and the recovered crowd, its beacon gone and the tram's lamp off, spreads in the yard from where it stands. The surveyor takes the stairs; the tram is left blocked, because clearing it would cost ten hits in front of a recovering crowd for a lamp the plan has no use for.
- **5:45.** The summit. Through the pass to the Exchange's door: seven drums on one shaft, three clutches engaged, one of them this district's. The surveyor does not walk the floor; that is the Exchange's own visit. Back at the stores: the bundle taken; the Siphon taken this time, forgoing the Kit, and fitted at the summit shelter with its feed set into the battery, for a later trip; two cells free.
- **6:45.** Down the stairs in the cutting, past nothing.
- **7:30.** The depot foot. The fifty have spread across the yard in the three minutes since 4:30 and their ring reaches the gates: the crank would be worked inside it. The surveyor throws the panel to Gates instead: the yard beacon lights, the fifty retarget to it and walk back toward the intake end, and the gates open on their own power; the nearest bodies pass within range as they turn, one hit. The pass shuts above, which costs nothing now.
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- **7:50.** Through the powered gates to the dock road. Extraction at 8:10, before the second dispatch: one bundle, the Siphon, a full battery lost at the dock, four hits taken.
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- **7:50.** Through the powered gates to the dock road. Extraction at 8:10, as the second dispatch pours in at the intake end, forty metres behind powered gates: one bundle, the Siphon, a full battery lost at the dock, four hits taken.
**The alternative on this return, path A with Equipment's approach C.** Instead of tooling, the berth: the surveyor departs basic with a portable beacon, a battery and the Kit (`. . L B / . . K .`), earns ten motes at the dry edge under Gates without wading, plants the beacon dark on the loading apron, arms it, and throws Rail: the yard beacon dies and the crowd retargets to the lure on the apron, off the road, for a hundred seconds; the surveyor rides the dark tram up, clears the heavy from the rail in the five seconds the cutter needs with no crowd behind, and extracts at the summit berth without retracing the yard. The price is the beacon and its battery left where the crowd stood, the assembly spent on the berth instead of tooling, and no control window in the yard. Both plans reach the pass; they differ in whether the surveyor buys a stun or a destination, and neither can ride past the heavy without paying for it.
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Dropped thirty-five; collected twenty; spent ten; fifteen lost to fade and ten at the dock.
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#### Later return: the empty flash, and the crossing that salvage pays for (late; the player now believes the Flood is harvested, and comes to set the district's standing state for the head-works approach)
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#### Later return: the empty flash, and the return that understanding makes easy (late; the player now believes the Flood is harvested, and comes to set the district's standing state for the head-works approach)
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**What changed in the world.** At the Collector the surveyor held one basin's gate, withholding this district's first supply while leaving it permitted: a one-surge buffer, which buys the ride up and not the trip. The board shows the hold, the panel on Gates, and the tram at the depot with its heavy still on the rail.
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**What changed in the world.** At the Collector the surveyor held one basin's gate, withholding this district's first supply while leaving it permitted: a one-surge buffer, which buys the ride up and not the trip. The board shows the hold, the panel on Gates, and the tram at the depot with its heavy still on the rail. The network's cadence is already in the notebook from the Exchange's drums, so nothing on this trip needs to be waited for.
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**Prepared.** The small circuit set: `. . Q B / . . L .`, the Siphon's feed into the battery, the battery linked to the beacon, the Kit not carried; four cells free. Objective: copy the network's cadence from the summit board, which shows it only across two ticks, and leave the tram at the summit with its lamp lit, so that the next surge climbs away from the depot road the colony now uses. The first tick will be an empty flash; the second brings a surge, and the surveyor will still be at the summit when it does. That is the visit's problem, and it is one the first visit never had: coming down past a surge with no coil.
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**Prepared.** The small circuit set: `. . Q B / . . L .`, the Siphon's feed into the battery, the battery linked to the beacon, the Kit not carried; five cells free. Objective: leave the tram at the summit with its lamp lit, so that later surges climb toward it and away from the depot road the colony now uses, and bring the summit's bundle home. The first dispatch will be an empty flash, which the surveyor expects; the second, at 8:00, will bring a surge, which the surveyor intends to be gone before. This is the return that understanding makes easy, and the page says so: the player who knows supply is withheld has an empty yard to work in, and that is the payoff of the Collector's lesson.
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- **0:00.** The depot dock, panel on Gates as left, the yard beacon lit, the tram behind its heavy. No surge is due for three minutes and the first is withheld. The surveyor kills the heavy on the rail in ten hits, about five seconds, and walks over its large mote: five units into the battery, the visit's first charge and the tram's clearance.
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- **0:00.** The depot dock, panel on Gates as left, the yard beacon lit, the tram behind its heavy. No surge is due for three minutes and the first is withheld. The surveyor kills the heavy on the rail in ten hits, about five seconds, no hit taken from a single slow body against a retreating cutter, and walks over its large mote: five units into the battery, the visit's first charge and the tram's clearance.
- **0:30.** The panel to Rail: the yard beacon dies, the rail glows, the tram's lamp lights, the pass opens, the gates go dark. The lamp is lit from here, so the standing state is set at the depot and carried up. The surveyor boards.
- **1:00 to 3:00.** The tram climbs, no crowd behind it, no heavy ahead: an empty ride.
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- **3:00.** From the slope the surveyor watches the yard beacon flash below and nothing come. The empty flash: the dispatch happened and the arrival did not, because the Collector is holding what would have been sent. A flash never promised a crowd; it promised a call. The first tick is on the board.
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- **3:30.** The summit. The lever left up, the lamp left lit. The bundle from the stores into the cell beside the Siphon, touching it and not the battery; at the shelter the Siphon consumes the bundle and itself: three units more, eight in the battery, two cells freed. The surveyor waits in the shelter for the second tick.
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- **8:00.** The second tick, and the cadence copied. Surge two: eighty walkers enter the yard at its intake end; the yard beacon is dark under Rail and the tram's lamp at the summit is the only lit beacon they can reach, so they turn onto the incline road and climb toward it. The surveyor starts down the stairs in the cutting, ten metres below the road, passing the climbing crowd out of range.
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- **9:00.** The depot foot. The crowd's tail is still turning off the yard onto the road, and the way from the stairs' foot to the dark gates crosses its path; the ring is drawn across the road. The surveyor plants the beacon on the loading apron and arms it, five seconds, and steps back out of range: the nearest bodies retarget to the lure, nearer than the summit's lamp, and walk to the apron, off the road, while the rest continue uphill. The crank, ten seconds; the road to the gates and through them, ten more; the beacon burns its eight units, eighty seconds, and expires when the surveyor is on the dock road, and the bodies on the apron spread from it.
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- **9:40.** Extraction: nothing carried, no charge, no hits taken; the beacon and its battery left on the apron; the Siphon and the bundle consumed. Above, the surge holds at the lit tram at the summit, which is where the next one will go too.
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- **3:00.** From the slope the surveyor watches the yard beacon flash below and nothing come. The empty flash: the dispatch happened and the arrival did not, because the Collector is holding what would have been sent. A flash never promised a crowd; it promised a call.
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- **3:30.** The summit. The lever left up, the lamp left lit: the standing state. The bundle from the stores into a free cell, as cargo; the Siphon stays fitted and unused. The board is glanced at, not waited for: the cadence it would show across two ticks is the one the Exchange's drums already gave.
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- **4:00.** Down the stairs in the cutting, past nothing.
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- **5:00.** The depot foot. The yard is empty, because the surge that would have filled it was never sent; the gates are dark under Rail. The crank, ten seconds, outside any ring because there is none; the dock road.
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- **5:30.** Extraction: one bundle banked, the heavy's five units lost at the dock, no hits taken; the beacon, its battery and the Siphon carried home unused. Above, the tram stands lit at the summit, and the surge at 8:00 will climb toward it.
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**The alternative on this return, priced.** With the Kit taken instead of the Siphon on the changed return, the heavy's five units alone buy fifty lit seconds: enough for the plant, the crank and the crossing with a few seconds to spare, and nothing if the arming is fumbled. Without a beacon at all, the surveyor waits on the stairs until the crowd's tail has passed up the road, then cranks through an emptied yard; that costs the wait, and the third dispatch at 12:00 is the clock it runs against. The first visit's solution, ride up lit and crank down through a spread crowd, is not available here: this crowd is not spread, it is entering and turning, and the crank sits in its path.
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**The alternative on this return, priced: staying for the second tick.** A player who has not read the Exchange's drums, or who wants the cadence confirmed at the summit before the head-works, stays at the shelter until 8:00. Then the second surge enters the yard, finds the tram's lamp at the summit the only lit beacon it can reach, and climbs the incline road toward it while the surveyor descends the stairs in the cutting, out of range. At the foot, about 9:00, the crowd's tail is still turning off the yard onto the road, and the way from the stairs' foot to the dark gates crosses its path; the ring is drawn across the road. The heavy's five units buy fifty lit seconds: the surveyor plants the beacon on the loading apron and arms it, five seconds, and steps back out of range; the nearest bodies retarget to the lure, nearer than the summit's lamp, and walk to the apron, off the road, while the rest continue uphill; the crank, ten seconds; the road to the gates and through them, ten more; twenty-five seconds spare against the one uncertainty in the plan, whether the ring lies across the crank when the surveyor reaches it and has to be waited out. Extraction at 9:40 with nothing carried. The beacon is armed at 9:05 and still lit at extraction; had the expedition run on, it would have expired at about 9:55, and the bodies on the apron would then retarget to the lit summit lamp and climb, because a crowd whose beacon dies goes to the nearest reachable lit one and spreads only if there is none. The five units are committed to the planted beacon and left with it; about half are burned by the time the boat leaves, and the rest go with the item, which is lost at the expedition's end.
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**Newly learned:** supply is a third thing, separate from timing and permission; a plan that waits for a surge to fund a coil is not a plan when the surge is withheld; a bundle can be thirty seconds of light; the tram left lit at the summit pulls a surge uphill, seen from the stairs. **Given up:** the bundle and the Siphon, both consumed; the beacon and its battery, left; the depot gates dark for every later visit, because the lamp at the summit needs Rail. **Changed for good:** the tram at the summit, lit, so the next surge here climbs toward it and away from the dock road; the head-works approach that starts from this summit.
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**The Siphon, honestly.** On the quick plan it is not needed. On the stay, consuming the bundle and itself puts three more units in the battery, eighty lit seconds instead of fifty: thirty seconds of margin against the wait at the crank, bought with the bundle that would have been banked, the Siphon itself and the Kit's offer forgone on the changed return. That is optional margin, not a necessity and not the discovery that changes this route; its honest value is what it teaches, that a bundle can become charge where no surge will supply it, which is the head-works' problem and not this district's. A player who wants certainty over cargo takes the margin; one who has read the drums takes the bundle home and the trip that understanding made easy.
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**Ledger, later return.** One battery, capacity ten; the Siphon's three units count as collected by conversion.
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**Newly learned:** supply is a third thing, separate from timing and permission; a plan that waits for a surge to fund a coil is not a plan when the surge is withheld; the tram left lit at the summit pulls the next surge uphill, which the board will show on the next visit; a bundle can be light, at a price. **Given up:** the depot gates dark for every later visit, because the lamp at the summit needs Rail; and, on the stay, the bundle, the Siphon and a longer trip. **Changed for good:** the tram at the summit, lit, so the next surge here climbs toward it and away from the dock road; the head-works approach that starts from this summit.
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**Ledger, later return, the quick plan.** One battery, capacity ten.
| Time | Cells (of eight) | Dropped | Collected | Stored | Lost | Spent |
| 3:30 | + bundle 1, then bundle and siphon consumed; battery 1, beacon 1; six empty | | 3 | 8 | | |
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| 9:00 | beacon and battery planted on the apron; eight empty | | | 0 | | 8, lure |
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| 9:40 | extracted; nothing carried | | | 0 | | |
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| 3:30 | + bundle 1; four empty | | | 5 | | |
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| 5:30 | extracted: one bundle banked; charge lost at the dock | | | 0 | 5, dock | |
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Dropped five; collected eight, five from the heavy and three by conversion; spent eight on the lure; nothing lost.
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Dropped five, collected five, five lost at the dock; the bundle banked.
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**What the three visits are.** The first is discovery under the weather belief with no charge carried; the changed return exploits physical access and permission with a paid stun and a chosen exit; the later return sets the district for the ending under the harvested belief, and its problem, coming down past an entering surge with no coil, is one the first visit's solution cannot solve, so the new combination is used rather than held in reserve. Each has a credible alternative that reaches the same objective by a different sacrifice, and a lasting state the next visit reads on the board. A trip whose only purpose would be to watch the empty flash again is cut: once the player knows the supply rule and has no state to change here, the district is done until the head-works asks for it.
+
**Ledger, the stay.** The same start; the bundle and the Siphon consumed at 3:30 only if the margin is taken.
+
+
| Time | Cells (of eight) | Dropped | Collected | Stored | Lost | Spent |
| 3:30 | without the margin: + bundle 1 as cargo; with it: bundle and siphon consumed | | 0 or 3 | 5 or 8 | | |
+
| 9:05 | beacon and battery planted and armed on the apron | | | 0 | | 5 or 8, committed to the lure |
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| 9:40 | extracted: the bundle, or nothing; the beacon still lit, about half its charge burned, the rest lost with it | | | 0 | | |
+
+
Dropped five; collected five, or eight with the margin; all of it committed to the lure and left with it.
+
+
**What the three visits are.** The first is discovery under the weather belief with no charge carried; the changed return exploits physical access and permission with a paid stun and a chosen exit; the later return sets the district for the ending under the harvested belief, and its choices are whether to trust what the player already knows and go home early with cargo, or stay for certainty and pay for the crossing with light. Each has a credible alternative that reaches the same objective by a different sacrifice, and a lasting state the next visit reads on the board. A trip whose only purpose would be to watch the empty flash again is cut: once the player knows the supply rule and has no state to change here, the district is done until the head-works asks for it.
+
+
**The three visits against the vision's decision test** (the Brief's Game vision: the player's choice, its visible consequence, the part of the experience it serves).
+
+
| Visit | The player's choice | Its visible consequence | The part of the experience it serves |
+
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| First | Throw Rail and ride the lit tram, or keep Gates and walk | The crowd follows the lamp up the road, and the gates go dark behind you; the crank is the price | Enter under pressure; observe and test a cause: the lamp tows, and power has a cost somewhere else |
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| Changed return | Buy a stun in the lit yard, or buy a destination with a lure; tooling or the berth | A refilled battery and a walk, or a clear ride and a summit exit; the assembly does one or the other | Prepare for an intended intervention; change a route; return because understanding makes a different approach worthwhile |
+
| Later return | Trust the withheld supply and go home early with cargo, or stay for certainty and cross a surge with light; leave the tram lit above | An empty yard and a banked bundle, or a crossing bought with the heavy's charge; the next surge climbs away from the dock road | Responsibility for the system: the standing state is set for the ending, and the easy return is what understanding earned |
**Assets.** Reuses the yard tiles, water, lamps, cables and panel, and the humanoid mass at a larger size for the heavy. Gaps: the rail, the tram, the incline's slope tiles, the pass gate, the loading apron as a raised platform prop, the stairs' cutting. Nothing is claimed available.
@@ 337,7 371,7 @@
### 3.4 The Exchange, in outline; deep on its own page
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The world designer's example district, with its mystery contribution written on their page, and now deepened by the Campaign designer to the standard of the three districts above on [the Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Exchange) (CAM102), which keeps this outline entire and adds the ground, the panel, the interaction that takes time, two loadouts, a written expedition and the failure case; this outline adds the machinery problem and the rule that prices it. A dry hall where every district's signal cable meets: drums ticking together on one shaft, turned by a race whose head the player cannot see, and a routing bank, a panel with one position per district, that sets which district receives the trunk's permission. A district whose position is dark is in the shut regime, unannounced trickles that grow and a dark forecast, never a district with no Flood in it; its arrivals obey ordinary targeting once inside, so lit beacons still route them (PMR004). The bank's price, stated as a rule the way the panel's was: a lit position gives the player the forecast and the announced, routable surge in that district, which is the thing the whole game is played with; a dark position takes both away there. To withhold the Flood from a district is to give up reading it there; that coupling is the argument that the bank does not dominate, and its magnitude is for later validation, not proof. Conduction across the dry hall is by the cable reel, bridging the hall's exposed power terminals up to about six metres apart, as the Exchange page places them. The Carrier, the merged role that walks to the nearest reachable loose charge within a short range in preference to a lit beacon, makes a carried battery a beacon: the surveyor caches charge or is hunted for it; it leans toward what it wants and the forecast draws its target. The pumping district's dead drum is listed on the bank, which is the first campaign clue in its second form. The bank is found with three clutches engaged, the pumping district, the Lock Flight and the Tram Incline, and a fourth visibly seized whose repair is the head-works' business, so the three districts the player has already had forecasts in are exactly the three the bank was permitting (REV104-18; the Exchange page r2, ratified by the lead). The critic's alternative, a seized clutch on the pumping district, is not adopted, because darkening the opening district from here is the campaign's best example of a later discovery changing an earlier return.
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The world designer's example district, with its mystery contribution written on their page, and now deepened by the Campaign designer to the standard of the three districts above on [the Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Exchange) (CAM102), which keeps this outline entire and adds the ground, the panel, the interaction that takes time, two loadouts, a written expedition and the failure case; this outline adds the machinery problem and the rule that prices it. A dry hall where every district's signal cable meets: drums ticking together on one shaft, turned by a race whose head the player cannot see, and a routing bank, a panel with one position per district, that sets which district receives the trunk's permission. A district whose position is dark is in the shut regime, unannounced trickles that grow and a dark forecast, never a district with no Flood in it; its arrivals obey ordinary targeting once inside, so lit beacons still route them (PMR004). The bank's price, stated as a rule the way the panel's was: a lit position gives the player the forecast and the announced, routable surge in that district, which is the thing the whole game is played with; a dark position takes both away there. To withhold the Flood from a district is to give up reading it there; that coupling is the argument that the bank does not dominate, and its magnitude is for later validation, not proof. Conduction across the dry hall is by the cable reel, bridging two exposed power terminals the lead places here for the Exchange page to draw: one at the foot of the gallery stair at the dock end, live while the hall's run is powered, and one on the bank's own lamp line at the head end, dead, six metres apart where the floor narrows. The Exchange's expedition is ten minutes with two dispatches, at 3:00 and 8:00; a scene that needs a third dispatch or a twelfth minute is not this district's. The Carrier, the merged role that walks to the nearest reachable loose charge within a short range in preference to a lit beacon, makes a carried battery a beacon: the surveyor caches charge or is hunted for it; it leans toward what it wants and the forecast draws its target. The pumping district's dead drum is listed on the bank, which is the first campaign clue in its second form. The bank is found with three clutches engaged, the pumping district, the Lock Flight and the Tram Incline, and a fourth visibly seized whose repair is the head-works' business, so the three districts the player has already had forecasts in are exactly the three the bank was permitting (REV104-18; the Exchange page r2, ratified by the lead). The critic's alternative, a seized clutch on the pumping district, is not adopted, because darkening the opening district from here is the campaign's best example of a later discovery changing an earlier return.
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@@ 445,6 479,8 @@
**Rule ownership after this revision** (PMR004 4: the lead records which definitions now own the rule). The four clauses, the dispatch condition, the state table and readable state: the shared rule contract. Precedence, press, targeting, damage and status grammar: Combat Rules. The roster: Enemies and its role pages, the Floater included. Rack, links, leakage, collection priority, field handling and accounting: Inventory and Charge, with the catalogue on Equipment and its item pages and acquisition on Build Paths. The colony loop, services, refits and the defence option: Colony. District order, travel, the progression map, the count test, the duration hypothesis, the Collector and the Head-works: Districts and its pages. The Lock Flight, the Tram Incline, the Tidal Barrier and the Exchange outline: this page, until the Campaign designer and the lead cut them to district pages in one agreed edit. The mystery, the campaign question and the clues: World and Mystery. The pumping district's rules and examples: the Design Document, until the editor's transfer.
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**Sources read for r8 (DES105 r3).** Brief 0fff74 (the Game vision; PMU008); Tasks 1c38ca (the PMU008 handoff and PMR008 rows); PM Reviews PMR008 37fd94 and checkpoints cbc0d5, bb1b91; Hub eef0ca; Team 890a96 (the Visionary's mandate); Design Review REV105 r2 42ad46 (three clauses); External Critique r15 114d49 (X35); Districts r12 c4d604; Enemies r10 fd38a8 (the roster against the decision test); Reference/Readability Formulas REF112 ca6543 (read; PM has asked for its provenance correction).
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**Sources read for r7 (DES105 r2).** Design Review REV105 r1 35cccf; External Critique r14 211efe (X34; X32 on this page); Districts r11 c1bbe1 (section 5, the figures in one place, and 5.1); World and Mystery r26 744b21 (the chain re-ordered onto the Tram's three visits); Colony r6 59ad65 (COL102 r2, D026 applied); Combat Rules r8 221c48; Equipment r5 902439; Reference/Water Balance Haulage REF111 37601a (read; proposes nothing, and nothing is taken from it yet); Clarity r23 d3d6a0 (Q53, the Glossary's); Tasks cb7928.
**Sources read for r6 (DES105 r1).** PM Reviews PMR007 6fb181 and checkpoint e8a263, PMU007 f62987; Tasks 575001 (the DES105 row and the Tram handoff); Brief 0cba02 (D026); Hub 73d5b0; Design Review REV104 r6 ce94e4; Equipment/Build Paths r4 6bc3f7 (EQP102), Utility Modules r3 04a42d, Equipment r4 59fcc5, Coil 80da75, Inventory and Charge 9cebc1; Colony r5 fe7d88 (COL102); World and Mystery r25 e99445 (WLD104); Combat Rules r7 e3ad2b (R11 to R13; EQP102 countersigned), Enemies r9 56cadb; Districts r9 e9c413, the Exchange r3 4d6703, the Collector r5 8e39d2; Clarity Q52 (40a841). The contract at r7 was written from the same sources.
@@ 457,4 493,4 @@
**Sources read for r2.** PM Reviews PMR004 ed0def and PMU005 e8c3d4; Brief 70b6b1 (D022 to D024); Tasks 9569fc; Hub c33d3c; Expansion Brief d97965; Design Index 0ee6d3; Campaign 9d3590 (the Campaign designer's note); Districts r2 acb797, the Collector 40f2b5, the Head-works 6bf2a7; Combat Rules r2 1126c3, Enemies r3 0822dd and the eight role pages; Equipment a44990, Build Paths a9a288, Inventory and Charge 73eb77, Cutter 9618ad, Alternative Tools e6aed6; Colony a1046d; World and Mystery r20 7699de; Design Review REV104 r1 80a882; Reference index 454f11 (REF108). The contract at r3 was written from the same sources.
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**PM report.** Task DES105 r2 against REV105 r1 and External Critique X34; artifact Hold the Flood/Campaign r7 (r6 ee4202 and earlier in history). REV105-1: the later return's problem is now the main line: the cadence needs two ticks, so the surveyor is at the summit when the second surge enters and climbs toward the lit tram, and the Siphon's light is the crossing at the foot, with the fifty-second and no-beacon alternatives priced; the first visit's solution is shown unavailable. REV105-2: the heavy stands on the rail on both later visits; the changed return walks because a coil cannot stun a dry rail, and the later return kills it for its first five units. REV105-3: the stairs run in a cutting ten metres below the road; the first visit's foot and crank beats, and the changed return's withdrawal and exit, are priced in hits and time, the exit now by throwing Gates so the yard beacon draws the spread crowd off the gates. The minor items: the Siphon's letter, the record made at the quay dock, approach A's free cells, the lamp lit before boarding. X34: section 8 quotes Districts r11's three consolidated figures and the owner page carries them; X32: REF107's implication is stated in section 2. Changed decisions: none canonical. Evidence: three ledgers re-derived and closing; no player data; nothing built or tested. Risks: the cutting, the apron and the crossing budget remain the lead's proposals for the Campaign designer to place; consistency, not survivability. Next handoff: the critic on this revision; the Campaign designer's attribution; PM's next review. No PM request.
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**PM report.** Task: PMU008's Lead deliverable and PMR008's bounded corrections; artifact Hold the Flood/Campaign r8 (r7 de4893 and earlier in history). PMU008: the section after the owner page gives the Visionary the intended experience as written and three tensions, mastery against renewal, precision against plain speech, and the refuge at stake without a tax, each with links to existing scenes and no new document. PMR008 1: the later return's quick plan is the main line and the stay the priced alternative, with the wait no longer compulsory; the Siphon is optional margin against one named uncertainty; the lure's activation at 9:05, its expiry at about 9:55 after a 9:40 extraction, the charge committed and left, and the retarget to the lit summit lamp at expiry are stated; the changed return's 8:10 exit is described as it is and the tram's availability priced; five cells free. PMR008 3: the criterion-11 paragraph links the ledger instead of quoting a moving count. REV105 r2's three clauses are the same corrections. The Exchange's cadence and reel terminals are scoped in 3.4. The three visits are run against the vision's decision test. Changed decisions: none canonical. Evidence: two ledgers for the later return, both closing; no player data; nothing built. Risks: the note to the Visionary is the lead's reading of the experience, not the vision. Next handoff: the Visionary's expedition and keep, change, remove assessment; the critic and the reader on the vision submission; PM's next review. No PM request.
