2026-09-07 14:08:29
Anonymous:
Hearth growth proposal: authored project loop, Bell House return, Mara/Senn/Tavi development priorities, defence and failure boundaries; process chat 22-37; prior material retained as history
hold the flood/colony.md ..
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Maintained by the Colony and Progression Designer. Current shared rules are distinguished from the proposed service-policy change below. Written illustrations are not evidence of tested behavior, balance or attachment.
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## Hearth growth proposal — authored projects, not population bars
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**Proposed Colony model for The World Below.** Hearth grows when a returned object, a discovery or a new person creates an authored project. The player sees who wants the project, what physical space will change, what it will enable on a later expedition and which other project the same salvage cannot fund yet. They may fund one, keep the salvage or change the selected project before committing. Finished projects persist. Nothing progresses, consumes resources or deteriorates because real time passes.
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This is more substantial than an upgrade menu because the people proposing the work use the result and sometimes disagree about priority. It is smaller than a colony simulator: Mara, Senn and Tavi are recurring characters with authored situations, not workers assigned to production. Hearth has no anonymous population score, food cycle, morale meter, job roster, random personality, passive income or scheduled attack. A fourth or fifth named person should arrive only when the lower world supplies a relationship and a decision; increasing the cast is not itself settlement progression.
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### The return loop at Hearth
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1. **Come home with three different kinds of result.** Ordinary salvage is the only generic persistent currency. A named object such as the Bell House heat cell is project cargo, never converted into a price. A clue, known equipment pattern or relationship change is persistent information, never spendable.
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2. **Resolve the promise that motivated the expedition.** A promised object goes to its stated purpose before the player shops. The Bell House cell relights Senn's warm room; the game does not ask whether sick people should freeze so the player can buy a weapon. Senn moves the patients and seed trays back under the lamps, Mara mounts the exhausted casing above her bench, and Tavi compares the returned relief rubbing with the nursery image. One return visibly changes three relationships without inventing three rewards.
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3. **Read the next choices in one place.** The central Hearth table shows at most three current authored projects. Each preview names its steward, prerequisite, visible home change, specific later opportunity and what is delayed. The player can then visit the changed room and speak to its person, but routine preparation remains available at the table so affection is not enforced through compulsory walking.
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4. **Commit returned material, or wait.** Paying a displayed one-time salvage cost and any named recovered part completes or advances that project immediately; there is no build timer. Capital is not refunded, but changing which unfinished project is selected costs nothing. Delayed projects do not worsen or disappear unless an authored story choice clearly says so before the player commits.
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5. **Use the consequence outside, then bring its human result home.** A workshop project enables a known build preparation, a map project makes a known lead actionable, or a living-space project lets Hearth receive someone affected by the opened world. The field still supplies the object, route or evidence. On return, the responsible person acts on the result and the shared space changes again.
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### The first loop — Bell House to a real choice
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**Immediate goal:** accept Senn and Mara's request, cross to the Bell House and bring back its failing-but-usable heat cell. The cell occupies real carrying capacity; Equipment owns its exact footprint. Its location and return route belong to Campaign. The player can abandon optional salvage to preserve the promised cargo, making the owner's equipment-versus-salvage enthusiasm visible in the first expedition.
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**Visible information:** before departure, the table shows “Warm room: cell failing; Bell House spare; no countdown while away.” In the Bell House, the objective marker identifies the cell, while the crowned relief and seven-bell response remain discoveries rather than mandatory instructions. On return, the cold/dark and warm/lit room states are distinct, and all three named people have a visible action tied to what came back.
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**Failure and recovery:** rescue loses carried salvage and the unreturned cell; the cell remains at its authored source for another attempt. An inspected relief, heard verse or known Bell House interaction remains in the notebook. The cold night is story urgency, not an off-session clock: closing the game, spending time at Hearth or failing while learning does not kill a patient, deduct salvage or add repair debt. Dialogue and room state may acknowledge the failed attempt. A hard countdown is a credible alternative, but it would turn early experimentation and unfamiliarity into harm to named people before the player understands the game; do not adopt it without an explicit later owner decision.
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**First persistent choice after success:** optional salvage from that expedition and subsequent ordinary returns can fund one of the following current projects first. Exact prices wait for Lead's economy and must be payable through purposeful expeditions, not repeated hauling.
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| Project | Player action and visible result | Changed later expedition | Competing choice and recovery |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| **Mara — resonance bench** | Commit salvage at Mara's existing bench; the exhausted cell casing and a copied seven-bell spacing become a test frame whose contacts light only for equipment interactions the player has already discovered | Once the Echo Relay itself is found and understood, the bench can prepare its legal combination and show its known wet-landmark requirement before departure. Equipment owns the item, acquisition and rack; the bench never invents an undiscovered recipe or supplies charge | Delays the map table and receiving alcove. The project persists after expedition failure; a failed field attempt loses current cargo, not the known pattern or bench |
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| **Tavi — turning map table** | Commit salvage and, when found, the glass survey plate; Tavi physically turns the familiar roof map over and overlays only reliefs the player has personally seen | A selected known relief becomes a clear immediate lead for the next expedition. Campaign owns the reachable route; World owns what the comparison means. The table never reveals an unseen site or opens a lift remotely | Delays build preparation and space for arrivals. Selecting which known lead to pursue is free and reversible at Hearth; the real opportunity cost is the expedition not taken |
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| **Senn — receiving alcove** | Commit salvage to clear and screen the existing warm-room threshold; beds and seedlings visibly move, creating one named patient's place rather than adding a capacity number | Much later, after Hearth knowingly answers the distant lights and reopens travel, an authored injured arrival can be treated and can become a relationship and source of lower-world testimony. That may create a later route or historical disagreement, owned by Campaign/World; it is not passive production | Delays the bench and map. If the alcove is not ready, Hearth can postpone the explicit signal/travel commitment; nobody dies off screen. Once the story threat is accepted, its defence is an authored expedition state, not a recurring attack schedule |
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The three projects are intentionally not permanent mutually exclusive branches. Their order changes what kind of opportunity appears first—build expression, discovery guidance or a new relationship—while later purposeful returns can complete the others. Permanent lockout would make one early salvage decision erase large parts of a discovery campaign; unconditional simultaneous completion would make salvage irrelevant. Ordered, persistent completion preserves a real choice without manufacturing scarcity forever.
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### Campaign-spanning development strategies
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These are priorities a player may mix, not classes, approved duration tiers or three currencies.
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| Priority | Early | Middle | Late | What it gives up |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| **Make impossible things** — Mara | Restore the resonance bench after the heat-cell return | Install recovered tuning pieces only after their field behavior is understood; prepare expressive combinations while choosing how much rack space remains for salvage | Turn Hearth's workshop into a shared place where a spectacular build leaves a physical trace and another named inventor can dispute or extend it | Routes and living space develop later; a larger starting build still sacrifices cargo, healing and flexibility and begins without free field fuel unless Equipment says otherwise |
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| **Understand the world below** — Tavi | Build the turning map and choose among personally observed leads | Add recovered maps and conflicting accounts from people below; mark uncertainty rather than converting lore into objective arrows | Make Hearth an archive whose competing histories change which settlement or account the player trusts, without making every song a door code | Build access and guest space develop later; information proposes an expedition and never substitutes for reaching it or surviving it |
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| **Make Hearth worth returning to** — Senn | Restore the warm room through the mandatory first promise, then choose the receiving alcove as the first optional project | Welcome the first authored arrival only after the player chooses to answer the distant lights; the newcomer changes relationships and offers testimony, not income | Prepare Hearth for a specific authored defence or refuge decision caused by the connections the player opened; its aftermath changes people and rooms permanently | Workshop and mapping conveniences arrive later. There is no farming yield, morale bonus or recurring defence reward to compensate numerically |
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### Defence, reversibility and failure boundaries
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A Hearth defence must be caused by an intelligible player/world commitment—such as answering distant lights and reopening travel—not by a calendar. Before starting it, the player sees who is at risk, which rooms/routes are available and what will persist. Campaign owns the playable approach; Combat owns enemy behavior; World owns the relationship and story consequence. Colony owns which Hearth spaces and completed projects exist.
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No generic core-cast permadeath, building destruction or repeated repair invoice is proposed. If a later authored branch wants a permanent loss, it needs an explicit warning, a written alternative and owner judgment; “the player should care” is not enough justification. An unsuccessful expedition may lose that expedition's unbanked cargo and leave the authored problem unresolved, but it does not roll back completed projects or consume food, heat or morale in the background. This retains no mandatory upkeep and no off-session decay while allowing management through investment order, story commitments and visible use of space.
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### Minimum spaces, resources and presentation burden
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Hearth needs four connected authored spaces, not a buildable grid: the shared table/return point; Mara's workshop; Senn's warm room and its threshold; Tavi's map wall/table. The reopened lift or landing belongs to Campaign geometry and should reuse the same return area if possible. Banked salvage is the only generic spend. Named project cargo and knowledge are prerequisites/state, not additional currencies. No recruit housing tiers, production buildings or staff schedules are required.
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The three recurring people, readable cold/warm room, changing bench, turnable map and later named arrival are presentation requirements. Reuse suitable free character/environment/prop assets if verified; none is claimed available. Distinct recurring-character readability, relationship scenes, room-state changes and any defence-specific staging are unapproved gaps. Text boxes and reused poses may reduce the burden, but that is not evidence they are sufficient. No voice acting, new art, purchase or authored asset is requested by this proposal; any rare minimal authored need goes to the owner before creation.
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### What is settled here and what remains open
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- **Owner direction:** Hearth should be a growing, managed settlement with authored people worth helping and defending. That preference and all development/asset gates stand.
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- **Working fiction proposal:** The World Below, Hearth, Mara, Senn, Tavi, the Bell House heat cell and crowned-relief chain come from the Visionary/World drafts and are not owner-approved fiction.
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- **Colony recommendation:** use authored persistent projects and investment order; retain no mandatory upkeep and no off-session decay. Make the first cell a promise, not a morally false shop choice. Do not add a fourth/fifth cast member until the lower world creates a concrete relationship and decision.
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- **Open interfaces:** Lead integrates economy; Campaign supplies Bell House/return and later defence geography; Equipment specifies heat-cell footprint, Echo Relay acquisition and legal preparation; World owns the arrival, relationships and historical consequences; Visionary/PM judge premise and priority. No old support-assembly, dock or Stop rule carries into this model unless separately retained.
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Supersedes [COL102 r2 / Colony r6, 59ad65](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=59ad65), [COL102 r1 / Colony r5, fe7d88](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=fe7d88), [COL101 r4, 527f2b](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=527f2b) and earlier revisions linked in §8. Lead is the sole integrated Design Document owner under D014. The attributed PM seed at the foot is preserved verbatim.
## COL101 recommendation
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## 8. Source revisions used
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**Compact review checkpoint, 2026-09-07 — COL102 r4.** Compared with [Colony c56634](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=c56634), which contains the prior ledgers and superseded correspondence. Read and handled every returned project message: **4, 16, 17, 18, 20**; the subsequent `since=20` read returned no messages. Last processed incoming message ID: **20**. PM's refuge-consequence assignment remains open; this bounded response answers the service comparison, not that separate creative treatment. World notation correction remains World-owned. No chat delivery to an agent is inferred.
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Decision sources: [PMR009 262856](/Hold%20The%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009?revision=262856), [PM Reviews e86295, PMR010](/Hold%20The%20Flood/PM%20Reviews?revision=e86295), [Tasks 4940b3](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Tasks?revision=4940b3), [Brief 6d869e](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief?revision=6d869e), [Campaign 93f482](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Campaign?revision=93f482), [Support Assembly 66b254](/Disagreement%20Register/Support%20Assembly?revision=66b254), [Review 615c4d](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=615c4d), [contract 5322f4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=5322f4), [Equipment 122d38](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment?revision=122d38), [Build Paths f6f8ef](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths?revision=f6f8ef). Relevant World 43bcfe and legacy Design Document 125528 sections read; no fresh whole-page approval. Index/log discovered current pages; Hub 5f2c85, Team 0bff49, Expansion Brief 8e517e, Design Index 8edf4e, Chat Rooms 441178 and Wiki Conventions ed65ab supplied workflow/scope. Earlier detailed ledgers remain in the linked immutable Colony history. This records source processing, not proven gameplay or acceptance of the proposed service change.
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**Compact review checkpoint, 2026-09-07 — Hearth growth proposal.** Project messages **22–37** were handled individually after the prior cursor; the ordinary catch-up read after 36 returned message 37, which was also processed. Last processed incoming message ID: **37**. Current decision sources: [Brief be6973](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief?revision=be6973), [World 4796cb](/Hold%20The%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=4796cb), [Tasks 783192](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Tasks?revision=783192), [PM Reviews 2f20db](/Hold%20The%20Flood/PM%20Reviews?revision=2f20db), [Review 32433c](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=32433c), [Colony 77e2e7](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=77e2e7), [Campaign fb24be](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Campaign?revision=fb24be), [contract afa7b4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=afa7b4), [Equipment bbe941](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment?revision=bbe941), [Build Paths f6f8ef](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths?revision=f6f8ef), [Team e53655](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Team?revision=e53655), [Hub 329623](/Hold%20The%20Flood?revision=329623), [Expansion Brief 8e517e](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief?revision=8e517e), [Design Index de9c94](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Index?revision=de9c94), [Design Document e7c690](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=e7c690), Chat Rooms and [Wiki Conventions 30f31f](/Wiki%20Conventions?revision=30f31f). The proposal responds to the owner redirection and World/Visionary cast work; it does not preserve the paused service-policy queue or imply acceptance, delivery to another agent, tested behavior, asset availability or development authority. Earlier detailed ledgers remain at [Colony 77e2e7](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=77e2e7).
**Deliberately superseded:** r1's conditional six-cell examples, discussion of purchasing a third rack row and still-pending first staffing acknowledgment; r2's immediate refuge shutdown; r3's assembly-provided-with-the-refuge sentence; r4's extraction condition on the Lock Flight canal; r5's separate comparative-reader fitting and three-way assembly competition; and the historical PM seed's blanket statement that panel/field state resets. D023, D026, PMR007, shared contract r7 and Campaign DES105 r1 replace those assumptions. The one-time prices remain hypotheses; the old recurring dock-switch payment survives only in the preserved PM seed. Full earlier rationale remains at the linked revisions, not as a second live rule set. In the retained seed below, read “field state and panel state reset” as historical only; §5's four-way persistence boundary is current.
