2026-09-06 21:30:38
Anonymous:
The Collector r3: answer PMR004 items 1, 2 and 4 and its dark-dispatch correction. (1) Section 4 repacked on D023's eight cells; the harvester no longer reads as a preparation farm - charge is earned here and spent here on two named local sinks, the silted outfall winch (which is what lets a held mass be released on the player's schedule instead of the overtopping's) and the Holding Basin's powered inflow gate; states how an empty rack reaches its first discharge, from cutter kills in the opening five minutes. (2) Section 6 names the three ways-on and their districts, the one-surge visible buffer, when it is consumed (that district's first dispatch, then it refills), what the withheld forecast shows (everything - the dispatch happens, the arrival does not), and the real quiet window, five minutes on the pumping district's schedule rather than three. (4) Section 9 restates entry as physical access to a channel the culvert visibly drains toward, with the notes as evidence rather than permission, and reconciles the failure case with section 2's thresholds: the level drops one step overnight, so only an expedition abandoned at 3 costs the lower gantry. Section 7 withdraws r2's claim that a dark bank position makes enemies unroutable - beacons and post-entry targeting are unchanged under D013/D016; what is lost is the announcement, and bodies still take time to walk.
hold the flood/districts/the collector.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — The Collector
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**CAM101 · r2 · 2026-09-06 · Campaign and District Designer · In review; proposal. Nothing here is an owner approval or tested behaviour.** r2 rewrites §10 against [CMB101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies), which was published while r1 was being written: the roster is Combat's six roles, not the four in DES104 §4, and the harvester loadout no longer depends on a heavy. Nothing else changed; r1 is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector/history).
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**CAM101 · r3 · 2026-09-06 · Campaign and District Designer · In review; proposal. Nothing here is an owner approval or tested behaviour.** r3 answers [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) items 1, 2 and 4 and its dark-dispatch correction: §4 is repacked on D023's eight cells and no longer rewards leaving with charge — charge is earned and **spent here**, on two named local sinks, and how an empty rack reaches its first discharge is stated; §6 names the districts the outfall supplies, its one-surge buffer, when the buffer is consumed, what the withheld district's forecast shows and how long the quiet window actually is; §7 withdraws the claim that a dark bank position makes enemies unroutable; §9 states entry as physical access rather than a notebook flag and reconciles the failure case with §2's level thresholds. r2 reconciled §10 with CMB101; r1 and r2 are in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector/history).
District 5 of the seven recommended on [Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts). The Collector is the World designer's example district ([World and Mystery 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de)), placed and named in the lead's campaign ([DES104 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#2-the-campaigns-shape)), and marked **"Sketch — not designed"** in that page's coverage table for its loadouts and encounters. This page writes it to the standard of DES104 §3. **The World designer owns its clue logic and may rewrite §5; the lead owns any contradiction with DES104.**
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---
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## 4. Two loadouts that do different things
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## 4. Two loadouts that do different things, and what charge is for here
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*Rack notation as [DES104 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#3-three-districts-in-depth): C coil (two slots), B battery, S salvage bundle, I insulation, K kit, L portable beacon. Both drawn on the six-slot rack so they work before the lead's third row.*
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*Rack notation on the eight cells [PMR004 D023](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) adopts from [EQP101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) — fixed at eight from the outset, coil takes two. C coil, B battery, I insulation, K kit, L portable beacon, S salvage bundle.*
```
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Harvester Sluicegate
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C C B S S B
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B S I I L K
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link B(1) → C link B → L
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Harvester (8 cells) Sluicegate (8 cells)
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C C B B B L I K
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I S S K S S S S
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link B1 -> C link B -> L
```
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- **The harvester** comes to take charge out of a held basin. It carries two batteries because a held mass sheds far more than one battery holds, and insulation because it will be standing at the edge of energised water when it discharges. It banks one bundle and it is here for charge, not cargo — which only pays if the player has somewhere to spend charge, so this loadout is a *campaign* decision made at the refuge, not a local one.
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- **The sluicegate** comes to set the gates and leave. It carries three bundles' worth of space, a portable beacon to pull a held crowd off the walkway route it needs, and a kit because it will be crossing above a full basin with no coil to answer anything that reaches it.
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**Charge is earned here and spent here. Nothing carries it out** — clause 4 as the [shared contract 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) now words it, and [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) is right that r2's harvester read like a preparation farm for a later district. It is not one, and this section says what the charge is actually for.
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Neither is better. The harvester leaves with charge and no cargo and has to survive standing next to what it is harvesting; the sluicegate leaves with cargo and a set of gates and has no answer at all if a crowd reaches the walkway.
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**How an empty rack reaches its first discharge.** Charge resets every expedition ([Design Document §10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#10-progression-and-persistence)), so the harvester lands with two empty batteries and a coil it cannot fire. The first ten units are cut, not stunned: stragglers roaming the basins between dispatches, and the thin edge of the first surge, at one unit a kill. **That is a designed beat and it is the district's opening five minutes** — the player works the rim with the cutter while the first mass gathers, and the coil becomes available at roughly the moment there is something worth pointing it at. A player who mistimes it holds a full basin and has no way to stop it, which is this district's characteristic failure and is recoverable by leaving.
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---
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**The two local sinks, both here, both on this map.**
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1. **The outfall winch.** The outfall's screen is silted, and the winch that lifts it is a powered device on the outfall head's line. Ten units discharged into the channel lifts it in about five seconds; unpowered, the same lift is a hand crank of about forty, at the outfall head, which is exactly where a held mass stands when b2 is lit. **What charge buys is the ability to release a held mass on your schedule rather than on the overtopping's.** That is the district's most valuable action and it costs a full battery.
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2. **The Holding Basin's inflow gate** (§8). A powered gate, dead unless the intake channel is energised. One discharge opens it for the seconds it takes to walk through. **What charge buys is the optional discovery**, and it buys it with no key, no item and no flag.
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**So the two loadouts differ in what they do, not in what they take home.** The harvester comes to *use* the mass: stun it, take the deposits it was standing on, lift the outfall on its own terms, and open the Holding Basin. It banks two bundles. The sluicegate comes to set ways-on and carry cargo — four bundles, a beacon to pull a held crowd off the walkway it needs, insulation for the crossing, a kit — and it has no coil, so it can never release a mass early and must plan around overtopping instead.
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Neither is better. The harvester leaves with the smallest cargo in the campaign and everything this district can show you; the sluicegate leaves with the largest and has to take the district on the district's timing.
## 5. Discovery
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## 6. Outward consequence: the outfall, the empty flash, and what holding costs
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**The lever.** The outfall can be shut from the lower gantry at levels 0–1, or from the upper walkway at any level, the long way. Shut, what drains into the Collector stays in it.
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**The lever.** The outfall is not one gate but **three marked ways on**, side by side at the head, one per district this collector supplies: **Pumping**, **Lock Flight** and **Tram Incline**. Each is shut by hand from the lower gantry at levels 0–1, or from the upper walkway at any level, the long way round. Each is painted with its district's name and carries its own small gauge — the sign vocabulary the crews used everywhere.
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**What it does elsewhere.** A district downstream on the cycle **does not receive its next first surge**. Its drum still turns and the trunk still permits, so its beacon flashes, the thin cable pulses, and nothing comes with it. Three quiet minutes at the start of one expedition — enough to do the one thing a crowd was always standing on, and not enough to change what that district is. The second and third dispatches arrive normally, because the cycle refills.
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**What shutting one does, stated finitely.** This is [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) item 2, and r2 left all of it vague.
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**Its price, four ways.**
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- **The target is named, not "a district downstream".** The player picks which of the three.
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- **The buffer is one surge, and it is visible.** Each way-on holds a single surge's worth in its own chamber, and the gauge beside it reads full or empty. Shut it and the chamber does not refill.
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- **When the benefit is consumed.** At that district's **first dispatch of the next expedition there**: the drum turns, the trunk permits, the beacon flashes, the thin cable pulses, and nothing comes. The chamber then refills from the cycle, so the **second** dispatch is normal. One surge, once, and the gauge back here shows it spent.
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- **What the withheld district's forecast shows.** Everything it always shows — the countdown, the intake marker, the locked marker at dispatch. **The forecast is not wrong and nothing is hidden**: it reports the dispatch, which does happen. What does not happen is the arrival. That is the whole point of the empty flash, and it is why the light convention needs its own row ([REV104-3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review)).
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- **How long the quiet actually lasts.** Exactly the gap between that district's first and second dispatches, on its own schedule. In the pumping district's 3 / 8 / 12 that is **five minutes, from 3:00 to 8:00** — not three, and not "the start of the expedition". A player who wants the yard's far end has one five-minute window and has to be standing there at 3:00 to use it.
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1. **Here, next time.** A shut outfall means this basin does not drain: on the next visit the Collector starts one level higher, the lower gantry is gone, and the whole district is worked from the walkway. §9 states the failure case of this.
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2. **The trip.** The lever is only here. Buying a quiet opening somewhere else costs an expedition spent in the district you are not opening.
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3. **What you are standing next to.** Everything withheld is here, in a basin, and the basin is between the dock and the meters. Holding two surges' worth is the best harvest in the campaign and it is also the largest single mass in the game standing between the player and their route home.
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4. **Overtopping.** Held past level 3, a basin spills into the one below, and everything it was holding goes with it — into the basin the player crossed on the way in, over about twenty seconds, with a visible crest first. The player is warned and the warning is short.
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**Its price, four ways.**
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**Persistence and readability.** Gate and outfall states persist between expeditions, like the pumping district's relay. The refuge board shows them and the starting level before launch, so the player launches knowing which Collector they are getting.
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1. **Here, next time.** §9 states it exactly, against §2's thresholds.
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2. **The trip.** The ways-on are only here. Buying a quiet window somewhere else costs an expedition spent in the district you are not opening.
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3. **What you are standing next to.** Everything withheld is in the chamber and the basin above it, between the dock and the meters. Holding two surges' worth is the best harvest in the campaign and the largest single mass standing between the player and their route home.
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4. **Overtopping.** Held past level 3, a basin spills into the one below over about twenty seconds, with a visible crest first, and everything it held goes with it — into the basin the player crossed on the way in. The warning is real and it is short. **The outfall winch in §4 is the only way to choose the moment instead**, which is what the harvester's charge is for.
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**Persistence and readability.** The three ways-on, their gauges and the water level all persist between expeditions, and the refuge board shows them before launch — so the player launches knowing which Collector they are getting, and which district they have already paid for.
## 7. What the campaign later does to this district, and what this district enables
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- **After the [Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#34-the-exchange-in-outline):** the Collector's own bank position can be darkened. Then nothing here is announced, the panel's beacons still work but nothing schedules, and the sluice delivers trickles that spread through the basins instead of gathering. Harvesting a held mass becomes far harder — a spread crowd is not a stun target — and setting gates becomes far easier. Strictly better in one dimension, strictly worse in the other, which is what a late power should do to an earlier place.
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- **After the [Tidal Barrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#33-the-tidal-barrier) is shut:** the Collector is starved, as DES104 already states. Levels fall, held masses thin, and the district stops being a bank. That is a real cost of the Barrier's outcome, and it is the campaign's clearest example of one district's persistent choice reaching another.
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- **What this district enables: the race route to the [Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works).** The head race north is walkable only when the basins are held low — every gate open, the outfall open, nothing accumulating. So the alternative approach to the finale is bought by giving up everything this district is for, on the expedition you use it. See [Districts §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts#7-one-alternative-route-through-the-plan).
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- **After the [Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#34-the-exchange-in-outline):** this district's own bank position can be darkened. **r2 said the resulting crowds "cannot be routed". That was wrong, and [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) is right to strike it.** Under D013/D016 the beacons still exist and post-entry targeting is unchanged: arrivals still walk to the nearest lit beacon they can reach, and the panel still moves them. **What a dark position takes away is the announcement, not the routing** — no dispatch pulse, no flash, no countdown, no intake marker, so the player loses *when* and *where from* and keeps *where to*. In practice that makes a held mass harder to build deliberately, because bodies arrive continuously instead of in one body, and it makes setting ways-on easier, because nothing large lands while you are on the walkway. **Retargeting begins the moment a beacon changes, but bodies still walk**: ground a crowd is standing on does not clear instantly, and the press is what the player reads while it does.
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- **After the [Tidal Barrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#33-the-tidal-barrier) is shut:** the Collector is starved, as DES104 already states. Fewer bodies are in circulation, so held masses thin and the water arriving with them drops — **the district sits one level lower for the same settings**, which is the reconciliation [PMR004 §1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) asks for between this page and the Head-works. It stops being a bank, which is a real cost of the Barrier's outcome and the campaign's clearest case of one district's persistent choice reaching another.
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- **What this district enables: the race route to the [Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works).** The head race north is walkable only when the basins are held low — every way-on open, nothing accumulating. So the alternative approach to the finale is bought by giving up everything this district is for, on the expedition you use it. See [Districts §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts#7-one-alternative-route-through-the-plan).
## 8. The Holding Basin — optional, and the campaign's sharpest evidence
A sealed wing behind basin 1: a fourth basin the crews gated off and gauged separately. **Never required.**
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- **How it is reached.** The inflow to it is walkable only with the Collector held at level 0 — every gate open, the outfall open — which is the setting that gives up the delay lever for that expedition. No item, no key: a state the player already knows how to produce, used for something else.
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- **How it is reached.** Its inflow gate is a powered device, dead unless the intake channel is energised, so opening it costs one coil discharge earned here (§4). The walk to it is open only with the Collector held at level 0 — every gate open, the outfall open — which is the setting that gives up the delay lever for that expedition. No item, no key: a state the player already knows how to produce, used for something else.
- **What is in it.** The separate gauge, with a full log, and the crews' written reason for sealing it.
- **What it gives.** Certainty rather than capability. A player who reads it arrives at the head-works knowing which of the World designer's [two candidate answers](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery#two-candidate-final-answers-for-the-owner) is true; a player who skips it makes the final choice on inference. Both are complete campaigns; they are not the same experience. **The content of that evidence is the World designer's to write, not mine** — this page supplies the room, the way in, and the price.
- **Why a wing and not a district.** It occupies no new lever cell ([Districts §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts#2-the-count-seven-districts-not-eight)), and it costs this district's assets and no new ones.
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## 9. Entry, revisit, and one consequence of failure
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**Entry (knowledge, never an item), two ways.** The crews' inked plan behind the pumping district's junction gate draws the drains and names where they go. Independently, the Exchange's routing bank carries a position with this district's name on it. Either records the district in the notebook and makes its dock selectable at the colony, so a player who followed cable and one who followed water both arrive.
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**Entry is physical, not a flag.** [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) item 4 is right that "reading X unlocks Y" is a notebook gate wearing a knowledge gate's coat. The honest statement: **the colony's boat can put in at any dock the player has a way to know exists, and this district's way in is its own outfall channel, which the pumping district's culvert visibly drains toward.** A player who walks the culvert to its end has seen where the water goes and can select the dock on that alone. The crews' inked plan behind the junction gate is the *ordinary* way to learn it and the Exchange's routing bank carries the name as a third; none of the three is required, and no note has to be collected for the boat to go. **The redundancy is in the evidence, not in the permission.**
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**Revisit — three standing reasons.** The basins hold the campaign's densest salvage, because the city's drains catch what everything upstream loses. The gates are the only place the Flood's quantity can be set. And a held mass is the campaign's best charge harvest, which makes this the district a player comes to when they need charge rather than cargo.
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**Revisit — three standing reasons.** The basins hold the campaign's densest salvage, because the city's drains catch what everything upstream loses. The three ways-on are the only place another district's next first surge can be withheld. And a held mass is the campaign's best charge harvest, spent on the two sinks in §4 — which makes this the district a player comes to when they want what charge buys *here*, never to stock up for elsewhere.
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**Required return on the main route:** one, after the Tidal Barrier, because shutting the barrier gates starves this district and its state has to be re-read before the head-works run.
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**Required return on the baseline path:** one, after the Tidal Barrier, because shutting the barrier gates starves this district, and its level and gauges have to be re-read before the head-works run.
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**One consequence of failure.** If an expedition ends in rescue with the outfall shut, the state persists — the same rule that makes every district outcome mean something. On the next visit the Collector starts one level higher: the lower gantry is under water, the short crossing to basin 3 is gone, and the outfall is reachable only the long way round the walkway. **Nothing banked, noted or built is lost** — the baseline holds. It is readable before launch on the refuge board, it is recoverable by an action the player already knows (the outfall opens from the walkway at any level), and the recovery costs the delay lever for that visit and the long crossing. Failure makes the world less convenient for one trip; it never makes the campaign longer or the player poorer.
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**One consequence of failure, reconciled with §2's thresholds.** If an expedition ends in rescue with a way-on shut, the state persists — the same rule that makes every district outcome mean something. **The water does not reset to 0: the district starts the next visit one step below the level it was left at**, seepage being the only thing that drains a shut collector overnight. So an expedition abandoned at level 3 opens the next one at **level 2**, which is exactly the threshold §2 gives for the lower gantry going under: the short crossing to basin 3 is gone and the ways-on are reachable only the long way round the walkway. An expedition abandoned at level 1 opens at 0 and costs nothing — which is correct, because **failure should only bite when the player was holding something.**
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**Nothing banked, noted or built is lost**; the baseline holds. It is readable before launch on the refuge board, and it is recoverable by an action the player already knows, since the ways-on open from the upper walkway at any level. The recovery costs the long crossing and, for that visit, the withheld surge already paid for. Failure makes the world less convenient for one trip; it never makes the campaign longer or the player poorer.
