2026-09-06 22:17:26
Anonymous:
Power and Attraction r4 against PMR006 and REV104 r2: two-second coil window confirmed canonical (Equipment countersigned; Combat pending); Spark's death chosen as Combat wrote it (no stun, no chain); intensity rule adopted; fixed power energises a lit branch's water (C2); Grounder consequences (C4); cues stated (C9); lines conduct when dry; collection is walking over; a dark beacon still flashes; pursuit range about ten metres; press bound against the merged third-dispatch crowd; what persists between expeditions (PMR006 3); the refuge's place in Stop's cascade and the pump reserve declined (PMR006 4); grounded runs recover between expeditions; dispositions table updated
hold the flood/mechanics/power and attraction.md ..
@@ 1,115 1,124 @@
# Hold the Flood — Power and Attraction: the shared rule contract
-
**r3 · 2026-09-06 · Lead Game and Systems Designer · In review · The rules every district must obey. r3 embodies PMR004's provisional decisions D023 and D024, the critic's REV104-1, -3 and -4, and the lead's dispositions of the Combat and Equipment proposals (R1 to R10, E1 to E8), and records which page now owns each rule. Validated against Design Document r15 (5f9fbb), World and Mystery r20 (7699de), Combat Rules r2 (1126c3), Enemies r3 (0822dd), Inventory and Charge r1 (73eb77) and Colony r1 (a1046d).**
**r4 · 2026-09-06 · Lead Game and Systems Designer · In review · The rules every district must obey. r4 answers PMR006's blockers and the critic's REV104 r2 on the contract: the two-second coil window is confirmed canonical and countersigned by Equipment; the Spark's death is chosen as Combat wrote it, a hazard to the surveyor and nothing to organisms; the intensity rule that separates fixed power, the coil, the arc and a Spark is adopted; what persists between expeditions is stated; the refuge's place in Stop's cascade is stated and the pump reserve declined; lines conduct when dry, motes are collected by walking over them, a dark beacon still flashes, and pursuit range has a value. Validated against Design Document r15 (5f9fbb), World and Mystery r22 (da3639), Combat Rules r4 (91a866), Enemies r5 (9a72af), Inventory and Charge r2 (9b0547), Coil r2 (0696cf) and Colony r2 (12694e).**
**What this page is.** The one statement of the shared rules, which every district, enemy, item and colony service must obey. Everything here is a proposal and nothing is owner-approved or played. A district may add to this contract with a readable signal and the choice the addition improves, published as a shared-rule diff (section 7); it may not change what power, signal, a beacon or charge means. Where this page states a rule in one sentence and a domain page states it in full, the domain page owns the detail and this page owns the sentence; the ownership map is in section 10.
-
**What r3 changes, in one paragraph.** The rack is eight cells from the outset and pickups go to a battery order the player sets at a shelter (D023, adopting EQP101 E1 and E3); leakage, links and field handling are as Inventory and Charge states them (E2, E4, E5). A local dispatch needs the district's drum and the trunk's permission, arrivals also need supply, and a flash with nothing behind it is a readable state (D024, REV104-1 and -3). Fixed power has a stated source under the provisional Answer A, with the Stop consequence and the baseline return (D024, REV104-4, COL-I4). Bodies resolve their reasons to move in one order (R1), press is bounded by crowd size (R2), a discharge keeps water energised for two seconds (R3 ruled), roles read by silhouette and glow carries one bit (R4), a Carrier can take a mote (R5), the arc chains body to body only (R10 declined, the bounded model adopted), and one role may darken a beacon (R9 allowed). The old "two empty batteries fill together" cost is gone with the most-room rule.
+
**What r3 established (kept).** Eight cells and player-set collection priority (D023); dispatch needs the drum and the trunk, arrivals need supply, the empty flash is a state (D024, REV104-1, -3); fixed power has a source under Answer A with the Stop cascade and the baseline return (D024, REV104-4, COL-I4); the precedence stack, bounded press, glow as one bit, the Carrier's mote, the Grounder allowed, the arc bounded (R1, R2, R4, R5, R9; R10 declined).
+
+
**What r4 changes.** Section 1: lines conduct when dry. Section 2: fixed power energises a lit branch's channel water continuously; the Grounder's consequences; the race is unfed, not special. Section 3: a flash needs no power; pursuit range is about ten metres; the press bound is checked against the merged third-dispatch crowd. Section 4: the intensity rule; the Spark row; collection is walking over. Section 6: what persists. Section 9: the refuge's circuit and the declined reserve; grounded runs do not persist. Section 10: the dispositions, including Equipment's countersignature and Combat's pending one.
---
-
## 1. Conduction: water connects
+
## 1. Conduction: water connects, and so do lines
-
- Current present anywhere in a body of connected water is present everywhere in it. Two channels are one body when a valve, lock or breach joins them and both hold water. A dry bed does not conduct; a drained connection is no connection. Flowing water conducts exactly as still water does; a channel that carries no current is unenergised, not non-conducting, and a district that wants a break in conduction must draw a dry one.
-
- Ways to change the topology, all readable on the ground: a valve (joins or parts two channels), a drain or field pump (empties a channel), a lock (moves water between basins), the hand pump (a carried drain, section 5), and the cable reel (a laid conductor between two wet points across dry ground; it carries environmental power only and never charges a battery).
+
- Current present anywhere in a body of connected water is present everywhere in it. Two channels are one body when a valve, lock or breach joins them and both hold water. A dry bed does not conduct; a drained connection is no connection. Flowing water conducts exactly as still water does; a channel that carries no current is unfed, not non-conducting, and a district that wants a break in conduction must draw a dry one and show it.
+
- Lines conduct when dry: cables and rails carry current along their length. A dry bed, loose cargo (crane parts, bundles on dry ground) and equipment housings do not.
+
- Ways to change the topology, all readable on the ground: a valve (joins or parts two channels), a drain or field pump (empties a channel), a lock (moves water between basins; Campaign 3.1), the hand pump (a carried drain, section 5), and the cable reel (a laid conductor between two wet points across dry ground; it carries environmental power only and never charges a battery).
- In the rack, only orthogonal cell contact conducts. Equipment housings do not conduct, so any module, the insulation included, and any empty cell breaks a salvage chain; wet salvage bundles conduct into touching bundles, and a battery leaks one unit per minute per wet bundle reachable from its terminals through such a chain, capped at the charge present, shown as one drip per bundle. Two batteries reaching the same chain both leak; leakage never powers anything and never hurts the surveyor. Insulation worn as a module is also what lets the surveyor stand in energised water. (Owner of the detail: Inventory and Charge, E2.)
- These are game rules and not a claim about real electrical safety; the Reference pages on electricity in water and drainage engineering record the caveats.
-
**Readable signal.** Wet is wet on screen; energised water shows local arcs along its edges and contacts; a joined channel's lamp, where one exists, is an indicator.
+
**Readable signal.** Wet is wet on screen; energised water shows local arcs along its edges and contacts; a powered line glows faintly; a joined channel's lamp, where one exists, is an indicator.
## 2. Power: a device works while its channel carries current
- A device works only while the water, rail or line it stands on carries current, and stops when the current stops. Devices: dispatch beacons, hatches and doors, gates, pumps, lifts and indicator lamps.
- Sources of current: a district's own circuit, switched from its panel, whose positions choose which branch is powered and are exclusive (one branch at a time, or off); and a coil discharge, which energises the water the surveyor is touching for two seconds and stuns the conducting bodies in it for eight (section 4). The thick cable is the power line; switching it is instant and priced by what it darkens as well as by what it lights.
+
- **A lit branch's channel water is energised for as long as the branch is lit** (Combat's question C2, ruled yes): it is why the electrician waits in the lit yard in insulation, and why a discharge into a lit channel adds a stun and no new hazard. Fixed power hurts the uninsulated surveyor and does nothing to organisms (the intensity rule, section 4).
- **What supplies the district circuits (provisional, D024, Answer A).** The city runs on charge harvested from the Flood: the Collector's wheels take charge from the mass passing through, the head-works' switch-house stores and distributes it along the thick cables, and each district's panel switches its share. The store is what makes fixed power feel fixed: it outlasts any one expedition. The Stop position at the head-works ends the harvest, and the districts go dark one by one as the store drains (section 9); no district may depend on a supply the table in section 9 does not name.
-
- **The relay** is the one stated exception in the districts so far: it is a source of signal, not a consumer of power. Its drum is turned by a wheel in flowing water, the race above the weir, which nothing energises because no lit circuit joins it and the valves join only below the weir; drain R stops the wheel and touches no power (World and Mystery r18, closing REV103-9). The exception is readable: the wheel turns in water that shows no arcs.
-
- **A role may darken a beacon.** The Grounder (Enemies) climbs a live cable run and grounds it, so the beacon on that run flickers and goes dark until the body is cleared or the branch re-switched. This passes section 7's test: it makes a device stop for want of current, and can never make a light, cause a dispatch or select an intake. Its signal is an irregular flicker that is visibly not the travelling dispatch pulse, a spark at the body's position on the thick cable, and the forecast marking the branch failing (R9 allowed; World owns the body's fiction).
+
- **The relay** is the one stated exception in the districts so far: it is a source of signal, not a consumer of power. Its drum is turned by a wheel in the race above the weir, which is unfed water: no lit circuit joins it, the valves join only below the weir, and the actual dry breaks are the weir's crest, the dry gallery and the cables themselves. Drain R stops the wheel and touches no power (World and Mystery r18 and r22, closing REV103-9). The exception is readable: the wheel turns in water that shows no arcs.
+
- **A role may darken a beacon.** The Grounder (Enemies) climbs a live cable run and grounds it, so everything on that run loses power, beacon and hatch alike, until the body is killed or the branch re-switched; there is no alternate supply on a run. This passes section 7's test: it makes devices stop for want of current, and can never make a light, cause a dispatch or select an intake. Its signal is an irregular flicker that is visibly not the travelling dispatch pulse, a spark at the body's position on the thick cable, and the forecast marking the branch failing (R9 allowed, Combat's C4 ruled; World owns the body's fiction).
**Readable signal.** Steady light means powered; dark means unpowered; the thick cable is visibly thick.
## 3. Attraction: the signal chooses the intake; light draws the crowd
-
- **Dispatch (D024, REV104-1).** A district dispatches when its drum's contact closes and the trunk is carrying time: the drum makes the moment, the trunk permits it. Shut stops the drum; a dark position on the Exchange's bank withholds the trunk; either alone stops announced surges. A dark district is in the shut regime, unannounced trickles that grow and a dark forecast, and never a district with no Flood in it.
-
- **Intake and supply (REV104-3).** At a dispatch the chosen intake's beacon flashes, and a surge enters there if the supply provides one. A flash with nothing behind it is the empty flash, a readable state of its own: the beacon flashes on the cadence, no bodies come, and the forecast shows the next slot. The Collector's gates decide supply (Districts, the Collector). Only the panel selects intake; powering a beacon by any other means, including a coil, lights it but never makes it flash.
-
- **After entry, in one order (R1).** Every body resolves the first line that applies: 0, stunned (inside the eight-second stun, and it conducts); 1, pursuit (the surveyor is within its pursuit range: chase, and drift back when out of range); 2, a role target other than light (the Floater's is the flow while water flows; the Anchor's the lowest wet ground; the Carrier's the nearest reachable loose charge; the Grounder's the nearest reachable powered run); 3, attraction (walk continuously to the nearest lit beacon it can reach; hold on arrival; never leave a held beacon for a farther one; retarget to a nearer reachable lit beacon when its own goes dark); 4, spread (no lit beacon reachable: press outward along the entry branch). Pursuit outranks attraction, which is why harvesting inside a held crowd costs health; role targets sit below pursuit and above attraction, so up close every body is just a body. (Owner: Combat Rules.)
-
- **Press (R2).** A crowd holding at a beacon occupies a radius set by its size; when bodies join, the radius grows over a few seconds, and when bodies leave or die it shrinks. Press is that relaxation seen from outside, not an unbounded creep. A crowd with no beacon has no centre and spreads along its branch, which is the dangerous case. The forecast overlay draws one ring per crowd. The pumping district's tuning bound, that the first surge's press must not reach the causeway head before the evacuation window closes, becomes checkable: the first surge's radius must be shorter than the causeway.
-
- **What is a beacon.** The district's dispatch beacons, the portable beacon, and a moving beacon where a district adds one (the Tram Incline's lamp). Every other lamp is an indicator.
+
- **Dispatch (D024, REV104-1).** A district dispatches when its drum's contact closes and the trunk is carrying time: the drum makes the moment, the trunk permits it. Shut stops the drum; a dark position on the Exchange's bank withholds the trunk; either alone stops announced surges. A dark district is in the shut regime, unannounced trickles that grow and a dark forecast, and never a district with no Flood in it; its arrivals obey ordinary targeting once inside.
+
- **Intake and supply (REV104-3).** At a dispatch the chosen intake's beacon flashes, and a surge enters there if the supply provides one. A flash with nothing behind it is the empty flash, a readable state of its own: the beacon flashes on the cadence, no bodies come, and the forecast shows the next slot. The flash is a signal event and needs no power: a dark beacon still flashes at its dispatch and is dark again after it, so a crowd that entered under it retargets or spreads. The Collector's gates decide supply (Districts, the Collector). Only the panel selects intake; powering a beacon by any other means, including a coil, lights it but never makes it flash. Every district tables its panel: position, powered branch, intake selected, beacon that flashes (Campaign, section 3).
+
- **After entry, in one order (R1).** Every body resolves the first line that applies: 0, stunned (inside the eight-second stun, and it conducts); 1, pursuit (the surveyor is within its pursuit range: chase, and drift back when out of range); 2, a role target other than light (the Floater's is the flow while water flows; the Anchor's the lowest wet ground; the Carrier's the nearest reachable loose charge within its acquisition range; the Grounder's the nearest reachable powered run); 3, attraction (walk continuously to the nearest lit beacon it can reach; hold on arrival; never leave a held beacon for a farther one; retarget to a nearer reachable lit beacon when its own goes dark); 4, spread (no lit beacon reachable: press outward along the entry branch). Pursuit outranks attraction, which is why harvesting inside a held crowd costs health; role targets sit below pursuit and above attraction, so up close every body is just a body. (Owner: Combat Rules.)
+
- **Pursuit range** is about ten metres, a channel's width, and each district names a landmark for it. A body outside it does not chase; a crowd does not cross a district to reach the surveyor. The first battery in any written expedition is therefore earned at a crowd's edge, inside that range, and priced in hits (REV104-8). Contact costs one health with a moment of immunity after; the surveyor has five.
+
- **Press (R2).** A crowd holding at a beacon occupies a radius set by its size; when bodies join, the radius grows over a few seconds, and when bodies leave or die it shrinks. Press is that relaxation seen from outside, not an unbounded creep. A crowd with no beacon has no centre and spreads along its branch, which is the dangerous case. The forecast overlay draws one ring per crowd. The pumping district's tuning bound becomes checkable: the merged crowd after the third dispatch must not reach the causeway head before the evacuation window closes.
+
- **What is a beacon.** The district's dispatch beacons, the portable beacon (armed and charged, carried or planted), and a moving beacon where a district adds one (the Tram Incline's lamp, a lure that never flashes). Every other lamp is an indicator.
- **Arrival.** A surge is forty to a hundred and forty organisms entering over about half a minute, on the schedule the forecast shows.
**Readable signal.** Flashing means a dispatch; the thin cable is visibly thin; a crowd's target is the light it walks toward, and its ring is drawn.
## 4. Charge: once per organism, ten per battery
-
- Organisms carry charge and shed it once per expedition; an unshed body glows and a shed body does not, and that is all glow says (R4). A kill drops a small mote of one unit. A stun in water sheds one large mote of five units per ten organisms stunned. Motes fade in seconds.
-
- A battery holds ten units. **Collection goes by a priority the player sets at a shelter (D023, E3):** batteries are ordered in a visible list, the first eligible battery fills before the next, unlinked storage included; a large mote is five successive units split across batteries as needed, and only the excess is lost; a full, planted or active-arc battery is ineligible; with no eligible battery the charge is lost. The list cannot be reordered in the field. This replaces the most-room rule, so a player readies one action on purpose instead of splitting charge by accident.
+
- **The intensity rule** (Combat's proposal, adopted). Current does two different things to two kinds of body. To the surveyor, energised water is damage, one health per second at any intensity, prevented by insulation. To an organism, ordinary energised water does nothing; only a bank-strength discharge reaches it, and what a discharge does is stun it and make it shed, never damage it. Nothing in this game damages an organism with electricity; the arc damages by conducting the cutter's hits along bodies, a weapon effect with a weapon's cue.
+
- Organisms carry charge and shed it once per expedition; an unshed body glows and a shed body does not, and that is all glow says (R4). A kill drops a small mote of one unit. A stun in water sheds one large mote of five units per ten organisms stunned. Motes fade in seconds and are collected by walking over them where they fell; nothing is collected from a distance or from a moving step.
+
- A battery holds ten units. **Collection goes by a priority the player sets at a shelter (D023, E3):** batteries are ordered in a visible list, the first eligible battery fills before the next, unlinked storage included; a large mote is five successive units split across batteries as needed, and only the excess is lost; a full, planted or active-arc battery is ineligible; with no eligible battery the charge is lost. The list cannot be reordered in the field.
- A Carrier that reaches a mote on the ground takes it and carries it; killing that Carrier drops it again (R5). Nothing but the surveyor and a Carrier can take a mote.
-
- A coil discharge needs a full linked battery and spends it. It energises the water the surveyor is touching for two seconds (R3, ruled): long enough that an uninsulated discharge costs two health, short enough that the surveyor can collect inside the water during the eight-second stun without insulation being compulsory. Stunned bodies that have already shed yield nothing; stunning again buys control, not charge.
-
- The arc drains a full linked battery over about ten seconds, one burst per battery; a body hit while the burst runs is chained and the hit conducts onward to bodies within a short reach of it, body to body; the chain does not travel through energised water (R10 declined for this draft; the bounded model preserves spatial limits, and R10 is recorded as the alternative). The burst returns no motes from bodies that have shed. Starting a burst reserves its battery until it ends; an interrupted burst discards the unused fuel. The Glossary's "about twenty seconds" is wrong and is the editor's to fix; ten is the number.
-
- A Spark killed in water energises that water for two seconds, the same window as a discharge; conducting bodies in it that have not shed are stunned and shed by the ordinary rule, an uninsulated surveyor in it is hurt, and nothing is chained or killed by it.
+
- **A coil discharge** needs a full linked battery and spends it. It energises the water the surveyor is touching for two seconds and stuns every conducting body in that water for eight (R3, ruled at r3 and confirmed: Equipment countersigned at Coil r2 and Equipment r2; Combat's effect table still carries eight seconds of powered water and is to be brought to this row, PMR006 1). An uninsulated discharge costs two health; after the two seconds the surveyor can collect inside the water without insulation. Stunned bodies that have already shed yield nothing; stunning again buys control, not charge.
+
- **The arc** drains a full linked battery over about ten seconds, one burst per battery; a body hit while the burst runs is chained and the hit conducts onward to at most three further bodies within a short reach, body to body, needing proximity and line of sight; the chain does not travel through energised water and the arc never energises water (R10 declined; the bounded model preserves spatial limits and is recorded as the alternative's counterpart). The burst returns no motes from bodies that have shed. Starting a burst reserves its battery until it ends; an interrupted burst discards the unused fuel. The Glossary's "about twenty seconds" is wrong; ten is the number.
+
- **A Spark killed in water** energises that water for two seconds, the same window as a discharge, and by the intensity rule it stuns nothing and damages no organism; it hurts an uninsulated surveyor standing in that water and it makes no chain (PMR006 2, chosen as Combat wrote it; r3's stun clause is withdrawn). Its own kill mote is the yield, if it had not shed.
- Charge never leaves a district with the player; charge left in a battery at extraction is lost at the dock. What a district's own machines meter or move is that district's design.
-
- Accounting, on every written expedition: dropped, collected, stored, spent, and lost, with lost annotated as fade, overflow, leakage, interruption or dock. (E6; "expired" in the Design Document's ledgers means lost.)
+
- Accounting, on every written expedition: dropped, collected, stored, spent, and lost, with lost annotated as fade, overflow, leakage, interruption or dock (E6).
## 5. The rack
-
- Eight cells, two rows of four, from the campaign's start (D023, E1). One module or one bundle per cell; the coil takes two orthogonally adjacent cells; the cutter sits outside the rack in the primary cradle, and an alternative primary uses that cradle and one cell for its brace; one primary at a time; any number of batteries, at most one of each other module. There is no rack expansion; the Campaign page's third row and its crane parts are withdrawn in that form.
-
- Each battery links to one module and each module accepts one link; links may cross any cells. Arrangement, links, primary, cell order for pickups and collection priority are set only at shelters; in the field the surveyor uses what is fitted, may drop a bundle or an inert find at their feet, and may not shuffle cells (E4, E5). Planting a beacon places its battery with it and frees two cells; retrieval is a deliberate interaction that needs two free cells.
+
- Eight cells, two rows of four, from the campaign's start (D023, E1). One module or one bundle per cell; the coil takes two orthogonally adjacent cells; the cutter sits outside the rack in the primary cradle, and an alternative primary uses that cradle and one cell for its brace; one primary at a time; any number of batteries, at most one of each other module. There is no rack expansion.
+
- Each battery links to one module and each module accepts one link; links may cross any cells. Arrangement, links, primary, cell order for pickups and collection priority are set only at shelters; in the field the surveyor uses what is fitted, may drop a bundle or an inert find at their feet, and may not shuffle cells (E4, E5). The portable beacon is armed or disarmed by interaction, drains a unit every ten seconds while lit, and is planted with its battery, freeing two cells; retrieval is a deliberate interaction that needs two free cells (Utility Modules U3).
- Starting issue: the cutter and an empty battery, plus the workshop's starting module where the colony has one. Recorded racks are reissued on revisits only, capped at six issued cells, so first visits keep their discoveries (D023, COL-I2; Colony and Equipment own the boundary).
-
## 6. The expedition frame
+
## 6. The expedition frame, and what persists
- Fifteen minutes; three dispatches on the forecast's schedule where the district's relay runs; docks are hard stops for the Flood; extraction banks cargo and loses charge. Nothing decays between expeditions and nothing is charged for departure or return.
+
- **What persists between expeditions (PMR006 3).** Four kinds of state, and the rule for each: (a) *temporary electrical effects* end with their timers, never later: discharge windows, stuns, bursts, a Spark's hazard, a planted beacon's light; (b) *ordinary switched state* persists exactly as left: panel positions, valves, locks and basin levels, drains, gates, the Exchange's bank, the tram's position; (c) *authored commitments* persist and are one-way where their district says so, and the warning before one says whether rescue can undo it: shut, fix and hold, the barrier gates shut, the Collector's outfall, Stop, Keep and Leave; (d) *carried things* reset: charge is lost at the dock, finds and cargo not banked are lost on rescue, items left in the field are gone at the expedition's end, and the starting issue is reissued. Entered crowds do not persist: between expeditions the mass drains to the Collector (World and Mystery), so a district is found with its levers as left and its water as the campaign's outcomes set it, and its Flood arrives again on the schedule. A Grounder's run therefore recovers between expeditions with the rest of the mass. Colony mirrors this rule and keeps no blanket reset sentence.
- The colony holds one dock dry per district reached, and may support one further dry shelter at a surveyed compatible connection while its one advanced service is assigned there (COL-I1; Colony owns the service, Districts the connections). Changing the held dock is a one-time refit, not a recurring payment.
- The baseline return is by gravity and dry ground: a gravity-drained dock and a dry route home exist in every district and at the refuge and survive any power shutdown (COL-I4, section 9). Powered conveniences go dormant without supply; banked progress never does.
- A district may change the schedule's shape (the Tidal Barrier adds the tide) but not the frame.
## 7. What a district may add, and the shared-rule diff it must publish
-
A district page states, in one short table, what it adds (a device, a way to change topology, an enemy role, a module, a second clock), what it changes (ideally nothing), the signal that announces each addition, and the choice each improves. The test the critic applies: a written expedition in that district whose choices could not occur in another. Additions adopted so far: locks and basin levels; a powered rail and a moving beacon; the Exchange's bank; the Collector's gates and the empty flash; the tide; and eight enemy roles on the merged roster (Walker, Floater, Heavy, Carrier, Anchor, Crust, Spark, Grounder), each with a precedence line and a signal, owned by Combat with the Floater transferred there from the Campaign page. Additions that fail: anything that makes a lamp draw, a coil select intake, an organism shed twice, or a device work without current.
+
A district page states, in one short table, what it adds (a device, a way to change topology, an enemy role, a module, a second clock), what it changes (ideally nothing), the signal that announces each addition, and the choice each improves; and it tables its panel (section 3). The test the critic applies: a written expedition in that district whose choices could not occur in another. Additions adopted so far: locks and basin levels; a powered rail and a moving beacon; the Exchange's bank; the Collector's gates and the empty flash; the tide; and eight enemy roles on the merged roster (Walker, Floater, Heavy, Carrier, Anchor, Crust, Spark, Grounder), each with a precedence line and a signal, owned by Combat with the Floater's definition attributed on the Campaign page until transferred. Additions that fail: anything that makes a lamp draw, a coil select intake, an organism shed twice, or a device work without current. Passing that test is necessary and not sufficient: an addition must also say what loses power, what supplies it and how it recovers, as the Grounder now does.
## 8. Readable state
-
Steady means powered, flashing means a dispatch, dark means unpowered; the empty flash is a flash with no bodies behind it and the forecast still counting. Wet and dry read by tint and by a second, non-colour channel (proposed: surface motion on wet ground; energised water already reads by its arcs). Glow carries one bit, charge to shed or not; enemy roles read by silhouette and attitude, never by tint or brightness alone (R4; this corrects r2's "size and tint"). The dispatch flash is a slow pulse of about one to two per second; arcs are local sparks along edges, never a whole-screen flash (REF106). Each crowd's ring and each body's current target are drawn on the forecast overlay.
-
-
## 9. Power and dispatch: the state table (Lead with World; the world designer corrects the fiction, this page the rules)
+
Steady means powered, flashing means a dispatch, dark means unpowered; the empty flash is a flash with no bodies behind it and the forecast still counting. Wet and dry read by tint and by a second, non-colour channel (proposed: surface motion on wet ground; energised water already reads by its arcs). Four facts about a body want cues and brightness carries one (Combat's C9, ruled): glow says what is left to take; encrustation says whether current reaches it (the Crust); a flickering outline says a discharge is imminent (the Spark); silhouette, attitude and position say the role; scale says the Heavy. Never by tint or brightness alone. The dispatch flash is a slow pulse of about one to two per second; arcs are local sparks along edges, never a whole-screen flash (REF106). Each crowd's ring and each body's current target are drawn on the forecast overlay, and the cutter draws a thin line to its target.
-
PMR004 asks for one compact table that keeps six things apart. Every row is provisional under D024's Answer A.
+
## 9. Power and dispatch: the state table (Lead with World; World r22 carries the same table with the fiction)
| State | Source | Connection | What changes it | What survives exit |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
-
| Fixed power | The head-works' store of harvested charge | Thick cables from the switch-house to each district's panel and on to its branch | The district panel (which branch); a Grounder (one run, until cleared or re-switched); the head-works' Stop (all districts, as the store drains) | Panel positions and grounded runs persist as left |
-
| Hydraulic flow | The reservoir | Races, weirs, locks and drains | Locks and drains, including drain R; the head-works' flow positions | Lock and drain states persist; they are district outcomes |
-
| Trunk permission | The head-works' governor, keeping time | The thin trunk cable through the Exchange's bank to each district's relay | The bank's positions; the governor's Stop or Keep | Bank positions persist |
+
| Fixed power | The head-works' switch-house store of harvested charge, filled by the Collector's wheels | Thick cables from the switch-house to each district's panel and on to its branch; a lit branch's channel water is energised | The district panel (which branch); a Grounder (one run, until cleared or re-switched, within an expedition); the head-works' Stop (all districts, as the store drains) | Panel positions persist as left; a grounded run recovers between expeditions with the mass |
+
| Hydraulic flow | The reservoir over the weir | Races, weirs, locks and drains | Locks and drains, including drain R; the governor's cadence lever under Keep | Lock and drain states persist; they are district outcomes |
+
| Trunk permission | The head-works' governor, keeping time on its shaft | The thin trunk cable through the Exchange's bank to each district's relay | The bank's positions; the governor's Stop, Keep or Leave; Fix at a district clamps what the permit can do there | Bank positions persist |
| Local timing | Each district's drum, turned by its race | The drum's contact to the district's signal cable and its beacons | Shut (drain the race); Fix (clamp the lever); Hold | Persists; the incoming pulse on a stopped drum is the first campaign clue |
-
| Enemy supply | The Collector's basins, where the Flood is cycled | Outfalls and channels to each district's intake | The Collector's gates and outfall; the Tidal Barrier's gates for the sea's supply | Gate states persist; an empty supply gives the empty flash |
+
| Enemy supply | The Collector's basins, where the Flood is cycled; the sea, admitted by the Barrier | Outfalls and channels to each district's intake | The Collector's gates and outfall; the Tidal Barrier's gates | Gate states persist; an empty supply gives the empty flash |
| Observed warning | The forecast: the drum's cadence displayed where the relay is repaired | The district's board and the refuge's board | Repair; Shut; a dark bank position (no forecast there) | Repairs persist |
-
**Stop, and the baseline return.** Setting the head-works to Stop ends the harvest. The store drains and each district's circuit dies in turn, starting at the head-works, within the expeditions that follow (proposal: one district per expedition, nearest the head-works first, shown on the refuge's board); powered doors, hatches, lifts and the colony's powered pump go dormant; gravity drains, dry docks, the culvert and every hand-worked lock and valve keep working, so every district and the refuge still have a dry way home and nothing banked is lost. The relay drums keep turning on flow, so timing survives Stop; supply does not, because the Collector's wheels stop cycling the Flood without the harvest that drives its gates, which is the campaign-scale version of the relay-room choice. The Collector's water-level consequence under Stop is CAM101's to reconcile between its two pages.
+
**Stop, the cascade, and the refuge.** Setting the head-works to Stop ends the harvest. The store drains and each district's circuit dies in turn, one district per expedition, nearest the head-works first, shown on the refuge's board before the player launches; powered doors, hatches, lifts and the colony's powered pump go dormant; gravity drains, dry docks, the culvert, every hand-worked lock, gate and valve, the cutter, the coil and planted beacons keep working, so every district and the refuge still have a dry way home and nothing banked is lost. The drums keep turning on flow, so timing survives Stop; supply does not, because the Collector's wheels stop cycling the Flood without the harvest that drives its gates: Stop is the empty flash everywhere, for good. **The refuge's circuit** is fed with the pumping district's, whose dock it is, and dies with it, late in the cascade; the world designer's proposed salvage-fed pump reserve is declined, as Colony recommends (PMR006 4), so after Stop the refuge keeps its dry landing and manual bench and loses its powered forecast, pumped berth and advanced tooling, on the board's schedule. **Keep** makes the player the thing upstream that keeps time, a standing setting that persists like the relay's and is the one reversible outcome; **Leave** changes nothing and is recorded (the Head-works page).
## 10. Rule ownership, and the dispositions this revision makes
| Rule | Owner page | Disposition |
| --- | --- | --- |
-
| Conduction, power, attraction, charge: the four clauses | This page | Lead |
-
| Precedence stack, press, targeting, damage, status grammar (R1, R2, R6, R7, R8) | Combat Rules | Adopted: R1 the stack; R2 bounded press with a drawn ring; R6 the unwithholdable cutter with a target line; R7 three statuses, closed, the prod's push being movement; R8 no damage numbers, hit counts permitted and a resistance stated as "cannot be cleared by the cutter in useful time" |
-
| Energised window (R3, C1) | This page, section 4 | Ruled: two seconds; the stun eight; Equipment's Coil page to match |
-
| Glow and silhouette (R4) | This page, section 8 | Adopted; r2's "size and tint" corrected |
-
| Carrier takes motes (R5); the Static and Carrier merge | Enemies | Adopted: one role, the Carrier's targeting sentence with the Static's short range |
-
| A role may darken a beacon (R9, C5) | This page, section 2 | Allowed under section 7; World rules the fiction and names |
-
| Arc through energised water (R10, C7) | This page, section 4 | Declined for this draft; bounded body-to-body chaining adopted; R10 recorded as the alternative |
-
| Names (C6); arc duration (C8) | World; Glossary | Placeholders, World renames; ten seconds, the Glossary to be corrected |
-
| Eight cells (E1); leakage (E2); collection priority (E3); links and activation (E4); field acquisition (E5); accounting (E6); advance preparation (E7); combat boundaries (E8) | Inventory and Charge, with Build Paths for acquisition | Adopted, all eight, as D023 selects; E8 is the Combat interface and Combat has accepted the grammar in the same terms |
-
| Tide glass | Equipment | Deferred as Equipment argues; the tide staff is the indicator |
-
| The Floater | Enemies (transferred from Campaign) | Kept; its precedence line is R1's line 2; Combat carries it on the merged roster |
-
| The Heavy | Enemies | Kept, with Combat's wording |
-
| One held dock plus one supported shelter; one-time refit; baseline gravity return; player-selected refuge defence (COL-I1, I4, I6) | Colony, with Districts | Adopted |
-
| Reusable service loop replacing the three-decision ceiling (COL-I5) | Colony | Adopted as D023 selects; prices remain Colony's proposals |
-
| Dispatch and supply; the empty flash; the fixed-power source; the state table (REV104-1, -3, -4) | This page with World | Stated here as rules; World corrects the fiction |
+
| Conduction, power, attraction, charge: the four clauses; persistence; the state table | This page | Lead |
+
| Precedence stack, press, targeting, damage, status grammar (R1, R2, R6, R7, R8) | Combat Rules | Adopted at r3; R8 as a recommendation against a priced ladder, hit counts permitted (PMR005) |
+
| The intensity rule | This page, section 4 | Adopted from Combat r4 |
| A Spark's death | This page, section 4; Enemies/Spark | Combat's row chosen: hazard only, no stun, no chain (PMR006 2) |
+
| Fixed power in a lit branch's water (C2) | This page, section 2 | Yes; hazard only, by the intensity rule |
+
| The Grounder's consequences (C4) | This page, section 2 | Everything on the run; no alternate supply; recovery by kill or re-switch; recovers between expeditions |
+
| Cues (C9) | This page, section 8 | Glow, encrustation, flicker, silhouette and position, scale: stated |
+
| Glow and silhouette (R4); the Carrier's mote (R5); the Static and Carrier merge; the Heavy's hit count | Enemies | Adopted; the Heavy's count stays a number (PMR005) |
+
| A role may darken a beacon (R9, C5) | This page, section 2 | Allowed; World names |
+
| Arc through energised water (R10, C7) | This page, section 4 | Declined; Combat has withdrawn it |
| Eight cells (E1); leakage (E2); collection priority (E3); links and activation (E4); field acquisition (E5); accounting (E6); advance preparation (E7); combat boundaries (E8) | Inventory and Charge, with Build Paths | Adopted; Inventory and Charge r2 accepts the transfer |
+
| The tide glass | Equipment | Deferred |
+
| The Floater; the Heavy | Enemies, attributed on Campaign | Kept |
+
| One held dock plus one supported shelter; one-time refit; baseline gravity return; player-selected defence; no pump reserve (COL-I1, I4, I6; PMR006 4) | Colony, with Districts | Adopted; World's reserve proposal declined |
+
| Reusable service loop (COL-I5) | Colony | Adopted as D023 selects |
+
| Dispatch and supply; the empty flash; the fixed-power source; the state table (REV104-1, -3, -4) | This page with World | Stated as rules; World r22 carries the fiction |
| The mystery's answer | World and Mystery | Answer A provisional (D024); B preserved |
-
| District set and count | Districts, with the Campaign page | Seven external districts and the refuge at stake (D022) |
+
| District set and count; the ending's three positions | Districts, with the Campaign page | Seven external districts and the refuge at stake (D022); Stop, Keep, Leave (Head-works r4) |
+
| Presentation categories | Campaign, section 7 | One list for the Reference audit (D025) |
## Bookkeeping
-
**Sources read for r3.** PM Reviews PMR004 ed0def and PMU005 e8c3d4; Brief 70b6b1 (D022 to D024); Tasks 9569fc; Expansion Brief d97965; Design Index 0ee6d3; Combat Rules r2 1126c3 and Enemies r3 0822dd with the role pages; Inventory and Charge r1 73eb77, Equipment a44990, Build Paths a9a288; Colony r1 a1046d; Districts r2 acb797, the Collector 40f2b5, the Head-works 6bf2a7; World and Mystery r20 7699de; Design Review REV104 r1 80a882; Reference REF108 (drainage engineering, index 454f11).
+
**Sources read for r4.** PM Reviews PMR006 a28870 and checkpoint da9eb5; Tasks b72189; Brief 77e392 (D025); Design Review REV104 r2 908e01; World and Mystery r22 da3639; Combat Rules r4 91a866; Enemies r5 9a72af and the role pages at their r3 and r4; Inventory and Charge r2 9b0547; Equipment r2 ae4543; Coil r2 0696cf; Utility Modules 087718; Colony r2 12694e; Districts r4 c58832; the Head-works r4 706ce6; the Collector r4 75c09e; External Critique r10 fc95e6.
-
**PM report.** Task: the Lead's integration of PMR004 1 and 2 into the shared rule contract; artifact: this page r3 (r2 69024c and earlier in history). Changed decisions: none canonical; D023 and D024 embodied as provisional rules; the lead's dispositions of R1 to R10, E1 to E8, C1 to C8 and COL-I1 to I6 recorded in section 10. Evidence: written design against the cited revisions; no player data; nothing built. Risks: the state table's Stop cadence and the fixed-power fiction are the lead's proposals for World to correct; the two-second window and bounded arc are reversible rulings with their alternatives recorded; the Design Document's ledgers were derived under the old rules and are not re-certified. Next handoff: World to correct section 9's fiction and adopt the dispatch sentence on its page; Combat and Equipment to publish the joint effect table with these numbers and fix Encounters A and B as PMR004 asks; the critic on this revision and the Campaign page's r2; the editor's transfer when the role resumes.
+
**PM report.** Task: the Lead's reconciliation of PMR006's five blockers as they fall on the contract, and of REV104 r2's four contract notes; artifact: this page r4 (r3 59f895 and earlier in history). Changed decisions: none canonical; one r3 clause withdrawn (the Spark's stun) in favour of Combat's row; the persistence rule and the intensity rule added; the refuge's cascade position stated and the pump reserve declined. Evidence: written design against the cited revisions; no player data; nothing built. Risks: the ten-metre pursuit range is a proposal every written scene now leans on; the cascade cadence is a guess; Combat's table still carries eight seconds until countersigned. Next handoff: Combat to countersign the two-second window and the Spark row in its effect table; Colony to mirror section 6's persistence rule and the cascade; World to carry "a grounded run recovers between expeditions" in its table; the critic on this revision with the Campaign's r3; PM's next review.
