**Status.** A provisional proposal for review, not owner-approved. It follows one authored person from first trace to their presence on a later expedition. Example fiction is labelled. It does not establish the full cast, the station's history, the revival explanation or a colony economy, and it settles no global rule about whether survivors can be permanently lost.
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**Status:** a working proposal after focused review. This example follows one authored person from their first traces to a contribution aboard the ship. The fiction and rescue structure are proposals; they do not settle the cast, station history, revival explanation, colony economy or global survivor loss.
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**Owner requirements used:** rescued humans can be sent to the ship; a small authored community grows there; survivors help the player understand what they find; the colony provides upgrades and a reason to defend people; oxygen limits the astronaut.
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The brief asks for survivors the player knows, helps and cares about, who become a home community and provide understanding and upgrades. This example combines acquaintance through traces with a short cooperative extraction. Those are separable choices: another survivor may be met directly or leave with less preparation.
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## The person
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## The person and the immediate goal
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*(Proposed fiction, building on traces already in use.)* **Dorn** is the work partner Yeva named from his handwriting. He is alive behind the section his own painted marks describe, in a small sealed refuge whose remaining atmosphere holds while he waits. It is not a refill station: its damaged lock cannot cycle without venting the pocket, and it makes no oxygen. Leaving requires a full portable canister connected to his own suit, which the astronaut must carry in and hand over.
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**Proposed fiction:** Dorn is the work partner Yeva named from his handwriting. He is alive behind a section his painted marks describe, maintaining a small sealed refuge and controlling what he still can. Its damaged personnel lock cannot cycle without venting the pocket. Its atmosphere supports the example's waiting state between expeditions, but the refuge produces no oxygen and cannot refill the astronaut. Dorn needs a full portable canister connected to his own suit before leaving.
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He is not a clue dispenser and not cargo. He has kept working: marking, maintaining, controlling the one thing he still can. He has a view about his own situation, and the player can act against it. Postponing does not quietly degrade him — a bounded rule for this example, not a claim that survivors are generally safe.
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The player can leave the ship with a concrete goal: reach the sealed run and find out whether anyone is behind it. Existing journal records show painted copies of a cut mark, in one hand, on fittings along a route. These support an inference that someone placed them deliberately; they do not prove who, why or whether that person remains alive. A voice through local radio, then a face at a port, supplies the next evidence.
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## The loop at a glance
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Dorn states both a need and a preference. He wants to leave, but does not want the direct run opened. He sealed it for a reason and admits he does not know whether that reason still holds or whether anything remains isolated. He is a witness with a partial account. The player can weigh it and override his wish.
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| Stage | What the player sees | What Dorn does | What the player decides |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Notice | Painted marks in one hand, on fittings along a route | Has been marking as he works | Whether to spend a trip on a person |
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| Meet | A sealed run; a voice, then a face at a port | Keeps the refuge sealed; will not open blind | Talk now, or come back equipped |
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| Understand | His account of what he shut and why | States what he did; admits what he does not know | Which of his claims to trust |
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| Decide | Two routes with different costs | Says plainly which he prefers | Fast route against his wish, or slow route with his |
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| Prepare | A route walked; a vestibule stocked shipward | Takes the canister through the sleeve | Spend capacity on his air and a reserve |
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| Send | A crossing window under ordinary horde pressure | Crosses under his own power; works his side | Hold the junction, or abort |
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| After | A colony member with a trade and a history | Asks first whether the section held | What to ask, and where to go next |
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## Immediate goal, and the evidence for it
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The sortie leaves with one sentence: reach the far side of the sealed run and find out whether anyone is behind it. Checkable on arrival.
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The evidence is already in the player's journal from earlier trips: painted copies of a cut mark, in one hand, on fittings along a route rather than on a single door. What the player may *infer* is that a person did this deliberately. What they are not told is who, why, or whether that person is alive. Nothing states it; the marks are all there is until a voice answers.
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## What he needs, and what he wants
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His immediate need is simple and he says it: he cannot open his side without losing the pocket, and he cannot travel without a canister of his own.
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His preference is the part that matters. Dorn does not want the direct run opened. He sealed it, he believes he sealed it for a reason, and he says so — while admitting he does not know whether the reason still holds, or whether what he isolated is still there. He is a witness with a partial account, not an oracle. The player can weigh it, and can override it.
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## Two ways to get him out
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**Open the direct run.** Restore power and bypass the isolator contact, as the closed exploration rules describe: one relay-family part, left in the fixture. Cheap in oxygen, short in exposure, and it shortens the run inward for as long as that relay stays seated and the feed holds — retrieving the part recovers it and removes the shortcut, per the closed rules.
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Its cost is that it does the one thing he asked the player not to do. What that opens is bounded, and the design should know it even though the player does not: the section's contents join the direct run's varying population and hazard state, exactly as the exploration rules already allow any run to vary. What was isolated is not settled here, and Dorn cannot tell them — he says only that he does not know whether his reason still holds.
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## The loop
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**Take the long way.** A longer service route that stays in vacuum and leaves his seal intact. It needs no capability the player lacks: the suit's baseline cutter releases jammed manual bolts, and each pressure door is then hand-cycled as a world-time action. Dorn travels on his own canister. The cost is a longer path, more personal oxygen and canister capacity, and repeated door operations in the open — but it keeps the relay part in the player's rig instead of leaving it in a fixture, and the boundary he drew stays drawn.
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These differ materially in cost, in what persists, and in whose judgement prevails. Neither is correct, and neither is pure loss: the fast route buys a shortcut and spends a part and his trust; the slow route spends oxygen and exposure and keeps both.
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**On why the slow route is worth offering.** Honouring him is not made meaningful by a matching penalty, and the fast route's consequence is not there to equalise the two. If the bounded consequence turns out mild in play, the choice is still a choice: whether to keep a boundary a person asked you to keep, when neither of you knows what it holds. Whether players will take that seriously is a prediction and nothing written here tests it — including the prediction that the shortcut will always be taken.
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## The crossing
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Before anything begins the player has to prepare. A full canister goes into the refuge's equipment sleeve from the corridor, so Dorn can take it and connect it without cycling the personnel lock — his air arrives without spending his shelter. Then the player walks a route they have actually traversed and stocks a fallback: a small pressure vestibule immediately shipward of the exposed junction, with a reserve canister sealed into its cradle. That preparation is the real cost of either choice, and it is spent whether or not the crossing succeeds.
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The crossing itself is short, ordinary and irreversible. The refuge vents when Dorn opens the personnel door, so there is no going back to the room he has lived in — once he steps out, that shelter is gone. The astronaut holds the junction against a normal horde while Dorn crosses under his own power and works the controls on his side. He is not carried, not led, and never a slot in the pack; a person occupies no inventory space.
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If the crossing breaks down he cannot return to the pocket, which no longer holds air. He continues shipward into the prepared vestibule and closes its door behind him, on his canister's emergency margin, and waits there on the staged reserve — which is why stocking it was not optional. A second attempt starts from the vestibule, not the vented pocket, and needs fresh air, the next segment rechecked, and a new fallback stocked further shipward. Repeated interruption costs real supply and moves him only between refuges the player actually prepared: no hidden timer, no free immunity.
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*Sent* means he has physically crossed the ship's airlock and it has closed. A request, a radio confirmation or a crossing in progress is not sent, and only then is he a colony member.
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Death is resolved by phase, not by one rule. **Before departure**, Dorn is still waiting in his original sealed refuge and the next attempt begins where the first did. **During transfer**, the pocket is already vented and he is at the prepared fallback, which the next attempt must reach with replacement air and a route checked again. **After Sent**, he is aboard whatever happens to the astronaut. The astronaut's own equipment follows the ordinary cache rules throughout. Phases and supply costs are Systems' to state in Rescue Rules.
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| Stage | What becomes available | Player decision | Dorn's action |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Notice | Marks from an identifiable hand along a route | Follow this evidence or pursue another objective | His earlier work leaves traces |
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| Meet | Contact through the sealed refuge | Talk now or return equipped | Describes his need and refuses to open blind |
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| Understand | An account of what he sealed and what he does not know | Which claims to trust | States his preferred route |
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| Prepare | Two traversable routes and a stocked abort refuge | Commit equipment and air; choose a route | Takes his canister and confirms suit flow |
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| Cross | A short ordinary-horde defence | Signal movement, hold the junction or abort | Moves under his own power and operates controls |
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| Home | An authored reunion and later contribution | What to ask and investigate next | Responds to the rescue and works aboard |
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## Aboard
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## Two ways out
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Yeva knows him before he speaks. The scene is not a reward ceremony: the first thing Dorn asks is whether the section held. If the player opened it, he is told so, and he takes it in front of them.
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**Open the direct run.** Restore the feed using a relay-family part left in the fixture. The powered hoist shortens travel while the feed and installed relay remain. Retrieving the part recovers it and stops that powered access; it does not undo every consequence of opening the section.
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## What he changes on a later expedition
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The player gains a shorter, less exposed crossing, commits a useful part and overrides Dorn's stated wish. The proposed consequence category is that the opened section can contribute its contents to the run's population and hazards. This does not identify those contents or guarantee a compensating punishment. Dorn and the player have uncertainty; this is new example fiction, not a conclusion established merely by the exploration rules allowing population changes.
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**Interpretation.** Dorn explains what his painted marks meant *to him*. They were not a system; they were one man's shorthand, and he used a borrowed shape because it was to hand. From then on the player reads every painted copy differently: personal, local, possibly idiosyncratic, and not necessarily consistent with any other hand's paint. That reframes evidence already in the journal, which is the discovery this rescue pays.
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**Take the long way.** Keep his boundary closed and retain the relay. The service route remains in vacuum. The suit's baseline cutter releases visible jammed retaining bolts, and pressure doors are then hand-cycled as world-time actions. This costs distance, preparation trips, oxygen and repeated exposure during door work. Dorn travels on his own canister; no new repressurisation tool is assumed.
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He can also say what he was doing and where he had been. He cannot supply an unseen safe route, and he does not know what happened to the station.
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The choice concerns route and equipment costs as well as whose judgment prevails. Honouring a person's wish can matter without a matching material reward. Overriding it does not automatically deduct trust or inflict an unstated relationship penalty; Dorn's response belongs to the authored scene. Which route players prefer remains untested.
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**Capability.** He is a pressure-tech's partner, and his trade attaches to gear the design already has: aboard, he services the canister-packing gear the compressor head feeds, so that more of each canister's charge is usable. *(Proposed new mechanism.)* Two things it is not. It is not a retroactive claim that equipment has been quietly degrading — no earlier article establishes a maintenance tax, and none is being added. And it is not the whole of what the brief means by colony upgrades: it is one person's trade, and the wider colony contribution is undecided and not settled here.
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## The crossing and continuation
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## The strongest escort alternative
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The astronaut passes Dorn's full canister through a pressure-rated equipment sleeve separate from the damaged personnel lock. Dorn takes it, connects his suit and confirms flow without opening the personnel door. Once committed through the sleeve it is no longer carried cargo. Dorn himself never occupies an inventory slot.
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**Hand him a canister and walk him out.** Reserve carrying capacity for his air against equipment and salvage, route for two, and fight or avoid with a person beside you.
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The player traverses the chosen route and stocks a designated abort refuge with a separate reserve. During the exposed crossing the astronaut holds an ordinary horde at a junction while Dorn crosses under his own power and operates the controls on his side. Either can call an abort. The original room vents on departure; Dorn cannot return there for air.
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Its case is genuinely strong: it puts the brief's "defend people" literally on screen. The player is not repairing a door on someone's behalf but standing between a person and a horde, which is the most direct reading of what the brief asks. It also needs no infrastructure work, so it suits survivors found anywhere, not only behind sealed runs.
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The rescue uses a finite sequence of prepared refuges. An intermediate interruption ends in the stocked vestibule immediately shipward of that segment's junction. Its reserve supports the example's stable waiting state. A renewed attempt needs fresh travel air, a rechecked segment and a stocked abort destination. At the final approach, a vestibule beside the ship airlock can reseal and serves as the abort destination; it is restocked for each attempt. There is no demand for another refuge beyond the ship. [Rescue Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Rescue%20Rules) specifies the phases and supply commitments.
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It is not preferred here for one reason that holds: it makes his safety depend on companion behaviour that no written scene can establish. It is *not* rejected for reducing him to a follower — an escort can preserve a person's stated preferences and reciprocal action just as well, and saying otherwise would be a caricature of the alternative. The chosen structure spends the player's understanding rather than their escorting, which is a preference about emphasis, not a claim that escort denies agency.
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**Sent** means Dorn is physically aboard and the ship airlock has closed. Before any departure, astronaut death leaves him in his current waiting refuge: the original room initially, or the reached vestibule on a retry. Interruption during transfer sends him to that segment's designated abort refuge, still unsent. After Sent, astronaut death leaves him aboard. Carried equipment follows the ordinary cache rules throughout.
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**Separability.** Long acquaintance through traces and a costly extraction are independent choices. This example uses both because the traces already existed; a later survivor could be met cold, or leave cheaply, without contradicting anything here.
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## Home and the next expedition
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**A correction to earlier reasoning.** It is not true that material cost is what stops rescue being a free narrative reward. Knowing a person through what they left would matter with no cost attached. The costs exist to make the *decision* real — chiefly the decision to override him — not to license the feeling.
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Yeva recognises him before he speaks. Dorn first asks whether the section held. If the player opened it, they tell him and see his response. The scene should communicate a person processing what happened, rather than substitute a generic reward notice; its emotional effect is untested.
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## Accepted costs and what would reopen this
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**Interpretation:** Dorn explains what his paint meant to him. It was one person's shorthand using a borrowed shape, not a universal machine notation. Previously recorded painted copies can now be read as personal, local and potentially different from another person's marks. He can describe his own work and whereabouts without providing unseen safe routes or explaining the whole station.
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The long route may read as busywork rather than respect, in which case the two choices collapse into an obvious cheapest option. Dorn's objection may land as an obstacle rather than a person's wish. The defence beat is deliberately short and may feel thin next to escorting someone through real danger. Every one of these is a prediction; no written scene establishes that any of it is affecting or fun.
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**Capability:** a proposed contribution is servicing the compressor-fed canister-packing equipment so that more of each canister's charge is usable. This introduces a possible improvement, not retroactive equipment degradation. It is one person's trade; the wider colony upgrade structure remains open.
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This preference would reopen if the owner reads "defend people" as protection witnessed in play, which the escort alternative serves better; or if honouring his wish proves to have no felt weight, leaving the fast route always correct.
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## Alternative, accepted cost and reopening
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## Unresolved
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The strongest alternative is continuous physical escort: give Dorn air, travel together, and defend or avoid throughout the return. It makes sustained protection visible and can preserve his preferences and reciprocal actions. It also exposes more traversal to companion behaviour and makes discovery detours part of escort reliability.
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Transfer mechanics, supply costs and failure outcomes (Rescue Rules); what was isolated and whether it matters; the colony's wider upgrade contribution; whether a survivor can ever be permanently lost, which this example does not need; and the revival cause, station history and escape solution, all untouched.
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The staged approach is preferred for this example because it concentrates cooperation at chosen crossings while preserving the earlier acquaintance and route decision. Its own costs are authored sleeves, refuges, transitions and survivor behaviour; the stable waiting and abort structure may feel protective or contrived. The short defence may feel thin, and long-route preparation may feel like busywork. Reopen the preference if the relationship or cooperation lacks weight, or the concrete escort alternative better serves the intended experience. Neither approach is validated by this written scene.
