**Failure and recovery:** rescue loses carried salvage and the unreturned cell; the cell remains at its authored source for another attempt. An inspected relief, heard verse or known Bell House interaction remains in the notebook. The cold night is story urgency, not an off-session clock: closing the game, spending time at Hearth or failing while learning does not kill a patient, deduct salvage or add repair debt. Dialogue and room state may acknowledge the failed attempt. A hard countdown is a credible alternative, but it would turn early experimentation and unfamiliarity into harm to named people before the player understands the game; do not adopt it without an explicit later owner decision.
-
**First persistent choice after success:** optional salvage from that expedition and subsequent ordinary returns can fund one of the current projects below first. Exact prices wait for Lead's economy and must be payable through purposeful expeditions, not repeated hauling.
+
**No fabricated shop fork after the first return.** That return's real choices were the promised two-cell cargo, optional salvage and which known upper-sanctuary lead to pursue next. The player banks salvage. Pre-credits Hearth still changes with each returned furnace part and fulfilled promise, but no optional project is sold until it creates a concrete field or relationship consequence rather than basic clarity. Exact later prices wait for Lead's economy and must be payable through purposeful expeditions, not repeated hauling.
**Do not sell correctness.** On the first return, Mara automatically mounts the exhausted cell casing and copied seven-bell spacing as the bench's resonance display. It mirrors the free legality, link and incomplete-rack warnings every shelter preview already owes; it costs no salvage and unlocks no item. Mara's first optional authored project remains deliberately unnamed until a recovered object or understood interaction gives it a new field action. A third project is not invented merely to make the three cast members symmetrical.
| Project | Player action and visible result | Changed later expedition | Competing choice and recovery |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
-
| **Tavi — turning map table** | Commit salvage and, when found, the glass survey plate; Tavi physically turns the familiar roof map over and overlays only reliefs the player has personally seen | A selected known relief becomes a clear immediate lead for the next expedition. Campaign owns the reachable route; World owns what the comparison means. The table never reveals an unseen site or opens a lift remotely | Delays build preparation and space for arrivals. Selecting which known lead to pursue is free and reversible at Hearth; the real opportunity cost is the expedition not taken |
+
| **Tavi — turning map table** | After the furnace archive supplies the glass survey plate, commit salvage for a physical table that can turn the familiar roof map over; Tavi overlays only reliefs the player has personally seen | It organizes competing lower-world route proposals after the lift. Campaign owns reachable routes; World owns what comparisons mean. The table never reveals an unseen site, charges for notebook clarity or opens the lift remotely | Unavailable before the plate; salvage is simply banked. Selecting and interpreting known leads remains free and reversible; the paid project is deferred until Lead/Campaign gives it a field consequence beyond clearer UI |
| **Senn — receiving alcove** | Commit salvage to clear and screen the existing warm-room threshold; beds and seedlings visibly move, creating one named patient's place rather than adding a capacity number | Much later, after Hearth knowingly answers the distant lights and reopens travel, an authored injured arrival can be treated and can become a relationship and source of lower-world testimony. That may create a later route or historical disagreement, owned by Campaign/World; it is not passive production | Delays the bench and map. If the alcove is not ready, Hearth can postpone the explicit signal/travel commitment; nobody dies off screen. Once the story threat is accepted, its defence is an authored expedition state, not a recurring attack schedule |
-
The two current optional projects are intentionally not permanent mutually exclusive branches. Their order changes what appears first—discovery guidance or room for a new relationship—while later purposeful returns can complete the other. A future Mara project joins this order only when the field supplies a concrete new build action. Permanent lockout would make one early salvage decision erase large parts of a discovery campaign; unconditional simultaneous completion would make salvage irrelevant. Ordered, persistent completion preserves a real choice without manufacturing scarcity forever.
+
The two later optional projects are intentionally not permanent mutually exclusive branches. Their order changes what appears first—discovery guidance or room for a new relationship—while later purposeful returns can complete the other. A future Mara project joins this order only when the field supplies a concrete new build action. Permanent lockout would make one early salvage decision erase large parts of a discovery campaign; unconditional simultaneous completion would make salvage irrelevant. Ordered, persistent completion preserves a real choice without manufacturing scarcity forever.
### Campaign-spanning development strategies
@@ 50,7 50,7 @@
| Priority | Early | Middle | Late | What it gives up |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Make impossible things** — Mara | Use the automatically restored resonance display for free rack/link feedback; spend no salvage on a duplicate preview | Add a project only when a recovered tuning piece and understood interaction create a new field action, not merely safer rehearsal of an existing rule | Turn Hearth's workshop into a shared place where a spectacular build leaves a physical trace and another named inventor can dispute or extend it | The first optional investment goes to mapping or living space until a real build project exists. Any later workshop project delays those uses; a larger starting build still sacrifices cargo, healing and flexibility and begins without free field fuel unless Equipment says otherwise |
-
| **Understand the world below** — Tavi | Build the turning map and choose among personally observed leads | Add recovered maps and conflicting accounts from people below; mark uncertainty rather than converting lore into objective arrows | Make Hearth an archive whose competing histories change which settlement or account the player trusts, without making every song a door code | Build access and guest space develop later; information proposes an expedition and never substitutes for reaching it or surviving it |
+
| **Understand the world below** — Tavi | Compare personally observed leads for free; after the archive plate and lift, build the turning map only when it changes a field route | Add recovered maps and conflicting accounts from people below; mark uncertainty rather than converting lore into objective arrows | Make Hearth an archive whose competing histories change which settlement or account the player trusts, without making every song a door code | Build access and guest space develop later; information proposes an expedition and never substitutes for reaching it or surviving it |
| **Make Hearth worth returning to** — Senn | Restore the warm room through the mandatory first promise, then choose the receiving alcove as the first optional project | Welcome the first authored arrival only after the player chooses to answer the distant lights; the newcomer changes relationships and offers testimony, not income | Prepare Hearth for a specific authored defence or refuge decision caused by the connections the player opened; its aftermath changes people and rooms permanently | Workshop and mapping conveniences arrive later. There is no farming yield, morale bonus or recurring defence reward to compensate numerically |
### Defence, reversibility and failure boundaries
@@ 70,8 70,8 @@
- **Owner direction:** Hearth should be a growing, managed settlement with authored people worth helping and defending. That preference and all development/asset gates stand.
- **Working fiction proposal:** The World Below, Hearth, Mara, Senn, Tavi, the Bell House heat cell and crowned-relief chain come from the Visionary/World drafts and are not owner-approved fiction.
- **Colony recommendation:** use authored persistent projects and investment order; retain no mandatory upkeep and no off-session decay. Make the first cell a promise, not a morally false shop choice. Do not add a fourth/fifth cast member until the lower world creates a concrete relationship and decision.
-
- **Visionary disposition:** accept that model and the Tavi/Senn projects. Reject the paid resonance bench because loadout legality and incomplete-rack feedback are baseline UX; make its display an automatic first-return change. Add no optional Mara project until a discovery supplies a new expedition action. The submitted version remains in [Colony 109bf1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony?revision=109bf1).
-
- **Open interfaces:** Lead integrates economy; Campaign supplies Bell House/return and later defence geography; Equipment specifies heat-cell footprint, Echo Relay acquisition and legal preparation; World owns the arrival, relationships and historical consequences; Visionary/PM judge premise and priority. No old support-assembly, dock or Stop rule carries into this model unless separately retained.
+
- **Visionary disposition:** accept authored projects, but do not pretend the first return offers a capital choice. Pre-credits Hearth changes through promises and returned furnace parts; salvage may be banked. Reject the paid resonance bench because legality feedback is baseline UX. Tavi's and Senn's paid projects begin only after the plate/lift gives them an honest field or relationship consequence; add no Mara project for symmetry. The earlier project timing remains in [Colony cf90ad](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony?revision=cf90ad).
+
- **Open interfaces:** Lead integrates economy; Campaign supplies Bell House/return and later defence geography; Equipment specifies the heat-cell footprint and Choir Cascade's legal preparation; World owns the arrival, relationships and historical consequences; Visionary/PM judge premise and priority. No old support-assembly, dock or Stop rule carries into this model unless separately retained.
Supersedes [COL102 r2 / Colony r6, 59ad65](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=59ad65), [COL102 r1 / Colony r5, fe7d88](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=fe7d88), [COL101 r4, 527f2b](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=527f2b) and earlier revisions linked in §8. Lead is the sole integrated Design Document owner under D014. The attributed PM seed at the foot is preserved verbatim.
