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2026-09-08 19:42:11 Anonymous: Add first-pass home return and five person-linked project contract| /dev/null .. hold the flood/home and colony loop.md | |
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| + | # Hold The Horde — Home And Colony Loop |
| + | |
| + | **Status.** First-pass SMALL-band proposal, not owner-approved colony management, cast, final dialogue, economy, save policy, survivor mortality rule or implementation. The owner has selected an authored survivor colony that becomes a home, unlimited ship oxygen, shared expedition capacity, carried-property return on death, and tentatively the existing equipment-loan direction. The five people, three new projects, fiction, ship fixtures and benefits below remain replaceable proposals. This article reuses the accepted working scenes in [Coming Home](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Coming%20Home) and [Home Projects](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Home%20Projects) without reopening their review. |
| + | |
| + | ## The return is a sequence of chosen acts |
| + | |
| + | Home is the interval in which the astronaut can account for an expedition, spend time with people, use optional projects and deliberately prepare the next attempt. It is not a results screen that silently distributes discoveries or a management day that advances debts. |
| + | |
| + | ### A living return |
| + | |
| + | 1. **Cross the ship airlock.** The station does not shift merely because the astronaut returned alive. Every object still carried crosses once in its exact state: active rig parts remain in the rig; inactive cargo remains inactive; loot and canisters retain their object identities and fill states. Oxygen already breathed and material already consumed stay spent. An object left in a station fixture or deliberately dropped remains there. |
| + | 2. **Acknowledge or postpone.** Any person physically present may offer a visible greeting or immediate concern, but the player may answer, say “later,” or walk to storage. Postponement preserves the conversation. It causes no relationship deduction, hidden resentment, missed upgrade, unseen discussion or project decay. This article does not decide what happens to people after rescue; it changes no survivor state merely because the astronaut returned. |
| + | 3. **Unload deliberately.** Moving an object from the manifest to ship storage, a named home fixture or a person-linked project is an explicit one-instance transition. Nobody silently takes salvage or a reusable part. A project loan remains the same object at a displayed ship location and is no longer in the selected expedition manifest while seated there. |
| + | 4. **Share an observation deliberately.** The player chooses a committed record and a person. That person can respond only from what the record shows, what the player says and their own attributed experience. Nothing learned by one person becomes communal knowledge merely because both are aboard. No project writes, corrects or grades the player’s notes. Capturing a project result is a world-time recording action; opening the journal pauses the world and freezes project progress, after which the player may annotate the stored evidence themselves. |
| + | 5. **Work, prepare or skip.** Project operations occur in world time aboard. Exact duration is unchosen, and there is no passive timer, upkeep cycle or regeneration cost. Ordinary suit and canister refill uses the unlimited ship oxygen supply at no scarce-resource cost. The packing bench can instead create the distinct prepared-full canister state. Ship-side rig rearrangement is safe and reversible. |
| + | 6. **Choose a departure manifest.** The player selects one current rig and any inactive cargo, canisters and loot. Active rig parts use carrying capacity once plus active rig area; inactive cargo uses carrying capacity but no active area. A part still installed in a home project uses neither expedition figure and cannot also depart. Reclaiming it first is safe, returns that same instance and suspends the fixture. Capacity or area overflow refuses departure with the object still visible; nothing is dropped. |
| + | |
| + | ### A death return |
| + | |
| + | Death begins at step 1 aboard but is not a richer reward. Under the owner’s rule, every object in carried membership at death returns once, including active rig parts, inactive cargo, carried loot and canisters in their exact surviving states. The death itself shifts the station. Station-installed, dropped, handed-over and consumed things do not return; a reusable part already loaned to a ship project was already aboard and remains seated there without being duplicated. Existing ship storage is unchanged. |
| + | |
| + | The next home actions are still acknowledge or postpone, unload, share, work and prepare. No forced death conversation occurs before the player regains control, and no conversation happens unseen. Ordinary condition restoration follows the current survival baseline, but canister refill, project work and rig choice remain separate acts. This article does not select single-line or reloadable saves and does not decide the result of death during an unresolved survivor transfer. It also establishes no rule that a rescued person is immortal, endangered or regenerated by the ship. |
| + | |
| + | ## Property and operation states aboard |
| + | |
| + | | State | Where the one instance is | Operates / persists | Departure consequence | |
| + | |---|---|---|---| |
| + | | Active in chosen rig | Astronaut rig | Links may operate; exact rig state is retained until edited | Pays carrying cost once and active area | |
| + | | Inactive expedition cargo | Selected manifest, outside active rig | Cannot receive links or operate | Pays carrying cost, no active area | |
| + | | Ship storage | Named storage position | Object state, fill and records persist; no expedition operation | Not carried unless selected | |
| + | | Installed in home project | One named fixture seat | Only that fixture’s stated operation; continuous operation ends on removal | Not carried; reclaim and capacity check before departure | |
| + | | Station-installed or dropped | Named stable world object/location | Its owning world rule; old route may become historical after death | Does not appear aboard or depart | |
| + | | Completed product or record | Prepared canister, physical trace or committed evidence | Persists because work actually completed, not because its fixture stays powered | Carries only if its object is selected; knowledge is not cargo | |
| + | | Consumed input | No remaining object location | Stays spent after return, death and project reclamation | Cannot be selected or restored here | |
| + | | Survivor | A person in their last established state, never a manifest item | Only authored actions and conversations | Never cargo; this loop grants no delivery or mortality result | |
| + | |
| + | ## Five person-linked project briefs |
| + | |
| + | Names are convenient fiction labels, not a selected cast. Yeva and Aster are mutually compatible with either current first-survivor direction: if one is not chosen for R-3, that person may be rescued later or the project can move to the stated replaceable role. Each project is voluntary and remains usable later without deterioration. |
| + | |
| + | | # | Person and want | Input, fixture and actual operation | Visible result and changed next action | Reclaim, postpone, revisit; bounded knowledge | |
| + | |---|---|---|---|---| |
| + | | **1 — Collar receiver (reused)** | **Dorn**, a replaceable station-maintenance worker, wants to know whether the section he sealed behaved as expected. | Loan the Fork Relay to the receiver service seat. Start one ship-supplied poll while world time runs; the fixed collar tap reads one addressed pressure sensor at a panel Dorn serviced. | The display shows one value drift and return. Dorn states what he expected and that a failing sensor could look identical. The player can choose the known panel as a next objective: inspect it, trace which volume its line currently samples and check the sensor. | Once the observation is made, reclaiming Fork stops monitoring but does not erase the witnessed value or Dorn’s attributed statement. Postponing yields neither. A later poll is a new dated reading, not proof that the section held, a route, direction, cause or safety verdict. | |
| + | | **2 — Packing bench (reused)** | **Yeva**, a replaceable pressure technician, wants the compressor routing she installed—and Dorn serviced—to make an expedition materially different. | Put ordinary-full or eligible partial canisters at the bench, loan Fork, and deliberately run a witnessed packing cycle using fixed ship power and unlimited ship oxygen. | Each completed vessel visibly changes to **prepared-full**, holding more usable oxygen at its normal carrying size. The player can choose greater reach for a loadout or comparable planned reach with more capacity for equipment/loot; no exact amount or sufficiency is promised. | Reclaiming Fork ends further preparation; already prepared gas remains in completed canisters. Postponement leaves ordinary refill available. Returning later resumes from the last committed vessel, without decay. The result says what the bench did, not how much oxygen an unknown route will require. | |
| + | | **3 — Ledger comparison table (new)** | **Aster**, or a replaceable supply clerk, wants to test whether a dated movement in her ledger corresponds to something the astronaut actually recorded rather than treating her memory as a map. | The player chooses two already committed records tied to known room instances or generations and one dated ledger entry. At a fixed illuminated table, player and clerk align only visible anchors; recording the resulting overlay is a separate world-time capture. No portable part is required. | A physical overlay exposes one bounded match or contradiction—for example, the same cabinet mark but a different threshold face. The player chooses whether to revisit that known room, compare a named fixture, or ignore the lead in favor of another expedition. | The table can be left at any stage and nothing is lost. Completed overlays remain aboard; they are not automatic journal annotations. Aster’s conclusion stays attributed and historical. It cannot reveal a present neighbour, current contents, walkable route, translation or which witness is right. | |
| + | | **4 — Material response tray (new)** | **Mara Venn**, a replaceable sterile-processing/reclamation worker, wants to stop calling visibly different station scrap “the same rubbish.” | The player may loan an owned **Salvage Cycler** to a fixed catch cradle and select one unprotected salvage sample. A ship fixture supplies the deliberate activation trigger and catches the output while the player watches. Once activation commits, the selected sample is consumed under the Cycler’s existing rule. | The catch box visibly contains the sample’s inspected conductive, pressure or brittle response, and a world-time capture can preserve that result. The player may pack a matching expendable sample and Cycler for a chosen cargo-spending rig, or keep the carrying space/value and use a non-consumption build. | Reclaiming Cycler ends testing and returns the same part; the recorded response remains, but no ammunition, recipe or new part remains in the tray. Postponement consumes nothing. Revisiting with another sample is a new voluntary spend. Mara can compare observations, but equipment discovery, use and the same source-fixture evidence remain available without her. | |
| + | | **5 — Evacuation gait rail (new)** | **Ivo Hale**, a replaceable rehabilitation worker, wants the ship’s abandoned evacuation rail to respond to deliberate movement rather than a rolling load—the distinction that mattered in their old work. | Loan an owned **Stride Switch** to the fixed rail. The astronaut chooses a short stop/start crossing and performs it in world time; the ship powers the rail’s lamps. The Switch supplies a trigger only after the astronaut’s voluntary grounded movement meets its shown condition. | Lamps and a paper trace show exactly which player-performed crossing emitted and which conveyor/rolling-weight comparison did not. The player can decide to try Stride as the source of a movement-conditioned rig next trip, or leave it home and retain their current manual/sensor control. No stat or mastery bonus is awarded. | Reclaiming Stride darkens the rail and returns that instance; a completed trace remains as a record of this test. Postponement has no penalty. A revisit can test another deliberate pattern. Ivo knows this fixture and witnessed movement only; the trace predicts neither station terrain, enemy motion, safe timing nor the full behavior of a future rig. | |
| + | |
| + | The Cycler and Stride projects do not gate their parts. Their station sources, inspection, removal and rig use remain available to an empty ship under [Equipment Acquisition And Rig Growth](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment%20Acquisition%20And%20Rig%20Growth). Likewise, no person here translates alien writing, fabricates an intact catalogue part, grants active area, selects the station-wide connection mechanism, knows an unseen route or unlocks an unchosen ending. |
| + | |
| + | ## Scoped Fork interface clarification |
| + | |
| + | The older home pages called the borrowed object a generic “relay-family part” and sometimes used “powered” as shorthand. Under the current twelve-part catalogue, propose that the exact loan is the existing **Fork Relay**, and that each home project contains a fixed, visibly wired service seat. This adds no thirteenth portable part and no general adapter recipe. |
| + | |
| + | The ship provides each fixture’s power and physical medium: the receiver has ship power plus its existing docking-collar monitoring bus; the bench has ship power plus unlimited oxygen and its installed compressor head. A fixed maintenance controller at each fixture emits one **bare trigger** into Fork’s one input. Fork preserves the wave and copies that trigger to two compatible outputs. At the receiver, one output opens the poll gate and one arms the display latch; the sensor value returns through the fixed bus, not through invented remote sensing by Fork. At the bench, one output opens the ship-supply valve and one starts the compressor cycle. These fixed receivers act only when ready. Fork supplies no energy, gas, sensor value, translation or payload, and only one fixture can hold the one object at a time. |
| + | |
| + | **Local causal trace and manifest.** The astronaut returns carrying Fork. They store other cargo, remove Fork from the chosen rig, and seat it at the receiver: **fixed ship poll control → Fork input → poll gate + display latch**. One limited value is observed and captured; Fork is reclaimed, ending monitoring. They move that same instance to the bench: **fixed ship packing control → Fork input → oxygen-valve control + compressor-cycle control**. One or more canisters reach prepared-full only as each cycle completes; Fork is reclaimed, ending preparation. At departure the manifest contains exactly one Fork—active in the chosen rig or inactive cargo—plus the selected prepared canisters at their normal carrying sizes. The receiver and bench are dark. The pressure record and completed canister states persist as produced results. No object, gas or signal was duplicated, and the only material loss was any oxygen later breathed or separately authored consumed input; listening, packing and reclaiming themselves cost only chosen world time aboard. |
| + | |
| + | This is a scoped clarification for these two legacy fixtures. Whether fixed ship maintenance controllers use exactly this presentation, and their detailed readiness, remain interface work; changing the portable Fork’s catalogue behavior is not proposed. |
| + | |
| + | ## Two complete return examples |
| + | |
| + | ### A richer later return |
| + | |
| + | The astronaut returns alive with one partial prepared canister, Fork active in a combat rig, Cycler inactive in cargo, one expendable metal sample and two records from different arrangement generations. Aster asks whether one photograph is the ward shipment she remembers. The player may answer now or unload first; either way she remains available and no warmth is gated behind the choice. |
| + | |
| + | The player deliberately shares both records and her ledger entry, then performs the table alignment outside the paused journal. The visible cabinet mark agrees while the photographed threshold does not. Aster says this may be a moved threshold or her wrong shipment entry; the record proves neither. The player captures the overlay, then opens the paused journal to write their own hypothesis. They choose the already known cabinet room as one possible revisit rather than receiving a current route. |
| + | |
| + | Next, the player loans Fork to Dorn’s receiver, observes one dated drift and reclaims it; then loans the same Fork to the packing bench, completes the partial canister’s new prepared cycle and reclaims it. Finally they choose whether to sacrifice the metal sample at Mara’s tray. If they commit, the sample is consumed and a visible conductive response is recorded; if they decline, both sample and Cycler remain available. Dorn can disagree with Aster’s emphasis without either account becoming truth, and Yeva’s response depends only on what the player actually tells her. The player leaves with one chosen rig, a deliberate oxygen/equipment/loot balance and one of several existing leads. All work happened in world time; opening the journal froze it rather than completing it. |
| + | |
| + | ### A valid skip/postpone return |
| + | |
| + | The astronaut returns, postpones every greeting, unloads nothing they want to keep selected, uses ordinary free ship refill rather than the packing bench, safely rearranges the rig and departs. No project advances unseen; no conversation is lost; no person becomes less helpful; no bench, receiver, overlay, tray or rail decays; no resource or relationship is charged. The manifest still refuses excess capacity or active area honestly. This route preserves the immediate expedition rhythm and prevents five optional projects from becoming compulsory chores. |
| + | |
| + | ## Content accounting and the smaller alternative |
| + | |
| + | This article contains **exactly five project briefs: two reused** (collar receiver and packing bench) and **three new** (ledger table, material tray and gait rail). The three new projects add three proposed fixed ship fixtures, three project-operation state sets and their visible outputs. The Fork clarification adds two fixed control interfaces to the already-counted receiver/bench, not a portable part. Content states required across the five are available, input selected, operation active, interrupted/postponed, completed output, loan seated, and reclaimed/dark; each instance needs only the states its action uses. |
| + | |
| + | For the proposed SMALL ledger, the projects can overlap one home-follow-through scene for each of **five people**: Yeva/pressure technician, Dorn/maintenance worker, Aster/supply clerk, Mara/reclamation worker and Ivo/rehabilitation worker. The shared Yeva/Dorn return can remain one cross-linked scene while still recording which person’s arc it serves; materially different branches require authored variations. These briefs do **not** select the final five people, choose the R-3 survivor, provide each person’s short rescue, allocate all **fifteen scenes**, write final dialogue, settle relationships, or close their personal investigations. That remains for the bounded cast/home map, which must assign rescue plus home follow-through and count any extra scene rather than hiding it. |
| + | |
| + | **Strongest smaller viable alternative.** Keep only the existing receiver and bench as operable projects and let later survivors contribute conversations around player-carried records. This preserves return, refill, rig preparation, the tentative loan direction and a human place to revisit with no new fixtures. What it loses is not claimed labor or playtime: three of the SMALL sample’s five people would lack an action-linked home follow-through; home would exercise pressure evidence and oxygen preparation but not route-record comparison, voluntary salvage commitment or movement-source rehearsal; and the player would have fewer inspectable reasons to choose time with different people before a departure. Choose it if the three new operations do not earn their repetition or make home feel like an errand board. |
| + | |
| + | ## Open work and evidence |
| + | |
| + | Still open are the final cast and first survivor; exact scene allocation; project staging and accessibility cues; fixed controller readiness; any management layer; alive-return population behavior; post-rescue danger; save policy; true capacity/rig quantities; found parts versus fabrication; exact operation durations; and every final story or ending consequence. Later owner-authorised implementation and observation with players must determine whether returns feel like time among people rather than chores, whether the Fork trace is understandable, whether postponement feels genuinely safe, and whether any project changes the next expedition without becoming mandatory. This paper contract demonstrates none of those outcomes. |