Commit 8d03e8

2026-09-07 13:52:13 Anonymous: WLD105 r29: first contribution to the replacement premise (The World Below) - the three people's reasons to care, the crowned-relief reinterpretation as a fair chain (relief in three places, song sung and carved, safe door-order test, plate reading recoverable at home), keys vs history rule for songs, the Flood as creatures not fuel, the staged reveal of the world below; plain opening rewritten for the redirection; drowned-city material filed under one retained heading. Also PM's bounded correction to r28: both routes to the junction gate restored, doubled names removed. In review, design only

hold the flood/world and mystery.md ..
@@ 2,7 2,57 @@
	**Superseded premise — owner direction, 2026-09-07:** the harvest-dependence revelation and its ending are rejected for now; this page preserves earlier design material, not the active pitch. Setting and retained mechanics await the [replacement vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision). Follow [current assignments](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks); do not expand or polish incompatible material merely to close old tickets.
-	**What this page is, in plain words.** This is the mystery of Hold the Flood: the questions the drowned city asks the player, the evidence that answers them, and the rule that every answer must change what the player does next. The Flood is a mass of enemies that pours into each district on a schedule. At first it looks like weather. Then the player finds that a signal chooses where each surge enters, that something upstream permits the signal, that the surges are supplied from a place where the mass is gathered, and finally that the city has been calling the Flood in to take its charge, the same charge the player fights with, and runs its lights and doors on it. The first district's question is why its marked refuge route is overrun (a crew steered the Flood there on purpose). The campaign's question is what, at the head of the network, is still keeping time. Every clue is a thing the player can see: a lamp that flashes, a cable that pulses, a drum that turns, a gauge with two hands of writing. Nothing essential is hidden behind an item or a purchase, and every essential clue exists in two places. The page below holds the rules the mystery rests on, the chains of evidence, the endings and their consequences, and the bookkeeping the team uses. Detailed mechanics live on the [shared rules page](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction); the districts on [Districts](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts); the whole game on [Campaign](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign); the working creative direction on the [Brief's Game vision](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision).
+	**What this page is, in plain words.** This is the mystery of Hold the Flood: the questions the world asks the player, the evidence that answers them, and the rules that keep every answer fair, visible and reachable in more than one way. The premise is being replaced. On 2026-09-07 the owner rejected the earlier answer, that the drowned city ran on charge harvested from the Flood, and asked for a game led by discovery: clues that mean something new with new context, places unexpectedly larger than they seemed, history found while looking for power, and a refuge with people worth going home to. The Visionary's replacement proposal, [The World Below](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#visionary-replacement-proposal-the-world-below), gives the refuge a name, Hearth, three people, a first errand (a heat cell from the Bell House before the next cold night), a clue seen since childhood (a crowned figure under seven dots) that turns out to be a plan of the lifts below, and a children's song that keeps the order in which the old doors answer. The first section below is this page's contribution to that premise: what the three people are for, how the relief's reinterpretation is made fair, which songs are keys and which are history, and what the Flood is when it is not the revelation. Everything after that heading is the earlier drowned-city material, preserved as design the retained scenes may still draw on, not the active pitch. Detailed mechanics live on the [shared rules page](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction); the campaign on [Campaign](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign); the refuge on [Colony](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony); the working direction on the [Brief](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision).
+
+	**WLD105 · r29 · 2026-09-07 10:52 UTC · In review** — first contribution to the replacement premise, under the Tasks row "World + Colony designers: a small core cast and one concrete reason to care, help or defend them; link one practical expedition goal to a clue that later changes its meaning or exposes a larger world; not every historical discovery a key." Written jointly with [Colony](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony) (Hearth and its people) against the Visionary's proposal; proposals, not owner-approved fiction; designer spoilers marked. r29 also makes PM's bounded correction to r28 (both routes to the junction gate restored in the map description; doubled names removed).
+
+	## The World Below — the people, the clue that changes meaning, and what the Flood is (WLD105; proposals)
+
+	**Standing.** The Visionary's proposal supplies the premise: Hearth on the dry roof of a flooded sanctuary; Mara, Senn and Tavi; the Bell House across the square; the crowned relief under seven dots; the children's song; the glass survey plate; the lift; the inhabited layers below. Colony owns Hearth's structure and growth; this page owns the clue logic and the Flood's fiction, and shares the cast's reasons with Colony. Nothing here is a lock unless it says so.
+
+	### The three people, and one concrete reason to care about each
+
+	| Person | Their thread | The practical goal they give | The reason to care, help or defend (authored situations, never a bar or a schedule) |
+	| --- | --- | --- | --- |
+	| **Senn**, medic and grower | The warm room: Hearth's seedlings and its sick | The first goal: a heat cell before the next cold night | The room is visibly emptied when it cools and refilled when it warms; later, a patient who cannot be moved when the first arrivals come up the lift, which is the refuge's first authored defence and the first time the world below reaches Hearth. |
+	| **Mara**, workshop keeper and mentor | The bench: what the player brings home is installed, not counted | Knows where the spare cell is; reads relics with the player | She raised the player and taught them salvage; she is the one who says the bell frame is a tuning rack, not a bell frame; and she is wrong once, about the rooftops being all there is, and takes the plate's reading hard. A mentor who can be wrong is a reason to go and see. |
+	| **Tavi**, mapmaker and closest friend | The songs and the map: the same odd images in songs and in ruins no one enters | Asks the player to bring back "anything with lines"; every place the player opens, Tavi draws | Tavi's map is the player's map, so Tavi's curiosity is the player's; when the plate is read, Tavi wants to go down first, and the refuge has a reason to hold someone back or let them go. |
+
+	Three is a minimum spine, as the Visionary says; a fourth and fifth belong to Colony's growth proposal. None is a colonist unit; each appears in situations written for them.
+
+	### The clue that changes meaning: the crowned relief (the chain, made fair; designer spoiler)
+
+	| Step | Evidence, inference, consequence |
+	| --- | --- |
+	| Notice | The relief above Hearth's nursery door: a crowned figure under seven dots, seen since childhood, harmless. The same relief in the Bell House, cut into the wall by the bell frame. A third, half under water, on the sanctuary's flooded stair. Three places: the clue can be missed twice. |
+	| Compare | Tavi's song, heard at Hearth: seven stars beneath the crown, and the doors that answer in their turn. A line of it is carved under the Bell House relief. Two forms of the same words, one sung and one cut. |
+	| The wrong reading it invites | A saint or a king; the Bell House a shrine; the seven bells a holy weapon that tore the lane. Reasonable, and everything at Hearth believes it. |
+	| Understand | While seeking another power source, a glass survey plate. Held over the nursery copy, its lines align only when the image is upside down: the crown is a plan of lift shafts below the sanctuary; the seven dots are depth marks; the verse is the order the old doors answer. The Bell House was not a temple; its seven-bell pulse was a test of a larger relay. |
+	| A safe way to test it | At the Bell House relief, the hall's old doors answer the song's order with a light and a bell tone, one door at a time, before anything opens; a wrong order rings flat and does nothing. The player can try the sequence with no Flood in the hall and lose nothing but time. |
+	| Discover | The right order opens a lift behind the Bell House. Below the roof: a dry hall, a garden, the scale of it; and, far off, lights that answer Hearth's signal. The little drowned world was a roof. |
+	| Change later play | Every relief seen before is now read as a plan of somewhere; the campaign's map is below; Hearth is one home among many. Tavi's map turns over. |
+
+	**Fairness.** Redundancy: the relief in three places, the song in two forms. Recovery: Tavi copies the plate's reading onto the nursery relief the evening it is found, so a player who misread the plate in the field can read it at home. Replay: once known, reliefs are read on sight; the skill persists, the surprise does not, and the design says so. No item gates the reading: the plate is found, the song is known, the doors answer to anyone who tries the order.
+
+	### Which songs are keys, and which are history (the owner's relaxed rule, applied)
+
+	Songs that preserve a **sequence** are keys: the order the doors answer; the safe way to wake a relic. Songs that preserve **people** are history: grief, loyalties, and competing accounts of why the ancestors sealed the layers and why they left ordinary families songs that could reopen them. History changes what the player believes, and later whose account they trust when the settlements below disagree; it never locks a door. Proposed proportion: at most one song in three is a key; a discovery earns its place by changing what the player understands, not only what they can open. The rule this page kept from before, that a clue must change what the player *does*, is relaxed to *understands or does*, as the owner asked.
+
+	### What the Flood is in this premise (enemy fiction, shared with the Lead and Combat)
+
+	Creatures that pour through the submerged streets and chambers when water and noise disturb them: a threat and a material condition, not fuel for the old world and not the revelation. The retained physics stays true of them without depending on them: they conduct when they stand in water and shed charge when stunned, so a build fights with what the Flood carries, and nothing else does. Light, noise and current in water draw them, which makes attraction a supporting tool for a plan rather than the headline experiment. The Bell House pulse, one discharge reaching seven tuned bells through a wet floor, is the bounded first lesson that a connected discharge reaches every conductive thing in the water at once; the Echo Relay's cascade, much later, is that lesson at full size (Equipment and Combat own its legal form). Where the Flood comes from is a discovery for the layers below, left open on purpose.
+
+	### The larger world as discovery, staged
+
+	The drowned surface is a roof, and the reveal comes in steps that are each a discovery in themselves: the relief read as a plan (a map of *somewhere*); the lift (a way down); the first landing (a dry hall and a garden: the scale); the lights that answer (people). Only the lift needs the song's sequence. The campaign question this opens, why the layers were sealed apart and why ordinary families were left the songs that reopen them, is the Visionary's; the evidence for its answers, sung and carved and drawn, is this page's to design next.
+
+	### Handoff
+
+	Colony: the three situations above as Hearth grows, and who else lives there. Lead and Campaign: the layered progression from the lift down. Equipment and Combat: the Bell House pulse and the Echo Relay. Visionary: whether these reasons to care and the key-or-history rule serve the premise; PM disposes. What follows on this page is the drowned-city material, superseded as the active pitch and preserved as design.
+
+	---
+
+	## Retained material from the drowned-city premise (superseded as the active pitch on 2026-09-07; preserved as design the retained scenes may draw on)
	**WLD104 · r28 · 2026-09-07 09:51 UTC · Accepted at r26 (PMR008); r28 In review** — the notation pass PMR009 §5 and Tasks assign ("replace private letter labels with the existing physical names in the next substantive edit, preserving references and rule meaning"): every private letter label this page used for the beacons, intakes, hatch, gate, valves, drain, sluice, panel, culvert exits, docks and platform is replaced by the name the Document, the districts and the glossary use; no rule, clue or chain meaning changed, and no anchor other pages cite is renamed. Submission notice posted in the hold-the-flood room, as the owner's workflow now asks. r27 was the vision pass PMU008 asks of every domain designer, run on this page: a plain-language opening before any code (Clarity Q52, Wiki Conventions 7, named as due in PMR008's World row), and the Visionary's decision test applied to each element of the mystery, with one concrete cut proposed, this page's private letter notation, which the Document and the district pages never use and which the vision's own criterion names (a name disguising an existing state). The vision's one story is this page's chain, so nothing in the mystery contradicts the direction; that is stated where it is checked. r26 answered PMR007 §4 and Tasks: the chain is re-ordered onto the route the player actually takes, the Lock Flight, then the Tram's three visits with the Exchange and the Collector between them as DES105 places them, with the earlier reading and the revised action at each actual visit; a second observable for *harvested*, independent of the refuge's board, is named (the Collector's intake gauge against its outfall meter); the held gate's action carries its bound (a one-surge buffer buys the ride up, not the trip: REV105 §3); the endings are given an informed player's genuine reasons instead of a sophistication ladder; the grounded-run cell follows contract §6; D026 is mirrored and this page's bank-permission upgrade withdrawn; W1 carries R12 and R13 from contract r7. r25 was the WLD104 deliverable PMU007 assigned as this role's contribution to DES105, depth across repeated expeditions: one clue chain that runs the whole campaign, in which the player's explanation of the Flood changes twice before the ending, and each change makes them do something different, a machine operation, then a route and a rack; with the evidence, the reasonable wrong reading, the safe way to test it, its second form, the payoff, and what stays worth discovering after the answer. It also answers COL102's request on the comparative reader. r24 was the first revision after the overnight stop. Three things landed that touch this page: [contract r5 08d5e8a](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=08d5e8a) recast Stop as the brake on the shaft that keeps time (after Stop nothing is permitted, no dispatches and no flashes anywhere, the drums turn to no effect), which r24 mirrors in the state table and Stop rule; [Colony r4](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony?revision=527f2bf) addressed COL-I3 and COL-I4 to this page (the comparative reader's boundary, and a raised landing as the refuge's unpowered return), both accepted; and [Districts r7](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts?revision=cd487b1) with [the Collector §8](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector#8-the-holding-basin--optional-and-the-campaigns-sharpest-evidence) gave this page the content of the Holding Basin's evidence, the optional certainty clue for the final answer, which r24 writes. r23: PMR006 accepted WLD103 at r22 as a contribution (not the fiction as owner-approved), and Tasks asks this role to participate only if the lead changes the shared contract; [contract r4 29f5b0a](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=29f5b0a) did, in three places that touch W1's text here, so r23 mirrors them: what counts as a beacon now includes a district's moving beacon (the Tram's lamp, a lure that never flashes) and the portable beacon armed and charged; a flash is a signal event that needs no power, so a beacon a Grounder has darkened still flashes at its dispatch and is dark again after; and the colony pump's reserve, held here as a proposal, is declined and withdrawn. r23 also adopts CAM102's convention that the Exchange's board is the campaign's index of districts, which is in this page's domain. r22 aligned r21 to the ratified shared contract [Power and Attraction r3 59f8951](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=59f8951), which was drafted in parallel and validated against r20: the two agree on the source of fixed power, the relay as a source of signal, drum-and-trunk, the empty flash and the unpowered return, and where they differed the contract's wording is adopted here (its *switch-house* for the head-works' store; Stop as a cascade of one district per expedition, nearest the head-works first, shown on the refuge's board; the empty flash as the contract defines it, this page's marker cue kept only as an optional presentation note). The colony pump's after-Stop reserve is marked as a proposal for Colony. The Head-works r4 has withdrawn its reversed water-level sentence, so that flag is closed. r21 was the D024 deliverable Tasks assigns after PMR004: Answer A developed as the provisional mystery (the harvesting machinery), W1 extended with the dispatch condition PM chose (local drum AND trunk permit; arrivals also need supply; fixed power separate), the six-state table PMR004 §1 asks Lead and World for (source, connection, what changes it, what survives exit and Stop), Stop's costs with a bounded reserve and a guaranteed unpowered return, the empty-dispatch convention (REV104-3), the water-level reconciliation between the Collector and the Head-works as one rule, the correction that flowing water conducts like any water (the race is unfed, not unconductive) with the actual dry breaks named (REV104-4), and the essential-clue redundancy table with the guarantee that no clue is sold (REV104-1/-5, PMR004 §4). WLD103 was placed on Tasks at eb8c03f (Ready) and Brief D019–D021 record the owner's expansion; r20 adds the one element the formal line asks for that r19 only implied, the player's evolving hypotheses, and maps the line to this page's sections. r19 was the first WLD103 deliverable, written minutes before the line under a labelled assumption: the campaign's overarching question, the rule for what every district contributes to it with the false-refuge chain's fairness, the fixed rule contract against what a district may add, the pumping district's relay decision reframed as a local outcome that is also the first campaign clue, three example districts sketched only as mystery contributions, and two candidate final answers left for the owner. Written for the lead's DES104 and for the Campaign designer when staffed. r18 closed REV103-9 (the relay's channel carries *flowing* water, not energised water: the relay is the district's one source of signal, a drum turned by the race above the weir, so the valves can never light the yard from the relay's side, and the drain stops the drum without touching the district's power), and records the owner's expansion direction (PMU004) as it bears on this role: the overarching mystery and clue logic across a campaign of districts, WLD103, anticipated but not yet on Tasks; the bounded first deliverable is scoped at the end. r17 was the targeted revision PMR003 requested of this role: the three valves' found and set positions and the success condition (connectivity, not order) in one table; the relay's own supply against the door's, and what drain valve stops and leaves working, with one added clause (the drain valve sits above the head valve's weir, so it empties only the relay's feed); the access chain's consequence qualified by route (a crowd held by a still-lit causeway beacon stays put on the coil route); the Shut row's workshop claim removed. The lead's r13 proposals for these are confirmed here with that one addition, so [Document r13 50046f7](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=50046f7) needs only the weir clause to match. r16 merged the tier-three chain with the one the lead proposed in [Design Document r9 fb6b6df](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=fb6b6df) "for the world designer to correct and own", so there is one chain, on this page, for §11 to lift: the lead's access chain (the crew's note as a three-valve sequence that joins the yard's water to the sluice head) followed by this page's relay chain (drum, lever, clamp, drain valve). Two reconciliations are stated in the PM report. r15 was the revision PMR002 requested of this role (items 1 and 3): W1 now says what counts as a beacon and the precedence between retargeting and spreading; the junction lamp is an indicator, not a lure; a state table checks the three signature routes and the failed experiment against the rule as written; tier three gets a complete clue → inference → action → consequence chain, an endings table with each ending's dispatch, retreat and colony consequence, no salvage price on the choice itself, and the early takeaway Q36 asked for. r14 applied PMU002's rulings: the title moves out of "owner requirements" to its D017 status as the owner-supplied working title (Clarity Q37 was right); D016 confirms the routing baseline, so the standing decision request is closed; D015 seats the five further contributors on the Team, so their pages are cited as team work, and REF101's electrofishing reference is cited as research grounding for W1. No rule or chain text changed. r13 aligned two tier-two sentences to [DES102 draft r6 12779dc](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=12779dc), which states the critic's REV102-6 on the document's own principle: any current in the joined water energises the junction circuit, so with the valve open the panel lighting the yard is enough to open the junction gate, at the price of a hot yard; with the valve shut, a coil discharge into the pool opens it quietly; the coil buys stealth, not access. Nothing else changed from [r12 23dca93](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=23dca93), which aligned to draft r4, whose r3 topology stands (the lead's r4 note and REV102 issue 1 both settle on this page's r10 choices). r12 re-instated r10's body, undoing [r11 eac7ed8](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=eac7ed8), which had aligned to draft r2 while r3 was aligning to r10. To make a third crossing impossible, this page no longer carries its own map: topology and crowd behaviour are sourced from the Design Document's sections 2 and 4 and only summarised here with a notation key; this page remains the source for W1–W4 and the mystery chain, which the document's section 9 mirrors. Any topology change starts here and is agreed before either page moves, as the lead's r3 note asks. [r10 c6f0598](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=c6f0598), [r9 41681d9](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=41681d9), [r8 ba6f8b8](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=ba6f8b8) and earlier are page history. Author: World and Mystery Designer. Handoff: canonical Lead (D014) for DES102; PM. WLD101 was accepted in PMR001 as a concept contribution (at [r6 4302067](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=4302067)); [r7 fa3eb1b](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=fa3eb1b) and earlier revisions are page history.
@@ 16,7 66,7 @@
	North is the interior; the docks are south. `=` raised and dry, `~` shallow water, `-` the culvert (a gravity drain: dry on its own, never pumped, never paid for).
-	The map is drawn once, in the [Design Document, section 2](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#2-the-district) (from this page's r10, and not re-drawn on either page again). This page uses the same names as the Document, the district pages and the glossary: the causeway dock (held dry by default) and the yard dock (flooded by default; wet, so it conducts); the panel at the causeway head; the causeway beacon at the causeway's far end and the causeway intake beside it; the yard beacon at the pump-hall door and the yard intake, the channel mouth at the door, in water; the pump-hall hatch, on the yard circuit with its beacon, with a hand crank inside; the culvert's two exits at the two dock ends (a gravity drain, always dry, never paid for); the junction platform, a shelter; the junction gate into the interior, on the junction's own circuit, energised only when the junction valve joins the yard channel to the junction pool and current is in that water; the sluice beside the junction, the Flood's own way in. Shelters (hard stops): the two docks when dry, and the junction platform. The causeway has no device; what lighting it buys is the road and where the next surge enters. The hatch blinks and closes when its branch loses power, never on an occupant, and can be cranked open from inside in ten seconds; that is the hall's recoverable exit.
+	The map is drawn once, in the [Design Document, section 2](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#2-the-district) (from this page's r10, and not re-drawn on either page again). This page uses the same names as the Document, the district pages and the glossary: the causeway dock (held dry by default) and the yard dock (flooded by default; wet, so it conducts); the panel at the causeway head; the causeway beacon at the causeway's far end and the causeway intake beside it; the yard beacon at the pump-hall door and the yard intake, the channel mouth at the door, in water; the pump-hall hatch, on the yard circuit with its beacon, with a hand crank inside; the culvert's two exits at the two dock ends (a gravity drain, always dry, never paid for); the junction platform, a shelter; the junction gate into the interior, on the junction's own circuit, which the panel never reaches by wire: any current in the junction pool energises it, either a coil discharge into the pool with the junction valve shut, or the powered yard feeding the pool through the open junction valve; the sluice beside the junction, the Flood's own way in. Shelters (hard stops): the two docks when dry, and the junction platform. The causeway has no device; what lighting it buys is the road and where the next surge enters. The hatch blinks and closes when its branch loses power, never on an occupant, and can be cranked open from inside in ten seconds; that is the hall's recoverable exit.
	## World rules — proposal for DES102, PM baseline
@@ 83,7 133,7 @@
	**The title.** "Hold the Flood" is the owner-supplied working title and is kept as such; final naming is the owner's and is not locked (D017; this page's earlier revisions wrongly listed it under owner requirements, which Clarity Q37 caught). In A it means holding the enemy mass off the refuge: the dock, the causeway signed as the way out, and eventually the district. The pump holds water; the panel, the beacons, and the surveyor hold the Flood. The Flood is never water.
-	**Three tiers on one district, each a recombination of the same rules.** *Tier 1, the false refuge* (designed above): learn that power is key and lure; the panel is the lever. *Tier 2, the junction and the interior, "what they went in for":* the junction gate the junction gate is on a circuit the panel never reaches. Evidence: junction valve beside it, drawn open on the inked plan and found shut; a lamp on the junction pool that lights whenever the yard channel is energised while the junction valve is open. Inference: joined water carries power, and therefore attraction, across the district, so the crew could open the junction gate from the yard without the panel. Experiment: open the junction valve and light the yard at the panel; the pool's lamp (an indicator, not a beacon: it draws nothing) lights and the junction gate opens for as long as the yard is lit. The price is the hot yard: the next surge enters at the yard intake and its crowd holds at the yard beacon, beside the junction, so the platform is worked at that crowd's edge. Or leave the junction valve shut and discharge the coil into the pool: The junction gate opens quietly, no beacon lights, for the seconds the charge lasts. The coil buys stealth, not access (REV102-6). Consequence: entering tier two needs no module, and every way in has a price the player can read. Behind the junction gate: the second tally board and the crew's note of the relay room's valve sequence. Keep tier 3 a knowledge gate: the relay room opens by the same current rule and that note, not by a found key item. *Tier 3, the relay room, "what calls the Flood" (r16: one chain, merged from the lead's r9 access chain and this page's r15 relay chain; designer spoilers; this page owns it and Design Document §11 lifts it).* **Prerequisites:** the junction gate open (tier two) and the crew's note from behind it. The note has two sides: a three-valve order drawn against the inked plan, and the crew's own conclusion, "relay on the head channel; drain it and it stops; clamp it and it holds one line; we chose neither."
+	**Three tiers on one district, each a recombination of the same rules.** *Tier 1, the false refuge* (designed above): learn that power is key and lure; the panel is the lever. *Tier 2, the junction and the interior, "what they went in for":* the junction gate is on a circuit the panel never reaches. Evidence: junction valve beside it, drawn open on the inked plan and found shut; a lamp on the junction pool that lights whenever the yard channel is energised while the junction valve is open. Inference: joined water carries power, and therefore attraction, across the district, so the crew could open the junction gate from the yard without the panel. Experiment: open the junction valve and light the yard at the panel; the pool's lamp (an indicator, not a beacon: it draws nothing) lights and the junction gate opens for as long as the yard is lit. The price is the hot yard: the next surge enters at the yard intake and its crowd holds at the yard beacon, beside the junction, so the platform is worked at that crowd's edge. Or leave the junction valve shut and discharge the coil into the pool: The junction gate opens quietly, no beacon lights, for the seconds the charge lasts. The coil buys stealth, not access (REV102-6). Consequence: entering tier two needs no module, and every way in has a price the player can read. Behind the junction gate: the second tally board and the crew's note of the relay room's valve sequence. Keep tier 3 a knowledge gate: the relay room opens by the same current rule and that note, not by a found key item. *Tier 3, the relay room, "what calls the Flood" (r16: one chain, merged from the lead's r9 access chain and this page's r15 relay chain; designer spoilers; this page owns it and Design Document §11 lifts it).* **Prerequisites:** the junction gate open (tier two) and the crew's note from behind it. The note has two sides: a three-valve order drawn against the inked plan, and the crew's own conclusion, "relay on the head channel; drain it and it stops; clamp it and it holds one line; we chose neither."
	**Reaching the room (the lead's chain, adopted).**
@@ 110,7 160,7 @@
	| Step | Evidence, inference, consequence |
	| --- | --- |
	| Notice | On the relay's face a drum turns with three marks per cycle; the forecast countdown on the surveyor's board ticks exactly with it. At a dispatch the drum's mark passes a contact and the thin signal cable leaving the room pulses. The forecast has been this drum all along. |
-	| Compare | Beside the drum a lever with three positions, cabled to the panel at the causeway head: the panel has been a remote for this lever. A clamp hangs beside it, unused; a drain valve the drain valve sits on the sluice-head channel that feeds the relay, shut; the note names both and chose neither. |
+	| Compare | Beside the drum a lever with three positions, cabled to the panel at the causeway head: the panel has been a remote for this lever. A clamp hangs beside it, unused; a drain valve sits on the sluice-head channel that feeds the relay, shut; the note names both and chose neither. |
	| Understand | The relay is the one device in the district that *makes* signal instead of consuming power: its race, the sluice-head channel above the weir, flows past a wheel that turns the drum, and the drum's contact makes the pulse. It runs on flowing water, not energised water; there is no current in that race, and its wheel is visible turning. The drum decides *when*; the lever decides *where*. Nothing else is new: a drain valve empties a channel (the field pump did the same in the yard), a clamp fixes a lever, and the door beside the room obeys the same rule as a hatch. |
	| Infer | Three things can be done with what the player already knows, each persistent because it is done to the district, not to the player: open the drain and the relay loses its water and stops; clamp the lever and every dispatch goes to one branch; leave it, and the panel keeps its remote. |
	| Act | **Shut:** open the drain. **Fix:** set the lever, then clamp it. **Hold:** leave the room as found and record the choice at the dock. Each is one interaction; none consumes salvage; the cost was reaching the room. |