commit 999d84

Commit `999d84`

2026-09-06 21:32:22 Anonymous: The Head-works r3: answer PMR004 item 3 and its two contract corrections. Slow is WITHDRAWN and merged into Keep - PM is right that a freely adjustable Keep already reproduced it while staying reversible, which is a better reason than the one r1 gave for doubting it. The three outcomes are now Stop, Keep and Leave, the relay room's three shapes exactly. States the interaction commitment honestly (Keep is the one outcome that is not a single interaction) and rules out upkeep: the setting persists like the relay's, nothing decays, a return is a choice not a bill. Section 2 withdraws r1's generalisation that flowing water cannot conduct - it conducts like any water; the isolation is topological, and this names the actual dry break (every powered line stops at the gallery, above the weir) and the district's power feed (the trunk, carrying harvested charge under D024). Stop's row now states the city-wide powered-door and pump loss and the gravity-and-dry-ground route that always survives it. Section 5 withdraws r1's claim that the boat route submerges the race route, which had a starved Collector running fuller than an unstarved one, and reconciles with The Collector section 7: shutting the Barrier opens both roads and costs the Collector its function.

`hold the flood/districts/the head-works.md` ..
@@ 1,6 1,6 @@
	# Hold the Flood — The Head-works

-	CAM101 · r2 · 2026-09-06 · Campaign and District Designer · In review; proposal. Nothing here is an owner approval or tested behaviour. r2 rewrites §8 against [CMB101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies), published while r1 was being written: the roster is Combat's six roles, not the four in DES104 §4. Nothing else changed; r1 is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works/history).
+	CAM101 · r3 · 2026-09-06 · Campaign and District Designer · In review; proposal. Nothing here is an owner approval or tested behaviour. r3 answers [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) item 3 and its two contract corrections. Slow is withdrawn and merged into Keep, because a freely adjustable Keep could already reproduce it while staying reversible; the three outcomes are now Stop, Keep and Leave — the relay room's three shapes exactly — with the interaction commitment stated and no compulsory return for upkeep. §2 withdraws the claim that flowing water cannot conduct and names the actual dry break and the district's power feed. §5 withdraws r1's claim that arriving by boat submerges the race route and reconciles starvation with [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) §7. r2 reconciled §8 with CMB101; r1 and r2 are in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works/history).

	District 7, the last, of the seven recommended on [Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts). The Head-works is the World designer's example district ([World and Mystery 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de)), placed in the lead's campaign ([DES104 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#2-the-campaigns-shape)) and marked "Sketch — not designed" in that page's coverage table. This page writes its ground, its approaches, its decision and its consequences to the standard of DES104 §3.

@@ 42,7 42,7 @@
	SLUICE-EQUIVALENT: the spill channel, where the Flood comes in with the overflow
	```

-	- The reservoir and the weir. Still water above, flowing water below: the races that turn every district's drum start here. The weir is the one place in the campaign where the player stands between a still body and a flowing one, and the distinction the whole rule set rests on — flowing water turns drums and carries no charge — is visible in a single view.
+	- The reservoir and the weir. Still water above, flowing water below: the races that turn every district's drum start here. Flowing water conducts exactly as any water does — [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) is right that r1's wording generalised a local fact into a rule, and r1's sentence is withdrawn. What is true is topological, not hydraulic: nothing electrical is connected to the races, because every powered line in this district stops at the gallery, which stands above the weir on dry ground. That is the dry break, and it is visible — the cable runs end at the gallery wall and no conductor crosses the weir. So the races carry no charge for the same reason the pumping district's relay feed carries none: not because water in motion is special, but because nothing energises it. Anything that did reach a race would energise it normally, and that is a live hazard at the weir, not an exception. Where this district's own power comes from: the trunk, up from the districts below, which under [D024](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) is charge harvested from the Flood — so the gallery's lamps and the gate motors are running on what the player has watched the Collector's meters count all campaign.
	- The race heads. Four hand-worked gates, one per race. They are not the finale's decision; they are the local puzzle (§3).
	- The governor gallery. Dry, raised, and the only dry ground in the district. The governor stands in it: a brake, a cadence lever with more positions than any panel, and district clutches on the shaft.
	- The tally room. Optional; §6.
@@ 71,30 71,26 @@

	## 4. The decision: three positions, and what each does

-	The governor is the relay room's shut / fix / hold at city scale. Each is one interaction; none consumes salvage; the cost was getting here.
+	r1 offered Slow, Stop and Keep. [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) item 3 is right that this was three positions doing two things: a freely adjustable Keep can already wind the cadence back and put it forward again, so Slow was a strictly worse Keep wearing its own name. Slow is withdrawn and merged into Keep. What is left is the relay room's three shapes at city scale, which is what this district was always for: stop it, take it, or leave it.

	\| Position \| The action \| What it does, stated as a rule \| What it costs \|
	\| --- \| --- \| --- \| --- \|
-	\| Slow (the cadence lever) \| Wind the cadence lever back \| Every district's trunk cadence lengthens permanently: fewer dispatches per expedition, each larger, everywhere. The forecast still works; the schedule the player has learned everywhere is rewritten at once \| Larger surges are harder to route and harder to outlast; a district whose beats the player had memorised is now a different district. Every existing crowd-timing plan is spent \|
-	\| Stop (the brake) \| Set the brake on the shaft \| The trunk carries no time at all. Every district enters the shut regime permanently: no dispatches, no forecast, the Flood arriving by each district's own sluice as unannounced trickles that grow \| The whole forecast layer of the game is gone, in every district, for good — including the colony's board and the Exchange's bank, which now sets nothing. Under the World designer's Answer A this also stops what feeds the grid, and §7 states what that means \|
-	\| Keep (the district clutches) \| Leave the shaft running and set the clutches yourself \| The player becomes the thing upstream that keeps time. Which districts are permitted, and at what cadence, becomes a standing setting readable and re-settable — from here, at the cost of a trip \| Someone has to come back. The campaign's question is answered by the player taking the job, and the refuge's safety now depends on a setting only they maintain \|
+	\| Stop \| Set the brake on the shaft \| The trunk carries no time at all. Every district enters the shut regime permanently: no dispatch, no forecast, no flash, and the Flood arriving by each district's own sluice as unannounced trickles that grow. Post-entry targeting is unchanged everywhere — beacons still lure, panels still move what has arrived; what is gone is the announcement \| The whole forecast layer of the game, in every district, for good, including the refuge board and the Exchange's bank, which now sets nothing. Under [D024](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004)'s Answer A the trunk also stops carrying the harvested charge the grid runs on, so every powered door, hatch, beacon and pump in the city goes dark, the colony's dock pump included. What survives is everything that never needed power: gravity drains and the culverts, dry high ground, hand-worked gates, levers and locks, the cutter, and the player's own coil and planted beacons. The way home always exists — it is the gravity-and-dry-ground route the campaign has had since expedition one \|
+	\| Keep \| Set the cadence lever and the district clutches yourself, and leave the shaft running \| The player becomes the thing upstream that keeps time. Which districts the trunk permits, and how often, becomes a standing setting — including winding the cadence back to fewer, larger dispatches everywhere, which is what Slow used to be \| This is the one outcome that is not a single interaction, and saying so is the honest answer to PMR004: setting a cadence and then setting clutches is several deliberate actions in a room whose door depends on a race the player chose in §3. It is also the only outcome that is reversible, and reversing it means coming back here. There is no upkeep and no compulsory return: the setting persists exactly as the pumping district's relay state does, nothing decays, and no expedition is ever required to maintain it. A return is a choice to change your mind, never a bill \|
+	\| Leave \| Walk out of the gallery without touching the governor, and record it at the dock \| Nothing changes anywhere. The network runs as it has, and the colony's board records that it could have been stopped and was not \| The campaign's question is answered and its lever is declined. This is the hold row at city scale, and it is a real ending rather than a failure to finish \|

-	Why these three and not a boss. They are the same three shapes the player already chose between in the relay room — stop it, fix it, leave it — which means the finale is legible to a player who has been paying attention and needs no tutorial at the worst possible moment. And they are genuinely different games afterward, which is what the pumping district's endings table already promises at district scale.
+	Why these three and not a boss. They are the three shapes the player already chose between in the relay room, which means the finale is legible to anyone who has been paying attention and needs no tutorial at the worst possible moment. And they leave genuinely different games afterward, which is what the pumping district's endings table already promises at district scale.

-	Deferral. The choice can be deferred, exactly as the relay's can. Reaching the gallery and leaving without touching the governor is a complete expedition, and the district stays open.
-
-	---
+	Deferral. The choice can be deferred, exactly as the relay's can. Reaching the gallery and leaving without touching the governor is a complete expedition and is not the same as choosing Leave, which is recorded; the district stays open either way.

	## 5. What the player's own campaign has already done to this district

-	The head-works reads differently depending on the state the player arrives in, and this is where the campaign's persistence pays off rather than merely accumulating.
+	The head-works reads differently depending on the state the player arrives in. r1 claimed the two approaches shut each other off, and that was wrong: it had a starved Collector running fuller, which contradicts [The Collector §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector#7-what-the-campaign-later-does-to-this-district-and-what-this-district-enables), where starvation puts that district a level lower. [PMR004 §1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) asks the two pages to be reconciled, and this is the reconciliation: shutting the Tidal Barrier makes both approaches to the finale easier and costs the Collector its whole function. That is the trade, and it is a better one than a fake exclusion.

-	- Arriving by boat means the Tidal Barrier's gates are shut, which starves the [Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector). Fewer organisms are in circulation, so the head-works' own surges are thinner and the weir approach is survivable — and the race route is submerged, because a starved Collector holds nothing and its head race runs full.
-	- Arriving by race means the Collector is open and running, so the city is at full supply and the head-works' surges are at their largest — and the weir approach is the one that is easy, because the reservoir is drawn down.
-	- A district darkened at the Exchange cannot be read from the gallery: the governor's board shows a position with no cadence on it, which is the last and clearest statement of what the bank has been doing all campaign.
-	- The pumping district's relay, if the player shut it on expedition eleven, shows here as a clutch that is already disengaged — the first thing they ever did to the network, seen from the place that owns it. That costs no content at all and it is the single best moment I can offer this district.
-
-	---
+	- If the Barrier is shut — which is what unlocks the boat route at all — fewer bodies are in circulation, so the Collector sits a level lower and its head race is walkable more often, not less. Both roads up are open. The price is paid at the Collector, which is no longer a bank: held masses thin, the harvest that funds its two local sinks dries up, and the ways-on withhold less. A player who wants the Collector to keep working arrives here by race, with the Barrier still open, and does the harder version of both.
+	- The head-works' own supply follows the same rule. With the Barrier open and the city at full circulation, this district's surges are at their largest and the gallery's stationary work is at its most dangerous. With the Barrier shut, they are thin. So the campaign's last district is easier for a player who has spent the campaign's most valuable district to get here — which is the shape I want, because it means the difficulty of the ending is something the player chose four expeditions earlier and can see written on the refuge board before they launch.
+	- A district darkened at the Exchange cannot be read from the gallery: the governor's board shows a position with no cadence on it. It is the last and clearest statement of what the bank has been doing all campaign.
+	- The pumping district's relay, if the player shut it on expedition eleven, shows here as a clutch already disengaged — the first thing they ever did to the network, seen from the place that owns it. It costs no content at all and it is the best moment this district has.

	## 6. Discovery

@@ 116,7 112,7 @@

	Stated so that the decision in [DES104 §10.7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#10-decisions-for-the-owner-and-one-question-for-pm) can be made with its consequences visible. I do not recommend between them; that is the World designer's and the owner's.

-	- Answer A, the machine. Costs this district nothing new. The grease is the works' own automatic maintenance, the tally room's boards are printed by the machine, and Stop darkens every powered door and pump in the city including the colony's — which makes the finale's cost enormous and entirely mechanical. It also settles [REV104-4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review): the districts' circuits are fed by charge harvested from the Flood, which the Collector's meters have been telling the player for two districts.
+	- Answer A, the machine. Costs this district nothing new. The grease is the works' own automatic maintenance, the tally room's boards are printed by the machine, and Stop darkens every powered door and pump in the city including the colony's, as §4 now states in full — which makes the finale's cost enormous and entirely mechanical. It also settles [REV104-4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review): the districts' circuits are fed by charge harvested from the Flood, which the Collector's meters have been telling the player for two districts.
	- Answer B, the keepers. Costs this district one human presence and a reason — an asset category this design has otherwise avoided completely, and the campaign's only character. It changes Keep from "the player takes the job" to "the player takes it from someone", which is a stronger scene and a different game. It leaves REV104-4 unanswered, so the grid's power source would need stating elsewhere.

	The one thing I will say as the district's designer: whichever is chosen, the three governor positions in §4 stand unchanged. That is the property I built the district for.
@@ 156,4 152,5 @@
	- Lead (DES104). Whether this page contradicts anything in the campaign page; if so, that page wins until agreed otherwise. Also §2's race route, which adds a second approach to the boat range in DES104 §5.
	- [COL101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony). Keep makes the governor a standing colony setting, which is a persistent-progression object in Colony's domain rather than mine. If Colony would rather it were not, Keep can remain a one-time setting with no return trips, and the district still works.
	- [CMB101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies). The Grounder placement in §8, and the floater question in §8's last bullet.
-	- Unresolved by me, honestly. Whether Slow is a real choice or a trap — rewriting a schedule the player spent ten hours learning may read as punishment rather than power, and I do not know. It is the position I would cut first if the three had to become two, and I am recording that now rather than defending it later.
+	- Withdrawn, and recorded as withdrawn. r1 kept a third governor position, Slow, and flagged it as the one I would cut first. PMR004 cut it for a better reason than mine — it was reproducible by Keep — and I accept that; the reasoning is in §4 and the r1 wording is in page history. What I got right was the instinct; what I got wrong was keeping a position I could not defend.
+	- Unresolved by me, honestly. Whether Keep asks too much of a finale — it is the only outcome that is several interactions rather than one, in the campaign's most exposed room, and a player who wanted a clean ending may experience it as homework rather than as power. I do not know, and it is the first thing I would want watched if a play phase is ever authorised.

Commit 999d84

Commit `999d84`