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| - | # Hold the Flood — Districts |
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| - | **CAM101 accepted; CAM102 / CAM103 · r15 · 2026-09-07 · Campaign and District Designer · SCOPE SUPERSEDED — read §0 first.** r15 delivers this role's half of the survivorlike revision the owner has asked for, in **§0.1**: what the player repeatedly does, what makes the next trip different from the last, and how a discovery changes what they can do — written plainly, with no task codes, because the owner's complaint was that the design is barely understandable. It also **demotes routing from the central science to a supporting tool**, as the owner instructs, and says what that costs on my own pages rather than defending them. r1–r14 are in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/history). |
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| - | **This page does not replace [Campaign (DES104)](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign).** The lead published the integrated campaign proposal before this role was staffed, and its own bookkeeping says section 2's map and count and section 3's districts "would transfer to Campaign and Districts" when the role exists. It exists now. **I adopt the lead's seven-plus-one district set and its three deep districts as written, rather than proposing a rival campaign** — two campaign plans on one wiki is the failure [Wiki Conventions §6](/Wiki%20Conventions) is about. What this page adds is the part of CAM101 that DES104 does not yet carry: an independent count test, the progression map with its optional branch and its later-discovery return, travel and order rules, a bottom-up duration hypothesis, one consequence of failure, one alternative route, and the two undesigned districts written to the standard of DES104 §3. |
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| - | **Sources read 2026-09-06, at these revisions.** [Campaign / DES104 r1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) (read in full; §2 the shape and count, §3.1–3.4, §4–§10 and the bookkeeping) · [Hub 42488e](/Hold%20the%20Flood?revision=42488e) · [Brief 1bd68a](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=1bd68a) (D009, D013, D016, D019–D021) · [Tasks eb8c03](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=eb8c03) (CAM101) · [Expansion Brief cdc0c5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief?revision=cdc0c5) · [Design Index dd01c7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index?revision=dd01c7) · [Design Document ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) (§2–§4, §10–§13) · [World and Mystery 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de) (W1–W4, WLD103's campaign question and six-part contribution rule) · [Design Review 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882) (REV104-1 to -5) · [Pumping District 7161a5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District?revision=7161a5) · [Power and Attraction 8afc3c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=8afc3c) · [Expansion Prompts ed17df](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Team/Expansion%20Prompts?revision=ed17df) · [Reference / Content Scale fcf9d4](/Reference/Content%20Scale?revision=fcf9d4) · [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions). |
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| - | ## 0. Dependency assessment after the owner's direction of 2026-09-07 |
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| - | *This is the domain designer's answer to [PMU008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks): "explain the player value of affected systems and any broken dependency; offer a concrete revision or removal; do not defend a feature just because it is already documented." I have tried to write it as though I had no stake in the pages below.* |
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| - | ### What is dead |
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| - | - **The harvest revelation, and everything resting on it.** [Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#rejected-and-undecided) rejects *"the city depends on the creatures"* as a cliché masquerading as a twist, withdraws D024 / Answer A and the harvest-dependent Stop–Keep–Leave ending, and asks that it not return under other names. That takes **[The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) §5** — the meters reading what the rack reads *is* the rejected revelation — and it takes **[The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) §§4, 5 and 7**, whose three governor positions are a choice about the harvest and are three settings on a timetable without it. Both pages are marked at their heads. |
| - | - **The seven-district, 34-expedition, 8.1-hour outline as the complete-game scope.** The Brief supersedes it in terms, against about 30 hours to first credits and about 90 total. **I am withdrawing the hour figures as a scope claim outright**, not qualifying them again: they were an honest bottom-up count of content that no longer describes the game being asked for, and one more caveat would be a worse answer than a withdrawal. The method in §5 — printed beats, required separated from optional, overhead named as an assumption — is the part worth keeping, and it will produce a different number when there is different content to count. |
| - | |
| - | ### What is not dead, only unconfirmed |
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| - | The Brief lists **the drowned industrial city and the machinery that redirects hordes** as *undecided* — "they may or may not serve the desired experience", and neither is mandatory for the replacement premise. So the districts are not condemned; they are unconfirmed, which is a different instruction and calls for holding rather than rewriting. **[The World Below](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#visionary-replacement-proposal--the-world-below) keeps more of the physical vocabulary than it discards**: drowned ruins, a horde that gathers and migrates through flooded chambers, coil and battery and rack, salvage brought home. What it moves is the *shape* of the geography — from seven surface districts to layers under one sanctuary, divided by cisterns, service rings and drainage shafts that the Flood can follow between levels once reopened. |
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| - | ### What survives on its own merits, whatever premise is chosen |
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| - | These are premise-independent, three of them are already adopted elsewhere, and I would carry them into any geography: |
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| - | | Rule | Where it lives | Why it survives | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | A revisit earns its place only by a state changed, a problem the earlier visit could not pose, or an objective requiring presence | [§5.1](#51-what-makes-a-revisit-worth-taking--the-test-and-my-own-baseline-audited-against-it) | It cut a trip from my own baseline before anyone asked. Layers need it more than districts did | |
| - | | A rescue cannot complete a commitment defined as happening at extraction | [§3.3](#33-return-paths-an-additional-berth-and-what-a-rescue-cannot-complete) | Adopted by Colony. Independent of what the places are | |
| - | | One held dock plus one additional supported berth, campaign-wide | §3.3 | In the shared contract. Scarcity is what makes it a decision | |
| - | | Route-gating state is readable before launch | §3.3 | In Colony's route board. A deal-breaker in the Brief is bad UX; this is directly against it | |
| - | | The order is a recommendation, not a gate; entry by physical access, never a notebook flag | [§3.4](#34-the-route-is-a-recommendation-not-a-gate--and-what-that-settles) | A layered world needs it more, not less: shafts reopen between levels | |
| - | |
| - | ### What I recommend for each page |
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| - | | Page | Recommendation | |
| - | | --- | --- | |
| - | | [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) | **Hold, do not revise.** Its foundation is gone. The one thing worth rescuing is the shape of its ending — a final choice the player has already lived with in miniature — and that is a fiction-independent structure that can be rebuilt anywhere | |
| - | | [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) | **Hold §5; keep §6 available.** Withholding a wave so that a light flashes with nothing behind it needs no revelation — only that the Flood is *moved* through the place, which the replacement premise already has it doing | |
| - | | [The Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Exchange) | **Least damaged; hold.** It never depended on the harvest. Its idea — a room where the player's choice lands somewhere they are not standing — transfers to layers unchanged | |
| - | | [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) | **Hold.** It is the lead's and the document's, and its teaching role does not depend on the withdrawn revelation | |
| - | | This page | **Retained below as the record of a superseded scope**, with §0 as its live content | |
| - | |
| - | ### What I am not doing, and why |
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| - | **I am not redesigning the campaign for thirty hours this hour.** The replacement premise is explicitly *not approved*, [REV106](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) has returned *revise* on it, and the Brief says designers must explain the discoveries, build development, world changes and optional depth that could sustain that structure **before** claiming a matching hour total. Producing a seven-to-thirty-hour expansion against an unapproved premise would be the padding the Brief forbids, and it would be the third scope I have written in two days. |
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| - | **What I need before I can propose a geography for the new premise**, stated so PM and the Visionary can supply it or tell me to proceed without it: whether the layered sanctuary replaces surface districts entirely or sits under them; whether a *layer* is the unit that replaces a district, or whether a layer holds several; and whether the campaign's spine is still travel between places or is now descent. **The third question is the one that decides everything else on this page.** Until it is answered, holding is the honest thing to do, and it costs nothing that a rewrite would not cost twice. |
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| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ### 0.1 What the player repeatedly does, and how a discovery changes it |
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| - | *This is the Campaign designer's half of the joint revision the owner has asked of the Lead and this role. It is written in plain words with no codes, and it assumes no particular geography — no districts, no layers, no water — because none of those is currently endorsed. What it does assume is that places persist and can be gone back to.* |
| - | |
| - | #### The loop, in six steps |
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| - | 1. **You pick a place and a reason.** Someone at home needs a thing, or you want a specific power you have heard is out there. The reason is human or practical, never a quota. |
| - | 2. **You pack.** What you carry decides which problems you can solve. Every slot spent on a tool is a slot not spent on what you bring back, and you cannot carry answers to everything. |
| - | 3. **You go in under pressure.** The crowd is already there and it grows while you work. Nothing waits for you. |
| - | 4. **You earn your power in the field.** You arrive with empty banks every time, so the first minutes are spent getting enough charge to do the thing you came for. Power is earned inside the trip, not bought before it. |
| - | 5. **You do the thing** — open it, take it, change it, or reach it — and the crowd is what stands between you and doing it twice. |
| - | 6. **You come home and watch it land**, on the workshop, on a person, or on the map. |
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| - | #### What makes the next trip different from the last |
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| - | Three answers, and **only one of them is routing**: |
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| - | - **You understand more.** Something you have walked past for hours acquires a meaning, and you act on it. |
| - | - **You can do more.** A combination you could not afford or had not found now works, and it changes what a room costs you. |
| - | - **The world is bigger than it was.** You opened a way, and the map you thought you had turns out to be a corner of one. |
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| - | **A trip that offers none of the three is a trip that should not be on the plan.** That test already cut a required trip from this page's own baseline, and it is the one thing in §5.1 I would carry into any premise. |
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| - | #### Routing is a tool now, not the science — and here is what that costs me |
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| - | The owner has said plainly that **understanding enemy routing is not intended to be this game's central science**. My pages have treated it as exactly that. The concrete change: |
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| - | - **What routing keeps:** it is how you buy room to act. Sending the crowd to the far end so you can work the near one is a good, legible tool, and it should stay a tool. |
| - | - **What routing loses:** it stops being a reason for a place to exist. **A district may no longer justify itself by posing a new routing puzzle** — which was the standard my own count argument used, and which is now withdrawn twice over. |
| - | - **What that costs me, stated rather than defended:** [The Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Exchange) is routing at campaign scale and almost nothing else. Under the corrected direction it is **the district of mine most at risk**, and I would rather say so than quietly recast it. If it survives, it will be because a room where your choice lands somewhere you are not standing is a *discovery* about the size of the world, not because it is a clever lever. |
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| - | #### The discovery this role owns: "the world is much larger than it appeared" |
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| - | Of the three kinds of discovery the owner described, this one is geography's, and it is the one I can build. Three mechanisms, none of which needs a particular setting: |
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| - | - **A place you know becomes an entrance.** Not a new room — a room you have crossed a dozen times turns out to lead on. The player's own familiarity is what makes it land. |
| - | - **A boundary turns out to be a door.** Something you had read as the edge of the world — scenery, rubble, a wall of water, a drop — has a mechanism, and it always did. |
| - | - **A scale reveal.** One moment where you see at once how much there is: a view, a shaft that goes further than your light, a sound that comes back too late. |
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| - | **The rule that makes all three work:** the player must have already been there, ideally more than once, and had a good reason not to look. A reveal in a room you have never entered is just a new room. **This is the strongest argument for revisits that this design has**, and it is a better one than the one I was using — it makes going back the way the world grows, rather than the way content is re-used. |
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| - | #### Scope assumptions, kept explicit |
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| - | No hour figure is claimed here and none is implied. This section describes a loop and three discovery mechanisms; **what it would take to sustain thirty hours of them is a content question I cannot answer until the premise is settled**, and the owner's brief is explicit that the discoveries must be explained before a matching total is claimed. Nothing above assumes water, a drowned city, layers, or the seven districts below. |
| - | |
| - | ## District pages |
| - | |
| - | | District | Designed where | Page | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | Pumping District | Design Document §2–§4, §11; campaign role here | [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) | |
| - | | Lock Flight | [DES104 §3.1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#31-the-lock-flight) — lead's, deep | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 | |
| - | | Tram Incline | [DES104 §3.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#32-the-tram-incline) — lead's, deep | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 | |
| - | | The Exchange | **Here** — was outline-level in DES104 §3.4; deepened under CAM102 | [The Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Exchange) | |
| - | | The Collector | **Here** — was a sketch in DES104 §7; written to the §3 standard | [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) | |
| - | | Tidal Barrier | [DES104 §3.3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#33-the-tidal-barrier) — lead's, deep | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 | |
| - | | The Head-works | **Here** — was a sketch in DES104 §7; written to the §3 standard | [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) | |
| - | | The Refuge | DES104 §5, as a played district | **Recommended against as a district** — see §2.3 | |
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| - | I have not created pages for the **Lock Flight** or the **Tram Incline**. Their content is authored and current on the lead's page; copying it here would create the divergent second copy the conventions warn about, and the transfer is the lead's to make, not mine to take — that is the third half of CAM102 and it is a coordination step, not an edit I can perform alone. **The Exchange was the exception [PMR006](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR006) asked for**: it was outline-level rather than authored at depth, so deepening it adds rather than duplicates, and its page keeps the lead's outline entire and links the bank's pricing rather than restating it. |
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| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 1. Three contrasting districts, and what "contrasting" has to mean |
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| - | CAM101 asks for three contrasting districts in depth, with the pumping district as the candidate opening and two areas of my own design. The three are the **[Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District)** (§3 below and its own page), **[The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector)**, and **[The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works)** — the two the lead's coverage table marks "Not designed". |
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| - | They contrast on the thing that matters, which is **what the player's lever sets**: |
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| - | | District | The lever sets | Where it applies | When you feel it | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | Pumping District | **Where** the Flood enters, and where an entered crowd walks | Here | Now, in front of you | |
| - | | The Collector | **How much** Flood another district gets | Elsewhere | On a later expedition, somewhere you are not | |
| - | | The Head-works | **How often** every district dispatches | Everywhere at once | Permanently, from the moment you set it | |
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| - | Three levers, three different cells, one rule set. That is the contrast this campaign needs and it is not achievable by changing tilesets. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 2. The count: seven districts, not eight |
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| - | **Recommended seven; [PMR004 D022](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) accepts it provisionally** — "seven external districts plus the refuge, without a forced refuge-defence expedition", which is this section's argument including the part about the refuge, and which PM records as revising their own eight-area hypothesis rather than as an owner-approved count. The reasoning is left standing below because a count that is accepted still has to be re-checkable, and D022 leaves a justified eighth open. |
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| - | **I recommend seven.** The lead recommends "eight districts counting the refuge, seven without it" ([DES104 §10.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#10-decisions-for-the-owner-and-one-question-for-pm)). **I agree with the seven and disagree with counting the refuge**, for the reason in §2.3. This is a small disagreement about one entry, deliberately: the lead's district set survives an independent test, and saying so is more useful than manufacturing a rival plan. |
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| - | ### 2.0 The seven districts against the vision's decision test |
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| - | *The [Game vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) sets one test: **name the player's choice, its visible consequence, and the part of the experience it serves.** If those cannot be stated plainly, simplify or combine; if the element still contributes nothing, remove it. It adds that a feature's origin, its author and its prior acceptance do not answer the test. Here are the seven, plainly, with no task codes and no revision numbers, because a reader should be able to use this table without any of them.* |
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| - | | District | What the player chooses | What they see happen | What it is for | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Pumping District** | Which road to light | The next wave comes in on the road you lit, and the door on that road opens | Teaches the whole game: every door you open invites the crowd to it | |
| - | | **Lock Flight** | Whether to move the water or move the crowd | Basins fill and drain; a drained bed becomes a road, and a filled one becomes a circuit | Shows that the water is a tool, not just terrain | |
| - | | **Tram Incline** | Whether to tow the crowd or send it away | A lit tram climbs, and the crowd follows the light up or is left behind it | Shows that a light can be carried, not just switched | |
| - | | **The Exchange** | Which districts stay readable | Somewhere else, on a later trip, a wave arrives announced — or doesn't | The first choice that lands in a place you are not standing in | |
| - | | **The Collector** | How much of the Flood another district gets, and whether to hold it, harvest it or let it through | A wave that was scheduled to arrive somewhere simply doesn't: the light flashes and nothing comes | Shows the Flood is being moved on a schedule, not spawned | |
| - | | **Tidal Barrier** | Whether to shut the sea out | The flats stop flooding, the refuge's dock stops flooding, and the Collector runs short | The first choice that helps home and costs the machine | |
| - | | **The Head-works** | Stop, Keep or Leave | Every district's schedule changes at once, on a timetable you can watch approach | The same choice as the first district's relay, with the whole city on the other end | |
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| - | **All seven pass this test, and that is less than it sounds.** Every row names a choice the player makes, a consequence they watch, and a job in the one story the vision describes: follow the signal upstream, find out what the Flood is for, and decide what your home should keep running. **But [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) is right that “all seven pass” establishes neither that every district is distinct enough nor that the duration satisfies the owner**, and r12 overstated it by calling the table “the argument”. What the table actually does is state each district's intended function plainly enough to be argued with. **Distinctness is tested by the lead's written-expedition test, one district at a time, and four of the seven have not had it run on them; whether eight hours of this is what the owner meant is not a question any table on this page can answer.** The honest status: the table replaces a justification that was withdrawn, and it is a better starting point than the one it replaced, not a finding. |
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| - | **What I am withdrawing.** §2.1 offers the lever ladder as a cheaper count test than the lead's, and §2.2 runs the seven through it. **As a justification for the count, it is withdrawn.** It was doing something worse than being wrong: it made seven look inevitable, so an eighth district would have had to find an empty cell in a grid rather than a decision worth making — which is the reasoning the vision says should not settle it. *(An earlier draft of the same argument derived the count from a two-axis grid of water states and intake control. It was never published. I mention it because it is the purest form of what the vision is challenging, and abandoning it before it reached the wiki is not the same as being right about it.)* |
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| - | **What survives, restated in the vision's terms.** The ladder never required a district to add a *rule*; it required each district's consequence to land in a different place and time from the others. Read that way it is the vision's own test applied across districts rather than one at a time, and it is still what catches a reskin. **A district earns its place by the choice it gives the player, not by the rule it adds** — and by that standard the Exchange is the interesting case, because it adds nothing at all to the shared rules and is still the first place a player's choice reaches a district they are not standing in. |
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| - | **Already applied, before the vision said it.** *"Change or cut when a visit exists to meet an hour/count target."* At r10 a required trip was cut from the baseline for exactly that reason — its only purpose was to watch a clue the player would see anyway — and the baseline fell to 34 expeditions and 8.1 hours. I mention it because the vision asks designers not to defend a feature by its documentation, and the cheapest way to show that is to have cut something before being asked to. |
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| - | **What I have not done.** No district is added, none is expanded and no catalogue is touched: [PMU008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) defers that while the direction is under review, and this role's job meanwhile is to support coherence and correct live contradictions. If a later vision pass changes what a district must do, the table above is where the damage shows first, and I would rather revise it than argue for it. |
| - | |
| - | ### 2.1 The test I applied, which is not the lead's |
| - | |
| - | > **Withdrawn as the reason for the count at r12**, after the [Game vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) ruled that a district need not add a rule to earn its place. The ladder is kept below as an anti-reskin check, which is what it is good for, and no longer as the justification. The current argument is the decision-test table in [§2.0](#20-the-seven-districts-against-the-visions-decision-test). |
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| - | The lead's test is: *a district must have a written expedition whose choices could not occur in another district.* That is a good test and it is expensive — it needs a written expedition per district before it can be run, and three of the eight do not have one. |
| - | |
| - | **My test is cheaper and can be run on a sketch: the lever ladder.** Every district's outward consequence occupies one cell of *(what it sets) × (where it applies) × (when it is felt)*. **A district whose lever shares a cell with another district's is a reskin, however different its ground looks.** This is the same instinct as the lead's, made checkable before the expedition is written — which is what the Expansion Brief's "avoid eight renamed pumping yards" actually needs. |
| - | |
| - | ### 2.2 The ladder applied to the lead's set |
| - | |
| - | | District | What its lever sets | Where | When felt | Verdict | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | Pumping District | Where the Flood enters; where an entered crowd walks | Here | Now | **Distinct** | |
| - | | Lock Flight | Where the *water* is — which makes roads and completes circuits | Here | Now | **Distinct** — it moves the medium, not the crowd | |
| - | | Tram Incline | Where the *light* is, continuously, on a rail | Here | Now, continuously | **Distinct** — the panel sets an entrance at a dispatch; the tram sets a lure that moves while you watch | |
| - | | [The Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Exchange) | Which district is announced, forecast and routable at all | Elsewhere | Next visit there | **Distinct** — and, since CAM102, designed rather than asserted | |
| - | | The Collector | How much Flood a district receives | Elsewhere | Next visit there | **Distinct from the Exchange** — one sets readability, the other quantity; a player can want a thin surge they cannot read, or a large one they can | |
| - | | Tidal Barrier | Whether a second, unannounced source exists at all | Here, permanently, and at the refuge | From the moment it is shut | **Distinct** | |
| - | | The Head-works | How often every district dispatches | Everywhere | Permanently | **Distinct** | |
| - | | The Refuge | — nothing; it is where other levers land | — | — | **Fails**: see §2.3 | |
| - | | Salt Pans (candidate) | — nothing new; one body of water is a topology variant of conduction | Here | Now | **Fails** — agrees with the lead's own decision to leave it a candidate, and gives the reason: it changes the *cost* of a known action, not the action | |
| - | |
| - | Seven pass. That the ladder independently reproduces the lead's seven is the strongest thing I can say for the set, and I would rather report that than invent a disagreement. |
| - | |
| - | ### 2.3 Why the refuge is not the eighth district |
| - | |
| - | The lead writes: *"the refuge as a played district is the least designed idea here and the one most likely to become a tower-defence mode by accident; it should be designed last and cut if it does."* I think the risk is structural, not a matter of care, and I would state it more strongly. |
| - | |
| - | - **It has no lever.** Every other district is somewhere the player goes to *set* something that is felt elsewhere or later. The refuge is the one place where the consequences of all the other levers arrive. Making it a district asks the player to travel to the place they already are, to change the thing they already changed. |
| - | - **It inverts the objective, not the rule.** Six districts ask *what can I do with this machine*; the refuge asks *can I survive this*. That is a different game's question, and it is the question the survivorlike genre already answers everywhere else — which is exactly why it will drift toward a defence mode. The Expansion Brief's warning about "eight unrelated minigames" is aimed at this shape. |
| - | - **It costs the campaign its best pressure.** A dry dock is a hard stop: the one thing the player can always rely on ([Design Document §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#3-core-play)). Every route decision in the campaign is priced against that guarantee. A refuge that can be attacked removes the guarantee, and every district's dock-route pricing has to be redone. |
| - | |
| - | **What I propose instead, which keeps what the lead wants from it.** The owner's word is *hold*, and a refuge that is only a menu cannot be held — that is right. But the holding should happen **through** the other districts, not at home: a district outcome that sends the Flood toward the refuge should change the refuge's *state* (its dock wet, its beacon drawing, its board dark), and the player's answer should be to go and change a lever somewhere else. That is the campaign the districts already support, and it makes the refuge the thing at stake rather than another arena. **If the owner wants an arena, it should be an explicit second mode with its own budget, not the eighth district.** |
| - | |
| - | ### 2.4 What would change my recommendation |
| - | |
| - | - **An eighth district earns its place the moment someone names a lever cell none of the seven occupies.** I could not find one; the two I looked hardest at were *when a district dispatches relative to the others* (that is the head-works' governor, one cell) and *what a surge is made of* (that is Combat's roster, not a place). |
| - | - **If the owner's "far too little" turns out to mean distinct places specifically** — the reading the lead's §10.1 asks for and PM has not yet had answered — then the cheapest honest growth is **wings**: a second dock and a new topology inside an existing district, reusing its assets and its lever cell. I would add a wing to the Lock Flight and to the Collector before I would add a place. |
| - | - **Corroboration, not the reason:** [REF107 fcf9d4](/Reference/Content%20Scale?revision=fcf9d4) records two shipped survivorlikes carrying five and six distinct environments with their variety inside each, as current rather than launch content, and proposes no count. I did not choose seven to match it and it is not evidence for any number. It is worth the owner seeing that a seven-district plan sits at the upper end of what comparable games carry, while this design's per-visit variety currently sits far below theirs — which is an argument for spending the next content budget on Combat's roster and Equipment's modules rather than on district eight. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 3. The order, the geography, and what travel costs |
| - | |
| - | ### 3.1 The map, as an order of play |
| - | |
| - | The lead's §2 establishes the geography: one water system, from the head-works at the top to the tidal barrier at the mouth. What follows is the **order**, which is my domain, and it is not the same thing as the geography — the player does not walk down the hill. |
| - | |
| - | ``` |
| - | THE HEAD-WORKS (7; the source; the governor) |
| - | | \ |
| - | races ------+ \---- boat, after the Barrier's dry dock |
| - | | (lead's colony unlock, DES104 §5) |
| - | THE EXCHANGE (4; time routed) |
| - | / \ |
| - | TRAM INCLINE (3) \ (the tram's summit is the way in) |
| - | | \ |
| - | LOCK FLIGHT (2) THE COLLECTOR (5; the Flood's supply) |
| - | | / |
| - | PUMPING DISTRICT (1) ---/ TIDAL BARRIER (6; the clock, at the mouth) |
| - | | | |
| - | ============== THE REFUGE: the colony's dock ============== |
| - | |
| - | RECOMMENDED 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → {5, 6 in either order} → 7 (an order, not a gate: §3.4) |
| - | OPTIONAL the weir dock (2) · the depot gates (3) · the mole (6) · the second approach to 7 (§7) |
| - | ``` |
| - | |
| - | **Why this order and not another.** The first four districts each hand the player one new thing to *set* — an entrance, water, a moving light, a network — in increasing distance from where they are standing, which is the campaign's whole shape: the player's reach grows from the room they are in to the city they are not in. Districts five and six are the two that act on quantity and on a clock, and they are interchangeable because neither depends on the other. Seven combines all of it. |
| - | |
| - | ### 3.2 Travel rules |
| - | |
| - | - **One expedition, one district.** The colony's boat goes out and comes back. There is no travel between districts inside an expedition. This keeps the expedition the unit of pressure the whole design already uses, and makes *which district am I spending this trip on* the campaign's top-level decision. |
| - | - **Travel costs no salvage.** The no-mandatory-upkeep baseline holds ([Design Document §10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#10-progression-and-persistence), and the Expansion Brief's instruction to retain it). The cost of a trip is opportunity, not a toll. |
| - | - **A district opens by physical access, not by a key and not by a notebook flag.** r1 said entries were knowledge gates because a note was recorded; [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) item 4 is right that this is a flag wearing a knowledge gate's coat. **The rule, corrected: the colony's boat can put in at any dock the player has a way to know exists, and every district's way in is a physical feature another district shows them** — a channel the culvert drains toward, a trunk cable on pylons, a rail climbing out of a cutting. The crews' plans and boards are the *ordinary* way to learn where one goes; **none of them has to be collected for the boat to go**, and a player who worked it out from the water can select the dock without them. A found object is never the gate ([REV102-2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review/Archive/REV102) is right that a found key is the definition of an item gate), and neither is a recorded note. **The redundancy is in the evidence, not in the permission.** |
| - | - **Every district has at least two ways to be found.** Stated per district; it is the geography-level version of WLD103's rule 5 on redundant clues, and it is what stops a missed inspection from stalling a campaign. |
| - | - **The colony holds one dock dry per district reached** — the lead's rule ([DES104 §5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#5-the-colony-across-the-campaign)), adopted here unchanged. I considered proposing one dry dock city-wide, to make the choice bigger, and rejected it: it would make every unvisited district's dock wet ground, which turns the campaign's later half into a series of districts with no hard stop, and the pricing of every route in DES104 §3 assumes one. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ### 3.3 Return paths, an additional berth, and what a rescue cannot complete |
| - | |
| - | *Answering **COL-I1** in [Colony r4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony), which asks this role to own the physical approach and return paths, to say whether a second berth is acceptable, and to rule on rescue. Colony is right that the Colony preview cannot claim these on Campaign's behalf; here is Campaign's answer, in three rules.* |
| - | |
| - | **Rule 1 — a rescue cannot complete a commitment that is defined as happening at extraction.** Colony asks that rescue must not falsely satisfy the extraction-conditioned canal commitment, and I agree, but the reason is general and belongs here rather than in one district: **a rescue is not an extraction.** The campaign already turns on persistent states the player sets and then leaves with — the pumping district's relay, the Collector's ways-on, the Exchange's clutches — and every one of them is set by an action performed *in* the district, which a rescue does not undo. A commitment made *at* extraction is a different animal: it is completed by leaving properly, and a player who was carried out did not leave properly. So: **physical state persists as left; a commitment conditioned on extraction does not complete.** That also gives the failure case its honest shape — you do not lose the lock you opened, you lose the trip that would have made it count, and the fix is one more expedition. |
| - | |
| - | **Which physical state on the Lock Flight expresses this is the lead's**, not mine. I own the rule; DES104 owns the lock. What I would ask of that mechanism is only that the incomplete state be *distinguishable on sight* from the complete one, so a player reading the board can tell "lock open, canal not connected" from "canal connected". |
| - | |
| - | **Rule 2 — one additional supported berth, campaign-wide, and I support it with one condition.** Colony proposes an explicit exception to the one-dock-per-district limit: a baseline held dock plus one additional supported berth, paid for with the advanced assembly assignment. **Campaign's position: accept it.** It buys a real route decision — enter below, tow a crowd with the Tram's own machinery, work above and extract at the summit without retracing that crowd — and a route the player pays for with a capability they wanted elsewhere is exactly the kind of choice this campaign is short of, not long on. |
| - | |
| - | **The condition, which is the part only this role would think to add: one additional berth in the whole city, not one per district.** Per-district it would be seven extra hard stops by the late campaign, and every route price in [DES104 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#3-three-districts-in-depth) and on these district pages is set against the assumption that a district has one guaranteed way out. **The exception is interesting precisely because it is scarce**: assigning the berth to the Tram summit is a decision only if it is a berth you are not putting somewhere else. Colony's own baseline requirement — that arrival and return stay possible without buying the option — I adopt unchanged and would enforce district by district as new districts are written. |
| - | |
| - | **Rule 3 — route-gating state is readable on the refuge board before launch.** Colony asks for canal state and summit eligibility to be shown before the choice is offered. Agreed, and generalised, because this page has already required it three times in three places and it should be one rule: **every persistent state that gates or prices a route appears on the refuge's board before the expedition launches** — the Collector's ways-on, gauges and starting level; the Exchange's engaged clutches; the pumping district's relay; the Stop cascade's schedule; and now the canal's state and the summit's eligibility. A player must never discover at the dock that the route they planned is not available. **This is a design constraint on every district page including my own**, and it is the readability half of what makes persistent cross-district state a decision rather than a trap. |
| - | |
| - | **What Campaign does not concede.** Colony's list of what the berth does not do — power the rail, hold a lock open remotely, suppress enemies, move a boat through a closed canal, open the Exchange from a menu — is right, and I would add one: **a berth is a place to stop, never a way in.** Districts open by physical access (§3.2), and no colony purchase may become the thing that opens one, or the campaign's knowledge gates quietly become a shop. |
| - | |
| - | ### 3.4 The route is a recommendation, not a gate — and what that settles |
| - | |
| - | *Answering **[PMR007 §4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007)**, which finds that WLD104 places Collector evidence before the Lock Flight and Tram explanation while this page's route reaches the Collector fourth, and rightly says that "the explanations can swap" is not yet a showing of the resulting decisions.* |
| - | |
| - | **The conflict is smaller than it looks, and the reason is already on these pages: the Collector does not sit behind the Lock Flight or the Tram.** Its entry condition is the pumping district's tier-two inked plan, and its second is the Exchange's board ([The Collector §9](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector#9-entry-revisit-and-one-consequence-of-failure)). **So the Collector is open from the pumping district onward**, and a player following World's chain can go Pumping → Collector directly. Nothing needs re-ordering and no new branch needs a cost, because the branch exists. |
| - | |
| - | **What was actually wrong was this page.** §3.1 draws `1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → {5, 6} → 7` and calls it the main route, and a numbered line reads as a sequence whether or not the prose says otherwise. **Stated properly: the numbering is the order I recommend for a first player, not the order the map enforces.** The map enforces only the entry conditions each district page states, and they are these: |
| - | |
| - | | District | Open from | So the earliest it can be visited is | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | Pumping | the start | first | |
| - | | The Collector | Pumping tier two (the inked plan), or the Exchange board | **second** | |
| - | | Lock Flight | Pumping tier three (the trunk cable) | second | |
| - | | Tram Incline | the Lock Flight's upper canal | third | |
| - | | The Exchange | the Tram's summit pass, or the trunk cable followed from Pumping | third | |
| - | | Tidal Barrier | the Exchange board, or the Collector's outfall channels | third | |
| - | | Head-works | the Barrier's boat range, or the Collector's head race | fourth | |
| - | |
| - | **What that gives World, in the terms PMR007 asks for.** A player who takes Pumping → Collector second meets the meters before they have any explanation for them: the reading available then is *"the city moves the Flood and takes something off it as it passes"*, and the action it changes is immediate and local — they start shutting ways-on to thin a district's first surge, without knowing what the charge is for. The Lock Flight and Tram explanations then arrive as **why**, and the revised action is that the same ways-on become a way to buy a quiet window for a specific job in a specific district, rather than a general softening. A player who takes the other order gets the explanation first and the meters as confirmation, and their ways-on are deliberate from the first use. **Both are complete; they differ in whether the player's first month at the Collector was superstition or method**, which is the kind of difference a mystery campaign should want and not the kind it should prevent. |
| - | |
| - | **The one thing I will not do is make the orders equivalent.** If World needs the Collector-first reading to be the canonical one, the honest change is to *recommend* it in §3.1 rather than to claim both routes teach the same thing. That was a WLD104/CAM103 decision and I said I would take World's preference over my own, because the evidence chain is theirs and the numbering is only mine. |
| - | |
| - | **Closed: World chose the recommended route.** [WLD104 r26](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) re-orders the chain onto it, keying the campaign's turns to the Exchange's found bank state and to the Collector's intake-gauge-against-outfall-meter difference — both of which are the district pages' own observables, so nothing on either side had to be invented to make the orders agree. §3.1's numbering stands as the recommendation, and the table above stands as what the map actually allows. |
| - | |
| - | ## 4. The progression map: main route, an optional discovery, and a later discovery that changes an earlier return |
| - | |
| - | ``` |
| - | MAIN ROUTE (required) |
| - | ───────────────────── |
| - | PUMPING ─ tier-2 plan ──▶ LOCK FLIGHT ─ upper canal ──▶ TRAM INCLINE ─ summit pass ──▶ EXCHANGE |
| - | │ |
| - | ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ |
| - | ▼ ▼ |
| - | THE COLLECTOR TIDAL BARRIER |
| - | │ │ |
| - | └──── races (§7 alt.) ──▶ THE HEAD-WORKS ◀── boat ─┘ |
| - | |
| - | OPTIONAL DISCOVERY |
| - | ────────────────── |
| - | THE COLLECTOR ─ the intake gauge and the crews' quarantine notes ──▶ THE HOLDING BASIN |
| - | (a sealed wing of the Collector; never required; carries the campaign's sharpest |
| - | evidence for which of the World designer's two final answers is true) |
| - | |
| - | LATER DISCOVERIES THAT CHANGE AN EARLIER RETURN |
| - | ─────────────────────────────────────────────── |
| - | EXCHANGE bank ──▶ changes PUMPING, LOCK FLIGHT, TRAM, COLLECTOR, BARRIER |
| - | COLLECTOR gates ──▶ changes any district's first surge (the empty flash) |
| - | HEAD-WORKS gov. ──▶ changes every district's cadence at once |
| - | ``` |
| - | |
| - | **The optional discovery: the Holding Basin.** A sealed wing of the Collector, behind a gate the crews shut and gauged. Reachable only by holding the Collector's own water low enough to walk its inflow — which means giving up the outfall lever for that expedition. Inside: the intake gauge with a full log, and the crews' notes on why they sealed it. Nothing required depends on it. What it gives is certainty rather than capability: a player who finds it reaches the head-works knowing which of the two candidate answers on the [World page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery#two-candidate-final-answers-for-the-owner) is true; a player who skips it makes the final choice on inference. Both are complete campaigns, and they are not the same experience. That is what optional content is for in a mystery game, and it is why this one is a wing rather than an eighth district — it costs the Collector's assets and no new ones. |
| - | |
| - | **A later discovery that changes a useful earlier return, worked through.** In the pumping district the three yard deposits and the pump hall's tally board sit at the far end, and the hatch opens only while the yard branch is powered — so the early campaign's characteristic squeeze is that opening the door is what invites the Flood to the door. After the **Exchange**, the player can set that district's bank position dark. On the next visit there: no dispatch pulse, no flash, no countdown, no intake marker. The Flood arrives by the sluice on no announced schedule. |
| - | |
| - | **What that does and does not change — r1 got this wrong and [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) is right to strike it.** r1 said the resulting crowds "cannot be routed around". They can. Under D013/D016 the beacons still exist and post-entry targeting is untouched: arrivals still walk continuously to the nearest lit beacon they can reach, still hold at it, still retarget when it goes dark, and the panel still moves them. **A dark bank position removes the announcement, not the routing** — the player loses *when* and *where from*, and keeps *where to*. And retargeting is not teleportation: it begins the moment a beacon changes, and the bodies then walk, so occupied ground clears at the speed of the press and not at the speed of the switch. |
| - | |
| - | So the return is genuinely double-edged rather than simply quieter. **Better:** nothing large lands at a scheduled moment, so a player can work the far end for the first time in the campaign without a surge forming on top of them. **Worse:** they cannot plan, because the forecast board is dark and there is no intake to route away from — the panel becomes a tool for reacting rather than for arranging, and the trickles reach the dock road as readily as the interior. A player who wants both the far end and a plan makes two trips with the bank set differently. **It costs no new content at all**: the state already exists as the pumping district's own shut ending, reached from somewhere else. |
| - | |
| - | **One mystery, not seven key hunts.** Every district above contributes to the single question WLD103 states — *what, upstream, is still keeping time, and for whom* — and none contains a key. The Collector answers where the Flood comes from and that it is metered; the Head-works asks who is metering it. Both are written to the six-part contribution rule on their own pages, with their redundant clue forms named. Where I have proposed clue content it is a proposal in the World designer's domain and marked as one. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 5. How long this campaign is: one baseline path |
| - | |
| - | **[PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) did not accept the duration in r1, and it was right not to.** Three specific faults: the required-return total contained optional branches and deferrals and so was not a required total; the pumping district's visit count differed from the lead's without a reason; and dock overhead and death/retry were folded in inconsistently, which hid which number was designed and which was guessed. **That estimate is withdrawn rather than defended.** What follows is what PM asked for: one baseline path, with concrete beats, only genuinely required returns, optional branches listed separately and never added in, and overhead reported as its own unmeasured multiplier. |
| - | |
| - | **Method, stated so it can be attacked.** The unit is one expedition. A district's count is the number of expeditions its designed discovery beats take, listed below so that anyone can dispute a beat rather than a total. Expedition lengths: Pumping, Lock Flight, Tram and Collector 15 minutes ([Design Document §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#3-core-play)); Exchange 10 (one room, one interaction); Tidal Barrier 12 (one tide cycle); Head-works 18 (two approaches and a final decision). **No number below is another district's number multiplied.** |
| - | |
| - | ### The baseline path, with its beats |
| - | |
| - | | # | Expeditions | The beats that fill them | Min | |
| - | | --- | ---: | --- | ---: | |
| - | | **Pumping District** | **10** | 1–2 read the light, the culvert, the first surge, and tier one lands: why the causeway is overrun. 3–5 route on purpose; the tally board; the hatch; the first loadout that is a choice. 6–8 tier two: the valve, the pool's lamp, the gate, the crew's note. 9–10 tier three: the three valves, the relay room, and the local outcome | 150 | |
| - | | **Lock Flight** | **4** | 1 locks and levels read. 2 the lock house door against the drained-bed shortcut. 3 the painted gauges. 4 the outcome and the upper canal | 60 | |
| - | | **Tram Incline** | **4** | 1 the rail as a dry conductor and the lamp as a moving beacon. 2 towing a crowd, and sending one away. 3 the timetable board. 4 the summit dock and the pass | 60 | |
| - | | **The Exchange** | **4** | 1 the hall, the shaft and seven drums on one time source. 2 the bank read, and one position set. 3 the swap — disengage, walk, engage — learned by paying the walk. 4 the dead drum listed on the board, against the pumping district's stopped one | 40 | |
| - | | **The Collector** | **4** | 1 the levels and the meters. 2 the three ways-on, and one surge withheld. 3 the harvest, the winch, and what charge is for here. 4 the intake gauge | 60 | |
| - | | **Tidal Barrier** | **4** | 1 the tide read against the dispatch clock. 2 the flats crossing and the signal house. 3 the gate log. 4 the gates shut | 48 | |
| - | | **The Head-works** | **3** | 1 the approach and the gallery door. 2 the grease, the tally and the cadence. 3 the governor | 54 | |
| - | | ~~Required return: a darkened district, watched~~ | **0** | **Cut at r10** — the trunk-permission clue is an observation, and the player is already going to a darkened district for its own reasons. The beat now happens inside that ordinary visit. See §5.1 | 0 | |
| - | | **Required return: the Collector, after the Barrier** | **1** | Shutting the gates starves it; its level and gauges have to be re-read before the head-works run | 15 | |
| - | | **Baseline total** | **34** | | **487** | |
| - | |
| - | **The baseline path is 34 expeditions and 8.1 hours of expedition time.** (r3 said 34 and 8.2, r5–r9 said 35 and 8.4; the Exchange gained one expedition by acquiring a real beat list at [its own page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Exchange), which is the only honest direction for a number to move when a sketch becomes a design.) Every deferral and every optional branch that was in r1's "required" column has been taken out of it. |
| - | |
| - | **Where this differs from the lead, and why I moved.** r1 gave the pumping district 5–8 expeditions; [DES104 §8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#8-length-honestly) carries the lead's estimate of 10–12 from that district's own designed beats. **I have adopted the lead's number at its low end.** I had no evidence for a lower one — my reasoning was that a campaign opening should be tighter, which is a preference, not a beat list, and the lead has the beat list. Where two roles differ on a number, the one who wrote the beats should win. |
| - | |
| - | **Reconciling the baseline with Lead-owned beats — the second half of CAM102.** [DES104 §8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#8-length-honestly) states the lead's position: no figure on that page until one baseline path with concrete beats exists across the districts, and that path is this role's submission. So there is no competing number to reconcile *against* — what there is, since [Campaign r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign), is authored ground for four districts that were previously outlines or sketches. Reconciled honestly, that splits the table above in two: |
| - | |
| - | - **Counts derived from beats I wrote, on pages I own:** the Collector, the Head-works and now the Exchange. These are mine to defend and mine to be wrong about. |
| - | - **Counts proposed against ground the lead authored:** the Pumping District (10, adopted from the lead's own 10–12 rather than my earlier 5–8), the Lock Flight (4), the Tram Incline (4) and the Tidal Barrier (4). **The lead's r3 gives each of those a panel table and one written expedition, not a tier list**, so my four-expedition counts are Campaign's reading of their districts and not the lead's estimate. They are the three numbers most likely to move, and they should move on the lead's word rather than mine. |
| - | |
| - | **The stale pointer r5 flagged is resolved, by its author.** r5 noted that DES104 §8 still described the duration as unaccepted after PMR006 had accepted it, and left the fix to the lead rather than editing another author's page. [DES104 r4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) §8 now states the baseline itself — thirty-five expeditions and about eight and a half hours of authored beats, optional and overhead printed apart, deaths and hauling excluded — and cites this page for it. **That is the interface working the way it should: flag on your own page, and let the owner of the text fix the text.** Nothing further is outstanding here. |
| - | |
| - | ### 5.1 What makes a revisit worth taking — the test, and my own baseline audited against it |
| - | |
| - | *This is the audit [Tasks CAM103](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) asks for: "identify any baseline trip whose only purpose is hauling or repeating a solved interaction; cut, combine or redesign it." [PMR007 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007) puts it in one line — "cut a supply-observation trip if the player already knows its answer and has no new objective or useful state to change" — and [REV105-1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) has just found one on the lead's Tram. The right response to a finding like that is not to defend my own count, so I ran the test here first.* |
| - | |
| - | **The test. A revisit earns a place on the baseline path only if it has at least one of:** |
| - | |
| - | 1. **A state the player changes**, which persists and which they could not have set on the earlier visit. |
| - | 2. **A problem the earlier visit could not pose**, because something elsewhere in the campaign has since changed what the rule can do there. |
| - | 3. **An objective that requires being there**, rather than an answer that could be read anywhere. |
| - | |
| - | **A trip that has none of these is an observation, and an observation is a beat, not an expedition.** It belongs inside a trip the player was taking anyway. |
| - | |
| - | **Applying it to my own two required returns.** |
| - | |
| - | | Required return | Test | Verdict | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **A darkened district, watched** — to observe that the trunk *permits* dispatch | Changes no state. Poses no new problem: the district is as it was, minus its announcement. Requires being there only to *look* | **Fails all three. Cut.** | |
| - | | **The Collector, after the Barrier** — starvation has changed it | Changes state: the ways-on and the level are set here, and they decide whether the head race is walkable for the [race route](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works). Poses a problem the first visit could not: a starved Collector is a different district. Requires being there | **Passes 1, 2 and 3. Kept.** | |
| - | |
| - | **So the darkened-district trip is cut, and the clue survives without it.** The observation was always going to happen anyway: the player darkens a district *in order to work it more easily* ([§4](#4-the-progression-map-main-route-an-optional-discovery-and-a-later-discovery-that-changes-an-earlier-return)), and when they get there the flash that does not come is the first thing they see. **Making it a separate expedition was me counting a beat as a trip**, and it inflated the baseline by one expedition and fifteen minutes. The baseline is now 34 and 8.1 hours, and §5's tables carry that. |
| - | |
| - | **This is the direction a content-derived number is supposed to move.** It went up at r5 when the Exchange earned a beat list and down at r10 when a trip failed a test. If it only ever went up, it would not be an estimate. |
| - | |
| - | **On [REV105-1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review), which is the same finding on the lead's district.** The critic's diagnosis — that the Tram's later return is the first visit unopposed, with its new tool exercised only in a contingency the written path avoids — is the test above failing on condition 2: the problem the earlier visit posed has been *removed* by the player's own Collector hold and by the heavy stepping off the rail, and nothing has replaced it. **Their minimal repair is the right one and I support it**: make the contingency the main line, so the objective requires staying through a second dispatch rather than leaving before it. |
| - | |
| - | **I am not writing that scene.** [PMR007 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007) is explicit that the lead owns one integrated first/changed/later return for the Tram and that this role supplies geography with attribution, and a competing version is the last thing that district needs. What I can offer is the test, and one geographical fact the repair can use if it wants it: **the Tram is the only district on the recommended route whose objective sits at the far end of a one-way climb**, so "leave before the second dispatch" and "finish the job" are naturally in tension there in a way they are not anywhere else. If the lead wants the contingency to be the main line, the geography already argues for it. |
| - | |
| - | ### Optional — listed, and added to nothing |
| - | |
| - | | Optional branch | Expeditions | Min | |
| - | | --- | ---: | ---: | |
| - | | The Holding Basin ([Collector §8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector#8-the-holding-basin--optional-and-the-campaigns-sharpest-evidence)) | 2 | 30 | |
| - | | The weir dock, the depot gates, the mole (the lead's optional exploration) | 3 | 42 | |
| - | | The approach to the head-works not taken (§7) | 1 | 18 | |
| - | | Evidence beyond the minimum for narrowing the final answer | 2 | 30 | |
| - | | **Optional total** | **8** | **120 (2.0 h)** | |
| - | |
| - | ### Overhead, deaths and hauling — separated, and none of it counted |
| - | |
| - | - **Dock overhead** — repacking, the notebook, planning between expeditions — is an **unmeasured multiplier**, not content. If it runs at 25–35%, the baseline path is 10.1–11.0 hours wall-clock. **I am reporting 8.1 hours as the designed content and the multiplier separately**, because PM is right that folding them together hid which figure was designed and which was assumed. |
| - | - **Deaths and retries are excluded entirely.** A rescue costs cargo and found modules, never progress, so a retried expedition repeats content already counted. Counting it would inflate the campaign with the player's mistakes. |
| - | - **Hauling is excluded entirely.** No colony unlock in this plan is paid for by a trip made only to pay for it. **The constraint that keeps that true, for [COL101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony) and [DES104 §5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#5-the-colony-across-the-campaign): every unlock must be payable out of salvage collected during the 35 baseline expeditions above.** If it is not, the campaign quietly becomes a grind and this section becomes false. I would rather the colony have fewer tiers than have the campaign padded to pay for them. |
| - | |
| - | ### The figures in one place, for anyone quoting them |
| - | |
| - | *Added at r8. [EXT102's X33](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique) reads this section and derives "nearer ten to fourteen" hours. That is a fair reading, and it is a composite the critic had to assemble because this page reported its parts in three places and no total anywhere. If the project's positioning is going to be restated at the new length, the number quoted should be one this role stands behind, so here it is once.* |
| - | |
| - | | What | Expeditions | Hours | |
| - | | --- | ---: | ---: | |
| - | | Authored beats on the baseline path, expedition time only | 34 | **8.1** | |
| - | | Baseline path with dock overhead applied (unmeasured 25–35% assumption) | 34 | **10.1–11.0** | |
| - | | Optional branches, expedition time only | 8 | 2.0 | |
| - | | Optional branches with the same overhead | 8 | 2.5–2.7 | |
| - | | **Everything designed, with overhead** | **42** | **12.6–13.7** | |
| - | |
| - | **So the honest span is about eight hours of authored beats, ten to eleven for a player who does the baseline path, and about thirteen for one who does everything designed.** These figures moved down at r10 because a trip was cut, not because an estimate was revised: **the way this number should change is by content changing.** Deaths, retries and hauling are excluded from every row and are not campaign length. **The only measured figure in this table is zero of them**; the expedition counts come from printed beat lists, the overhead is an assumption stated as one, and all of it belongs to a phase that has not been authorised. |
| - | |
| - | **And the three parts of criterion 11 that X33 finds missing are not Campaign's to supply.** Which player the game serves, what specific experience offers value, and the evidence behind commercial positioning are the integrated owner document's, which is the lead's, with the External Critic on the evidence and PM on whether it is deferred. **This role supplies the length and nothing else about the product**, and it should not be read as having an opinion on price or shelf by supplying an hour count. If positioning is restated, the rows above are what it should be restated against; if it is deferred, this page has no objection and no standing to have one. |
| - | |
| - | ### What this claims, and what it does not |
| - | |
| - | **The claim:** the designed content on the baseline path is 34 expeditions and about eight hours, against the three to four the owner rejected, with roughly two more hours of optional branches and an unmeasured dock multiplier on top. |
| - | |
| - | **What it is not.** It is not a measurement, a promise, or a validated length. Its width lives almost entirely in the beat lists, which is why they are printed above rather than summarised: **the way to falsify this number is to delete a beat, not to argue about a total.** Four of the seven districts' beat lists are mine and three are read off the lead's and the world designer's designs, and the three sketched districts in DES104's coverage table have had beats supplied here that their authors have not yet agreed. **Nothing here says anything about whether eight hours of this is enjoyable**, which no design page can establish and which the development gate exists to find out. |
| - | |
| - | ## 6. One consequence of failure |
| - | |
| - | **The baseline stands: a rescue never costs banked salvage, notes, observed rules or colony state** ([Design Document §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#3-core-play) and §10). I am not proposing a loss spiral. What a campaign adds is that a failure can leave a *district* half-changed, and one of those costs a route rather than a resource. |
| - | |
| - | **The case: the Collector's outfall, left shut.** Shutting it is what withholds another district's next first surge (the empty flash). While it is shut, this basin has nowhere to drain. |
| - | |
| - | - **Player action.** Shut the outfall on the lower gantry, then extract. |
| - | - **On failure.** If the expedition ends in rescue with the outfall shut, the state persists — the same rule that makes every district outcome meaningful. On the next visit the Collector starts one level higher: the lower gantry is under water, so the short crossing between the second and third basins is gone, and the outfall is reachable only the long way round the upper walkway. |
| - | - **Visible in advance.** The outfall's indicator and the starting level are both on the refuge's board before launch, so the player launches knowing which Collector they are getting. |
| - | - **Recovery, and its cost.** The outfall can always be opened from the upper walkway, which is above every level the basin reaches. It costs the long crossing and, for that visit, the delay lever: you cannot both withhold another district's surge and have your short route back. |
| - | - **Why this is the right shape.** Failure makes the world less convenient for one visit, is fully recoverable by an action the player already knows, and is caused by their own successful lever rather than by a penalty bolted onto dying. It never makes the campaign longer, and it never makes the player poorer. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 7. One alternative route through the plan |
| - | |
| - | **The head-works can be reached two ways.** The lead's colony section unlocks the boat's range from the Tidal Barrier's dry dock, which is the reservoir approach from the water. I propose a second, and it is the reason the Collector is worth mastering rather than visiting. |
| - | |
| - | - **The boat route (the lead's).** Requires the Barrier's dry dock, which requires shutting the barrier gates. Arrives at the reservoir from below, at the weir. The approach is a conduction problem: the reservoir's own water is the first thing the player meets, and everything they learned about joined bodies applies. |
| - | - **The race route (mine).** Up the head race from the Collector. Requires the Collector's water held low — outfall open, gates set to drain — so the race channel above the third basin is walkable rather than submerged. Arrives at the head-works from the side, in the governor gallery. The approach is a *timing* problem: the race is walkable only between dispatches, because each one raises the level behind it. |
| - | |
| - | **What this buys.** A player who bounced off the Barrier is not locked out of the finale, and vice versa; the redundancy WLD103 rule 5 asks of clues becomes structural as well; and the optional content in §5 has an obvious thing to be — going back and arriving the other way, which shows the player the half of the head-works they did not see. **The two routes also matter to the ending**: the boat route arrives with the Barrier shut, which starves the Collector; the race route arrives with the Collector open and running. The head-works' governor reads differently in the two states, which is detailed on [its page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works). |
| - | |
| - | **A second, smaller alternative:** districts five and six are order-free. A player who takes the Collector first learns how much Flood there is before they learn there is a second source; one who takes the Barrier first learns the reverse. Both reach the head-works. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 8. Asset reuse and gaps, for the districts I own |
| - | |
| - | **No availability of any free asset is claimed anywhere on this page, and nothing here authorises creating one** ([Brief D009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief); no AI-generated art of any kind, including concepts and placeholders). The lead's §7 covers the campaign-wide burden; this adds only the two districts written here. |
| - | |
| - | - **The Collector.** Reuses: water planes and wet/dry tinting, gates and valves, cable, lamps, beacons, panels, walkway and gantry props, boards, signs, the humanoid mass. **Gaps:** turning wheels with readable meters; a stepped-basin drainage set; and the *held mass* — a crowd standing still in water in numbers larger than a surge, which is a crowd-rendering question as much as an art one. |
| - | - **The Head-works.** Reuses: races, weirs, drums, cable, boards, gallery and walkway props. **Gaps:** a large reservoir and dam exterior, the campaign's biggest single art ask; and the governor as an oversized multi-position panel. **And one conditional gap the owner should see attached to a decision they are being asked to make:** if the World designer's Answer B (the keepers) is chosen, the head-works needs one human presence, which is an asset category this design has otherwise avoided entirely. The lead recommends Answer A; that recommendation is also an asset decision and it should be said out loud when it is put to the owner. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 9. Dependencies, disagreements and open questions |
| - | |
| - | **Resolved since r3 — recorded here rather than left looking open.** |
| - | |
| - | 1. **[REV104-1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review), the drum-and-trunk contract — RESOLVED as a rule.** The shared contract [r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) states it: the drum makes the moment, the trunk permits it; Stop stops the drum, a dark bank position withholds the trunk, either alone stops announced surges. This was the ruling this plan most needed, and the [Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works)' three outcomes and the Exchange's whole purpose now rest on ratified text. |
| - | 2. **[REV104-3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review), the empty flash — RESOLVED as a rule and a readable state.** "A surge enters there if the supply provides one", with the flash, the missing bodies and the still-counting forecast all specified in the light convention. The Collector's outward consequence is no longer waiting on anything. |
| - | 3. **[REV104-2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) and [REV104-4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) — RESOLVED.** Charge never leaves a district *with the player*, machinery may transfer it; and the fixed-power source is the head-works' store of harvested charge, named in the contract with **the Collector's wheels as its first step**. Both landed the way these pages argued, which is worth recording honestly: the argument was made here, the ruling was made elsewhere, and the ruling is what counts. |
| - | 4. **The count — ACCEPTED provisionally.** [PMR004 D022](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) and [DES104 r2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) both carry seven external districts with the refuge at stake rather than played, and the lead's r2 cites the lever ladder (§2.1) alongside their own written-expedition test. §2's argument stays on the page because an accepted count still has to be re-checkable and D022 leaves a justified eighth open. |
| - | |
| - | **One new job, assigned to this role by the contract, and done.** *"The Collector's water-level consequence under Stop is CAM101's to reconcile between its two pages."* Answered at [Collector r4 §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector#7-what-the-campaign-later-does-to-this-district-and-what-this-district-enables) and summarised on the [Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works): the powered return lift dies while gravity does not, so the Collector drains to level 0 for good and the Flood accumulates on its dry floor instead of being cycled out — low water, high population, the coil worthless there for the first time, and the head race permanently walkable, which makes the road back to the head-works run through the district Stop ruined. |
| - | |
| - | **Still open, and not mine to close.** |
| - | |
| - | 1. **The World designer (WLD103)** owns every clue proposal on both new district pages, including the Holding Basin's evidence and the redundant form offered for the head-works' clue. D024 adopts Answer A provisionally, so the Answer B cost note on the Head-works stays live until it is not provisional. |
| - | 2. **The Lead (DES104)** owns the transfer in the table at the top of this page. r2 has taken the count and the refuge argument; the Lock Flight, Tram Incline and Exchange detail is still authored there, and moving it here remains the lead's call, not mine to take. |
| - | 3. **[CMB101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies)** owns the four placements §10 asks for. [Grounder r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder) has already corrected one claim this plan carried, which is the interface working. |
| - | |
| - | **Where I disagree, stated in place rather than routed.** |
| - | |
| - | - **The refuge is not a district (§2.3).** The lead's own risk note is right and I think the risk is structural. My recommendation to PM and the owner is seven, with the refuge as the thing at stake rather than an arena. |
| - | - **The Salt Pans should be closed rather than left a candidate**, with the reason in §2.2: they change the cost of a known action, not the action. Leaving a candidate open with no lever cell to fill invites it back later on grounds of variety. |
| - | |
| - | **Open, and not resolved by me.** |
| - | |
| - | - Whether the Collector's held mass is legible at survivorlike crowd density is a runtime question and no design page can answer it. The Collector page states a cheaper fallback. |
| - | - Whether a campaign whose first district ends in a persistent choice makes the later districts' outcomes feel smaller. I think not — the head-works is the same choice at scale, which is the point — but it is a real risk and I have not resolved it. |
| - | - The duration bounds in §5 are wide because the expeditions-per-tier assumption is unvalidated, and it is the single number most worth checking first if a play phase is ever authorised. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 10. Reconciliation with CMB101, and what Campaign owes Combat |
| - | |
| - | The Combat and Enemy Designer was staffed and published [CMB101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) and [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) while this page's r1 was being written. Two consequences, recorded rather than left to be discovered: |
| - | |
| - | **1. The roster this plan places is Combat's six, not the lead's four.** [DES104 §4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#4-equipment-and-combat-across-the-campaign) proposes walker, floater, heavy and static; CMB101 proposes Drifter, Anchor, Carrier, Crust, Spark and Grounder, and the Design Index now records Combat as the owner. **Campaign owns placement, Combat owns behaviour**, so where the two disagree I place Combat's. [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) and [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) were both revised to r2 for this; nothing in §1–§9 of this page depended on a role, which was deliberate. |
| - | |
| - | **2. One rule DES104 uses and CMB101 does not carry: the flow-carried floater.** The Lock Flight's water-moved district and the Head-works' spill channel both assume attraction yields to flow while water is flowing. CMB101's roster contains no flow-carried role. **This is the lead's and Combat's to settle, not mine**, and I have said on the Head-works page what that district loses if it is dropped: the decision survives, the sweetener does not. It matters more to the Lock Flight, which is the lead's district, and I flag it rather than design around it. |
| - | |
| - | **What Campaign owes Combat, in one list.** Placement is my responsibility and these are the four placements this plan asks for, each with a reason and none of them a stat: **Crust density scaling with how long a mass has been held** in the Collector, so that holding is priced by what the coil never stopped; **Carriers wherever the campaign asks the player to carry stored charge and stand still** — the Collector's harvest and the Head-works' gallery; **at most one Grounder in the Head-works gallery, and only after a race is set**, so that a plan expires rather than a finale becoming arbitrary; and **Anchors in the Collector's low basin**, where a standing hazard the panel cannot clear is the point of a district whose panel is not the lever. Combat may reject any of them; they are placements, not behaviours. |
| - | |
| - | **What Campaign does not owe Combat, and will not supply:** a district built to justify a role. Every district in §2's ladder earns its place from the shared rule, and each of them then pays off roles that already exist. If a proposed role has no district that wants it, that is worth knowing, and it is not a reason to add a district. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | *569 words of submission status, provenance and handoff were removed from this page on 2026-09-07 by the wiki editor, under the owner's instruction that discussion belongs in [chat](/Chat%20Rooms) and articles belong to the design. Sections removed: *CAM101 — submission*. **Nothing is lost** — the full text is at [revision 695eb4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Districts?revision=695eb4) and in this page's [history](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Districts/history). Discussion continues in the `hold-the-flood` room.* |
| hold the flood/districts/pumping district.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,68 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — Pumping District |
| - | |
| - | **PMU004 r1 (PM's seed, below, unchanged) + CAM101 r2 · 2026-09-06 · Campaign and District Designer · In review.** The role PM's seed named as intended owner is staffed; the appended section is this role's, and PM's two seed sections are unchanged. **r2 corrects one claim in the appended section** per [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004): a dark bank position removes the *announcement*, not the routing — CAM101 r1 said a spread crowd "cannot be routed", and it can. Lead owns the district's rules and map; World owns its mystery. r1 is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District/history). |
| - | Source: [Design Document r13 / 50046f](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=50046f), sections 2, 9–10 and 15. This records the existing proposal, not an accepted expansion design. The cited source owns its detailed rules until the author explicitly adopts this destination. [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary). |
| - | |
| - | ## Existing candidate |
| - | |
| - | A ruined pumping area with two docks, a raised causeway, a gravity-drained culvert, a flooded yard and pump hall, a junction platform with a gate/pool/valve, a sluice, and an interior relay room. The default dry causeway dock provides a starting point; changing which dock the refuge holds dry changes approach conditions. |
| - | |
| - | The causeway panel selects the powered/signaled branch. Lighting the yard can open its pump-hall hatch while selecting the yard intake for the next dispatch. The culvert offers an alternative connection; the junction and interior routes become important when crowds move between branches. The relay room anchors the existing local mystery and proposed resolution. |
| - | |
| - | The source map is fixed. Contents and expedition pressure provide revisits. Exact valve states, the relay-versus-door supply distinction and the finale's examples have been review subjects; consult [World r16](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=812fd6) and [PMR003](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR003), and check later corrections before marking them resolved. |
| - | |
| - | ## Candidate role in a larger campaign |
| - | |
| - | PM proposes this as an opening district that teaches power versus signal, route redirection, equipment/cargo tradeoffs, and discovery through machinery. This is a reuse recommendation, not a settled campaign map. |
| - | |
| - | **CAM101 with WLD103:** define how the player reaches another district, what discovery or resource travels with them, what local outcome persists, and what later discovery makes a return worthwhile. Reassess the current final relay decision as a district outcome; do not force the entire larger mystery to end here. |
| - | |
| - | Later districts must differ in the player's decisions, not just their names or tiles. Do not make seven copies of this layout. Record which shared assets and rules can be reused and which genuinely new content is required. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## CAM101 — the pumping district's role in the campaign |
| - | |
| - | **Added 2026-09-06 by the Campaign and District Designer, answering the four questions PM's seed above asks of this role.** The district's own rules, map and mystery are not restated here: they are the lead's in [Design Document §2, §4 and §11](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document) and the World designer's in [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery), and those pages remain canonical. This section says only what the *campaign* makes of this place. The campaign it belongs to is the lead's [DES104](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign); the district plan around it is [Districts (CAM101)](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts). |
| - | |
| - | **Confirmed as the opening.** It teaches the whole rule set with one panel, two branches and one door, and every later district is a change to exactly one thing it establishes. Nothing in the campaign plan asks it to change. |
| - | |
| - | ### 1. How the player reaches another district |
| - | |
| - | Two threads leave here, and either can be followed first, so the campaign never depends on one room. |
| - | |
| - | - **The inked plan**, behind the junction gate (tier two), draws the district's drains and names where the water goes. Reading it opens **[The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector)**, and beyond it the low half of the city. |
| - | - **The trunk signal cable**, leaving the relay room (tier three), carries a tag naming where the time comes from. Following it opens the **[Lock Flight](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#31-the-lock-flight)** and, through it, the road up to the **[Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#34-the-exchange-in-outline)**. |
| - | |
| - | Both are things read, not things carried. **No object leaves this district as a key**, which keeps the campaign's entries knowledge gates rather than item gates. |
| - | |
| - | ### 2. What travels with the player |
| - | |
| - | A fact and a convention, per the [WLD103 contribution rule](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery#what-every-district-contributes-the-rule-the-false-refuge-chain-is-the-model), and nothing else. |
| - | |
| - | - **The fact:** only a beacon that *flashes* chooses where the next surge enters, and anything the surveyor lights themselves is steady. This is the reading every later district is built on, and it is the reason a player can be dropped into the Tidal Barrier or the Collector and still know what they are looking at. |
| - | - **The convention:** turned refuge signs face the way the last crew went (W4). It is a navigation habit that costs one rotated asset and pays in every district. |
| - | |
| - | ### 3. What local outcome persists |
| - | |
| - | Shut, fix or hold at the relay, as the lead's §11 defines them, **as a district outcome and not the end of the game** — which is what PM's seed asks this role to confirm, and I confirm it. Two campaign consequences follow: |
| - | |
| - | - **Shut** produces the campaign's first clue at no content cost: the drum stops, local dispatches stop, and the trunk cable entering from outside still pulses on the old cadence. Something upstream is still keeping time. That is the door to the whole campaign and it is already designed. |
| - | - **The choice is visible again at the end.** A relay clutch the player disengaged here shows on the [Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) governor board as a position with no cadence on it — the first thing they ever did to the network, seen from the place that owns it. It costs nothing to build and it is the best payoff this district has. |
| - | |
| - | ### 4. What later discovery makes a return worthwhile |
| - | |
| - | **The Exchange's routing bank, and it changes this district more than any other.** Set this district's bank position dark and, on the next visit: no announced dispatch, no forecast, no flashing beacon — the Flood arrives by the sluice as unannounced trickles that spread, in the shut regime the endings table already defines. |
| - | |
| - | - **Better:** the yard's three deposits and the pump hall's tally board sit at the far end where the crowd always gathers. With nothing announced and nothing concentrating, the far end is workable for the first time in the campaign. |
| - | - **Worse:** the player cannot *plan*. The forecast board is dark, there is no flash and no intake marker, so nothing can be arranged in advance and the trickles reach the dock road as readily as the interior. **They can still be routed**, and CAM101 r1's claim that they cannot is withdrawn: under D013/D016 the beacons still light and post-entry targeting is untouched, so anything that has arrived still walks to the nearest lit beacon it can reach and the panel still moves it. What changes is that the panel becomes a tool for reacting to a crowd already inside rather than for arranging where the next one lands — and retargeting is not teleportation, so ground a crowd is standing on clears at the speed of the press, not the speed of the switch. |
| - | |
| - | Strictly better in one dimension, strictly worse in another, so a player who wants both makes two trips with the bank set differently. **It costs no new content at all** — the state already exists as this district's own shut ending, reached from somewhere else. |
| - | |
| - | ### Asset reuse and gaps |
| - | |
| - | This district is the campaign's asset vocabulary: ground and water tiles, wet and dry tinting, cable, lamps, beacons, panels, hatches, valves, boards, signs, dock props, the humanoid mass. Every other district in the plan is dressed from it plus a marked list of its own. **This district needs no new asset category for its campaign role**, and that is the strongest argument for keeping it as the opening. No free asset has been located, checked or licensed for anything here, and nothing on this page authorises creating one ([Brief D009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief)). |
| - | |
| - | ### Open, and not settled by this section |
| - | |
| - | The valve states, the relay-versus-door supply distinction and the finale's examples that PM's seed lists above are still the lead's and the World designer's to close; this section depends on none of them and does not close any. The one contract item this district's campaign role rests on is [REV104-1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) — *the drum makes the moment, the trunk permits it* — because the shut clue and the bank's effect here both assume it. |
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| - | # Hold the Flood — The Collector |
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| - | **CAM101 · r6 · 2026-09-07 · Campaign and District Designer · CENTRAL DISCOVERY WITHDRAWN — do not read §5 as current design.** |
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| - | > **This district's discovery is the revelation the owner has just rejected.** [Brief — Rejected and undecided](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#rejected-and-undecided) rejects *“the city depends on the creatures”* as a cliché masquerading as a twist, and asks that it not be reintroduced under different names. **§5 is exactly that revelation**: the wheels take charge off the Flood as it passes, the meters read what the player's own rack reads, and the city runs on it. I am not going to rename it and keep it. |
| - | > |
| - | > **What breaks, and what does not.** §5's inference goes, and with it the campaign clue and the pairing with the Tidal Barrier's gate log. **§6's lever survives the loss** — shutting a way-on so that a district's next first surge does not arrive, and its beacon flashes with nothing behind it, is a good mechanic that needs no revelation at all: it only needs the Flood to be *moved* through this place, which the replacement premise already has it doing through cisterns and drainage shafts. The winch ratchet, the held mass, the failure case and the level thresholds are likewise premise-independent. **If this district survives in any form, §6 is the reason and §5 is not.** |
| - | > |
| - | > **Recommendation: hold §5, keep §6 available.** The replacement premise is unapproved and [REV106](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) returned *revise*, so this is not the moment to write a new discovery. Full assessment across my pages: [Districts §0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts). |
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| - | *Superseded header, r5:* **CAM101 · r5 · 2026-09-07 · Campaign and District Designer · In review; proposal. Nothing here is an owner approval or tested behaviour.** r5 answers [PMR007 §5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007): r4's outfall winch claimed one discharge completed a five-second powered lift, and **two seconds of coil power cannot run a five-second winch**. §4 now specifies the winch as a **ratchet with retained mechanical progress**, with its release and interruption states, and preserves the roughly forty-second free manual alternative. No second-bank gate was added to repair the prose. r1–r4 are in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector/history). |
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| - | District 5 of the seven recommended on [Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts). The Collector is the World designer's example district ([World and Mystery 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de)), placed and named 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 for its loadouts and encounters. This page writes it to the standard of DES104 §3. **The World designer owns its clue logic and may rewrite §5; the lead owns any contradiction with DES104.** |
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| - | **Sources:** [Campaign / DES104 r1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) (§1 the rules in one paragraph, §2 the shape, §3.1 and §3.3 for the water and clock districts this one must not repeat, §4 the module and enemy roles used below, §5 the colony, §7 the coverage table) · [Design Document ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §3–§4, §10 · [World and Mystery 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de) W1–W4 and the WLD103 contribution rule · [Design Review 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882) REV104-2, REV104-3 · [Expansion Brief cdc0c5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief?revision=cdc0c5). Neighbours: [Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts) · [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) · [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary). |
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| - | --- |
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| - | ## 1. The problem, and how it differs from the two water districts already designed |
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| - | **The Collector is where the Flood is kept between expeditions, and the only place the player can decide how much of it another district gets.** |
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| - | This campaign already has two districts made of water, and this one must not be a third version of either: |
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| - | - The **[Lock Flight](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#31-the-lock-flight)** is water the player *moves by hand*, to make roads and complete circuits. Its lever is a lock lever. |
| - | - The **[Tidal Barrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#33-the-tidal-barrier)** is water on a *clock the player cannot set*. Its lever is a schedule they read. |
| - | - **The Collector is water the player does not move at all.** Its level is a *consequence* of what they hold: shut a gate and the Flood that drains in has nowhere to go, so the mass and its water both stay. The player never touches water here; they touch gates, and the water follows. |
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| - | So the decision is not "where is the water" or "when is the water" but **"how much of the Flood do I let through, and what do I do with what I keep"** — and what is kept is a crowd standing in a basin, which is simultaneously the campaign's richest harvest and the worst thing to be standing next to. |
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| - | --- |
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| - | ## 2. The ground |
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| - | ``` |
| - | N ── HEAD RACE, up toward the Head-works (walkable only when the basins are low; see §7) |
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| - | INTERCEPTOR MOUTHS ══ the Flood drains in here between expeditions ══ INTAKE GAUGE |
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| - | ══════ UPPER WALKWAY ════════════════════════════════════════════ above every level |
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| - | [ BASIN 1 ] ── gate G1 ── [ BASIN 2 ] ── gate G2 ── [ BASIN 3 ] ── OUTFALL ── to the deep |
| - | ~~ ~~ ~~ |
| - | wheel W1 + meter wheel W2 + meter wheel W3 + meter |
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| - | ──── LOWER GANTRY ─────────────────────────────────────── dry at levels 0–1, gone at 2+ |
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| - | SLUICE (this district's own way in) BEACON b1 (basin 1 rim) BEACON b2 (outfall head) |
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| - | COLLECTOR DOCK (colony-held; a shelter, above every level) PANEL: b1 / b2 / Off |
| - | ``` |
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| - | - **Three stepped basins** joined by **gates G1 and G2**, closed at the bottom by the **outfall**. Each gate carries a **wheel** turned by whatever passes through it, driving a **meter** on the walkway above. All four are hand-worked from the walkway; none is powered, so none of them can be denied to the player by darkening the district. |
| - | - **The return lift, which is powered, and is not the same thing as the gates.** Water leaves this district by gravity; the *Flood* does not — it is lifted back up to the districts' intakes by the pumps at the outfall head, and those run on the harvested charge the shared contract [r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) describes. **This is the distinction that lets both pages be right:** the contract says the harvest drives the Collector's cycling, and this page says the player's lever is always available. Both hold, because the wheels and the lift are powered and the gates are a hand crank. Kill the power and the player can still set every way-on; what they cannot do is send anything back up. §7 is what follows from that. |
| - | - **The intake gauge** at the interceptor mouths logs what has come in. It is the redundant form of the Tidal Barrier's gate log, as [DES104 §6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#6-the-mystery-thread-the-world-designers-and-how-the-districts-serve-it) already pairs them; this page adopts that pairing rather than proposing a new one. |
| - | - **Four levels, 0 to 3**, and the level is *derived*: level 0 is everything open and draining; each shut gate raises the level above it by one step at each dispatch, because what drains in cannot leave. Nothing here rises on a clock. **Leave every gate open and the district never floods** — which is also the setting in which the player gets nothing from it. |
| - | - **Shelters: the dock only.** The upper walkway is above every level and is not safe from the Flood. That is this district's characteristic pressure — you can always get above the water and never away from the crowd. |
| - | - **Two fixed beacons and a three-position panel**, on the district's own circuit, permitted by the trunk like everywhere else. |
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| - | --- |
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| - | ## 3. Shared-rule diff |
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| - | | Adds | Changes | Signal | Choice it improves | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Gates that hold the Flood**, not the water: a shut gate keeps arriving organisms and their water in the basin above it | Nothing in what power, signal or charge mean | The wheel stops turning and its meter stops climbing; the water visibly backs up behind the gate | Spend the Flood, keep it, or harvest it | |
| - | | **A held mass**: organisms with no reachable lit beacon and nowhere to drain, standing in water, in numbers larger than one surge | Nothing: they follow W1's precedence exactly — they hold at a lit beacon if one is reachable, and spread in the basin if none is | A basin visibly full, and the meter that stopped | Make the campaign's best stun target, at the price of making it next to you | |
| - | | **Overtopping**: a basin held past level 3 spills into the one below over about twenty seconds | Nothing; it is drainage, not a new rule | The water crests the gate visibly before anything moves | Know when to stop holding | |
| - | | **The empty flash** (also [REV104-3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review)): a withheld district's beacon flashes with nothing behind it | W1 gains one clause — *a surge enters there if the collector supplies one* | The beacon flashes, the thin cable pulses, nothing arrives | Buy three quiet minutes in another district and see that you bought them | |
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| - | **The one contract change this district requires** is the W1 clause above. It is the lead's to make. Without it the withheld surge is an invisible number; with it, it is a moment the player watches happen in a different district on a later expedition, which is the best thing in this design. |
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| - | --- |
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| - | ## 4. Two loadouts that do different things, and what charge is for here |
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| - | *Rack notation on the eight cells [PMR004 D023](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) adopts from [EQP101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) — fixed at eight from the outset, coil takes two. C coil, B battery, I insulation, K kit, L portable beacon, S salvage bundle.* |
| - | |
| - | ``` |
| - | Harvester (8 cells) Sluicegate (8 cells) |
| - | C C B B B L I K |
| - | I S S K S S S S |
| - | link B1 -> C link B -> L |
| - | ``` |
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| - | **Charge is earned here and spent here. Nothing carries it out** — clause 4 as the [shared contract 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) now words it, and [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) is right that r2's harvester read like a preparation farm for a later district. It is not one, and this section says what the charge is actually for. |
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| - | **How an empty rack reaches its first discharge.** Charge resets every expedition ([Design Document §10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#10-progression-and-persistence)), so the harvester lands with two empty batteries and a coil it cannot fire. The first ten units are cut, not stunned: stragglers roaming the basins between dispatches, and the thin edge of the first surge, at one unit a kill. **That is a designed beat and it is the district's opening five minutes** — the player works the rim with the cutter while the first mass gathers, and the coil becomes available at roughly the moment there is something worth pointing it at. A player who mistimes it holds a full basin and has no way to stop it, which is this district's characteristic failure and is recoverable by leaving. |
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| - | **The two local sinks, both here, both on this map.** |
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| - | 1. **The outfall winch — a ratchet, because two seconds of power cannot run a five-second lift.** The outfall's screen is silted and its winch is a powered device on the outfall head's line. The screen lifts through **five notches**, and a pawl holds whatever notch it has reached. A coil discharge energises the channel for its **two powered seconds** (contract §4), which drives the winch **two notches** and no more; the pawl then holds them. The remaining notches are hand-cranked at about **eight seconds each**. So the three legal ways up are: **all manual, about forty seconds** — the free alternative, and it is preserved; **one discharge plus cranking, about twenty-four**; **two discharges plus cranking, about eight**. *Retained progress is the point:* the pawl holds between discharges and between expeditions, so a player who cranks two notches now and comes back later starts at two. *Release:* dropping the pawl by hand lets the screen fall shut in about a second, which is how a held mass is stopped as well as started. *Interruption:* nothing is lost — a Grounder that darkens the run, a discharge that ends, or an expedition that ends in rescue all leave the winch exactly where it stood, because the pawl is mechanical and the power only ever drove it. **What charge buys here is therefore about thirty seconds at the outfall head, where a held mass stands when b2 is lit** — not access, which is always free, but the difference between releasing a mass on your schedule and cranking while it reaches you. *The five-notch division and the eight-second crank are proposals of mine; Equipment's two-powered-plus-three-manual ratchet is the same shape and is a candidate design, not an established conversion rate, as [PMR007](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007) says. If Equipment sets different numbers, the three ways up and the retained progress survive them.* |
| - | 2. **The Holding Basin's inflow gate** (§8). A powered gate, dead unless the intake channel is energised. One discharge opens it for the seconds it takes to walk through. **What charge buys is the optional discovery**, and it buys it with no key, no item and no flag. |
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| - | **So the two loadouts differ in what they do, not in what they take home.** The harvester comes to *use* the mass: stun it, take the deposits it was standing on, lift the outfall on its own terms, and open the Holding Basin. It banks two bundles. The sluicegate comes to set ways-on and carry cargo — four bundles, a beacon to pull a held crowd off the walkway it needs, insulation for the crossing, a kit — and it has no coil, so it can never release a mass early and must plan around overtopping instead. |
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| - | Neither is better. The harvester leaves with the smallest cargo in the campaign and everything this district can show you; the sluicegate leaves with the largest and has to take the district on the district's timing. |
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| - | ## 5. Discovery |
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| - | **Local question: why does the Flood come back every time?** The pumping district answers where it enters and who aimed it. It never answers where it comes from, and a player who has shut a relay and watched the sluice keep delivering has the question sharply. |
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| - | - **Notice.** The wheels turn when a surge passes through a gate, and the meters above them climb. The meters are graduated in the units the rack's battery readout uses. |
| - | - **Compare.** The player has watched their own battery fill from motes, one unit a kill. The needle here moves the same way, on a scale hundreds of times larger. |
| - | - **Infer.** The city is not producing the Flood; it is *moving* it, the way it moves water, and taking charge off it as it passes. The surges are cycled, not spawned — which is the World designer's stated contribution for this district. |
| - | - **Experiment, free, on the first visit, no item required.** Shut G2 and watch W3's wheel stop while W1 and W2 keep turning. The mass is being routed; the player is the one routing it. |
| - | - **Consequence.** The outfall, §6. |
| - | - **Recovery if the clue is missed.** The meters are on the walkway, which every route home crosses from level 2 upward, so the district shows them to a player who is only trying to leave. |
| - | - **On replays.** The meters are stable evidence under W3 and read true every visit. A player who knows what they mean uses them as a live reading of how much of the Flood is still upstream — which is the only such reading in the game. |
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| - | **Campaign clue (proposal; the World designer's domain).** The meters read *charge* — the same quantity the player's rack reads. **Redundant form:** the intake gauge against the Tidal Barrier's gate log, as DES104 §6 already pairs them. |
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| - | **On [REV104-2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review), which the World page flagged against itself.** Clause 4 says charge never leaves the district. The meters do not break it: they read this district's own throughput, on this district's own wheels, and nothing the player carries crosses the dock. **My position is that clause 4 should read "charge never leaves the district *with the player*", and the clue should stand.** Dropping it would remove the one observable connecting the player's own resource to the city's, which is the campaign's central inference. This is the lead's clause to word; I am saying which way I would word it, and this page is built on that reading. |
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| - | --- |
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| - | ## 6. Outward consequence: the outfall, the empty flash, and what holding costs |
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| - | **The lever.** The outfall is not one gate but **three marked ways on**, side by side at the head, one per district this collector supplies: **Pumping**, **Lock Flight** and **Tram Incline**. Each is shut by hand from the lower gantry at levels 0–1, or from the upper walkway at any level, the long way round. Each is painted with its district's name and carries its own small gauge — the sign vocabulary the crews used everywhere. |
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| - | **What shutting one does, stated finitely.** This is [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) item 2, and r2 left all of it vague. |
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| - | - **The target is named, not "a district downstream".** The player picks which of the three. |
| - | - **The buffer is one surge, and it is visible.** Each way-on holds a single surge's worth in its own chamber, and the gauge beside it reads full or empty. Shut it and the chamber does not refill. |
| - | - **When the benefit is consumed.** At that district's **first dispatch of the next expedition there**: the drum turns, the trunk permits, the beacon flashes, the thin cable pulses, and nothing comes. The chamber then refills from the cycle, so the **second** dispatch is normal. One surge, once, and the gauge back here shows it spent. |
| - | - **What the withheld district's forecast shows.** Everything it always shows — the countdown, the intake marker, the locked marker at dispatch. **The forecast is not wrong and nothing is hidden**: it reports the dispatch, which does happen. What does not happen is the arrival. That is the whole point of the empty flash, and it is why the light convention needs its own row ([REV104-3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review)). |
| - | - **How long the quiet actually lasts.** Exactly the gap between that district's first and second dispatches, on its own schedule. In the pumping district's 3 / 8 / 12 that is **five minutes, from 3:00 to 8:00** — not three, and not "the start of the expedition". A player who wants the yard's far end has one five-minute window and has to be standing there at 3:00 to use it. |
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| - | **Its price, four ways.** |
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| - | 1. **Here, next time.** §9 states it exactly, against §2's thresholds. |
| - | 2. **The trip.** The ways-on are only here. Buying a quiet window somewhere else costs an expedition spent in the district you are not opening. |
| - | 3. **What you are standing next to.** Everything withheld is in the chamber and the basin above it, between the dock and the meters. Holding two surges' worth is the best harvest in the campaign and the largest single mass standing between the player and their route home. |
| - | 4. **Overtopping.** Held past level 3, a basin spills into the one below over about twenty seconds, with a visible crest first, and everything it held goes with it — into the basin the player crossed on the way in. The warning is real and it is short. **The outfall winch in §4 is the only way to choose the moment instead**, which is what the harvester's charge is for. |
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| - | **Persistence and readability.** The three ways-on, their gauges and the water level all persist between expeditions, and the refuge board shows them before launch — so the player launches knowing which Collector they are getting, and which district they have already paid for. |
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| - | ## 7. What the campaign later does to this district, and what this district enables |
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| - | - **After the [Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#34-the-exchange-in-outline):** this district's own bank position can be darkened. **r2 said the resulting crowds "cannot be routed". That was wrong, and [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) is right to strike it.** Under D013/D016 the beacons still exist and post-entry targeting is unchanged: arrivals still walk to the nearest lit beacon they can reach, and the panel still moves them. **What a dark position takes away is the announcement, not the routing** — no dispatch pulse, no flash, no countdown, no intake marker, so the player loses *when* and *where from* and keeps *where to*. In practice that makes a held mass harder to build deliberately, because bodies arrive continuously instead of in one body, and it makes setting ways-on easier, because nothing large lands while you are on the walkway. **Retargeting begins the moment a beacon changes, but bodies still walk**: ground a crowd is standing on does not clear instantly, and the press is what the player reads while it does. |
| - | - **After the [Tidal Barrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#33-the-tidal-barrier) is shut:** the Collector is starved, as DES104 already states. Fewer bodies are in circulation, so held masses thin and the water arriving with them drops — **the district sits one level lower for the same settings**, which is the reconciliation [PMR004 §1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) asks for between this page and the Head-works. It stops being a bank, which is a real cost of the Barrier's outcome and the campaign's clearest case of one district's persistent choice reaching another. |
| - | - **Under the head-works' Stop — the reconciliation the shared contract assigns to this role.** [Power and Attraction r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) states that Stop ends the harvest, that the drums keep turning on flow so timing survives, and that supply does not, "because the Collector's wheels stop cycling the Flood without the harvest that drives its gates" — and it hands the water-level consequence here. **The answer is that this district inverts.** The return lift dies, so nothing is sent back up; water still leaves by gravity, because gravity was never powered. So the level falls to **0 and stays there**, every basin drains, the lower gantry is dry for good and the head race north is permanently walkable. And the Flood that drains in is not cycled out, so **it accumulates here instead** — each expedition begins with more of it standing on a dry floor than the last, until the basins are packed, after which the excess spills down the outfall channels by gravity and reaches the districts as the shut regime's unannounced trickles, which is exactly what the endings table already promises. **Low water, high population: the bank becomes a floor you have to cross.** Three things follow, and they are the point rather than the side effect. The coil is nearly worthless here for the first time, because a mass on dry ground is not a stun target. The harvest that funded this district's two local sinks (§4) is gone with it. And the one road that is always open is the head race — **so the way to undo Stop runs through the district Stop ruined**, which is the consequence I would most want the player to discover for themselves. |
| - | - **What this district enables: the race route to the [Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works).** The head race north is walkable only when the basins are held low — every way-on open, nothing accumulating. So the alternative approach to the finale is bought by giving up everything this district is for, on the expedition you use it. See [Districts §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts#7-one-alternative-route-through-the-plan). |
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| - | ## 8. The Holding Basin — optional, and the campaign's sharpest evidence |
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| - | A sealed wing behind basin 1: a fourth basin the crews gated off and gauged separately. **Never required.** |
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| - | - **How it is reached.** Its inflow gate is a powered device, dead unless the intake channel is energised, so opening it costs one coil discharge earned here (§4). The walk to it is open only with the Collector held at level 0 — every gate open, the outfall open — which is the setting that gives up the delay lever for that expedition. No item, no key: a state the player already knows how to produce, used for something else. |
| - | - **What is in it.** The separate gauge, with a full log, and the crews' written reason for sealing it. |
| - | - **What it gives.** Certainty rather than capability. A player who reads it arrives at the head-works knowing which of the World designer's [two candidate answers](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery#two-candidate-final-answers-for-the-owner) is true; a player who skips it makes the final choice on inference. Both are complete campaigns; they are not the same experience. **The content of that evidence is the World designer's to write, not mine** — this page supplies the room, the way in, and the price. |
| - | - **Why a wing and not a district.** It occupies no new lever cell ([Districts §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts#2-the-count-seven-districts-not-eight)), and it costs this district's assets and no new ones. |
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| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 9. Entry, revisit, and one consequence of failure |
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| - | **Entry is physical, not a flag.** [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) item 4 is right that "reading X unlocks Y" is a notebook gate wearing a knowledge gate's coat. The honest statement: **the colony's boat can put in at any dock the player has a way to know exists, and this district's way in is its own outfall channel, which the pumping district's culvert visibly drains toward.** A player who walks the culvert to its end has seen where the water goes and can select the dock on that alone. The crews' inked plan behind the junction gate is the *ordinary* way to learn it and the Exchange's routing bank carries the name as a third; none of the three is required, and no note has to be collected for the boat to go. **The redundancy is in the evidence, not in the permission.** |
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| - | **Revisit — three standing reasons.** The basins hold the campaign's densest salvage, because the city's drains catch what everything upstream loses. The three ways-on are the only place another district's next first surge can be withheld. And a held mass is the campaign's best charge harvest, spent on the two sinks in §4 — which makes this the district a player comes to when they want what charge buys *here*, never to stock up for elsewhere. |
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| - | **Required return on the baseline path:** one, after the Tidal Barrier, because shutting the barrier gates starves this district, and its level and gauges have to be re-read before the head-works run. |
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| - | **One consequence of failure, reconciled with §2's thresholds.** If an expedition ends in rescue with a way-on shut, the state persists — the same rule that makes every district outcome mean something. **The water does not reset to 0: the district starts the next visit one step below the level it was left at**, seepage being the only thing that drains a shut collector overnight. So an expedition abandoned at level 3 opens the next one at **level 2**, which is exactly the threshold §2 gives for the lower gantry going under: the short crossing to basin 3 is gone and the ways-on are reachable only the long way round the walkway. An expedition abandoned at level 1 opens at 0 and costs nothing — which is correct, because **failure should only bite when the player was holding something.** |
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| - | **Nothing banked, noted or built is lost**; the baseline holds. It is readable before launch on the refuge board, and it is recoverable by an action the player already knows, since the ways-on open from the upper walkway at any level. The recovery costs the long crossing and, for that visit, the withheld surge already paid for. Failure makes the world less convenient for one trip; it never makes the campaign longer or the player poorer. |
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| - | ## 10. Enemy and build pressure |
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| - | *Roles are the six the Combat and Enemy Designer defines in [CMB101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies); shared combat rules are on [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). Campaign owns placement, Combat owns behaviour. Everything below works with the Walker alone (the base role, renamed from Drifter for coordination under [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005)); the other roles sharpen it and are not required by it.* |
| - | |
| - | - **The coil is central here and situational elsewhere.** A held mass standing in a basin is the largest stun target in the campaign, and the district's economy is built on it. That is a real build swing, not a stat: a rack that was correct on the pumping district's dry causeway is under-equipped here. |
| - | - **Insulation stops being optional** from level 1, because the ground the deposits are on is energised whenever anything discharges into it — including the player's own coil. |
| - | - **The held mass is its own charge source, so nothing here depends on a particular role.** A basin holding two surges' worth, stunned in water, sheds far more than one battery can take; the harvester rack in §4 exists because of the mass, not because of any one body in it. That is deliberate: this district should not be hostage to a roster decision that is Combat's to make. |
| - | - **Crusts are what stop the harvest being free.** They stand unstunned inside a stunned crowd, so a held basin is not a cleared floor — exactly the lesson CMB101's Encounter A teaches in the pumping district's yard, at this district's scale. **Placement proposal for Combat:** Crusts should be present in a held mass in proportion to how long it has been held, so that the player who holds longest meets the most bodies the coil never stopped. That prices holding without adding a number to anything. |
| - | - **Carriers make the harvester rack dangerous in the right way.** A player crossing this district with two full batteries, in the one district whose whole point is stored charge, is exactly what a Carrier walks to. The counterplay is the district's own: spend the charge, or plant a beacon's battery as a decoy on the far walkway. |
| - | - **Anchors belong here more than anywhere.** They stand in the lowest wet ground and are unmoved by any routing — which in a district of three stepped basins means the low basin always has a standing hazard the panel cannot clear, and the field pump or the long way round are the answers. |
| - | - **Grounders redirect here; they do not disperse.** [Grounder r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder) corrects the general claim, and the correction bites hardest in this district: darkening a beacon makes a crowd re-evaluate and retarget to any other reachable lit beacon, and it spreads only when there is none. **This district has two beacons and a three-position panel, so which happens is the player's own doing.** With the panel on b2 and a mass held at the outfall, a Grounder on that run sends the mass to **b1** — across the basins, through the ground the player is working, and to the rim where the sluice is. With the panel on Off, nothing is lit and the same Grounder does disperse it. **So a Grounder is a redirection tool in this district and a dispersal one only in the state the player chose**, which is a better threat than r3's version and is Combat's rule, not mine. What a Grounder can never take is the lever: the hand gates and the three ways-on are unpowered by design (§2), so a grounded run costs the harvest and the plan, never the ability to set supply. |
| - | - **What this district asks of Combat:** nothing new. It pays off four of the six roles already proposed, which is a better argument for that roster than another district would be. |
| - | |
| - | ## 11. Asset reuse and gaps |
| - | |
| - | **Reused, no new category:** water planes and wet/dry ground tinting, gates and valves, cable, indicator lamps, beacons, a three-position panel, walkway and gantry props, boards and gauges, signs, dock props, the humanoid mass. This is the pumping district's vocabulary throughout. |
| - | |
| - | **Genuine gaps, marked and not filled. No free asset has been located, checked or licensed for any of these, and nothing here authorises creating one** ([Brief D009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief)). |
| - | |
| - | - **Turning wheels with readable meters** — visible rotation tied to throughput, and a needle readable from a walkway at a distance. |
| - | - **A stepped-basin drainage set** — three basins in a stair with hand-worked gates. The closest thing in the design is the pumping district's yard channel and sluice; whether a free set covers this is unknown and unchecked. |
| - | - **The held mass** — a crowd standing still, in water, in numbers larger than one surge. This is as much a crowd-rendering and readability question as an art one, and it is the largest single unknown on this page. |
| - | |
| - | **A cheaper alternative, recorded now rather than after it is expensive.** If the held mass proves illegible or costly at survivorlike density, cap what a basin holds at one surge's worth and make the harvest smaller and the overtopping quicker. The district keeps its lever, its discovery, its outward consequence and its failure case; it loses the "bank of Flood" feeling that is its best idea. I would try the full version first. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 12. Open questions and dependencies |
| - | |
| - | - **[REV104-3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) — RESOLVED, not by me.** The empty flash is now a rule and a readable state in the shared contract [r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction): "a surge enters there if the supply provides one", with the flash, the absent bodies and the still-counting forecast all specified. §6 is built on the ratified wording and needs nothing further. |
| - | - **[REV104-2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) — RESOLVED.** Charge never leaves a district *with the player*; machinery may transfer it. That is the wording this page argued for at r1 and it is now the contract, so the meter clue stands. **REV104-4 is resolved too**, and in this district's favour: the contract's fixed-power source names "the Collector's wheels take charge from the mass passing through" as the first step of the city's supply, which makes §5's inference the campaign's load-bearing one rather than a local curiosity. |
| - | - **World (WLD103).** The campaign clue in §5, the evidence in the Holding Basin (§8), and whether the intake-gauge pairing in DES104 §6 stands as this district's redundant form. |
| - | - **Lead (DES104).** Whether this page's account of the Collector contradicts anything in the campaign page; if it does, the campaign page wins until we have agreed otherwise. |
| - | - **[EQP101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment).** The winch's notch count and crank rate in §4 are mine and are the kind of number Equipment owns once a mechanism is agreed; the three ways up and the retained progress are the design and should survive any renumbering. |
| - | - **[CMB101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies).** The Crust-density placement proposal in §10, and whether a held mass is a legitimate composition under [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)'s composition budget — it is larger than any surge that page prices. |
| - | - **Unresolved by me, honestly.** Whether a held mass is legible at crowd density (§11 has the fallback). Whether three quiet minutes elsewhere are worth an expedition here — a balance question with no evidence, designed to be cheap to weaken and expensive to remove. |
| hold the flood/districts/the exchange.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,215 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — The Exchange |
| - | |
| - | **CAM102 · r6 · 2026-09-07 · Campaign and District Designer · AT RISK — read this before the design below.** |
| - | |
| - | > **The owner has ruled that understanding enemy routing is not this game's central science** ([Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#latest-owner-correction--survivorlike-identity-and-songs); routing is a supporting tool). **This district is routing at campaign scale and almost nothing else.** It holds no salvage worth the trip, its local problem is a walk, and everything it offers is the bank. By the corrected direction that is not enough to earn a place, and I am recording that rather than recasting the page to hide it. |
| - | > |
| - | > **The one thing here that might survive on the new terms.** Not the lever — the *realisation*. Walking a floor of drums that tick together, finding your own districts already listed on a board, and understanding that the schedule you have been reading was set from a room you had never seen, is the owner's second kind of discovery: **the world is much larger than it appeared.** If this district is rebuilt for the revised game, that is what it should be built from, and the bank becomes the evidence rather than the point. |
| - | > |
| - | > **Recommendation: hold.** Nothing below is withdrawn as design work — the scene is legal and the corrections stand — but it should not be read as a district the campaign currently needs. See [Districts §0.1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts) for the reasoning and what replaces routing as a justification. |
| - | |
| - | *Superseded header, r5:* **CAM102 · r5 · 2026-09-07 · Campaign and District Designer · In review; proposal. Nothing here is an owner approval, a validated number, or tested behaviour.** r4 applies the four bounded corrections [Tasks](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) still records against this page: **a six-occupied-cell departure issue** (the rack is eight cells; the colony may only issue six, so r2's eight-item racks were illegal at departure), **linking and pickup priority set at a shelter** (r2 had the player relink mid-floor, which the rack rules forbid), **stated distances**, and a **field bundle** rather than an issued one. The scene's decision moves accordingly and improves: it is now made at the dock, before anything happens, which is what the [Game vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) means by preparing for an intended intervention. Dispatch cadence is deferred to the lead. r1–r3 are in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Exchange/history). **r5 records that PMR009 selected this district's 3:00/7:00 cadence**, closing r4's deferral. |
| - | |
| - | District 4 of the seven on [Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts). [PMR006](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR006) assigns CAM102: *"deepen the Exchange to the same standard as the three detailed districts."* This page does that. The district is the World designer's example ([World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery)), and the lead's outline at [DES104 §3.4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#34-the-exchange-in-outline) supplies the hall, the drums, the bank, the shut-regime meaning of a dark position, the bank's coupling and the Carrier's part in it. **Everything in that outline is kept; this page adds the ground, the panel, the interaction that takes time, two loadouts, a written expedition, the failure case and the asset list.** World owns the clue logic; Lead owns any contradiction with the campaign page or the contract. |
| - | |
| - | **Sources read 2026-09-06 22:30 UTC.** [Power and Attraction r4 29f5b0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=29f5b0) (the ruled contract: lines conduct when dry; the R1 precedence stack; the Carrier's acquisition range; the Grounder; pursuit range about ten metres; the cable reel; the empty flash; dispatch needs drum and trunk) · [Campaign r3 6e4b59](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign?revision=6e4b59) (§3.4, and the panel-table format each district now uses) · [PMR006](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR006) · [Enemies r6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) and [Combat Rules r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) (the eight-role roster and the composition budget) · [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) (eight cells, the cable reel) · [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery). Neighbours: [Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts) · [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) · [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) · [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary). |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 1. The problem |
| - | |
| - | **Every other district's lever acts on the place you are standing in. This one acts on places you are not, and gives you almost nothing where you stand.** There is no salvage here worth the trip, no water to speak of, and nothing to carry home but a setting. A district like that has to earn its expedition some other way, and the answer this page proposes is: |
| - | |
| - | **The Exchange is the one district where you must commit to your crowd arrangement before you begin the interaction, because the interaction walks you away from the panel.** |
| - | |
| - | The bank's positions are spread along the shaft, in the order the districts sit on the water. Changing which districts the trunk permits means walking the drum floor, and the panel that decides where the hall's crowds are standing is at the other end, by the dock. So the sequence is: read the hall, decide where you want the Flood while you are busy, set the panel, and only then start walking. **Get that order wrong and the correction costs the whole walk back.** |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 2. The ground |
| - | |
| - | ``` |
| - | DOCK END (south) HEAD END (north) |
| - | ┌──────────────┐ ┌────────────────┐ |
| - | │ EXCHANGE │ ═══════════ THE DRUM FLOOR (dry) ═══════════ │ THE BANK │ |
| - | │ DOCK │ one shaft, seven drums, ticking together │ 7 positions, │ |
| - | │ (shelter) │ │ 2 clutches │ |
| - | │ PANEL ──────┼── b1 ────────────── b2 ─────────────────── b3 ───┤ engaged, │ |
| - | └──────────────┘ (dock end) (mid-floor) (head end) │ 1 seized │ |
| - | │ └────────────────┘ |
| - | │ ~~~ THE TAIL RACE ~~~ narrow channel along the west wall ~~~ |
| - | │ (enters by culvert at the dock end, leaves at the head end; |
| - | │ the only water in the district, and what turns the shaft) |
| - | │ |
| - | CABLE GALLERY (east wall, head height): every district's signal cable enters here. |
| - | Lines conduct when dry — this is the district's conduction network. |
| - | ARRIVALS: the upper landing at the head end (the tram pass) — no water route in. |
| - | ``` |
| - | |
| - | - **The drum floor** is dry, long and open: one shaft down its length with **one drum per district**, all ticking together, turned by the tail race at the west wall. The drums are the district's clue and its clock in one object. |
| - | - **The bank** stands at the head end: **seven positions, one per district**, spread along the shaft in the order the districts sit on the water, and **two clutches engaged of a possible three, the third visibly seized**. A position's clutch is engaged or not; a district whose position is dark is in the shut regime, never a district with no Flood in it ([DES104 §3.4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#34-the-exchange-in-outline), and PMR004). |
| - | - **Three fixed beacons**, b1 at the dock end, b2 mid-floor, b3 at the head end by the bank. The contract permits more than two ([World's fixed contract](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery#what-stays-fixed-everywhere-and-what-a-district-may-add)), and three in one long room is this district's physical signature: **the precedence stack is visible here in a way it is nowhere else**, because a crowd can see two lit beacons at once and the player can watch it take the nearer. |
| - | - **The tail race** is a narrow channel along the west wall — the only water in the district. It is where the coil works, where the cable reel finds its two wet points, and where an Anchor will be standing. |
| - | - **The cable gallery** runs the east wall at head height. **Lines conduct when dry** (contract r4 §1), so this is a live conduction network with no water in it at all, and it is what a Grounder climbs. |
| - | - **Shelters: the dock only.** There is no platform on the floor and none at the bank. That is deliberate: the bank is the thing you walk to, and a shelter beside it would delete the district's only pressure. |
| - | |
| - | ### The panel, and why nothing here flashes at a beacon |
| - | |
| - | *Format as [DES104 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#3-three-districts-in-depth) tables each district's.* |
| - | |
| - | | Panel position | Powered branch | Intake selected | What flashes at a dispatch | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | Dock | The dock end: b1 lit, the gallery's dock run live, the tail race's lower reach energised | The upper landing — always; the panel cannot change it | **The landing's own intake marker** | |
| - | | Floor | The mid run: b2 lit, the gallery's centre run live | The upper landing | The landing's intake marker | |
| - | | Head | The head end: b3 lit by the bank, the gallery's head run live, the race's upper reach energised | The upper landing | The landing's intake marker | |
| - | | Off | Nothing | The upper landing; the shut regime if the trunk does not permit | The landing's intake marker | |
| - | |
| - | **r1 had the panel flash a beacon at the far end of the hall from the only way in, and [PMR007](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007) is right that this breaks the convention the whole campaign has taught** — that the light which flashes is where the bodies appear. The fix costs nothing and improves the district: **the Exchange has one way in, so it has an intake marker at the landing, and that is what flashes.** The three beacons are lures and never intake selectors. |
| - | |
| - | So this district splits in two what every other district joins. Elsewhere the panel chooses where the Flood enters *and* where it then goes; here it chooses only where it goes. **The player meets, for one district, the half of the panel that is pure lure** — which is the cleanest possible statement of the distinction the campaign has been building since the pumping district's two cables, and it is why this district is worth visiting even though it holds nothing. Pursuit range is about ten metres (contract §3), and the floor is wide enough that a body at the gallery wall does not chase a surveyor at the race. |
| - | |
| - | **Duration and cadence — settled.** This district runs a ten-minute expedition with dispatches at about **3:00 and 7:00**. r4 deferred the cadence to the lead; [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) has since selected **this district's existing 3:00/7:00 within its ten-minute expedition** for the retained draft, with the lead mirroring it where the campaign page carried 3:00/8:00. So §7's beats stand as written. What this page owns is the ten minutes and the reason for them: **one room, one interaction, and nothing here worth carrying home.** |
| - | |
| - | ## 3. Shared-rule diff |
| - | |
| - | | Adds | Changes | Signal | Choice it improves | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **The routing bank**: seven positions, two clutches, campaign-scale permission | Nothing in what power, signal or charge mean | Clutches visibly engaged, disengaged or seized; a drum ticking or still; the board above the bank | Choose which two districts you can read, and pay for it with the walk and the trip | |
| - | | **A third fixed beacon** in one room | Nothing — W1's precedence is unchanged and is simply *visible* here | Three lamp posts down one floor | Watch the precedence stack decide, instead of inferring it | |
| - | | **An interaction that takes a walk**: positions are spread along the shaft, and swapping means disengage, walk, engage | Nothing | The positions are laid out in the districts' own order, so the walk's length is readable before you start | Commit to a crowd arrangement in advance, at the panel, because you cannot re-decide from the far end | |
| - | | **A district whose panel selects no intake** | Nothing; there is one way in, so the intake column has one value | One landing, visibly the only opening | Learn what the panel is *for* by meeting a place where half of it does not apply | |
| - | |
| - | **Nothing here needs a contract change.** That is worth stating plainly: this district is built entirely out of rules that already exist, and the only new thing in it is a machine. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 4. Two loadouts that do different things |
| - | |
| - | **The rack is eight cells; the colony may issue only six occupied ones** ([Colony](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony): revisit-only recorded-rack issue capped at six occupied cells). r2 drew two racks of eight and both were illegal at departure. Corrected: |
| - | |
| - | ``` |
| - | The cacher — 6 issued, 2 free The dry hand — 2 issued, 6 free |
| - | C C B B I K . . |
| - | L I . . . . . . |
| - | at the dock: B1 → C, B2 → L no battery, no link |
| - | at the dock: pickup priority B2 pickup priority irrelevant |
| - | ``` |
| - | |
| - | *C coil (two cells), B battery, L portable beacon, I insulation, K kit. A dot is an empty cell.* |
| - | |
| - | - **The cacher** carries charge into the one district where carrying charge is hunted. A Carrier's target is the nearest reachable loose charge **within its acquisition range** (contract §3, R5) — so the counterplay is distance as much as quantity, and the cacher's play is to put loose charge somewhere it is not. **It has no kit**, because six cells will not carry the coil, two batteries, a beacon, insulation *and* a kit; that is the issue limit doing its job rather than a flourish. Two cells stay free, and §7 needs them. |
| - | - **The dry hand** carries nothing a Carrier wants, so every Carrier reverts to line 3, the nearest lit beacon. It moves fast and has no decision to get wrong. **Its six free cells are mostly empty here on purpose**: this district holds no salvage worth the trip, so the dry hand's virtue is speed and a kit, not cargo, and its weakness is that when a plan expires it has nothing to answer with. |
| - | |
| - | **The constraint that makes both interesting.** Batteries start empty; charge resets ([Design Document §10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#10-progression-and-persistence)). **A lit portable beacon drains one unit every ten seconds, so a full bank of ten buys a hundred lit seconds.** A coil discharge spends a full bank. **So one filled battery is either a hundred seconds of lure or one discharge, never both** — and in ten minutes there is rarely time to fill two. |
| - | |
| - | **And the choice is made at the dock, not in the field.** Links and pickup priority are set at a shelter, and the dock is this district's only one. **So the player decides which battery fills first before they have seen anything**, and that decision decides whether the trip has a lure or a discharge in it. r2 had the player relinking on the floor, which the rack rules forbid; the correction turns a mid-scene reflex into a preparation, which is the better version. |
| - | |
| - | ## 5. Discovery |
| - | |
| - | **Local question: why do these drums have no water of their own?** Every relay the player has met turns on its own race. Seven drums here turn on one shaft, and the shaft comes in from a culvert whose head is out of sight. |
| - | |
| - | - **Notice.** The drums tick together, exactly, and the shaft enters from upstream. |
| - | - **Compare.** In the pumping district the drum *was* the clock. Here there are seven drums and one shaft, so the drums are not clocks — they are repeaters. |
| - | - **Infer.** **One time source, upstream, permitting all of them.** This is the campaign question's first hard evidence, and it is what makes the bank legible: the player understands the lever by understanding the machine, not by reading a label on it. |
| - | - **Experiment, free, first visit, no item.** Disengage one clutch and watch that district's drum stop while the others keep ticking. Nothing is spent and the change is reversible in the same trip. |
| - | - **Consequence.** The bank, §6. |
| - | - **Recovery if missed.** The drums are the floor. Every route from the dock to the bank walks their length. |
| - | |
| - | **Campaign clue (the lead's, adopted).** *The pumping district's dead drum is listed on the bank* — a position for a district whose drum no longer turns, still on the board, still with a clutch. **Redundant form:** the World page's pairing, the pumping district's stopped drum that still hears the trunk's cadence after R is opened. A player who shut that relay meets the same fact from both ends. |
| - | |
| - | **What travels.** A fact — *the districts' relays are repeaters on one upstream clock* — and a convention: **the bank's board is the campaign's index of districts**, so a position with a name the player has not visited is how they learn a district exists. That is how the [Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) and others can be found from here without a note being collected. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 6. Outward consequence: the bank |
| - | |
| - | **The bank's pricing is not restated here.** It is stated once, as a rule, by the lead at [DES104 §3.4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#34-the-exchange-in-outline): a lit position gives the player the forecast and the announced, routable surge in that district, and a dark one takes both away there, so withholding the Flood from a district means giving up reading it. **r1 and r2 of this page also cited a §6 on [Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts) for that rule. There is no such section and there never was** — the pricing was drafted for a page that was never published, and the citation was carried forward without being followed. Corrected here rather than by adding a duplicate somewhere to make the link true. What belongs here is the **found state** and the **local** cost of changing it. |
| - | |
| - | **The found state: three clutches engaged, on Pumping, Lock Flight and Tram Incline.** This is REV104-18, which [PMR007](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007) correctly calls a campaign dependency rather than a footnote: the player has by now had announced dispatches in three districts, and two engaged clutches cannot explain three announced districts. **The answer is that the bank drives three, and the player finds it already set to exactly the three districts they have been visiting** — which is not a coincidence to be explained away but the district's best single moment, because it tells the player that the route they thought they chose was the route something upstream had already permitted. |
| - | |
| - | **I have not adopted the critic's seized-Pumping-clutch candidate**, and [PMR007](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007) is right to make that an explicit choice rather than a preserved ambiguity: a seized clutch on Pumping would mean the player can never darken their opening district, and darkening Pumping is the campaign's best worked example of a later discovery changing an earlier return ([Districts §4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts#4-the-progression-map-main-route-an-optional-discovery-and-a-later-discovery-that-changes-an-earlier-return)). **Three live clutches keeps that and costs nothing.** The seized fourth position stays as it was: visibly seized, never usable, and its repair is the head-works' business rather than this district's. |
| - | |
| - | **Three of seven, and the scarcity argument is unchanged.** Most of the city is unread at any time, and every district added costs one given up. What changes from r1's two is only the arithmetic, and it changes in the direction the campaign's own history demands. |
| - | |
| - | **The local cost of a change.** |
| - | |
| - | - **A swap is disengage, walk, engage.** Positions sit along the shaft in the districts' own order, so swapping neighbours is a short walk and swapping the ends is the length of the floor. **The map's shape becomes the cost of the plan.** |
| - | - **The walk is the exposure.** There is no shelter on the floor. Whatever the panel was set to when you left the dock end is what the crowds are doing while you work. |
| - | - **Nothing is spent.** No salvage, no charge, no module. The bank costs a trip and a walk — which is why the trip has to be worth planning rather than worth farming. |
| - | |
| - | ## 7. A written expedition — illustrative, not a playtest |
| - | |
| - | **Declared setup.** Middle campaign, ten minutes, dispatches at about 3:00 and 7:00 (cadence the lead's, §2), evacuation from 10:00. The player wants the **Collector** permitted and will give up the **Tram Incline**. Bank found engaged on Pumping, Lock Flight, Tram. Rack: **the cacher**, six issued cells, two free. **At the dock, which is this district's only shelter, the player sets B1 → coil, B2 → beacon, and pickup priority to B2 first.** That is the decision; everything after it is consequence. Both batteries empty. Panel found on **Head**, so b3 is lit at the bank end. The hall's standing stragglers are its own — this room is never quiet, which is what makes charge earnable before a surge lands. |
| - | |
| - | | Time | What happens | B1 | B2 | Ledger | |
| - | | --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | --- | |
| - | | 0:00 | Dock. Board reads dispatch 3:00, intake the landing. b3 lit at the far end, which would walk the surge *toward* the bank | 0 | 0 | links and priority set here | |
| - | | 0:20 | Panel to **Dock**: b1 lights beside the player, b3 goes dark. The surge will now cross the floor away from the bank | 0 | 0 | — | |
| - | | 0:20–3:00 | Cutting the hall's stragglers, one unit a kill. Priority sends every unit to **B2**, the beacon's battery | 0 | 8 | **+8** | |
| - | | 3:00 | Dispatch. **The landing's marker flashes**; the surge enters at the landing and walks the length of the floor to b1, the only lit beacon | 0 | 8 | — | |
| - | | 3:00–4:20 | It gathers at b1. The player works its edge inside pursuit range (about ten metres) and cuts | 2 | 10 | **+4; B2 full, overflow to B1** | |
| - | | **4:30** | **The plant.** Beacon and B2 go down about **twenty-five metres** from b1 on the dock side. Two cells leave the rack, so four are occupied and four free. **The coil is dead for the trip**: B1 holds 2, and a discharge needs a full bank — which the priority decided at 0:00 | 2 | planted | **−10 committed to the lure** | |
| - | | 4:40–6:20 | **A hundred lit seconds and no more.** The two Carriers in the crowd take the planted battery: at twenty-five metres it is the nearest reachable loose charge, and the player is sixty metres north and walking | 2 | — | — | |
| - | | 6:00–6:45 | The bank. Disengage **Tram**; its drum stops and its lamp goes out. Four positions along the shaft. Engage **Collector**. Three engaged again | 2 | — | — | |
| - | | **6:20** | **The lure expires.** Retargeting, stated: b1 is still lit and stands beside the dead plant, so the crowd holds and the Carriers revert to line 3 and take b1. **Nothing moves.** The lure bought a walk, not a rearrangement | 2 | — | lure spent | |
| - | | 7:00 | Second dispatch, and the player is at the head end: **the landing's marker flashes beside them** and the surge enters there. b1 is the only lit beacon, so it sets off south — away from the player, down the road the player must take home | 2 | — | — | |
| - | | 7:00–9:00 | The player follows behind its press. A Grounder that came in with it climbs the gallery's dock run and grounds it: **b1 goes dark** | 2 | — | — | |
| - | | 9:00 | Retargeting again, and this time spreading is legal: b2 and b3 are dark, the plant died at 6:20, so **no reachable lit beacon exists** and the crowd spreads both ways, including toward the player. The grounded run leaves the race's lower reach dead — safe to wade, and no help | 2 | — | — | |
| - | | 9:00–9:40 | **No coil, and no kit** — the six-cell issue bought insulation instead. The cutter and position are the whole answer. The player retrieves the beacon and its empty battery into **the two cells that were free because those two were planted**, and reaches the dock | 2 | 0 | six occupied again | |
| - | | 10:00 | Evacuation. **The 2 units in B1 are lost at the dock**; charge never leaves a district | 0 | 0 | **earned 12 · spent 10 · lost 2 · carried out 0** | |
| - | |
| - | **What the expedition was about.** Not the bank — that was forty-five seconds. It was the line at **0:00**: pickup priority to B2. **That single shelter decision spends the trip's only full battery on a hundred seconds of lure and leaves the coil dead**, and the player finds out what it cost at 9:00, in a spreading crowd, with a cutter. Priority to B1 buys the opposite trip: a discharge available at the end, and no way to hold the Carriers off the walk. **A dry hand makes neither choice**, walks faster, keeps a kit, and has nothing to answer with when the plan expires. |
| - | |
| - | **Why the Grounder is placed in the second surge.** It makes a plan expire *after* it has been paid for. Had the lure still been lit at 9:00 the crowd could not have spread at all — a reachable lit beacon forbids it — which was the illegal move in r1. The scene works because the lure ran out, not despite it. |
| - | |
| - | **Not a playtest.** No claim about timing, difficulty, survivability or enjoyment is made or could be. Every number is a proposal checked against the written rules, which is a consistency check and nothing more. |
| - | |
| - | ## 8. Entry, revisit, and one consequence of failure |
| - | |
| - | **Entry is physical, two ways.** The **tram incline's summit pass** opens onto the upper landing ([DES104 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#2-the-campaigns-shape): the tram's summit is the way to the Exchange). Independently, the **trunk signal cable** leaving the pumping district's relay room runs here and can be followed on the map. Neither requires a note to be collected; the plans and tags are the *ordinary* way to learn where they go, per [Districts §3.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts#32-travel-rules). |
| - | |
| - | **Revisit.** Every change to the bank costs a trip here — that is the lever's first price, and it is why this district is visited more often than any other except the pumping district, and always briefly. |
| - | |
| - | **One consequence of failure, and it is this district's own shape.** A swap is two actions with a walk between them. **If the expedition ends in rescue between them, the city is left with one district permitted instead of two.** That is not a punishment bolted onto dying; it is exactly what the player did, left half-done. |
| - | |
| - | - **Readable before launch.** The refuge's board shows which positions are engaged, so the player launches knowing they are down to one. |
| - | - **What it costs.** One fewer district announced until they come back — thinner information everywhere, not more danger anywhere. |
| - | - **Recovery.** A trip here, and the engage half of the swap they did not finish. |
| - | - **Nothing banked, noted or built is lost.** The baseline holds. |
| - | |
| - | **And the mitigation is a real choice, not a safety net:** a player who engages first and disengages second is never left with one — but they cannot, because only two clutches exist and the third is seized. **The seized clutch is what makes the failure case possible, and that is why it is visible from the first visit.** |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 9. Enemy and build pressure |
| - | |
| - | *Roles are Combat's, in [CMB101 r6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) and [Combat Rules r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat); Campaign owns placement. Everything below works with the Walker alone.* |
| - | |
| - | - **This is the Carrier's district**, and the lead's outline says so. It is the one place the player's own stored charge is a liability with a designed answer — cache it deliberately — rather than a hazard to be endured. **Placement proposal for Combat:** Carriers present in every surge here, at low density, so the cacher's plant is worth its cells on the first visit rather than the third. |
| - | - **The Grounder is what makes a plan expire**, and this district is where that reads best: the gallery is at head height along one wall, so a Grounder is visible climbing it, and the player watches their arrangement come apart with time to answer. **Placement proposal: at most one per surge, never in the first surge of a first visit, and best in the second** — where §7 puts it, because a plan that expires after it has been paid for teaches more than one that never forms. Never place one where it would darken the only lit beacon while the player has no charge and no route: that is not a plan expiring, it is a trap. |
| - | - **Anchors belong in the tail race** and nowhere else here: one standing hazard in the only water, so the coil's own working ground is contested. |
| - | - **What this district does not want:** Crusts and Sparks. Both are about water and conduction, this hall has almost none, and putting them here would blur the contrast with the [Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector). **A district should decline roles as deliberately as it asks for them**, and this is the one place in the campaign I would decline two. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 10. Asset reuse and gaps |
| - | |
| - | **Reused, no new category:** drums, cable, poles and galleries, indicator lamps, beacons, a four-position panel, boards, walkway and dock props, a narrow water channel with wet/dry tinting, the humanoid mass. |
| - | |
| - | **Genuine gaps, marked and not filled. No free asset has been located, checked or licensed for any of these, and nothing here authorises creating one** ([Brief D009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief)). |
| - | |
| - | - **A long rotating shaft with drums along it** — visible rotation, and one drum that has stopped while the others turn. The stopped drum is a clue, so its state has to read at a distance. |
| - | - **A many-position bank** whose per-position state (engaged, disengaged, seized) reads at a glance and in a non-colour channel. |
| - | - **A long interior hall.** This is the only district that is mostly indoors, and it shares almost nothing with the outdoor sets except props. |
| - | |
| - | **A cheaper alternative, recorded now.** If the long hall is out of reach, the district can be staged as a short gallery with the drums in one view and the bank at its end. It keeps the panel-then-walk decision only if the walk stays long enough to matter — **and if the walk goes, this district's only local problem goes with it**, which would be the moment to ask whether the Exchange should be a room inside the Head-works rather than a place. I do not think it should, because the bank's price is the trip; but that is the honest fallback and it should be on the record before it is expensive. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 11. Open questions and dependencies |
| - | |
| - | - **World (WLD103).** The campaign clue in §5 is the lead's and the World designer's; the "board as the campaign's index of districts" convention in §5 is mine and is a proposal in World's domain, because it decides how a player learns a district exists. |
| - | - **Lead (DES104).** Whether the panel table in §2 — a district whose panel selects no intake — is acceptable under the contract. I believe it is: the contract requires the intake column to be true, not to have more than one value, and one-way-in is a topology fact, not a rule change. If Lead disagrees, the fix is a second landing and the district loses a good contrast. |
| - | - **[CMB101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies).** The three placements and the two declines in §9. |
| - | - **[EQP101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) — corrected at r2.** r1 described the cable reel as joining two *wet* points, which was the r4 contract's wording; [contract r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) restates it as Equipment's **U6, a bridge between exposed power terminals**. That makes it a far better fit for this district than r1 allowed — a dry hall whose gallery carries live runs is exactly where bridging terminals is worth two cells. **I have still kept it out of both loadouts in §4**, because the two the district needs to contrast are the one that carries charge and the one that carries none, and a third rack would blur that. A reel loadout here is a real third answer and Equipment is better placed to draw it. |
| - | - **Unresolved by me, honestly.** Whether a district with no salvage worth carrying and one setting to change can hold an expedition's worth of interest on its third visit. My answer is the walk and the panel decision in §7, and I believe it; but this is the district in the campaign whose premise is thinnest, and if any of the seven fails the lead's written-expedition test on contact, I would expect it to be this one. That is why §10 records what it would become instead. |
| hold the flood/districts/the head-works.md .. /dev/null | |
| @@ 1,166 0,0 @@ | |
| - | # Hold the Flood — The Head-works |
| - | |
| - | **CAM101 · r6 · 2026-09-07 · Campaign and District Designer · DEPENDENCY BROKEN — do not read this page as current design.** |
| - | |
| - | > **The owner has withdrawn the revelation this district's ending was built on.** [Brief — Rejected and undecided](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#rejected-and-undecided): *“the city depends on the creatures” as the central revelation* is rejected as a cliché masquerading as a twist, **D024 / Answer A and the harvest-dependent Stop–Keep–Leave ending are withdrawn from the active direction**, and maintaining the harvesting system is no longer the governing theme. |
| - | > |
| - | > **What that breaks here, stated plainly.** §4's three governor positions are a choice *about the harvest*: Stop ends it, Keep takes it over, Leave declines it. Without the revelation they are three settings on a timetable with nothing at stake. §5 and §7 depend on it more directly still. **I am not defending them.** The player value they were carrying — a final choice that is the first district's small local choice at city scale, made by a player who has already lived with its smaller version — is real and premise-independent, and is the one thing worth rescuing into whatever premise the owner accepts. The rest of this page is a record of a design whose foundation was removed. |
| - | > |
| - | > **Recommendation: hold, do not revise.** The replacement premise ([The World Below](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#visionary-replacement-proposal--the-world-below)) is under review and [REV106](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) has returned *revise*; rewriting this district against an unapproved premise would waste the work twice. See [Districts §0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts) for the full dependency assessment across my pages. |
| - | |
| - | *Superseded header, r5:* **CAM101 · r5 · 2026-09-06 · Campaign and District Designer · In review; proposal. Nothing here is an owner approval or tested behaviour.** **r5 drops "the empty flash everywhere" from §4's Stop row, as [Power and Attraction r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) instructs by name.** The contract has ruled Stop as the brake on the shaft that *keeps time*, so after Stop no district is permitted at all: no dispatches and no flashes anywhere, the drums turning to no effect. r4's reading — that the cadence would go on flashing over an empty supply — is **withdrawn**; the empty flash keeps its narrower and better meaning, a permitted dispatch the Collector did not supply, which is the [Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector)'s lever and not Stop's image. r5 also records the refuge's place in the cascade and that its pump reserve was declined. r1–r4 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. |
| - | |
| - | **What this page deliberately does not do: it does not answer the campaign's question.** The World designer holds [two candidate answers](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery#two-candidate-final-answers-for-the-owner) for the owner and the lead recommends one in [DES104 §10.7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#10-decisions-for-the-owner-and-one-question-for-pm). **This page is built so that either answer can be dropped into it without redesigning the district**, and §7 says exactly what each answer costs here. That is my job as the place's designer; choosing between them is not. |
| - | |
| - | **Sources:** [Campaign / DES104 r1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) (§1–§2, §3.3 for the Barrier's dry dock, §4 modules and roles, §5 the boat's range, §6 the mystery thread, §7 coverage, §10 decisions) · [World and Mystery 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de) (the campaign question, the six-part contribution rule, the fixed contract, the head-works sketch, the two answers) · [Design Document ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §3–§4, §11 (the relay room's shut / fix / hold, which this district is the scaled version of) · [Design Review 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882) REV104-1, REV104-4, and the open note that the head-works' clue has no second form · [Expansion Brief cdc0c5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief?revision=cdc0c5). Neighbours: [Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts) · [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) · [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary). |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 1. The problem |
| - | |
| - | Every district so far has let the player set **where** the Flood goes, **which** district can be read, or **how much** of it arrives. The head-works is the only place that sets **how often**, and it sets it everywhere at once and permanently. |
| - | |
| - | That is the whole design problem of a finale in this game: it must be the same kind of decision the player already made in the relay room on expedition ten or eleven, at a scale where they can see it land on every district they have learned. **It must not be a new machine, a boss, or a key.** It is the relay's lever with more positions and a city on the other end. |
| - | |
| - | The second problem is that the player arrives here having permanently changed four or five districts already, in a state of their own making. **The head-works must read differently depending on what they did**, or the campaign's persistence was decoration. §5 is how. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 2. The ground, and two ways in |
| - | |
| - | ``` |
| - | THE RESERVOIR ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| - | | | |
| - | THE WEIR ═══════════════════════ spill channel |
| - | (boat route arrives here, from below) | |
| - | | | |
| - | ┌── RACE HEADS ──────┴─────────────────────┐ | |
| - | | four gates, one per race, hand-worked| | |
| - | | | | |
| - | THE GOVERNOR GALLERY (dry, raised) ── THE TALLY ROOM (optional; §6) |
| - | | the governor: the brake, the cadence lever, the district clutches |
| - | | |
| - | (race route arrives here, from the side, up the Collector's head race) |
| - | | |
| - | ══ MAINTENANCE WALK ══ down to the LANDING (colony-held dock; a shelter) |
| - | | |
| - | BEACON h1 (weir end) BEACON h2 (gallery end) PANEL: h1 / h2 / Off |
| - | 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. **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 switch-house**, added by the shared contract [r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction), which places the city's **store** of harvested charge here and runs the thick cables out to every district's panel from it. It sits below the gallery, off the maintenance walk, and it is where the campaign's biggest fact is legible in one view: **every lamp, hatch and beacon the player has used all campaign is running off a store filled by the Flood.** The store's level is on a gauge, and it is the only gauge in the game that reads the whole city at once. It is not a lever — the player cannot spend the store — which is deliberate: this district's lever is the governor, and a second one here would make the finale a control room. |
| - | - **The tally room.** Optional; §6. |
| - | - **Two fixed beacons and a three-position panel**, on this district's own circuit, permitted by the trunk exactly as everywhere else — with one consequence the player will notice: **this district's own dispatch is set by the lever they are standing next to.** |
| - | |
| - | **Two ways in, either sufficient.** |
| - | |
| - | - **The boat route** ([DES104 §5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#5-the-colony-across-the-campaign)): the colony's boat range, unlocked from the Tidal Barrier's dry dock, which requires shutting the barrier gates. Arrives at the weir, from below and wet. The approach is a conduction problem — the reservoir's water is the first thing met and everything the player knows about joined bodies applies. |
| - | - **The race route** (mine; see [The Collector §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector#7-what-the-campaign-later-does-to-this-district-and-what-this-district-enables)): up the Collector's head race, walkable only while that district is held at level 0 — every gate open, nothing accumulating. Arrives in the gallery, from the side and dry. The approach is a timing problem — the race floods behind each dispatch, so the window is between them. |
| - | |
| - | **Why two.** A player who bounced off the Barrier is not locked out of the finale, and neither is one who never mastered the Collector; the structural redundancy WLD103 rule 5 asks of clues holds for the road too; and the second approach is the best piece of optional content in the campaign, because it shows the half of the district the first route did not. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 3. The local machinery problem: reaching the gallery |
| - | |
| - | The gallery is dry and raised, and the governor is in it. Getting to the governor is the district's own puzzle and it is deliberately a *recombination*, not a new machine: the gallery door is a device on the gallery's line, and the gallery's line is fed from **whichever race is running**. |
| - | |
| - | - **Four races, four gates.** Closing a race's gate stops that race, and with it the drum it drives in the district downstream — the drain-valve R lesson from the pumping district's relay room, at four times the size. |
| - | - **The gallery's line runs off the race the player leaves open.** So the door opens, but which race is running decides which of the district's two beacons is live and therefore where every crowd in the district walks while the player works. |
| - | - **The decision.** Leave the weir race open and the gallery door opens with h1 live: the crowd holds at the weir, across the route the boat route arrived by. Leave the spill race open and h2 is live: the crowd holds at the gallery end — where the player is going. Close all four and the door is dead, but nothing is lit anywhere and the crowd spreads through a district with two dry approaches and no lure at all. |
| - | |
| - | There is no free option. **The player is choosing which of their two ways out to give away**, which is the pumping district's price of the panel with the stakes made literal, and it is the last time the campaign asks that question before it asks the big one. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 4. The decision: three positions, and what each does |
| - | |
| - | **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 | |
| - | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
| - | | **Stop** | Set the brake on the shaft | **The brake stops the shaft that keeps time, so after Stop no district is permitted at all: no dispatches and no flashes anywhere, and the drums turn on flow to no effect.** The Flood arrives by every district's own sluice as trickles that grow — the shut regime everywhere, permanently. **The harvest ends with it, and the city dies district by district rather than all at once**: the store drains and each district's circuit fails in turn, nearest the head-works first, roughly one per expedition, **shown on the refuge's board before the player launches**. All of this is the ruled text in [Power and Attraction r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction); r4 of this page said the cadence would go on flashing over an empty supply, and that reading is withdrawn — **Stop's image is dark boards and trickles, not the empty flash** | The whole powered and announced layer, lost on a visible schedule the player can watch approach and spend expeditions ahead of: powered doors, hatches, lifts and the colony's pump go dormant. **The refuge is not spared and is not first**: its circuit is fed with the pumping district's, whose dock it is, so it dies late in the cascade, keeping its dry landing and manual bench and losing its powered forecast, pumped berth and advanced tooling — and the salvage-fed pump reserve that would have softened this was declined (PMR006 4, Colony's recommendation), so the cost is paid rather than bought off. **What survives is everything that never needed power** — gravity drains, the culvert, dry docks, every hand-worked lock, gate and valve, the cutter, the coil and planted beacons — so every district and the refuge keep a dry way home and nothing banked is lost. At [the Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector#7-what-the-campaign-later-does-to-this-district-and-what-this-district-enables) the wheels stop cycling because nothing is dispatched to pass through them and the powered return lift dies with the power, so that district drains to level 0 for good and the Flood piles up on its dry floor. **Its head race is then permanently walkable, which is the road back here** | |
| - | | **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 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 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. **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. |
| - | |
| - | - **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 |
| - | |
| - | **Local question: who oiled this?** Every machine in the campaign is seized, silted, weathered or dead. The governor is not. |
| - | |
| - | - **Notice.** Fresh grease on the governor's shaft. A tally board in the gallery with a recent date. A cadence set to positions no evacuation would ever need. |
| - | - **Compare.** The player has been reading tally boards since the pump hall. Every other one stops at the evacuation. This one does not. |
| - | - **Infer.** The network is *maintained*, not merely running. That is the answer to the campaign question's second half — *and for whom* — in the only form this district can honestly give it before the owner has chosen between the two candidate answers. |
| - | - **Act.** The governor, §4. |
| - | - **Recovery if missed.** The grease and the board are in the gallery, which is the only way to the governor, so a player who is only trying to finish the game walks past both. |
| - | |
| - | **The redundant form, which [REV104](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) records as missing and which I owe as this district's designer.** My proposal, for the World designer to accept or replace: **the Lock Flight's lock levers are greased and free, while every other hand-worked mechanism in the city is seized.** The player has been pulling those levers since district two without a thought, because a lever that works is not evidence of anything until you have seen a city where nothing else does. It costs no asset, no room and no new interaction, and it pays off five districts later. If the World designer prefers a different second form, this district loses nothing by taking theirs. |
| - | |
| - | **The optional tally room.** A room off the gallery, never required, holding the maintenance boards for the whole network: which district was serviced, when, and in what order. It is where a player who wants the campaign's bookkeeping can have it, and it is the natural home for whichever of the two candidate answers the owner chooses. **Its contents are the World designer's to write.** |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 7. What each candidate answer costs this district |
| - | |
| - | *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** brakes the shaft that keeps time and ends the harvest, so nothing is permitted anywhere and the city goes dark district by district, the colony's pump included, as §4 now states in full on the contract's ruled text — 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. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 8. Enemy and build pressure |
| - | |
| - | *Roles are the six the Combat and Enemy Designer defines in [CMB101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies); shared rules on [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). Campaign owns placement, Combat owns behaviour. Everything below works with the Walker alone (the base role, renamed from Drifter for coordination under [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005)).* |
| - | |
| - | - **The only district with still, flowing and absent water in one map**, so it is the one place a rack cannot be specialised. The coil works at the weir and in the spill channel and nowhere in the gallery; insulation matters below the weir and not above it. **A player who has carried a district-specific rack all campaign has to build a general one for the first time**, which is a fitting last exam and is a stated cost rather than a difficulty tint. |
| - | - **The gallery is the campaign's longest stationary interaction**, because the governor's positions take time to set. That is what makes the **Carrier** the right body here: a player who arrived by the weir carrying batteries for it is carrying exactly what a Carrier walks to, and the counterplay — spend it, or decoy it with a planted battery — has to be decided before the lever is touched, not during. |
| - | - **Grounders are the district's own argument against complacency.** They ground a powered cable run and darken its beacon; here the run that feeds the gallery is the one the player chose in §3, so a Grounder can close the gallery door behind them. **Placement proposal for Combat:** at most one, and only after the player has set a race — the threat should be that a plan expires, not that the finale is arbitrary. |
| - | - **Anchors on the weir apron and Crusts in the spill channel** are the two that make the wet approach a different problem from the dry one, without either approach needing a role the other does not have. |
| - | - **Sparks are the reason the weir approach is not simply the easy one.** Killing in the reservoir's shallows energises connected water for a moment, and at the weir the connected water is what the player is standing in. |
| - | - **One open item for Combat, not a request.** DES104 §3.1 gives the Lock Flight a **floater** carried by flowing water, with attraction yielding to flow. The spill channel here assumes that rule, because a race that moves bodies is what makes opening a race a choice. CMB101's roster does not contain a flow-carried role. **Either the floater is Combat's to adopt, or this district's spill channel moves nothing and §3's third option loses its sweetener** — the decision still stands, it is just less generous. Combat and the lead should settle which; this page does not need it resolved to work. |
| - | |
| - | ## 9. Asset reuse and gaps |
| - | |
| - | **Reused:** races, weirs, water planes and wet/dry tinting, drums and shafts, cable, lamps, beacons, a three-position panel, hand-worked gates, boards and tallies, walkway and gallery props, dock props, the humanoid mass. |
| - | |
| - | **Genuine gaps, marked and not filled. No free asset has been located, checked or licensed for any of these, and nothing here authorises creating one** ([Brief D009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief)). |
| - | |
| - | - **A large reservoir and dam exterior.** The campaign's biggest single art ask, and the only district that cannot be dressed out of the pumping district's kit. |
| - | - **The governor** as an oversized multi-position machine with per-district state readable at a glance. It is a panel, but it is the panel the whole campaign has been building toward, and dressing it as an ordinary one would undersell the ending. |
| - | - **Conditional, and attached to a decision the owner has not yet made:** one human presence, if Answer B is chosen (§7). |
| - | |
| - | **A cheaper alternative, recorded now.** If the reservoir exterior is out of reach, the district can be staged entirely *inside* the works — gallery, race heads and a weir seen through an opening — which keeps every decision in §3 and §4 and loses the one view the finale would most want. I would fight for the view and I would not fight for it at the cost of the district. |
| - | |
| - | --- |
| - | |
| - | ## 10. Open questions and dependencies |
| - | |
| - | - **[REV104-1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) — RESOLVED.** The shared contract [r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) now states it as a rule: the drum makes the moment, the trunk permits it; Stop stops the drum, a dark bank position withholds the trunk, either alone stops announced surges. **Stop** and **Keep** in §4 rest on ratified text rather than on an assumption, which was the single ruling this page most needed. |
| - | - **[REV104-4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) — RESOLVED, and it landed in this district.** The contract's fixed-power source is the head-works' store of harvested charge, distributed from a switch-house that is now part of this district's ground (§2). D024 adopts Answer A provisionally, so §7's coupling between the answer and the power source is settled rather than open — and §7's note about what Answer B would cost stands, because D024 is marked provisional. |
| - | - **World (WLD103).** §6's redundant clue form; the tally room's contents; the campaign's answer. All proposals in their domain, and this district is built to survive their replacement. |
| - | - **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. |
| - | - **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. |
| - | - **A second withdrawal, r5.** r4 wrote that Stop leaves every district's beacon flashing on the cadence over an empty supply — "the empty flash everywhere". The contract has ruled otherwise and named this page in doing so, and the ruling is better than what I wrote for a reason worth keeping: an empty flash is *a dispatch that was permitted and not supplied*, so it cannot also be the image of a world where nothing is permitted. Conflating the two would have cost the Collector's lever its meaning. Stop's image is dark boards and trickles. |
| - | - **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. |