**Current owner direction — 2026-09-08.** Cooperative rescue is accepted only while it avoids becoming a long escort quest. A long continuous escort is no longer an eligible alternative under that direction. Death now triggers a station shift; the ordering of shift, current-refuge handling and final abort is still to be specified. Old references to a shipward refuge or adjoining vestibule do not guarantee unchanged reachability after a shift. Global survivor loss remains undecided. [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief).
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**Current owner direction — 2026-09-08.** Cooperative rescue is accepted only while it avoids becoming a long escort quest. A long continuous escort is no longer an eligible alternative under that direction. Death now triggers a station shift. The ordering of shift, current-refuge handling and final abort is answered **conditionally** by the accepted candidate in [Death Shift and Rescue Continuity](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Death%20Shift%20And%20Rescue%20Continuity), whose protected retreat is **new and pending owner reaction** — not an owner requirement and not implied by a quiet window, a short route or the carried-property rule. Old references to a shipward refuge or adjoining vestibule do not guarantee unchanged reachability after a shift. Global survivor loss remains undecided. [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief).
**Status:** a working proposal after focused review for the Dorn example in [Rescue and Home](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Rescue%20and%20Home). It is not a global rescue, colony-management or survivor-loss system. The physical Sent boundary and local continuation rules below support one authored scene; oxygen quantities and gameplay quality remain unvalidated.
@@ 34,8 34,8 @@
| State | What establishes it | Next action |
|---|---|---|
| Waiting | Dorn is in his current supported refuge | Postpone, explore, prepare or revise the route |
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| Prepared | Travel air connected and confirmed; next segment traversed; designated abort refuge stocked; route equipment ready | Request movement; Dorn confirms readiness and his preference |
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| In transfer | Dorn accepts and leaves | Hold the ordinary horde, operate controls, signal movement or call abort; only the original damaged room is permanently lost on opening |
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| Prepared | Travel air connected and confirmed **by Dorn**; next segment traversed this life; designated abort refuge stocked; route equipment ready; the current encounter quiet; and a retreat line armed that he can operate without the astronaut. The handed-over canister must read at or above the route's authored **full-attempt return mark** — the outward attempt plus the longest return from any committed segment, including cycling back out of an unclosed ship airlock — confirmed on the local preparation gauge | Request movement; Dorn confirms readiness and his preference. An under-supplied request refuses before the refuge door opens |
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| In transfer | Dorn accepts and leaves | Hold the ordinary horde, operate controls, signal movement or call abort; only the original damaged room is permanently lost on opening. **Under the pending candidate**, if the astronaut dies here the armed line runs inside a bounded window in which creatures and hazards are frozen and cannot act on, block or damage him, and he reaches the named abort refuge before the shift |
| At abort refuge | An interrupted transfer reaches its designated destination | Defer under the bounded waiting rule, or bring fresh travel air, recheck the segment and stock the next abort destination |
| Sent / colony | Dorn is inside the ship and the airlock closes | His authored interpretation and proposed canister-packing contribution become available aboard |
@@ 49,10 49,10 @@
| Intermediate interruption | Original room remains vented if already opened; Dorn reaches the prepared shipward refuge. Travel emergency margin and its waiting reserve are committed/spent | Prepare the next segment with fresh travel air and its designated reserve; recover installed or staged equipment; or defer |
| Final-approach interruption | Dorn returns to the resealable last vestibule, unsent; the staged reserve supports waiting | Restock that same vestibule and supply fresh travel air before retrying the ship approach |
| Astronaut dies before a departure | Everything still carried returns aboard with the astronaut. Dorn remains in his current waiting refuge, not necessarily the original room | Resume rescue, recover committed equipment, or pursue another objective after revival |
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| Astronaut dies during transfer | Everything still carried returns aboard; Dorn reaches the designated abort refuge and is not retroactively Sent | Resume from that refuge with fresh supplies and route checks |
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| Astronaut dies during transfer | Everything still carried returns aboard. **This row was a local intention for this scene, never a universal rule.** Under the pending candidate the world outcome is that Dorn reaches the named abort refuge alive and unsent — and the astronaut does **not** learn it: the abort door leaves a closure tell on the local refuge control only, nothing is transmitted aboard, so his present state is unconfirmed knowledge until the player reaches that refuge again and observes it | Resume with fresh supplies and a fresh current-route check; the shift has made the old route historical |
| Astronaut dies after Sent | Dorn remains aboard; everything still carried returns with the astronaut | Continue with Dorn still part of the colony |
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Requests, radio confirmations and a crossing in progress never count as Sent. Failure is locally reversible but consumes travel air and staged reserves already spent and may leave installations committed. It creates no death-cache trip or replacement tax. This does not establish trust penalties, injury, permanent deterioration or universal immunity. A different rescue may need a separate explicit outcome and an owner decision about its stakes.
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Requests, radio confirmations and a crossing in progress never count as Sent, and neither does standing inside an **unclosed** ship airlock: that delivery freezes at the lethal instant, and under the candidate he cycles stationward on his own reserved margin rather than closing the airlock himself to finish the mission. If a final approach cannot supply that survivor-operated return, the marked margin and a local tell, the crossing is not eligible to begin and he waits. Failure is locally reversible but consumes travel air and staged reserves already spent and may leave installations committed. It creates no death-cache trip or replacement tax. This does not establish trust penalties, injury, permanent deterioration or universal immunity. A different rescue may need a separate explicit outcome and an owner decision about its stakes.
