2026-09-06 17:38:58
Anonymous:
WLD102 r8: PMR001 items 1, 2, 5 under PM baseline D013 (panel selects intake; entered surges follow nearest energised beacon district-wide; no glow/split); textual map; crowd holding/thinning/proximity; five-part price of the panel incl. mid-surge switch; dock-choice consequence re-derived; two required scenes; hatch closure + ladder exit; culvert = gravity drain; motive without upkeep; title kept; three tiers and ending; sight-limited model set aside; In review, design only
hold the flood/world and mystery.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — World and Mystery
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**WLD101 · r7 · 2026-09-06 14:29 UTC · In review** — supersedes [r6](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=4302067), [r5](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=33dc2ae), r4 e54d6a3, r3 c92838c, r2 438f1bf, r1 01378d, all in page history. Author: World and Mystery Designer. Handoff: Lead (DES102), Independent Design Critic (DES102 review), PM. PM accepts.
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**WLD102 · r8 · 2026-09-06 14:38 UTC · In review** — the routing/topology/mystery correction (PMR001 items 1 and 2) and the motive/ending contribution (item 5), written to PM's reversible DES102 baseline (Brief D013). Author: World and Mystery Designer. Handoff: canonical Lead (D014) for DES102; PM. WLD101 was accepted in PMR001 as a concept contribution (at [r6 4302067](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=4302067)); [r7 fa3eb1b](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=fa3eb1b) and earlier revisions are page history.
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**Owner requirements.** Survivorlike; exploration, experimentation, mystery; the Flood is massed enemies (Brief D011); Unity; Steam; assume nothing exists. Design only until the owner explicitly authorizes development after reviewing the design document. No AI-generated art; prefer verified free assets; purchases and rare authored assets need owner approval. This revision creates no assets, code, prototypes, or tests.
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**Owner requirements.** Survivorlike; exploration, experimentation, mystery; the Flood is massed enemies (Brief D011); Unity; Steam; assume nothing exists; "Hold the Flood" is the owner's title. Design only until the owner explicitly authorizes development after reviewing the design document (D007). No AI-generated art; prefer verified free assets; purchases and rare authored assets need owner approval. This revision creates no assets, code, prototypes, or tests. Bioelectric enemies, the drowned district, the small colony, and every rule below are proposals, not owner approvals (D013).
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**Sources.** Reread 14:29 UTC: [Hub f55be6b](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood?revision=f55be6b) (PM 75c3c3c: owner-approved hourly PM review; notification policy), [Brief a449b2](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=a449b2), [Tasks 254220](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=254220), [Design r4 42f6533](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design?revision=42f6533) (notes folded into the body; glossary; beacon-sight rule; asks this role to align W1 and the r5 topology sentence), [Design Review r6 a892274](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=a892274) (N12 = Q22, Finding 2 conditionally re-opened until W1 and W2 agree; N13 = Q23; N14 pump-upkeep fiction; N15, N16), [Clarity Questions r2 b0658c3](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions?revision=b0658c3) (outside reader, not on the recorded Team; Q22 correctly found a contradiction inside r5; the lead has marked Q7/Q8 answered consistently with r6), [Wiki Conventions fd16a26](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Wiki%20Conventions?revision=fd16a26) (unrecorded "wiki editor"; taken as advice, notably one fact in one place). PM Reviews and Glossary pages do not exist yet. OWN101 still open. No comparative research and no asset verification. Setting, enemy identity, and every mechanic below remain proposals. PM has not yet recorded a working direction (OWN101 open); no Design Document page exists. No comparative research and no asset verification. Setting, enemy identity, and every mechanic below remain proposals.
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**Sources.** Reread 14:38 UTC: [Brief 3cf14c7](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=3cf14c7) (D013 provisional A, D014 canonical lead), [Tasks ee938e6](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=ee938e6) (PMR001; WLD102 Ready), [Design r5 b030c98](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design?revision=b030c98), [Design Review r6 a892274](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=a892274), [Clarity Questions 22d1476](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions?revision=22d1476), [Glossary f1bf1f4](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary?revision=f1bf1f4). The [PM Reviews](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews) page cited by PMR001 still returned 404 at this reread. No comparative research and no asset verification.
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**Revision history.** r1: the false-refuge chain and W1–W3 in a setting-neutral relay district. r2: mapped onto DES101 A; withdrew r1's clock-freezing observation view for S1–S3. r3: answered the lead's integration note and REV101 r1 (W1 dispatch-instant, W4 turned signs, unlabelled panel with forecast marker, reachable answer, four-part cost of diversion). r4: answered REV101 r2 and integration note 2 (W1 split into intake and path; sluice as Off intake; second dock). **r5:** fixes REV101 N10, the one open item on this page: W1's path clause said *pulsing*, which is undefined between dispatches; it now says *energised*, evaluated continuously, and states what a surge does with no energised beacon reachable. r5 also places each branch's beacon at its far end from the docks and gives the three-line no-panel extraction trace the critic asked DES102 to show, because it tests this page's "withdrawal never requires solving this" claim. Everything else is r4 text. **r6:** adds one section of plain-language definitions and in-fiction answers for the Clarity Questions that touch this page's words and narrative meaning (Q4, Q7, Q8, Q9, Q13, Q14), written so the owner-facing document can lift them; replaces "dry without payment" with plain wording in the topology. No rule changed. **r7:** adopts the lead's beacon-sight reading for Clarity Q22 / REV101 N12, the contradiction r5 created between W2 and its own topology sentence: the panel is a planning tool and never moves a surge that has arrived; only a beacon carried into a surge's sight does. W1 and the topology are amended; the yard intake is the channel beside the pump hall (Q23 / N13); cost of diversion (4) reworded to match. The dispatch/forecast fiction for Q7/Q8 stands as the shared text; duplicate word definitions are replaced by a link to Design's glossary; the pump-upkeep sentence is aligned with the colony rules (N14).
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**What r8 does.** PMR001 chose the simpler routing model over the sight-limited one that r7 and Design r4–r5 had adopted: **the panel alone selects the intake at dispatch; after entry every surge continuously follows the nearest reachable energised beacon, district-wide.** r8 rewrites W1/W2, the map, the chain, the price of the panel, and both required scenes under exactly that model, removing r7's glow-range and split-surge text. It reconciles the culvert account (no pump; item 6), re-derives the dock-choice consequence (item 2), and supplies the motive, tiers, and ending without upkeep and without making the Flood water (item 5). Word definitions stay in [Design's glossary](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design#words-used-below); the wiki editor's Glossary mirrors it. The sight-limited model is recorded once, at the end, as a set-aside alternative.
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## World rules — proposal for DES102, aligned to the spine rule
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## The district — textual map (proposal)
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DES101 r2 states one spine rule (conduction, power, attraction, charge). W1–W4 sit inside its *attraction* clause; the wording below is what this page asks DES102 to carry.
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North is the interior; the docks are south. `=` raised and dry, `~` shallow water, `-` the culvert (a gravity drain: dry on its own, never pumped, never paid for).
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- **W1 — Attraction (revised r7, Q22 / N12).** An energised beacon is lit steady, shows its reach as a glow, and pulses at each dispatch. *Intake:* a surge enters by the fixed beacon that pulses at the dispatch instant; the panel alone decides which fixed beacon is energised (*Causeway*, *Yard*, or *Off*: none lit, so the surge uses the sluice). If two fixed beacons pulse at one dispatch (a coil discharge can light a second branch across a dispatch), the surge splits and the forecast shows both. *Path:* after entry, a surge moves toward the nearest lit beacon *within its sight* (inside its glow), re-evaluated continuously; with none in sight it spreads along the branch it entered (the interior route, for the sluice). The fixed beacons stand at the far ends of different branches, out of each other's sight, so **switching the panel never moves a surge that has already arrived**; darkening its beacon lets it spread along its own branch, and only a beacon carried lit into its sight pulls it anywhere else. A planted beacon therefore changes where a surge goes, never where it enters. The panel needs no item, rack space, resource, or journal flag; what it costs is stated under Finding 2 below.
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- **W2 — Commitment (reworded r7, N12).** A dispatched surge keeps its intake until it arrives. Re-routing at the panel changes the intake only of surges not yet dispatched; it never teleports enemies, cancels a pursuit, or pulls an entered surge toward the newly lit branch, because the fixed beacons are out of each other's sight. Its one effect on an entered surge is to darken the beacon holding it, after which that surge spreads along its own branch. The forecast shows each pending surge's intake as a map marker that moves the moment the panel changes; a dispatched surge shows a locked marker.
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- **W3 — Stable evidence.** Wiring, signs, wear marks, and signal behaviour are identical on every expedition. Water states, pumps, enemies, loose salvage, and surge timing may vary or reset (DES101 r2 persistence list) and can change the best route, never the rule.
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- **W4 — Turned signs.** Every refuge sign in the district that has been turned faces the way the last crew actually went. First seen in the culvert (facing the yard); confirmed by the reachable answer below; thereafter a navigation clue wherever the prop recurs. Same sign asset, rotated. Under W3 it never changes.
[Dock D1] causeway dock (held dry by default) [Dock D2] yard dock (flooded by default; wet, conducts)
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```
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**Topology (one statement; r4 adds the sluice and the second dock for N3 and N4).** Two docks at the district's rim: the *causeway dock*, held dry by default, and the *yard dock*, flooded by default and unusable until the colony's pump holds it dry instead (DES101 r2's exclusive choice; while flooded it is wet ground and therefore conducts). Between them the raised dry causeway, signed as the evacuation route, beacon live by default; the culvert beneath it, dry on its own (no bundle has to be spent on a pump to keep it dry), with cart wear and a turned sign; the pump hall and salvage yard beside a shallow channel, beacon dark, hatch on the yard circuit. At the district's low end, where the two branches meet, the *sluice*: the Flood's own way in, no beacon, opening straight onto the interior route. Each branch's beacon stands at its far end from the docks: the causeway beacon at the causeway's interior end, the yard beacon at the pump hall, where the shallow channel enters the yard, so a surge arriving by the yard stands in water (Q23). A surge enters beside its beacon and, while that beacon stays lit, holds there (W1 *path*), so the overrun "refuge" is the causeway's interior end and the dock end stays passable. The panel never moves an arrived surge (Q22): darken its beacon and it spreads along its own branch; only a lit beacon carried into its sight draws it elsewhere. Three intakes: Causeway, Yard, and the sluice when the panel is Off. Panel resets to *Causeway*; the first dispatch follows a short scouting interval the lead sets.
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Powered devices, one per branch, on that branch's circuit: **G**, the interior gate at the causeway's far end; **H**, the pump-hall hatch. The relay's output runs from P to B1 or B2; the same circuit feeds G or H. Shelters (S2 hard stops): D1, D2 when dry, R1, R2. The ladder from the hall's floor to R2 is unpowered and always usable; it is the hall's recoverable exit.
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**No-panel extraction trace (for DES102's written expedition; illustration, not a playtest).** First expedition, panel untouched on *Causeway*, causeway dock held dry. Surge 3 enters at the causeway's interior end and holds at its lit beacon. The player at the yard takes the culvert back under the causeway to its dock-side exit, then the short open stretch to the dock, an S2 hard stop. Nothing on that route is on the surge's path unless the player lit something else. So "withdrawal never requires solving this" holds on paper by construction, not by timing; whether the open stretch is comfortable is empirical.
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## World rules — proposal for DES102, PM baseline
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*Off* therefore has a place and a price: both branches stay quiet, both hatches stay shut, and the surge pours onto the interior route, which is where the reachable answer's inked route and W4's signs lead. A's "surges enter through different passages" is preserved without a fourth mechanism.
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- **W1 — Attraction.** *Intake:* at each dispatch the relay fires one pulse down the branch the panel selects: *Causeway* (B1 pulses, the surge enters at I1), *Yard* (B2, I2), or *Off* (no pulse; the surge enters at the sluice). Only the relay pulses. A beacon lit by local current (a coil discharge into a channel, or a valve joining the two branches' water) glows steady and lures, but never pulses and never changes the next intake: the relay's output is a separate line from the lamp. *Path:* after entry a surge moves continuously toward the nearest reachable energised beacon anywhere in the district, fixed or planted, panel-lit or coil-lit; with none reachable it spreads along the branch it is in (from the sluice, along the interior route and then both branches). The panel needs no item, slot, resource, or notebook flag; what it costs is stated under "The price of the panel".
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- **W2 — Commitment (entrance only).** A dispatched surge keeps its intake: nothing changes where it came in, and nothing teleports it. Switching the panel changes which beacons are lit, and therefore where every entered surge walks next. The forecast shows the next dispatch's intake as a map marker that moves the moment the panel changes, a locked marker for a surge already dispatched, and each entered surge's current target beacon.
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- **W3 — Stable evidence.** Wiring, signs, wear marks, and signal behaviour are identical on every expedition. Water states, enemies, loose salvage, and surge timing may vary or reset and can change the best route, never the rule.
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- **W4 — Turned signs.** Every refuge sign that has been turned faces the way the last crew went; first seen in the culvert facing the yard; confirmed by the tally board; thereafter a navigation clue wherever the sign recurs. One sign asset, rotated.
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## Illustrative design — DESIGNER SPOILERS: the false refuge
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**How a surge behaves once it has arrived (item 2).** It gathers around its target beacon and holds there while that beacon stays lit and no lit beacon is nearer; each surge is larger, so the held crowd's radius grows, and by surge 3 the causeway's far end or the channel mouth is full. Two things pull organisms out of the crowd: **proximity** (any organism within a short radius of the surveyor pursues the surveyor regardless of beacons, which is what the cutter fires at) and **thinning** (over a quiet interval the crowd drifts outward along its branch and into the water as stragglers, so "quiet" means spread thin, not gone; the next surge re-concentrates it). A surge whose beacon goes dark spreads along its branch immediately, both ways. What creates survival decisions while a crowd holds: the hatch, the gate, the richest deposits, and the motes all sit at the far ends where the crowd is; harvesting or opening anything means working at the crowd's edge inside its proximity radius, or waiting for thinning and losing surge time.
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Proposed play, not a playtest. Light convention throughout: steady = powered, pulsing = dispatching, dark = unpowered.
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## The price of the panel (item 1; replaces "Cost of diversion")
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| Step | Evidence, inference, consequence |
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| --- | --- |
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| Notice | From the dock: the causeway beacon is lit steady. At the first dispatch it pulses and the surge visibly turns onto the causeway. Visual first, sound supplements. Repeats every expedition (W3). |
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| Compare | The yard beacon is dark and the pump-hall hatch is shut. In the culvert under the crowded causeway: cart wear leading toward the yard, and a refuge sign turned to face the yard. Each inspectable in three or four lines. |
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| Understand | Cabling runs from the panel to both beacons and on to the yard hatch. The panel's three positions carry no words: each is a cable heading off toward its branch, plus a closed position. The forecast shows the next surge as a countdown and a marker at an intake. Switching moves the marker at once, so the rule can be learned two ways: watch a pulse and the surge's turn, or switch and watch the marker jump. After the first observed pulse-and-turn, the notebook records the observation in the player's own terms ("the surge came in by the pulsing beacon"). No label states the rule. |
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| Infer | Power is both key and lure: the lit branch is where doors open and where the Flood is sent. The "refuge" sign marks where surges go, not where it is safe. Someone kept the culvert and the yard in use by leaving the panel on *Causeway*. |
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| Experiment | Set *Yard*. The yard beacon goes steady, the hatch opens, the forecast marker moves to the yard intake with the countdown still running. Retreat to a shelter or stay; watch the dispatch. *Off* darkens both branches, shuts both hatches, and moves the marker to the sluice. |
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| Discover | The next surge enters through the yard. The surge already on the causeway stays there (W2). The pump hall is open — and the surge is coming to it. Reaching the answer below costs exactly the exposure the critic asked for. |
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| Change later play | Each of the three dispatches reopens the choice: keep *Causeway* and haul through the culvert to a quiet, closed yard; set *Yard* to open the hall and walk the causeway into the interior while the surge is elsewhere; set *Off* to keep both branches quiet and give up the interior; or invite the surge to the yard channel on purpose (the lead's electrician). Turned signs (W4) now read as a route. |
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Switching is free of resources and available on expedition one. It is paid, visibly, five ways:
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**The reachable answer (spoiler; proposal).** Inside the pump hall, on the wall beside the one pump still running (the one that keeps the culvert dry): a crew tally board. Rows of marks per surge sent to the causeway; a last row with one mark to the yard and a line drawn under it; beside it a district plan with the refuge signs crossed out and a route inked through the culvert into the interior. Three or four inspectable lines carry it: the last crew fed the evacuation route to keep working the yard, turned the signs to mark their own way out, and left the panel on *Causeway* for whoever came after. Small, reachable, and it changes action: the inked route and W4 now point into the interior. What they went in for stays unanswered in the minimum scope; that is the spine of later mysteries, not a catalogue.
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1. **Exposure.** P stands in the open at the causeway head, a dash from D1 and R1. Switching with the countdown near zero means being on, or next to, the branch you just lit.
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2. **Invitation.** The lit branch is the only one whose device (G or H) is open, and it is where the next dispatch enters. The branch you want open is the branch the next surge comes to.
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3. **The mid-surge switch moves the crowd, and that is its price.** A switch does buy something this surge: every entered surge walks to the new light. Its cost is the route it takes and the door that shuts. Causeway to Yard: the crowd at B1 leaves the far end, crosses the interior junction below the sluice, and comes down the channel to B2; the interior route is occupied while it crosses; G shuts behind it, so anyone inside the interior returns by the yard. Yard to Causeway: the mirror. Off darkens both: the crowd spreads along its branch, both ways, toward the dock as much as the interior, and both devices shut. The forecast shows each surge's new target the moment you switch, so the price is readable before the crowd moves.
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4. **The held dock.** Extraction is threatened by two things only: a planted beacon lit near a dock, or a dark branch with a crowd in it spreading toward the dock. So the branch of the held dock must stay lit whenever a surge is in it, which is also what keeps that branch hot. **Dock-choice consequence (re-derived):** holding the causeway dock means the causeway is your safe default and the yard is where you send trouble; holding the yard dock means the yard must stay lit through any surge you send there, so the hall's crowd is between you and nothing, but Off and Causeway are both dangerous the moment a surge is in the yard. The colony choice decides which branch you can never afford to darken.
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5. **Commitment.** The intake is fixed at dispatch; a switch after dispatch changes where the surge goes after it enters, never where it enters, so the forecast's locked marker stays true.
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**Knowledge gate vs item/stat gate.** The panel is usable on expedition one; what changes is knowing what it does and when to use it. An uninformed player can still survive the causeway by skill; an informed player decides where the pressure goes and which doors open. Equipment changes how well a choice can be exploited, never whether it can be made.
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**Where the coil fits.** A coil discharged into the yard channel lights B2 and opens H for a few seconds without touching the panel: a lure and a key, not an intake. Any crowd nearer to B2 than to its own lit beacon starts toward it; the panel's next intake is unchanged. This is the separation PMR001 asked for: lamps can be lit from anywhere the water reaches; only the relay's selected line pulses.
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**Fair recovery.** Death: rescue without cargo (A); notebook, map, and observed facts persist; no deduction is granted unearned. Missed clue: the causeway beacon is steady on every arrival and pulses every dispatch; the culvert is visible from the yard side too; the marker jump is a second, independent way in. Optional hints escalate from "the two beacons differ" to "switch, then watch the forecast marker". Late switch: the locked marker explains why nothing changed. Switching costs no resource, but it is never without consequence (below). Withdrawal never requires solving this.
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## Illustrative design — DESIGNER SPOILERS: the false refuge under the PM baseline
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## Cost of diversion — answering REV101 Finding 2
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Proposed play, not a playtest. Light convention: steady = powered, pulsing = the relay dispatching, dark = unpowered.
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The critic's question: does the beacon choose the entrance of an announced surge, or reroute groups that have arrived? **Answer: the panel chooses the intake of the next announced surge, at the dispatch instant; nothing moves a surge that has arrived except a lit beacon carried into its sight (W1 *path*).** A's surge schedule stays the pressure; the player steers where it lands. Under the spine rule the switch is free of resources but paid four ways, all readable before the switch: (1) the panel stands in the open, a dash from the nearest shelter, and switching with a countdown near zero means being on the branch you just lit; (2) energising a branch is the only way to open its hatches, so the branch you want to explore is the branch the next surge enters; (3) committed surges do not turn back, so a diversion made after dispatch buys nothing this surge; (4) a surge sent into the held dock's branch sits on the extraction route: keep its beacon lit and it holds at the far end; darken it and it spreads along that branch toward the dock; the forecast marker shows which branch before the switch. "Gather the yard first, then divert" still works once, for a closed yard: the hall's hatch, the salvage behind it, and the answer above all sit on the lit branch. **The mid-surge switch, argued rather than inherited (N12):** a panic switch buys no rescue, because the panel cannot pull an entered surge anywhere; it darkens the beacon that was holding that surge at the far end, so the surge spreads along the branch you are standing in, while the other branch's hatch opens and its beacon invites the next dispatch there. Costs (1), (2) and (4) apply to it unchanged, and it adds a fifth: you release what was held. Under this reading the panel remains a planning tool between surges, and Finding 2 stays closed on this page. Whether these costs are heavy enough is empirical; that they exist and are visible is the design claim.
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| Step | Evidence, inference, consequence |
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| --- | --- |
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| Notice | From D1: B1 is lit steady. At the first dispatch B1 pulses and the surge visibly gathers at the causeway's far end around it. Repeats every expedition (W3). |
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| Compare | B2 is dark; H is shut. In the culvert under the crowded causeway: cart wear toward the yard and a refuge sign turned to face the yard. Three or four inspectable lines each. |
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| Understand | Cabling runs from P to B1 and on to G, and from P to B2 and on to H. P's three positions carry no words: two cable headings and a closed position. The forecast shows a countdown, an intake marker, and each entered surge's target. Switching moves the intake marker at once, and moves the crowd: the rule can be learned by watching a dispatch, or by switching and watching both the marker and the crowd respond. The notebook records what was seen, in the player's own words. |
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| Infer | Power is key and lure at once: the lit branch is where a door opens, where the next surge enters, and where every crowd walks. The refuge sign marks where the Flood is sent. Someone kept the culvert and the yard in use by leaving the panel on Causeway. |
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| Experiment | Set Yard. B2 lights, H opens, G shuts, the intake marker jumps to I2 with the countdown running, and the crowd at B1 begins across the junction toward B2. Retreat to R1 or D1 and watch, or move now. Off instead darkens both and moves the marker to the sluice. |
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| Discover | The causeway's far end empties as the crowd crosses; the next dispatch enters at the channel mouth. The hall is open, and both the old crowd and the new surge are coming to it. Reaching the answer below costs exactly that. |
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| Change later play | Each dispatch reopens the choice: keep Causeway and haul through the culvert to a dark, closed yard; set Yard early, before any crowd exists, to walk the causeway into the interior through G while the yard is hot; or set Yard with a crowd already at B1 to clear the causeway at the cost of the interior route and the hall. Turned signs (W4) now read as a route. |
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## Shelter and observation rules — S1 to S3 (adopted by DES101 r2)
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**The reachable answer (spoiler; proposal).** Inside the pump hall, beside the hall's dead pump, a crew tally board: rows of marks per surge sent to the causeway; a last row with one mark to the yard and a line under it; a district plan with the refuge signs crossed out and a route inked through the culvert to the interior. The last crew fed the evacuation route to keep working the yard, turned the signs to mark their own way, and left the panel on Causeway for whoever came after. It changes action: the inked route and W4 point into the interior.
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- **S1 Notebook** — full pause; shows only what has been observed; no new evidence; experiments do not advance.
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- **S2 Raised shelter (both docks included when dry)** — enemies cannot enter or spawn; the surge clock runs; repacking allowed; the district stays visible, so watching a dispatch from a shelter is the observation position and costs surge time.
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- **S3 Live evidence** — new clues, panel switches, and their verification happen in the running world.
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**Knowledge gate, not item gate.** The panel works on expedition one; what changes is knowing what it does. Loadouts change how well a choice can be exploited, never whether it can be made.
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## Spine rule × W1–W4 — items for DES102
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**Fair recovery.** Death: rescue without cargo; notebook, map, and observed facts persist; no deduction is granted. Missed clue: B1 is lit on every arrival and pulses every dispatch; the culvert is visible from the yard bank; the marker-and-crowd response to a switch is an independent second path. Hints escalate from "the two beacons differ" to "switch, then watch the forecast and the crowd". Withdrawal never requires solving this (scene 1).
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**Confirmation (r3, unchanged).** *Notice*, *Compare*, and *Understand* survive with steady = powered, pulsing = dispatching, dark = unpowered as the only light convention; the yard hatch on the beacon circuit is accepted.
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## Two required scenes (item 2; illustrations, not playtests)
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1. **Two pulsing beacons (REV101 N1; replaces r3 item 1).** r3 proposed that a planted beacon overrides the panel's intake choice; the lead accepted it under constraints. r4 withdrew that in favour of the critic's split, now written into W1: the panel alone chooses the intake; a planted beacon changes only the path a surge takes after entry, and only within its own glow (r7). Reasons: the forecast marker then always tells the truth, so the false-refuge chain's fairness does not depend on where a shepherd stands; Finding 2 stays closed, because no build can move the intake for free; and the shepherd gets a verb of its own, pulling an entered surge off a corridor, instead of a second copy of the panel. The lead's rack constraint from integration note 2 (a battery powers one module at a time) is independent of this and still useful for Finding 3.
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2. **Portable beacon light.** Steady while powered, pulsing only at a dispatch; accepted by the lead for DES102.
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3. **Dispatch-instant intake, continuous sight-limited path (N10, Q22 / N12).** Intake is decided at the dispatch instant; path is re-evaluated continuously toward the nearest lit beacon in sight (W1). Continuous was chosen over per-dispatch because a standing lure reads from the light convention itself (steady = lure, glow = reach) and gives the shepherd persistent, counterable behaviour (darken the beacon, the pull stops); sight-limited was chosen over district-wide so that the panel stays a planning tool between surges rather than a lever pulled mid-emergency, which is the reading W2, cost (3) and "does not turn back" always assumed. With this, N12's condition is met and Finding 2 stays closed on this page. The lead's coil case (a dispatch pulse inside a discharge window fires the beacon) still depends on the dispatch-instant intake rule; the forecast countdown makes it fair.
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4. **Off (REV101 N4).** Placed: the sluice, above. Not a safe default; it trades both branches' quiet for the interior route.
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5. **Persistence.** Water states, pumps, charge, and which dock is flooded reset or persist as DES101 r2 lists; wiring, signs, wear, and W4's turned signs never change. No conflict with W3.
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6. **N5 and N6, resolved in r3 before the critic's r2.** r3 removed r2's "coil is an optional extension" wording (N5): the false-refuge chain never *requires* the coil (culvert dry without payment; panel needs no item), and it never called the spine optional. r3 also dropped this page's build triad in favour of the lead's electrician / hauler / shepherd (N6). N2 (what sheds charge) is the lead's.
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**Scene 1 — untouched panel, first expedition, retreat.** Panel on Causeway, D1 held. Surge 3 enters at I1 and gathers at B1, the far north end. The surveyor, at the yard deposits, takes X2 into the culvert, walks south under the causeway to X1, crosses the short open stretch to D1, a hard stop. Nothing on that route is a beacon, so no crowd is drawn along it; only stragglers thinned from surge 2 and organisms inside proximity radius are met. The claim "withdrawal never requires solving this" holds by construction under this model too; the open stretch is where it will be felt, which is empirical.
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**Under B, The Listening Below.** W1–W4 still hold with beacon = signal source and surge = a swarm released at a marked threshold; the sluice becomes the archive's own breach. PM's choice is not constrained by this page.
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**Scene 2 — inside the pump hall when power ends, then when the next surge arrives.** The surveyor set Yard, crossed to the hall while the crowd was still crossing the junction, and is reading the tally board. *Power ends* (the panel is switched to Causeway or Off by the surveyor's own earlier plan, or a coil-opened H times out): H shuts with the surveyor inside. Rule: **a hatch closes when its branch loses power; anyone inside is shut in, and every hall has an unpowered exit** — here the ladder to R2, the dry ledge beside the channel, a shelter. Climb, wait, and descend to the yard bank or return by X2. No mystery solution is needed to leave. *The next surge arrives* with Yard still lit: it enters at I2 and gathers in the channel mouth in front of the hall, standing in water. From inside, the surveyor is behind H with the crowd outside it. Choices: leave by the ladder to R2 and along the bank inside the crowd's proximity radius; wait for thinning and lose surge time; or, with a coil and insulation, go down to the channel's edge and discharge, which is the electrician's whole reason for being there. Switching the panel from inside is impossible, because P is at the causeway head.
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## Expression, resources, colony — A terms, proposal
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## Motive, tiers, ending (item 5; proposals for owner judgment)
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The lead's three sketches sit on the panel decision; this page adds nothing to the rack. **Resources:** the panel decides which branch is open and hot this expedition; three dispatches give three decisions. **Colony:** which dock the pump holds dry inverts which panel setting threatens extraction, so a colony choice changes the value of a known rule instead of adding one; the forecast relay repair shows the first intake before departure. Nothing here requires more colony than that.
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**Motive, no upkeep.** The colony is a dozen people on the one dock the pump keeps dry. The pump runs on salvage already banked; nothing is charged per expedition, there is no decay between sessions, and repeated failed expeditions lose only their own cargo. What salvage buys is change: a dock held dry instead of the other, a workshop, the forecast relay, and the ending itself. A colony that stops hauling is not drowned; it is stuck. The surveyor goes in because the crew before them went in and did not come back, and because the district's own machinery is what is sending the Flood at the refuge route.
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**Replay after the answer.** The question closes; the decision does not. The same three dispatches, the same panel, and a different rack, cargo target, and held dock make the routing choice fresh each expedition. Diverting never creates extra enemies or rewards.
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**The title.** "Hold the Flood" is the owner's title and is kept. In A it means holding the enemy mass off the refuge: the dock, the causeway signed as the way out, and eventually the district. The pump holds water; the panel, the beacons, and the surveyor hold the Flood. The Flood is never water.
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## Plain words and fiction — answers to Clarity Questions that touch this page (proposals)
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**Three tiers on one district, each a recombination of the same rules.** *Tier 1, the false refuge* (designed above): learn that power is key and lure; the panel is the lever. *Tier 2, the interior, "what they went in for":* beyond G, the valve gallery, where the crew's second repurposing is found: valves that join the branches' water so a beacon can be lit from the other branch's current without the panel. Evidence: valves left in a pattern that matches the inked plan; a lamp in the gallery that lights when the yard channel is energised. Inference: joined water carries power, and therefore attraction, across the district. Experiment: join the channels and discharge, or light the yard, and watch which lamps and crowds respond. Consequence: a way to move crowds and open doors from inside the interior, where the panel cannot be reached, and the reason the crew could work with the causeway overrun. *Tier 3, the relay room, "what calls the Flood":* the timer itself, at the sluice's head. The final choice, each one an expedition-ending act with a different persistent district: **shut it** (no more dispatches; the Flood enters only by the sluice, unannounced: honest and harder), **fix it** (weld the panel to one branch for good: one dock safe forever, one branch lost), or **hold it** (leave it running and keep steering: the status quo, chosen). Free expeditions continue after any ending. None of this adds a machine family: valves, lamps, beacons, hatches, and the relay already exist.
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CLR101 was added by a reader who is not on the recorded Team; nothing in it is an assignment. Word definitions now live in one place, [Design's "Words used below"](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design#words-used-below) (one fact, one place); this page keeps only the fiction it owns, which Design r4 adopts as the shared text for the owner document. The lead has marked Q7 and Q8 answered on the Clarity page; this role marks Q22 there, citing this revision.
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**Early, middle, final (illustrative; the expedition count is a proposal, not coverage).** Early: the panel, the culvert, the yard; hauler loadouts; the first colony repair. Middle: G and the interior; valves; the held-dock switch; electrician and shepherd loadouts; the tally board and the inked route. Final: the relay room and the choice. A rough twelve to twenty expeditions is the lead's number to defend in DES102 against the content above; this page supplies the tiers, not the count.
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- **Dispatch (Q7).** The district's relay still runs on its old timer. At each scheduled tick it fires one pulse down whichever branch is powered; it was built to call crews and pumps to that branch, and the Flood answers it the same way. So a dispatch is a timer tick: nothing is sending the Flood on purpose now, and the last crew learned to point the pulse (the tally board). Automated, not haunted; once run by someone, now left running.
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- **Forecast (Q8).** The relay's own schedule, read from its board at the docks: when the next tick fires and which branch is powered, therefore where the surge will enter. The player has it because the district always had it; it is the Flood's timetable only because the Flood follows the pulse. The colony's "forecast relay" repair restores the dock's reader so the first tick is known before departure. The timer's cadence is the lead's to vary; W3 lets timing vary, never the rule.
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- **Why the player is there, and the title (Q13, Q14; proposal, not a setting lock).** The colony is the handful of people living on the one dock the pump keeps dry. The pump runs on what has already been banked; nothing is charged per expedition (N14: no upkeep, so a light, investigative return is never punished). The stake is long-run: every dock repair, every change of which dock is held, and the ending itself are paid in salvage, so a colony that stops hauling stops being able to change anything, and the district's last dry ground stays exactly as exposed as it is. "Hold the Flood" then reads literally: not fighting the mass, but holding the water and the mass off the one place that still stands, by learning to send them elsewhere. The surveyor's question, why the machinery was turned against the Flood, is how they learn to do that. If the owner prefers another title or motive, nothing else on this page depends on this paragraph.
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## Shelter and observation rules — S1 to S3 (unchanged)
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- **S1 Notebook** — full pause; shows only what has been observed; no new evidence.
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- **S2 Raised shelter (D1, D2 when dry, R1, R2)** — enemies cannot enter or spawn; the surge clock runs; repacking allowed; the district stays visible.
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- **S3 Live evidence** — new clues, panel switches, and their verification happen in the running world.
## Content and asset burden
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One district reused before and after discovery: two docks, causeway, culvert, yard, pump hall, sluice, one panel, two beacons, one hatch, a forecast overlay, a tally board and plan, and a handful of wear and sign props (the sign reused rotated for W4). Evidence types: a light state, a cable path, wear marks, a turned sign, an unlabelled three-position panel, a map marker. No compatible free asset set or terms are verified; plain-text inspection is the fallback for any prop that cannot be sourced. No custom asset creation is proposed; any would need owner approval first.
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One district reused before and after discovery: two docks, causeway, culvert, yard, pump hall, sluice, interior gallery and relay room, one panel, two fixed beacons, two devices, two ledges, a forecast overlay, a tally board and plan, valves, and wear and sign props (one sign rotated for W4). Evidence types: light state, cable path, wear, a turned sign, an unlabelled panel, a map marker, a crowd's visible target. No compatible free asset set or terms are verified; plain-text inspection is the fallback for props; readable live crowd cues are the lead's Finding 5 table. No custom asset creation is proposed.
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## Set aside, for the record
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r7 and Design r4–r5 used a sight-limited path (a beacon pulls only within its glow) so that the panel could never move an arrived surge. PMR001 set it aside for the simpler district-wide rule above, priced honestly. Both are reversible; if DES102's scenes turn out to need the panel to be a planning tool only, the sight-limited wording is in [r7](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=fa3eb1b). The lead's Design r5 still carries the sight-limited and split-surge wording and will need the same alignment.
## PM report
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Task WLD101; artifact World and Mystery r7 (supersedes r6 4302067). No canonical decisions changed. Changed proposal: W1 path is sight-limited (beacon glow), so the panel never moves an arrived surge — resolves Clarity Q22 / REV101 N12, a contradiction r5 introduced on this page and the reader found; topology aligned with Design r4 (yard intake is the channel, Q23 / N13); cost (4) reworded; pump-upkeep fiction aligned with the colony rules (N14); duplicate definitions replaced by a link to Design's glossary. Evidence: written analysis of Design 42f6533, Design Review a892274, and Clarity Questions b0658c3 against Brief a449b2; no player data. For PM, unchanged: Tasks 254220 still shows WLD101/DES101 "Ready" (Clarity Q15); the CLR101 author and the Wiki Conventions author are not on the recorded Team; PM Reviews (Hub) and Glossary (Conventions) pages do not exist. The Hub's notification policy is acknowledged. Risks, all unvalidated: the shepherd's standing lure may dominate corridor defence (its glow radius is the balance lever); *Off* as a trap for new players unless the forecast marker shows the sluice as clearly as the branches; the open stretch between culvert exit and dock is where the withdrawal claim will actually be felt. This page has no open items from REV101 r1–r4; this role posts nothing further until a DES102 draft exists, PM records a direction, or a PM review addresses this page. Next handoff: lead carries W1–W4 (with N10 fixed here), S1–S3, and the r5 topology into DES102; critic reviews DES102; this role checks the integrated draft for contradictions when it exists. **PM request:** record the working direction (A, B, or premise change) and whether W1–W4 and S1–S3 are carried into DES102 as candidate rules. No acceptance or development authorization is assumed.
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Task WLD102; artifact World and Mystery r8 (supersedes r7 fa3eb1b). No canonical decisions changed; D013's baseline applied. Delivered: items 1 and 2 (W1/W2 under PM's model; map; crowd behaviour; the five-part price of the panel; re-derived dock-choice consequence; both scenes; hatch-closure and recoverable-exit rule; culvert account unified as a gravity drain, item 6) and item 5 (motive without upkeep; title kept and related to holding enemies off the refuge; three tiers and an ending on the existing district). Evidence: written reasoning against Tasks ee938e6, Brief 3cf14c7, Design b030c98, Design Review a892274; no player data. Risks, unvalidated: a live-lever panel may dominate if the crossing route and shut door are too cheap; crowd thinning and proximity radius are balance levers with no numbers; readable crowd targets on a crowded screen. Handoff: canonical lead lifts W1–W4, the map, the price of the panel, and the scenes into DES102 (exact revision: this page's hash in the changelog); this role checks the integrated draft when it exists and will not revise this page again before that except for a PM correction. Note for PM: the PM Reviews page cited by PMR001 does not exist yet.
