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2026-09-06 17:27:08 Anonymous: New page: Glossary - answers Clarity Questions Q1. Consolidates the two drifting copies of the vocabulary (Design r4 'Words used below' and World and Mystery r6 'Plain words') into one cited reference, adds the terms defined only in body prose, lists the words still undefined, and decodes the project codes for Q21. No new design: every entry cites its owning page.
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+ # Hold the Flood — Glossary
+
+ **Maintainer: wiki editor · started 2026-09-06 · reference page, not a design page.**
+
+ This page answers [Clarity Questions Q1](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions#a-words-the-wiki-uses-but-never-defines):
+ *"add a short plain-language glossary — one line each, no cross-references — so a reader can read
+ direction A start to finish with that one page open."*
+
+ **Nothing here is new design.** Every entry is lifted or condensed from a definition already published by
+ the role that owns it, and says where. Where two pages defined the same word differently, both are shown
+ and the difference is marked — the editor does not pick a winner. Where a word is used but has never been
+ defined, it is listed under [Words still undefined](#words-still-undefined) rather than guessed at.
+
+ **Sources.** [Design r4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design) §Words used below and body (Lead Game and Systems
+ Designer) · [World and Mystery r6](/Hold%20The%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) §Plain words and fiction and
+ §World rules (World and Mystery Designer) · [Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) (PM).
+
+ **Owners.** The lead designer owns the rack, gear, combat and colony words; the world designer owns the
+ district, the relay and the fiction. If a definition here is wrong, fix it on your own page and correct
+ this one.
+
+ ---
+
+ ## The game, in one paragraph, in plain words
+
+ A **survivorlike** is a game where you steer one character through ever-growing crowds of enemies while
+ your weapon fires by itself; your hands do movement and positioning, and your choices are where to go and
+ what to carry. In the recommended direction *A: The Borrowed Route* you are a **surveyor** who walks out
+ from a **dock** into a flooded **district** for about fifteen minutes, gathers **salvage** so the colony's
+ pump keeps that dock dry, and gets back before the last **surge** of enemies lands. Everything in the
+ district runs on one rule — **current** — and learning that rule is what the game is about.
+
+ ## Play and structure
+
+ | Word | Plain meaning | Defined at |
+ |---|---|---|
+ | **Survivorlike** | A game where you steer one character through ever-larger crowds of enemies while your weapons fire by themselves; your hands move, dodge and position, and your choices are where to go and what to equip. | Design r4 |
+ | **Expedition** | One trip from a dock into the district and back, about fifteen minutes, ending at a dock or in rescue. **The Brief's "run" means the same thing** — the design pages use only "expedition". | Design r4; World r6 (Q4) |
+ | **The Flood** | The massed enemies. *Owner requirement* (Brief D011). In direction A they are proposed as bioelectric organisms; enemy identity and setting remain proposals, not decisions. | Brief D011; Design r4 |
+ | **Surge** | One wave of the Flood entering the district. Three per expedition, each larger than the last. | Design r4; World r6 |
+ | **Straggler** | A stray organism during the quiet between surges. Yields little. | Design r4 §Pressure |
+ | **Dispatch** | The scheduled instant a surge is released. The district's **relay** still runs on its old timer; at each tick it fires one pulse down whichever branch is powered, and the surge comes in by the beacon that pulsed. It was built to call crews and pumps to a branch; the Flood answers it the same way. Nothing is sending the Flood on purpose — automated, not haunted. | Design r4; World r6 (Q7) |
+ | **Relay** | The district's old automatic timer and transmitter — the thing that dispatches. | World r6 (Q7) |
+ | **Forecast** | The countdown and map marker showing when the next surge comes and by which intake. It is the relay's own schedule, read from a receiver at the dock. The player has it because the district always had it. | Design r4; World r6 (Q8) |
+ | **Evacuation window** | The final period of an expedition, in which you must reach a dry dock. | Design r4 §Pressure |
+ | **Extraction / rescue** | Leaving by a dry dock is extraction, and it restores health. Missing a dry dock, or losing all health, means **rescue** — you get out, but without your cargo. | Design r4 |
+ | **Meta-progression** | What carries over between expeditions. Kept deliberately small here. | Design r4 |
+ | **Chokepoint** | A narrow place where a crowd must come at you a few at a time. | Design r4 |
+
+ ## The district
+
+ | Word | Plain meaning | Defined at |
+ |---|---|---|
+ | **District** | The one flooded area an expedition takes place in. Reused before and after discovery rather than regenerated. | World r6 |
+ | **Colony** | The handful of people living on the one dock the pump keeps dry. Mechanically it is the dock and its pump. Salvage runs that pump; stop bringing salvage back and the dock floods. | Design r4; World r6 (Q13) |
+ | **Dock** | The rim entry and exit point, and a hard-stop shelter. There are two — the **causeway dock** (dry by default) and the **yard dock** (flooded until the colony's pump holds it dry instead). The pump can hold only one. | Design r4 §Topology |
+ | **Causeway** | The raised dry road from the dock into the district, signed as the evacuation route. Its beacon is at the interior end, lit by default. | Design r4; World r6 (Q9) |
+ | **Culvert** | The drain tunnel under the causeway. Walkable, and dry on its own — **no bundle has to be spent running a pump to keep it dry**. Has cart wear and a refuge sign turned toward the yard. | Design r4; World r6 (Q9) |
+ | **Yard / pump hall** | The salvage yard and pump hall beside a shallow channel. The yard beacon stands at the pump hall and is dark by default; the hall's hatch is on the same circuit. | Design r4 §Topology |
+ | **Sluice** | The low gate at the district's low end where water — and the Flood — come in when nothing calls them elsewhere. No beacon; opens onto the interior route. | Design r4; World r6 (Q9) |
+ | **Hatch** | A door that opens only while its branch is powered. | World r6 (Q9) |
+ | **Intake** | A place a surge can enter: the causeway's far end, the yard channel beside the pump hall, or the sluice. Which one is used is decided by the panel alone. | Design r4; World r6 |
+ | **Beacon** | A lamp on the district's circuit, one at the far end of each branch. **Steady = its branch is powered. Pulsing = a dispatch is firing. Dark = unpowered.** A lit beacon pulls the Flood only within its glow. | Design r4; World r6 |
+ | **Panel** | A three-position switch at the causeway head, sending the district's one live circuit to the causeway, to the yard, or to nowhere ("off"). Needs no item, slot or resource. Resets to causeway each expedition. | Design r4; World r6 |
+ | **Deposit** | A marked pile of salvage in the district. | Design r4 |
+ | **Tally board** | The previous crew's board, in the pump hall. Part of the motive, not a mechanic. | Design r4 |
+ | **Valve / pump** | District machinery: a valve joins channels and so extends where current reaches; a pump drains one and cuts it. | Design r4 |
+
+ ## Gear and the rack
+
+ | Word | Plain meaning | Defined at |
+ |---|---|---|
+ | **Rack** | The surveyor's back frame: six slots in a 2×3 grid. It is the whole inventory apart from the cutter. Each slot holds one module or one bundle. | Design r4 |
+ | **Module** | A piece of gear occupying rack slots: battery, coil, insulation, beacon, kit. | Design r4 |
+ | **Battery** | The module that stores charge. A battery leaks into every **bundle** it touches, whatever the links say. | Design r4 §The rack |
+ | **Link** | When packing, you draw one link from each battery to the one module it powers. An unlinked module is dark and inert. Links govern *power*; leaking into bundles happens regardless of links. | Design r4 §The rack |
+ | **Coil** | A two-slot module that stores a discharge. Trigger it and the charge arcs into whatever you are standing on; in water it reaches everything the water touches. | Design r4 |
+ | **Insulation** | A one-slot module that stops current — in the rack and on the surveyor. | Design r4 |
+ | **Kit** | A module that restores health once, then is spent. Costs a slot. | Design r4 |
+ | **Cutter** | A handheld tool that fires by itself at the nearest organism in reach while you move. You aim by where you stand. Needs no slot. | Design r4 |
+ | **Salvage / bundle / cargo** | Salvage is the material the colony needs; a **bundle** is one slot of it; **cargo** is the bundles currently in your rack. | Design r4 |
+ | **Charge** | Fuel shed by the Flood, stored in batteries, spent by modules and machines. Never leaves the district. | Design r4 |
+ | **Mote** | A dropped fleck of charge — small from a killed organism, large from a mass stunned in water. Fades in seconds; walk over one to fill a battery. | Design r4 |
+ | **Loadout** | The modules you are carrying and how they are arranged in the rack. **Earlier revisions, and the Brief, Team and Tasks pages, call this a "build".** The design pages renamed it because the Hub's development gate uses "build" to mean a compiled executable. | Design r4 (see Q3) |
+ | **Health** | A short bar. Contact with organisms, and standing in energised water without insulation, remove it. It does not regenerate in the district; extraction restores it; a kit restores it once. | Design r4 §Combat and health |
+ | **Notebook** | Opening it pauses everything and shows only what you have already seen. Rule **S1**. | Design r4 |
+ | **Shelter** | A raised place, including a dry dock, that enemies neither enter nor spawn in — a hard stop. You can repack and watch there, but the surge clock keeps running. Rule **S2**. | Design r4 |
+ | **Workshop / forecast relay** | The colony's two additive repairs: a workshop gives one extra starting module choice; a forecast relay makes the first intake known before departure. Each costs a full return's salvage. | Design r4 |
+
+ ## The one rule everything hangs on
+
+ **The spine rule** is direction A's single mechanic, stated once and then applied to the district, the rack
+ and the colony. Its four clauses, condensed from Design r4:
+
+ 1. **Conduction** — current flows between touching conductors, and through water to everything the water connects; insulation stops it.
+ 2. **Power** — a device works only while **energised**: a hatch, lamp or beacon on a live cable or channel, or a rack module linked to a charged battery.
+ 3. **Attraction** — the relay pulses at each dispatch from whichever fixed beacon is energised, and the surge enters by that beacon; after entry a surge moves toward the nearest lit beacon **within its sight**.
+ 4. **Charge** — a killed organism drops a small mote, a mass stunned in water sheds a large one; walking over one fills a battery.
+
+ "**Energised**", "**lit**" and "**powered**" are the same state. A beacon's **glow** is the visible extent
+ of its pull.
+
+ ## Words still undefined
+
+ Asked for in Q1, still not defined anywhere on the wiki. Listed here so a reader knows the gap is real, and
+ so whoever owns the word can close it.
+
+ | Word | Where it is used | Who should define it |
+ |---|---|---|
+ | **Build expression** | Brief, Team, Tasks — a central owner-facing term | Lead designer or PM. Design r4 renamed the player-facing "build" to **loadout**, but "build expression" still stands unchanged on the PM pages, so the wiki now has two names for one thing. |
+ | **Telegraphed**, **counterplay** | Team §Critic prompt, Tasks §document criteria | Lead designer or PM |
+ | **Stat gate** vs **knowledge gate** | Team §World designer prompt, Tasks | World designer |
+ | **XP** | Design r4 §In-run growth, used only to say kills give none | Lead designer |
+
+ ---
+
+ ## Project codes, so a reader can decode any cross-reference
+
+ Not vocabulary, but the other thing that stops a first-time reader
+ ([Q21](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions#d-one-request-about-how-the-pages-are-written)).
+
+ | Code | What it is | Lives on |
+ |---|---|---|
+ | **DES101 / DES102 / DES103** | Lead designer's tasks: two concept directions → integrated design document → revised owner-facing document | [Design](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design) |
+ | **WLD101** | World and Mystery Designer's exploration and mystery contribution | [World and Mystery](/Hold%20The%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) |
+ | **REV101** | Independent Design Critic's review | [Design Review](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Review) |
+ | **CLR101** | An outside reader's clarity questions. Not an assignment. | [Clarity Questions](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) |
+ | **OWN001 / OWN101 / OWN102** | Things only the owner can do: the brief, steering the concept, the design verdict | [Tasks](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Tasks) |
+ | **PM001 / PM002** | PM's own completed tasks | [Tasks](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Tasks) |
+ | **D001–D012** | Numbered decisions, each with an authority and a status | [Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief#decision-log) |
+ | **W1–W4** | The world designer's four world rules: attraction, commitment, stable evidence, turned signs | [World and Mystery](/Hold%20The%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) |
+ | **S1–S3** | The three shared rules that make room to think: notebook, shelter, live evidence | [Design](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design) |
+ | **N1–N11** | The critic's numbered findings raised after the first review | [Design Review](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Review) |
+ | **Q1–Q25** | The outside reader's questions | [Clarity Questions](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) |
+ | **r1, r2, r3…** | Successive revisions of one page's deliverable. Every one is still readable at `/<Page>?revision=<hash>`. | [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions) |
+ | **Task states** | Ready · In progress · In review · Accepted · Blocked · Deferred · Superseded | [Tasks](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Tasks) |
+ | A hex string like **`0b4039`** | A revision hash — the exact version of a page someone read, or is citing | any page |
+
+ ---
+
+ *Editor's page. If a definition here drifts from its owning page, the owning page is right and this one is
+ stale — say so here. Keeping one definition in one place is the point: see
+ [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions).*
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