Hordes and Builds

You enter the Cable Junction because a window above it shows points of light that move when a parked lamp twitches. A folded bridge beside the window points into darkness. A rail-mounted lamp can scan it, but its carriage is at the wrong end. Its station power supply is visibly live. You release the mechanical brake and the carriage starts moving at walking pace.

The machinery wakes two approaches. Bodies descend the Pump Hall’s gantry behind you and press through the Cable Junction’s duct grille across the rail. Aperture lamps and moving hatches warn where they will arrive. Your gun fires automatically while you choose where to stand, which crowd to let close and when to use your special.

You can run ahead of the lamp, fall behind or circle it. Bodies slow the carriage until you clear its rail. The objective keeps moving through the fight.

The moving scan

Your rig is the equipment mounted and connected on your suit. Today's later electrical rig, Storm Choir, uses gun impacts to power short arcs and charge a store. It begins this expedition without the temporary upgrades earned on previous trips.

At the first junction you stay near the packed centre so each arc can jump to the next body, then cut aside when the fast pack reaches you. Regular fighting earns a temporary choice. In the fully paused journal you choose Echoing Arc: the electrical attack gains additional branches. Closing the journal returns you to the same danger, with a machine better suited to this crowd.

At the middle sampling position, another cable-duct band enters. Keeping the moving track clear and answering a Veilbearer’s warned attack earns Thunderhead, a manual burst that spends the full charge store. The first three fighting bands offered the ordinary improvement before this breakthrough. You can still operate the carriage and reach the window without either upgrade.

At the far sample, a visible alarm lead wakes the still-available loft source in the adjacent Transfer Gallery. Its crowd converges with the surviving cable bands. Around a hundred bodies is the intended crest when the arrivals overlap; fast clearing can make it thinner. You risk the dense middle, finish charging and press Thunderhead. Three electrical chain heads spread through the packed ranks while a pressure lance cuts a slot along the lane. A substantial part of the crowd falls; fast creatures and the survivors of the burst still force you to move. Ordinary firing and charging resume as the equipment becomes ready again.

The carriage surges through. The pleasure is seeing your plan become powerful enough to break the formation that was stopping you.

It can go badly. Flankers pull your arcs away from the main crowd, bodies stall the carriage, and the Veilbearer’s sheet cuts across your electrical paths. You can spend the burst on the smaller group threatening you now, hold position long enough to charge while the crowd closes, or abandon the scan and escape along the walking route. You can also stop the carriage at an earlier notch and leave along the Pump Hall route. A strong build is an opportunity to attempt more, not a required key to the exit.

At the far window, the finite source releases settle. You clear the bodies still beside the carriage or separate them behind a pedestrian bulkhead before examining the result. The three lamp positions reveal how the apparent stars shift: they are reflections from exposed receiver fittings across the void. One converges on a collar you can now see on the Regulator Gallery’s landing. You try the bridge release, watch the span catch that collar, and walk across. The observation has become a route. Another point remains unexplained.

You capture what the instrument shows while the world runs, then open the paused journal to compare the three positions and any older dated captures. With less oxygen left, you can step onto the new span or bring the connection home and plan another trip. After a living return, the bridge stays open: you can use the shortcut next time without repeating the scan. A death shift makes the old alignment historical; a visible return chain lets you rewind and measure the changed arrangement. The Moving Scan Expedition specifies the placement and its added rail, bridge and room geometry. Combat delivered access; the discovery changes the next trip.

Pressure, power and quiet

A source is a physical place from which enemies can reach you: a ward, a duct, a lift well or another occupied space with an open route. Warnings show where bodies may arrive. Crowds need enough scale to change movement across the room; a broad gallery might hold 80–150 at once, while a narrow hall carries a continuous river through visible doors.

Most fights have four readable beats:

1. Wake. You see sleeping bodies, shifting silhouettes or doors beginning to open. You have a moment to read the approaches.
2. Gather. A slow majority fills broad lanes while faster packs take side routes. Your build starts earning temporary growth during the fighting.
3. Crest. Movement patterns overlap. Choose the dense line that rewards your machine, a safer position, or retreat. A moving objective continues through the space.
4. Break. Clear the current crowd or seal its incoming route, then deal with bodies already through. Enemy flow and music ease, leaving room to inspect, salvage and decide what matters next.

Killing faster than enemies arrive buys space. Outrunning them buys escape. Neither automatically makes the room quiet. A completed seal stops its source; creatures already beyond it still need clearing or safe separation. A powerful build may overwhelm a crest and enjoy the silence it earned.

New expeditions renew combat and growth opportunities while permanent work stays done. A closed source does not reopen for another wave. Current proposals place renewed crowds through sources and walking routes compatible with those changes; Fighting the Horde gives the worked cases and their limits. Quiet rooms and earned breaks remain essential: without them, a clue becomes background clutter and a climax has no contrast.

Three current build examples

These cards explain the examples used by the current shared equipment rules. All three bank charge for a manual climax. Build Comparison proposes more distinct replacements for the ricochet and gravity controls; those alternatives have not replaced the versions below.

Storm Choir — seek a connected crowd

Play. Your automatic gun's impacts feed electrical arcs and fill a Capacitor, the charge store. Move toward knots of nearby, mutually visible enemies. Echoing Arc adds branches; Thunderhead turns a full store into three chain heads and a pressure lance. You decide when the crowd is worth the release.

Cost and weakness. The rig uses seven carrying spaces and seven mounted spaces. One normal oxygen canister leaves one of the ten carrying spaces for a find. It has no Barrier. Hard cover and gaps between enemies can stop the arcs, so crossing toward the best target can also put you inside the horde.

The parts. Threat Sensor starts Pulse Projector. Impact Dynamo collects that gun's impacts; Fork Relay divides the resulting charge between Arc Emitter and Capacitor. The Fork also fits some station machinery, giving you a reason to reconsider keeping the whole rig intact.

Ricochet Foundry — use the room's angles

Play. Begin with ordinary automatic shots and a manual shove. An earned Rebound Disc upgrade turns those shots into discs that bank from suitable hard surfaces. Fragment Wake adds a fan where each flight ends. With Foundry Drop, spend a full Capacitor on a larger master disc and fan. Several flights can overlap while you run for the next angle.

The shown bank line and fan direction matter. A shove can move bodies or loose cover before a disc arrives; it does not steer the disc. The same shove may be the escape tool you need a moment later.

Cost and weakness. The six parts use seven carrying and mounted spaces, leaving one carrying space after a canister. This version has no Barrier. Open atriums, soft partitions and a fan opening into fixed cover can waste the setup.

The parts. Sensor and Projector provide ordinary fire. Dynamo charges Capacitor from its impacts. Manual Trigger operates Vector Nozzle for the shove. This is the stored-master-disc version; the proposed alternative in Build Comparison replaces that payoff with deliberately timed disc endings.

Gravity Furnace — gather a dangerous tail

Play. Running operates a Stride Switch and Nozzle, initially producing outward pulses. Inward Draft changes those pulses into short pulls behind you. Meanwhile automatic gun impacts charge the store. With Furnace Burst, face the gathered mass and spend that charge through a Thermal Lens for a heat lance and a spreading bloom.

Keep gathering for a larger payoff, or fire early to make room. The repeated steps must be voluntary movement: a conveyor, recoil or enemy shove cannot keep the pull operating for you.

Cost and weakness. The seven parts use eight carrying and mounted spaces. One canister fills the ten-space loadout, leaving no room for salvage and no Barrier. Hard cover splits the pull and bloom; ranged enemies can remain dangerous outside the gathered tail.

The parts. Stride and Nozzle control the crowd. Sensor, Projector and Dynamo supply automatic fire and stored charge; Capacitor and Lens provide the thermal release. This is the battery version. Build Comparison's proposed movement-ember version has a different source of heat and a different timing demand.

The same obstruction, three decisions

In a broad balance gallery, a Bellback plants itself across a structural rib. Its chest draws dust inward before releasing a pressure wave through a clearly shown cone. Bodies pour around the rib while the floor's balancing machinery changes their approach.

Storm Choir wants to cross far enough that the rib no longer cuts its electrical paths, or accept a smaller storm from safety. Ricochet can use the rib's hard face for a bank, but must decide whether to spend the shove on disc geometry, interrupting Bellback's brace, or escaping. Gravity can gather the trailing crowd into a line, yet the rib may block its bloom and the pressure wave may scatter the tail before release.

That is the useful difference: the same room asks each player to make a different movement decision. A full charge does not remove the need to read cover, facing and timing. If the shot commits and the target moves behind cover, the spent charge remains spent.

Assembling and growing the machine

A part provides an understandable action: detect, fire, split, store, push or convert. Connecting those actions changes what the rig does. Several ordinary weapons can work together when the mounted parts fit and the equipment can supply their power and heat demands.

You can change links in the fully paused journal. Physically fitting a newly found part, picking up an object and operating a station fixture happen while the world runs. Temporary upgrades alter the current machine; their manual specials restore ordinary operation without requiring a journal edit for each attack.

The practical limits create choices between coverage, defence, oxygen and discoveries. Effects have finite reach and cannot refill the energy that created them. The preview shows incompatible or overloaded connections; cooling and readiness still matter in combat. Exact connections, costs and effect limits belong to Build Rules, the Equipment Catalogue and Mechanical Interfaces.

Regular fighting supplies temporary growth, with larger transformations at major horde milestones. Current proposals for earning and choosing those changes are in Fighting the Horde, including the moving scan’s growth before its crest. Every temporary upgrade and unchosen offer ends when you return aboard, alive or revived. Your physically carried equipment and loot remain, and a new part can suggest another combination for the next trip. Finding Equipment and Growing the Rig describes that retained progression.

The next expedition should offer two reasons to leave: try a new machine against the crowd, and follow the question uncovered beyond the last one. The wider find-versus-fabricate model and practical pacing remain open. The scan adds a substantial mechanism and room geometry; that scope cost remains provisional. These examples describe intended play; their fun and balance are untested.

Continue to Build Comparison for the proposed alternative control fantasies, or return to The Game. The main discovery journey continues through three expeditions into the observation ward.