[Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Shared rule contract](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) · [Design Document](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document) · [World and Mystery](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) · [Design Review](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review)

**What changed.** You called the premise promising, found three to four hours far too little, and asked for a much larger number of districts, with separate pages for mechanics, enemies and weapons. This page answers that. It keeps the rule you found promising and builds the larger game by combining it, not by relaxing it.

**What this proposes.** A campaign of connected districts on one water system: the drowned flood defences of a city, from the sea gate at the bottom to the head-works at the top. Every district is a different machine on the same water and the same four rules: water connects, current works machines, light draws the Flood, and the Flood carries the charge you fight with. The pumping district you have read opens the campaign; its relay decision becomes a district outcome instead of the end of the game. The head-works end the campaign, with the question the world designer has written: what, upstream, is still keeping the network in time, and for whom. The refuge is a place you defend, not only a menu.

**The count.** Eight districts pass the test PM set, that each must change what the player does under the shared rules, if the refuge is counted as one: the Pumping District, the Lock Flight (water you move), the Tram Incline (light that moves), the Exchange (the signal network between districts), the Collector (where the Flood is gathered and metered), the Tidal Barrier (a second clock), the Head-works (the source), and the Refuge (the district you hold). Seven if the refuge stays a home base. A ninth, the Salt Pans, is a candidate that has not earned a distinct problem. PM's eight is a drafting target; this page arrives at the same number by the test, not by the target, and section 2 says what would make it wrong.

**What is designed and what is a hypothesis.** Three districts are described in depth in section 3, each with a written expedition and a charge ledger that closes to the unit, two loadouts that do different things, an enemy combination with a precedence question, a discovery chain and a consequence for another district. The other five are one paragraph each. Equipment, enemies, colony and mystery across the campaign are proposals in sections 4 to 6. No hours figure is given: section 8 separates first discovery from revisits and replay and says why a total would be a guess. Nothing has been played.

**One question back, through PM.** "Far too little" has several readings: too little content for the money, too little to keep playing after the ending, too little ambition for the premise, or a dislike of a finite ending itself. This proposal bets on ambition and finality together: a bigger authored game that still ends. If your objection was to the ending, sections 2 and 6 change; if to replay, section 5 changes. Section 10 lists this with the other decisions.

**What happens if you say yes.** Nothing is built. This is a design gate, not a development gate. Saying yes means the team designs the remaining districts to the standard in section 3 and PM staffs or reassigns the four roles.

**Where to read.** This page for the campaign; the Design Document for the pumping district and the rules' derivation; the shared rule contract for the rules in one place.

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Water connects: current anywhere in a joined body of water is everywhere in it, and dry ground does not conduct. A device works only while its channel carries current, from the district's own switched circuit or from a coil discharge that lasts seconds. Only the signal line, set by a panel, chooses where the next surge enters; after entry a crowd walks continuously toward the nearest lit beacon it can reach, spreads if there is none, and never leaves a nearer lit beacon for a farther one; only dispatch beacons and the portable beacon draw, and every other lamp is an indicator. Organisms shed charge once: one unit on a kill, five per ten stunned in water; batteries hold ten; a discharge spends a battery; the arc drains one over ten seconds. The full contract, with readable signals and the test for exceptions, is on the [shared rule contract](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) page. A district may add to it; none may change what power, signal or charge mean.

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**The water system is the map.** The city built its flood defences as one machine: a reservoir and head-works at the top, whose flow turns every race, a lock flight to step the water down through the works, a tram incline to move crews between the levels, an exchange where every district's signal cable meets, a collector in the low place the water drains to, a pumping district to lift it out of the low quarter, and a tidal barrier at the mouth to keep the sea out. The city drowned when the machine was turned to a new purpose; what still keeps it in time is the campaign's question, which the world designer has written (section 6). The refuge is a dock on that water. Districts are the machines; the water between them is the road.

**The districts, one paragraph each.** The rule each adds is stated as a diff against the contract; the full diffs for the three deep districts are in section 3.

1. **The Pumping District** (opening; designed in the Design Document). Adds nothing: it teaches the contract. Power against signal, the panel as a live lever, the culvert, the coil route, and the relay. Its finale, shut, fix or hold, becomes a district outcome: shut and this district's surges arrive unannounced by the sluice; fix and the intake is clamped; hold and the forecast stays. In the campaign, what the trunk still permits here is set at the Exchange's bank, at a price, which is a reason to return; and after shut, the incoming cable still pulses on a stopped drum, which is the world designer's first campaign clue.

2. **The Lock Flight** (early). Adds locks and basin levels: the surveyor moves water between basins by hand, which moves the topology that current runs on, and moves the Flood's floaters with the flow. The lock house holds the crane parts that give the rack its third row. Deep in section 3.1.

3. **The Tram Incline** (middle). Adds a powered rail as a dry conductor and a moving beacon: a tram whose headlamp draws the crowd while the rail is powered. The surveyor tows a crowd, or sends it away. Its summit is the way to the Exchange. Deep in section 3.2.

4. **The Exchange** (middle; the world designer's example district, named there). Adds the network: a hall of drums on one shaft, turned by a race whose head the player cannot see, and a routing bank with one position per district, so a choice here changes another district's forecast before the player arrives, including what the pumping district's relay can still do. Adds the static, an organism drawn to stored charge. The hall is dry, so conduction is by laid cable. Outlined in 3.4.

5. **The Collector** (middle; the world designer's). The low place the water drains to and where crowds go between expeditions: basins with wheels turned by the mass passing through, and meters on the wheels that read what the rack reads. Adds gates: closing a district's collector gate delays that district's first surge on the next visit, at the price of the collector filling. The district where the player learns the surges are cycled, not spawned. Sketched only; its machinery problem, managing the Flood's own supply, is distinct from the Exchange's, which routes time.

6. **The Tidal Barrier** (late). Adds a second clock, the tide, which wets and dries the flats on a cycle the surveyor reads but cannot set, and an unannounced intake, the sea, through the open gates at high tide. Shutting the gates is a district outcome that stops the refuge's dock flooding. Deep in section 3.3.

7. **The Head-works** (the end; the world designer's). The reservoir whose flow turns every race, and the governor that regulates it, with fresh grease and today's tally. The campaign's last decision is made here and changes every district's dispatch at once. Sketched only; the world designer owns its mystery and holds two candidate answers for the owner.

8. **The Refuge** (throughout). The colony's dock as a district played rather than managed: when a district outcome sends the Flood toward the refuge, an expedition is a defence at home under the same rules, with the refuge's own pump, beacons and panel. Sketched only.

**Candidate: the Salt Pans.** Brine basins that conduct as one body, so one discharge stuns a whole pan and nothing can be stunned locally. It is a variation on conduction, not a new problem, unless a written expedition shows choices no other district poses. It stays a candidate.

**Travel and return.** Districts are reached by water from the refuge's dock, and the colony holds one dock dry per district reached. Returns are caused, not scheduled: the Exchange's bank changes a district's forecast and intake, the Tidal Barrier's outcome changes the refuge, the Lock Flight's setting opens the upper canal that makes the Tram's summit dock holdable, and each district's campaign clue (section 6) is legible only with evidence from another. Repeated hauling to pay a price is not a return reason and is not used as one.

**The count, and what would make eight right or wrong.** The test, PM's and the critic's: a district must have a written expedition whose choices could not occur in another district. Eight pass on paper, counting the refuge: the pumping district (power against signal), the locks (water moved), the tram (light moved), the exchange (time routed), the collector (the Flood's supply), the barrier (the clock), the head-works (the source), the refuge (defence). The number matches PM's drafting target by the test and not by the target, which is the only reason to trust it; it becomes wrong the moment one of these districts' expeditions could be played in another with the same choices, and three of the eight, the collector, the head-works and the refuge, are sketches not yet written to the test. The Reference Researcher's REF107 records that two shipped survivorlikes carry five and six distinct environments with their variety inside each, as current rather than launch content and as an observation, not a norm; that is consistent with a campaign of about this many machines and much variety within them, and it is not evidence for any count.

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Each district below gives: the problem; the ground; the shared-rule diff; two loadouts that differ in what they do; the enemy combination and the precedence question it poses; the discovery chain; the consequences; a written expedition with its charge ledger; and the asset categories with gaps marked. Times and numbers are proposals. Ledgers use the contract's rules and the collection rule as written.

**The problem.** Water is both the road's obstacle and the door's supply. The lock house at the head of the flight holds what the surveyor came for, and its door is a device on the head basin's line: it works only while that basin holds water and that water is joined to a lit circuit. The direct road up the flight is the crowd's road when the weir beacon is lit; the basins' beds are the shortcut when they are drained; and draining the head basin kills the door. The surveyor chooses which to move, the crowd or the water, and pays in the other.

**The ground.** Three basins in a stair: the Tail, with the quay dock (held by the colony), the quay beacon and the district panel (Quay, Weir, Off); the Middle; the Head, with the lock house at its top and the weir road on to the weir dock and weir beacon. Two locks, L1 between Tail and Middle and L2 between Middle and Head, each worked by a hand lever at its top, unpowered; opening a lock levels its two basins over about twenty seconds, the higher draining into the lower, and the flow runs on through the Tail into the tail race behind the quay. The direct road climbs beside the locks. The quay beacon's circuit energises the Tail; the weir beacon's circuit energises the Head; the Middle is energised only when joined to one of them by an open lock.

| Adds | Changes | Signal | Choice it improves |

| --- | --- | --- | --- |

| Locks: a hand lever moves water between two basins; levels are full, half or dry; a dry bed is walkable and does not conduct | Nothing in what power, signal or charge mean | A gauge board at each lock (indicator) shows both levels; moving water is visibly moving | Move the water instead of the crowd, and draw the wire yourself |

| Floaters: an enemy role carried by flowing water, unable to climb locks or ladders | Attraction yields to flow while the water flows, and resumes when it stops | Rides low, with a wake | Flush a quay instead of fighting it |

| The prod: a second automatic weapon, a lock-keeper's pole that pushes the nearest organism back a step and kills nothing | Nothing | The organism staggers back | Hold a catwalk or a doorway without spending health or drawing charge |

The lockkeeper makes current where there is none: with the panel left on Quay so the crowd holds at the dock and the road is free, the door at the top is dead, and the coil opens it by a discharge into the head basin, which needs a full battery earned from kills on the way up. The bargeman moves the crowd instead: with the panel thrown to Weir the door is live and the crowd climbs the road toward the weir; the bargeman goes up ahead of it, and on the way back drops the lit portable beacon on the Tail's far bank so the floaters hold there and the dock is clear. One rack fights for ten motes; the other carries a lure and three bundles. Neither is better; the lockkeeper banks fewer bundles and the bargeman shares the road with walkers.

**Enemies and the precedence question.** This district's surges are mostly floaters with a few walkers: sixty at the first dispatch as fifty floaters and ten walkers. The question a floater poses that a walker cannot: when the water flows, does the crowd follow the light or the flow? The rule: flow, while it flows; light, once it stops. The reader sees it once and can plan on it: open L1 above a quay full of floaters and the quay empties into the tail race for the twenty seconds of the flush, then the survivors walk back toward the lit beacon. Walkers ignore the flow, climb the stairs, and pursue; they are the kill motes.

**Discovery chain.** Notice: the gauge boards at each lock are painted with times, not levels, and the lock house has a level log. Compare: the times on the boards are the dispatch times on the forecast, and the log's entries match the pumping district's relay drum, three marks per cycle. Infer: the crews worked the locks to the dispatch schedule; the Flood was being moved down the flight by water, on purpose, on the network's time. Act: nothing is required to leave; the log is the evidence, and it changes a later action, because a player who has seen the locks keep the relay's time reads the Exchange's drums (3.4) as one time source at a glance. In the world designer's terms the campaign clue is the painted gauge board, an inspectable object, and its redundant form is the tram's timetable board. Consequence and recovery: a surveyor who never reads the log still finds the crane parts; the log can be read on any later visit; on replays the flush trick is available from the first minute.

**Consequences.** For the refuge: the crane parts, two slots of cargo, let the workshop build the rack's third row (section 4), which is why this district is early. For another district: leaving L2 open at extraction keeps the head basin drained and the upper canal joined to the Middle, which is the water road to the Tram Incline's summit dock; the colony can then hold that dock. For a return: the weir dock, unheld on the first visits, is the other way in, and holding it instead of the quay reverses which end of the flight is hot.

**Written expedition, lockkeeper, the district's third visit.** Rack at the dock: coil, one empty battery, insulation, two empty slots. Panel found on Quay. Forecast: first surge at 3:00, intake quay; second at 8:00, intake quay.

- **0:00.** The quay dock. The surveyor leaves the panel alone and takes the direct road.

- **1:30.** Two bundles from a wrecked barge on the Tail's bank. Rack: C C B over S S I; the insulation sits under the battery, so nothing leaks.

- **3:00.** Surge one, quay: fifty floaters and ten walkers pour into the Tail's shallows and hold at the quay beacon, between the surveyor and home. The surveyor is at the top of L1.

- **3:30.** The ten walkers climb the stairs in pursuit. The surveyor holds the top step with the cutter: ten kills, ten motes, collected between bodies into the one battery; two hits taken. Battery ten.

- **5:00.** The lock house. The door is dead: the head basin is full but unpowered, because the panel is on Quay. The surveyor stands at the basin's edge in insulation and discharges: the head basin is energised for the seconds the charge lasts, the door opens, and the surveyor is through. Nothing was in the water, so nothing sheds. Battery empty.

- **5:30.** Inside: the level log, read and copied; the crane parts, two of them, one slot each. The rack is full, so one bundle is dropped for one part: C C B over S P I. Parts are dry metal and do not conduct.

- **7:00.** Out and down. The forecast reads: second surge in one minute, intake quay. The dock is under fifty floaters.

- **7:20.** At the top of L1 the surveyor opens the lock. The Middle drains into the Tail over twenty seconds; the flow carries the floaters through the Tail and out to the tail race grating behind the dock, where the dock's hard stop holds them.

- **7:40.** The flush ends. The surveyor runs the stairs to the quay, thirty seconds.

- **8:10.** Extraction, as the second surge pours in beside the boat: one bundle, one crane part, an empty battery, two hits taken. The survivors of the flush are walking back toward the quay beacon as the boat leaves.

Notebook: floaters ride the flow; a lock can flush a quay for twenty seconds; the house door wants the head basin live, and the panel cannot light it without lighting the road, but the coil can; the boards are painted with dispatch times.

**Ledger, lockkeeper.** One battery, capacity ten.

| Time | Slots (of six) | Dropped | Collected | Stored | Expired | Spent |

| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |

| 0:00 | coil 2, battery 1, insulation 1; two empty | | | 0 | | |

| 1:30 | + bundles 2; full; no drip | | | 0 | | |

| 3:30 | same | 10 | 10 | 10 | | |

| 5:00 | discharge into the head basin | 0 | 0 | 0 | | 10 |

| 5:30 | one bundle dropped, one crane part | | | 0 | | |

| 8:10 | extracted: coil, battery, insulation, bundle, part | | | 0 | | |

Dropped ten, collected ten, spent ten, nothing expired, nothing lost at the dock.

**Assets.** Reuses the ground and water tiles, lamps, cables and the panel from the pumping district, and the humanoid mass with a low silhouette and a wake for the floater. Gaps: lock gates and a water level that animates between three states, which the Tidal Barrier reuses, so one water-level system serves two districts; the prod. No availability is claimed for any of it.

**The problem.** A beacon that moves. The incline's tram runs while its rail is powered, and its headlamp is a beacon while lit; a crowd follows the lamp up the incline road, and the tram is slow on the slope and fast on the flat. Powering the rail is the depot panel's Rail position, which darkens the depot's gates, so the surveyor who tows a crowd has given up the gates as a way home. The surveyor can ride the lamp, send the lamp away empty, or put it out.

**The ground.** The depot at the foot, ankle-deep across its yard, with the depot dock, the yard beacon, the gates to the dock road, and the panel (Rail, Gates, Off). The incline road and the rail climb side by side to the summit station, a shelter, with the pass gate to the Exchange, the summit dock on the upper canal, and the timetable board. The rail is a metal channel: it carries current along its length while the panel is on Rail, and glows faintly to show it. The tram has one lever, up or down, and a lamp switch; it moves only while the rail is powered; the pass gate is on the rail's circuit and is open while the rail is powered.

| Adds | Changes | Signal | Choice it improves |

| --- | --- | --- | --- |

| A powered rail: a dry conductor that carries the depot circuit up the incline | Nothing: a channel need not be water, and the contract says so from here on | The rail glows while powered | The panel's price is felt at a distance |

| The tram: a moving shelter whose lamp is a beacon while lit and the rail is powered; the third kind of beacon after the district's and the portable one | Adds a beacon; changes no rule about beacons | The lamp is steady while lit; the tram is visibly a lamp on wheels | Tow a crowd, send it away, or hold it at a station |

| Heavies: an enemy role that blocks rails and doorways, takes ten hits, drops a large mote when killed and counts as ten for the stun yield | Nothing | Size | Kill for charge, stun to pass, or route around |

**Two loadouts** (both assume the third row from the Lock Flight; the six-slot forms lose the third row's bundles).

The tram crew rides the lamp and fights at the step: coil and arc with a battery each, insulation, kit, two bundles; it can clear a heavy from the rail, hold the tram's step against the crowd that catches up, and, if the yard is flooded enough, stun the depot. The tow crew carries five bundles, a kit, insulation and the portable beacon: it lets the tram tow the crowd to the summit, drops the lit beacon at the summit to hold the crowd there, and sends the tram down empty to ride home with the cargo. One rack spends charge to fight where it stands; the other spends a slot to decide where the crowd stands.

**Enemies and the precedence question.** Walkers and heavies. A heavy on the rail stops the tram, and the crowd behind catches up while it stands. The question: kill it for its large mote, taking ten hits' worth of time with the crowd closing, or reverse the tram and come at the incline again once the crowd has strung out? The heavy also poses a yield question in water: it counts as ten for a stun, so one heavy in a flooded yard is worth as much charge as ten walkers.

**Discovery chain.** Notice: the summit's timetable board lists departures that match the dispatch schedule, and the depot's log shows the trams ran full downhill and empty up. Compare: the Lock Flight's log said the same of the locks, and the pumping district's relay drum keeps the same time. Infer: crews were moving the Flood down to the low quarter by every machine the city had, on one timetable; the timetable is the network's, not this district's. Act: the pass gate opens while the rail is powered, and the Exchange is on the other side, where the time comes from. Recovery: the tram works without the discovery; a surveyor who never reads the board still reaches the summit dock, and the Exchange's meaning waits. Campaign clue: the timetable board; redundant form: the Lock Flight's painted gauges.

**Consequences.** For another district: the summit dock is holdable only if the Lock Flight's upper canal is joined, and reaching the Exchange needs the rail powered, which leaves the depot's gates dark for every later visit until the colony chooses otherwise. For the refuge: the incline is the only dry road between the lower and upper city, so a tram left at the summit with its lamp lit draws the next surge uphill and away from the refuge's water; a tram left at the depot draws it down. For a return: heavies gather where the tram was left.

**Written expedition, tram crew, the district's second visit; the summit dock held.** Rack: coil, arc, two empty batteries, insulation, kit, two empty bundle slots. Panel found Off. Forecast: first surge at 3:00, intake yard; second at 8:00, intake yard.

- **0:00.** The summit dock. The surveyor descends the stairs beside the rail to the depot to fetch the tram, which is at the foot.

- **1:00.** The depot panel to Rail: the rail glows, the tram's lamp lights, the pass gate above opens, and the depot gates go dark. The tram is now a lit beacon standing in the yard.

- **3:00.** Surge one, yard: sixty walkers enter the flooded yard and walk to the nearest lit beacon, which is the tram. The surveyor boards and puts the lever up.

- **3:30.** The tram climbs, slow on the slope; the crowd follows the lamp up the incline road twenty metres behind. Halfway, a heavy stands on the rail and the tram stops against it. The surveyor kills it from the step, ten hits in five seconds, and takes its large mote: five units into the first battery. The tram moves again.

- **4:30.** The stop cost the lead. The crowd's front reaches the tram's step on the slope, and the surveyor holds the step with the cutter for the last of the climb: ten kills, ten motes, collected as they fall. By the collection rule they alternate between the two batteries once the second has caught up: eight and seven.

- **5:30.** The summit station. The surveyor steps off, throws the lamp switch off and the lever down, and the tram rolls back down the incline dark. The crowd on the slope has no lit beacon to reach and spreads along the incline road it is on.

- **6:00.** Two bundles from the summit stores into the third row. The timetable board, read and copied. The pass gate is open; the surveyor looks through at the Exchange's edge and does not go in.

- **8:00.** Surge two, yard: eighty walkers enter the depot, where the tram stands dark and the yard beacon is dark, and spread across the yard.

- **9:40.** Extraction at the summit dock: two bundles, eight and seven units lost at the dock, no hits taken. The rail is left powered; the depot gates are left dark; the notebook records both.

Notebook: the lamp tows; a heavy on the rail costs the lead; putting the lamp out drops the crowd where it stands; the board keeps the network's time.

**Ledger, tram crew.** First battery linked to the coil, second to the arc; capacity ten each.

| Time | Slots (of nine) | Dropped | Collected | Stored | Expired | Spent |

| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |

| 0:00 | coil 2, arc 1, batteries 2, insulation 1, kit 1; two empty | | | 0 / 0 | | |

| 3:30 | same | 5 | 5 | 5 / 0 | | |

| 4:30 | same | 10 | 10 | 8 / 7 | | |

| 6:00 | + bundles 2; full | | | 8 / 7 | | |

| 9:40 | extracted; charge lost at the dock | | | 0 / 0 | 15 | |

Dropped fifteen, collected fifteen, spent nothing, fifteen lost at the dock. The 4:30 row: from five and nothing, the first five motes fill the second battery to five, then the tie goes to the first battery and they alternate: six and five, six and six, seven and six, seven and seven, eight and seven.

**Assets.** Reuses the yard tiles, water, lamps, cables and panel, and the humanoid mass at a larger size for the heavy. Gaps: the rail, the tram, the incline's slope tiles, the pass gate. Nothing is claimed available.

**The problem.** A clock the surveyor cannot set. The flats between the mole and the barrier's signal house dry out at low tide and flood at high, on a cycle the tide staff shows; the direct crossing is open for a few minutes each way, and the alternative, the mole road, is where the sea's Flood comes in through the open barrier gates at high tide, unannounced. The signal house's gate lever is powered only when the flats are one body of water joined to the lit flats beacon, which is only at high tide, which is the only time the surveyor cannot leave. The choice is to run, or to stay.

**The ground.** The mole, a stone road from the mole dock (held) to the signal house, exposed; the flats, a wide bed between the mole and the house, dry at low tide, chest-deep at high, with wrecks stranded on it; the flats beacon on the mole's landward end and the mole beacon at the house's end; the barrier gates in the sea wall beyond the house, standing open; the tide staff painted on the house. The district panel is in the house (Flats, Mole, Off). The tide: low from the expedition's start, rising from 2:00, high from 6:00 to 8:00, falling from 8:00, low again by 12:00. The dispatch schedule runs as usual; the sea's arrivals run on the tide.

| Adds | Changes | Signal | Choice it improves |

| --- | --- | --- | --- |

| The tide: a second schedule that wets and dries the flats and so joins and parts the district's water | Nothing in what power, signal or charge mean; the flats conduct when wet, as any water does | The tide staff (indicator); water visibly rising or falling | Time the expedition against two clocks |

| An unannounced intake: the sea, through the open gates at high tide, as trickles along the mole with no beacon flashing | Nothing: it is the pumping district's shut ending as a natural state | The gates are visibly open; the trickle is visible on the mole | Shut the gates, and pay for it |

| The tide glass: a one-slot indicator module that tells the tide's time to the minute | Nothing | A dial in the rack | Trade a slot for certainty |

The tidewatcher stays: coil, one battery, insulation, kit, three bundles, and one empty slot for the crossing's finds; it earns a battery from the walkers that wade to the house, discharges into the flats at high tide when the whole crowd is in one body of water, and works the lever when the tide powers it. The runner carries no battery at all: kit, insulation and three bundles, crossing at low tide, throwing the house panel to Mole so the first surge lands away from the flats, reading the log, and crossing back before the water closes, without touching the lever. One rack makes the district's decision; the other reads it and goes home with cargo. The runner's charge is simply lost, which is the point of its rack.

**Enemies and the precedence question.** Walkers from the dispatches and floaters from the sea. The question: when the flats are one body of water and the crowd stands in it, a single discharge from the house's step stuns everything on the flats, and the yield is huge; but the stun lasts eight seconds and the crossing takes a minute, so the discharge buys charge and not passage. Charge or passage is the district's question, and the tide answers it differently every two minutes.

**Discovery chain.** Notice: the barrier's log shows the gates opened at every high tide, on purpose, for years; the sea's Flood comes in through them. Compare: the Lock Flight's and the Tram's logs showed the Flood moved down through the city on the network's time; this is the bottom of that road, and the gate log's openings follow the trunk's cadence, not the tide's. Infer: the gates are opened on the network's time to let the tide in, because the tide is what fills the low basins the machine cycles the Flood through, and the sea's Flood comes in with it; the mouth is part of the machine, not its exit. Act: shut the gates at the lever, at high tide, with the flats beacon lit. Consequence and recovery: the log can be read at low tide by a runner; the act needs the stay; on replays the surveyor knows the window to the minute. Campaign clue: the gate log, whose openings keep the trunk's time; redundant form: the Collector's intake gauge.

**Consequences.** For the refuge: with the gates shut the tide no longer floods the refuge's dock at high water, which is what has been costing the colony its held-dock choice on this coast. For this district: the flats stop wetting, so the whole-flats stun is gone for good, and the mole road is dry for good; a district outcome with a cost. For another district: the Collector downstream of the low quarter is fed by the tide through these gates; shut, its wheels turn slower and its meters read less, which the Exchange's shaft shows, and what the head-works' choice can reach at the mouth is decided by what the gates allow (section 6).

**Written expedition, tidewatcher, the district's second visit.** Rack: coil, one empty battery, insulation, kit, one empty slot, two empty bundle slots. Panel found on Flats. Forecast: first surge at 3:00, intake flats; second at 8:00, intake flats; third at 12:00. Tide low.

- **0:00.** The mole dock. The surveyor walks the dry flats toward the house, past stranded wrecks.

- **1:30.** Three bundles from the wrecks. Rack: C C B over S I K over S S and an empty slot; no bundle touches the battery.

- **2:00.** The tide turns; the staff shows it; the notebook records the minute.

- **2:30.** The house, a shelter. The gate lever: dead. The log, read and copied.

- **3:00.** Surge one, flats: sixty walkers enter on the wetting flats and hold at the flats beacon, on the mole's landward end, across the surveyor's way home.

- **3:30.** Ten walkers wade to the house's steps in pursuit; the cutter takes them on the steps: ten motes, battery ten.

- **4:30.** The flats are knee-deep and one body of water, energised by nothing. From the house's step in insulation the surveyor discharges: the fifty organisms standing in it are stunned; five large motes, twenty-five units; the battery, emptied by the discharge, takes ten and fifteen expire. Battery ten again. The crossing is still a minute and the stun is eight seconds: the surveyor stays.

- **6:00.** High tide. The flats beacon is lit and the flats join the house's line: the lever is powered. The surveyor shuts the gates. The sea's trickle along the mole, ten floaters that came in on the rising tide, stops arriving; those ten spread on the mole.

- **8:00.** Surge two, flats: eighty walkers join the recovered fifty, holding at the flats beacon in chest-deep water. The tide turns.

- **9:00.** The house panel to Mole: the flats beacon dies and the mole beacon at the house's end lights; a hundred and thirty organisms walk off the flats onto the mole road toward the house, which is a shelter, and hold at the beacon below its steps. The flats are clearing as the water falls.

- **12:00.** Low tide. Surge three, mole: a hundred more join the crowd at the mole beacon. The surveyor leaves the house by the flats side and crosses the dry bed to the mole dock, away from the crowd.

- **13:30.** Extraction: three bundles, a full battery lost at the dock, no hits taken. The gates are shut for good.

Notebook: the lever wants high water and the lit flats; the discharge buys charge, not passage; the panel moves the crowd off the flats while the tide drains them; the gates were open on purpose.

**Ledger, tidewatcher.** One battery, capacity ten.

| Time | Slots (of nine) | Dropped | Collected | Stored | Expired | Spent |

| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |

| 0:00 | coil 2, battery 1, insulation 1, kit 1; four empty | | | 0 | | |

| 1:30 | + bundles 3; one empty | | | 0 | | |

| 3:30 | same | 10 | 10 | 10 | | |

| 4:30 | discharge into the flats, then harvest | 25 | 10 | 10 | 15 | 10 |

| 13:30 | extracted; charge lost at the dock | | | 0 | 10 | |

Dropped thirty-five; collected twenty; spent ten; fifteen expired on the flats and ten lost at the dock.

**Assets.** Reuses ground and water tiles with the Lock Flight's animated water level, lamps, cables, panel, the humanoid mass and the floater. Gaps: the barrier gates, the mole, the tide staff, the stranded wrecks. Nothing is claimed available.

The world designer's example district, with its mystery contribution written on their page; this outline adds the machinery problem and the rule that prices it. A dry hall where every district's signal cable meets: drums ticking together on one shaft, turned by a race whose head the player cannot see, and a routing bank, a panel with one position per district, that sets which district receives the next trunk pulse. A district whose position is dark gets no announced surge until the player returns, and, as the critic asks (REV104-5), dark means the shut regime the pumping district's endings table already defines, unannounced trickles that grow and a dark forecast, never no surge at all. The bank's price, stated as a rule the way the panel's was: a lit position gives the player the forecast and the announced, routable surge in that district, which is the thing the whole game is played with; a dark position takes both away there. To withhold the Flood from a district is to give up reading it there, and that coupling is what keeps the bank from dominating; its magnitude is for later validation. Conduction across the dry hall is by the cable reel, a two-slot module that lays a conductor between two wet points. The static, an organism drawn to stored charge within a short range in preference to a lit beacon, makes a carried battery a beacon: the surveyor caches charge or is hunted for it; it sparks toward what it wants, which is its signal. The pumping district's dead drum is listed on the bank, which is the first campaign clue in its second form.

---

**The rack grows once, by a discovery.** Six slots is the contract's start. The Expansion Brief asks the six-slot cap and seven modules to be justified or revised; the justification for growth is that the campaign adds module classes that do new things, not more of the same, and each needs a slot without pushing out the bundles that pay for the trip. Proposed: a third row of three, built by the workshop from the Lock Flight's crane parts, so the rack is nine slots from the early middle of the campaign. The leak, link and shelter rules extend unchanged to three rows, and the loadouts in section 3 are drawn on both sizes.

**New modules, three, each tied to a district.** The hand pump (Lock Flight; one slot; drains the channel the surveyor stands beside over ten seconds for five units of charge; a portable field pump, which makes "cut the water" a carried option); the cable reel (the Exchange; two slots; lays a conductor between two wet points across dry ground); the tide glass (Tidal Barrier; one slot; an indicator that costs a slot). The seven existing modules keep their definitions. That is ten modules; the test for an eleventh is a choice it creates that none of the ten does.

**Weapons, three, with reasons.** The cutter stays: it is the only source of charge that needs no charge, and every district's first battery is filled by it. The prod (Lock Flight) pushes and never kills: it holds a doorway or catwalk without spending health or making motes, which matters where kills would draw statics or where the surveyor wants the crowd alive for a stun. The arc is the module it already is. Reason to switch: position over kills; reason to keep the cutter: charge. A third family is not proposed until a district's expedition needs one.

**Enemy roles, four.** Walker, the base. Floater: rides flow, cannot climb, otherwise a walker. Heavy: blocks, takes ten hits, drops a large mote, counts as ten for a stun. Static: drawn to stored charge within a short range, over a lit beacon; sparks toward it. Each poses a precedence question the walker cannot, stated in section 3 and 3.4; each is readable by size, silhouette or spark, not by tint alone. Health and tint are not roles.

| Phase | Districts | The player prepares for | The choice that is new | What fails |

| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |

| Early | Pumping, Lock Flight | Reading light; moving water; the first battery from kills | Hold or route; move the crowd or the water | Standing in energised water without insulation; draining the door's supply |

| Middle | Tram, Exchange, Collector | Moving the crowd deliberately; carrying two batteries and earning them; laying conduction | Tow, send away or hold; carry charge or cache it; close a gate and pay for it | A heavy on the rail; a battery that draws statics through a door |

| Late | Tidal Barrier, Head-works, Refuge | Two clocks; the network's settings; defence at home | Stay or run; which district's Flood goes where | A window missed by a minute; a fix clamped onto the refuge's own road |

**A cost the rules impose, stated so it is not discovered late.** Under the collection rule two empty batteries fill together, so a two-battery rack needs about nineteen kill motes before its first discharge. The tram crew above shows it at eight and seven after fifteen units. Districts that hand the surveyor two batteries early must show where the charge comes from; the campaign's answer is heavies, whose large motes fill a battery five at a time.

---

**What the refuge is.** A dock on the water with a board, a workshop, a pump and its own panel and beacons. No upkeep, no decay between expeditions: the PM baseline stands, and every choice below is an investment or a setting, not a tax.

- **Which dock is held, per district.** The colony holds one dock dry in every district it has reached; which one decides where the district is hot and which road is home. Changing it is a colony decision with a stated cost per district (section 3's consequences).

- **The workshop's tiers, unlocked by discoveries, paid in banked bundles.** The starting module (exists). The third rack row, from the Lock Flight's crane parts. The tram's lamp rewired to the refuge's circuit, from the Tram's depot, so the refuge has a beacon it can move on its own dock. The boat's range, from the Tidal Barrier's dry dock, which is what reaches the head-works. Each unlock changes what a loadout can be, and none is a strictly better version of an old item.

- **The forecast network.** Each district's relay repaired puts its forecast on the refuge's board; the Exchange's bank shows there too. The board is the colony's map of where the Flood will go, and it is only as complete as the districts visited.

- **The route board.** Every district outcome is recorded with its consequences; the colony reads it before choosing the next expedition. Outcomes are revisable only where a district says so (the Exchange's bank for what the trunk permits; the Tidal gates are not).

**The refuge as a played district.** When an outcome sends the Flood toward the refuge, the next expedition is at home: the colony's pump must be powered, its dock held, its beacon used to draw the arrivals off the landing, under the same rules and the same fifteen minutes. This is sketched, not designed; it is here because the owner's word for the game is hold, and a refuge that is only a menu cannot be held.

---

The World and Mystery Designer owns the mystery and has written the campaign thread (WLD103, on World and Mystery r19 and r20); this section adopts it and says how the districts above serve it, and proposes no second thread. The campaign question, in their words: the district relays are one network, kept in time from somewhere upstream; what, at its head, is still keeping time, and for whom? The first campaign clue is already in the pumping district and costs nothing new: after the player shuts the relay, the drum stops and the thin cable entering the room from outside still pulses on the old cadence. Shut, fix and hold are local outcomes, as the Expansion Brief asks, and the incoming pulse on a stopped drum is the door to the campaign.

Every district contributes six things or it is a key hunt, by the world page's rule: a local question the place asks, one campaign clue as an inspectable object, what travels as a fact and a convention and never as an item, one later action it enables, a redundant form of its clue in another district, and a consequence stated as a rule. Section 3 applies that rule to the three deep districts: the locks' painted gauges and the tram's timetable board are one clue in two forms (the machines kept the network's time); the barrier's gate log, whose openings keep the trunk's cadence and not the tide's, has its redundant form in the Collector's intake gauge; and each district's consequence is stated as a rule in its own subsection. The Exchange, the Collector and the Head-works are the world designer's example districts and carry their clues as written there; the player's evolving hypotheses, stage by stage, are tabulated on the world page and are the campaign's early-stop answer.

Two candidate final answers are held on the world page for the owner: the machine, in which nobody is left, the city runs on charge harvested from the Flood, and the head-works' choice is the relay-room choice at scale, so shutting it darkens every powered door and pump in the city, the colony's included; or the keepers, in which someone at the head-works keeps the network in time on purpose and steers the Flood toward the districts the refuge uses. Neither is chosen there; both keep the Flood as massed enemies; the choice is listed in section 10 with a recommendation, because it also decides what supplies the districts' power, the contract's open item REV104-4. The critic's five findings on the thread (REV104-1 to -5) are the world designer's to close, and two of them, what charge may leave a district with and what supplies the circuit, are carried by the shared rule contract. Whether the Flood is organisms, a fiction or a name is still the owner's decision, as before.

---

| District | Problem | Loadout tradeoff | Enemy combination | Discovery | Consequence | Assets: reuse / gap | Status |

| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |

| Pumping | Power against signal | Hauler, electrician, harvester, arc hauler | Walkers at a door | The relay | District outcome, revisable at the Exchange | Tiles, water, lamps, cables, mass / none new | Designed (Design Document) |

| Lock Flight | Water moved | Lockkeeper, bargeman | Floaters and walkers; flow against light | The locks kept the timetable | Rack row; upper canal; weir dock | Same / lock gates, water levels, prod | Deep (3.1) |

| Tram Incline | Light moved | Tram crew, tow crew | Heavies on the rail | The trams kept it too | Summit dock; gates dark; pass to the Exchange | Same / rail, tram, slope, pass gate | Deep (3.2) |

| Exchange | Time routed | Cable layer, cacher | Statics drawn to charge | One shaft, one time source | Every district's forecast and intake | Same / drums, bank, cable | Outline (3.4); mystery on the world page |

| Collector | The Flood's supply | Not designed | Not designed | Surges are cycled, not spawned | A closed gate delays a district's first surge | Same / wheels, meters, gates | Sketch; mystery on the world page |

| Tidal Barrier | The clock | Tidewatcher, runner | Walkers in one body of water; sea floaters | The gates keep the trunk's time | Refuge dock; flats dry for good; the Collector starved | Same / gates, mole, staff, wrecks | Deep (3.3) |

| Head-works | The source | Not designed | Not designed | Who oiled this? | Every district's dispatch at once | Same / governor, races | Sketch; mystery on the world page |

| Refuge | Defence at home | Not designed | Arrivals on the landing | None | The colony's own settings | Same / none new | Sketch |

| Salt Pans (candidate) | Conduction as one body | Not designed | Not designed | Not designed | Not designed | Same / pans | Candidate; not counted |

**Asset burden, honestly.** Every district reuses the pumping district's categories: ground and water tiles, lamps, cables, panels, boards, the humanoid mass. One animated water-level system serves the locks and the tide. The genuinely new categories are the rail and tram, lock and barrier gates, the Collector's wheels and meters, the head-works' governor and races, and three enemy silhouettes derived from the base mass. No free asset has been located for any of these and none is claimed; the Brief's rule that every shortlisted asset is recorded with source, creator, terms and intended use applies, and the asset-licences reference page governs what a free licence permits.

---

The Brief forbids an hours claim made by multiplying the old district's estimate, and this page makes none. What can be said: the pumping district's first discovery was estimated at ten to twelve expeditions from its designed beats, and that estimate stands for that district alone. For every other district the honest count waits on a beat list to the standard of section 3; the three deep districts have one expedition each, not a tier structure, so their first-discovery counts are not yet estimable. Required revisits are caused by consequences (the Exchange's reroutes, the held-dock changes, the second boards); optional exploration is the weir dock, the depot gates and the mole; open-ended replay is free expeditions under each outcome's rules. A total in hours will be given when three districts have full beat lists, and it will be labelled an estimate from content, not a measurement.

---

- **That the shared rule carries eight districts** is the central hypothesis; the test is section 3's, and three districts pass it on paper. Three of the eight, the Collector, the head-works and the refuge, are sketches and could fail it.

- **The floater's flow rule and the static's charge rule are exceptions** to attraction, each with a readable signal and a stated choice; the critic should test whether they make the precedence unreadable in combination.

- **The rack's third row** may make the six-slot tension in the pumping district feel like a tutorial constraint; the counter is that the new modules cost slots too.

- **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.

- **Numbers**: every count, time and yield above is a proposal; the ledgers show consistency, not balance.

- **The reading of "far too little"** decides whether this is the right expansion; see section 10.

---

1. **The aim.** Which reading of "far too little" is yours: content for the money, replay after the ending, ambition for the premise, or the ending itself? This page assumes ambition with a finite ending. Recommendation: say which, in a sentence, and PM records it; the districts are aimed by it.

2. **The count.** Eight districts counting the refuge, seven without it, and a ninth only when a candidate passes the test. Recommendation: eight, with the refuge designed last.

3. **The pumping district's finale as a district outcome** rather than the game's end, with what the trunk permits there set at the Exchange's bank. Recommendation: yes.

4. **The rack's third row**, unlocked by a discovery. Recommendation: yes.

5. **The refuge as a played district.** Recommendation: yes, designed last, cut if it does not stay the same game.

6. **Four enemy roles** with precedence questions, and two weapons plus the arc. Recommendation: yes; more only by the same test.

7. **The campaign's answer.** The world designer holds two for you: the machine (nobody is left; the city runs on the Flood's charge; the head-works' choice is the relay-room choice at scale) or the keepers (someone still keeps time on purpose). It also decides what supplies the districts' power. Recommendation: the machine, because it needs no new presence and makes the ending the same kind of choice you found promising at the relay; the keepers if you want a face at the end.

8. **Staffing.** The four proposed roles would take sections 2 to 6 over; until then the lead carries them. Your call.

**One question for PM**, recorded here because the Disagreement Register's TRL104 asks it and this page depends on the answer: can the owner's objection be recorded in one sentence, or should the Expansion Brief say the reason was not given? Either answer aims the campaign; the absence does not.

---

**Sources read for r1.** Expansion Brief PMU004 1a568e; Brief 1bd68a (D019 to D021); Tasks eb8c03 (DES104 Ready, highest priority: start structure and the shared-rule contract now); Team/Expansion Prompts ed17df (the four roles' domains, so this page marks what would transfer); Design Index 3cc078; Mechanics/Power and Attraction r1 782139 (adopted as r2 by the lead); Districts/Pumping District 655b14; Weapons/Cutter 1f135e; Equipment 481bca; Enemies 4987ab and Colony 4842a3 (seeds); World and Mystery r18 d1d56a and r20 7699de (WLD103 r19 and r20, adopted in section 6); Design Review REV103 r5 205bfb (REV104 criteria) and REV104 r1 80a882 (five findings on the world thread); Disagreement Register TRL104 b38d24; Reference/Readable State REF106 e86ada and Reference/Content Scale REF107 fcf9d4; Design Document r14 ec1b6c and r15 (the header note on the owner's steer, Clarity Q46).

**What would transfer, and to whom, if the roles are staffed.** Section 2's map and count and section 3's districts to Campaign and Districts; section 4's roles, weapons and precedence questions to Combat and Enemies; section 4's modules, rack and loadouts to Equipment and Builds; section 5 to Colony and Progression; section 6 to the existing World and Mystery Designer now. Until then the lead owns all of it as proposals, and PM's seeded pages remain reading aids.

**PM report.** Task DES104 r1, the campaign proposal named by the Expansion Brief; artifact Hold the Flood/Campaign r1, this page. Changed decisions: none canonical; the one-district product framing in the Design Document's owner page is superseded by PMU004, and the document now says so in a header note; section 6 adopts WLD103 r20 rather than proposing a second thread. Evidence: written design against the cited revisions; three written expeditions with charge ledgers that close under the shared rule contract; no player data; nothing built, prototyped, simulated or tested; no asset located or claimed. Risks: sections 9 and 10; the roles this page stands in for do not exist. Next handoff: the critic's REV104 on this exact revision; the world designer's correction of section 6 under WLD103; PM to record DES104 on Tasks, answer the question in section 10, and put the owner's decisions to the owner. One PM request: the owner's reading of "far too little", or a line saying it cannot be had.