An **ordinary role** is a crowd member: it has one principal warning/action loop that stays readable while dozens of others move around it, and its crowd arrives from a physical source area as [Combat Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20Rules) describes. A **special role** changes the local geometry, target visibility or oxygen clock strongly enough to deserve a featured entrance and additional recovery space. “Special” does not mean invulnerable, a punitive counter-unit or guaranteed rarity; a ridiculous build may erase it before its first action.

| **Unaware / investigating / locally alert** | Facing, sight line and heard/seen source are shown. An enemy follows a reachable visible route toward sight, recent sound or last seen place, searches locally, then disengages. | No global knowledge, unseen shortcut or cross-station tracking. A completed call or mechanism alarm wakes an adjacent source area; its crowd arrives only through routes shown before arrival. |

| **Break / quiet window** | Defeated enemies stay defeated for that expedition. A broken crest shows whether its source area is sealed, exhausted or still able to feed, and whether any woken crowd is still travelling. | No counter-spawn, reward reduction or replacement elite reacts to success. A quiet window lasts until a still-occupied area sends bodies through a visible route or an authored source acts. Mechanisms remain whatever their own state says. |

The nearest-visible rule remains a provisional targeting default, not a claim of optimal targeting. Priority choices, manual overrides and accessibility assistance remain interface decisions. Examples on this page may use more than one ordinary output where a rig carries them.

**Choice and responses.** Back out of reach during wind-up, circle fixed cover, defeat it with ordinary automatic fire or commit to the cutter when isolated. Manual Barrier buys work time; Manual → Nozzle can break the approach. The viable no-unique-part baseline is movement, hard cover and the worn cutter. Packed Pressers make lane space costly, but they share no omniscience. In a crowd they are the dense line an arc or pull build wants, and the wall a cautious player keeps to one side.

**Choice and responses.** Keep the side route in view, move so it lengthens, use fixed cover to force another approach, or defeat the Flanker. A manual Barrier can guard the chosen side; a faced Nozzle can turn its committed lane into a miss. Baseline movement and doorway geometry remain sufficient. Flankers usually arrive as a pack while the slow mass holds the main lane, so where the astronaut stands decides which reaches them first.

**Effect and work.** The completed call is one external event/wave for ancestry, but carries no damaging packet or impact and has no receiver in the current catalogue. It wakes one adjacent source area whose route was shown before the brace; that crowd then arrives physically, and each later attack is its own wave. The call itself neither cancels a stage nor creates enemies from nothing, and a source area already sealed or exhausted cannot answer.

**Choice and responses.** Rush or automatically focus the visible Caller, obstruct or displace it during the brace, cut the named alarm lead, seal the answering route, or withdraw before its crowd arrives. Letting it call is also a choice: a strong build may want the second surge. Manual Nozzle is a strong brace interrupt; Barrier can buy time but does not silence it. Baseline cutter, ordinary fire, hard cover and the physical alarm-lead checkpoint prevent a required part gate.

**Perception and timing.** It follows local sight/sound. If a visible control becomes active within its room, it faces the astronaut operating it. During the crouch, the landing arc follows the operator until the clamp jaws flash; that flash locks the arc to the astronaut's current position. Cancelling before lock makes the inactive control ineligible, so the Crawler drops the crouch and resumes pursuit without leaping. After lock, cancelling does not stop the committed leap: moving outside the fixed arc makes it miss and skid through recovery, while remaining at the control lets the body strike and jaws catch the panel. A latched Crawler occupies the control until displaced or defeated; after removal it rights itself before acting again.

**Choice and responses.** Begin work to draw the crouch, wait for the visible jaw-flash lock, then cancel and leave the fixed landing arc so it skids; alternatively interrupt/defeat it before commitment or clear it before working. Manual Barrier can intercept the committed body and Manual → Nozzle can displace it. The baseline lock-read, movement and cutter path uses no unique equipment. No cancellation or occupation erases an already completed checkpoint.

**Perception and timing.** With sight of the astronaut and at least one visible allied creature behind the previewed sheet, it winds up by extending the two anchors, commits one fixed veil between them, then remains unable to cast while the veil's shown edge decays. Collapse is followed by a brief refold recovery. Losing the eligible ally, losing sight, displacement or defeat before commitment aborts the cast; moving the bearer afterwards does not drag the anchored sheet.

**Wind-up, action and recovery.** At the start of the visible plant/dust-draw warning, Bellback faces the last-seen point and the cone direction locks. The bright ripple fills within that already fixed cone. Completing the brace releases one pressure wave through it, then the chest collapses and it must unplant/refill before another brace. Leaving the cone or reaching hard cover avoids the release without cancelling it; displacing or defeating Bellback during brace interrupts it.

This allocation creates **ten encounter placements inside existing objective instances 1–9 and 11**. Objectives 10 and 12 deliberately add none: 10's readiness report is ship-side, while 12 must reuse the actual populations of the eventual connected rooms until its joining mechanism is selected. The two major setpieces below are placements 8 and 10 in this same ledger, not two additional rooms. **Every placement is a crowd encounter:** the roles below are the recognisable members and teaching cues inside crowds fed by source areas, and [Encounter And Mechanism Placement Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Encounter%20And%20Mechanism%20Placement%20Inventory) owns each placement's source areas, scale hypothesis and any host rework. Exact tuning and exhaustive geometry, cue and recovery variants remain later work.

This roster provisionally allocates **ten placements within the thirteen-major-mechanism SMALL first pass**: two Triage Relays (objectives1/3), two Carousels (2/5), two Breath Banks (6/8), one Phase-Balance chamber (8), two Resuscitation Grids (7/9), and the pressure-receiver iris/two-clamp assembly (11). These are P01–P10 in [Encounter And Mechanism Placement Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Encounter%20And%20Mechanism%20Placement%20Inventory); **P11 clinical profile comparator, P12 Synchronization converter/roster and P13 core isolation are already assigned there**, not unallocated future slots. Objective4’s quarantine Arc source and objective5’s Lens exchanger remain equipment fixtures already counted by Acquisition26, not extra mechanism slots here. The final game band remains unselected.

| Existing objective / encounter placement | Crowd and first readable cue | Crest decision | Reused trap/work and how quiet is earned |

| **R1 / 1. Collar isolation / placement 1** | A slow crowd of Pressers already fills the cargo aisle's two lanes; the first to reach the player teach backswing, direct lane and nearest visible target. A Caller braces beside the patient-bay alarm before the noisy final fastener. | Let the Caller wake the patient bay and fight the surge through the shutter lane, silence it first, or finish a fastener and retreat. Fork in the shutter fixture closes one lane. | Simple Triage Relay/alarm lead. Cutting the lead, closing the shutter or breaking the surge creates a shown quiet window; completed fasteners persist. |

| **R4 / 11. Pressure-receiver iris / placement 10, setpiece B** | Siphon and Shutterback each had separate earlier lessons; the long approach hall, its feeding mouths, pillars, fan angle, tether radius and Caller are visible before commitment. | Drain, occlusion and a large surge change whether to take the direct selector, cut the alarm or use the two-clamp line. See setpiece B. | The existing pressure iris and its two-clamp alternative are the only mechanisms. Tether retraction, fan collapse, cut alarm and sealed mouths provide windows; iris/clamp stages persist. |

The most important exploration combinations are placement 6, where a crowd and Siphon pressure compete with a durable cap stage, and placement 8, where Bellback and a large crowd interact with visible mechanism force while the player chooses a persistent cap/pin. Placement 9 similarly makes occlusion, and the choice to allow or stop a second surge, matter to record/pull work rather than only kill speed.

**Two-order cue check.** Build-and-ship-first still sees Boltspitter at 2 before 5/7, Flanker at 4 before 6 and Bellback at 8 before 11. Language-and-network-first instead gets the always-authored separated Boltspitter and eligible Veilbearer cue bays at 5 before their pair at 7, and the Flanker-only long-approach segment at 6 before its valve mixture; 2 and 4 later reinforce those cues. These are spatial staging obligations inside placements 5 and 6, not journal-learned flags, new prerequisites, populations appearing from nowhere or extra objectives. The main Receiver Vault uses Siphon/Shutterback, whose separate placements 6/9 precede 11 in both orders; the cheaper Bellback substitution supplies its own threshold rehearsal below rather than assuming objective 8 was visited.

**One existing-room layout obligation.** The objective 8 room must contain a threshold with full view of Bellback's cone, one fixed structural rib, the Phase-Balance neutral line, one Breath Bank draw lane, one cap control on the protected side and a maintenance stirrup that prevents tilt displacement only while occupied. The broad gallery also needs two visible feeding mouths from adjacent source volumes, each with a sealable shutter, and floor space for a crowd on the proposed 80–150 scale. That is added layout work inside this existing room, not free capacity. No success-triggered population appears. These are later room-placement obligations for one existing objective instance, not a new module or mechanism family.

**Visible stages and objective.** Stage 1: reach the neutral line while Bellback and the Bank advertise different force directions and the first bodies gather. Stage 2: the crest — the crowd pours from both mouths while Bellback braces; hold, seal a mouth, or overpower it. Stage 3: in the break, one cap hand-cycle or one rib-pin checkpoint, then optional removal of the Nozzle/exchanger rewards under their own lifecycle. The objective is persistent cap/pin progress and discovery, not mandatory extermination.

**Overpowering clean win.** A developed crowd build — for example an arc chain that feeds on density, with a stored manual release — turns the crest into the payoff: the crowd collapses in the neutral lane, Bellback is caught exposed after its brace, and the gallery goes quiet before the next mechanism cycle. How many ordinary outputs the rig carries and how its links change belong to [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules). No elite, immunity or reduced reward appears; thresholds and damage remain unvalidated.

**Ordinary low-power path.** With the opening rig — or only movement, cutter and hard cover — the player seals one feeding mouth early, waits behind the fixed rib, leaves Bellback's locked cone, crosses on the Bank's opposite quiet beat and uses the stirrup for one hand-cycle. Closing one cap persists and removes that side's later draw; the player may withdraw and return. Barrier can catch physical debris but does not stop oxygen drain or solve timing.

**Failure and return.** Displacement loses only the current unfinished cycle. Withdrawal preserves completed cap/pin work, and a crowd the player actually broke stays broken on a living return. Death returns carried property, ends temporary upgrades, spends breathed gas, shifts the station and makes the old route historical; the room's stable mechanisms and installed/dropped objects keep their owning state. A new population variant may come with the new arrangement, but no failed attempt creates a punitive wave.

**One existing-room layout obligation.** The objective 11 instance must give a threshold view of the central pressure iris/gauge, Shutterback's initial shelter angle, Siphon's tether radius, one Caller and the source volumes it can wake. Two fixed pillars break the hose line. The long approach hall carries the main crowd on the proposed 80–150 scale from visible feeding mouths, each sealable; that crowd space is added layout work in the existing approach, not free capacity. Two side alcoves contain the already proposed mechanical equalisation clamps, each reachable without crossing behind the closed iris; one alcove offers a longer flank around the fan. The retreat boundary is visible. This adds no mechanism beyond the iris/two-clamp assembly already owned by objective 11.

**Visible stages and objective.** Stage 1: cross the approach hall as the crowd wakes and choose the exposed direct selector lane, the longer fan flank or the first clamp alcove. Stage 2: the crest — let the Caller wake the second source or stop it, and resolve or evade the two special pressures inside the surge. Stage 3: in the break, fill/equalise the receiver through the correct selector or complete both clamp checkpoints, then hand-cycle the iris. Each completed clamp and the opened iris persist. The reward is the bounded passage/evidence cell; no ending truth or rescue is attached.

**Overpowering clean win.** A developed build can take the crest head-on: automatic fire strips the exposed Shutterback, the fan collapses, and a stored manual release clears the packed hall and the Siphon behind it. A player who wants the spectacle may deliberately let the Caller wake the second source and break both surges together. How many ordinary outputs the rig carries and how its links change belong to [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules). A legal build wins with no reactive counter-spawn or invulnerability; whether it suffices is a later balance question, not guaranteed prose.

**Ordinary low-power path.** Seal the nearest feeding mouth, bait Siphon's announced hose into a pillar, cross during full retraction, use the longer alcove outside Shutterback's shelter, and cut the Caller's exposed alarm lead. Complete one clamp and withdraw. On a later reachable visit, repeat for the second clamp and hand-cycle after the gauge equalises. Opening-rig Barrier may catch one hose/strike, but fixed cover, movement and cutter are sufficient; no unique part, language conclusion or survivor is required.

**Failure and return.** An occupied control or displacement loses only its current unfinished stage. A cut alarm lead, sealed mouth and completed clamp remain. Living withdrawal is physical, and a broken crowd stays broken on a living return. Death returns only carried property, ends temporary upgrades, shifts once and does not reveal the vault's new route. The same survivor rules and short-crossing limit remain elsewhere; this is never an escort or mandatory ending gate.

On the first objective 6 visit, the four-space Sensor/Projector plus Manual/Barrier rig can barely hold the long hall's crowd, so the player seals one ward door early, baits the newly seen Glass Siphon hose into a pillar and works the Flanker pack along the wall. They close one Breath Bank cap, free and carry the installed Dynamo, and leave the proposed regulator core because carrying capacity or oxygen margin is exhausted. The cap and removed-Dynamo state persist; the current route is recorded, not promised.

After objective 9 exposes a Capacitor and objective 2's coupler permits the proposed 6 A configuration, the player returns if the sampling loop is actually reachable. They can take the **6 C/6 A Counterwall**: Manual → Barrier, Dynamo locally clamped to that frame → Capacitor, then built-in manual release → Arc. Siphon hose and Presser/Flanker strikes caught on the faced Barrier are separate external waves, each able to add one local contribution; at a visible Arc target the player manually clears the packed lane. That turns the dense crowd from a reason to leave into fuel for a protected valve window. With one proposed 2 C canister, only 2 C remain for the proposed regulator core and none for other loot.

Either build may complete the remaining hand-cycle and pick up the regulator. A living return brings the carried manifest home without a shift, ends that trip's temporary upgrades and leaves the broken hall quiet. Death after the pickup commits returns every still-carried part, canister and regulator once, leaves consumed Cycler material spent and completed cap/work intact, ends temporary upgrades, then shifts the station. Death before pickup does not collect it. The journal freezes the warning and lets the player compare records; changing links there is the proposal in [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules), while tether breaks, attacks, caps and pickups still need running time.

The six ordinary roles cover direct lane, side angle, waking the next source, ranged line, occupied control and temporary sight. The three specials escalate body displacement, mobile occlusion and local oxygen drain. Each pressure changes movement or a world-time decision; none exists only as a health shape, steals property, demands one part or targets the player's successful build. Veilbearer earns its apparent overlap by teaching a bounded stationary occlusion before Shutterback's mobile group shelter; if that distinction is not readable, the ordinary role should be cut rather than multiplied.

**Genuinely cheaper alternative: 6 ordinary / 2 special / 1 setpiece.** Retain all six ordinary roles plus Bellback and Glass Siphon. Omit Shutterback from the selected SMALL roster while preserving its source proposal for later consideration; Veilbearer carries the simpler sight-pressure function. Convert Balance Gallery from a major setpiece to an ordinary Bellback/mechanism placement, and retain Receiver Vault as the only setpiece using Bellback/Siphon rather than a fan. Its threshold must stage Bellback alone across one fixed pillar for a full warning-start lock, release and recovery before the Siphon line can overlap; both creatures are visibly present and no spawn is triggered. This self-contained rehearsal means the cheaper vault does not depend on objective 8, but it consumes part of the layout saving. The alternative still removes one special adaptation and one bespoke staged layout, at the cost of less dynamic angular cover, spectacle and escalation. It does not promise retained playtime, add enemies elsewhere or turn the short rescue into compensation.

**Overlap accounting.** Combat Rules already owns general perception, targeting, alerts, interruption and return; this page summarises the ordinary-output and link-editing rules owned by Build Rules and Mechanical Interfaces And Opening Quantities and does not rewrite them. Traps And Encounter Progression already owns five families, the regional pressure rhythm and the first Pressure Gallery trace; setpiece A specializes that existing trace at objective 8 rather than adding a third setpiece. Horde Creature Proposals supplies the three special behaviors; this page classifies, allocates and integrates them rather than claiming three wholly new designs. Equipment Catalogue and Acquisition own parts, C/A and legal rig paths. Player Information owns cue presentation/accessibility equivalents. Save And Content State owns identities/transaction consistency.

**Unique v1 increments.** This proposal adds three ordinary role definitions (Boltspitter, Clampcrawler, Veilbearer), scoped combat-state/placement extensions for the three existing ordinary roles and three existing special briefs, one shared combat-state sheet, ten encounter allocations inside existing objectives, and two setpiece specifications included within those ten. Cross-order integrity adds two separated cue bays/fixed separation at placement 5 and one separated approach beat at placement 6; the cheaper roster carries one conditional Bellback threshold rehearsal. These are geometry/staging work inside already counted placements, not new encounters or rooms. The proposal adds zero regions, objectives, rooms, language/mystery chains, survivor scenes, equipment definitions or mechanism families. The setpieces reuse objective 8's Phase/Breath work and objective 11's pressure iris; their first-pass host geometry and thirteen-major-mechanism allocation are supplied by [Station Room And Module Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Station%20Room%20And%20Module%20Inventory) and [Encounter And Mechanism Placement Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Encounter%20And%20Mechanism%20Placement%20Inventory). Exact permitted geometry/state/staging variants remain M4 work, not silently completed by this roster.

This outcome advanced the combat/interface/roster portion of Production Scope’s historical **Acquisition, build/combat interfaces and roster** row after Acquisition26; it does not reopen or add the full Catalogue, Acquisition, Traps, Regional, Player Information, Save or older outline estimates. [Encounter And Mechanism Placement Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Encounter%20And%20Mechanism%20Placement%20Inventory) now supplies **ten encounter-placement briefs, including the two setpieces, and thirteen major mechanism briefs**, using [Station Room And Module Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Station%20Room%20And%20Module%20Inventory)’s first-pass host geometry and recovery constraints. Remaining detailed authoring is exact permitted geometry/population/cue/state variants, full setpiece layout variants, role-specific presentation equivalents and combined encounter/mechanism cases. Multiple ordinary outputs are allowed under Build Rules, which owns their limits. TARGET/STRETCH roles and variants remain unestimated.

All nine roles have a silhouette/warning, local perception, wind-up/action/recovery, effect on astronaut/work, interrupt/avoid/defeat conditions, player choice, manual rig response, no-unique-part baseline and causal-wave/Dynamo boundary. Veil casts now name an eligible ally; Clampcrawler locks the operator position and distinguishes cancellation before/after commitment; Bellback locks its cone when the warning begins. The allocation uses all nine roles across four regions, assigns ten encounters to existing objectives, counts two setpieces inside that ten, adds no encounter at ship-side objective 10 and invents none for unresolved objective 12. Both retained Regional orders receive low-pressure Boltspitter and Flanker cues before their mixtures without objective or learned-state gates. At least placements 6, 8 and 9 change persistent work or evidence decisions. The revisit compares two legal 6 C/6 A rigs and conserves material/property. No controller-free or double-resolved shot, global Dynamo, Fork amplification, remote drain, punitive counter-spawn, mandatory equipment gate, death material penalty, rescue exception, story truth or ending lock was added.

Open decisions/interfaces are target override/assistance; limits on multiple ordinary outputs, owned by Build Rules; exact warning and recovery timings; damage, health, displacement, crowd scale and on-screen effect density; line/cover/camera rules; Barrier eligibility; Siphon drain presentation; Veil/Shutter visibility distinction; origin evidence and cast interpretations; surviving-enemy hold and presentation detail on living return (population membership and defeated states are preserved; a different finite population variant is selected only at a death shift); exact room geometry and shift-valid access; exhaustive mechanism-instance geometry/state variants; performance/effect density; and acquisition/capacity values. Later owner-authorised implementation and observation with real players must establish readability, accessibility, combat value, build dominance, low-power viability, pressure pacing and performance. This paper contract proves none of them.