District 5 of the seven recommended on [Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts). The Collector is the World designer's example district ([World and Mystery 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de)), placed and named in the lead's campaign ([DES104 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#2-the-campaigns-shape)), and marked **"Sketch — not designed"** in that page's coverage table for its loadouts and encounters. This page writes it to the standard of DES104 §3. **The World designer owns its clue logic and may rewrite §5; the lead owns any contradiction with DES104.**

**Sources:** [Campaign / DES104 r1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) (§1 the rules in one paragraph, §2 the shape, §3.1 and §3.3 for the water and clock districts this one must not repeat, §4 the module and enemy roles used below, §5 the colony, §7 the coverage table) · [Design Document ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §3–§4, §10 · [World and Mystery 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de) W1–W4 and the WLD103 contribution rule · [Design Review 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882) REV104-2, REV104-3 · [Expansion Brief cdc0c5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief?revision=cdc0c5). Neighbours: [Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts) · [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) · [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) · [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary).

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This campaign already has two districts made of water, and this one must not be a third version of either:

- The **[Lock Flight](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#31-the-lock-flight)** is water the player *moves by hand*, to make roads and complete circuits. Its lever is a lock lever.

- The **[Tidal Barrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#33-the-tidal-barrier)** is water on a *clock the player cannot set*. Its lever is a schedule they read.

- **The Collector is water the player does not move at all.** Its level is a *consequence* of what they hold: shut a gate and the Flood that drains in has nowhere to go, so the mass and its water both stay. The player never touches water here; they touch gates, and the water follows.

So the decision is not "where is the water" or "when is the water" but **"how much of the Flood do I let through, and what do I do with what I keep"** — and what is kept is a crowd standing in a basin, which is simultaneously the campaign's richest harvest and the worst thing to be standing next to.

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- **Three stepped basins** joined by **gates G1 and G2**, closed at the bottom by the **outfall**. Each gate carries a **wheel** turned by whatever passes through it, driving a **meter** on the walkway above. All four are hand-worked from the walkway; none is powered, so none of them can be denied to the player by darkening the district.

- **The intake gauge** at the interceptor mouths logs what has come in. It is the redundant form of the Tidal Barrier's gate log, as [DES104 §6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#6-the-mystery-thread-the-world-designers-and-how-the-districts-serve-it) already pairs them; this page adopts that pairing rather than proposing a new one.

- **Four levels, 0 to 3**, and the level is *derived*: level 0 is everything open and draining; each shut gate raises the level above it by one step at each dispatch, because what drains in cannot leave. Nothing here rises on a clock. **Leave every gate open and the district never floods** — which is also the setting in which the player gets nothing from it.

- **Shelters: the dock only.** The upper walkway is above every level and is not safe from the Flood. That is this district's characteristic pressure — you can always get above the water and never away from the crowd.

- **Two fixed beacons and a three-position panel**, on the district's own circuit, permitted by the trunk like everywhere else.

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| Adds | Changes | Signal | Choice it improves |

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

| **Gates that hold the Flood**, not the water: a shut gate keeps arriving organisms and their water in the basin above it | Nothing in what power, signal or charge mean | The wheel stops turning and its meter stops climbing; the water visibly backs up behind the gate | Spend the Flood, keep it, or harvest it |

| **A held mass**: organisms with no reachable lit beacon and nowhere to drain, standing in water, in numbers larger than one surge | Nothing: they follow W1's precedence exactly — they hold at a lit beacon if one is reachable, and spread in the basin if none is | A basin visibly full, and the meter that stopped | Make the campaign's best stun target, at the price of making it next to you |

| **Overtopping**: a basin held past level 3 spills into the one below over about twenty seconds | Nothing; it is drainage, not a new rule | The water crests the gate visibly before anything moves | Know when to stop holding |

| **The empty flash** (also [REV104-3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review)): a withheld district's beacon flashes with nothing behind it | W1 gains one clause — *a surge enters there if the collector supplies one* | The beacon flashes, the thin cable pulses, nothing arrives | Buy three quiet minutes in another district and see that you bought them |

**The one contract change this district requires** is the W1 clause above. It is the lead's to make. Without it the withheld surge is an invisible number; with it, it is a moment the player watches happen in a different district on a later expedition, which is the best thing in this design.

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- **The harvester** comes to take charge out of a held basin. It carries two batteries because a held mass sheds far more than one battery holds, and insulation because it will be standing at the edge of energised water when it discharges. It banks one bundle and it is here for charge, not cargo — which only pays if the player has somewhere to spend charge, so this loadout is a *campaign* decision made at the refuge, not a local one.

- **The sluicegate** comes to set the gates and leave. It carries three bundles' worth of space, a portable beacon to pull a held crowd off the walkway route it needs, and a kit because it will be crossing above a full basin with no coil to answer anything that reaches it.

Neither is better. The harvester leaves with charge and no cargo and has to survive standing next to what it is harvesting; the sluicegate leaves with cargo and a set of gates and has no answer at all if a crowd reaches the walkway.

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**Local question: why does the Flood come back every time?** The pumping district answers where it enters and who aimed it. It never answers where it comes from, and a player who has shut a relay and watched the sluice keep delivering has the question sharply.

- **Notice.** The wheels turn when a surge passes through a gate, and the meters above them climb. The meters are graduated in the units the rack's battery readout uses.

- **Compare.** The player has watched their own battery fill from motes, one unit a kill. The needle here moves the same way, on a scale hundreds of times larger.

- **Infer.** The city is not producing the Flood; it is *moving* it, the way it moves water, and taking charge off it as it passes. The surges are cycled, not spawned — which is the World designer's stated contribution for this district.

- **Experiment, free, on the first visit, no item required.** Shut G2 and watch W3's wheel stop while W1 and W2 keep turning. The mass is being routed; the player is the one routing it.

- **Consequence.** The outfall, §6.

- **Recovery if the clue is missed.** The meters are on the walkway, which every route home crosses from level 2 upward, so the district shows them to a player who is only trying to leave.

- **On replays.** The meters are stable evidence under W3 and read true every visit. A player who knows what they mean uses them as a live reading of how much of the Flood is still upstream — which is the only such reading in the game.

**Campaign clue (proposal; the World designer's domain).** The meters read *charge* — the same quantity the player's rack reads. **Redundant form:** the intake gauge against the Tidal Barrier's gate log, as DES104 §6 already pairs them.

**On [REV104-2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review), which the World page flagged against itself.** Clause 4 says charge never leaves the district. The meters do not break it: they read this district's own throughput, on this district's own wheels, and nothing the player carries crosses the dock. **My position is that clause 4 should read "charge never leaves the district *with the player*", and the clue should stand.** Dropping it would remove the one observable connecting the player's own resource to the city's, which is the campaign's central inference. This is the lead's clause to word; I am saying which way I would word it, and this page is built on that reading.

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**The lever.** The outfall can be shut from the lower gantry at levels 0–1, or from the upper walkway at any level, the long way. Shut, what drains into the Collector stays in it.

**What it does elsewhere.** A district downstream on the cycle **does not receive its next first surge**. Its drum still turns and the trunk still permits, so its beacon flashes, the thin cable pulses, and nothing comes with it. Three quiet minutes at the start of one expedition — enough to do the one thing a crowd was always standing on, and not enough to change what that district is. The second and third dispatches arrive normally, because the cycle refills.

1. **Here, next time.** A shut outfall means this basin does not drain: on the next visit the Collector starts one level higher, the lower gantry is gone, and the whole district is worked from the walkway. §9 states the failure case of this.

2. **The trip.** The lever is only here. Buying a quiet opening somewhere else costs an expedition spent in the district you are not opening.

3. **What you are standing next to.** Everything withheld is here, in a basin, and the basin is between the dock and the meters. Holding two surges' worth is the best harvest in the campaign and it is also the largest single mass in the game standing between the player and their route home.

4. **Overtopping.** Held past level 3, a basin spills into the one below, and everything it was holding goes with it — into the basin the player crossed on the way in, over about twenty seconds, with a visible crest first. The player is warned and the warning is short.

**Persistence and readability.** Gate and outfall states persist between expeditions, like the pumping district's relay. The refuge board shows them and the starting level before launch, so the player launches knowing which Collector they are getting.

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- **After the [Exchange](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#34-the-exchange-in-outline):** the Collector's own bank position can be darkened. Then nothing here is announced, the panel's beacons still work but nothing schedules, and the sluice delivers trickles that spread through the basins instead of gathering. Harvesting a held mass becomes far harder — a spread crowd is not a stun target — and setting gates becomes far easier. Strictly better in one dimension, strictly worse in the other, which is what a late power should do to an earlier place.

- **After the [Tidal Barrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#33-the-tidal-barrier) is shut:** the Collector is starved, as DES104 already states. Levels fall, held masses thin, and the district stops being a bank. That is a real cost of the Barrier's outcome, and it is the campaign's clearest example of one district's persistent choice reaching another.

- **What this district enables: the race route to the [Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works).** The head race north is walkable only when the basins are held low — every gate open, the outfall open, nothing accumulating. So the alternative approach to the finale is bought by giving up everything this district is for, on the expedition you use it. See [Districts §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts#7-one-alternative-route-through-the-plan).

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A sealed wing behind basin 1: a fourth basin the crews gated off and gauged separately. **Never required.**

- **How it is reached.** The inflow to it is walkable only with the Collector held at level 0 — every gate open, the outfall open — which is the setting that gives up the delay lever for that expedition. No item, no key: a state the player already knows how to produce, used for something else.

- **What is in it.** The separate gauge, with a full log, and the crews' written reason for sealing it.

- **What it gives.** Certainty rather than capability. A player who reads it arrives at the head-works knowing which of the World designer's [two candidate answers](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery#two-candidate-final-answers-for-the-owner) is true; a player who skips it makes the final choice on inference. Both are complete campaigns; they are not the same experience. **The content of that evidence is the World designer's to write, not mine** — this page supplies the room, the way in, and the price.

- **Why a wing and not a district.** It occupies no new lever cell ([Districts §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts#2-the-count-seven-districts-not-eight)), and it costs this district's assets and no new ones.

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**Entry (knowledge, never an item), two ways.** The crews' inked plan behind the pumping district's junction gate draws the drains and names where they go. Independently, the Exchange's routing bank carries a position with this district's name on it. Either records the district in the notebook and makes its dock selectable at the colony, so a player who followed cable and one who followed water both arrive.

**Revisit — three standing reasons.** The basins hold the campaign's densest salvage, because the city's drains catch what everything upstream loses. The gates are the only place the Flood's quantity can be set. And a held mass is the campaign's best charge harvest, which makes this the district a player comes to when they need charge rather than cargo.

**Required return on the main route:** one, after the Tidal Barrier, because shutting the barrier gates starves this district and its state has to be re-read before the head-works run.

**One consequence of failure.** If an expedition ends in rescue with the outfall shut, the state persists — the same rule that makes every district outcome mean something. On the next visit the Collector starts one level higher: the lower gantry is under water, the short crossing to basin 3 is gone, and the outfall is reachable only the long way round the walkway. **Nothing banked, noted or built is lost** — the baseline holds. It is readable before launch on the refuge board, it is recoverable by an action the player already knows (the outfall opens from the walkway at any level), and the recovery costs the delay lever for that visit and the long crossing. Failure makes the world less convenient for one trip; it never makes the campaign longer or the player poorer.

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**Reused, no new category:** water planes and wet/dry ground tinting, gates and valves, cable, indicator lamps, beacons, a three-position panel, walkway and gantry props, boards and gauges, signs, dock props, the humanoid mass. This is the pumping district's vocabulary throughout.

**Genuine gaps, marked and not filled. No free asset has been located, checked or licensed for any of these, and nothing here authorises creating one** ([Brief D009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief)).

- **Turning wheels with readable meters** — visible rotation tied to throughput, and a needle readable from a walkway at a distance.

- **A stepped-basin drainage set** — three basins in a stair with hand-worked gates. The closest thing in the design is the pumping district's yard channel and sluice; whether a free set covers this is unknown and unchecked.

- **The held mass** — a crowd standing still, in water, in numbers larger than one surge. This is as much a crowd-rendering and readability question as an art one, and it is the largest single unknown on this page.

**A cheaper alternative, recorded now rather than after it is expensive.** If the held mass proves illegible or costly at survivorlike density, cap what a basin holds at one surge's worth and make the harvest smaller and the overtopping quicker. The district keeps its lever, its discovery, its outward consequence and its failure case; it loses the "bank of Flood" feeling that is its best idea. I would try the full version first.

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- **[REV104-3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) (Lead).** The W1 clause and the light-convention row for the empty flash. §6 is unreadable without it and this is the one contract change this district needs.

- **[REV104-2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) (Lead, with World).** Clause 4's wording, per §5. My position is stated there and this page is built on it.

- **World (WLD103).** The campaign clue in §5, the evidence in the Holding Basin (§8), and whether the intake-gauge pairing in DES104 §6 stands as this district's redundant form.

- **Lead (DES104).** Whether this page's account of the Collector contradicts anything in the campaign page; if it does, the campaign page wins until we have agreed otherwise.