Hold The Horde — First Expedition Options

The astronaut has no choice but to dock the damaged ship despite the station's stay-away warning and unanswered hails. Station current back-feeds through its collar. The astronaut leaves clean air to retrieve the isolation bridge that can stop the fault, carrying a spare canister and a rig that shoots automatically but raises Barrier only when commanded.

The owner chose Option A — One part, two kinds of machine as the opening direction; Option B remains the alternative.

Why the astronaut leaves

The ship can refill the suit but cannot fly. Its airlock display shows the fault entering the nearest rooms; the suit shows oxygen, condition, shared carrying space and a reverse breadcrumb through passages actually walked.

In the Airlock Corridor, an inaccessible window shows a human-painted R-3 ward label, breathable pressure and a repeated knock. The astronaut can record it but not reach it. First they must free the bridge at Collar Control and bring it home. Installed in the ship-side cutoff, it stops the back-feed; it neither repairs propulsion nor opens an R-3 route.

Two nearest Pressers teach the starting rig before the new part appears. Sensor → Projector fires repeatedly at a valid target when ready. Manual → Barrier raises a brief faced wall on the player's press. Physical handling and station work happen while the game runs; only links among accessible mounted parts change in the paused journal. The worn cutter, tank and navigation are not rig parts.

Option A — One part, two kinds of machine

The first pressure

The route is Airlock Corridor → Cargo Turn → Collar Control. From Cargo Turn's threshold, the astronaut sees a glass-front board, a rack breaking the bend and about 20–40 standing Pressers across two lanes. These are a proposed total, not a release stage or guaranteed simultaneous screen count. Projector keeps firing while the astronaut moves; the player faces and raises Barrier to cross the bend or hold the board. Clearing the standing bodies earns quiet for this expedition; exact opening growth awards remain open.

Make one event do two jobs

The board shows one pulse reaching either the rack lamp or patient-bay shutter lamp. Beside it, a loose Fork Relay matches that one-input/two-output shape and the rig diagram; invalid ports refuse before commitment.

The player may experiment at cover or in quiet: pack Manual, mount Fork, then link Sensor → Fork → Projector + Barrier. Handling happens while the game runs and the link edit in the paused journal. On the next accepted visible threat, a ready Projector shoots while a ready, already-faced Barrier rises. Each branch keeps its own target, readiness, heat and facing; one refusal neither cancels its sibling nor queues defence.

Fork adds control, not damage or area. Automatic protection gives up the chosen Barrier moment, and bad facing or an unimportant target can waste it. Keeping Manual is valid. The opening quantity sheet owns the details: the split fills four mounted spaces and the six-power peak, while inactive Manual still consumes carrying space.

Lend the same Fork to the station

The board repeats Fork's grammar at room scale. Fixed station power can hold rack and shutter together only while that one Fork is installed; Fork supplies no power. Moving it from rig or cargo costs exposed time and ends the personal branch. The player can remount Manual when able. Suit and board never share the benefit.

Install Fork in the board. Rack arms and shutter stay held while the board's power continues. The board and floor frame are separate. Beside the frame, reachable before crossing, the hand-operated shutter latch can be turned while the shutter is across. Completing its cycle mechanically secures the closure after power is gone. The work takes time while the game runs; interruption loses the current hand-cycle, and installing Fork alone does not secure it.
Keep Fork personal or carried. The selector must hold the rack during removal, so the unlatched shutter is not held and its approach stays open. The player keeps the personal branch or manual option and avoids installation/retrieval time, but accepts that lane.

Without Fork, the player can use the selector to hold the shutter across, complete its latch, then return power to the rack. This costs exposed time. The unpowered rack relocks at the last completed fastener; work resumes when rack power returns. After bridge removal the rack needs no power. An unlatched shutter returns neutral on withdrawal or death; the completed latch persists. The airlock route never crosses the floor frame or shutter lane.

The noisy hold and the useful return

The final fastener is visibly noisy. It or the waiting Caller's completed call releases one warned 40–60-body stage from the patient-bay ward through the shutter lane. Clearing its committed arrivals resolves the stage; completing the latch with the shutter across seals the ward against further arrivals. A latch completed before the noise prevents that release, while a powered hold suppresses it only while current continues. Bodies already through a late closure remain active. Clearing the standing bodies earns current-expedition quiet, and a completed latch keeps the ward closed even if other combat renews.

The player may retreat to refill after any completed fastener. Fork fitting, retrieval and bridge pickup commit separately. At death an installed Fork remains in Cargo Turn; a carried Fork returns once. Cargo Turn and Collar Control remain a compact assembly, so throat, conduit and releases never split.

Mounted Sensor, Fork, Projector and Barrier use four carrying units; packed Manual adds one, the canister two and bridge two: 9 of 10. Reclaiming Fork fits but leaves one unit; an installed Fork remains that exact object for a later reachable visit. The selector, rack cover, cutter and retreats keep no-Fork extraction viable.

Back aboard, the bridge stops the warning tone and back-feed, but propulsion remains broken. The isolated signal gives R-3's current local bearing, not a route: one useful ship change and one human reason to leave again.

The discovery may disappoint if automatic Barrier feels like a convenience, or if the board repeats the diagram before the player values it. Fork adds no force or spectacle. Its case rests on making one useful branch, then deciding whether that scarce object belongs to the rig or station.

Option B — Follow the bodies

Before and discovery

The route is Airlock Corridor → Receiving Bay → Collar Control. A contested main passage crosses Receiving Bay. Beside it, a hospital gurney lift cycles after a fallen creature is pushed onto its plate and returns empty. A second body produces the same result. The player directly observes that the lift transports bodies upward; this suggests a risky route to investigate but does not prove that the destination is safe, breathable, unlocked, or intended for a living astronaut.

The player can step onto the lift or take the known main passage. Boarding commits them to a short trip with oxygen still running and no knowledge of the landing. Refusing it loses no required progress.

Decision now

Ride the lift. It reaches a compact mortuary landing above Receiving Bay, behind the crowd's main approach. In this first arrangement, the player sees where transported bodies went and reaches Collar Control by a quieter service door. If that door is locked or the landing is unsafe, a powered return control calls the lift back; the failed guess costs oxygen and time while the game runs, rather than the expedition.
Take the main passage. The route and return are known, but the player must cross the crowd and decide when the manual barrier is worth spending. The gurney remains available for later investigation.

In this option, Receiving Bay, the lift shaft, and the mortuary landing are one compact local assembly that moves together through shifts. That continuity is required for a lift with two physical stops to remain intelligible. The service door and whatever lies beyond it are outside the assembly: after a shift they may lead somewhere else, or the door may be unusable in its current state. The stable lift therefore does not guarantee the same bypass on later visits. Its cost is one less relationship available to reshuffle, a bespoke upper landing, and variable service-door states that must remain readable. This is a narrow opening-content exception, not a guarantee for every lift or a general rule that machines preserve neighbouring rooms.

Crowd, oxygen, and continuation

The main route asks the player to cross intermittent pressure from one crowd, then protect staged bridge removal in Collar Control. The lift route may avoid the first crossing but can consume more oxygen if the player must return from an unhelpful landing. Both paths converge before extraction, so neither avoids the core automatic-fire/manual-barrier encounter.

An alive returner has already seen R-3 from the Airlock Corridor. Removing the isolation bridge lets the ship separate the ward's pressure pulse from the back-feed, producing the same local bearing and next expedition as Option A. Riding the lift may add a second self-chosen question—what else the hospital transported there—but it does not replace the practical R-3 lead.

False guesses remain recoverable

The powered return control makes an unhelpful landing reversible while it remains reachable. If the lift fails visibly before departure, the player keeps the known passage. After a shift, records can identify the compact assembly and its observed two stops, but cannot promise where the assembly now sits relative to the ship. The player is never told that a body-safe route is human-safe.

First natural death in either option

No task, item, or secret requires suicide. A cautious player can finish the collar work alive and begin the R-3 expedition. The first natural death may happen during the bridge extraction, on the return, or later.

Revival aboard reveals two rules without adding a penalty:

The cargo and rig manifest contains everything still carried immediately before death, including the isolation bridge or Fork. Consumed supplies stay spent; a Fork installed in the station stays installed and does not duplicate.
R01 Dock Mouth stays directly outside the ship airlock and does not change. The astronaut steps out into the same familiar interior; what has changed lies beyond it. Where R01's outer face is still unbound, its far door now opens onto a recognisably different station room. If that face is already persistently joined, the reveal moves outward to the nearest sensed free frontier of the fixed ship-rooted group; no existing bind is undone to stage it. Completed fasteners, unlocked doors, and placed objects remain recorded, while traversed routes are marked historical after death. If the bridge is not yet aboard and installed, the ship can show only the collar back-feed entering the currently adjacent room; R-3 remains a historical observation with no current location. Once the bridge is installed, the isolated signal lets the ship distinguish R-3's live pressure pulse and provide a local bearing but no route.

A small set of first-post-death frontier neighbours — reached through R01 rather than replacing it — each presents a readable local opportunity. It is opening-specific content and must respect the connections already made. Before the repair, the useful choice is whether to follow the currently visible collar trace or investigate the newly adjacent room at that frontier while retaining R-3 only as a historical lead. After the bridge is installed, the player may instead pursue R-3's live local bearing through the new arrangement. There is no cache run, forced equipment replacement, hidden death counter, or unchanged-corridor grind.

Comparison and recommendation

Question	Option A — service board	Option B — body lift
Discovery changes	Branch one threat into automatic attack and faced defence, then decide whether that same Fork belongs in the rig or board	Risk an unknown transport route, or take the known contested passage
Strongest case	Makes the reusable-part grammar personally useful before the station asks to borrow it	Delivers a stranger, more physical “I wonder if I can do that” moment without relying on signage
Cost	Packs Manual, surrenders Barrier timing, and adds live fitting/retrieval plus the board choice to basic combat	Requires a compact lift assembly, return control, body handling, a fourth room, and variable destination content
Main risk	A control-only branch feels minor or wastes Barrier before the board turns it back into an interface lesson	Players read body transport as proof of safety, or the lift dominates whenever its landing is favourable

Recommendation: Option A, the service board. The astronaut first turns one sensed threat into a useful automatic attack-and-defence branch, then sees the same Fork run two station holds. Lending it away removes the personal control they just discovered. That sequence establishes the causal vocabulary for later self-made builds while making carried-versus-installed state concrete. It still favours an intelligible systems revelation over Option B's stranger physical mystery and may feel modest because Fork adds control rather than force. This version does not stack the body lift; R-3 supplies the next human mystery instead.

Option B is the strongest alternative if the owner values a more surprising physical route discovery over teaching the reusable-part grammar immediately. Choosing it accepts the compact-assembly/content burden and delays the first build-part decision.

Open questions

These rules are untested; numbers are proposals.

Exact timing, starting loadout and parts, carrying capacity, oxygen margin, enemy counts and composition, targeting, rooms and fiction names, the first-shift neighbour set, the R-3 occupant, and the relationship between the collar work and later room binding.
Story causation, corruption, a language, and what completing the station-wide connection does: neither option decides these.
Whether, in play, the Fork is understood, the lift is tempting without feeling mandatory, the horde is readable, oxygen creates good pressure, and the first shift feels surprising rather than punitive.