Hold the Flood — Glossary
Maintainer: wiki editor · started 2026-09-06 · reference page, not a design page.
This page answers Clarity Questions Q1: "add a short plain-language glossary — one line each, no cross-references — so a reader can read direction A start to finish with that one page open."
Nothing here is new design. Every entry is lifted or condensed from a definition already published by the role that owns it, and says where. Where two pages defined the same word differently, both are shown and the difference is marked — the editor does not pick a winner. Where a word is used but has never been defined, it is listed under Words still undefined rather than guessed at.
Sources. Design Document Appendix A and body (DES102, the owner-facing packet) · Design r5 §Words used below and body · World and Mystery (WLD102) · Brief (PM).
There are now three copies of this vocabulary, and that is deliberate: the Design Document's Appendix A exists so the owner can read the packet without leaving it (the reader's Q21), and the lead keeps a working list on Design. The Design Document is canonical. This page is the one a reader can hold open beside any page, and it says where each definition comes from. If the three disagree, that is a defect — see Known divergence.
Owners. The lead designer owns the rack, gear, combat and colony words; the world designer owns the district, the relay and the fiction. If a definition here is wrong, fix it on your own page and correct this one.
The game, in one paragraph, in plain words
A survivorlike is a game where you steer one character through ever-growing crowds of enemies while your weapon fires by itself; your hands do movement and positioning, and your choices are where to go and what to carry. In the recommended direction A: The Borrowed Route you are a surveyor who walks out from a dock into a flooded district for about fifteen minutes, gathers salvage so the colony's pump keeps that dock dry, and gets back before the last surge of enemies lands. Everything in the district runs on one rule — current — and learning that rule is what the game is about.
Play and structure
| Word | Plain meaning | Defined at |
|---|---|---|
| Survivorlike | A game where you steer one character through ever-larger crowds of enemies while your weapons fire by themselves; your hands move, dodge and position, and your choices are where to go and what to equip. | Design r4 |
| Expedition | One trip from a dock into the district and back, about fifteen minutes, ending at a dock or in rescue. The Brief's "run" means the same thing — the design pages use only "expedition". | Design r4; World r6 (Q4) |
| The Flood | The massed enemies. Owner requirement (Brief D011). In direction A they are proposed as bioelectric organisms; enemy identity and setting remain proposals, not decisions. | Brief D011; Design r4 |
| Surge | One wave of the Flood entering the district. Three per expedition, each larger than the last. | Design r4; World r6 |
| Straggler | A stray organism during the quiet between surges. Yields little. | Design r4 §Pressure |
| Dispatch | The scheduled instant a surge is released. The district's relay still runs on its old timer; at each tick it fires one pulse down whichever branch is powered, and the surge comes in by the beacon that pulsed. It was built to call crews and pumps to a branch; the Flood answers it the same way. Nothing is sending the Flood on purpose — automated, not haunted. | Design r4; World r6 (Q7) |
| Relay | The district's old automatic timer and transmitter — the thing that dispatches. | World r6 (Q7) |
| Forecast | The countdown and map marker showing when the next surge comes and by which intake. It is the relay's own schedule, read from a receiver at the dock. The player has it because the district always had it. | Design r4; World r6 (Q8) |
| Evacuation window | The final period of an expedition, in which you must reach a dry dock. | Design r4 §Pressure |
| Extraction / rescue | Leaving by a dry dock is extraction, and it restores health. Missing a dry dock, or losing all health, means rescue — you get out, but without your cargo. | Design r4 |
| Meta-progression | What carries over between expeditions. Kept deliberately small here. | Design r4 |
| Chokepoint | A narrow place where a crowd must come at you a few at a time. | Design r4 |
| Telegraphed | Announced before it happens, so a player can see it coming. Every surge is telegraphed by the forecast. | Design r5 |
| Counterplay | What an opponent — here the Flood or the district — can do against a loadout, and what the player can do back. | Design r5 |
| XP | Experience points: the survivorlike habit of growing stronger per kill. This design gives none — growth comes from the world instead. | Design r5 |
| Knowledge gate / stat gate | A knowledge gate is passed by understanding something; a stat gate is passed by having a number high enough. This design uses only the first. | Design Document, App. A |
| Press | The slow outward creep of a gathered crowd's edge along its branch during a quiet interval. | Design Document r3, App. A |
| Pursuit range | The distance within which organisms leave a crowd to chase you. | Design Document r3, App. A |
The district
| Word | Plain meaning | Defined at |
|---|---|---|
| District | The one flooded area an expedition takes place in. Reused before and after discovery rather than regenerated. | World r6 |
| Colony | The handful of people living on the one dock the pump keeps dry. Mechanically it is the dock and its pump. Salvage repairs and improves the colony; there is no per-expedition upkeep and nothing decays (Design Document d828a4, section 10). | Design Document d828a4; World r7 (Q13) |
| Dock | The rim entry and exit point, and a hard-stop shelter. There are two — the causeway dock (dry by default) and the yard dock (flooded until the colony's pump holds it dry instead). The pump can hold only one. | Design r4 §Topology |
| Causeway | The raised dry road from the dock into the district, signed as the evacuation route. Its beacon is at the interior end, lit by default. | Design r4; World r6 (Q9) |
| Culvert | The drain tunnel under the causeway. Walkable, and dry on its own — no bundle has to be spent running a pump to keep it dry. Has cart wear and a refuge sign turned toward the yard. | Design r4; World r6 (Q9) |
| Yard / pump hall | The salvage yard and pump hall beside a shallow channel. The yard beacon stands at the pump hall and is dark by default; the hall's hatch is on the same circuit. | Design r4 §Topology |
| Sluice | The low gate at the district's low end where water — and the Flood — come in when nothing calls them elsewhere. No beacon; opens onto the interior route. | Design r4; World r6 (Q9) |
| Hatch | The pump hall's powered door. Open while the yard is lit, with a hand crank inside for when it is not. | Design Document r3, App. A |
| Junction platform / gate / pool / valve | The raised shelter where the branches meet; the gate into the interior on its own circuit, which the panel never reaches; the pool beside it; and the valve that joins the yard channel to the pool. | Design Document r3, App. A |
| Intake | A place a surge can enter: the causeway's far end, the yard channel beside the pump hall, or the sluice. Which one is used is decided by the panel alone. | Design r4; World r6 |
| Beacon | A lamp on the district's circuit, one at the far end of each branch. Steady = its branch is powered. Pulsing = a dispatch is firing. Dark = unpowered. A lit beacon draws the Flood that is already inside the district. Whether that pull is limited to a visible glow is an open decision: the Design Document (d828a4, section 4) uses PM's baseline, in which a surge follows the nearest lit beacon it can reach, and presents the glow-limited version as the alternative. | Design Document d828a4 |
| Panel | A three-position switch at the causeway head, sending the district's one live circuit to the causeway, to the yard, or to nowhere ("off"). Needs no item, slot or resource. Resets to causeway each expedition. | Design r4; World r6 |
| Deposit | A marked pile of salvage in the district. | Design r4 |
| Tally board | The previous crew's board, in the pump hall. Part of the motive, not a mechanic. | Design r4 |
| Valve / pump | District machinery: a valve joins channels and so extends where current reaches; a pump drains one and cuts it. | Design r4 |
| Signal cable / power cable (also called power line / signal line ) | The thin and thick cables that leave each panel position side by side; the relay's pulse is seen travelling the thin one. Design Document r6's Appendix A defines this pair twice, under both names — "power line / signal line: the two lines the panel switches; power lights and opens things, signal carries the dispatch pulse" — and the body uses both wordings about equally. They appear to be the same two conductors, but a reader meeting both entries will reasonably conclude there are four. The editor has not chosen between them; this is for the lead designer. | Design Document r6, App. A (both entries) |
| Field pump | A pump fuelled by one bundle that drains one channel, for one expedition only. | Design Document, App. A |
Gear and the rack
| Word | Plain meaning | Defined at |
|---|---|---|
| Rack | The surveyor's back frame: six slots in a 2×3 grid. It is the whole inventory apart from the cutter. Each slot holds one module or one bundle. | Design r4 |
| Module | A piece of gear occupying rack slots: battery, coil, insulation, beacon, kit. | Design r4 |
| Battery | The module that stores charge. A battery leaks into every bundle it touches, whatever the links say. | Design r4 §The rack |
| Link | When packing, you draw one link from each battery to the one module it powers. An unlinked module is dark and inert. Links govern power; leaking into bundles happens regardless of links. | Design r4 §The rack |
| Coil | A two-slot module that stores a discharge. Trigger it and the charge flows into whatever conductive thing you are touching: dry ground takes nothing; water carries it to everything the water touches, including you unless you wear insulation. To reach a channel you must be in it. | Design r5 (corrected by the lead, Q27) |
| Insulation | A one-slot module that stops current — in the rack and on the surveyor. | Design r4 |
| Kit | A module that restores health once, then is spent. Costs a slot. | Design r4 |
| Cutter | A handheld tool that fires by itself at the nearest organism in reach while you move. You aim by where you stand. Needs no slot. | Design r4 |
| Salvage / bundle / cargo | Salvage is the material the colony needs; a bundle is one slot of it; cargo is the bundles currently in your rack. | Design r4 |
| Charge | Fuel shed by the Flood, stored in batteries, spent by modules and machines. Never leaves the district. | Design r4 |
| Mote | A dropped fleck of charge — small from a killed organism, large from a mass stunned in water. Fades in seconds; walk over one to fill a battery. | Design r4 |
| Loadout | The modules you are carrying and how they are arranged in the rack. Earlier revisions, and the Brief, Team and Tasks pages, call this a "build". The design pages renamed it because the Hub's development gate uses "build" to mean a compiled executable. | Design r4 (see Q3) |
| Health | A short bar. Contact with organisms, and standing in energised water without insulation, remove it. It does not regenerate in the district; extraction restores it; a kit restores it once. | Design r4 §Combat and health |
| Notebook | Opening it pauses everything and shows only what you have already seen. Rule S1. | Design r4 |
| Shelter | A dry dock or the junction platform; enemies neither enter nor spawn there. You can repack and watch, but the surge clock keeps running. Rule S2. | Design Document r3, App. A |
| Workshop / forecast relay | The colony's two additive repairs: a workshop gives one extra starting module choice; a forecast relay makes the first intake known before departure. Each costs a full return's salvage. | Design r4 |
| Siphon | A module that consumes one touching bundle for three units of charge, once — for a player who needs power and has only salvage. | Design Document §5 |
| Arc | An optional one-slot module that, while linked to a charged battery, makes the cutter's hits conduct from organism to organism through a dense crowd, draining the battery over about twenty seconds. | Design Document §5 |
| Leak / drip | Charge lost from a battery into the wet bundles it touches, shown as one drip per bundle. Happens whatever the links say. | Design Document, App. A |
| Build expression | The way a loadout shows a strategy. The Brief, Team and Tasks pages use this term; the design pages say loadout expression for the same thing. | Design r5 |
The one rule everything hangs on
The spine rule is direction A's single mechanic, stated once and then applied to the district, the rack and the colony. Its four clauses, condensed from Design r4:
- Conduction — current flows between touching conductors, and through water to everything the water connects; insulation stops it.
- Power — a device works only while energised: a hatch, lamp or beacon on a live cable or channel, or a rack module linked to a charged battery.
- Attraction — the relay pulses at each dispatch down the signal line the panel has selected, and the surge enters by that beacon; after entry a surge moves toward the nearest lit beacon it can reach (PM baseline, Design Document d828a4 section 4; the sight-limited version is the labelled alternative there).
- Charge — a killed organism drops a small mote, a mass stunned in water sheds a large one; walking over one fills a battery.
"Energised", "lit" and "powered" are the same state. Under the baseline a lit beacon's pull has no fixed radius; under the alternative its glow would be the visible extent of it.
Renamed or withdrawn — so an earlier revision still reads
The Design Document's vocabulary changed in each of its first three revisions, sometimes back again. Every entry above is cited to the revision it currently comes from. This table is only so that a reader holding r1 or r2 — or any page that quoted them — can still find the thing.
| Was | Is now | Note |
|---|---|---|
| press (r1) → thinning (r2) → press (r3) | Press | Renamed and reverted within ten minutes |
| pursuit range (r1) → proximity radius (r2) → pursuit range (r3) | Pursuit range | Same |
| power line / signal line (r1–r2) | Signal cable / power cable | Renamed r3 |
| gate / hatch as one branch-door pair (r2) | Hatch and gate separately | r3 puts the gate on the junction platform, on a circuit the panel never reaches |
| ledge (r2): a raised dry shelter, one mid-causeway, one on the yard bank | — withdrawn | r3 drops the term; the junction platform is the mid-district shelter |
| power line / signal line (r1–r2) → signal cable / power cable (r3) → both, in the same appendix (r6) | unresolved | Not a rename any more — r6 carries both entries at once. See the row above |
For the lead designer: this is not a complaint about revising — it is fast, and the churn is the cost of moving fast. But a term renamed and reverted inside ten minutes, with no note either time, is expensive for anyone reading a revision that is not the newest, and the design document is the artefact most likely to be read at a fixed revision. One line in the revision header saying which words changed would remove the whole problem.
Words once missing, now defined
The five words this page listed as undefined on 2026-09-06 have all been defined since, each by the role that owns it. They are in the tables above; this is only the record of where each landed.
| Word | Closed at |
|---|---|
| Build expression | Design r5 — and note it is the PM pages' name for what the design pages call loadout expression. Two names, one thing; the rename has still not reached Brief, Team or Tasks. |
| Telegraphed, counterplay, XP | Design r5 §Words used below |
| Knowledge gate / stat gate | Design Document Appendix A |
Known divergence — reported, not decided
The editor does not choose between design statements. This is here so a reader who meets both is not misled, and so the owning role can close it.
Beacon pull. PM's baseline (Brief D013, carried by the Design Document §4 and World and Mystery r8) is that after entry a surge follows the nearest lit beacon it can reach, district-wide. Design r5's own word list still states the superseded model flatly — "a lit beacon pulls the Flood only within its glow" — with no label marking it as the set-aside alternative. Same author, two pages, opposite rules, and it is the rule that prices the panel. The world designer has already noted the same thing at the foot of World and Mystery r8. For the lead designer.
Project codes, so a reader can decode any cross-reference
Not vocabulary, but the other thing that stops a first-time reader (Q21).
| Code | What it is | Lives on |
|---|---|---|
| DES101 / DES102 / DES103 | Lead designer's tasks: two concept directions → integrated design document → revised owner-facing document | Design |
| WLD101 | World and Mystery Designer's exploration and mystery contribution | World and Mystery |
| REV101 | Independent Design Critic's review | Design Review |
| CLR101 | An outside reader's clarity questions. Not an assignment. | Clarity Questions |
| OWN001 / OWN101 / OWN102 | Things only the owner can do: the brief, steering the concept, the design verdict | Tasks |
| PM001 / PM002 | PM's own completed tasks | Tasks |
| D001–D012 | Numbered decisions, each with an authority and a status | Brief |
| W1–W4 | The world designer's four world rules: attraction, commitment, stable evidence, turned signs | World and Mystery |
| S1–S3 | The three shared rules that make room to think: notebook, shelter, live evidence | Design |
| N1–N11 | The critic's numbered findings raised after the first review | Design Review |
| Q1–Q25 | The outside reader's questions | Clarity Questions |
| r1, r2, r3… | Successive revisions of one page's deliverable. Every one is still readable at /<Page>?revision=<hash>. |
Wiki Conventions |
| Task states | Ready · In progress · In review · Accepted · Blocked · Deferred · Superseded | Tasks |
A hex string like 0b4039 |
A revision hash — the exact version of a page someone read, or is citing | any page |
Editor's page. If a definition here drifts from its owning page, the owning page is right and this one is stale — say so here. Keeping one definition in one place is the point: see Wiki Conventions.