Hold The Horde — Home Projects

Status: working systems contract for the cooperative return in Coming Home. The owner tentatively accepted this equipment-loan direction (“keep. I think.”), not a complete colony economy or a requirement that every scene consume scarce material. Human effect and production cost remain unvalidated.

Arrival and relay states

The proposed loan is one existing Fork Relay returning from the station. While carried it occupies shared capacity. A live return brings it aboard; death also brings it and every other still-carried item aboard with the astronaut under the owner’s rule. It remains in its actual rig or inactive-cargo state until the player explicitly unloads it into ship storage or seats it in a project. A relay deliberately left in station infrastructure was not carried and stays installed. Dorn and Yeva show their incomplete work, but neither silently takes or reserves it.

The player may seat or remove the relay at either project, carry it on departure, or postpone with it stored. The relay is reusable equipment under Build Rules: removal returns the same part and stops the powered device. No timer, degradation, upkeep demand or relationship penalty advances while either project waits.

The single Fork cannot be seated at both projects, or stay aboard while also carried.

Proposed fixed interface. Ship supply provides fixture energy, unlimited bench oxygen and the existing collar bus. A fixed ship controller sends a bare trigger through Fork to the fixture’s compatible controls; Fork supplies no energy, gas or sensor value. Home And Colony Loop owns the two exact control paths, their independent receiver-readiness limits and the proposed commissioning/participant rules. These fixed fixtures add no portable part or general adapter recipe.

Dorn's receiver and its physical channel

The station docking collar carries a low-rate monitoring bus among its service lines. Dorn's shipboard tap addresses one channel on that bus: the pressure sensor at a single interlock panel. He knows its address and crew location because he serviced that panel. This proposed physical channel does not depend on answered hails and does not invent an earlier player-placed sensor.

When powered, the receiver gives one pressure value at that point and whether it is steady. Dorn observes a drift and return that differs from what he expected under its last known conditions. He also states that a failing sensor looks identical from aboard. The reading therefore establishes neither motion, cause, direction, which volume the pressure line currently samples, whole-section condition nor safety. Removing the relay ends monitoring, but Dorn retains what he observed.

Knowledge sharing is an action. Dorn tells the astronaut; the astronaut may then tell Yeva. She asks which side of the seal the panel's pressure line currently samples. Dorn knows which panel he serviced; neither his crew-era location nor the receiver channel supplies a current route after a death-shift. The channel alone does not establish that plumbing connection. The bounded next goal is to inspect the known panel, trace the sampled volume and check the sensor, not open the section. The remote signal alone does not establish whether the pressure itself changed.

Yeva and Dorn's packing bench

Yeva installed the compressor head and routed the ship supply. Dorn's completed pressure-hardware service is why it can run, and he operates it in this scene. The prerequisites are that completed setup, fixed ship power, the ship's unlimited oxygen supply and Fork seated while packing. This creates no maintenance schedule: the bench does not degrade when Dorn is absent, and wider staffing or survivor-loss rules remain open. Home And Colony Loop separately proposes solo eligible cycles after both contributions and the demonstrated cycle; that new general operator rule does not change Dorn’s role here.

Without bench use, ordinary free ship refill remains available. While powered, the bench prepares canisters with more usable charge, the existing proposal in Rescue and Home. Earlier canisters were not secretly degraded. Removing the relay stops further improved preparation, but charge already placed in a canister remains embodied there; it is not continued operation by a dark bench.

Survival And Loadout owns the distinct ordinary-full, partial and prepared-full states and their refill/conservation rules. Listening, packing and recording results advance in world time; opening the journal pauses them.

Prepared canisters still occupy their normal carrying capacity. They may support more reach for a chosen carried pattern or similar planned reach with more capacity for equipment or salvage. No exact charge, slot allocation or preparation duration is asserted.

Intended sequence and departure

This scene is a cooperative loan and preparation sequence:

1. Seat the relay in Dorn's receiver, observe one pressure value drift and return, and reclaim it.
2. Seat it in the bench, prepare the departure canisters, and reclaim it.
3. Leave carrying the single relay, those canisters and Dorn's limited account.

Both ship projects are dark on departure. Nothing is duplicated: prepared charge and communicated knowledge persist because they are produced results, not operating benefits. Leaving the relay in the bench remains permitted but gives no additional established benefit for this departure. Darkness during the expedition and unspecified ship time are not invented costs.

Other participation choices remain honest. Leaving the bench powered leaves the relay aboard and offers no additional established benefit to that departure. Postponing sends the relay out in the rig with ordinary canisters and no reading. Selective listening or packing is also possible. These are choices about which human activities and information the player engages with, not exclusive material expenditures.

Visible human responses and content states

After listening, Dorn unseats and returns the relay himself, thanking the player specifically for a loan. At the bench, Yeva says the canisters are his work as much as hers and returns the relay beside them. On postponement, Yeva says she would rather hear no than have Dorn keep asking through her; Dorn says the panel will still be there. Neither withdraws anything. When told the reading, Yeva asks which side of the seal the pressure line currently samples, giving the player a specific connection to trace at the known panel.

The crossed-out-name disagreement remains an ordinary later conversation, not payment or punishment. Neither memory is made station history.

Necessary room states are both devices incomplete/dark, receiver powered, bench powered and both dark after reclamation. Dialogue variants cover inspect, listen, share, pack, remove, postpone and return after checking the panel. The sequence's strength is visible cooperation without manufactured loss. Its risk is becoming an automatic pre-departure checklist rather than time among people. Irreversible commitment remains credible for another project whose material and experience justify it. Reopen this choice if the interaction becomes compulsory repetition or a concrete permanent project supports a stronger human decision without hidden degradation, delays or loss rules.