Hold The Horde — Home Projects

Status: working systems contract for the cooperative return in Coming Home. It tracks one relay, two projects and the results they produce. It is not a colony economy, upkeep system or requirement that every human scene consume scarce material. Human effect and production cost remain unvalidated.

Arrival and relay states

One ordinary relay-family part returns from the station. Before a live return it occupies carrying capacity and would remain in the ordinary death cache. Crossing into the ship banks it; it then appears in ship storage unless still installed in the astronaut's rig. 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 relay never powers both devices, or stays aboard while also carried.

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 where he expected a sealed dead volume to stay flat. He also states that a failing sensor looks identical from aboard. The reading therefore establishes neither motion, cause, direction, the side of the seal, 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 whether the addressed panel is on the near or far side of the seal. Nobody aboard can settle that. The bounded next goal is to revisit the known panel and determine whether its sensor is faulty, not open the section.

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, the ship's unlimited oxygen supply and the relay 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.

Before power, ship oxygen receives the ordinary proposed fill. 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.

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, hear one transient, 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 owns that address, making its uncertainty actionable.

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.