Hold The Horde — Mystery Consequences

Status. This comparison applies the working Death and Persistence, Rescue Rules and Exploration Structure to the three Mystery Directions. None is canon. The Owner Brief requires return aboard this ship; cause, losses and persistence remain open. Compatibility does not make a working proposal an owner requirement.

Shared return, persistence and ending baseline

While service is active, each cause covers damage and oxygen deaths throughout playable station space. Death caches carried equipment and unbanked salvage. Journal evidence, locations, deliberate infrastructure and people already Sent persist; an unsent survivor remains in their authored state. No mechanism copies the pack, banks salvage, gains a hidden counter or fails because an ordinary power puzzle changed.

The apparent resolution is repair plus informed escape clearance: a real way out while still docked, so revival continues into the deeper path. Final departure ends service and completes the story. Continue/load returns before that choice with achievements and world changes intact. A mortal post-credits phase is a separate owner exception, not part of any mystery by default.

Each baseline covers the astronaut only. Exclusion says nothing about another person’s loss or immunity; local rescue, abort and Sent rules remain. Eligibility needs a decision only when a scene offers a named, consenting person registration, admission or assignment.

1. The Registry — connected alien institution

Return and resources. Docking fixes this vessel as the return address; a protected casualty channel stabilises and retrieves the astronaut’s current body at death. Berth service repairs that same body, leaves unregistered objects at the death site, and returns the person to the fixed address. Current memory stays with the body; ship telemetry preserves records. Ordinary route-power changes cannot disable this channel.

Old complements keep returning inside the station because their vessels or return addresses vanished; count does not degrade them or the service. Their hostility and strangeness therefore need a separate bounded condition, not an arbitrary astronaut exemption. Existing creatures remain after release.

Repair and deeper continuation. Repairing the ship and clearing the fault behind its distress state earns departure clearance; service remains until undocking. Later client filings reveal that blanket release would stop new returns but could strand coherent complements awaiting valid destinations. The deeper action becomes a berth-by-berth decision: restore a valid return route, suspend a harmful return, or leave an uncertain berth active. These choices change future returns and horde sources without erasing what already walks the station.

Sent survivors are not in the docking-time complement. A concrete later offer to register one would require owner choice because it changes who can return; absent that scene, no global loss rule is reopened.

Decisive clue. Observation: before one old berth’s release, an addressed creature killed in ordinary combat triggers a recovery transaction; after release it does not, while a still-flagged control berth does. Testimony: Dorn saw the same service move salvage but not its destination. Inference: the flag causally gates person recovery. The rival is a historical register merely observing another cause; the differing post-release result weakens it. Tagged material traced from service transfer into berth treatment can support the transport path, not exclusive causation or metaphysical identity.

2. The Appropriated Unit — human project, alien mechanism

Return and resources. Refuge workers secretly installed an appropriated alien recovery unit on this ship. A protected wreck-side anchor retrieves the astronaut’s actual current body from their individual casualty tag; the serial-addressed unit repairs and revives them aboard. Neither half works alone, and equipment remains as the cache. This explains return aboard this ship and why the station contains the answer.

For the strongest complete version, an outside sponsor selected the test craft and engineered its failure and route back. This replaces coincidence with employer conspiracy and makes the opening less accidental; choosing coincidence instead would weaken causality but reduce predestination. The separate containment disaster retains human responsibility. Protected anchor transfer avoids a finite biomass counter.

Repair and deeper continuation. Repair plus navigation-lock removal earns escape; remaining docked preserves revival. Project orders and alien relay records reveal which hidden refugee groups are exposed. The player alters their route, warns them to stay hidden or exposes the controller. Sent people stay aboard. Final departure ends the link; earlier prototype shutdown is optional, not baseline.

Coverage follows an individual casualty tag, not mere presence aboard a fitted ship. Only the astronaut currently has one. Installing or reassigning a tag in a named emergency would be an owner choice and must state what happens to the astronaut’s eligibility.

Decisive clue. Observation: an archived fitting test names this ship’s unit serial and records tag capture, body transfer and onboard repair; its sealed logs match after ordinary deaths. Testimony: Dorn installed part of the fitting but never saw selection or navigation orders. Inference: the refuge coupled ship and anchor. The rival is station-only revival with passive hardware. A control run where transfer produced no revived subject until the serialled unit connected supports joint causation without deliberate player death.

3. The Clinic — actual-body triage

Return and resources. Protected triage arrests damage, retrieves the actual body through service routes, resuscitates it and delivers it to the manifest vessel. Nothing stores or recreates a person. Loose possessions form the cache; suit telemetry preserves records.

Every playable death site therefore needs a protected service route or bounded patient-transfer reach. Supported gameplay hazards leave recoverable physiology because triage intervenes at the lethal threshold; total bodily destruction cannot be an ordinary death presentation inside coverage. A blocked visible route or local power change cannot silently prevent return. These are content and worldbuilding constraints, not evidence of feasibility.

Repair and deeper continuation. Repair and discharge authorisation earn escape; treatment remains active until departure executes discharge. Records reveal an external programme still sending cases. The player can revoke experimental protocols, release viable patients and send evidence to a chosen recipient. This changes active treatment and the programme’s continuation, not merely lore.

Sent status does not equal clinic admission. A later consent-based intake for a named survivor would reopen that person’s eligibility only; it would not settle global survivor loss.

Decisive clue. Observation: archived telemetry and scans follow the same wounds, mass and embedded tag through treatment. Testimony: Yeva maintained one junction and saw bodies pass wardward, but thought it was disposal. Inference: triage treats the same body. The rival is destruction then reconstruction. Restoring an observation window and matching two checkpoints supports bodily continuity—not metaphysical identity or valid consent—and needs no fatal experiment.

Comparative burden and decision interface

The direction choice does not also decide loss of revival, where the deeper action occurs or whether survivor eligibility expands. Before owner comparison, the companion article must identify both alien languages’ distinct origins and uses in every direction, keep survivor knowledge bounded by actual work, and align these apparent/deeper/final actions. The owner’s central choice is among the strongest concrete stories; mortal continuation or a specific survivor exception should be presented separately only if worth adopting. None of this establishes fun, readability, feasibility or duration.