**Status.** A provisional proposal for review, not owner-approved. It follows one authored person from first trace to their presence on a later expedition. Example fiction is labelled. It does not establish the full cast, the station's history, the revival explanation or a colony economy, and it settles no global rule about whether survivors can be permanently lost.

**Owner requirements used:** rescued humans can be sent to the ship; a small authored community grows there; survivors help the player understand what they find; the colony provides upgrades and a reason to defend people; oxygen limits the astronaut.

*(Proposed fiction, building on traces already in use.)* **Dorn** is the work partner Yeva named from his handwriting. He is alive behind the section his own painted marks describe, in a small sealed refuge whose remaining atmosphere holds while he waits. It is not a refill station: its damaged lock cannot cycle without venting the pocket, and it makes no oxygen. Leaving requires a full portable canister connected to his own suit, which the astronaut must carry in and hand over.

He is not a clue dispenser and not cargo. He has kept working: marking, maintaining, controlling the one thing he still can. He has a view about his own situation, and the player can act against it. Postponing does not quietly degrade him — a bounded rule for this example, not a claim that survivors are generally safe.

| Stage | What the player sees | What Dorn does | What the player decides |

|---|---|---|---|

| Notice | Painted marks in one hand, on fittings along a route | Has been marking as he works | Whether to spend a trip on a person |

| Meet | A sealed run; a voice, then a face at a port | Keeps the refuge sealed; will not open blind | Talk now, or come back equipped |

| Understand | His account of what he shut and why | States what he did; admits what he does not know | Which of his claims to trust |

| Decide | Two routes with different costs | Says plainly which he prefers | Fast route against his wish, or slow route with his |

| Prepare | A route walked, a fallback chosen | Waits; his situation holds | Spend capacity on his canister |

| Send | A crossing window under ordinary horde pressure | Crosses under his own power; seals behind them | Hold the junction, or abort |

| After | A colony member with a trade and a history | Asks first whether the section held | What to ask, and where to go next |

The sortie leaves with one sentence: reach the far side of the sealed run and find out whether anyone is behind it. Checkable on arrival.

The evidence is already in the player's journal from earlier trips: painted copies of a cut mark, in one hand, on fittings along a route rather than on a single door. What the player may *infer* is that a person did this deliberately. What they are not told is who, why, or whether that person is alive. Nothing states it; the marks are all there is until a voice answers.

His immediate need is simple and he says it: he cannot open his side without losing the pocket, and he cannot travel without a canister of his own.

His preference is the part that matters. Dorn does not want the direct run opened. He sealed it, he believes he sealed it for a reason, and he says so — while admitting he does not know whether the reason still holds, or whether what he isolated is still there. He is a witness with a partial account, not an oracle. The player can weigh it, and can override it.

**Open the direct run.** Restore power and bypass the isolator contact, as the closed exploration rules describe: one relay-family part, left in the fixture. Cheap in oxygen, short in exposure, and it permanently shortens the run inward for every later expedition. The cost is that it does the one thing he asked the player not to do, and whatever the isolation was for is loose on a route the player now uses constantly. The design does not say what that means; it says the player chose it knowing he objected.

**Take the long way.** Repressurise and clear a longer service route that leaves his seal intact. More oxygen, more trips, more ordinary horde contact, no permanent shortcut, and nothing gained except that the boundary he drew stays drawn.

These differ materially in cost, in what persists, and in whose judgement prevails. Neither is correct.

Before anything begins the player has to prepare: deliver the canister, walk a route they have actually traversed, and establish a fallback refuge. That preparation is the real cost of either choice, and it is spent whether or not the crossing succeeds.

The crossing itself is short, ordinary and irreversible. Opening the pocket vents it, so there is no going back to the room he has lived in — once he steps out, that shelter is gone. The astronaut holds a junction against a normal horde while Dorn crosses under his own power, works the inner controls and seals the fallback behind them. He is not carried, not led, and never a slot in the pack; a person occupies no inventory space.

If the crossing breaks down, he does not return to the pocket, because it no longer holds air. He falls back to the refuge the player prepared, on the emergency margin of the canister already delivered — which is why preparing that fallback was not optional. Reaching him again means verifying a route once more and bringing replacement air, not assuming the old way is still open.

*Sent* means he has physically crossed the ship's airlock and it has closed. A request, a radio confirmation or a crossing in progress is not sent, and only then is he a colony member. If the astronaut dies before that point he is at the fallback, unsent, exactly as the closed death rules describe; if after, he is aboard and stays aboard. The phases, supply costs and outcomes are Systems' to state in Rescue Rules.

Yeva knows him before he speaks. The scene is not a reward ceremony: the first thing Dorn asks is whether the section held. If the player opened it, he is told so, and he takes it in front of them.

**Interpretation.** Dorn explains what his painted marks meant *to him*. They were not a system; they were one man's shorthand, and he used a borrowed shape because it was to hand. From then on the player reads every painted copy differently: personal, local, possibly idiosyncratic, and not necessarily consistent with any other hand's paint. That reframes evidence already in the journal, which is the discovery this rescue pays.

He can also say what he was doing and where he had been. He cannot supply an unseen safe route, and he does not know what happened to the station.

**Capability.** He is a pressure-tech's partner, and aboard he services the carry frame's seals, which had been losing a little on every trip. That is one tangible, concrete contribution consistent with the brief's promise of colony upgrades. It is one person's trade, not a system, and it does not by itself satisfy everything the brief means by upgrades — the wider colony contribution is undecided and is not settled here.

**Hand him a canister and walk him out.** Reserve carrying capacity for his air against equipment and salvage, route for two, and fight or avoid with a person beside you.

Its case is genuinely strong: it puts the brief's "defend people" literally on screen. The player is not repairing a door on someone's behalf but standing between a person and a horde, which is the most direct reading of what the brief asks. It also needs no infrastructure work, so it suits survivors found anywhere, not only behind sealed runs.

It is not preferred here for two reasons: it makes his safety depend on companion behaviour no written scene can establish, and it reduces his agency to following. The chosen structure spends the player's understanding instead, and leaves him a preference to be honoured or overridden.

**Separability.** Long acquaintance through traces and a costly extraction are independent choices. This example uses both because the traces already existed; a later survivor could be met cold, or leave cheaply, without contradicting anything here.

**A correction to earlier reasoning.** It is not true that material cost is what stops rescue being a free narrative reward. Knowing a person through what they left would matter with no cost attached. The costs exist to make the *decision* real — chiefly the decision to override him — not to license the feeling.

The long route may read as busywork rather than respect, in which case the two choices collapse into an obvious cheapest option. Dorn's objection may land as an obstacle rather than a person's wish. The defence beat is deliberately short and may feel thin next to escorting someone through real danger. Every one of these is a prediction; no written scene establishes that any of it is affecting or fun.

This preference would reopen if the owner reads "defend people" as protection witnessed in play, which the escort alternative serves better; or if honouring his wish proves to have no felt weight, leaving the fast route always correct.

Transfer mechanics, supply costs and failure outcomes (Rescue Rules); what was isolated and whether it matters; the colony's wider upgrade contribution; whether a survivor can ever be permanently lost, which this example does not need; and the revival cause, station history and escape solution, all untouched.