Hold The Horde — Rescue Under Pressure
A proposed short rescue using Yeva as an illustrative survivor; the first survivor remains undecided. It uses the current R-3 rooms and E04 population. The crossing, timing and emotional effect are design hypotheses, not tested play or story canon.
At the ward glass
The astronaut has personally walked the current Dock Mouth → R-3 Approach → Clinical Abort Vestibule → R-3 Ward route (R01→R11→R12→R13): one exposed junction, one counted vestibule and the refuge door. The player has passed travel air through the existing equipment sleeve and watched Yeva connect it herself. The canister competes with equipment and salvage before handover; the ward supplies no refill.
Through the glass, Yeva points past the player rather than at the door. Grease-pencil dates record which pressure fittings stopped holding and when. She will leave, but she wants the wall captured first: it is her only proof that the failures happened in an order.
The player has a concrete choice:
- Frame the wall now. Capturing runs in live time. The astronaut spends position and oxygen while pressure still approaches R11, but the full dated wall becomes a persistent record.
- Signal movement now. Yeva still comes. The uncaptured wall remains in R13 if the room can be reached later, but only the dates Yeva personally remembers become available aboard. There is no hidden loyalty penalty and no main-path gate.
Yeva also chooses the moment. She watches the R12 gauge and her suit flow, ignores the astronaut's first signal, and waits behind R12's closed shipward threshold. She leaves only when its inspection view shows the marked floor from that door, around R11's bollard and into the R01 leg physically empty, with any surviving side-leg bodies held beyond the exploration-leg choke by closure, position or fire. A Break Mark may have filled after roughly half a band was defeated while bodies still occupied that floor; it never tells her to move. When the actual lane clears, she says she can make it. The astronaut may accept her timing or keep clearing or sealing the remaining stage.
One junction, under pressure
This proposal changes one local E04 rule. Transfer may begin at a visible crossing window, rather than waiting for the whole encounter to resolve, only when the R12→R11→R01 footprint itself is clear and remaining pressure is physically separated from it. The existing quarantine-wing allocation of perhaps 25–50 Pressers is divided into two warned pressure bands without adding bodies or a source. The Flanker pack and first Presser band create the approach fight. Breaking that band may pay its growth mark, but the window exists only if firing, displacement, the bollard position or the grille closure has actually opened and held the floor Yeva must walk. The second band can remain visible beyond that separation.
If the player has already dogged the grille shut, the uncommitted band is prevented. If they have fully cleared every committed arrival, the crossing is quiet. Neither case produces replacement enemies, reduced rewards or a surprise source. The player earned the safer rescue and keeps it. A powerful build may erase the second band quickly; the population never scales up to manufacture drama.
Accepting the crossing window makes the remaining ordinary crowd the rescue pressure while Yeva waits behind a real door. She cycles R13, crosses R12 under her own power and watches from its shipward control while the astronaut holds the horde far enough away to open the route. She advances without follow-distance steering. At the bollard, the player chooses between holding the R01 mouth as a funnel, taking the exploration leg to intercept Flankers, or reaching the grille wheel before more Pressers cross.
This scene uses one explicit local protection rule while the astronaut lives. E04 creatures continue to target the astronaut; Yeva draws no attack, blocks no creature and cannot be used as cover. A Presser entering her marked floor makes her stop; direct contact from it or a Flanker makes her raise one arm, turn and take the still-open route behind her. The contact neither damages nor kills her in this proposal. The player sees the R12 door lamp turn amber and her physical reversal while the creature continues toward the astronaut, then can fire, displace it, move to pull its approach away or close the grille.
Under protected retreat, Yeva closes herself into stocked R12 and waits there, alive and unsent; a living retry requires fresh travel air, restocking the same waiting refuge as needed, and visibly clearing or separating the same floor again. Under autonomous finish, R12 is not a stocked waiting refuge, so the same living block makes her continue through R12 to R13 and close her own ward door; another attempt begins from that observed origin after the route is made clear. Used travel air stays used in either case. This forced retreat avoids a survivor health system but is a safety exception: no creature can injure her in this crossing, and keeping her behind R12 until the route is physically clear sacrifices most simultaneous survivor-and-horde danger. The excitement sits in earning her departure and holding the last short lane, not in watching enemies damage her.
Existing combat answers remain enough. Sensor→Projector fires at visible targets; Manual→Barrier faces a locked Flanker line; the bollard and worn cutter support the baseline. A later Nozzle can peel the Presser lane aside. Temporary power already earned gets a vivid use because clearance becomes a human step toward the ship. Each E04 band can pay its ordinary Break Mark at most once under Combat Rules; the rescue grants no extra growth or major transformation.
The target from R13 opening to the ship airlock closing is roughly 45–90 seconds, explicitly untested, and prior sealing, clearing or a strong build may shorten it. During a witnessed living crossing, Yeva’s movement and the local door cue show her next action. Losing sight of her grants no tracking, and the death outcomes below do not reveal an unseen refuge. She moves along the physically walked route.
When the airlock closes
Sent commits only when Yeva is physically aboard and the ship airlock closes. The horde music falls away with the outer door. She does not thank the astronaut. She asks for a working light and sits beside the ship recorder without taking off one glove.
If the wall was captured, she reads its entries aloud, then starts naming the people who stopped returning on those dates. If it was left behind, she records only the R13 entries she remembers and says, “There were more.” The first branch gives broader dated evidence; the second leaves a reason to revisit without making her useless or filling the missing record. Her existing packing-bench contribution remains a separate player-invoked scene, not an automatic reward.
Excitement comes from turning a build toward bodies so another person can move. Care comes from Yeva's disagreement and timing; relief from the closed airlock. Her technical list becoming a list of absences changes a record's meaning without answering the station's mysteries.
The same death moment, two approaches
Compare both approaches at one exact instant: Yeva has left R12 and entered R11, the second band reaches the bollard, and the astronaut dies before either person reaches R01.
| Local approach | Where Yeva is after the death transaction | What the player knows on revival | What persists; what is lost or delayed | How play continues after the shift |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Protected retreat — current proposal | From the astronaut's lethal seal until Yeva closes R12, every existing E04 creature and active hazard is frozen and physically nonblocking; no other world action advances. Yeva uses only the armed line and reserved return margin to walk back into counted R12. The shift happens after its door closes, moving her with that room's group, alive and unsent. | The astronaut knows only that Yeva was last seen in R11 and that the retreat was armed. R12's closure tell is local; no result is transmitted aboard. Her present state stays unconfirmed. | The wall capture, completed grille work and object locations persist. Travel air used on retreat and staged reserve already committed remain spent. The astronaut loses position and temporary power; the old route becomes historical. | Find stable R12 again, observe Yeva and the local tell, then bring fresh travel air, restock that vestibule and personally walk a new eligible short route. If no such route exists, rescue waits. |
| Autonomous finish — simpler alternative | This explicit alternative drops the abort-room stock, full-attempt return mark, retreat line and local closure tell. From the same lethal seal until the ship airlock closes, every existing E04 creature and active hazard is frozen and physically nonblocking; no work or other movement advances. Yeva physically walks the already verified R11→R01 leg, operates the airlock and becomes Sent. Only then does the station shift. She is aboard on revival. | The player learns the outcome by directly seeing Yeva aboard and hearing her account, not by remote station knowledge. | The same world work and record persist; consumed gas stays spent, and the astronaut still loses position and temporary power. Rescue progress is not delayed. | No rescue retry is needed. The next expedition begins from the ship with renewed combat and the post-death arrangement. |
The provisional recommendation is autonomous finish. The player has supplied Yeva and earned the short route; letting her complete that commitment preserves progress and avoids repeating preparation after a failure. Its price is real: dying can finish the rescue, and her forward walk needs explicit protection before the station shifts.
The strongest case for protected retreat is that the rescue can still fail without selecting survivor mortality, and finding Yeva again gives the changed station a personal purpose. Its cost is extra stocked air, a marked return margin, survivor-operable retreat controls, a local tell and another attempt. These are different priorities; neither outcome is established as more fun by this written comparison.
Autonomous finish is cleaner, but its protection is broader, not absent: Yeva receives a hostile-free run all the way to the ship, death can become the fastest completion, and the shift waits for her airlock closure. Protected retreat freezes a shorter reverse path and preserves failure; autonomous finish freezes the longer forward path and converts failure to Sent. Both are explicit local exceptions, not current rules.
Integration, scope and what could fail
| Item | Existing support | Proposed change or cost |
|---|---|---|
| Shared rescue eligibility | Rescue Rules, Rescue and Home and Cast And Short Rescue Map currently require the present encounter to be quiet before Prepared movement. | If this local direction is selected, E04's exception instead requires the exact R12→R11→R01 walking footprint to be visibly empty and all remaining pressure physically separated at the instant Yeva leaves R12. A Break Mark never qualifies it. Protected retreat retains the stocked R12, full-attempt return mark, armed line and local tell; autonomous finish explicitly replaces those four requirements with Yeva's own travel-air judgment and survivor-operable verified route/ship-airlock controls. No other rescue changes. |
| E04 and rooms | Counted R01, R11, R12 and R13; E04's Flankers, quarantine-wing grille and 25–50 Presser allocation. | Encounter and Room owners would split the same finite allocation into two visible bands, show the crossing footprint/door-lamp state, and record the local target/contact/forced-retreat rule plus R12 or R13 living waiting destination. No room, source, route, survivor or population increase. |
| Human behavior | Yeva's wall choice, flow confirmation, self-propelled crossing and recorder scene already exist. | First Survivor/Cast would add visible gap judgment and the forced living retreat. The home beat is a tighter presentation of her existing arrival, not a new cast scene. |
| Death failure | Death Shift And Rescue Continuity's protected retreat is pending owner decision; first survivor and global mortality remain open. | Select exactly one death row above before integration, including its stated hostile-free window and shift order. Neither choice settles post-Sent mortality or makes Yeva the first survivor. |
The scene could still fail. The wall capture may feel like an obvious “good” choice rather than a real risk. Splitting E04 may look authored for a reward beat instead of physical pressure. Keeping Yeva behind R12 until the floor is truly clear may make the final crossing emotionally brief, while the local no-injury retreat and the protected-death preparation may feel visibly contrived. A strong build or prior seal can shorten the scene further; that remains an earned advantage. Later authorized layout and play observation would need to test those possibilities; this design pass establishes only a readable proposal.
Owner question: when the astronaut dies at the bollard after Yeva enters R11, should she use the prepared hostile-free retreat to R12 and require a shifted-route retry, or physically finish the already walked route and be aboard on revival? The recommendation is to let her finish, accepting that death can complete this already-started rescue. Both approaches and global survivor loss remain unselected.