“Apparent,” “deeper” and “secret” below name layers of discovery rather than endings.

The recurring rhythm is: leave the ship with a deliberate rig and finite carried oxygen; enter a station whose useful connections may differ after death; observe a local system while surviving its horde; spend shared carrying capacity on tools, oxygen and findings; then return with parts, people or knowledge that changes what can be attempted next. Death returns all still-carried property to the ship and changes the station. Consumed resources remain spent; station/ship-fixture installations, dropped or handed-over things remain outside the carried return set without duplication. Rig-installed parts remain carried property. Home is a place to prepare with survivors.

| **Opening: one part, two machines** | Find the loose Fork Relay (the splitter) at Cargo Turn, then remove the isolation bridge at Collar Control and bring the bridge aboard. The Fork may be deployed so the service rack and patient-bay shutter remain powered, costing time and leaving the part installed; keeping it instead preserves the part but consumes carrying space. | Read trigger-to-payload causality, decide whether to deploy the loose part or keep it, survive the resulting shutter state, and learn which property returns after death. | Station infrastructure and combat equipment obey related rules; a “key” can also be a build component. This is the Option A opening. |

Discovery must change play at every layer: a route sign predicts an operation; an operation opens or safely alters a path; the path yields a component, person or fact; and that result changes a later preparation or interpretation. Lore that supplies none of those consequences is optional texture, not spine content.

Late expedition goals are represented by the deeper and optional-secret rows rather than a separate act: they turn accumulated regional work into central access, consequential action and the entire-station objective.

This is a middle-game example. After Yeva is home, she recognizes the identifier on a photographed R-3 pressure log but cannot infer where its line now runs. The player seats a relay-family part in Dorn’s collar receiver, listens, retrieves the part, then prepares the expedition. This cooperative preparation costs time aboard; it does not create scarcity, consumption, upkeep or a choice between the reading and carrying the relay. Listening yields one pressure value and a suspect channel—not a route or proof.

Inside the station, builder service marks let the player predict which of two valves performs “sample” and which performs “purge.” A visitor-language source/destination pair then predicts that the line was redirected through a decontamination ward. The player tests the prediction while the game runs, holds a horde at the valve, and—under the found-parts default—finds an **Impact Dynamo** installed in the abandoned sampling loop. Removing it ends that shortcut. The part adds local impact-to-charge behavior: clamped to a named Barrier frame or Projector physical-output feed, it can supply a compatible configured receiver, such as a Capacitor when one is owned. The full path and active-area cost follow the [Equipment Catalogue](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment%20Catalogue); motion alone belongs to Stride's separately stated rule.

The ward ledger shows only that a named transfer occurred after the time Yeva believed transfers had stopped. It does not say why, who survived or which witness was right. Back aboard, Yeva revises one accusation and asks the player to look for the destination ward; Dorn retains a different reading. Thus one expedition connects observation, two language tests, an earned expressive build change and a human consequence without converting evidence into authorial truth.

| Opening | Two readable trigger/payload chains; first shared-use relay choice. | Empty ship and a visible reason to return to R-3. | First repeated service mark recorded with its observed result. |

In this outline, builder operational marks are one alien language, while visitor source/destination pairs and later utterances are two registers of a second. The [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) requires a minimum of two alien languages.

A **region** is a coherent expedition territory. A reusable **room module** is a layout/encounter pattern; one module may produce multiple **placed playable room instances**, and the late whole-station objective concerns those actual instances, not the catalogue count. A **discovery chain** is a multi-step investigation with a gameplay consequence. A **major set-piece** is an exceptional encounter or sequence and may also host a chain, room or objective; cross-listed units are not additive workload.

| Content unit | SMALL | TARGET | STRETCH |

| Regions / reusable room modules / placed playable room instances | 4 / 24 / 40 | 7 / 45 / 80 | 10 / 70 / 130 |

| Survivors with rescue plus home follow-through | 5 | 9 | 14 |

| Distinct equipment parts | 12 | 24 | 36 |

| Language discovery chains, split across at least two languages | 4 | 8 | 12 |

| Two-language discovery map | SMALL; 4 chains, relationship of registers resolved | Language and Journal; Language Expedition; Utterance Discovery | Each chain records evidence, test, correction path and action unlocked; neither language becomes exposition |

| Save/persistence and authoring constraints | All bands; technical-design discovery/spec only | Shift/persistence rules; topology; content schemas | Save authority, death transaction, persistent-world state, content identifiers and authoring constraints are testable on paper without implementing them |

| Whole-game coherence review | SMALL specification set; one focused review | Readable versions of selected specifications | Finds missing pillars, hidden dependencies, unsupported duration claims and contradictory player rules, or records no material objection |

2. Which hospital-story direction, if any, should lead: captive ascendant, departed being/template engine, or a revision? No exact explanation or ending is canon.

4. Should functioning found parts be the progression spine, with fabrication limited to repairs/adapters, or should observation-led fabrication dominate?

6. Must the whole-station connection unlock a deeper ending, or remain an optional secret whose reward is interpretation and access?

13. What would support the owner’s ambition of 30, 90 or 100–200 hours. Counts still missing: oxygen canister and carrying-capacity variants, starting loadout alternatives, resource sinks, objective reuse, branch scenes, clue permutations and technical state combinations. Measurements still missing: average expedition and revisit length; how often death creates a genuinely new route rather than repetition; clue discovery and correction rates; viable-build count after dominance testing; horde encounter variety; dialogue/state volume per survivor; gating and backtracking costs; accessibility pacing; and the proportion of players who pursue secrets.