Hold the Flood — Campaign (DES104)

DES104 r2 · 2026-09-06 · Lead Game and Systems Designer · In review · The campaign proposal, revised against PMR004: PM's provisional decisions D022 to D024 are integrated, the four staffed roles' pages are linked as the authoritative topics, the owner's short narrative is written, the three deep districts are redrawn on the eight-cell rack, and the bookkeeping records which page now owns each rule. r1 (34dc09, with the Campaign designer's note at 9d3590) is in page history. Expansion Brief · Design Index · Shared rule contract · Districts · Enemies · Combat Rules · Equipment · Build Paths · Colony · World and Mystery · Design Document · Design Review · PMR004

Added by the Campaign and District Designer, 2026-09-06, without changing anything on this page. The role this page stands in for is now staffed. Its first deliverable is Districts (CAM101), which adopts this campaign rather than proposing a rival one: it takes section 2's set and section 3's districts as written, adds an independent count test and a recommended seven, the order of play and travel rules, the progression map, a bottom-up duration hypothesis, one consequence of failure and one alternative route to the head-works, and writes the two districts this page's coverage table marks as sketches — The Collector and The Head-works. One disagreement is recorded there and not here: the refuge should not be counted as the eighth district. The transfer this page's bookkeeping anticipates is the lead's to make, not mine to take.

(The lead, r2: that note is kept as written. The disagreement it records is accepted below; the count is seven external districts with the refuge at stake, as PM's D022 now says.)

Read this first: one page for the owner

What changed. You called the premise promising, found three to four hours far too little, and asked for a much larger number of districts, with separate pages for mechanics, enemies and weapons. Since then four specialists have written the districts, enemies, equipment and colony in detail, and PM has taken three provisional drafting decisions so the next draft is one design: seven districts plus the refuge (D022), an eight-cell rack with pickups the player prioritises (D023), and the world designer's first answer to the mystery, that the city still runs on the Flood (D024). None of that is your approval; all of it is reversible; nothing has been built or played.

What this proposes. A campaign of seven connected districts on one water system, the drowned flood defences of a city, from the sea gate at the bottom to the head-works at the top. Every district is a different machine on the same water and the same four rules: water connects, current works machines, light draws the Flood, and the Flood carries the charge you fight with. The pumping district you have read opens the campaign, and its relay decision becomes a local outcome instead of the end. The refuge is the thing at stake, not a menu: district outcomes change its state, and your answer is usually a lever somewhere else, or, if you choose, a defence at home.

The game in four beats.

• A first trip. You leave the causeway dock, walk past a dark lamp, and watch the far beacon flash as the first surge pours in beneath it. You learn the culvert, find a coil, and drain your own battery by packing wet salvage against it. Nothing is solved; everything needed to solve it was seen. (The Design Document's expedition one.)
• A changed return, in the middle of the game. You have set the Exchange's bank so the pumping district's relay is permitted again, and you come back to a district whose forecast you can now predict without its board. You throw the panel to yard on purpose, hold the pump-hall door with the cutter while two batteries fill, discharge into the channel, and spend the arc on the recovering crowd. Then you walk the causeway home along the road that was, five expeditions ago, the Flood's. (Expedition six, and the Exchange in section 3.4.)
• A later build choice. At the Collector you pack the harvester, coil and arc with a battery each, or the grid diver, coil and cable reel, and the difference is whether you came for charge to spend on the spot or for reach through a gate the panel cannot feed. Either rack leaves two cells for what you find, and neither is a better number than the other. (Build Paths, family one.)
• The payoff. At the head-works the governor has fresh grease and today's tally. The city has been harvesting the Flood to keep its own lights on, and the surveyor who shut one relay for one district now holds the lever for all of them. Stop, and the harvest ends and the districts go dark in turn, the colony's pump with them, while the gravity docks and hand-worked locks keep everyone alive; Keep, and the machine runs as you found it; set it slower, and you pay in every district at once. (The Head-works page; the contract's state table.)

The count. Seven external districts pass the two tests that have been run on them, the lead's written-expedition test and the Campaign designer's lever ladder: the Pumping District, the Lock Flight, the Tram Incline, the Exchange, the Collector, the Tidal Barrier and the Head-works. The refuge is not an eighth; it is where the levers land. The Salt Pans are deferred, not banned. PM records this as D022, provisional.

What is designed and what is a hypothesis. Three districts are in depth on this page, with written expeditions and charge ledgers that close under the rules as now ruled; two more, the Collector and the Head-works, are in depth on the Campaign designer's pages; the Exchange is an outline; the pumping district is the Design Document. The enemy roster, the equipment catalogue and the colony loop are the specialists' proposals, linked below, with the lead's dispositions recorded in the bookkeeping. No hours figure is given here: the Campaign designer's bottom-up hypothesis exists on the Districts page and PM has not accepted it; section 8 says why a number still waits.

What happens if you say yes. Nothing is built. This is a design gate, not a development gate. Saying yes means the team finishes the remaining districts to the standard in section 3, the critic reviews the whole, and you assess it.

Where to read. This page for the campaign; the Districts page for order, travel, the progression map and the two districts written there; Build Paths for the choices a player makes with equipment; Enemies for what the Flood does; Colony for what the refuge does between trips; the shared rule contract for the rules in one place; the Design Document for the pumping district.

1. The shared rules, in one paragraph

Water connects: current anywhere in a joined body of water is everywhere in it, and dry ground does not conduct. A device works only while its channel carries current, from the district's own switched circuit or from a coil discharge that energises water for two seconds and stuns for eight. A district dispatches when its drum's contact closes and the trunk permits it, and a surge enters at the flashing beacon if the supply provides one; after entry a body resolves stun, then pursuit, then its role's own target, then the nearest lit beacon it can reach, then spread. Organisms shed charge once: one unit on a kill, five per ten stunned in water; batteries hold ten and fill in the order the player set at the last shelter; a discharge spends a battery; the arc drains one over ten seconds, body to body. The rack is eight cells. The full contract, with readable signals, the state table and the ownership of every rule, is the shared rule contract. A district may add to it; none may change what power, signal, a beacon or charge means.

2. The campaign's shape

The water system is the map. The city built its flood defences as one machine: a reservoir and head-works at the top, whose flow turns every race, a lock flight to step the water down through the works, a tram incline to move crews between the levels, an exchange where every district's signal cable meets, a collector in the low place the water drains to, a pumping district to lift it out of the low quarter, and a tidal barrier at the mouth to keep the sea out. The city drowned when the machine was turned to a new purpose; what still keeps it in time is the campaign's question, which the world designer has written (section 6). The refuge is a dock on that water. Districts are the machines; the water between them is the road.

The seven districts, one paragraph each. The rule each adds is a diff against the contract; the deep treatments are section 3 here and the Districts pages.

1. The Pumping District (opening; the Design Document). Adds nothing: it teaches the contract. Its finale, shut, fix or hold, is a local outcome; after shut, the incoming cable still pulses on a stopped drum, the world designer's first campaign clue, and what the trunk permits here is set at the Exchange's bank.
2. The Lock Flight (early). Adds locks and basin levels: the surveyor moves water between basins by hand, which moves the topology that current runs on and moves the Flood's floaters with the flow. Deep in 3.1.
3. The Tram Incline (middle). Adds a powered rail as a dry conductor and a moving beacon. Deep in 3.2.
4. The Exchange (middle). Adds the network: a hall of drums on one shaft and a routing bank with one position per district. Outlined in 3.4; its mystery is the world designer's.
5. The Collector (middle). Adds the Flood's supply: basins with wheels turned by the mass passing through, meters, gates and an outfall; closing a district's gate delays its next first surge and shows the empty flash. Deep on the Collector (Campaign designer).
6. The Tidal Barrier (late). Adds a second clock and an unannounced sea intake. Deep in 3.3.
7. The Head-works (the end). The governor that keeps every district's time, with two ways in and the campaign-scale choice. Deep on the Head-works (Campaign designer).

The refuge, at stake. The colony's dock is where outcomes land: a district outcome can leave its dock wet, its beacon drawing or its board dark, and the answer is a lever elsewhere. When an outcome threatens the refuge's approach, the player may choose a defence expedition at home, under the same rules and the same fifteen minutes, with the inner dry dock always a shelter and the threatened landing outside it; it is never forced, its preview names the affected route before the original district action, and losing it costs that expedition's cargo and leaves the approach unresolved, never banked salvage, notes, facilities or people (Colony's COL-I6, adopted; D022). This replaces r1's eighth district.

Candidate, deferred: the Salt Pans. Brine basins that conduct as one body change the cost of a known action, not the action; they return only with a lever cell none of the seven occupies.

Order, travel and return. The order of play, the travel rules, the progression map with its optional branch and the later discovery that changes an earlier return, one consequence of failure and one alternative route to the head-works are on the Districts page (sections 3, 4, 6 and 7), which this page adopts. Returns are caused, not scheduled: the Exchange's bank changes a district's forecast, the Tidal Barrier's gates change the refuge and starve the Collector, the Lock Flight's upper canal makes the Tram's summit berth supportable, and each district's campaign clue is legible only with evidence from another. Repeated hauling to pay a price is not a return reason and is not used as one.

3. Three districts in depth

Each district gives the problem, the ground, the shared-rule diff, two loadouts that differ in what they do, the enemy combination and the precedence question it poses, the discovery chain, the consequences, a written expedition with its charge ledger, and the asset categories with gaps marked. Racks are the eight-cell rack of D023: two rows of four, the cutter outside it in the primary cradle; only orthogonal contact conducts, and any module or empty cell breaks a salvage chain. Collection goes by the priority the player set at the dock. Times and numbers are proposals; the enemy roles are Combat's on the merged roster.

3.1 The Lock Flight

The problem. Water is both the road's obstacle and the door's supply. The lock house at the head of the flight holds what the surveyor came for, and its door is a device on the head basin's line: it works only while that basin holds water and that water is joined to a lit circuit. The direct road up the flight is the crowd's road when the weir beacon is lit; the basins' beds are the shortcut when they are drained; and draining the head basin kills the door. The surveyor chooses which to move, the crowd or the water, and pays in the other.

The ground. Three basins in a stair: the Tail, with the quay dock (held by the colony), the quay beacon and the district panel (Quay, Weir, Off); the Middle; the Head, with the lock house at its top and the weir road on to the weir dock and weir beacon. Two locks, L1 between Tail and Middle and L2 between Middle and Head, each worked by a hand lever at its top, unpowered; opening a lock levels its two basins over about twenty seconds, the higher draining into the lower, and the flow runs on through the Tail into the tail race behind the quay. The direct road climbs beside the locks. The quay beacon's circuit energises the Tail; the weir beacon's circuit energises the Head; the Middle is energised only when joined to one of them by an open lock.

Shared-rule diff.

Two loadouts.

Lockkeeper              Bargeman
C  C  B  I              S  L  B  K
S  S  .  .              S  S  .  .
link B -> C             link B -> L (the portable beacon)

The lockkeeper makes current where there is none: with the panel left on Quay so the crowd holds at the dock and the road is free, the door at the top is dead, and the coil opens it by a discharge into the head basin, which needs a full battery earned from kills on the way up; the insulation beside the battery keeps the bundles off its terminals and lets the surveyor stand at the water's edge for the discharge. The bargeman moves the crowd instead: with the panel thrown to Weir the door is live and the crowd climbs the road toward the weir; the bargeman goes up ahead of it, and on the way back drops the lit portable beacon on the Tail's far bank so the floaters hold there and the dock is clear. One rack fights for ten motes; the other carries a lure and three bundles. Neither is better; the lockkeeper banks fewer bundles and the bargeman shares the road with walkers.

Enemies and the precedence question. This district's surges are mostly floaters with a few walkers: sixty at the first dispatch as fifty floaters and ten walkers. The question a floater poses that a walker cannot: when the water flows, does the crowd follow the light or the flow? The rule: flow, while it flows; light, once it stops. The reader sees it once and can plan on it: open L1 above a quay full of floaters and the quay empties into the tail race for the twenty seconds of the flush, then the survivors walk back toward the lit beacon. Walkers ignore the flow, climb the stairs, and pursue; they are the kill motes.

Discovery chain. Notice: the gauge boards at each lock are painted with times, not levels, and the lock house has a level log. Compare: the times on the boards are the dispatch times on the forecast, and the log's entries match the pumping district's relay drum, three marks per cycle. Infer: the crews worked the locks to the dispatch schedule; the Flood was being moved down the flight by water, on purpose, on the network's time. Act: nothing is required to leave; the log is the evidence, and it changes a later action, because a player who has seen the locks keep the relay's time reads the Exchange's drums (3.4) as one time source at a glance. In the world designer's terms the campaign clue is the painted gauge board, an inspectable object, and its redundant form is the tram's timetable board. Consequence and recovery: a surveyor who never reads the log still finds the crane parts; the log can be read on any later visit; on replays the flush trick is available from the first minute.

Consequences. For the refuge: the crane parts, two cells of cargo, are the material for the colony's reusable support assembly, the one advanced service it can assign to a district (Colony owns what they build); r1's third rack row is withdrawn under D023. For another district: leaving L2 open at extraction keeps the head basin drained and the upper canal joined to the Middle, which is the water road to the Tram Incline's summit berth; the colony can then support that berth. For a return: the weir dock, unheld on the first visits, is the other way in, and refitting the held dock there reverses which end of the flight is hot.

Written expedition, lockkeeper, the district's third visit. Rack at the dock: coil, one empty battery, insulation, four empty cells; priority list: the one battery. Panel found on Quay. Forecast: first surge at 3:00, intake quay; second at 8:00, intake quay.

• 0:00. The quay dock. The surveyor leaves the panel alone and takes the direct road.
• 1:30. Two bundles from a wrecked barge on the Tail's bank, into the two cells the surveyor ordered first, under the coil; nothing touches the battery, so nothing leaks.
• 3:00. Surge one, quay: fifty floaters and ten walkers pour into the Tail's shallows and hold at the quay beacon, between the surveyor and home. The surveyor is at the top of L1.
• 3:30. The ten walkers climb the stairs in pursuit. The surveyor holds the top step with the cutter: ten kills, ten motes, collected between bodies into the one battery; two hits taken. Battery ten.
• 5:00. The lock house. The door is dead: the head basin is full but unpowered, because the panel is on Quay. The surveyor stands at the basin's edge in insulation and discharges: the head basin is energised for two seconds, the door opens on that current and the surveyor is through it before the current is gone. Nothing was in the water, so nothing sheds. Battery empty.
• 5:30. Inside: the level log, read and copied; the crane parts, two of them, one cell each, into the last two empty cells; they are dry metal and do not conduct. The rack is full.
• 7:00. Out and down. The forecast reads: second surge in one minute, intake quay. The dock is under fifty floaters.
• 7:20. At the top of L1 the surveyor opens the lock. The Middle drains into the Tail over twenty seconds; the flow carries the floaters through the Tail and out to the tail race grating behind the dock, where the dock's hard stop holds them.
• 7:40. The flush ends. The surveyor runs the stairs to the quay, thirty seconds.
• 8:10. Extraction, as the second surge pours in beside the boat: two bundles, two crane parts, an empty battery, two hits taken. The survivors of the flush are walking back toward the quay beacon as the boat leaves.

Notebook: floaters ride the flow; a lock can flush a quay for twenty seconds; the house door wants the head basin live, and the panel cannot light it without lighting the road, but the coil can; the boards are painted with dispatch times.

Ledger, lockkeeper. One battery, capacity ten.

Dropped ten, collected ten, spent ten, nothing lost.

Assets. Reuses the ground and water tiles, lamps, cables and the panel from the pumping district, and the humanoid mass with a low silhouette and a wake for the floater. Gaps: lock gates and a water level that animates between three states, which the Tidal Barrier and the Collector reuse, so one water-level system serves three districts; the prod. No availability is claimed for any of it.

3.2 The Tram Incline

The problem. A beacon that moves. The incline's tram runs while its rail is powered, and its headlamp is a beacon while lit; a crowd follows the lamp up the incline road, and the tram is slow on the slope and fast on the flat. Powering the rail is the depot panel's Rail position, which darkens the depot's gates, so the surveyor who tows a crowd has given up the gates as a way home. The surveyor can ride the lamp, send the lamp away empty, or put it out.

The ground. The depot at the foot, ankle-deep across its yard, with the depot dock, the yard beacon, the gates to the dock road, and the panel (Rail, Gates, Off). The incline road and the rail climb side by side to the summit station, a shelter, with the pass gate to the Exchange, the summit berth on the upper canal, and the timetable board. The rail is a metal channel: it carries current along its length while the panel is on Rail, and glows faintly to show it. The tram has one lever, up or down, and a lamp switch; it moves only while the rail is powered; the pass gate is on the rail's circuit and is open while the rail is powered.

Shared-rule diff.

Two loadouts.

Tram crew               Tow crew
C  C  Bc A              B  L  I  K
I  Ba K  S              .  S  S  S
links Bc -> C, Ba -> A; priority Bc, Ba     link B -> L

The tram crew rides the lamp and fights at the step: coil and arc with a battery each, insulation, kit and one bundle; it can clear a heavy from the rail, hold the tram's step against the crowd that catches up, and, if the yard is flooded enough, stun the depot. Its priority is the coil's battery first, so the first ten units are a discharge and the rest are the burst. The tow crew carries three bundles, a kit, insulation and the portable beacon with its battery, and one empty cell: it lets the tram tow the crowd to the summit, drops the lit beacon at the summit to hold the crowd there, and sends the tram down empty to ride home with the cargo. One rack spends charge to fight where it stands; the other spends cells to decide where the crowd stands.

Enemies and the precedence question. Walkers and heavies. A heavy on the rail stops the tram, and the crowd behind catches up while it stands. The question: kill it for its large mote, with the crowd closing for the seconds it takes, or reverse the tram and come at the incline again once the crowd has strung out? The heavy also poses a yield question in water: it counts as ten for a stun, so one heavy in a flooded yard is worth as much charge as ten walkers.

Discovery chain. Notice: the summit's timetable board lists departures that match the dispatch schedule, and the depot's log shows the trams ran full downhill and empty up. Compare: the Lock Flight's log said the same of the locks, and the pumping district's relay drum keeps the same time. Infer: crews were moving the Flood down to the low quarter by every machine the city had, on one timetable; the timetable is the network's, not this district's. Act: the pass gate opens while the rail is powered, and the Exchange is on the other side, where the time comes from. Recovery: the tram works without the discovery; a surveyor who never reads the board still reaches the summit berth, and the Exchange's meaning waits. Campaign clue: the timetable board; redundant form: the Lock Flight's painted gauges.

Consequences. For another district: the summit berth is supportable only if the Lock Flight's upper canal is joined, and reaching the Exchange needs the rail powered, which leaves the depot's gates dark for every later visit until the colony chooses otherwise. For the refuge: the incline is the only dry road between the lower and upper city, so a tram left at the summit with its lamp lit draws the next surge uphill and away from the refuge's water; a tram left at the depot draws it down. For a return: heavies gather where the tram was left.

Written expedition, tram crew, the district's second visit; the summit berth supported. Rack: coil, arc, two empty batteries, insulation, kit, one empty cell; priority: the coil's battery, then the arc's. Panel found Off. Forecast: first surge at 3:00, intake yard; second at 8:00, intake yard.

• 0:00. The summit berth. The surveyor descends the stairs beside the rail to the depot to fetch the tram, which is at the foot.
• 1:00. The depot panel to Rail: the rail glows, the tram's lamp lights, the pass gate above opens, and the depot gates go dark. The tram is now a lit beacon standing in the yard.
• 3:00. Surge one, yard: sixty walkers enter the flooded yard and walk to the nearest lit beacon, which is the tram. The surveyor boards and puts the lever up.
• 3:30. The tram climbs, slow on the slope; the crowd follows the lamp up the incline road twenty metres behind. Halfway, a heavy stands on the rail and the tram stops against it. The surveyor kills it from the step in the seconds the cutter needs, and takes its large mote: five units into the coil's battery, first on the list.
• 4:30. The stop cost the lead. The crowd's front reaches the tram's step on the slope, and the surveyor holds the step with the cutter for the last of the climb: ten kills, ten motes, collected as they fall. By the priority list the coil's battery fills to ten and the arc's takes the last five: ten and five.
• 5:30. The summit station. The surveyor steps off, throws the lamp switch off and the lever down, and the tram rolls back down the incline dark. The crowd on the slope has no lit beacon to reach and spreads along the incline road it is on.
• 6:00. One bundle from the summit stores into the last cell. The timetable board, read and copied. The pass gate is open; the surveyor looks through at the Exchange's edge and does not go in.
• 8:00. Surge two, yard: eighty walkers enter the depot, where the tram stands dark and the yard beacon is dark, and spread across the yard.
• 9:40. Extraction at the summit berth: one bundle, ten and five units lost at the dock, no hits taken. The rail is left powered; the depot gates are left dark; the notebook records both.

Notebook: the lamp tows; a heavy on the rail costs the lead; putting the lamp out drops the crowd where it stands; the board keeps the network's time.

Ledger, tram crew. Coil's battery first on the priority list, arc's second; capacity ten each.

Dropped fifteen, collected fifteen, spent nothing, fifteen lost at the dock. Under the old most-room rule the same fifteen units would have split eight and seven and bought nothing; under the priority rule the surveyor holds a discharge at the summit and chose not to spend it.

Assets. Reuses the yard tiles, water, lamps, cables and panel, and the humanoid mass at a larger size for the heavy. Gaps: the rail, the tram, the incline's slope tiles, the pass gate. Nothing is claimed available.

3.3 The Tidal Barrier

The problem. A clock the surveyor cannot set. The flats between the mole and the barrier's signal house dry out at low tide and flood at high, on a cycle the tide staff shows; the direct crossing is open for a few minutes each way, and the alternative, the mole road, is where the sea's Flood comes in through the open barrier gates at high tide, unannounced. The signal house's gate lever is powered only when the flats are one body of water joined to the lit flats beacon, which is only at high tide, which is the only time the surveyor cannot leave. The choice is to run, or to stay.

The ground. The mole, a stone road from the mole dock (held) to the signal house, exposed; the flats, a wide bed between the mole and the house, dry at low tide, chest-deep at high, with wrecks stranded on it; the flats beacon on the mole's landward end and the mole beacon at the house's end; the barrier gates in the sea wall beyond the house, standing open; the tide staff painted on the house. The district panel is in the house (Flats, Mole, Off). The tide: low from the expedition's start, rising from 2:00, high from 6:00 to 8:00, falling from 8:00, low again by 12:00. The dispatch schedule runs as usual; the sea's arrivals run on the tide.

Shared-rule diff.

(r1's tide glass module is deferred as Equipment argues; the painted staff is the indicator.)

Two loadouts.

Tidewatcher             Runner
C  C  B  K              K  I  .  .
S  S  I  S              S  S  S  .
link B -> C             (no battery)

The tidewatcher stays: coil, one battery, insulation, kit and three bundles, the rack full; it earns a battery from the walkers that wade to the house, discharges into the flats at high tide when the whole crowd is in one body of water, and works the lever when the tide powers it. The runner carries no battery at all: kit, insulation, three bundles and three empty cells for the crossing's finds, crossing at low tide, throwing the house panel to Mole so the first surge lands away from the flats, reading the log, and crossing back before the water closes, without touching the lever. One rack makes the district's decision; the other reads it and goes home with cargo. The runner's charge is simply lost, which is the point of its rack.

Enemies and the precedence question. Walkers from the dispatches and floaters from the sea. The question: when the flats are one body of water and the crowd stands in it, a single discharge from the house's step stuns everything on the flats, and the yield is huge; but the stun lasts eight seconds and the crossing takes a minute, so the discharge buys charge and not passage. Charge or passage is the district's question, and the tide answers it differently every two minutes.

Discovery chain. Notice: the barrier's log shows the gates opened at every high tide, on purpose, for years; the sea's Flood comes in through them. Compare: the Lock Flight's and the Tram's logs showed the Flood moved down through the city on the network's time; this is the bottom of that road, and the gate log's openings follow the trunk's cadence, not the tide's. Infer: the gates are opened on the network's time to let the tide in, because the tide is what fills the low basins the machine cycles the Flood through, and the sea's Flood comes in with it; the mouth is part of the machine, not its exit. Act: shut the gates at the lever, at high tide, with the flats beacon lit. Consequence and recovery: the log can be read at low tide by a runner; the act needs the stay; on replays the surveyor knows the window to the minute. Campaign clue: the gate log, whose openings keep the trunk's time; redundant form: the Collector's intake gauge.

Consequences. For the refuge: with the gates shut the tide no longer floods the refuge's dock at high water, which is what has been costing the colony its held-dock choice on this coast. For this district: the flats stop wetting, so the whole-flats stun is gone for good, and the mole road is dry for good; a district outcome with a cost. For another district: the Collector downstream of the low quarter is fed by the tide through these gates; shut, its wheels turn slower and its meters read less, which the Exchange's shaft shows, and what the head-works' choice can reach at the mouth is decided by what the gates allow (the Districts page, section 7, makes this the difference between its two routes to the head-works).

Written expedition, tidewatcher, the district's second visit. Rack: coil, one empty battery, insulation, kit, three empty cells; priority: the one battery. Panel found on Flats. Forecast: first surge at 3:00, intake flats; second at 8:00, intake flats; third at 12:00. Tide low.

• 0:00. The mole dock. The surveyor walks the dry flats toward the house, past stranded wrecks.
• 1:30. Three bundles from the wrecks, into the ordered cells; the insulation sits under the battery, so no bundle touches it.
• 2:00. The tide turns; the staff shows it; the notebook records the minute.
• 2:30. The house, a shelter. The gate lever: dead. The log, read and copied.
• 3:00. Surge one, flats: sixty walkers enter on the wetting flats and hold at the flats beacon, on the mole's landward end, across the surveyor's way home.
• 3:30. Ten walkers wade to the house's steps in pursuit; the cutter takes them on the steps: ten motes, battery ten.
• 4:30. The flats are knee-deep and one body of water, energised by nothing. From the house's step in insulation the surveyor discharges: the fifty organisms standing in it are stunned; five large motes, twenty-five units; the battery, emptied by the discharge, takes ten and fifteen are lost as overflow. Battery ten again. The crossing is still a minute and the stun is eight seconds: the surveyor stays.
• 6:00. High tide. The flats beacon is lit and the flats join the house's line: the lever is powered. The surveyor shuts the gates. The sea's trickle along the mole, ten floaters that came in on the rising tide, stops arriving; those ten walk to the nearest lit beacon they can reach, the flats beacon, and join the crowd there.
• 8:00. Surge two, flats: eighty walkers join the recovered crowd, holding at the flats beacon in chest-deep water. The tide turns.
• 9:00. The house panel to Mole: the flats beacon dies and the mole beacon at the house's end lights; a hundred and forty organisms walk off the flats onto the mole road toward the house, which is a shelter, and hold at the beacon below its steps. The flats are clearing as the water falls.
• 12:00. Low tide. Surge three, mole: a hundred more join the crowd at the mole beacon. The surveyor leaves the house by the flats side and crosses the dry bed to the mole dock, away from the crowd.
• 13:30. Extraction: three bundles, a full battery lost at the dock, no hits taken. The gates are shut for good.

Notebook: the lever wants high water and the lit flats; the discharge buys charge, not passage; the panel moves the crowd off the flats while the tide drains them; the gates were open on purpose.

Ledger, tidewatcher. One battery, capacity ten.

Dropped thirty-five; collected twenty; spent ten; fifteen lost as overflow and ten at the dock.

Assets. Reuses ground and water tiles with the Lock Flight's animated water level, lamps, cables, panel, the humanoid mass and the floater. Gaps: the barrier gates, the mole, the tide staff, the stranded wrecks. Nothing is claimed available.

3.4 The Exchange, in outline

The world designer's example district, with its mystery contribution written on their page; this outline adds the machinery problem and the rule that prices it. A dry hall where every district's signal cable meets: drums ticking together on one shaft, turned by a race whose head the player cannot see, and a routing bank, a panel with one position per district, that sets which district receives the trunk's permission. A district whose position is dark is in the shut regime, unannounced trickles that grow and a dark forecast, never a district with no Flood in it; its arrivals obey ordinary targeting once inside, so lit beacons still route them (PMR004). The bank's price, stated as a rule the way the panel's was: a lit position gives the player the forecast and the announced, routable surge in that district, which is the thing the whole game is played with; a dark position takes both away there. To withhold the Flood from a district is to give up reading it there; that coupling is the argument that the bank does not dominate, and its magnitude is for later validation, not proof. Conduction across the dry hall is by the cable reel. The Carrier, the merged role that walks to the nearest reachable loose charge within a short range in preference to a lit beacon, makes a carried battery a beacon: the surveyor caches charge or is hunted for it; it leans toward what it wants and the forecast draws its target. The pumping district's dead drum is listed on the bank, which is the first campaign clue in its second form.

4. Equipment and combat across the campaign: the integration record

The specialists own the detail; this section records what the lead adopted, ruled or declined, and why, so the next draft is one design. The full dispositions table is section 10 of the shared rule contract.

• The rack is eight cells from the outset, with pickups in a player-set order (Inventory and Charge, E1 to E7; D023). r1's third row unlocked by the crane parts is withdrawn: Equipment's argument that a fixed frame with room for one signature combination plus cargo or a countermeasure creates more decisions than a capacity ladder is better than mine, and PM chose it. The crane parts now pay for the colony's service assembly (section 5).
• Weapons: the cutter, the prod and the rivet driver; the arc is a module (Equipment, Alternative Tools). One primary at a time; an alternative primary costs a cell for its brace and gives up the arc's host. The reason to keep the cutter is charge; the reasons to switch are position (the prod) and a penetrating line (the rivet driver). No damage ladder, by Combat's R8, adopted.
• The roster is eight roles, merged (Enemies, Combat Rules): Walker, Floater, Heavy, Carrier, Anchor, Crust, Spark, Grounder. r1's four are in it: the Walker under Combat's name of the same role, the Floater transferred to Combat with its flow rule, the Heavy with Combat's wording, the Static merged into the Carrier with the Carrier's targeting sentence and the Static's short range. Each role deletes one assumption and reads by silhouette, never by tint or brightness alone.
• Rulings the specialists asked the lead for: the precedence stack (R1) and the bounded press (R2) are adopted as the drafting rules; a discharge keeps water energised for two seconds and stuns for eight (R3); the arc chains body to body and not through energised water (R10 declined, the bounded model PM recommended); a role may darken a beacon (R9, allowed under the contract's test; World names it); three statuses, closed (R7); the arc takes ten seconds, not the Glossary's twenty (C8).
• Build paths. Build Paths gives three families, the Circuit Harvester, the Route Shepherd and the Salvage Breacher, each with an early, middle and late choice and a branch. The four beats on the owner page use them. The lead's early, middle and late table from r1 is superseded by that page.
• What Combat and Equipment still owe, per PMR004: one joint effect table for fixed power, coil, arc and Spark, using the numbers ruled above, and the corrected Encounters A and B. The lead resolves any residual disagreement in that submission.

5. The colony across the campaign: the integration record

Colony owns the loop; PM's D023 adopts its structure: one reusable support assembly and one active advanced service at a time, one-time refits instead of recurring dock-switch payments, free departure and return, and no upkeep or decay. The lead's answers to its six requests:

• COL-I1, one-time outlet refit and a supported forward berth. Adopted. The colony holds one baseline dock per district and may support one further dry shelter at a surveyed compatible connection while its service is assigned there; the Tram's summit berth is the first such connection, and it needs the Lock Flight's upper canal joined. The boat's range to the head-works follows the witnessed Barrier route, not a salvage purchase.
• COL-I2, inspected recipes and recorded racks. Equipment's to argue; the lead's position is Colony's: recorded racks on revisits only, capped at six issued cells, so first visits keep their discoveries (D023).
• COL-I4, the baseline return after a shutdown. Adopted and written into the contract's state table: gravity docks, dry routes and hand-worked machinery survive Stop; powered conveniences go dormant; nothing banked is lost.
• COL-I5, the reusable service loop in place of three decisions. Adopted as structure; the four-bundle prices are Colony's proposals, and the Districts page's constraint stands: every unlock must be payable from the salvage of required expeditions, or the campaign has become a grind.
• COL-I6, a player-selected defence. Adopted; section 2's refuge paragraph is the result.
• The crane parts from the Lock Flight are the assembly's material, so a discovery, not a haul, opens the colony's advanced service.

One lasting, visible refuge consequence beyond a different loadout menu, as PMR004 asks: the refuge's board, which shows every district's forecast, bank position and gate state the player has repaired or set, and which goes dark district by district after Stop.

6. The mystery: the world designer's, with PM's provisional answer

The World and Mystery Designer owns the mystery and has written the campaign thread (WLD103, World and Mystery r19 and r20); this page adopts it. The campaign question, in their words: the district relays are one network, kept in time from somewhere upstream; what, at its head, is still keeping time, and for whom? The first campaign clue is already in the pumping district: after the player shuts the relay, the drum stops and the thin cable entering the room from outside still pulses on the old cadence. Every district contributes six things by the world page's rule, and section 3 applies it: the locks' painted gauges and the tram's timetable board are one clue in two forms; the barrier's gate log has its redundant form in the Collector's intake gauge; the Exchange, the Collector and the Head-works carry their clues as written on the world page and the Districts pages.

PM's D024 chooses Answer A for the next draft: nobody is left; the city runs on charge harvested from the Flood; the head-works' choice is the relay-room choice at scale, and Stop darkens the districts in turn, the colony's pump included, while the gravity docks keep everyone alive. Answer B, the keepers, is preserved as the documented alternative. The lead recommended A in r1 and the reasons stand: it needs no new presence, it makes the ending the same kind of choice the owner found promising at the relay, and it is also an asset decision, since B needs a human figure the design has otherwise avoided. What A requires of the rules, the fixed-power source, the dispatch condition, the empty flash and the Stop consequence, is now in the contract's sections 2, 3 and 9 as the lead's proposal for the world designer to correct.

7. Content coverage and asset burden

Asset burden, honestly. Every district reuses the pumping district's categories: ground and water tiles, lamps, cables, panels, boards, the humanoid mass. One animated water-level system serves the locks, the tide and the Collector's basins. The new categories are the rail and tram, lock and barrier gates, the Collector's wheels and meters, the head-works' governor, races and dam exterior, and eight enemy silhouettes derived from the base mass, which is Combat's stated cost. No free asset has been located for any of these and none is claimed; the Brief's rule that every shortlisted asset is recorded with source, creator, terms and intended use applies, and the asset-licences reference page governs what a free licence permits.

8. Length, honestly

The Districts page carries the Campaign designer's bottom-up hypothesis, with required, optional and repeated content separated and its method exposed; PMR004 records it as unaccepted, because required returns still contain optional branches, the pumping district's visit assumptions differ from the lead's, and overhead and deaths need consistent accounting. The lead's position is unchanged: no figure on this page until one baseline path with concrete discovery beats exists across the districts, which is the Campaign designer's next submission, and the figure will be labelled an estimate from content. What can be said now is structural: the pumping district's first discovery was ten to twelve expeditions by its designed beats; the three districts above each have one written expedition and a two-tier shape; nothing is padded by hauling.

9. Hypotheses and risks

• That the shared rule carries seven districts is the central hypothesis; five are written to the section 3 standard on this page and the Districts pages, the Exchange is an outline, and the pumping district is the Design Document.
• The priority rule may make charge management feel like list-keeping; its counter is the pickup preview and that the list is set once at a shelter. The most-room rule is recorded as the alternative.
• The bounded arc gives up the largest crowd-clearing payoff proposed (Combat's R10); it can be reopened once Encounter B is corrected and the joint effect table exists.
• The Grounder puts a clock on plans; if pursuit range is generous it reads as just another body up close, which is a tuning bound and unverified.
• The refuge as the thing at stake depends on district outcomes reaching it visibly; the optional defence is a sketch and is cut if it becomes a tower-defence mode.
• Answer A's Stop consequence is the campaign's hardest content: districts going dark in turn must be legible and fair, and the cadence proposed in the contract is a guess.
• Numbers: every count, time and yield is a proposal; the ledgers show consistency, not balance.

10. Decisions for the owner

PM has taken three provisional drafting decisions since r1 so the team can write one design; they remain yours to reverse. The question r1 put back to you, which reading of "far too little" was meant, PM has disposed of for drafting: a larger finite authored campaign with optional replay, no clarification needed to continue. What remains yours:

1. The count and the refuge. Seven external districts, the refuge at stake with an optional defence and never a forced one (D022). Recommendation: yes.
2. The rack. Eight cells from the outset, pickups in an order you set (D023). Recommendation: yes; it is Equipment's argument and PM's choice, and the lead withdrew the alternative.
3. The campaign's answer. The machine, Answer A (D024), with the keepers preserved. Recommendation: A, for the reasons in section 6.
4. The roster and the weapons. Eight enemy roles, three primaries and nine modules, no damage numbers. Recommendation: yes; more only by the same tests.
5. The setting and the enemy's identity remain yours, as before; the roles' names are placeholders the world designer will rename.
6. The ending's shape. Stop, Keep, or slower, at the head-works, with the Districts page's two routes in; PMR004 asks the Campaign designer to make the slower position distinct or merge it. Recommendation: decide after that correction.

Bookkeeping

Rule ownership after this revision (PMR004 4: the lead records which definitions now own the rule). The four clauses, the dispatch condition, the state table and readable state: the shared rule contract. Precedence, press, targeting, damage and status grammar: Combat Rules. The roster: Enemies and its role pages, the Floater included. Rack, links, leakage, collection priority, field handling and accounting: Inventory and Charge, with the catalogue on Equipment and its item pages and acquisition on Build Paths. The colony loop, services, refits and the defence option: Colony. District order, travel, the progression map, the count test, the duration hypothesis, the Collector and the Head-works: Districts and its pages. The Lock Flight, the Tram Incline, the Tidal Barrier and the Exchange outline: this page, until the Campaign designer and the lead cut them to district pages in one agreed edit. The mystery, the campaign question and the clues: World and Mystery. The pumping district's rules and examples: the Design Document, until the editor's transfer.

Sources read for r2. PM Reviews PMR004 ed0def and PMU005 e8c3d4; Brief 70b6b1 (D022 to D024); Tasks 9569fc; Hub c33d3c; Expansion Brief d97965; Design Index 0ee6d3; Campaign 9d3590 (the Campaign designer's note); Districts r2 acb797, the Collector 40f2b5, the Head-works 6bf2a7; Combat Rules r2 1126c3, Enemies r3 0822dd and the eight role pages; Equipment a44990, Build Paths a9a288, Inventory and Charge 73eb77, Cutter 9618ad, Alternative Tools e6aed6; Colony a1046d; World and Mystery r20 7699de; Design Review REV104 r1 80a882; Reference index 454f11 (REF108). The contract at r3 was written from the same sources.

PM report. Task DES104 r2 against PMR004 1 to 4; artifact Hold the Flood/Campaign r2 (r1 34dc09 and 9d3590 in history), with the shared rule contract r3 as its rules. Changed decisions: none canonical; D022 to D024 integrated as provisional; the lead's dispositions of R1 to R10, E1 to E8, C1 to C8 and COL-I1 to I6 are recorded on the contract and here. Evidence: three written expeditions re-derived under the eight-cell rack and the priority rule, with ledgers that close; the owner narrative's four beats each point at a designed page; no player data; nothing built, simulated or tested; no asset located or claimed. Risks: section 9. Next handoff: the critic's REV104 on this revision and the contract's r3; World to correct the state table's fiction and adopt the dispatch sentence; Combat and Equipment's joint effect table and corrected encounters; the Campaign designer's PMR004 3 corrections and the baseline path; the cut of sections 3.1 to 3.4 to district pages by agreement; PM's next review. No PM request.