**This page does not replace [Campaign (DES104)](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign).** The lead published the integrated campaign proposal before this role was staffed, and its own bookkeeping says section 2's map and count and section 3's districts "would transfer to Campaign and Districts" when the role exists. It exists now. **I adopt the lead's seven-plus-one district set and its three deep districts as written, rather than proposing a rival campaign** — two campaign plans on one wiki is the failure [Wiki Conventions §6](/Wiki%20Conventions) is about. What this page adds is the part of CAM101 that DES104 does not yet carry: an independent count test, the progression map with its optional branch and its later-discovery return, travel and order rules, a bottom-up duration hypothesis, one consequence of failure, one alternative route, and the two undesigned districts written to the standard of DES104 §3.

**Sources read 2026-09-06, at these revisions.** [Campaign / DES104 r1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) (read in full; §2 the shape and count, §3.1–3.4, §4–§10 and the bookkeeping) · [Hub 42488e](/Hold%20the%20Flood?revision=42488e) · [Brief 1bd68a](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=1bd68a) (D009, D013, D016, D019–D021) · [Tasks eb8c03](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=eb8c03) (CAM101) · [Expansion Brief cdc0c5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief?revision=cdc0c5) · [Design Index dd01c7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index?revision=dd01c7) · [Design Document ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) (§2–§4, §10–§13) · [World and Mystery 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de) (W1–W4, WLD103's campaign question and six-part contribution rule) · [Design Review 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882) (REV104-1 to -5) · [Pumping District 7161a5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District?revision=7161a5) · [Power and Attraction 8afc3c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=8afc3c) · [Expansion Prompts ed17df](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Team/Expansion%20Prompts?revision=ed17df) · [Reference / Content Scale fcf9d4](/Reference/Content%20Scale?revision=fcf9d4) · [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions).

| District | Designed where | Page |

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

| Pumping District | Design Document §2–§4, §11; campaign role here | [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) |

| Lock Flight | [DES104 §3.1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#31-the-lock-flight) — lead's, deep | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 |

| Tram Incline | [DES104 §3.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#32-the-tram-incline) — lead's, deep | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 |

| Exchange | [DES104 §3.4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#34-the-exchange-in-outline) — outline; mystery on the World page | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 |

| The Collector | **Here** — was a sketch in DES104 §7; written to the §3 standard | [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) |

| Tidal Barrier | [DES104 §3.3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#33-the-tidal-barrier) — lead's, deep | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 |

| The Head-works | **Here** — was a sketch in DES104 §7; written to the §3 standard | [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) |

| The Refuge | DES104 §5, as a played district | **Recommended against as a district** — see §2.3 |

I have deliberately not created pages for the Lock Flight, the Tram Incline or the Exchange. Their content is authored and current on the lead's page; copying it here would create the divergent second copy the conventions warn about. When the lead is ready to transfer, the pages should be cut from that page and linked back, in one edit, by agreement — not by me lifting them.

---

CAM101 asks for three contrasting districts in depth, with the pumping district as the candidate opening and two areas of my own design. The three are the **[Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District)** (§3 below and its own page), **[The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector)**, and **[The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works)** — the two the lead's coverage table marks "Not designed".

They contrast on the thing that matters, which is **what the player's lever sets**:

| District | The lever sets | Where it applies | When you feel it |

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

| Pumping District | **Where** the Flood enters, and where an entered crowd walks | Here | Now, in front of you |

| The Collector | **How much** Flood another district gets | Elsewhere | On a later expedition, somewhere you are not |

| The Head-works | **How often** every district dispatches | Everywhere at once | Permanently, from the moment you set it |

Three levers, three different cells, one rule set. That is the contrast this campaign needs and it is not achievable by changing tilesets.

---

The lead's test is: *a district must have a written expedition whose choices could not occur in another district.* That is a good test and it is expensive — it needs a written expedition per district before it can be run, and three of the eight do not have one.

**My test is cheaper and can be run on a sketch: the lever ladder.** Every district's outward consequence occupies one cell of *(what it sets) × (where it applies) × (when it is felt)*. **A district whose lever shares a cell with another district's is a reskin, however different its ground looks.** This is the same instinct as the lead's, made checkable before the expedition is written — which is what the Expansion Brief's "avoid eight renamed pumping yards" actually needs.

| District | What its lever sets | Where | When felt | Verdict |

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

| Pumping District | Where the Flood enters; where an entered crowd walks | Here | Now | **Distinct** |

| Lock Flight | Where the *water* is — which makes roads and completes circuits | Here | Now | **Distinct** — it moves the medium, not the crowd |

| Tram Incline | Where the *light* is, continuously, on a rail | Here | Now, continuously | **Distinct** — the panel sets an entrance at a dispatch; the tram sets a lure that moves while you watch |

| Exchange | Which district is announced, forecast and routable at all | Elsewhere | Next visit there | **Distinct** |

| The Collector | How much Flood a district receives | Elsewhere | Next visit there | **Distinct from the Exchange** — one sets readability, the other quantity; a player can want a thin surge they cannot read, or a large one they can |

| Tidal Barrier | Whether a second, unannounced source exists at all | Here, permanently, and at the refuge | From the moment it is shut | **Distinct** |

| The Head-works | How often every district dispatches | Everywhere | Permanently | **Distinct** |

| The Refuge | — nothing; it is where other levers land | — | — | **Fails**: see §2.3 |

| Salt Pans (candidate) | — nothing new; one body of water is a topology variant of conduction | Here | Now | **Fails** — agrees with the lead's own decision to leave it a candidate, and gives the reason: it changes the *cost* of a known action, not the action |

Seven pass. That the ladder independently reproduces the lead's seven is the strongest thing I can say for the set, and I would rather report that than invent a disagreement.

The lead writes: *"the refuge as a played district is the least designed idea here and the one most likely to become a tower-defence mode by accident; it should be designed last and cut if it does."* I think the risk is structural, not a matter of care, and I would state it more strongly.

- **It has no lever.** Every other district is somewhere the player goes to *set* something that is felt elsewhere or later. The refuge is the one place where the consequences of all the other levers arrive. Making it a district asks the player to travel to the place they already are, to change the thing they already changed.

- **It inverts the objective, not the rule.** Six districts ask *what can I do with this machine*; the refuge asks *can I survive this*. That is a different game's question, and it is the question the survivorlike genre already answers everywhere else — which is exactly why it will drift toward a defence mode. The Expansion Brief's warning about "eight unrelated minigames" is aimed at this shape.

- **It costs the campaign its best pressure.** A dry dock is a hard stop: the one thing the player can always rely on ([Design Document §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#3-core-play)). Every route decision in the campaign is priced against that guarantee. A refuge that can be attacked removes the guarantee, and every district's dock-route pricing has to be redone.

**What I propose instead, which keeps what the lead wants from it.** The owner's word is *hold*, and a refuge that is only a menu cannot be held — that is right. But the holding should happen **through** the other districts, not at home: a district outcome that sends the Flood toward the refuge should change the refuge's *state* (its dock wet, its beacon drawing, its board dark), and the player's answer should be to go and change a lever somewhere else. That is the campaign the districts already support, and it makes the refuge the thing at stake rather than another arena. **If the owner wants an arena, it should be an explicit second mode with its own budget, not the eighth district.**

- **An eighth district earns its place the moment someone names a lever cell none of the seven occupies.** I could not find one; the two I looked hardest at were *when a district dispatches relative to the others* (that is the head-works' governor, one cell) and *what a surge is made of* (that is Combat's roster, not a place).

- **If the owner's "far too little" turns out to mean distinct places specifically** — the reading the lead's §10.1 asks for and PM has not yet had answered — then the cheapest honest growth is **wings**: a second dock and a new topology inside an existing district, reusing its assets and its lever cell. I would add a wing to the Lock Flight and to the Collector before I would add a place.

- **Corroboration, not the reason:** [REF107 fcf9d4](/Reference/Content%20Scale?revision=fcf9d4) records two shipped survivorlikes carrying five and six distinct environments with their variety inside each, as current rather than launch content, and proposes no count. I did not choose seven to match it and it is not evidence for any number. It is worth the owner seeing that a seven-district plan sits at the upper end of what comparable games carry, while this design's per-visit variety currently sits far below theirs — which is an argument for spending the next content budget on Combat's roster and Equipment's modules rather than on district eight.

---

The lead's §2 establishes the geography: one water system, from the head-works at the top to the tidal barrier at the mouth. What follows is the **order**, which is my domain, and it is not the same thing as the geography — the player does not walk down the hill.

**Why this order and not another.** The first four districts each hand the player one new thing to *set* — an entrance, water, a moving light, a network — in increasing distance from where they are standing, which is the campaign's whole shape: the player's reach grows from the room they are in to the city they are not in. Districts five and six are the two that act on quantity and on a clock, and they are interchangeable because neither depends on the other. Seven combines all of it.

- **One expedition, one district.** The colony's boat goes out and comes back. There is no travel between districts inside an expedition. This keeps the expedition the unit of pressure the whole design already uses, and makes *which district am I spending this trip on* the campaign's top-level decision.

- **Travel costs no salvage.** The no-mandatory-upkeep baseline holds ([Design Document §10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#10-progression-and-persistence), and the Expansion Brief's instruction to retain it). The cost of a trip is opportunity, not a toll.

- **The colony holds one dock dry per district reached** — the lead's rule ([DES104 §5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#5-the-colony-across-the-campaign)), adopted here unchanged. I considered proposing one dry dock city-wide, to make the choice bigger, and rejected it: it would make every unvisited district's dock wet ground, which turns the campaign's later half into a series of districts with no hard stop, and the pricing of every route in DES104 §3 assumes one.

---

**The optional discovery: the Holding Basin.** A sealed wing of the Collector, behind a gate the crews shut and gauged. Reachable only by holding the Collector's own water low enough to walk its inflow — which means giving up the outfall lever for that expedition. Inside: the intake gauge with a full log, and the crews' notes on why they sealed it. Nothing required depends on it. What it gives is certainty rather than capability: a player who finds it reaches the head-works knowing which of the two candidate answers on the [World page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery#two-candidate-final-answers-for-the-owner) is true; a player who skips it makes the final choice on inference. Both are complete campaigns, and they are not the same experience. That is what optional content is for in a mystery game, and it is why this one is a wing rather than an eighth district — it costs the Collector's assets and no new ones.

**The baseline stands: a rescue never costs banked salvage, notes, observed rules or colony state** ([Design Document §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#3-core-play) and §10). I am not proposing a loss spiral. What a campaign adds is that a failure can leave a *district* half-changed, and one of those costs a route rather than a resource.

**The case: the Collector's outfall, left shut.** Shutting it is what withholds another district's next first surge (the empty flash). While it is shut, this basin has nowhere to drain.

- **Player action.** Shut the outfall on the lower gantry, then extract.

- **On failure.** If the expedition ends in rescue with the outfall shut, the state persists — the same rule that makes every district outcome meaningful. On the next visit the Collector starts one level higher: the lower gantry is under water, so the short crossing between the second and third basins is gone, and the outfall is reachable only the long way round the upper walkway.

- **Visible in advance.** The outfall's indicator and the starting level are both on the refuge's board before launch, so the player launches knowing which Collector they are getting.

- **Recovery, and its cost.** The outfall can always be opened from the upper walkway, which is above every level the basin reaches. It costs the long crossing and, for that visit, the delay lever: you cannot both withhold another district's surge and have your short route back.

- **Why this is the right shape.** Failure makes the world less convenient for one visit, is fully recoverable by an action the player already knows, and is caused by their own successful lever rather than by a penalty bolted onto dying. It never makes the campaign longer, and it never makes the player poorer.

---

**The head-works can be reached two ways.** The lead's colony section unlocks the boat's range from the Tidal Barrier's dry dock, which is the reservoir approach from the water. I propose a second, and it is the reason the Collector is worth mastering rather than visiting.

- **The boat route (the lead's).** Requires the Barrier's dry dock, which requires shutting the barrier gates. Arrives at the reservoir from below, at the weir. The approach is a conduction problem: the reservoir's own water is the first thing the player meets, and everything they learned about joined bodies applies.

- **The race route (mine).** Up the head race from the Collector. Requires the Collector's water held low — outfall open, gates set to drain — so the race channel above the third basin is walkable rather than submerged. Arrives at the head-works from the side, in the governor gallery. The approach is a *timing* problem: the race is walkable only between dispatches, because each one raises the level behind it.

**What this buys.** A player who bounced off the Barrier is not locked out of the finale, and vice versa; the redundancy WLD103 rule 5 asks of clues becomes structural as well; and the optional content in §5 has an obvious thing to be — going back and arriving the other way, which shows the player the half of the head-works they did not see. **The two routes also matter to the ending**: the boat route arrives with the Barrier shut, which starves the Collector; the race route arrives with the Collector open and running. The head-works' governor reads differently in the two states, which is detailed on [its page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works).

**A second, smaller alternative:** districts five and six are order-free. A player who takes the Collector first learns how much Flood there is before they learn there is a second source; one who takes the Barrier first learns the reverse. Both reach the head-works.

---

**No availability of any free asset is claimed anywhere on this page, and nothing here authorises creating one** ([Brief D009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief); no AI-generated art of any kind, including concepts and placeholders). The lead's §7 covers the campaign-wide burden; this adds only the two districts written here.

- **The Collector.** Reuses: water planes and wet/dry tinting, gates and valves, cable, lamps, beacons, panels, walkway and gantry props, boards, signs, the humanoid mass. **Gaps:** turning wheels with readable meters; a stepped-basin drainage set; and the *held mass* — a crowd standing still in water in numbers larger than a surge, which is a crowd-rendering question as much as an art one.

- **The Head-works.** Reuses: races, weirs, drums, cable, boards, gallery and walkway props. **Gaps:** a large reservoir and dam exterior, the campaign's biggest single art ask; and the governor as an oversized multi-position panel. **And one conditional gap the owner should see attached to a decision they are being asked to make:** if the World designer's Answer B (the keepers) is chosen, the head-works needs one human presence, which is an asset category this design has otherwise avoided entirely. The lead recommends Answer A; that recommendation is also an asset decision and it should be said out loud when it is put to the owner.

---

- **The refuge is not a district (§2.3).** The lead's own risk note is right and I think the risk is structural. My recommendation to PM and the owner is seven, with the refuge as the thing at stake rather than an arena.

- **The Salt Pans should be closed rather than left a candidate**, with the reason in §2.2: they change the cost of a known action, not the action. Leaving a candidate open with no lever cell to fill invites it back later on grounds of variety.

- Whether the Collector's held mass is legible at survivorlike crowd density is a runtime question and no design page can answer it. The Collector page states a cheaper fallback.

- Whether a campaign whose first district ends in a persistent choice makes the later districts' outcomes feel smaller. I think not — the head-works is the same choice at scale, which is the point — but it is a real risk and I have not resolved it.

- The duration bounds in §5 are wide because the expeditions-per-tier assumption is unvalidated, and it is the single number most worth checking first if a play phase is ever authorised.

---

**Task:** CAM101 ([Tasks eb8c03](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=eb8c03), listed *Blocked — role not yet created*; the role is staffed by this submission). **Artifacts:** this page r1; [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) r1; [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) r1; a campaign-role section added to [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) preserving PM's seed. **Status: In review.** I do not mark my own task accepted.

**Delivered against the assignment.** An eight-district campaign evaluated with a purpose stated for every district and an independent test (§2); a recommended count of seven with reasons and the eighth's cut argued rather than asserted (§2.3); three contrasting districts in depth, the pumping district as the candidate opening and two areas of my own with genuinely different decisions (§1 and the three pages); entry and revisit conditions, machinery problem, enemy and build pressure, discovery, outward consequence and asset reuse or gap for the districts I own, and the lever-cell audit for all of them (§2.2 and the pages); a progression map with a main route, an optional discovery and a later discovery that changes an earlier return (§4); a bottom-up duration hypothesis separating required, optional and repeated content, with its method and its sensitivity (§5); one consequence of failure (§6); one alternative route through the plan (§7); asset reuse and gaps (§8); explicit dependencies (§9).

**Not delivered, deliberately.** Pages for the Lock Flight, the Tram Incline and the Exchange: their content is current and authored on the lead's page, and duplicating it would create a divergent second copy. Any enemy, item or colony design, which belongs to the roles those pages name. Any claim about fun, balance, performance, feasibility or asset availability, none of which a design page can establish.