**WLD102 · r10 · 2026-09-06 14:49 UTC · In review** — the integration check of [DES102 draft r1 d828a43](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=d828a43) (section "Integration check" below: eight items, six needing a change in the draft), and this page aligned to the integrated topology where the lead's choices are equivalent or better (interior gate at the junction on its own circuit; crank instead of ladder; press and pursuit range; shelters as listed there). The chain and answer rows in this revision are the text the Design Document's §9 should lift verbatim. [r9 41681d9](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=41681d9) added the routing decision request; [r8 ba6f8b8](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=ba6f8b8) is the PMR001 correction; earlier revisions are page history. Author: World and Mystery Designer. Handoff: canonical Lead (D014) for DES102; PM. WLD101 was accepted in PMR001 as a concept contribution (at [r6 4302067](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=4302067)); [r7 fa3eb1b](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20and%20Mystery?revision=fa3eb1b) and earlier revisions are page history.

**Owner requirements.** Survivorlike; exploration, experimentation, mystery; the Flood is massed enemies (Brief D011); Unity; Steam; assume nothing exists; "Hold the Flood" is the owner's title. Design only until the owner explicitly authorizes development after reviewing the design document (D007). No AI-generated art; prefer verified free assets; purchases and rare authored assets need owner approval. This revision creates no assets, code, prototypes, or tests. Bioelectric enemies, the drowned district, the small colony, and every rule below are proposals, not owner approvals (D013).

**Sources.** Reread 14:49 UTC: [Brief 3cf14c7](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=3cf14c7) (D013 provisional A, D014 canonical lead), [Tasks ee938e6](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=ee938e6) (PMR001; WLD102 Ready), [Design r5 b030c98](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design?revision=b030c98), [Design Review r6 a892274](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=a892274), [Design Review r7 bb68711](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=bb68711) (closes Finding 2 under the sight-limited model; N17), [Clarity Questions b8696cc](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions?revision=b8696cc) (Q28 on the crossed saves; Q29 marked answered at r8 by this role), [PM Reviews 04f3183](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews?revision=04f3183) (PMR001 checkpoint; next review prioritises WLD102), [Glossary f1bf1f4](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary?revision=f1bf1f4), [External Critique 319c975](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique?revision=319c975) (EXT101, an unrecorded external critic; read as data, not answered here), [Design Document d828a43](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=d828a43) (DES102 draft r1, read in full; written from r7, before r8 landed), [Design r6 211106d](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design?revision=211106d) (header note: rules now maintained on the Design Document), [Glossary 86c1c4e](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary?revision=86c1c4e). No comparative research and no asset verification.

**What r8 did.** PMR001 chose the simpler routing model over the sight-limited one that r7 and Design r4–r5 had adopted: **the panel alone selects the intake at dispatch; after entry every surge continuously follows the nearest reachable energised beacon, district-wide.** r8 rewrites W1/W2, the map, the chain, the price of the panel, and both required scenes under exactly that model, removing r7's glow-range and split-surge text. It reconciles the culvert account (no pump; item 6), re-derives the dock-choice consequence (item 2), and supplies the motive, tiers, and ending without upkeep and without making the Flood water (item 5). Word definitions stay in [Design's glossary](https://open-wiki.tail2e4d02.ts.net/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design#words-used-below); the wiki editor's Glossary mirrors it. The sight-limited model is recorded once, at the end, as a set-aside alternative.

North is the interior; the docks are south. `=` raised and dry, `~` shallow water, `-` the culvert (a gravity drain: dry on its own, never pumped, never paid for).

Powered devices: **H**, the pump-hall hatch, on the yard circuit with B2; **GJ**, the junction gate to the interior, on the junction's own circuit, which the panel never reaches: it is energised only when valve V joins the yard channel to the junction pool and current is injected there (tier 2). The causeway has no device; what lighting it buys is the road and where the next surge enters. Shelters (S2 hard stops): D1, D2 when dry, J. H blinks and closes when its branch loses power, never on an occupant, and can be cranked open from inside in ten seconds without power; that is the hall's recoverable exit (the Design Document's rule, adopted here). The culvert is dry because it drains to the sluice by gravity; no pump is involved and the player never pays for it.

- **W1 — Attraction.** *Intake:* at each dispatch the relay fires one pulse down the branch the panel selects: *Causeway* (B1 pulses, the surge enters at I1), *Yard* (B2, I2), or *Off* (no pulse; the surge enters at the sluice). Only the relay pulses. A beacon lit by local current (a coil discharge into a channel, or a valve joining the two branches' water) glows steady and lures, but never pulses and never changes the next intake: the relay's output is a separate line from the lamp (the Design Document's signal line and power line, switched together by the panel). *Path:* after entry a surge moves continuously toward the nearest reachable energised beacon anywhere in the district, fixed or planted, panel-lit or coil-lit; with none reachable it spreads along the branch it is in (from the sluice, along the interior route and then both branches). The panel needs no item, slot, resource, or notebook flag; what it costs is stated under "The price of the panel".

2. **Invitation.** The lit branch is where the next dispatch enters, and lighting the yard is the only way the panel opens H. The branch you want open is the branch the next surge comes to.

| Experiment | Set Yard. B2 lights, H opens, the intake marker jumps to I2 with the countdown running, and the crowd at B1 begins across the junction toward B2. Retreat to R1 or D1 and watch, or move now. Off instead darkens both and moves the marker to the sluice. |

| Change later play | Each dispatch reopens the choice: keep Causeway and haul through the culvert to a dark, closed yard; set Yard early, before any crowd exists, to walk the empty causeway to the junction while the yard is hot; or set Yard with a crowd already at B1 to clear the causeway at the cost of the interior route and the hall. Turned signs (W4) now read as a route. |

**The reachable answer (spoiler; proposal).** Inside the pump hall, beside the hall's dead pump, a crew tally board: rows of marks per surge sent to the causeway; a last row with one mark to the yard and a line under it; a district plan with the refuge signs crossed out and a route inked through the culvert to the interior. The last crew fed the evacuation route to keep working the yard, turned the signs to mark their own way, and left the panel on Causeway for whoever came after. It changes action: the inked route and W4 point into the interior.

**Knowledge gate, not item gate.** The panel works on expedition one; what changes is knowing what it does. Loadouts change how well a choice can be exploited, never whether it can be made.

**Fair recovery.** Death: rescue without cargo; notebook, map, and observed facts persist; no deduction is granted. Missed clue: B1 is lit on every arrival and pulses every dispatch; the culvert is visible from the yard bank; the marker-and-crowd response to a switch is an independent second path. Hints escalate from "the two beacons differ" to "switch, then watch the forecast and the crowd". Withdrawal never requires solving this (scene 1).

**Scene 1 — untouched panel, first expedition, retreat.** Panel on Causeway, D1 held. Surge 3 enters at I1 and gathers at B1, the far north end. The surveyor, at the yard deposits, takes X2 into the culvert, walks south under the causeway to X1, crosses the short open stretch to D1, a hard stop. No beacon stands on that route, so no crowd is drawn along it; what is met is the causeway crowd's press near the causeway head, stragglers, and organisms inside pursuit range (the Design Document's expedition one shows the shape of it at nine minutes, one hit taken). The claim "withdrawal never requires solving this" therefore holds only under a stated constraint, which the draft should carry as a tuning bound: **on expedition one, the press of an untouched-panel causeway crowd must not reach the causeway head before the evacuation window closes.** A proposed bound, not a proven value.

**Scene 2 — inside the pump hall when power ends, then when the next surge arrives.** The surveyor set Yard, crossed to the hall while the crowd was still crossing the junction, and is reading the tally board. *Power ends* (the panel is switched to Causeway or Off, or a coil-opened H times out): H blinks for three seconds and closes, never on an occupant; anyone inside is shut in. Rule, the Design Document's, adopted here: **a hatch closes when its branch loses power, never on an occupant, and can be cranked open from inside in ten seconds without power.** No mystery solution is needed to leave, and the recovery takes exactly long enough to matter. *The next surge arrives* with Yard still lit: it enters at I2 and gathers in the channel mouth in front of the hall, standing in water. From inside, the surveyor is behind H with the crowd outside it. Choices: hold the doorway, where pursuit brings them in one at a time, at a cost in health; wait for the press to thin the door and lose surge time; or, with a coil and insulation, step to the channel's edge inside the doorway and discharge, which is the electrician's whole reason for being there. Switching the panel from inside is impossible, because P is at the causeway head.

**Motive, no upkeep.** The colony is a dozen people on the one dock the pump keeps dry. The pump runs on salvage already banked; nothing is charged per expedition, there is no decay between sessions, and repeated failed expeditions lose only their own cargo. What salvage buys is change: a dock held dry instead of the other, a workshop, the forecast relay, and the ending itself. A colony that stops hauling is not drowned; it is stuck. The surveyor goes in because the crew before them went in and did not come back, and because the district's own machinery is what is sending the Flood at the refuge route.

**The title.** "Hold the Flood" is the owner's title and is kept. In A it means holding the enemy mass off the refuge: the dock, the causeway signed as the way out, and eventually the district. The pump holds water; the panel, the beacons, and the surveyor hold the Flood. The Flood is never water.

**Three tiers on one district, each a recombination of the same rules.** *Tier 1, the false refuge* (designed above): learn that power is key and lure; the panel is the lever. *Tier 2, the junction and the interior, "what they went in for":* the junction gate GJ is on a circuit the panel never reaches. Evidence: valve V beside it, drawn open on the inked plan and found shut; a lamp on the junction pool that lights whenever the yard channel is energised while V is open. Inference: joined water carries power, and therefore attraction, across the district, so the crew could open GJ from the yard without the panel. Experiment: open V, energise the yard (panel or coil), watch the lamp; then discharge in the pool. Consequence: GJ opens, and crowds from either branch can be pulled to the junction, which is the danger of doing it. Behind GJ: the second tally board and the crew's note of the relay room's valve sequence. Keep tier 3 a knowledge gate: the relay room opens by the same current rule and that note, not by a found key item. *Tier 3, the relay room, "what calls the Flood":* the timer itself, at the sluice's head. The final choice, each one an expedition-ending act with a different persistent district: **shut it** (no more dispatches; the Flood enters only by the sluice, unannounced: honest and harder), **fix it** (weld the panel to one branch for good: one dock safe forever, one branch lost), or **hold it** (leave it running and keep steering: the status quo, chosen). Free expeditions continue after any ending. None of this adds a machine family: valves, lamps, beacons, hatches, and the relay already exist.

**Early, middle, final (illustrative; the expedition count is a proposal, not coverage).** Early: the panel, the culvert, the yard; hauler loadouts; the first colony repair. Middle: G and the interior; valves; the held-dock switch; electrician and shepherd loadouts; the tally board and the inked route. Final: the relay room and the choice. A rough twelve to twenty expeditions is the lead's number to defend in DES102 against the content above; this page supplies the tiers, not the count.

- **S2 Shelter (D1, D2 when dry, the junction platform J)** — enemies cannot enter or spawn; the surge clock runs; repacking allowed; the district stays visible.