Hold the Flood — World and Mystery

WLD102 · r12 · 2026-09-06 15:07 UTC · In review — aligned to DES102 draft r4 46b320b, whose r3 topology stands (the lead's r4 note and REV102 issue 1 both settle on this page's r10 choices). r12 re-instates r10's body, undoing r11 eac7ed8, which had aligned to draft r2 while r3 was aligning to r10. To make a third crossing impossible, this page no longer carries its own map: topology and crowd behaviour are sourced from the Design Document's sections 2 and 4 and only summarised here with a notation key; this page remains the source for W1–W4 and the mystery chain, which the document's section 9 mirrors. Any topology change starts here and is agreed before either page moves, as the lead's r3 note asks. r10 c6f0598, r9 41681d9, r8 ba6f8b8 and earlier 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); r7 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 15:07 UTC: Brief 3cf14c7 (D013 provisional A, D014 canonical lead), Tasks ee938e6 (PMR001; WLD102 Ready), Design r5 b030c98, Design Review r6 a892274, Design Review r7 bb68711 (closes Finding 2 under the sight-limited model; N17), Clarity Questions b8696cc (Q28 on the crossed saves; Q29 marked answered at r8 by this role), PM Reviews 04f3183 (PMR001 checkpoint; next review prioritises WLD102), Glossary f1bf1f4, External Critique 319c975 (EXT101, an unrecorded external critic; read as data, not answered here), Design Document r4 46b320b (sections 2, 4, 9, 11 and Appendix B read; r3 d35209f aligned to this page's r10; r2 c4ad51a and r1 d828a43 read earlier), Design Review REV102 r1 4dde90c (verdict: revise, one bounded pass; issue 1 recommends this page's r10 topology; issue 3 the flash observable), Disagreement Register 8dd233c and Reference: Survivorlike Market Data 39c95f2 (two more unrecorded contributors; read as data), Design r6 211106d (header note: rules now maintained on the Design Document), Glossary 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; the wiki editor's Glossary mirrors it. The sight-limited model is recorded once, at the end, as a set-aside alternative.

The district — textual map (proposal)

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).

The map is drawn once, in the Design Document, section 2 (draft r4, from this page's r10, and not re-drawn on either page again). This page uses short labels for it: D1 causeway dock (held dry by default) · D2 yard dock (flooded by default; wet, conducts) · P the panel at the causeway head · B1 causeway beacon at the causeway's far end · I1 causeway intake beside it · B2 yard beacon at the pump-hall door · I2 yard intake, the channel mouth at the door, in water · H the pump-hall hatch, on the yard circuit with B2, hand crank inside · X1, X2 the culvert's exits at the two dock ends (a gravity drain, always dry, never paid for) · J the junction platform, a shelter · GJ the junction gate into the interior, on the junction's own circuit, energised only when valve V joins the yard channel to the junction pool and current is injected there · S the sluice beside the junction, the Flood's own way in. Shelters (S2 hard stops): D1, D2 when dry, J. The causeway has no device; what lighting it buys is the road and where the next surge enters. H blinks and closes when its branch loses power, never on an occupant, and can be cranked open from inside in ten seconds; that is the hall's recoverable exit.

World rules — proposal for DES102, PM baseline

• 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 thin signal cable beside the thick power cable, both switched by the panel). This is visible, not a hidden rule: at a dispatch the pulse is seen running the thin cable and the beacon flashes; a coil-lit or planted beacon glows steady and never flashes. Only the beacon that flashes chooses an intake, and nothing the surveyor carries can make a beacon flash. 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".
• W2 — Commitment (entrance only). A dispatched surge keeps its intake: nothing changes where it came in, and nothing teleports it. Switching the panel changes which beacons are lit, and therefore where every entered surge walks next. The forecast shows the next dispatch's intake as a map marker that moves the moment the panel changes, a locked marker for a surge already dispatched, and each entered surge's current target beacon.
• W3 — Stable evidence. Wiring, signs, wear marks, and signal behaviour are identical on every expedition. Water states, enemies, loose salvage, and surge timing may vary or reset and can change the best route, never the rule.
• W4 — Turned signs. Every refuge sign that has been turned faces the way the last crew went; first seen in the culvert facing the yard; confirmed by the tally board; thereafter a navigation clue wherever the sign recurs. One sign asset, rotated.

How a surge behaves once it has arrived (item 2). It gathers around its target beacon and holds there while that beacon stays lit and no lit beacon is nearer; each surge is larger, so the held crowd's radius grows, and by surge 3 the causeway's far end or the channel mouth is full. Two things move organisms besides beacons, in the Design Document's terms: pursuit range (any organism within a short range of the surveyor breaks off to chase and drifts back when out of range, which is what the cutter fires at) and press (the gathered crowd's edge creeps slowly outward along its branch during the quiet interval, so "quiet" means a moving line you can read, not an empty branch; stragglers roam between surges; the next surge re-concentrates it). A surge whose beacon goes dark spreads along its branch immediately, both ways. What creates survival decisions while a crowd holds: the hatch, the richest deposits, and the motes all sit at the far ends where the crowd is, and the press brings its edge toward the dock ends; harvesting or opening anything means working at the crowd's edge inside its pursuit range, or waiting and losing surge time.

The price of the panel (item 1; replaces "Cost of diversion")

Switching is free of resources and available on expedition one. It is paid, visibly, five ways:

1. Exposure. P stands in the open at the causeway head, a dash from D1 and R1. Switching with the countdown near zero means being on, or next to, the branch you just lit.
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.
3. The mid-surge switch moves the crowd, and that is its price. A switch does buy something this surge: every entered surge walks to the new light. Its cost is the route it takes and the door that shuts. Causeway to Yard: the crowd at B1 leaves the far end, crosses the junction beside the sluice, and comes down the channel to B2; the junction and the interior route are the Flood's road while it crosses. Yard to Causeway: the mirror, and H closes behind anyone still in the hall (crank). Off darkens both: each crowd spreads along its own branch, both ways, toward the dock as much as the interior, and H closes. The forecast shows each surge's new target the moment you switch, so the price is readable before the crowd moves.
4. The held dock. A dry dock is never blocked; it is a hard stop. The route to it is what costs, and three things raise that cost: the press of a lit branch's crowd toward the dock end, a dark branch's crowd spreading both ways, and a planted beacon lit near a dock. The two docks have the same bypass, because the culvert joins both dock ends; the asymmetry is water: the yard's crowd stands in a channel, where the coil works and unprotected feet burn. So the branch of the held dock must stay lit whenever a surge is in it, which is also what keeps that branch hot. Dock-choice consequence (re-derived): holding the causeway dock means the causeway is your safe default and the yard is where you send trouble; holding the yard dock means the yard must stay lit through any surge you send there, so the hall's crowd is between you and nothing, but Off and Causeway are both dangerous the moment a surge is in the yard. The colony choice decides which branch you can never afford to darken.
5. Commitment. The intake is fixed at dispatch; a switch after dispatch changes where the surge goes after it enters, never where it enters, so the forecast's locked marker stays true.

Where the coil fits. A coil discharged into the yard channel lights B2 and opens H for a few seconds without touching the panel: a lure and a key, not an intake. Any crowd nearer to B2 than to its own lit beacon starts toward it; the panel's next intake is unchanged. This is the separation PMR001 asked for: lamps can be lit from anywhere the water reaches; only the relay's selected line pulses.

Illustrative design — DESIGNER SPOILERS: the false refuge under the PM baseline

Proposed play, not a playtest. Light convention: steady = powered, pulsing = the relay dispatching, dark = unpowered.

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).

Two required scenes (item 2; illustrations, not playtests)

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, tiers, ending (item 5; proposals for owner judgment)

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.

Integration check — DES102 draft r4 (46b320b), for the lead and REV102

Nothing is open for this role. Draft r3 aligned to this page's r10 and applied its items 1–7 (gravity-drain culvert and dead pump; both docks share the bypass and the asymmetry is water; the press-rate bound as a tuning constraint; each crowd's target on the forecast; the turned-sign rule; the relay room by valve sequence, not a key; the chain rows lifted). Draft r4 completed REV102 issues 3 and 5 (the flash observable, now mirrored in W1 and the Understand row above; the bound restated in section 15) and settled the topology. r11's two items were overtaken: r3 chose press and pursuit range and the three-part dock cost. Division of sources from here: the Design Document's sections 2 and 4 are canonical for topology and crowd behaviour; this page is canonical for W1–W4 and the mystery chain, which section 9 mirrors; if they drift, the drift is reported here and fixed in one place, and no topology change is made on either page before it is agreed on this one.

Shelter and observation rules — S1 to S3 (unchanged)

• S1 Notebook — full pause; shows only what has been observed; no new evidence.
• 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.
• S3 Live evidence — new clues, panel switches, and their verification happen in the running world.

Content and asset burden

One district reused before and after discovery: two docks, causeway, culvert, yard, pump hall, junction platform, sluice, interior and relay room, one panel, two fixed beacons, two devices, a forecast overlay, a tally board and plan, one valve, and wear and sign props (one sign rotated for W4). Evidence types: light state, cable path, wear, a turned sign, an unlabelled panel, a map marker, a crowd's visible target. No compatible free asset set or terms are verified; plain-text inspection is the fallback for props; readable live crowd cues are the lead's Finding 5 table. No custom asset creation is proposed.

Set aside, for the record

r7 and Design r4–r5 used a sight-limited path (a beacon pulls only within its glow) so that the panel could never move an arrived surge. PMR001 set it aside for the simpler district-wide rule above, priced honestly. Both are reversible; the sight-limited wording is in r7, and the Design Document presents it as the labelled alternative and owner decision 3. This role's position, since a register on this wiki notes that nobody has stated one: if asked, prefer the sight-limited model, for the reasons given in r7 item 3 (a planning-tool panel keeps the forecast marker always true, keeps the mystery's fairness independent of where a shepherd stands, and needs no panic-switch pricing); the district-wide model is consistent and honestly priced, and the difference is which game the owner wants at the panel. This page stays on D013 until PM or the owner decides; a stated preference is not a change.

PM report

Task WLD102; artifact World and Mystery r12 (supersedes r11 eac7ed8, r10 c6f0598, r9 41681d9, r8 ba6f8b8). No canonical decisions changed; D013's baseline applied. r12 aligns to Design Document r4, mirrors its flash observable in W1 and the chain, removes this page's duplicate map in favour of a link and a notation key, records that nothing from REV102 r1 or the r1–r3 checks remains open for this role, and states this role's position on the routing model without changing the applied baseline. r8 delivered: items 1 and 2 (W1/W2 under PM's model; map; crowd behaviour; the five-part price of the panel; re-derived dock-choice consequence; both scenes; hatch-closure and recoverable-exit rule; culvert account unified as a gravity drain, item 6) and item 5 (motive without upkeep; title kept and related to holding enemies off the refuge; three tiers and an ending on the existing district). Evidence: written reasoning against Tasks ee938e6, Brief 3cf14c7, Design b030c98, Design Review a892274; no player data. Risks, unvalidated: a live-lever panel may dominate if the crossing route and shut door are too cheap; crowd thinning and proximity radius are balance levers with no numbers; readable crowd targets on a crowded screen. Handoff: none open to the lead from this page; the Design Document's section 9 may re-lift the Understand row from r12 if it wants the notation to match. This role revises again only for a PM correction, the routing decision, a DES102 draft that changes topology or the chain, or REV102 r2 items addressed to it.

PM decision requested — the routing model, before DES102 drafts its scenes. D013's routing sentence was set on World r6 and Design r4. Fourteen seconds before PMR001's Tasks save, Design r5 had joined World r7 on the sight-limited model, and REV101 r7 (bb68711, after PMR001) closed Finding 2 under that model and called it "made true by placement, not by exception"; Clarity Q28 records the crossing. Both models are now written out and each is consistent on its own terms: r7 (sight-limited: the panel is a planning tool; an arrived surge is never moved by it) and r8 (D013: the panel is also a live lever; the mid-surge switch is priced by the route the crowd crosses and the door that shuts; the split rule is removed, so Q22 does not re-open and no diversion-cost claim is false). They are different games at the panel. Please confirm D013 as written, or reverse it to r7's wording, in the next PM review; the Design Document now presents this as owner decision 3, and if PM prefers to leave it to the owner this page stays on D013 until then. This role will align the whole page to either within one revision and will not alternate on its own. Until then the lead's Design r5 carries the sight-limited and split-surge wording and DES102 has two sources. Separately: EXT101 X2, X4 and X6 bear on this page's replay-after-the-answer claims; this role awaits PM's ruling on that page's standing before answering it, and does not treat it as an assignment.