Hold the Flood — World and Mystery
WLD101 · r5 · 2026-09-06 14:06 UTC · In review — supersedes r4 (e54d6a3), r3 (c92838c), r2 (438f1bf), r1 (01378d), all in page history. Author: World and Mystery Designer. Handoff: Lead (DES102), Independent Design Critic (DES102 review), PM. PM accepts.
Owner requirements. Survivorlike; exploration, experimentation, mystery; the Flood is massed enemies (Brief D011); Unity; Steam; assume nothing exists. Design only until the owner explicitly authorizes development after reviewing the design document. 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.
Sources. Reread 14:06 UTC: Hub, Brief a449b2, Tasks 254220, Design db8c5c3 (DES101 r2 plus integration notes 1–3; note 3 confirms the W1 split and adopts the r4 topology), Design Review 3fd6dfc (REV101 r4: concept-packet review complete, verdict "ready for OWN101"; N10 raised against W1's path clause; r3 698c13 and r2 47d51da retained). PM has not yet recorded a working direction (OWN101 open); no Design Document page exists. No comparative research and no asset verification. Setting, enemy identity, and every mechanic below remain proposals.
Revision history. r1: the false-refuge chain and W1–W3 in a setting-neutral relay district. r2: mapped onto DES101 A; withdrew r1's clock-freezing observation view for S1–S3. r3: answered the lead's integration note and REV101 r1 (W1 dispatch-instant, W4 turned signs, unlabelled panel with forecast marker, reachable answer, four-part cost of diversion). r4: answered REV101 r2 and integration note 2 (W1 split into intake and path; sluice as Off intake; second dock). r5: fixes REV101 N10, the one open item on this page: W1's path clause said pulsing, which is undefined between dispatches; it now says energised, evaluated continuously, and states what a surge does with no energised beacon reachable. r5 also places each branch's beacon at its far end from the docks and gives the three-line no-panel extraction trace the critic asked DES102 to show, because it tests this page's "withdrawal never requires solving this" claim. Everything else is r4 text.
World rules — proposal for DES102, aligned to the spine rule
DES101 r2 states one spine rule (conduction, power, attraction, charge). W1–W4 sit inside its attraction clause; the wording below is what this page asks DES102 to carry.
- W1 — Attraction (revised r4). An energised beacon is lit steady and pulses at each dispatch. Intake: a surge enters by the fixed beacon that pulses at the dispatch instant, which the panel alone decides (Causeway, Yard, or Off: no fixed beacon lit, so the surge uses the sluice, below). Path (revised r5, N10): after entry, a surge moves toward the nearest energised beacon it can reach, re-evaluated continuously, so a steady light is a standing lure and darkening it ends the pull; with no energised beacon reachable, a surge spreads along the branch it entered (the interior route, for the sluice). A planted beacon therefore changes where a surge goes, never where it enters. The panel needs no item, rack space, resource, or journal flag; what it costs is stated under Finding 2 below.
- W2 — Commitment. A dispatched surge keeps its intake until it arrives. Re-routing at the panel affects only surges not yet dispatched; it never teleports enemies or cancels a pursuit. The forecast shows each pending surge's intake as a map marker that moves the moment the panel changes; a dispatched surge shows a locked marker.
- W3 — Stable evidence. Wiring, signs, wear marks, and signal behaviour are identical on every expedition. Water states, pumps, enemies, loose salvage, and surge timing may vary or reset (DES101 r2 persistence list) and can change the best route, never the rule.
- W4 — Turned signs. Every refuge sign in the district that has been turned faces the way the last crew actually went. First seen in the culvert (facing the yard); confirmed by the reachable answer below; thereafter a navigation clue wherever the prop recurs. Same sign asset, rotated. Under W3 it never changes.
Topology (one statement; r4 adds the sluice and the second dock for N3 and N4). Two docks at the district's rim: the causeway dock, held dry by default, and the yard dock, flooded by default and unusable until the colony's pump holds it dry instead (DES101 r2's exclusive choice; while flooded it is wet ground and therefore conducts). Between them the raised dry causeway, signed as the evacuation route, beacon live by default; the culvert beneath it, dry without payment, with cart wear and a turned sign; the pump hall and salvage yard beside a shallow channel, beacon dark, hatch on the yard circuit. At the district's low end, where the two branches meet, the sluice: the Flood's own way in, no beacon, opening straight onto the interior route. Each branch's beacon stands at its far end from the docks: the causeway beacon at the causeway's interior end, the yard beacon at the pump hall. A surge enters beside its beacon and, while that beacon stays lit, holds there (W1 path), so the overrun "refuge" is the causeway's interior end and the dock end stays passable; re-routing the panel after entry is what drags a surge across the district toward the new light. Three intakes: Causeway, Yard, and the sluice when the panel is Off. Panel resets to Causeway; the first dispatch follows a short scouting interval the lead sets.
No-panel extraction trace (for DES102's written expedition; illustration, not a playtest). First expedition, panel untouched on Causeway, causeway dock held dry. Surge 3 enters at the causeway's interior end and holds at its lit beacon. The player at the yard takes the culvert back under the causeway to its dock-side exit, then the short open stretch to the dock, an S2 hard stop. Nothing on that route is on the surge's path unless the player lit something else. So "withdrawal never requires solving this" holds on paper by construction, not by timing; whether the open stretch is comfortable is empirical.
Off therefore has a place and a price: both branches stay quiet, both hatches stay shut, and the surge pours onto the interior route, which is where the reachable answer's inked route and W4's signs lead. A's "surges enter through different passages" is preserved without a fourth mechanism.
Illustrative design — DESIGNER SPOILERS: the false refuge
Proposed play, not a playtest. Light convention throughout: steady = powered, pulsing = dispatching, dark = unpowered.
| Step | Evidence, inference, consequence |
|---|---|
| Notice | From the dock: the causeway beacon is lit steady. At the first dispatch it pulses and the surge visibly turns onto the causeway. Visual first, sound supplements. Repeats every expedition (W3). |
| Compare | The yard beacon is dark and the pump-hall hatch is shut. In the culvert under the crowded causeway: cart wear leading toward the yard, and a refuge sign turned to face the yard. Each inspectable in three or four lines. |
| Understand | Cabling runs from the panel to both beacons and on to the yard hatch. The panel's three positions carry no words: each is a cable heading off toward its branch, plus a closed position. The forecast shows the next surge as a countdown and a marker at an intake. Switching moves the marker at once, so the rule can be learned two ways: watch a pulse and the surge's turn, or switch and watch the marker jump. After the first observed pulse-and-turn, the notebook records the observation in the player's own terms ("the surge came in by the pulsing beacon"). No label states the rule. |
| Infer | Power is both key and lure: the lit branch is where doors open and where the Flood is sent. The "refuge" sign marks where surges go, not where it is safe. Someone kept the culvert and the yard in use by leaving the panel on Causeway. |
| Experiment | Set Yard. The yard beacon goes steady, the hatch opens, the forecast marker moves to the yard intake with the countdown still running. Retreat to a shelter or stay; watch the dispatch. Off darkens both branches, shuts both hatches, and moves the marker to the sluice. |
| Discover | The next surge enters through the yard. The surge already on the causeway stays there (W2). The pump hall is open — and the surge is coming to it. Reaching the answer below costs exactly the exposure the critic asked for. |
| Change later play | Each of the three dispatches reopens the choice: keep Causeway and haul through the culvert to a quiet, closed yard; set Yard to open the hall and walk the causeway into the interior while the surge is elsewhere; set Off to keep both branches quiet and give up the interior; or invite the surge to the yard channel on purpose (the lead's electrician). Turned signs (W4) now read as a route. |
The reachable answer (spoiler; proposal). Inside the pump hall, on the wall beside the one pump still running (the one that keeps the culvert dry): 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 drawn under it; beside it a district plan with the refuge signs crossed out and a route inked through the culvert into the interior. Three or four inspectable lines carry it: the last crew fed the evacuation route to keep working the yard, turned the signs to mark their own way out, and left the panel on Causeway for whoever came after. Small, reachable, and it changes action: the inked route and W4 now point into the interior. What they went in for stays unanswered in the minimum scope; that is the spine of later mysteries, not a catalogue.
Knowledge gate vs item/stat gate. The panel is usable on expedition one; what changes is knowing what it does and when to use it. An uninformed player can still survive the causeway by skill; an informed player decides where the pressure goes and which doors open. Equipment changes how well a choice can be exploited, never whether it can be made.
Fair recovery. Death: rescue without cargo (A); notebook, map, and observed facts persist; no deduction is granted unearned. Missed clue: the causeway beacon is steady on every arrival and pulses every dispatch; the culvert is visible from the yard side too; the marker jump is a second, independent way in. Optional hints escalate from "the two beacons differ" to "switch, then watch the forecast marker". Late switch: the locked marker explains why nothing changed. Switching costs no resource, but it is never without consequence (below). Withdrawal never requires solving this.
Cost of diversion — answering REV101 Finding 2
The critic's question: does the beacon choose the entrance of an announced surge, or reroute groups that have arrived? Answer: the panel chooses the intake of the next announced surge, at the dispatch instant; nothing moves a surge that has arrived except a beacon it can path to (W1 path). A's surge schedule stays the pressure; the player steers where it lands. Under the spine rule the switch is free of resources but paid four ways, all readable before the switch: (1) the panel stands in the open, a dash from the nearest shelter, and switching with a countdown near zero means being on the branch you just lit; (2) energising a branch is the only way to open its hatches, so the branch you want to explore is the branch the next surge enters; (3) committed surges do not turn back, so a diversion made after dispatch buys nothing this surge; (4) a surge sent toward the held dock blocks extraction, and the forecast marker shows that before the switch. "Gather the yard first, then divert" still works once, for a closed yard: the hall's hatch, the salvage behind it, and the answer above all sit on the lit branch. Whether these costs are heavy enough is empirical; that they exist and are visible is the design claim.
Shelter and observation rules — S1 to S3 (adopted by DES101 r2)
- S1 Notebook — full pause; shows only what has been observed; no new evidence; experiments do not advance.
- S2 Raised shelter (both docks included when dry) — enemies cannot enter or spawn; the surge clock runs; repacking allowed; the district stays visible, so watching a dispatch from a shelter is the observation position and costs surge time.
- S3 Live evidence — new clues, panel switches, and their verification happen in the running world.
Spine rule × W1–W4 — items for DES102
Confirmation (r3, unchanged). Notice, Compare, and Understand survive with steady = powered, pulsing = dispatching, dark = unpowered as the only light convention; the yard hatch on the beacon circuit is accepted.
- Two pulsing beacons (REV101 N1; replaces r3 item 1). r3 proposed that a planted beacon overrides the panel's intake choice; the lead accepted it under constraints. r4 withdraws that in favour of the critic's split, now written into W1: the panel alone chooses the intake; a planted beacon changes only the path a surge takes after entry. Reasons: the forecast marker then always tells the truth, so the false-refuge chain's fairness does not depend on where a shepherd stands; Finding 2 stays closed, because no build can move the intake for free; and the shepherd gets a verb of its own, pulling an entered surge off a corridor, instead of a second copy of the panel. The lead's rack constraint from integration note 2 (a battery powers one module at a time) is independent of this and still useful for Finding 3.
- Portable beacon light. Steady while powered, pulsing only at a dispatch; accepted by the lead for DES102.
- Dispatch-instant evaluation, continuous path (N10). Intake is decided at the dispatch instant; path is re-evaluated continuously toward the nearest energised beacon (W1). Continuous was chosen over per-dispatch because a standing lure reads from the light convention itself (steady = lure) and gives the shepherd persistent, counterable behaviour (darken the beacon, the pull stops); a momentary bait would coincide with the panel's timing and be unreadable in a crowd. The lead's coil case (a dispatch pulse inside a discharge window fires the beacon) still depends on the dispatch-instant intake rule; the forecast countdown makes it fair.
- Off (REV101 N4). Placed: the sluice, above. Not a safe default; it trades both branches' quiet for the interior route.
- Persistence. Water states, pumps, charge, and which dock is flooded reset or persist as DES101 r2 lists; wiring, signs, wear, and W4's turned signs never change. No conflict with W3.
- N5 and N6, resolved in r3 before the critic's r2. r3 removed r2's "coil is an optional extension" wording (N5): the false-refuge chain never requires the coil (culvert dry without payment; panel needs no item), and it never called the spine optional. r3 also dropped this page's build triad in favour of the lead's electrician / hauler / shepherd (N6). N2 (what sheds charge) is the lead's.
Under B, The Listening Below. W1–W4 still hold with beacon = signal source and surge = a swarm released at a marked threshold; the sluice becomes the archive's own breach. PM's choice is not constrained by this page.
Expression, resources, colony — A terms, proposal
The lead's three sketches sit on the panel decision; this page adds nothing to the rack. Resources: the panel decides which branch is open and hot this expedition; three dispatches give three decisions. Colony: which dock the pump holds dry inverts which panel setting threatens extraction, so a colony choice changes the value of a known rule instead of adding one; the forecast relay repair shows the first intake before departure. Nothing here requires more colony than that.
Replay after the answer. The question closes; the decision does not. The same three dispatches, the same panel, and a different rack, cargo target, and held dock make the routing choice fresh each expedition. Diverting never creates extra enemies or rewards.
Content and asset burden
One district reused before and after discovery: two docks, causeway, culvert, yard, pump hall, sluice, one panel, two beacons, one hatch, a forecast overlay, a tally board and plan, and a handful of wear and sign props (the sign reused rotated for W4). Evidence types: a light state, a cable path, wear marks, a turned sign, an unlabelled three-position panel, a map marker. No compatible free asset set or terms are verified; plain-text inspection is the fallback for any prop that cannot be sourced. No custom asset creation is proposed; any would need owner approval first.
PM report
Task WLD101; artifact World and Mystery r5 (supersedes r4 e54d6a3). No canonical decisions changed. Changed proposals: W1 path clause now energised, continuous, with a no-beacon default (closes REV101 N10); beacon placement at each branch's far end; the no-panel extraction trace. Evidence: written analysis of Design db8c5c3 and Design Review 3fd6dfc against Brief a449b2; no player data. Risks, all unvalidated: the shepherd's standing lure may dominate corridor defence; Off as a trap for new players unless the forecast marker shows the sluice as clearly as the branches; the open stretch between culvert exit and dock is where the withdrawal claim will actually be felt. This page has no open items from REV101 r1–r4; this role posts nothing further until a DES102 draft exists or PM records a direction. Next handoff: lead carries W1–W4 (with N10 fixed here), S1–S3, and the r5 topology into DES102; critic reviews DES102; this role checks the integrated draft for contradictions when it exists. PM request: record the working direction (A, B, or premise change) and whether W1–W4 and S1–S3 are carried into DES102 as candidate rules. No acceptance or development authorization is assumed.