STANDING ORDER: Mr Smith is a Cthulhu Mythos messenger, not Vesh

Tim's ruling. He comes from Outside and speaks for the powers that sleep
there, which the department has no heading for; the census in the Registry
is a Vesh working for him. The open question is marked decided.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md

@@ -193,9 +193,14 @@ days. Nobody has seen a delivery. The pipe is four inches wide.
 1974 by order, against flash blindness, and the seal lifts only on Centre's authority.
 Centre's renewals carry radiation readings. They have never once been good enough.
 
-**The experiment.** Mr Smith is a messenger — a clerk of the far side's higher orders, the
-things the department files under *Vesh*. He is not one of them and he does not command
-them; he carries their correspondence, and this is his proposal to them. **A population
+**The experiment.** Mr Smith is a **Cthulhu Mythos messenger** — not a god, and not
+anything on the department's far side. The Vesh and the Cadence are the far side's
+clerks and machinery, and the department has a heading for each. **It has no heading for
+him.** He comes from Outside, he speaks for the powers that sleep and wait there, and he
+carries their correspondence the way a courier carries a sealed bag: faithfully, and with
+opinions about the contents. This is his proposal to them. The census counting in the
+Registry is a Vesh, and Vesh count for whoever sets them to it; **this one is working for
+him.** **A population
 that obeys paper perfectly can be filed into anything.** So he has written to them for
 fifty-two years, and every renewal has moved them one word:
 
@@ -897,7 +902,8 @@ grey coat came in 2022; she cannot describe him and it frightens her more than t
 ### Never met
 
 **Mr Smith, for Centre** — a grey coat, the right paper, a pleasant manner, and a face nobody
-can picture. A messenger for the far side's higher orders, not one of them. **He has no
+can picture. A Cthulhu Mythos messenger from Outside — a go-between for the powers that
+sleep there, not one of them, and not of the far side the department knows. **He has no
 sheet, no portrait, and no scene.** He is the thread from Mercy Draw and he outlasts this
 case.
 
@@ -983,9 +989,9 @@ much harder.
 
 ## Open questions for Tim
 
-- **Mr Smith's register.** He is written here as a messenger for the Vesh. If the campaign
-  wants him to answer to something else, the only text that names it is the Plot Summary and
-  the roster.
+- ✅ **Mr Smith's register — decided 16 September 2026.** He is a Cthulhu Mythos messenger,
+  not Vesh. The powers he serves are deliberately never named in this case; if the campaign
+  names them, the only text to change is the Plot Summary and the roster.
 - **The dream persisting.** The best ending still leaves the born-below dreaming unless the
   Annex correction reaches row two. That is deliberate — the thread — but it may read as a
   punishment.