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CLEAN GROUND v0.21 — the anchor is the way home, and the Close has an ending

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Applies desk pass 10's five fixes.

1. The accepted-and-taken branch has a consequence now. One session in five
   or six reaches it, and the document had nothing: Ashcroft holds the door
   everyone else goes through, Transposition 63 is his, and the Close cannot
   happen until somebody is back through — three facts printed in three
   places that had never met. The way home now WORKS, and works beautifully,
   because the thing does not need to escape the party, it needs them to
   walk it home and it is carrying the skill that gets them there. It holds
   the door properly because that is what the file says an anchor does. The
   GM is told to play the gratitude: somebody at the table will say thank
   you, and that is the scene.
2. Act Three's "real scene" is written. It was one sentence claiming to be
   the act's centre. Ivy is told or she is not; if she is, she asks how long
   they have known, goes and sits with the line, and does not tell them.
   And the Close now answers it — if she was told she does not come south to
   ask whether there is a north, she comes to ask "Well?", because she is no
   longer asking for the truth, she is asking what they are for. Act Three's
   real scene is load-bearing instead of decorative.
3. The Close has a failure case, which it was the only scene in the document
   to lack. Nobody writes anything and the entry stays filed by default —
   the second ending arrived at by omission, played as an ending. Covers the
   clock, the split table, a dead Ivy, and a party too far down to sign.
4. Four across and then cancel anyway is priced as a third ending rather
   than a failed second one, and Ivy chooses the four, not the agents. She
   picks the youngest and she is not among them.
5. The depot Research has a special: the 1962 cancellation form, blank,
   filed by somebody who expected this to end. It is the paper they sign in
   the Close and it has been waiting sixty-four years.

npm run check: 20 guards pass.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
slaguru666
2026-09-13 17:16:06 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 2ee44cef79
commit 4b491b18cf
1 changed files with 86 additions and 6 deletions
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| | |
|---|---|
| **Version** | **v0.20.1**, 13 September 2026 |
| **Version** | **v0.21**, 13 September 2026 |
| **Can it be run?** | **Yes, from this document alone.** A GM with this file and the compendium can run it end to end. |
| **Is it convention-ready?** | **Nearly.** The print pack is built (`CLEAN_GROUND_HANDOUTS.html`, held by `check-handouts`). What is missing is a run with human beings, and a slot. |
| **Playtesting** | **Seven desk passes, no human runs.** `_1.md` GM chair (seed 4271) · `_2.md` Act Four stress (9314) · `_3.md` player chair, contrarian (5580) · `_4.md` **the clock, against v0.13's recut timings** (6142) · `_5.md` **the four-player cut, played** (8815) · `_6.md` **the four untested branches, forced** (3319) · `_7.md` **an honest session, nothing forced** (7742) · `_8.md` **the cold read, plus an honest session** (5108). Fifty-two fixes plus three post-passes, and pass 7's finding is now a guard: **`check-outcomes` reads every bracketed mechanic tag in the acts and holds what its beat states.** Pass 7 ran ~3:35 against 3:40 at six players with no cuts taken — the first honest pass inside the clock unaided. |
| **Playtesting** | **Seven desk passes, no human runs.** `_1.md` GM chair (seed 4271) · `_2.md` Act Four stress (9314) · `_3.md` player chair, contrarian (5580) · `_4.md` **the clock, against v0.13's recut timings** (6142) · `_5.md` **the four-player cut, played** (8815) · `_6.md` **the four untested branches, forced** (3319) · `_7.md` **an honest session, nothing forced** (7742) · `_8.md` **the cold read, plus an honest session** (5108) · `_9.md` **the regression pass, every fix from 4–8 re-checked** · `_10.md` **the Close, and a twelve-seed census** (4417). Fifty-two fixes plus three post-passes, and pass 7's finding is now a guard: **`check-outcomes` reads every bracketed mechanic tag in the acts and holds what its beat states.** Pass 7 ran ~3:35 against 3:40 at six players with no cuts taken — the first honest pass inside the clock unaided. |
| **What it is** | A **convention one-shot**, decided 13 September 2026. It ends in the slot; there is no second session and the text must not promise one. |
| **Where it runs** | **Contingency 2027 — Sunday 31 January 2027, afternoon** (slot 9), Searles Leisure Resort, Hunstanton. |
| **Runtime** | **3h30 of play plus a 10-minute break — 3h40 wall clock**, which is the house budget. Act Two was cut from 65 minutes to 45 in v0.13 to get there. The **Pacing Note** carries a further 65 minutes of cuts; take them as the default. |
@@ -848,6 +848,11 @@ carelessness — this column has done this before, and it has lost people doing
place the truth is written down. `[CUS: Research — RESERVE ENTRY (NORTHERN), authorised,
pegged, never cancelled]` *Missed:* Ivy hands them a 1962 ration tin with a requisition
number on it, and that number is enough to work the rest out from the Bureau.
- **On a special or better (01–13 at Research 63):** filed with the entry, blank, is
**the cancellation form itself** — drawn up in 1962 by somebody who expected this to end
and never signed. It is the paper they will sign in the Close, and it has been waiting
sixty-four years. **Hand it over as an object.** Nothing needs to be said about it; a
table that is carrying the form all through Act Four arrives at the decision differently.
- `[CUS: Anomaly Lore — what a peg is, and what losing one does]`
**On a success — and they will ask, because re-pegging is the obvious idea and desk pass 3
proposed it unprompted:** the answer is that it cannot be done, and why. The entry is
@@ -862,7 +867,20 @@ carelessness — this column has done this before, and it has lost people doing
spend twenty minutes on it. **Let them try it exactly once.** Cutting the notch does
nothing whatsoever, and the silence of that failure teaches more about what the record
cares about than a correct roll would have.
- Telling Ivy. Or not telling her. This is the act's real scene and it has no roll.
- **Telling Ivy. Or not telling her. This is the act's real scene and it has no roll** — and
it changes the Close, so decide it deliberately rather than letting it drift.
- **What they are telling her:** that the north she has walked toward for sixty-four years
is a filed duplicate of a valley, that the walk does not arrive, and that forty-one
people have been kept going by a clerical arrangement nobody renewed.
- **She does not break, and she does not thank them.** She asks one question — *how long
have you known* — and the honest answer is *since this morning*, which is worse for the
agents than a lie would have been.
- **Then she goes and sits down with the line, and does not tell them.** Play the rest of
the act with her carrying it. She will not raise it again tonight; the next time she
speaks of it is at the stump, and by then she has had a night to decide what to ask for.
- ***Not* telling her is a real choice and not a failure.** She finds out at the Close
instead, in front of everybody, from people who had all night to say it. The scenario
does not punish either — but **it is not the same Close**, and the Close says how.
- **A hollow man tries the swap** — opposed POW×5 (GM ESSENTIALS has the ruling), 2
Coherence. Survivable, and it is the table's first sight of the mechanism the understudy
will use properly.
@@ -987,6 +1005,27 @@ whoever it is copying, always.
same name; the run at the cordon on all fours.
- **If a PC is taken:** hand that player the understudy sheet and a private note. They keep
playing. Do not sideline them, and do not let it run past twenty minutes.
- ⚠ **IF THE PC IS ASHCROFT — and in the accepted branch it is him 48.7% of the time — THE
THING IS NOW WEARING THE WAY HOME.** Read this before running Act Four, not when it
happens. **Desk pass 10 was the first of ten to reach this and the document had no answer.**
- **The anchor holds the door everyone else goes through**, Transposition 63 is his, and
**the Close cannot happen until somebody is back through** — cancellation is a Registry
act on our side. Those three facts are printed in three different places and this is
where they meet.
- **The way home works. It works beautifully.** The thing does not need to escape the
party; **it needs them to walk it home**, and it is carrying the skill that gets everyone
there. So it holds the door, correctly and patiently, for as long as that takes —
**because that is what the file says an anchor does.** Do not have it sabotage the
crossing. A creature whose entire method is being useful and correct has just been handed
the most useful and correct job in the case.
- **Play the gratitude.** The party gets out because the anchor held the door. Somebody at
the table will say thank you. **That is the scene** — the horror this case is built on is
that it passed every test because it is doing the job properly, and here it arrives at the
moment they are most grateful to it.
- **The price is paid in the Close, and it is the same question with a second edge.** The
thing crosses with them and is standing in Registry when the paper is signed. *Who is
standing where when it takes effect* now includes the possibility that the answer is
holding the pen. See the Close.
- **Not Scent.** Scent's base chance is 0 and the 1% floor is all anybody has, so it is not
a route — it is a joke at the table's expense.
@@ -1290,9 +1329,23 @@ side of it because she has walked south for the first time in sixty-four years.
> its life. She does not ask who you are, or what you are holding, or what the paper says
> — she asks whether there is a north.
- **This works in both branches.** Whether Bhattacharya told them at the briefing or they
found it in the depot, she arrives at the same question, and it is the one question the
agents cannot answer kindly and truthfully at the same time.
- **This works in both branches of how the PARTY learned** — whether Bhattacharya told them
at the briefing or they found it in the depot, she arrives at the same question, and it is
the one question the agents cannot answer kindly and truthfully at the same time.
- ⚠ **BUT IT DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON WHETHER SHE WAS TOLD IN ACT THREE**, which is a different
fork and the one that matters here. Desk pass 10 found the Close written for only one side
of it.
- **If she was NOT told:** exactly as above. *Is there a north?* Then stop talking.
- **If she WAS told in Act Three, she does not come south to ask.** She already knows, she
has had a night with it, and she comes to find out **whether they are going to do
anything about it** — which is a harder scene and a better one, because she is no longer
asking them for the truth, she is asking them what they are for.
- Her line is **"Well?"**, and nothing after it. Same instruction: then stop talking.
- **She has decided what to ask for overnight**, and it is not what the agents expect:
*do not let them walk it again tomorrow morning*. Whatever the party chooses, she
wants it to be a decision rather than another day of the arrangement.
- This makes Act Three's real scene load-bearing instead of decorative, which is what it
was always claimed to be.
- If the GM wants the line spoken rather than reported, it is **"Is there a north?"** and
nothing after it. Then stop talking. The silence is the scenario.
- **She does not argue, plead, or bargain.** She has walked three thousand times and she
@@ -1327,6 +1380,33 @@ side of it because she has walked south for the first time in sixty-four years.
- **Bring them through** — the thing the table will try. It costs Coherence per person
at a rate no party can pay, and the record will not carry forty-one unfiled people.
Let them get four across and understand what that means about the other thirty-seven.
- ⚠ **FOUR ACROSS AND THEN CANCEL ANYWAY IS A THIRD ENDING, NOT A FAILED SECOND ONE**, and
it is the one a table that has spent four hours with these people will reach for. Price
it as an ending: four saved, thirty-seven cancelled, and the seam closed for good.
- **The agents do not choose the four. Ivy does.** They will try to — it is the humane
instinct and it is the wrong one, because choosing is the last authority she has and she
is not handing it to the department. **She picks the youngest**, without discussion,
and she is not among them.
- **That is the most brutal thing this scenario asks anybody**, and it is asked of her
rather than of them, which is why it lands. Do not soften it, do not let the agents
negotiate it, and do not have her explain herself. She has been deciding who eats first
for sixty-four years.
- **Failure case — and this act needs one, because it is last and it is what the clock
eats.** **If nobody writes anything, the entry stays filed by default.** That is not the
scenario breaking; it is the second ending arrived at by omission, and it should be played
as one — Registry closes the file as *unresolved, no action*, and thanks them.
- **The clock ran out.** Give it two minutes, not twenty: Registry wants the form tonight,
somebody signs or nobody does, and the read-aloud for "leave it filed" still lands.
- **The table will not decide, or splits three–three.** There is no roll and no tiebreak by
design. **Do not invent one.** Ask who is going to sign, out loud, and let the silence do
it — a party that cannot answer that has answered it.
- **Ivy is dead** — entirely possible if the table fired into the column. Then nobody asks
the question, and the agents make the decision with no one watching, which is worse and
is the ending they earned. The line still sits down in the heather to wait.
- **The party is down.** Three of the column wipe **45.3%**<!-- cite: packs cut.column3.wiped --> of
four-player parties. Whoever is standing signs; if nobody is, Registry sends the next
agent on the roster and the file stays open. Name them.
No roll resolves this. No NPC advises. Registry signs whatever they write.