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CLEAN GROUND: four sheets of paper, one of which is a trick

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CG-H01 is a coroner holding something he cannot file — unfiled man, ninety-year
-old joints on a forty-year-old body, and boots resoled nine times by hand,
which is the premise in one detail and is not pointed at.

CG-H02 is the 1962 minute. Paragraph 4 has the Registrar warning that a place
recorded as the place the displaced go must afterwards be furnished with
displaced persons, and the Committee noting it without regarding it as an
obstacle. Paragraph 5 orders a review that was never held. It is minuted by
A.E.W., Clerk (Junior), who is Bhattacharya's predecessor, so that sheet goes
into his hand and nothing is said.

CG-H03a and CG-H03b are one almanac page each, eleven years apart, same hand
and same ruled paper. Seven days of weather and miles walked, and a column
headed TO CLEAN GROUND reading 41 mi on every line of both. Laid side by side
there is no roll and no explanation: the table says it out loud. The counts
carry the cost — fifty-three then, forty-one now.

Numbers checked against the rest of the document: 41 survivors including the
six hollow men, 11 duplicated miles, and the 41-mile figure inherited from 1962
when it was true on the real map and untestable from inside ever since.

Still outstanding: a print-ready A4 pack at 11pt. H03a and H03b must print
identically or the trick dies.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
slaguru666
2026-09-12 23:38:13 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
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@@ -165,6 +165,187 @@ Advance one step per act, plus one whenever the agents spend Coherence on the fa
---
## Handouts
| ID | Description | When |
|---|---|---|
| CG-H01 | **Coroner's preliminary note** — the body in the sheep pen | Act One, once Braithwaite has looked |
| CG-H02 | **RESERVE ENTRY (NORTHERN)** — the 1962 authorisation | Act Three, in the depot |
| CG-H03a | **Ivy's almanac** — one page, this September | Act Two, when she decides to trust them |
| CG-H03b | **Ivy's almanac** — one page, eleven years earlier | Act Three, and not before |
**H03a and H03b are the same trick as a magician's two cards, and they only work held
together.** Give H03a in Act Two and say nothing about it. Give H03b in Act Three, flat on
the table, beside the first. The distances are identical. Nobody has to explain the loop
to anybody — the table will do it, out loud, and that is the scene.
**Print guidance:** H01 on white A4, official and dull. H02 on cream, typewriter face, and
if you can run it through a photocopier twice, do. **H03a and H03b must be the same hand
on the same ruled paper** — that is the whole point, so print them identically and let the
dates be the only difference a reader can find.
---
### CG-H01 — Coroner's preliminary note
*Act One. Hand it over when Braithwaite examines the body, or when anyone asks the farmer
what the police said. The GM reads it aloud as it is given, as always.*
```
HM CORONER — NORTH NORTHUMBERLAND PRELIMINARY NOTE
Ref: NN/1174/26 Not for release
DECEASED: Unidentified male
FOUND: 29 August, stone sheep pen, Sike Head march
BY: Mrs M. Swinburne, of Sike Head
Estimated age at death, from dentition and general condition: forty to
forty-five years.
Bone density, joint surfaces and vascular condition are those of a man in
his ninetieth year. I have written that sentence three times and I am
content with it.
No dental record answers to this mouth. No fingerprint record answers to
these hands. Enquiries with the National Insurance index return nothing.
He is not a missing person anywhere I can reach.
Dressed in wool and cotton of good but old manufacture, mended repeatedly
and competently by hand. The boots have been resoled, by my count, nine
times, and not by a tradesman.
Lungs, turn-ups and hair carry a fine grey particulate which I am not
equipped to identify and have sent onward.
Cause of death: exhaustion, on a body that had no reserve left to draw on.
There is no injury. Nobody did this to him.
I would be glad to be told what this was, in due course, if anyone is
ever able to tell me.
J. A. Corbridge
Assistant Pathologist
```
- **The three clues, in the order a table finds them:** he is unfiled, he is old in the
wrong way, and somebody has resoled his boots nine times by hand.
- **Nine resolings is the scenario's whole premise in one detail.** Do not point at it.
- Corbridge is not a character and should not become one. The last paragraph exists so
the players understand that an ordinary professional has been left holding this.
- **Failure case:** if nobody asks for the note, Swinburne has a photocopy of it in a
drawer because she was not satisfied with what she was told, and she will produce it.
---
### CG-H02 — RESERVE ENTRY (NORTHERN)
*Act Three, in the buried depot. This is the only place the truth is written down. Give
the physical paper; do not summarise it.*
```
COMMITTEE ON CONTINGENT ARRANGEMENTS SECRET
Minute of the meeting of 26 October 1962 Copy 3 of 4
RESERVE ENTRY (NORTHERN) — AUTHORISED
1. The Committee approved the entry of a reserve holding of ground in
the northern march, of eleven miles and a fraction, to be recorded
twice in order that one record may be drawn upon without disturbance
to the other.
2. The purpose of the reserve is to hold persons displaced by a general
exchange, in a place which is not on any list that an adversary may
obtain. Members were reminded that an unrecorded place cannot be
targeted and cannot be requisitioned.
3. The entry is pegged to the standing boundary oak at Sike Head, being
the feature to which the march was recorded before the survey of
1861 and therefore the older of the two authorities. The Committee
was satisfied that the tree is in good health.
4. The Registrar drew the Committee's attention to the consequence of
paragraph 2. A place recorded as the place to which the displaced go
is a place the record must afterwards furnish with displaced persons.
The Committee noted this and did not regard it as an obstacle.
5. The entry is to be reviewed at the rising of the emergency, and
cancelled if it is found not to have been drawn upon.
Signed (illegible)
Chairman
Minuted by A.E.W.
Clerk (Junior)
```
- **Paragraph 4 is the scenario.** A table that reads it properly understands, without
being told, that nobody sent those people north — the record supplied them, because
somebody wrote down that it should.
- **Paragraph 5 is the crime.** The emergency rose. The review was never held, because
holding it would have meant putting paragraph 4 in writing a second time.
- Paragraph 3's last sentence is the one that gets the bitter laugh. Let it.
- **A.E.W. is Bhattacharya's predecessor**, the man whose brass slide rule is in his
pocket. If Bhattacharya is at the table, put the sheet in **his** hand and let him find
the initials himself. Say nothing. If he is not at the table, the initials mean nothing
and that is fine.
- **Copy 3 of 4** is deliberate. Three other copies exist and the players will ask where.
The honest answer is that the department does not know, and that is a campaign.
---
### CG-H03a and CG-H03b — Ivy's almanac
*H03a in Act Two, when she decides to trust them. H03b in Act Three, laid flat beside it.
Same hand, same ruled paper, eleven years apart.*
**H03a — the page she is writing now**
```
DAY WEATHER WALKED TO CLEAN GROUND NOTES
---- ----------- ------ --------------- ----------------
Mon low cloud 7 mi 41 mi Ground softer.
Tue dry, cold 8 mi 41 mi Passed the lorry.
Wed rain 5 mi 41 mi Rested at noon.
Thu dry 8 mi 41 mi Thursday again.
Fri low cloud 7 mi 41 mi Alec is tired.
Sat rain 6 mi 41 mi Passed the lorry.
Sun dry, bright 9 mi 41 mi Good day. Sang.
Counted this morning: forty-one.
```
**H03b — the page from eleven years before**
```
DAY WEATHER WALKED TO CLEAN GROUND NOTES
---- ----------- ------ --------------- ----------------
Mon dry 8 mi 41 mi Passed the lorry.
Tue rain 6 mi 41 mi Ada's chest again.
Wed low cloud 7 mi 41 mi Ground softer.
Thu dry, cold 8 mi 41 mi Thursday again.
Fri dry 7 mi 41 mi Passed the lorry.
Sat low cloud 6 mi 41 mi Rested at noon.
Sun rain 5 mi 41 mi Nobody sang.
Counted this morning: fifty-three.
```
- **The column that never moves is the whole reveal**, and no roll is required to see it.
It is forty-one miles to clean ground on every line of both pages.
- **"Thursday again" appears on both pages, on the Thursday.** She has written it for
decades without ever once asking herself why she keeps writing it.
- **The two counts are the cost:** fifty-three then, forty-one now. Twelve people, and
Ivy wrote every one of them down somewhere in between.
- **"Passed the lorry" is Pollard's evidence made portable.** It is the same wrecked lorry
from Act Three's clue trail, twice a week, for sixty-four years.
- **Do not let Ivy explain any of this.** She cannot. She is the one person at the table
for whom these pages are simply a record of an ordinary journey.
- **Failure case:** if H03a never gets handed over, Ivy offers the almanac at the Close
instead, open at the current page, as the thing she wants somebody to keep. That is a
worse reveal and a better scene, and the GM may prefer it.
---
## Act One — Registry and the Sike Head *(~45 min)*
**Beats**
@@ -503,8 +684,8 @@ twice.*
1. ~~Pregens.~~ **Done** — see Casting, above. Six from the duty roster, no new sheets.
2. ~~The read-aloud text.~~ **Done** — three blocks, in place in Act Two and the Close.
3. **Handouts.** The 1962 authorisation, Ivy's almanac page, the coroner's note on the
sheep-pen body.
3. ~~Handouts.~~ **Done** — four sheets, CG-H01 to CG-H03b. Still need a print-ready HTML
pack (A4, 11pt minimum) before a convention; the text is final.
4. **A written exposure model for Act Four**, so the GM knows what a fight at the cordon
actually costs before the table starts one.
5. **Desk playtest**, twice, before any of this is called runnable.