diff --git a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md index f892513..88ce9db 100644 --- a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md +++ b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md @@ -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.