diff --git a/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md b/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md index 8e10a43..fdfa23f 100644 --- a/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md +++ b/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md @@ -8,836 +8,524 @@ | | | |---|---| -| **Version** | **v1.0**, 16 September 2026 — the rewrite. Same site, same people, same art; a new case inside them | -| **Can it be run?** | **Yes, from this document alone,** with the compendium for sheets, the two cast actors, and the three bestiary creatures. | -| **Is it convention-ready?** | **No. It needs desk passes again.** `_PLAYTEST_1.md` to `_5.md` tested v0.7, which was a different plot: 231 people, no crossing, no Mr Smith, no broadcast. Their structural lessons are carried forward below and marked where they are; their timings are not evidence for this version. | -| **What it is** | A **three-act one-shot** and the second appearance of **Mr Smith**, who was planted in THROUGH TRAIN. It ends in the session. The thread does not. | +| **Version** | **v1.1**, 16 September 2026 — simplified, and the children made part of the jeopardy | +| **Can it be run?** | **Yes, from this document alone,** with the compendium for sheets and the two cast actors. | +| **Is it convention-ready?** | **No. It needs desk passes.** The five earlier passes tested v0.7, a different plot. Their structural lessons are carried forward; their timings are not evidence for this version. | +| **What it is** | A **three-act one-shot** and the second appearance of **Mr Smith**, who was planted in THROUGH TRAIN. | | **Players** | 4–6 from the duty roster. The cast is declared in Casting and the build enforces it. | -| **Runtime** | **Three acts of 45 / 75 / 50 plus a ten-minute break — 3h00 wall, in a 3h15 slot.** These are v0.7's measured budgets, kept because the shape is the same. **They are unmeasured for this plot.** | +| **Runtime** | **45 / 75 / 50 plus a ten-minute break — 3h00 in a 3h15 slot.** Unmeasured for this plot. | ### The things that are not obvious -1. **The brief is a rescue, and it is a diplomatic one.** The department wants these - thousand people brought home and wants to know who has been keeping them down there. - Nobody below is expendable, and the agents are told so in writing. **A party that solves - Bellhouse with violence has failed the brief even if it wins the fight.** -2. **The people below are not a cult and do not know they are becoming one.** They are a - council: minutes, rotas, a housing list, a complaints procedure that takes eleven weeks. - The occult is in the *procedures* — a form of words at the bulletin, a lullaby on the - crèche intercom, a dream everyone born below has had. **Never put an altar in this - building.** If a player can point at it and say "cult", the GM has overplayed it. -3. **Mr Smith is never met.** He is a hand on the letters, a mark on the franking, and a - face nobody can picture. He is the thread between this case and THROUGH TRAIN and he - must still be a thread at the end. **Do not stat him, do not describe him, and do not let - the table corner him.** -4. **Releasing them is not the hard part. The broadcast is.** Cancelling the Standing Order - takes one warrant card and no roll. But the order says that when the Seat surfaces it - *speaks* — and what it will say is Mr Smith's, not the government's. **The table must - neutralise the broadcast before, or while, they let the Seat go.** Act Three is that - order of operations. -5. **Detention is a scene, not a defeat.** The wardens can put the party in the Sump. The - real danger of being held is being *entered on the Establishment*, and Pennyfeather is the - person with the pen. Carried forward from v0.7's first desk pass: **no failure below - ends the case — it costs a scene.** +1. **The whole case in four lines.** Mr Smith tricked a bunker into going underground in + 1974. He has kept them there with letters ever since. On Thursday the bunker will + broadcast his tape, and anyone who hears it joins his cult. **The young children already + know the tape by heart.** +2. **The brief is a rescue, and a polite one.** Nobody below is expendable. A party that + solves Bellhouse with violence has failed, even if it wins. +3. **The people are not a cult and do not know they are becoming one.** They are a 1970s + council. The occult is small and quiet — never put an altar in this building. +4. **Order of operations is Act Three.** Opening the bunker sets off the broadcast. **Stop + the tape first, then open the door.** +5. **The children are the moral question, not a puzzle.** Every answer costs somebody + something. Do not steer the table to the "right" one. +6. **Mr Smith is never met.** No sheet, no portrait, no scene. He gets away. ### Still to do -- **Desk passes.** Minimum three, in the house order: GM chair, Act Three stress with the - detention fight run through the harness, then a player-chair contrarian. -- **Art.** Joan Wetherlaw still has no portrait. Mr Smith must never have one. Nothing else - is needed; the eight plates and the section map carry over. -- **Handout production.** Six handouts are written here and are in the compendium. No print - pack. +- **Desk passes**, in the house order: GM chair, Act Three stress, player-chair contrarian. +- **Joan Wetherlaw's portrait.** Mr Smith must never have one. --- ## GM ESSENTIALS -- **System:** d100 roll-under a percentage skill. **Special** under a fifth of the skill, - **critical** under a twentieth; 96–99 always fail and 00 always fumbles. -- **Opposed rolls: a tie goes to whoever is being acted upon.** -- **Coherence runs 10 → 0.** Crossings, the tape, and the cancellation all cost it, and - **nothing in this scenario gives any back.** -- **Panic is live** in Act Two's detention and Act Three's broadcast. Triggers are marked. +- **System:** d100 roll-under a percentage skill. **Special** under a fifth, **critical** + under a twentieth; 96–99 always fail and 00 always fumbles. +- **Coherence runs 10 → 0.** The tape and the release cost it. **Nothing here gives any + back.** +- **Panic is live** in the detention and the broadcast. - **Standing Order 9 is live.** Nothing modern goes through; charge for *using*, never for - carrying. Down here a modern object is also **evidence** — the first thing a warden will - ask about. -- **Borrowed Authority:** a named credential with a scope. Inside scope, no roll: it costs - 1 Trust and works. One tier beyond is a roll at −20 per red flag broken. **A warrant card - of the Department is inside scope at Bellhouse** — the Standing Order names it. -- **Content warnings:** confinement underground; a detention and a beating if the table - resists it; children as the object of an occult procedure (never on screen); a birth; an - elderly woman's shame; the possibility of a whole region being subsumed. + carrying. +- **A warrant card of the Department is inside scope at Bellhouse** — Borrowed Authority, 1 + Trust, no roll. The Standing Order names it. +- **Hearing the song.** Anyone who hears Mr Smith's song all the way through rolls **POW×5**. + *Failure:* lose **1 Coherence** and they are **his** — calm, obedient, waiting for Centre — + until the case closes and a debrief brings them back. It is eleven minutes long on the tape. + **Stopping it before the end is always a complete answer.** +- **Content warnings:** confinement underground; a detention that can turn violent; + children under an occult influence, and a decision about taking children from their + parents; a birth; an elderly woman's shame. --- ## Overview -The department commissioned Regional Seat of Government 12 — **Bellhouse** — in 1962, cut -into the worked-out galleries of Sheldon Colliery under Sheldon Moor in the Peak District. -It was built for four hundred staff and dependants, stocked as a Buffer Depot for the whole -region's reconstitution, and fed by the pit's own coal seam and a lead-miners' drainage -level that runs clean limestone water. +**1974.** Bellhouse is a government bunker built into an old coal mine under Sheldon Moor, +in the Peak District. It is running a practice drill for nuclear war. -In November 1974, during an exercise, a man calling himself **Mr Smith, for Centre** -delivered a live execution order. Deputy Controller **Edith Marlow** knew it was exercise -week. She signed it anyway, and she has never been able to say why. +A pleasant man in a grey coat — **Mr Smith, "for Centre"** — arrives with a letter saying the +war is real. Deputy Controller **Edith Marlow** knows it is only the drill. She signs anyway, +and has never been able to say why. **412 people go underground and the door shuts.** +Reality believes the paperwork: the mine is filled in, the bunker vanishes from every map, +and the only way in is a crossing. -**Reality took the filing.** Four hundred and twelve people went down on 4 November 1974 -and the war happened — on paper, which is where this setting keeps the truth. The pit was -"closed" in 1975. The adit is backfilled rubble. **Bellhouse is struck from the surface -record, and the only way in is a crossing.** +**Now.** Fifty-two years later there are **999 people** below — 118 of the original intake, +and 881 born there. They live like a 1970s council: rotas, ration books, a housing list, +vegetable gardens under lamps in old coal tunnels. **Every ninety days a letter arrives by +pipe from Centre: it is still not safe; stay down.** Centre is Mr Smith. -Fifty-two years later there are **nine hundred and ninety-nine** people below: a hundred -and eighteen of the 1974 intake, and eight hundred and eighty-one born there. They run a -functioning, exasperating, 1970s council: ration books, a housing list, a Parks and -Allotments committee that meets in a coal gallery under sodium lamps. **Every ninety days a -renewal arrives by pneumatic pipe from Centre** with radiation readings and one instruction: -*remain*. Centre has never missed one. +**Mr Smith** is a **Cthulhu Mythos messenger** — not a god, a go-between for the powers that +sleep Outside. His experiment: can the most obedient people in England be turned into a +congregation without ever being told? Three quiet signs show it working: -**Centre is Mr Smith.** He has spent fifty-two years using the most obedient population in -England as an experiment: can a people be *filed* into a congregation without ever being -told? The Seat's procedures have drifted, renewal by renewal, into observances. Its -children dream the same dream. Its establishment has been steered to a number. +- **The chant.** Every bulletin ends with the whole site saying *We hold. We count. We + answer.* +- **The dream.** Everyone born below has the same dream: a long corridor, a counter, a + pleasant man who asks your name and writes it down. +- **The drawings.** The children draw the sun as a circle with a stroke through the top. It + is the mark on Mr Smith's letters. -**On Thursday the thousandth person is born below.** Annex D of the Standing Order puts the -Seat at reconstitution strength, and a Seat at strength surfaces and **broadcasts the -Reconstitution Address** to the region it governs. The tape in the studio safe is not the -1974 recording. Centre replaced it in 2019. **Anyone who hears it to the end is entered on -the Establishment**, and Region 12 has a million people in it. +**The tape.** The bunker's Standing Order says that when it reaches **1,000 people** it must +come up and broadcast a recorded message to the region. In 2019 Centre sent a new tape. +**It is Mr Smith's song, and anyone who hears it to the end joins him.** Region 12 has a +million people in it. + +**The children.** Since 2019 the tape's opening has played on the crèche speaker at three in +the morning, "to settle the young". **The 168 children under twelve have heard it every night +of their lives and know the whole song by heart.** They hum it. They do not know what it is. + +**This week.** Ruth Cotter is due to have a baby: the thousandth. On Thursday at 07:00 the +bunker will open and broadcast. ### Design intent -1. **A post-apocalypse that is a council meeting.** The end of the world is administered - kindly, badly and in triplicate. The horror is that it works. -2. **The occult is procedural and it is quiet.** Six small wrong things, none of which is a - pentagram. The table assembles them; the document never announces them. -3. **A rescue with a deadline and a brief.** The department wants the people alive, the - site's story on file, and Mr Smith's hand identified. It does not want a body count, and - the brief says so before anybody crosses. -4. **One fight, and it is a detention.** The wardens are sent to bring the agents in, not - to kill them. The fight is real, measured, and avoidable, and losing it costs a scene. -5. **The thread survives.** Mr Smith is identified and not caught. Three things stay - unresolved and the GM notes name them. +1. **A post-apocalypse that is a council meeting.** The end of the world, administered kindly + and in triplicate. +2. **Quiet horror.** Three small wrong things, no altars. +3. **A rescue with a deadline.** Stop the tape, then open the door. +4. **One fight, and it is a detention.** Real, measured, avoidable, and it costs a scene. +5. **A choice about children with no clean answer.** --- ## Session Timing -**The slot is 3h15.** The acts keep v0.7's measured budgets because the shape — an outside -approach, a long investigation below, a decision at a fixed hour — is the same. **They have -not been measured for this plot**, and desk pass 1 must record them. - | | Act | Budget | GM checkpoint | |---|---|---|---| -| 1 | **The Crossing** — the Bureau, Sheldon Moor, through, and the Enquiries counter | 45 min | They are through the crossing by **0:25** | +| 1 | **Getting In** — the briefing, the moor, the crossing, the Enquiries desk | 45 min | Through the crossing by **0:25** | | — | *Break* | 10 min | | -| 2 | **The Establishment** — the site, the wardens, Centre's hand | **75 min** | They know about **Annex D** by **1:50** | -| 3 | **The Address** — Thursday, the thousandth, the broadcast | 50 min | They are at the tape or the transmitter by **2:40** | -| | **Total** | **3h00** | against a **3h15** slot | +| 2 | **Finding Out** — the bunker, the guards, the song | **75 min** | They know about **the tape and the children** by **1:50** | +| 3 | **The Broadcast** — Thursday, the thousandth, the choice | 50 min | They are holding the tape by **2:35** | +| | **Total** | **3h00** | in a **3h15** slot | -**Running times:** Act One 0:00–0:45 · break to 0:55 · Act Two 0:55–2:10 · Act Three -2:10–3:00. **The broadcast begins at 2:45 on the session clock** — thirty-five minutes into -Act Three — unless the table has stopped it. +**The broadcast starts at 2:45 on the session clock** — thirty-five minutes into Act Three — +unless the table has stopped it. -### Pacing Note — the cuts, written in advance - -**Take none of them unless you are actually late.** In this order, and stop when level: - -| Cut | Saves | What it costs | -|---|---|---| -| **The Bureau in two lines** — hand over SO-H01 and SO-H06 and cut to the moor | ~6 min | Bewley's line about the frank. **Give the frank to them on SO-H01 anyway** | -| **The Allotments by report** — Kowalczyk hears about the yields rather than walking the galleries | ~6 min | The Buffer Depot clue (supporting) | -| **The census** | ~4 min | Atmosphere, and the enumeration risk | -| **The Vigil** (Countdown step 5) | ~5 min | Revelation 3's last backstop. Only if they already have it | - -**Never cut:** the Enquiries counter, Pennyfeather's return, the crèche, or the studio. +**If you are late,** cut in this order: the Bureau to two lines; Joan to the vent head; the +Vigil. **Never cut** the Enquiries desk, the crèche, or the choice. --- ## Plot Summary (GM truth) -**1962.** RSG 12 is built into Sheldon Colliery's worked-out galleries: three upper levels -of Seat (Control, Registry, studio, quarters, school, sick bay) and the pit below them -(plant floor, the coal face, the Allotments, the Mill, the Buffer Depot, the Sump). The -Standing Order is drafted with its annexes. **Annex D, as drafted, says the Seat -broadcasts a recorded address from the Home Office on reconstitution.** It says nothing -about who hears it. - -**3 November 1974.** Exercise week. A pleasant man in a grey coat arrives at the lobby with -a sealed envelope on Centre's paper, franked with a mark Marlow has never seen — a small -circle with a short stroke through the top of it. It is the live execution order, and it -has a new Annex D. He waits while she reads it. She asks him whether it is real. **He says, -"Then it had better be."** She signs. She cannot picture his face and has tried for -fifty-two years. - -**4 November 1974.** The order executes. Four hundred and twelve people go down — two -hundred and sixty-eight staff and a hundred and forty-four dependants, seventy-one of them -children. The blast door shuts. Reality files a war. - -**1975.** Above, Sheldon Colliery closes overnight. Its foreman, Joan Wetherlaw's father, is -told to stop digging and backfill the adit, and does. Below, the first child is born: -**Alice Pennyfeather**, establishment number 413. - -**How they have lived.** The Buffer Depot held twenty years' stock for a thousand — flour, -tins, sugar, blankets, army-surplus bales. The Seat's plant section works the pit's live -seam for the boilers; the drainage level turns a turbine and fills the reservoir. From 1979 -the Parks and Allotments committee grows food hydroponically in the old galleries under -sodium lamps: potatoes, beans, mushroom beds on spent straw, trout in the sump tanks, hens in -the pit-pony stables. The Mill makes cloth from flax and recycled bales. **It should not -quite be enough, and it has always been exactly enough** — the Depot's ledger ran out in -1996, and since then its issue book has recorded stock *received from Centre* every ninety -days. Nobody has seen a delivery. The pipe is four inches wide. - -**Why nobody has looked.** The periscope head and the external instruments were sealed in -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 **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: - -- **The bulletin** closes with a response the whole site speaks: *We hold. We count. We - answer.* It was *Message ends* until 1983. -- **The Continuity of Establishment Scheme** licenses marriages "per Centre guidance" and - has steered the establishment to a number. -- **The Vigil**, the annual remembrance for the surface dead, reads a *Region* aloud. The - last places on the list are not in Derbyshire, or anywhere. -- **The crèche intercom** plays a tone at three in the morning "to settle the young" (Centre - Circular 88/4). It is the interval signal from the 2019 tape. -- **Everyone born below has had the same dream** — a long corridor, a counter, a pleasant - man who asks their name and writes it down. Nobody from the 1974 intake has. -- **The children draw the sun** as a circle with a stroke through the top. - -**What he wants from Thursday.** Annex D, as he rewrote it, reads: *the Seat at -establishment one thousand shall surface and address the Region, and those who hear the -Address are entered on the Establishment.* **The Address is a working.** Heard to its end, -it enrols the listener — they hold, they count, they answer — and the census, which has -been counting below for fifty-two years, goes up to count the rest. Region 12 is a million -people. **That is the threat to the outside world**, and it is why the department cannot -simply open the door. - -**Why the department is here now.** In May a Bellhouse return came out of a Registry -in-tray at the Bureau, franked 1974, addressed *to Centre*. Registry traced the frank. **The -same mark is on the letter of instruction a Mr Smith gave a surveyor named Elias Vane in -1881**, in the Mercy Draw file. Registry's file on Mr Smith has two entries and no face. - ### Timeline | When | What | |---|---| -| 1881 | Mr Smith instructs Elias Vane at Mercy Draw *(THROUGH TRAIN)*. | -| 1962 | RSG 12 "Bellhouse" commissioned in Sheldon Colliery. Standing Order drafted. | -| **3 Nov 1974** | Mr Smith delivers the live order. Marlow signs. | -| **4 Nov 1974** | 412 go down. The order executes. | -| 1975 | The pit closes; the adit is backfilled. Pennyfeather, the first birth below. | -| 1983 | The bulletin's closing words change to *We hold. We count. We answer.* | -| 1988 | Centre Circular 88/4: the crèche intercom. | -| 1996 | The Buffer Depot's own stock runs out. Issues "from Centre" begin. | -| 2019 | Centre replaces the Reconstitution tape: *12/R, revised.* Marlow stops speaking plainly. | -| May 2026 | A Bellhouse return arrives in Registry at the Bureau. | -| **Wednesday** | **Play begins.** Establishment: 999. Ruth Cotter is due. | -| **Thursday, 06:00** | Renewal assembly. The thousandth is born. **07:00: the Address.** | +| 1881 | Mr Smith tells Elias Vane what to put on a false survey *(THROUGH TRAIN)*. | +| **3 Nov 1974** | Mr Smith brings the "live" order. Marlow signs it, knowing it was a drill. | +| **4 Nov 1974** | 412 go down. The mine is filled in above them. | +| 1974–2026 | Fifty-two years of letters from Centre. 881 children born below. | +| **2019** | Centre sends a new broadcast tape. It starts playing to the crèche every night. | +| May 2026 | One of the bunker's old 1974 letters turns up in the department's in-tray, with Mr Smith's mark on it. | +| **Wednesday** | **Play begins.** 999 people. Ruth Cotter is due. | +| **Thursday 06:00** | The baby is born. **07:00: the broadcast.** | -### Revelations (6) +### How they have survived -1. **Bellhouse is inhabited and governing** — a thousand people. *(Act One, automatic)* -2. **They believe the war happened, and Centre tells them every ninety days to stay down.** - *(Act One/Two, automatic)* -3. **The live order was brought by a stranger in 1974, and Marlow signed it knowing it was - the exercise.** *(Act Two, three routes)* -4. **Centre is Mr Smith** — the frank on every renewal is the frank on Vane's letter. - *(Act Two, no roll once SO-H05 is in their hands)* -5. **The site is being made into a congregation.** *(Act Two, cumulative, supporting — the - table assembles it)* -6. **Annex D: at a thousand the Seat broadcasts the Address, and the Address enrols - whoever hears it.** *(Act Two, four routes)* +Coal from the mine for heat and power. Clean water from an old drainage tunnel. Vegetables, +trout and hens in the old coal tunnels. A mill for cloth. A government stockpile that should +have run out in 1996 and has been topped up "from Centre" every ninety days since, through a +pipe four inches wide. **Do not explain the stockpile.** + +### Why nobody has looked outside + +The periscope was sealed in 1974 against flash blindness, and only Centre can unseal it. +Centre's letters always say the air above is poison. + +### What the song does + +Anyone who hears it **all the way through** becomes Mr Smith's: calm, obedient, waiting for +Centre. One person hearing it is a tragedy. **A broadcast is a million people.** + +**The children carry it.** A child who knows the song hums it when they are tired, happy or +frightened. **An adult who hears a child hum it right through is affected exactly as if they +heard the tape** — slowly, one listener at a time, in playgrounds and bedrooms. Burning the +tape does not take it out of 168 small heads. + +**It can be taken out.** Kit Marlow has noticed the song only works as a whole. **Play the +tape to the children one last time with the final bars cut off**, and the tune breaks in them: +they stop humming it and cannot remember it by morning. That needs the tape — so the tape +cannot be burned first — and somebody has to stand in the crèche and run the machine. + +### Revelations (4) + +1. **The bunker is full of living people who think the war happened.** *(Act One)* +2. **There was no war; Mr Smith's letters keep them down.** *(Act Two)* +3. **On Thursday the bunker will broadcast his song, and it will take whoever hears it.** + *(Act Two)* +4. **The children already know the song.** *(Act Two)* --- -## The Countdown — what Bellhouse does on schedule +## The Countdown — Act Two -The site runs its day. **The clock starts when Act Two starts.** Every step lands inside the -act — carried forward from v0.7, where two steps fired after their act had ended. +Starts when Act Two starts. -| Step | When | What happens, whatever the players are doing | +| Step | When | What happens | |---|---|---| -| 1 | **+15 min** | **The bulletin.** Sowerby reads the daily bulletin over the tannoy — rations, a housing list update, radiation readings from Centre. The whole site stops. It ends, and nine hundred and ninety-nine people say *We hold. We count. We answer.* **Panic trigger** for any agent who hears it in a corridor full of people. | -| 2 | **+30 min** | **Centre Circular.** The pipe delivers SO-H05 to the Control Room. Sowerby reads it twice. | -| 3 | **+45 min** | **The detail.** Teague and his wardens are sent to bring the agents in. See *The detention*. | -| 4 | **+55 min** | **The establishment return.** Pennyfeather posts SO-H03 on the Registry board. The number is on the front. **This is clue 13c.** | -| 5 | **+65 min** | **Vigil.** The Reading of the Region. **Revelation 3's last backstop** — the 1974 roll of honour is read, and there are no names on it. | -| 6 | **+75 min** | **Ruth Cotter goes into labour.** Larkhall is called. Thursday is tomorrow and the act is over. | +| 1 | **+15 min** | **The bulletin.** The tannoy; the whole site stops; everyone says *We hold. We count. We answer.* **Panic trigger.** | +| 2 | **+30 min** | **Centre's letter** (SO-H05) arrives by pipe: deal with the strangers. | +| 3 | **+45 min** | **The guards** are sent. See *The detention*. | +| 4 | **+65 min** | **Vigil**, the yearly remembrance. The 1974 list of the dead is read — and there are no names on it. **Backstop for Revelation 2.** | +| 5 | **+75 min** | **Ruth Cotter goes into labour.** The act ends. | --- ## Handouts -The section map is **SO-H04** and is a plate in the compendium, not text. +The section map is **SO-H04**, a plate in the compendium. -### SO-H01 — The return that came out of the in-tray +### SO-H01 — Terms of engagement -*A4, buff, typed on a manual machine, franked 4 NOV 1974 with a small circle cut by a stroke -at the top. Give it in the briefing.* - -> REGION 12 — SEAT RETURN — WEEK 1 -> ESTABLISHMENT: 412. CASUALTIES THIS PERIOD: NIL. -> REGIONAL SURVIVING POPULATION (EST.): 1,140,000. -> SUPPLY: 20 YEARS AT CURRENT SCALE. -> QUERY TO CENTRE: CONFIRM THE GENTLEMAN WHO BROUGHT THE ORDER IS KNOWN TO YOU. -> SIGNED: E. MARLOW, DEPUTY CONTROLLER. - -**What it is for.** *Casualties nil* is wrong for week one of a war and right for week one of -an exercise. The query is Marlow's only protest, and Centre answered it: the return came -back with the frank on it. **The frank is the thread.** Bewley points it out. - -### SO-H02 — Standing Order 12, extract - -*Foolscap, three clauses and an annex. Registry supplies it on request.* - -> 4. On execution this Seat assumes the government of Region 12 and shall not surface -> until this Order is cancelled by the named authority or by an officer holding a warrant -> of the Department in person at the Seat. -> -> 5. This Order renews at ninety days on instruction from Centre, and is thereafter filed. -> -> 6. On cancellation the Seat shall surface and proceed under Annex D. -> -> ANNEX D. The Seat at establishment one thousand shall surface and address the Region by -> the recorded Address held at the Seat. Those who hear the Address are entered on the -> Establishment. -> -> NAMED AUTHORITY: SIR HUGH ELLERBY-STANNARD, PERMANENT UNDER-SECRETARY. - -**What it is for.** Clause 4 is the release: every agent holds a warrant. Clause 6 is the -trap: **cancelling the order sends the Seat up under Annex D**, so releasing them without -dealing with the Address starts the broadcast. Annex D's last sentence is the threat, in -plain civil-service English, and nobody below has read it as anything but a filing note. - -### SO-H03 — The establishment return - -*A Registry form, typed, initialled A.P. Posted on the board at Countdown step 4, or handed -to anyone who asks Pennyfeather a straight question.* - -> ESTABLISHMENT RETURN — WEEK 2,707 -> INTAKE 1974: 412. OF WHOM LIVING: 118. -> BORN AT THE SEAT: 1,176. OF WHOM LIVING: 881. -> ESTABLISHMENT: 999. -> EXPECTED: 1 (COTTER, R., DUE THURSDAY). -> NOTE: ANNEX D IN FORCE AT 1,000. -> *Controller — I have asked Centre what Annex D is for. Centre says it is for Thursday. — A.P.* - -**What it is for.** Revelation 6 in a player's hands, with the date on it. The last line is -Pennyfeather's own unease, and it is the cheapest way into Annex D. - -### SO-H05 — Centre Circular 26/33 - -*A flimsy, franked with the circle and stroke. Arrives by pipe at Countdown step 2. The -agents see it if they are in the Control Room, if Sowerby shows it to them, or if they take -it from his desk.* - -> CENTRE TO SEAT 12. CIRCULAR 26/33. -> UNACCOUNTED PERSONS AT THE SEAT ARE TO BE ENUMERATED OR REMOVED. -> ENUMERATION IS PREFERRED. -> THE ESTABLISHMENT WILL BE COMPLETE ON THURSDAY IN ANY CASE. -> THE SEAT WILL SPEAK AT THE HOUR. -> J. SMITH, FOR CENTRE. - -**What it is for.** Revelation 4, no roll: **the frank matches SO-H01's, and the name is the -one on Vane's letter.** It is also the order that sends the wardens, and the word -*enumerated* tells the table what detention really risks. - -### SO-H06 — Terms of engagement - -*A single typed sheet from the Bureau, signed by the Deputy Director. Give it in the -briefing and let them keep it.* +*Typed, from the Bureau. Give it in the briefing and let them keep it.* > CASE SO-012 — BELLHOUSE. > 1. The persons at the Seat are to be brought home. None is expendable. -> 2. Force is authorised in self-defence only. You are guests in a functioning -> administration and will conduct yourselves accordingly. -> 3. You will not tell the Seat what it believes is untrue until you can replace it with -> something it can file. -> 4. Establish who has been corresponding with the Seat as Centre, and bring back -> everything in his hand. -> 5. The Seat is to be released under clause 4 of its Order. Read clause 6 first. +> 2. Force is authorised in self-defence only. +> 3. Establish who has been writing to the Seat as Centre, and bring back his letters. +> 4. The Seat is released under clause 4 of its Order. Read clause 6 first. -**What it is for.** The brief, in writing, so that a table reaching for its weapons has -already been told what that costs. Term 5 is a hint and it is meant to be one. +**What it is for.** The brief, in writing. Term 4 is a hint. + +### SO-H02 — The 1974 letter + +*Buff, typed, stamped with a small circle cut by a stroke. It came out of the department's +in-tray in May.* + +> REGION 12 — SEAT RETURN — WEEK 1 +> ESTABLISHMENT: 412. CASUALTIES THIS PERIOD: NIL. +> QUERY TO CENTRE: CONFIRM THE GENTLEMAN WHO BROUGHT THE ORDER IS KNOWN TO YOU. +> SIGNED: E. MARLOW, DEPUTY CONTROLLER. + +**What it is for.** *Casualties nil* — no war. The stamp is Mr Smith's mark. + +### SO-H03 — Standing Order 12 + +*Foolscap. Pennyfeather hands it to anyone who asks.* + +> 4. This Seat shall not surface until this Order is cancelled by an officer holding a +> warrant of the Department in person at the Seat. +> +> 6. On cancellation the Seat shall surface and proceed under Annex D. +> +> ANNEX D. The Seat at establishment one thousand shall surface and broadcast the recorded +> Address held at the Seat. + +**What it is for.** Clause 4 is how to release them. Clause 6 is the trap: **cancelling the +order sets off the broadcast.** Annex D says a thousand people means Thursday. + +### SO-H05 — Centre's letter + +*A flimsy, stamped with the mark. Arrives by pipe at Countdown step 2.* + +> CENTRE TO SEAT 12. +> STRANGERS AT THE SEAT ARE TO BE DETAINED. +> THE SEAT WILL SPEAK ON THURSDAY AS ORDERED. +> THE YOUNG ARE TO BE SETTLED NIGHTLY AS BEFORE. +> J. SMITH, FOR CENTRE. + +**What it is for.** The name and the mark match the 1974 letter and Vane's in THROUGH +TRAIN. It sends the guards. Its third line points at the crèche. --- -## Act One — The Crossing *(~45 min)* +## Act One — Getting In *(~45 min)* -**Where:** the Bureau, then Sheldon Moor at dusk, then the lobby of a place that is not on -any map. **What it is for:** the job, the door, and the first test of the brief. +**What it is for:** the job, the door, and a first test of good manners. > *Read aloud or paraphrase:* -> *Registry smells of floor polish and old paper. Mr Bewley has laid a single buff envelope -> on the table between you as if it might go off. "This came out of my in-tray in May," he -> says. "It was posted in 1974. And somebody answered it."* +> *Mr Bewley lays a buff envelope on the Registry table. "This came out of my in-tray in +> May," he says. "It was posted in 1974. From a bunker that was filled in in 1975. And look +> at the stamp."* -### Hooks — how the table gets here +### Beat 1 — The briefing *(~10 min)* -The department sends them. There is one brief and it is SO-H06. What each agent carries -into it: +**Mr Bewley** gives SO-H01 and SO-H02 and tells them: -- **The return.** Bhattacharya's section logged SO-H01 when it surfaced. The frank is his - find. -- **The dog.** Nkemdirim has a vet's referral from Bakewell: a farm dog came home from - Sheldon Moor coated in coal soot, from a moor with no chimney on it for fifty years. -- **Mercy Draw.** If the table played THROUGH TRAIN, whoever asked Vane about Mr Smith is on - this case because they did. If not, Bewley has the file and the name anyway. +- **Bellhouse** was a government bunker. 412 people went down for a drill in 1974 and never + came back up. The entrance is rubble. +- **The only way in is a crossing**, at a warm vent on Sheldon Moor, at dusk. +- **The stamp** is the mark on Mr Smith's letter to Elias Vane in 1881. *"Bring me his + letters."* -### Beat 1 — The Bureau *(~10 min)* - -**Mr Bewley, Registry**, gives SO-H01 and SO-H06 and says, if asked: - -- **Bellhouse was RSG 12.** It was staffed for an exercise in November 1974 and the whole - intake is on the file as *not returned*. The file was closed in 1975 by an instruction - nobody can trace. -- **There is no way in on the ground.** The adit is backfilled; the survey says so; three - engineers confirmed it in May. **The site is only reachable across.** The crossing is at - the vent head, and it opens at dusk when the moor cools and the warm air comes up. -- **The frank.** *"I have seen this mark once before. It was on a letter of instruction in - the Mercy Draw file, signed Smith, in 1881."* He does not speculate. He wants the letters. - -**Mr Prosser, Stores**, lays out the 1974 issue. **Standing Order 9 is live**, and down there -a modern object is also a question the wardens will ask: - -| Instead of | They get | -|---|---| -| handset | **nothing** — out of contact once across | -| torch | **Home Office pattern hand lamp** | -| service pistol | **service revolver**, issued, and Prosser asks them not to need it | -| scanner | **a 1974 Geiger counter** — *"the one thing down there that might change a mind"* | -| stab vest | **Civil Defence greatcoat** | -| everything else | **warrant cards**, which are good in any year | +**Mr Prosser** issues 1974 kit: a hand lamp, a service revolver he hopes they won't need, a +1974 **Geiger counter**, greatcoats, and warrant cards. No phones. ### Beat 2 — Sheldon Moor *(~15 min)* > *Read aloud or paraphrase:* -> *The soot starts a mile before the farm. It lies black on the verges in the rain. Joan -> Wetherlaw meets you at the gate with a yard brush and says: "You're not from the Coal -> Board. They stopped coming in 1975."* +> *Coal soot lies black on the verges for a mile. Joan Wetherlaw meets you at her gate with +> a yard brush. "Coal smoke," she says. "Fifty years of it. From a moor with no chimney."* -**Joan is at the farm and walks up with them** — carried forward from v0.7's third desk -pass, which drove straight past her and lost Act One's failure case. A party who skip the -farm meet her at the vent head with a flask. +Joan walks them up to the vent. She tells them — `[CUS: Persuade — she has never told +anyone]` — that a man in grey once asked her to sign for a parcel addressed to Bellhouse, +and she cannot picture his face. *Failure:* she does not mention it; nothing depends on it. -### Clue trail — Act One - -| # | Clue | Where | How found | What it gives | Type | -|---|---|---|---|---|---| -| 1 | The frank | SO-H01, the briefing | `[CUS: no roll — Bewley points at it]` | The thread to Mercy Draw, and Mr Smith's name | Essential | -| 2 | The soot is fresh | The verges, the yard | `[CUS: Knowledge — bituminous coal smoke, burned this week, from a moor with no chimney]` | Something below is burning coal *now* | Supporting | -| 3 | The soot has an edge | The field boundary | `[CUS: Navigate — a straight line for 400 m and a right angle; it follows the old colliery lease, not the wind]` | The site's footprint is filed, not weathered | Supporting | -| 4 | Joan's father's box | The farmhouse | `[CUS: Persuade — the colliery's closure notice, 1975, and an instruction to backfill the adit "by order of Centre", franked with the circle and stroke]` | The frank again, on the surface, in 1975 | Supporting | -| 5 | The parcel | Joan herself | `[CUS: Insight — she is not frightened of the soot; she is frightened of the man who came in 2022 and asked her to sign for a parcel for Bellhouse]` | Mr Smith is still active above ground, and nobody can describe him — not even Joan, an hour after she tried | Supporting | -| 6 | The vent head is breathing | Sheldon Moor | `[CUS: no roll — a painted mushroom vent in the heather, warm to the hand, smelling of a coal fire]` | Revelation 1 begins: something down there is alive | Essential | - -**Failure cases.** Clues 2–5 fail to *Joan points at it within the minute*; she has been -trying to show somebody for decades. **The parcel (5) is the exception**: on a failure she -does not mention it today, and the Act Two routes to Mr Smith do not need it. +**No roll:** the vent is warm to the hand and smells of a coal fire. **Somebody down there is +alive.** ### Beat 3 — The crossing *(~5 min)* > *Read aloud or paraphrase:* -> *At dusk the warm air over the vent head goes wrong — not shimmering, creased, like a page -> folded and opened again. Behind it, somewhere below you, a tannoy is announcing the evening -> shift.* +> *At dusk the warm air over the vent goes wrong — creased, like a page folded and opened. +> Below you, a tannoy is announcing the evening shift.* -**Everybody crosses. Nobody rolls to cross.** A fumble on anything they do in the next -minute costs 1 Coherence (*fumble on crossing*). They come out **inside**, in the lobby -behind a blast door that has been shut since 1974. Joan does not come. She has never been -further than the vent and she is not starting now. +**Nobody rolls to cross.** They come out inside, behind a blast door shut since 1974. -### Beat 4 — Enquiries *(~15 min)* +### Beat 4 — The Enquiries desk *(~15 min)* > *Read aloud or paraphrase:* -> *The lobby is warm and smells of floor polish and soup. A man in a cardigan behind a -> counter marked ENQUIRIES looks up from a ledger, looks at the blast door behind you, and -> says, very carefully: "Name and section, please."* +> *A warm lobby that smells of floor polish and soup. A man in a cardigan behind a desk +> marked ENQUIRIES looks up, looks at the sealed door behind you, and says, very carefully: +> "Name and section, please."* -**Nobody has arrived since 1974.** There is a procedure for *unaccounted persons* and the -clerk, **Mr Ogden**, follows it to the letter: he rings the Controller's Office, he offers -them a seat, and he does not let them past the counter. **Teague and one warden** arrive in -three minutes. Nobody is hostile yet. Everybody is frightened. +**Nobody has arrived since 1974.** Mr Ogden calls the Controller. **Warden Teague** arrives +with one guard. Everyone is frightened; nobody is hostile yet. -**How they present themselves is the first test of SO-H06.** +**How they introduce themselves matters:** -- **"We are from the Department."** Show a warrant card and it is **Borrowed Authority - inside scope**: 1 Trust, no roll, and the Seat accepts them as Department officers. - *It does not accept them as Centre's*, and Ogden says so: *"Centre didn't say."* -- **"We are from Centre."** A cover story. `[CUS: Tradecraft — the Seat's own forms, the - right words, the right patience]`. *Success:* Sowerby sees them as visitors pending - verification. *Failure:* the lie is noticed at once, because Centre never sends anybody — - they are **held pending Centre's instruction**, which is Act Two's step 2 arriving early in - spirit. -- **"There was no war."** Said to Ogden, it is filed and forwarded. Said to Teague, it is the - most dangerous sentence in the building — move Teague straight to hostile and play Act Two - with him following them. -- **Modern kit on show.** Every item is a question, and a phone is a thing nobody below can - explain. **Panic trigger** for Ogden, not the agents. +- **Warrant cards** work — no roll. They are accepted as Department officers. *"But Centre + didn't tell us you were coming."* +- **Claiming to be from Centre** — `[CUS: Tradecraft — the right words, the right + patience]`. *Failure:* the lie is spotted, because Centre never sends anyone. +- **"There was no war."** Said to Teague, it makes him an enemy for the rest of the case. -**Sowerby interviews them** in the Controller's Office to close the act. -`[CUS: Persuade — he is courteous, lonely and procedural; give him something he can file and -he will give them the run of the Seat with an escort]`. *Success:* **visitors pending -verification**, escorted by a junior warden, and Sowerby writes to Centre about them. -*Failure:* **held in the interview room** until Centre replies — Act Two opens with them -confined, and the first scene is getting out of it (Kit Marlow brings the tea, and -the door is not locked because nobody below has ever needed it locked). **Either way -Sowerby writes to Centre**, and Centre answers at Countdown step 2. +**Controller Sowerby** interviews them. `[CUS: Persuade — give him something he can file]`. +*Success:* they are **visitors with an escort**. *Failure:* they are **held in the interview +room** — the door is not even locked, and Kit Marlow brings the tea. **Either way, Sowerby +writes to Centre about them.** -`[CUS: Insight — Sowerby is not suspicious of them; he is afraid of what Centre will say -about them, and that is a stranger thing for a Controller to be afraid of]` - -> ⚠ **Do not put the fight in Act One.** Teague and one warden will not start anything at the -> counter, and the harness agrees it would be no contest: against the four-player cut, that -> pair detains the whole party in **4%** of fights. -> The fight belongs to Act Two, when the detail is sent. +> ⚠ **No fight in Act One.** Teague and one guard will not start anything, and would lose: +> against the four-player cut that pair detains everyone in +> **4%** of fights. --- -## Act Two — The Establishment *(~75 min)* +## Act Two — Finding Out *(~75 min)* -**Where:** the Seat and the pit below it. **What it is for:** a thousand people, how they -live, who has been writing to them, and what Thursday is. +**What it is for:** meet the people, find the truth, find the song. > *Read aloud or paraphrase:* -> *The main corridor is full. Shift change: overalls and cardigans, a child on somebody's -> shoulders, a noticeboard with a housing list, a rota, and a poster for the Allotments -> Show. Everybody looks at you, and then — because they were brought up to — everybody -> looks politely away.* +> *Shift change. The corridor is full of cardigans and overalls, a child on somebody's +> shoulders, a noticeboard with a housing list. Everybody looks at you, and then — because +> they were brought up properly — everybody looks away.* -### How to run the population +### How to run the bunker -**A council, not a bunker.** People queue, complain, minute things, and are kind. They offer -tea. **Say this in three mouths over the act:** *Centre will tell us when.* It is the -load-bearing line. +- **A council, not a bunker.** Queues, complaints, minutes, tea. Say this line three times, + in three mouths: *Centre will tell us when.* +- **Everything the agents do is noted** — a guard's pocketbook, a clerk on a phone — and + reaches Sowerby within the hour. +- **Show at least two of the three wrong things** (the chant, the dream, the drawings) before + the guards arrive. -**Suspicion is procedural, not violent.** Nobody below attacks strangers; they report them. -Every conversation the agents have is noted by somebody and reaches Sowerby within the -hour. **The GM should mention the notes** — a warden writing in a pocketbook, a clerk on a -telephone — so the detail in step 3 feels earned rather than sprung. +### The four places that matter -**The occult is never announced.** Six wrong things are placed below. **Show at least two -before the detail arrives**; the table does the rest. If a player says *cult* out loud, -nobody below understands the word. - -### When the players tell them the truth - -**To Sowerby.** He files it. *"I'd like that to be true. Centre says otherwise, and Centre -has never been wrong about the readings."* **What moves him is not a fact but a hand**: put -Mr Smith's letter beside the genuine 1974 Home Office paper in Marlow's file (clue 11c) and -they are not the same office. That is his script break, and it is available from the moment -they hold both. - -**To Pennyfeather.** She asks one question: *"Then who has been answering the post?"* This -tips her from unease into action. - -**Taking a resident to the surface.** The crossing works both ways at dusk. **Do not let it -solve the case**: a resident who sees an uncratered moor sees *a* moor, and Centre's readings -say the region is poisoned beyond sight. Sowerby: *"That is a photograph of a hillside. I have -four hundred of those."* **The Geiger counter is different**: it reads clean below and -clean above, and it is 1974 equipment, and Kowalczyk or Larkhall can vouch for it. -`[CUS: Repair (Electronics) — prove to a Seat engineer that the counter is sound]`. -*Success* gives Sowerby a reading he cannot file under Centre's — a dossier item for Act -Three. - -### Locations below - -| Location | What is there | Why the players come here | +| Place | Who | What they find | |---|---|---| -| **Lobby and Enquiries** | Ogden, the ledger, the blast door | Arrival; the visitor book with three 1974 entries and one in 2026 | -| **Control Room and studio** | Sowerby, the tannoy, the regional map, **the studio safe** | The bulletin; Centre's letters; **the tape** | -| **Registry** | Pennyfeather, fifty-two years of files, the census in the stacks | **Annex D** and the Establishment | -| **Sick bay and maternity** | Dr Ivy Larkhall; Edith Marlow, 101; Ruth Cotter, due | Revelation 3; the dream | -| **Crèche and school** | Nineteen under-elevens; Kit Marlow, 17, teaching them | The drawings; the intercom | -| **Pipe room** | The pneumatic head; Centre's in-tray | SO-H05; the frank | -| **Vigil hall** | The site's chapel-that-is-not, rows of chairs, a lectern | The Reading of the Region | -| **The Allotments** | Coal galleries under sodium lamps; trout tanks; hens | How a thousand people eat | -| **Buffer Depot** | Stores, the issue book, a quartermaster | Stock *received from Centre* | -| **Plant floor** | Boilers, the coal face, **the transmitter rack** | The mast feed | -| **The Sump** | The old sough-side cells, dry, clean, rarely used | Where the detail takes them | +| **Control Room** | Sowerby | The tannoy; **a file of Centre's letters, all in Mr Smith's hand**; the studio safe with the tape | +| **Registry** | Pennyfeather | **The Standing Order (SO-H03)** | +| **Sick bay** | Dr Larkhall; Edith Marlow, 101; Ruth Cotter | **The truth about 1974**; the shared dream; the baby due Thursday | +| **Crèche** | Kit Marlow, 17; the children, including Teague's daughter **Nell, 9** | **The drawings; the humming; the three o'clock speaker** | + +The rest — the vegetable tunnels, the plant floor, the Vigil hall, the Sump cells — is +colour. Use it when the table wanders. ### Clue trail — Act Two | # | Clue | Where | How found | What it gives | Type | |---|---|---|---|---|---| -| 7 | They think it happened | Anywhere | `[CUS: no roll — the bulletin does it]` | Revelation 2 | Essential | -| 8 | The response | The bulletin | `[CUS: Listen — nine hundred and ninety-nine people say the same six words at the same pace, and the children say them best]` | Revelation 5 (a) | Supporting | -| 9 | The Order | Registry | `[CUS: no roll — Pennyfeather supplies SO-H02 to anyone who asks for the Order; it is filed where it should be]` | Clauses 4 and 6, and Annex D | Essential | -| 10 | Centre's hand | Pipe room or Control Room | `[CUS: no roll — SO-H05, at Countdown step 2]` | Revelation 4 | Essential | -| 10b | The Controller's file | Sowerby's desk | `[CUS: Research — fifty-two years of Centre letters, all in one hand, all franked; the early ones are Home Office typescript, then from 1974 they are not]` | Revelation 4, by a second road | Essential | -| 11 | The stranger | Sick bay, from Marlow | `[CUS: Insight — she is not confused, she is ashamed, and when she is asked kindly about November 1974 she says "he said, then it had better be"]` | Revelation 3 | Essential | -| 11b | CASUALTIES NIL | Registry | `[CUS: no roll — Pennyfeather fetches the week-one return for anyone who asks what the first week was like; it is SO-H01's twin]` | Revelation 3, by a second road | Essential | -| 11c | Marlow's file | Sick-bay day room | `[CUS: Research — her box on the shelf with the ward files: the genuine 1974 exercise order on Home Office paper, whose Annex D says only that the Seat broadcasts a Home Office address, and her note: "I knew. I signed."]` | Revelation 3 in her hand, **and the dossier item that breaks Sowerby** | Essential | -| 12 | The dream | Sick bay, from Larkhall | `[CUS: Insight — ask her what is wrong with the born-below and she shows you her unpublished paper: eight hundred and eighty-one people, one dream]` | Revelation 5 (b) | Supporting | -| 13 | The drawings | Crèche | `[CUS: no roll — Kit shows them the children's pictures of the sun; every one is a circle with a stroke through the top]` | Revelation 5 (c), and the frank again | Supporting | -| 13b | The intercom | Crèche | `[CUS: Listen — the speaker is wired to the studio, not the Control Room; Kit says it plays at three in the morning]` | The tape is played to the children nightly | Essential | -| 13c | The establishment return | Registry board, Countdown step 4 | `[CUS: no roll — SO-H03 is posted where anyone can read it]` | Revelation 6, with the date | Essential | -| 14 | The Reading | Vigil hall, Countdown step 5 | `[CUS: Occult — it is not a gazetteer, it is a litany; the last names are the kind a far side answers to]` | Revelation 5 (d) | Supporting | -| 15 | Received from Centre | Buffer Depot | `[CUS: Knowledge — twenty years of stock ran out in 1996; thirty years of ninety-day issues since, and nothing that size fits a four-inch pipe]` | Revelation 5 (e): Centre feeds them | Supporting | -| 16 | The Allocations | Registry | `[CUS: Research — the Continuity Scheme's register, "per Centre guidance", steering births toward one number]` | Revelation 5 (f) | Supporting | -| 17 | The tape | Studio | `[CUS: Research — the studio log: RECONSTITUTION ADDRESS 12/R, REVISED, RECEIVED FROM CENTRE 2019; and a line nobody has queried: PLAYED NIGHTLY, CRÈCHE, INTERVAL SIGNAL ONLY]` | Revelation 6: where the Address is, and that it is Centre's | Essential | -| 18 | The feed | Plant floor | `[CUS: Repair (Electronics) — the transmitter valves are warmed every day, and the feeder runs up the old shaft to a mast that is still on the moor]` | The Address can reach the region | Essential | +| 1 | They believe the war happened | Anywhere | No roll — the bulletin | Revelation 1 | Essential | +| 2 | Marlow's shame | Sick bay | `[CUS: Insight — asked kindly about 1974, she says: "It was the drill. He said, then it had better be. I signed."]` | Revelation 2 | Essential | +| 2b | Marlow's box | Sick-bay shelf | `[CUS: Research — the real 1974 drill order, and her note: "I knew."]` | Revelation 2, second road | Essential | +| 3 | Centre's letters | Control Room | No roll — Sowerby shows them, or SO-H05 arrives | Mr Smith's name and mark | Essential | +| 4 | The Order | Registry | No roll — Pennyfeather hands over SO-H03 | Revelation 3: clause 6 and Annex D | Essential | +| 5 | The tape | Control Room studio | `[CUS: Research — the studio log: NEW TAPE FROM CENTRE, 2019. PLAYED NIGHTLY TO CRÈCHE, OPENING ONLY]` | The tape is the broadcast, and the children hear it | Essential | +| 6 | The humming | Crèche | `[CUS: Listen — the little ones are all humming the same slow tune, and it does not end; they start again]` | Revelation 4 | Essential | +| 7 | The dream | Sick bay, Larkhall | `[CUS: Insight — ask her what's odd about the born-below and she shows you her notes: 881 people, one dream]` | Mr Smith's hand on the people | Supporting | +| 8 | What it all is | Anywhere, once two wrong things are seen | `[CUS: Occult — the chant, the dream and the drawings are one procedure: a congregation being gathered]` | Names the horror | Supporting | -**Revelation 6 has four roads and none is gated on a single roll:** Annex D itself (9, no -roll), the return (13c, no roll), the studio log (17), and the feed (18). **The table needs -the Annex and one of the others.** If they reach the end of the act with only the Annex, -Pennyfeather says it for them: *"Annex D says those who hear it are entered. I always thought -it meant we'd write them down."* +**Failure costs a scene, never the clue.** A failed Research is a clerk fetching it later. A +failed Listen in the crèche means **Kit tells them** instead: *"They hum it all day. Nell +hummed it at her dad's tea. He didn't like it."* A failed Insight with Marlow closes that +route; the box (2b) and the Vigil still give it. -**Revelation 3 has three roads**, carried forward from v0.7 exactly: Marlow (11), which is -allowed to close; Pennyfeather (11b), which cannot; the file (11c), in a room they have a -reason to be in. **All three failed means the Vigil gives it to them.** +**Revelation 4 is also given by Larkhall** at Countdown step 5 if nobody has found it: *"The +little ones won't stop humming. I've had to ask Ruth to keep the baby away from the crèche."* -**Failure cases. A failed roll on a filed clue costs a scene, not the clue** — carried forward -from v0.7's fourth desk pass. A failed Research is Pennyfeather or a clerk fetching it while -the party does something else. **Clue 18 failed** means the rack reads as ordinary plant and -Kowalczyk hears about the mast from the plant foreman a scene later. **Clue 13b failed** -means Kit mentions the three o'clock tone in passing, without the wiring. +### Kit Marlow — the key to the children -**Revelation 5 is the table's to build.** Bhattacharya's Occult 63 is the one sheet that -names it: `[CUS: Occult — any two of the six wrong things, put side by side, are the same -procedure; it is an enrolment, and it has been running for decades]`. *Failure* is not a -lost clue; it is a lost *name*. The table can still act on what it has seen. +**Give her a scene doing something ordinary** — teaching geography from a 1971 atlas — before +anyone asks her anything. Then she tells them, unprompted: -### The census, in the Registry - -**It has been counting for fifty-two years and it has reached nine hundred and -ninety-nine.** It is in the stacks behind Pennyfeather's desk. - -`[CUS: Spot — something between the shelves is keeping a tally, and the tally is people]` - -It does not attack. **When it counts an agent — one round, no roll, it simply looks — that -agent is ENUMERATED** (see the bestiary): on a list on the far side for good. **Here it also -means they are on the Establishment**, and an enumerated agent who hears the Address in Act -Three is enrolled with no resistance roll. - -**Tell the table what just happened when it happens.** It is optional and it is cheap, and -it is the clearest way to make SO-H05's word *enumerated* mean something. +- The speaker plays at three every morning. She was too old to learn the tune when it + started. **The under-twelves all know it.** +- **She has noticed the song only works whole.** *"If Nell stops halfway she just looks + confused and goes back to her crayons. It has to finish."* +- That is the cure, if the table thinks of it: **play the children the tape with the ending + cut off.** If nobody thinks of it by the end of the act, Kit says it. ### The detention — Countdown step 3 -SO-H05 tells Sowerby to enumerate or remove. **He chooses enumeration**, because it is -preferred and it sounds like paperwork. He sends **Teague and a detail of wardens** to bring -the agents to Registry to be entered. +Centre's letter says detain the strangers. Sowerby obeys. **Teague and his guards** come to +take the agents to the Sump cells. > *Read aloud or paraphrase:* -> *Teague comes round the corner with his hat on and three men behind him, and he is holding -> his truncheon the way a man holds something he hopes not to use. "The Controller asks you to -> come to Registry," he says. "I'm asked to say it's a formality. I'd like you to come -> quietly. I'll ask you twice."* +> *Teague comes round the corner with three men behind him, holding his truncheon the way a +> man holds something he hopes not to use. "The Controller asks you to come with me. I'll ask +> you twice."* -**Scale the detail to the table.** Four players: **Teague and three wardens**. Six players: -**Teague and five.** Their sheets are in the compendium; the wardens are one actor. +**Four players: Teague and three guards. Six players: Teague and five.** -**What the fight is, measured.** The harness ran each detail 2,000 times against this -scenario's declared cast. It does not model restraint, so read the detention figures as -sound and the death figures as a ceiling — the fight with nobody holding back and nobody -treating the fallen, which is not the fight the wardens are ordered to have. +**What the fight is, measured** — 2,000 runs each against this scenario's cast. Detention +figures are sound; death figures are a **ceiling**, because the guards stop hitting anyone +who is down. -| Detail | Against | Agents hurt | Agents down | Whole party detained | Deaths *(ceiling)* | -|---|---|---|---|---|---| -| Teague and three | the four-player cut | **3.5** | **2.89** | **60.3%** | **1.31** | -| Teague and three | the declared six | **2.71** | **1.16** | **0.3%** | **0.59** | -| Teague and five | the declared six | **4.75** | **3.51** | **15.7%** | **2.07** | +| Detail | Against | Agents down | Whole party detained | Deaths *(ceiling)* | +|---|---|---|---|---| +| Teague and three | the four-player cut | **2.89** | **60.3%** | **1.31** | +| Teague and three | the declared six | **1.16** | **0.3%** | **0.59** | +| Teague and five | the declared six | **3.51** | **15.7%** | **2.07** | -**What that means at the table.** The four-player cut has no fighter in it and **loses this -fight more often than it wins it.** The six have Okonkwo and win it — and a win is a -corridor of beaten neighbours, which SO-H06 forbids and which ends every conversation below. -**Either way the fight is the worst option, and the brief already said so.** +**A small party usually loses. A big party wins and breaks the brief.** Either way, fighting is +the worst option. -**The ways through, all live:** +**The ways through:** -- **Go quietly.** They are walked to Registry to be entered. **This is the real jeopardy** - — see *In Registry* below. -- **Talk it down.** `[CUS: Persuade — Teague is asking to be given a reason; a Department - warrant and a straight account are a reason]`. *Success:* he escorts them instead of - detaining them, and reports that they came willingly. -- **The script break.** Say **Nell**. His daughter is nine and in the crèche, and anybody - who has been there knows her name. He stands the detail down and becomes their strongest - voice below. `[CUS: Insight — he is not threatening anyone; he is asking to be argued out - of it]` tells them to try. -- **Run.** `[CUS: Stealth — through the Allotments galleries, where the lamps hum and - nobody looks up]`. *Success:* they are loose until Act Three and wanted. *Failure:* they - are cornered at the Sump gate and it becomes the fight or the quiet walk. -- **Fight.** It is legal and it is measured above. **Panic trigger** at the first agent down. - A warden stops hitting a downed agent and cuffs them. **Every resident who saw it stops - helping.** Larkhall treats the injured on both sides, without being asked. - -**In Registry.** Pennyfeather has the pen. **Entering them takes the establishment past a -thousand before Thursday** — she has read Annex D and she does not like it. - -- **If they have treated her as a person** — asked her a straight question, told her the - truth, or brought her SO-H01's query — **she stalls with no roll.** She finds the form is - the wrong one. She needs Centre's reference. It is teatime. -- **Otherwise** `[CUS: Persuade — ask her not to, and tell her why]`. *Failure:* she enters - them, and each entered agent is **on the Establishment** exactly as if the census had - counted them. -- **Then the Sump.** Held agents wait in the dry cells by the drainage level. It costs **one - scene**: Teague lets them out after the Nell break, or Kit brings the key, or - `[CUS: Repair (Mechanical) — a 1962 lock, and nobody has oiled it since]`. +- **Go quietly.** The Sump is dry and clean. It costs **one scene** to get out: Kit brings the + key, or Teague relents, or `[CUS: Repair (Mechanical) — a 1962 lock nobody has oiled]`. +- **Talk.** `[CUS: Persuade — a warrant card and an honest account are a reason]`. + *Success:* he escorts them instead. +- **Nell.** Mention his daughter — and, if they know, **the song she hums.** He stands his + men down and is on their side from now on. +- **Run.** `[CUS: Stealth — through the lamp-lit vegetable tunnels]`. *Failure:* cornered + at the Sump. +- **Fight.** **Panic trigger** at the first agent down. Everyone who saw it stops helping. --- -## Act Three — The Address *(~50 min)* +## Act Three — The Broadcast *(~50 min)* -**Where:** the Vigil hall at 06:00 Thursday, then the studio and the plant floor. **What it -is for:** the order of operations — silence the Address, then let them go. +**What it is for:** stop the tape, decide about the children, open the door. > *Read aloud or paraphrase:* -> *The whole Seat is in the Vigil hall. Sowerby has shaved. He reads Centre's renewal aloud, -> as Controllers have done two hundred and eight times, and his voice changes at the last line: -> "Establishment complete on issue. Annex D is in force. The Seat will speak at the hour." -> Down the corridor, a baby starts to cry.* +> *Thursday, six in the morning. The whole bunker is in the Vigil hall. Sowerby reads +> Centre's letter aloud, and then — down the corridor — a baby starts to cry. Somebody +> whispers: "That's a thousand." Sowerby closes the folder. "The broadcast is at seven," he +> says. "We're going home."* -**Ruth Cotter's child is the thousandth.** If the census or Pennyfeather already put the -agents on the Establishment, the thousand was reached yesterday and the baby is simply a -baby. **Either way Annex D is in force, and at 07:00 — the session's 2:45 — Sowerby goes to -the studio to broadcast.** He believes he is telling the region the Seat is coming up. +He believes it. **At 07:00 (the session's 2:45) he plays the tape** to the region through the +old mast on the moor. -### What has to happen, in order +### Step 1 — Get the tape -**1. Silence the Address.** Three ways, any one of them enough: +It is in the studio safe. Sowerby has the key. -- **The tape.** It is in the studio safe; Sowerby has the key on his chain. - - **He hands it over** if his script break has landed: Marlow's genuine 1974 order beside - Centre's letters (11c + 10b). No roll. He opens the safe himself and asks them not to - play it. - - `[CUS: Repair (Mechanical) — a 1962 Chubb safe; a special opens it in a minute, a - success in ten, a failure costs the scene]`. - - `[CUS: Tradecraft — take the key off his chain while he reads the renewal]`. - - **Destroying it** is easy once held: the studio's bulk eraser, or fire. -- **The feed.** On the plant floor. `[CUS: Repair (Electronics) — pull the output valves and - the transmitter is a cabinet of warm glass]`. *Failure:* the rack is live and the attempt - costs a scene. `[CUS: Demolition — cut the feeder where it enters the shaft]` works on a - failure too, loudly, and the plant foreman will not forgive it. -- **The Annex.** A **Borrowed Authority** stretch — the credential is Ellerby-Stannard, one - tier beyond scope because he is dead. `[CUS: Anomaly Lore — Annex D as it stands was never - drafted by the Home Office, and a correction of a 1974 clerical error restores the 1962 text]` at −20 - per red flag broken. *Success:* **Centre's Annex D was never part of the order**; the tape is a tape. **The dossier buys scope, not the roll** — carried forward from v0.7's second desk - pass: +- **He hands it over** if they show him Marlow's box beside Centre's letters — the drill order + and the orders that kept them down are in different hands. No roll. **This is his turning + point**, and he asks them not to play it. +- **Take it.** `[CUS: Tradecraft — the key off his chain during the assembly]`, or + `[CUS: Repair (Mechanical) — the old safe]`. *Failure* costs time, not the tape. +- **Last resort — the mast.** `[CUS: Repair (Electronics) — pull the transmitter valves on + the plant floor]`. This stops the broadcast but leaves the tape where it is. - | Items | What the correction grants | - |---|---| - | **One** | Annex D reverts to its 1962 wording — a Home Office address that enters nobody. **The tape still exists** and the enumerated are still on the list | - | **Two** | As one, and **the crèche intercom goes silent**; the dream stops for the youngest | - | **Three** | As two, and **the Establishment is only a headcount again** — nobody below is enrolled in anything | +### Step 2 — The choice about the children - The items: Marlow's file (11c), the Geiger counter reading Sowerby could not file, and - Pennyfeather's counter-signature `[CUS: Persuade — she has wanted to sign something against - Annex D since she read it]`. +**Once they hold the tape, the table has to decide.** Put all three options on the table, +plainly. Do not hint at a right answer. -**2. Let them go.** Clause 4: any agent holding a warrant cancels the order in person. **No -roll. It works. The cancelling agent spends 2 Coherence**, permanently, because they are the -authority that makes it true. +**A. Burn the tape. Bring everyone up.** +- The region is safe **today**. +- The 168 children still know the song. The department cannot let it loose in schools, so + **the children are taken into department care**, separated from their parents, for as long + as it takes — and nobody knows how long that is. +- **Teague will not let them take Nell.** Play that. -- ⚠ **Clause 6 sends the Seat up under Annex D.** Cancel with the Address still live and - Sowerby broadcasts *at once*, not at 07:00. **Say this out loud if a player reaches for the - warrant first** — SO-H06 term 5 already told them to read clause 6. -- **Or Sowerby withholds the renewal himself**, if his script break landed and they ask him - to. It is the first decision he has ever been allowed to make, and it releases them without - costing anybody Coherence. **This is the best version of the release and it is his, not - theirs.** +**B. Burn the tape. Leave the families below.** +- The region is safe. The door stays shut **for the families with young children** — about + four hundred people — and everyone else comes up. +- They are safe, fed and together, **and they are prisoners** of a lie the agents now know is + a lie. Mr Smith's letters will keep coming. -**What release costs, said plainly.** Eight hundred and eighty-one people born below have no -record above ground. **They do not vanish** — the department is here to bring them home, and -they are real. But they come up without names on anything, and the only record of them is -Pennyfeather's register. **If the register comes up with them, they have lives. If it does -not, the department spends a decade proving they exist.** Pennyfeather will carry it herself -if anyone asks her to. +**C. Cure the children first. Then burn the tape. Then bring everyone up.** +- The best ending, and the hardest. It needs: + 1. **Kit's idea** — play the tape with the ending cut off. *(No roll if they talked to Kit; + otherwise `[CUS: Listen — the song only bites at the end]`.)* + 2. **The cut.** `[CUS: Repair (Electronics) — splice out the last minute of an eleven-minute + tape]`. *Failure:* the cut is wrong and must be redone — ten minutes gone. + 3. **Somebody runs the machine** in the crèche with the children. **That agent hears ten + minutes of it** and rolls **POW×5**. *Failure:* **2 Coherence**, and they will have the + dream for the rest of their life. + 4. **It must be done before 07:00.** If Sowerby has not handed over the tape willingly, he + is looking for it. +- *Success:* by morning the children have forgotten the tune. Then burn the tape. -### If the Address goes out +### Step 3 — Open the door -At 07:00 the bell tone plays on the tannoy and on a mast on Sheldon Moor. **The Address is -eleven minutes long** and it works on anyone who hears it to the end. +- **An agent cancels the Standing Order** with their warrant card. No roll. They spend **2 + Coherence**. +- **Or Sowerby cancels it himself**, if he turned. No Coherence spent. **This is the best way + to end it.** +- ⚠ **If they open the door before stopping the tape, the broadcast starts immediately.** Say + so if a player reaches for the warrant card too early — SO-H01 already told them. -- **Any agent in earshot** resists with POW×5; *failure* costs **1 Coherence** and they are - enrolled — they hold, they count, they answer — until the case is closed and the debrief - can get them back. **Enumerated agents do not roll.** **Panic trigger** for every agent who - hears the tone. -- **It can still be stopped.** Eleven minutes is enough to reach the plant floor from the - studio. The feed at `[CUS: Repair (Electronics) — with the rack live and under load]` −20, - or the feeder with Demolition, or the tape pulled from the machine by hand in the studio - with Sowerby between them and it. **Stopped before the end, it has enrolled only the - building.** -- **If it finishes,** the **overwriter** arrives to correct the region to match the record. - It is not a fight — see the bestiary — and the harness cannot deliver its threat; the GM - must. **Read these four corrections, in order, then stop:** - 1. **Joan Wetherlaw says "We hold."** She says it on the phone to the Bureau, and then she says the other four words. - 2. **The warrant card names somebody else** — it has always been an Establishment card. - *(Use the agent with the most Coherence left; they have the furthest to fall.)* - 3. **Registry at the Bureau has always had Bellhouse on its establishment.** Bewley's - in-tray has a renewal in it. - 4. **Region 12 has always had one million, one hundred and forty-one thousand people in - it, and every one of them is waiting for Centre to tell them when.** +### If the broadcast goes out - The case is over. **This option must stay available** — a choice with one acceptable - answer is not a choice. +The song plays on the tannoy and on the moor. It is **eleven minutes long.** + +- **Every agent in earshot** rolls POW×5 at the end. **Panic trigger** at the first note. +- **It can still be stopped:** the mast, or the tape pulled from the machine by hand. + **Stopped before the end, nobody outside is taken.** +- **If it finishes,** say this and stop: *In farmhouses and flats and school buses across the + Peak District, people stop what they are doing and say, quietly, "We hold. We count. We + answer."* Region 12 belongs to Mr Smith. ### The endings -| Ending | What it takes | What the register says | -|---|---|---| -| **Silenced and released** | One neutralisation, then clause 4 or Sowerby | A thousand people come up over a week. The Bureau opens files on all of them. **The dream persists in the born-below** unless the Annex correction reached row two. | -| **Silenced, Sowerby's release** | His script break, and his choice | As above, and nobody spends Coherence. Sowerby is the last up and stands on the moor for an hour. | -| **Silenced, not released** | The Address stopped but nobody cancels | The Seat stays down, safely. The department returns next month with better paper. **Mr Smith writes again in ninety days.** | -| **Released, not silenced** | Clause 4 first | The broadcast, at once. See above. | -| **The Address goes out** | Nobody reached the tape or the feed | See above. | +| Ending | What happens | +|---|---| +| **C — cured, burned, opened** | A thousand people come home, with their children. The agent who ran the machine dreams of a counter and a pleasant man for the rest of their life. | +| **A — burned, opened** | Everyone comes up. The children go into care. Some parents never forgive the department. Teague is arrested at the crèche door. | +| **B — burned, families kept below** | Six hundred come up. Four hundred stay down, safe and lied to. Next month there is a letter from Centre. | +| **Broadcast stopped at the mast only** | The tape still exists. Decide again — or leave it for the next case. | +| **Broadcast finished** | Region 12 is Mr Smith's. | -**Whatever the ending, the letters come up.** Sowerby's file is the department's first -evidence of Mr Smith with more than a name on it. **Read this last, to close the case:** +**Whatever the ending, close the case with this:** -> *Three days later a buff envelope arrives in Registry, in Bewley's in-tray, franked with a -> circle and a stroke. It is addressed to the agents by name. Inside is a single line: "With -> thanks for the count. — J. Smith, for Centre."* +> *Three days later a buff envelope arrives in Bewley's in-tray, stamped with a circle and a +> stroke, addressed to the agents by name. Inside is one line: "With thanks for the count. — +> J. Smith, for Centre."* -### Teague +### If they call in containment instead -Warden Michael Teague, thirty-eight, born below, is the only person in Bellhouse who has -decided the surface is a lie — because if it is not, his mother died down here for a filing -and his daughter was born into one. **He is the case's only violence and he is avoidable.** - -**His paragraph, printed to be read aloud:** *"I've read what Centre sends. I've read it more -times than you have. It says the region's dead and we're what's left. If that's wrong then -everything I've done is wrong, and I'm not able to hold that. So I'm going to ask you to -come with me, and then I'm going to ask you again."* - -**His script break is Nell**, and it works in Act Two or Act Three. After it he is the -strongest voice below for letting them go, and **he stands at the studio door on Thursday** -if the table asks him to. - -### EXPOSURE — the one thing that will kill the party - -If the agents call the Seat in as a containment failure rather than a rescue, the department -sends a **quarantine unit**, and it gets there first. **SO-H06 exists so that nobody does this -by accident.** - -**Read the bestiary entry before you put it on the table.** v0.7's second desk pass ran it -against this cast and it wiped all six without its sterilisation blast firing, because that -power is out of the fight harness. The recorded figure against the frozen four is a wipe -rate of **87.4%**. - -**Run it as a clock, out loud:** - -- **Six rounds, counted openly**, then the site is rendered — BLAST 6d6, the whole location, - and a thousand people in it. -- **The argue-down** is the same Borrowed Authority stretch as the Annex correction: - `[CUS: Anomaly Lore — a Seat under a standing order outranks a containment instruction]` at - −20 per red flag broken, and the same dossier items count. *Success:* the unit stands down - and waits for the Bureau. -- **One more attempt** at −20 if the first fails. **Five rounds reach the lobby. They do not - reach the crèche.** Tell the players that. +If the agents report the children as a containment problem rather than a rescue, the +department sends a **quarantine unit**. It will seal the bunker with everyone inside. Its +recorded wipe rate against a four-agent party is +**87.4%**. **Count down six rounds out +loud**, and let them talk it down: `[CUS: Anomaly Lore — the Standing Order outranks a +containment order]` at −20. SO-H01 exists so nobody does this by accident. --- @@ -845,82 +533,55 @@ rate of **87.4%**. ### Below -**Controller Edwin Sowerby, 61** — *has obeyed Centre for fifty-two years and is afraid, -for the first time, of what Centre will say.* -Went down aged nine with his mother, a Registry clerk. Controller since 2011. Reads Centre's -letters aloud at every renewal and keeps the rest in a file on his desk. Courteous, lonely, -procedural. **He sends the wardens because Centre prefers enumeration and it sounds like -paperwork.** Break: Mr Smith's hand beside the real Home Office paper. +**Controller Edwin Sowerby, 61** — *has obeyed Centre for fifty years and is starting to be +afraid of it.* Went down aged nine. Sends the guards because Centre says so. **Turns** when +he sees Mr Smith's letters beside the real 1974 order. -**Registrar Alice Pennyfeather, 51** — *establishment number 413, the first child born -below, and the only person who has read Annex D as a sentence.* -Hands SO-H02 and SO-H03 to anyone who asks a straight question. **She holds the pen in -Registry**, and whether she enters the agents is the act's hidden hinge. She will carry the -birth register up if asked. +**Registrar Alice Pennyfeather, 51** — *the first child born below; hands over the Order to +anyone who asks.* -**Dr Ivy Larkhall, 44** — *the doctor who has found that eight hundred and eighty-one people -share one dream, and has nobody to publish it to.* -Curious, not frightened. Delivers Ruth Cotter's baby on Thursday. Treats anybody hurt in the -detention, on either side, without being asked. +**Dr Ivy Larkhall, 44** — *has found that 881 people share one dream.* Delivers Ruth's baby. +Treats anyone hurt, on either side. -**Deputy Controller Edith Marlow, 101** — *the woman who signed for a stranger because he -asked her to.* -In the end bed in the sick bay. Not confused; ashamed. **She is the only person alive who -has seen Mr Smith** and she cannot picture him. Kindly asked, she says it was the exercise. -Pressed, she denies it. Her box is on the day-room shelf. +**Edith Marlow, 101** — *signed for a stranger in 1974 and has been ashamed ever since.* The +only person who has seen Mr Smith, and she cannot picture him. Kind questions work; pressure +does not. -**Warden Michael Teague, 38** — *the only man below who has decided the surface is a lie.* -Head of the site's eleven police. Widower. Daughter **Nell, 9**, in the crèche. Leads the -detail himself. Leaves his pistol in the armoury on purpose. **Not a villain.** +**Warden Michael Teague, 38** — *head of the bunker's guards, and Nell's dad.* Widower. Leads +the detention himself, with a truncheon; leaves his pistol locked up. **Not a villain.** He +will fight anyone who tries to take his daughter. -**Sub-Officer Kit Marlow, 17** — *draws the sun the way the little ones do, and has started to -wonder why.* -Edith's great-granddaughter. Teaches the under-elevens geography from a 1971 atlas. Shows the -agents the drawings without being asked; knows about the three o'clock tone. **Give her a -scene doing something ordinary before anybody decides anything.** +**Kit Marlow, 17** — *teaches the little ones, and has noticed the song.* Edith's +great-granddaughter. **The key to the cure.** -**Mr Ogden, Enquiries** — *has waited fifty-two years for somebody to come through that door -and has no form for it.* +**Nell Teague, 9** — *hums the song at tea.* -**Ruth Cotter, 24** — *due on Thursday, and would like everybody to stop calling her baby -"the thousandth".* +**Mr Ogden, Enquiries** — *has no form for visitors.* -**The Seat, as a character** — a thousand people, warm corridors, soup, a housing list, an -Allotments Show, and six words at the end of every bulletin. *Centre will tell us when.* +**Ruth Cotter, 24** — *due on Thursday; would like people to stop calling her baby "the +thousandth".* ### Above -**Joan Wetherlaw, 67** — *has swept coal soot off her yard her whole life and signed for a -parcel she should not have.* -Her father closed the pit in 1975 on Centre's order. His box has the frank in it. A man in a -grey coat came in 2022; she cannot describe him and it frightens her more than the soot. +**Joan Wetherlaw, 67** — *has swept coal soot off her yard all her life.* Signed for Mr +Smith's parcel once. -**Mr Bewley, Registry** — *wants the letters.* *"Bring me everything in his hand."* - -**Mr Prosser, Stores** — *nineteen years of telling agents what they may take.* +**Mr Bewley, Registry** — *wants the letters.* **Mr Prosser, Stores** — *issues the 1974 kit.* ### Never met -**Mr Smith, for Centre** — a grey coat, the right paper, a pleasant manner, and a face nobody -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. - -### Creatures used — all from the bestiary - -| Creature | Where | What it is for | -|---|---|---| -| **The census** | Act Two, the Registry stacks | Counting the Establishment; ENUMERATED is permanent and here it also enrols | -| **The overwriter** | Act Three, only if the Address finishes | Correcting the region to match the record | -| **Quarantine unit** | EXPOSURE, if the agents call it in | The failure state; argue it down or die | +**Mr Smith, for Centre** — a **Cthulhu Mythos messenger**: a grey coat, a pleasant manner, and +a face nobody can picture. A go-between for the powers that sleep Outside, not one of them. +**No sheet, no portrait, no scene.** He gets away. ### Cast actors — in the compendium -| Actor | Where | What it is for | -|---|---|---| -| **Bellhouse warden** | Act Two, the detail | Detaining, not killing; one actor for all of them | -| **Warden Michael Teague** | Act One and Act Two | Leads the detail; the Nell script break | +| Actor | Where | +|---|---| +| **Bellhouse warden** | Act Two — one actor for all the guards | +| **Warden Michael Teague** | Acts One and Two | + +The **quarantine unit** is in the bestiary. --- @@ -928,28 +589,21 @@ case. -> ⚠ **THE DECLARED CAST IS LOAD-BEARING ON THE BUILD.** The marker above is read by -> `check-rollable`, which holds every skill named here to 25% or better on somebody in the -> list, and by `detention-tables`, which measures the Act Two fight against these six and -> the four-player cut. Change it and re-run both. +> ⚠ **The cast marker above is read by the build.** `check-rollable` holds every roll in this +> document to 25% or better on somebody listed, and `detention-tables` measures the Act Two +> fight against these six. -| # | Agent | Why they are here | The routes they own | -|---|---|---|---| -| 1 | **Marta Holloway** — Senior Field Officer, lead | Signs for the case and carries SO-H06 | Navigate 63 (the soot edge), Stealth 63 (the Allotments), **Tradecraft 63 (Enquiries, and Sowerby's key)** | -| 2 | **Arun Bhattacharya** — Registry Officer | The return was his section's find | Research 63 (10b, 11c, 16, 17), Knowledge 63, **Occult 63 (Revelation 5)**, **Anomaly Lore 63 (the Annex correction)** | -| 3 | **Kate Renshaw** — Interview Officer | Everyone below wants to talk | **Persuade 63 (Sowerby, Teague, Pennyfeather, Joan)**, Insight 63 (Marlow, Larkhall), Listen 63 (the response, the intercom) | -| 4 | **Marek Kowalczyk** — Probationary, engineering | Somebody has to read the plant | **Repair (Electronics) 58 (the feed, the Geiger counter)**, Repair (Mechanical) 58 (the safe, the Sump lock), Demolition 58 | -| 5 | **Dr Chidi Nkemdirim** — Probationary, medicine | The sooty dog is on his bench | Insight 58 and Knowledge 58, backing Renshaw and Bhattacharya; he helps Larkhall with the birth | -| 6 | **Ben Okonkwo** — Field Officer, containment | In case it is the other kind of case | Athletics, Brawl — **the detention**, and the studio door on Thursday. His best play is to stand still | +| Agent | What they do here | +|---|---| +| **Marta Holloway** — lead | Tradecraft 63 (Enquiries; Sowerby's key), Stealth 63 (running) | +| **Arun Bhattacharya** — Registry | Research 63 (Marlow's box, the studio log), Occult 63 (what it all is), Anomaly Lore 63 | +| **Kate Renshaw** — interviews | Persuade 63 (Joan, Sowerby, Teague), Insight 63 (Marlow, Larkhall), Listen 63 (the humming, the cut) | +| **Marek Kowalczyk** — engineer | Repair (Electronics) 58 (**the tape cut**, the mast), Repair (Mechanical) 58 (the safe, the cell lock) | +| **Dr Chidi Nkemdirim** — medic | Backs Renshaw's Insight at 58; helps Larkhall with the birth | +| **Ben Okonkwo** — containment | The detention. His best move is to stand still and not hit anyone | -**Casting note for Okonkwo's player, given before the game:** SO-H06 forbids him the easy -answer, and the scenario is built so that he is the reason the detail does not become a -beating. Tell his player that up front. - -**At four players,** cut Okonkwo and Nkemdirim. **No essential clue needs either**: every -roll they own is backed by Renshaw or Bhattacharya at 63, and Medicine is never called for — -Larkhall delivers the baby. **The detention is harder at four** and the table above says how -much harder. +**At four players,** cut Okonkwo and Nkemdirim. Nothing essential needs them. **The detention +is much harder at four**, and the table above says how much. --- @@ -957,45 +611,38 @@ much harder. | # | Location | Act | One line | |---|---|---|---| -| 1 | Wetherlaw farm | 1 | Coal soot on the yard, and a woman with a brush | -| 2 | The soot edge | 1 | A straight line for 400 m, then a right angle | -| 3 | Sheldon Moor vent head | 1 | Warm to the hand, smelling of a coal fire; the crossing | -| 4 | The postal pipe | 1/2 | Four inches wide, and Centre answers through it | -| 5 | The adit | 1 | Backfilled rubble since 1975 | -| 6 | Lobby and Enquiries | 1 | Mr Ogden, and no form for visitors | -| 7 | Control Room and studio | 2/3 | The tannoy, Centre's file, the safe, the tape | -| 8 | Registry | 2 | The Order, the Establishment, and something counting | -| 9 | Sick bay and maternity | 2/3 | Marlow, Larkhall, Ruth Cotter | -| 10 | Crèche and school | 2 | The drawings, and a tone at three in the morning | +| 1 | Wetherlaw farm | 1 | Coal soot, and Joan with a brush | +| 2 | The soot edge | 1 | A straight line of soot across the fields | +| 3 | The vent | 1 | Warm, smells of coal; the crossing | +| 4 | The postal pipe | 1/2 | How Centre's letters arrive | +| 5 | The adit | 1 | Filled with rubble in 1975 | +| 6 | Lobby and Enquiries | 1 | Mr Ogden | +| 7 | Control Room and studio | 2/3 | Sowerby, the letters, the safe, the tape | +| 8 | Registry | 2 | Pennyfeather and the Order | +| 9 | Sick bay | 2/3 | Marlow, Larkhall, Ruth | +| 10 | Crèche | 2/3 | Kit, Nell, the humming, the speaker | | 11 | Pipe room | 2 | Centre's in-tray | -| 12 | Plant floor | 2/3 | Boilers, the coal face, the transmitter rack | -| 13 | Vigil hall | 2/3 | The Reading of the Region; the renewal assembly | -| 14 | The Allotments and Buffer Depot | 2 | Sodium lamps, trout, and stock received from Centre | -| 15 | The Sump | 2 | Dry cells by the drainage level | +| 12 | Plant floor | 3 | The transmitter | +| 13 | Vigil hall | 2/3 | The chant; Thursday's assembly | +| 14 | The vegetable tunnels | 2 | Lamps, trout, hens | +| 15 | The Sump | 2 | The cells | --- ## GM notes — three things that do not get resolved -1. **What Mr Smith is.** A messenger. For whom, exactly, and what he reports, the case does - not say. His next letter is the next case. -2. **Where Centre's stock comes from.** Thirty years of issues through a four-inch pipe. Do - not explain it. -3. **Whether the dream stops.** Row two of the Annex correction silences the intercom. It - does not say the born-below stop dreaming, and they will be asked about it for the rest of - their lives. +1. **What Mr Smith is for.** He is a messenger. Whose, and what he reports, the case does not + say. +2. **Where the stockpile comes from.** Do not explain it. +3. **How long the children stay in care** (ending A), and whether the dream ever stops for the + born-below. --- ## Open questions for Tim -- ✅ **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. -- **Kit Marlow.** She was the cost of v0.7's tidy ending. Here she is a witness, not a price. - Check she still earns her scene. -- **Runtime.** 45/75/50 is inherited, not measured. Act Two has more locations than v0.7 and a - fight in it. **Desk pass 1 should time it before anything else.** +- **Ending A's cost.** Taking 168 children from their parents is heavy. It is the point of the + choice — but check it sits right for a convention table. +- **The cure's price.** One agent dreaming for life, or 2 Coherence. Too light? Too heavy? +- **Runtime.** Unmeasured. Act Three now holds a decision *and* a race; desk pass 1 should time + it first. diff --git a/packs/standingorder/000003.log b/packs/standingorder/000003.log index d09dadd..c25efb8 100644 Binary files a/packs/standingorder/000003.log and b/packs/standingorder/000003.log differ diff --git a/tools/scenario-standingorder.mjs b/tools/scenario-standingorder.mjs index 0a5ed12..e1771e3 100644 --- a/tools/scenario-standingorder.mjs +++ b/tools/scenario-standingorder.mjs @@ -9,8 +9,8 @@ * paragraph, which is visible in the journal rather than silently dropped. * * Two cast actors, and only two: the wardens the Controller sends in Act Two, and the man - * who leads them. Everybody else below is there to be talked to, and the three creatures - * are the bestiary's own. The detention fight is measured by tools/detention-tables.mjs + * who leads them. Everybody else below is there to be talked to, and the quarantine unit + * is the bestiary's own. The detention fight is measured by tools/detention-tables.mjs * against the declared cast, and the document cites that artifact. */ import { readFileSync } from "node:fs"; @@ -185,7 +185,7 @@ export const SO_CAST = [ { fam: "spot", spec: "", val: 45 }], weapons: ["punch", "cudgel"], tactics: "A wooden truncheon, issued 1974 and oiled every Friday since. They have " - + "arrested drunks and a man who stole from the Allotments; they have never fought anybody " + + "arrested drunks and a man who stole from the vegetable tunnels; they have never fought anybody " + "who fights back. They come in pairs, ask once, and take hold of arms. THEY ARE " + "DETAINING, NOT KILLING: a warden stops hitting an agent who is down and puts the " + "cuffs on instead. A warden who is hurt badly steps back and calls for Teague. If an " @@ -202,12 +202,12 @@ export const SO_CAST = [ { fam: "insight", spec: "", val: 50 }, { fam: "spot", spec: "", val: 55 }], weapons: ["punch", "cudgel"], - tactics: "The only man below who has decided the surface is a lie. He leads the " + tactics: "Not a villain: a widower who does what the Controller asks. He leads the " + "detail himself because he will not send anybody where he would not go. His " + "service pistol is in the armoury and he leaves it there on purpose. He asks them to " + "come quietly, twice. SCRIPT BREAK: his daughter Nell, nine, is in the creche; an " + "agent who names her puts a father in the corridor instead of a warden, and he " - + "stands the detail down." } + + "stands the detail down. He will fight anybody who tries to take her." } ]; /* The people, for showing. Joan Wetherlaw has no portrait yet — see STANDING_ORDER_ART. */