diff --git a/art/maps/bellhouse-section.svg b/art/maps/bellhouse-section.svg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..53b55c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/art/maps/bellhouse-section.svg @@ -0,0 +1,169 @@ + + + + + + + + + + + + + BELLHOUSE — RSG 12 + SECTION LOOKING WEST · SHELDON MOOR · COMMISSIONED 1962 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1 + + + + + 2 + + + + + + 3 + + + + + + 4 + + + + + + 5 + + + + + + + + + + 6 + + + + + 7 + + + + + + + + 8 + + + + + + 9 + + + + + + + + 10 + + + + + 11 + + + + + + + 12 + + + + + + + rock mass hatched · pneumatic line dashed orange · ventilation dashed black · not to scale + + + + ABOVE + BELOW + + + 1 · Wetherlaw farm — ash in the yard for four years + 2 · The ash edge — straight 400 m, then a right angle + 3 · Ventilation head — painted, and warm to the hand + 4 · Postal pipe — 4-inch pneumatic, sealed 1974 + 5 · Service adit — 400 m of 1962 concrete, lit + + 6 · Blast door and lobby — never locked + 7 · Control Room — the map, the tannoy, the desk + 8 · Registry — fifty-two years of files + 9 · Sick bay + 10 · Crèche and school + 11 · Pipe room — the outgoing tray + 12 · Plant floor — generators and the relay + + + + + SO-H04 · SECTION · STANDING ORDER + ISSUE 1 · NOT TO BE REMOVED FROM THE SEAT + diff --git a/art/maps/bellhouse-section.webp b/art/maps/bellhouse-section.webp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4c09086 Binary files /dev/null and b/art/maps/bellhouse-section.webp differ diff --git a/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md b/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..13fde50 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md @@ -0,0 +1,655 @@ +# Crossing case — The Custodians: STANDING ORDER + +> *Two hundred and six people went underground in 1974 to govern the country after the +> war. There was no war. They have been governing it for fifty-two years, the order that +> put them there renews itself every ninety days, and the next renewal is on Thursday.* + +## STATUS — read this before anything else + +| | | +|---|---| +| **Version** | **v0.1**, 15 September 2026 — first draft, written in one pass | +| **Can it be run?** | **Yes, from this document alone,** with the compendium for sheets and the three bestiary creatures. | +| **Is it convention-ready?** | **No.** No playtest of any kind, desk or human. The clock in Session Timing is an estimate and nothing has tested it. Treat every timing as a guess until somebody runs it. | +| **What it is** | A **three-act one-shot**. It ends in the session; there is no second part and the text must not promise one. | +| **Players** | 4–6 from the duty roster. The cast is declared in Casting and the build enforces it. | +| **Runtime** | Budgeted **3h00 of play** in three acts of 45 / 55 / 50 minutes plus a ten-minute break. Untested. | + +### The three things that are not obvious + +1. **Nobody in Bellhouse is a monster and almost nobody is hostile.** The population are + civil servants doing an appalling job impeccably, and they will offer the agents tea + before they ask them anything. The GM reflex under pressure is to make the underground + people sinister. Do not. The horror is that they are correct. +2. **The apocalypse is not a bomb, it is a reconciliation.** When the site's population + record exceeds the surviving population of the region it governs, the record resolves + the contradiction by making the region match. That is the threat, it is arithmetic, + and Act Two is where the players are shown the sum. +3. **Act Three is a decision, not a fight.** All three endings are real and all three + cost something. If the table reaches for violence the scenario still works, but see + EXPOSURE — the quarantine unit will kill them and is meant to be argued with. + +### Still to do + +- **A desk playtest.** None has been run. The act timings, the Act Two interview load and + whether Act Three's third option is findable are all unverified. +- **Handout production.** The three handouts are written here as text and have no print + pack. CLEAN GROUND's `CLEAN_GROUND_HANDOUTS.html` is the model. +- **A decision on Kit Marlow** — see Open questions. She is the cost of the tidiest + ending and the draft may be leaning on a seventeen-year-old too hard. + +--- + +## 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.** Resisting is stronger than + the numbers look. Two beats in Act Two depend on this. +- **Coherence runs 10 → 0** and measures how well-filed an agent is. Spending it is how + the supernatural works, and **nothing in this scenario gives any of it back.** +- **Borrowed Authority:** a named credential with a scope. Inside its scope there is no + roll — it costs 1 Trust and it works. One tier beyond is a roll at −20 per red flag + broken. Two tiers beyond is impossible at any skill. **Act Three's best ending is a + Borrowed Authority problem,** so read that section of the rules before you run this. +- **A warrant card is a named authority.** This matters more here than in any other case + in the corpus, and Act Three turns on it. + +--- + +## Overview + +The department commissioned Regional Seat of Government 12 — **Bellhouse**, under +Sheldon Moor in the Peak District — in 1962, and staffed it in 1974 during a genuine war +scare. Its Standing Order says: *on execution, the site assumes the government of Region +12 and does not surface until this order is cancelled by the named authority.* + +The order was executed on 4 November 1974 **as a drill**. Deputy Controller Edith Marlow +filed the drill as live, on purpose, because she believed a real one was coming inside +the year and wanted the site already running when it did. + +Reality took the filing. Two hundred and six people went down. Down there the war +happened, and they have been governing its aftermath for fifty-two years: issuing ration +books, logging fallout that nobody up here can measure, answering correspondence from +towns that are perfectly fine. + +The order renews every ninety days by standing instruction. Each renewal writes a little +more of the "after" into the moor above, which is why a farm at Wetherlaw has been +sweeping ash off its yard for four years. **Renewal 211 is due on Thursday, and Registry +has done the sum: at 211 the site's population record exceeds Region 12's surviving +population on paper.** A record cannot hold both. It resolves by correction. + +### Design intent + +1. **The end of the world is a document, and the people administering it are kind.** This + is a post-apocalyptic scenario in which the apocalypse is entirely clerical and every + person responsible for it believed they were doing their duty. +2. **It is an arrangement case, not a fight.** Two of the three endings involve no + violence at all, and the one creature that can wipe the party is there to be talked + down. The bestiary entries are load-bearing but the dice are not the point. +3. **The cost is named and not softened.** The tidy ending kills sixty-one children who + have no record above ground. The text says so plainly and does not offer the GM a way + to make it painless. If the table finds a fourth way out, let them have it. +4. **It is deliberately NOT CLEAN GROUND.** That case is a filed valley of people walking + north forever, found by accident, resolved by cancellation. This one is a filed + institution that works, that the department built on purpose, and that can be *amended* + rather than cancelled. +5. **Three things stay unresolved.** They are named in the GM notes as *do not resolve*. + +--- + +## Session Timing + +> ⚠ **Every figure in this table is an estimate and nothing has tested it.** The first +> desk pass is also the first test of this clock. + +| | Act | Budget | GM checkpoint | +|---|---|---|---| +| 1 | **The Returns** — Wetherlaw farm, the vent head, getting in | 45 min | They are at the blast door by 0:40 | +| — | *Break* | 10 min | | +| 2 | **Bellhouse** — the population, the Registry, the sum | 55 min | Pennyfeather has shown them the sum by 1:45 | +| 3 | **Renewal** — Thursday, the signing, the decision | 50 min | The signing starts no later than 2:35 | + +**If you are running late,** cut in this order: the vent-head climb in Act One (put them +at the postal pipe instead), then the crèche visit in Act Two (move Kit Marlow into the +corridor outside the Registry), then Teague's confrontation in Act Three (he stands down +when Sowerby tells him to, off-screen). **Do not cut Pennyfeather's sum or the signing.** + +--- + +## Plot Summary (GM truth) + +Bellhouse is real, it is where the map says it is, and everyone in it is alive. + +In 1962 the department built RSG 12 into the limestone under Sheldon Moor, as one of a +dozen regional seats. In October 1974 the scare was severe enough that the site was +staffed and exercised. The exercise order and the live order are the same document with a +different box ticked. + +**Edith Marlow ticked the other box.** She was Deputy Controller, she was fifty, and she +had read the same traffic as everyone else and drawn a harder conclusion. Her reasoning is +in her own hand in the file: a site that begins governing *after* the event is a site that +spends its first fortnight arguing about whether it is allowed to. She removed that +fortnight. + +Reality keeps a record of what belongs where. The record now said Region 12 had been +attacked, and so it had. Not up here — down there, and in the ground between. + +**What the last fifty-two years have been.** Two hundred and six went down; the +population below is now two hundred and thirty-one, of whom sixty-one were born there and +have no record anywhere else. They govern a region they have never seen. They receive +correspondence — it arrives — and they answer it, and their answers go up a pipe that +does not come out anywhere. Their fallout readings are real readings of a real +contamination that exists only inside the order. + +**What changed four years ago.** Renewals began pushing the boundary outward. Ash that is +not ash falls on Wetherlaw farm, three-quarters of a mile from the vent head. Joan +Wetherlaw's dog went out into it in 2024 and came back with an extra week of life in its +records and none in its body. + +**Why the department is here now.** Four months ago one of Bellhouse's returns came out of +the pipe onto a real desk in Registry — franked 1974, answering a question nobody had +asked. Bhattacharya's section traced it. In doing so they found the renewal schedule and, +in the site's own establishment returns, the sum. + +**The sum.** Region 12's surviving population, as the order records it, decays a little +each renewal. Bellhouse's population grows. At **renewal 211 — Thursday — the second +number passes the first.** A governing record whose government is larger than the governed +is a contradiction, and this one resolves the way records do: it corrects the region. + +### Timeline + +| When | What | +|---|---| +| 1962 | RSG 12 "Bellhouse" commissioned under Sheldon Moor. Standing Order drafted. | +| Oct 1974 | War scare. Site staffed and exercised; 206 personnel go down. | +| **4 Nov 1974** | **Marlow files the drill as live.** The order executes. | +| 1974–2022 | Fifty-two years of government. 61 children born below. Marlow, now 101, is in the sick bay and has not spoken plainly since 2019. | +| 2022 | Renewals begin to push the boundary. Ash starts falling at Wetherlaw. | +| 2024 | Joan Wetherlaw's dog goes out into the ash and comes back wrong. | +| May 2026 | A Bellhouse return arrives in Registry, franked 1974. | +| **Thursday** | **Renewal 211.** The sum crosses. | + +### Revelations (5, and that is all) + +1. The site is live and the people in it are alive. *(Act One)* +2. They believe the war happened, and by their record it did. *(Act Two, first ten minutes)* +3. It was a drill, and one person filed it wrong on purpose. *(Act Two, Marlow)* +4. The renewal is what pushes the boundary out. *(Act Two, Kowalczyk or Pennyfeather)* +5. At 211 the sum crosses and the region is corrected to match. *(Act Two, Pennyfeather)* + +--- + +## The Countdown — what Bellhouse does on schedule + +The site does not react to the agents. It runs its day. Print this and run it off the +clock whether or not the players are anywhere near it. + +| Step | When | What happens, whatever the players are doing | +|---|---|---| +| 0 | On arrival | Shift change. The corridors are briefly full. Nobody is looking for intruders because there has never been one. | +| 1 | +25 min | **The broadcast.** Sowerby reads the daily regional bulletin over the tannoy — casualty figures, ration adjustments, a weather report for a sky nobody has seen. It is four minutes long and the whole site stops to listen. | +| 2 | +50 min | **Teague is told there are strangers below.** From here he is looking for them. He is not yet hostile; he is a policeman with an anomaly. | +| 3 | +1h20 | **The establishment return is posted.** Pennyfeather files the population count that makes Thursday's sum what it is. Stopping this does not stop Thursday — the number is already true — but a player who tries has understood the case. | +| 4 | +2h00 | **Vigil.** The site's fifty-two-year remembrance for the surface dead. Everyone attends. It is genuinely moving and it is for nothing. | +| 5 | **Thursday, 06:00** | **Renewal 211.** Sowerby signs, Teague countersigns, Pennyfeather files. Act Three. | + +--- + +## Handouts + +### SO-H01 — The return that came out of the pipe + +*A4, buff, typed on a manual machine, franked 4 NOV 1974. Give it in the briefing.* + +> REGION 12 — SEAT RETURN — WEEK 1 +> ESTABLISHMENT: 206. CASUALTIES THIS PERIOD: NIL. +> REGIONAL SURVIVING POPULATION (EST.): 1,140,000. +> SUPPLY: 11 YEARS AT CURRENT SCALE. +> QUERY TO CENTRE: CONFIRM AUTHORITY TO ISSUE RATION DOCUMENTS IN OWN NAME. +> QUERY TO CENTRE: CONFIRM DISPOSAL OF SURFACE REMAINS AT SHELDON. +> SIGNED: E. MARLOW, DEPUTY CONTROLLER. + +**What it is for.** Two hidden things. *Casualties this period: nil* is wrong for week one +after an attack and right for week one of a drill. And the second query asks about bodies +at Sheldon, which is where the vent head is — the first hint the boundary was always +touching the surface. + +### SO-H02 — Standing Order 12, extract + +*A4, foolscap, two paragraphs and a signature block. 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 by the signature of the Controller, countersigned, +> and is thereafter filed. Renewal is not a decision and shall not be minuted as one. +> +> NAMED AUTHORITY: SIR HUGH ELLERBY-STANNARD, PERMANENT UNDER-SECRETARY. + +**What it is for.** It is the whole of Act Three. Ellerby-Stannard died in 1981 — but +clause 4 offers a second door, *an officer holding a warrant in person at the Seat*, and +every agent at the table is holding one. Clause 5 is the other half: renewal is not a +decision, which is exactly why nobody down there has ever reconsidered it. + +### SO-H03 — Pennyfeather's working + +*A single sheet of squared paper, pencil, in a clerk's hand. She gives it to whoever asks +her a straight question.* + +> RENEWAL 209 — SEAT 229 — REGION 1,140,000 → 231 est. decay applied +> RENEWAL 210 — SEAT 231 — REGION 242 +> RENEWAL 211 — SEAT 231 — REGION 219 +> ———————— +> SEAT EXCEEDS REGION AT 211. +> *I have taken this to the Controller three times. It is not minuted because renewal is +> not a decision. — A.P.* + +**What it is for.** This is Revelation 5 in a player's hands. Note the last line: she has +already tried, through the proper channel, and the proper channel is the problem. + +--- + +## Act One — The Returns *(~45 min)* + +**Where:** Wetherlaw farm and the vent head on Sheldon Moor, a wet afternoon in +September. **What it is for:** establish that the boundary is real, expanding, and has a +door in it. + +> *Read aloud or paraphrase:* +> *The ash starts about a mile before the farm. It lies on the verges and it does not +> wash off in the rain, which has been falling on it for four years. Joan Wetherlaw meets +> you at the gate with a yard brush in her hand and says: "You're not from the council."* + +### Hooks — how the table gets here + +Use whichever fits the group; all three are live and the department used all three. + +- **The return in Registry.** Bhattacharya's section has SO-H01 on a desk. It is + fifty-two years old, it is answering a question nobody asked, and it arrived in May. +- **The farm.** Joan Wetherlaw wrote to DEFRA about her yard in 2023 and was sent a + leaflet. The letter reached the department by the route those letters take. +- **The dog.** A veterinary practice in Bakewell submitted tissue it could not classify. + It is on Nkemdirim's bench in the briefing, and it is nine days older than the animal. + +### Clue trail — Act One + +| # | Clue | Where | How found | What it gives | Type | +|---|---|---|---|---|---| +| 1 | The ash is not ash | The verges, the yard | `[CUS: Science (Biology) — it is not combustion product and it is not mineral; it has a grain structure, like something milled]` | The boundary is a *place*, not a contamination | Essential | +| 2 | The ash has an edge | Walking the field boundary | `[CUS: Navigate — the line is straight for 400 m and then turns exactly 90°, which weather does not do]` | It is surveyed. Somebody drew it | Essential | +| 3 | The dog's records | Joan's kitchen, the vet's note | `[CUS: Medicine — nine days of healing in an animal that was gone overnight]` | Time runs differently inside | Supporting | +| 4 | Joan's fifty-two years | Joan herself | `[CUS: Persuade — she has a box of her father's papers she has never shown anyone]` | Her father was a Sheldon works foreman in 1974 and was told to stop digging | Supporting | +| 5 | The vent head | Sheldon Moor, 3/4 mile up | `[CUS: Spot — a mushroom vent in the heather, painted to lose itself, warm to the hand]` | The site is **live** — something down there is breathing | Essential | +| 6 | The postal pipe | Beside the vent head | `[CUS: Repair (Mechanical) — a sealed 4-inch pneumatic line, pressurised, and the seal is 1974 and unbroken]` | The route in, and where SO-H01 came from | Essential | +| 7 | The blast door | End of the service adit | `[CUS: Engineering (Field Systems) — it is not locked. It has never been locked. It opens from this side]` | Nobody built this to keep anyone out | Essential | + +**Every clue's failure case is the same and it is deliberate: nothing here is hidden.** +On a failure the agent does not find it *yet*; Joan, who has lived with all of it for four +years, points at it within the minute. She is not being mysterious. She has been trying to +show somebody for four years. **A special** on any of the above gets the same fact plus the +detail that it has been like this since 2022 and not before. + +### The three beats + +1. **The yard.** Joan, the brush, the ash. She is sixty-seven, she is tired of not being + believed, and she will talk for as long as anyone lets her. + `[CUS: Insight — she is not frightened of the ash; she is frightened of being told + again that there is nothing there]`. *Success:* she produces her father's box + unprompted. *Failure:* she produces it anyway, later, when somebody is kind to her. + Nothing is gated on this roll — it changes when, not whether. +2. **The walk up.** Forty minutes of moor in the wet. Use it for the ash edge (clue 2) and + for whatever the table wants to talk about. `[CUS: Athletics — average; only a fumble + is a fall, and a fall here is a twisted ankle and nothing worse]`. +3. **The vent head and the adit.** The way in. `[CUS: Stealth — they can be inside without + being seen, which matters at Countdown step 2]`. *Success:* Teague is told about them + later rather than sooner — push step 2 back twenty minutes. *Failure:* somebody below + logs an unscheduled opening, which is exactly what step 2 is. **There is no penalty + beyond that and the door still opens.** + +> ⚠ **Do not put a fight in Act One.** The scenario has one creature above ground and it +> is not here. If the table needs something to do with their hands, give them the adit: +> it is four hundred metres of 1962 concrete and the lights still work. +--- + +## Act Two — Bellhouse *(~55 min)* + +**Where:** the site. **What it is for:** the players meet a functioning civil service at +the end of the world, and are shown the sum. + +> *Read aloud or paraphrase:* +> *The corridor is warm and smells of floor polish and soup. A woman in a cardigan and a +> department lanyard steps out of an office, sees four strangers, and says — with no alarm +> whatever — "Oh, are you from Centre? Only we've been writing."* + +### How to run the population + +**Nobody attacks. Nobody is suspicious. Everybody is delighted.** Fifty-two years of +posting returns into a pipe and somebody has finally come. The agents will be offered +tea within ninety seconds and it is real tea, rationed, and giving it to them costs +somebody their allowance. + +**Say this three times over the act, in three different mouths:** *we were told Centre +would come when it could.* That is the load-bearing line. They are not mad, or trapped, +or cursed. They were told to hold on, and they held on. + +**The one instruction that matters:** if the GM feels the act sagging, do not introduce a +threat. Introduce a *person* — the man who has run the site's library for forty years and +wants to know whether the National Theatre reopened; the woman who is teaching children +the geography of a county she has never stood in. The act's engine is grief, not danger. + +### Locations below + +| Location | What is there | Why the players come here | +|---|---|---| +| **The blast door and lobby** | A visitor book, opened 1974, three entries, all from that week | First proof anybody has ever thought about the outside | +| **The Control Room** | Sowerby, the tannoy, the regional map with 1974 pins | The broadcast (Countdown 1); the man who signs | +| **Registry** | Pennyfeather, the establishment returns, fifty-two years of files | **The sum** — the act's destination | +| **The sick bay** | Dr Ivy Larkhall; Edith Marlow, 101, in the end bed | Revelation 3 — it was a drill | +| **The crèche and school** | Nineteen children under eleven; Kit Marlow, 17, teaching them | The cost of Act Three, made a person | +| **The pipe room** | The pneumatic head, the outgoing tray, fifty-two years of unanswered post | Where SO-H01 came from; Kowalczyk's route to Revelation 4 | +| **The plant floor** | Generators, the renewal relay, Teague's office | How the renewal physically happens | + +### Clue trail — Act Two + +| # | Clue | Where | How found | What it gives | Type | +|---|---|---|---|---|---| +| 8 | They think it happened | Anywhere, first ten minutes | `[CUS: no roll — the tannoy bulletin does it for you]` | Revelation 2 | Essential | +| 9 | The visitor book | The lobby | `[CUS: Spot — three signatures in one week in 1974 and nothing after]` | Nobody has ever come back | Supporting | +| 10 | The order itself | Registry, on request | `[CUS: Research — SO-H02, filed where it should be, because everything here is]` | Clause 4's second door | Essential | +| 11 | The drill | The sick bay, from Marlow | `[CUS: Psychology — she is not confused, she is ashamed, and those present differently]` | Revelation 3 | Essential | +| 12 | The relay | Plant floor | `[CUS: Repair (Electronics) — the renewal is wired to a relay that also drives the perimeter survey]` | Revelation 4: renewal *is* the expansion | Essential | +| 13 | The sum | Registry, from Pennyfeather | `[CUS: Insight — she has been waiting to be asked; ask her anything straight and she produces SO-H03]` | Revelation 5 | Essential | +| 14 | Sixty-one | Registry, the birth register | `[CUS: Research — sixty-one born below, no NHS number, no birth certificate above ground]` | The cost of cancellation | Essential | +| 15 | What Teague has decided | Plant floor, or he finds them | `[CUS: Listen — he asks each of them separately where they were on the day]` | He is testing a theory he cannot afford to be wrong about | Supporting | + +**Failure cases.** Clues 10, 13 and 14 are *filed*, and this is the most orderly place in +the world: a failed Research or Insight costs ten minutes and a second attempt, never the +clue. Clue 11 is the exception — **fail the Psychology with Marlow and she does not say +it today**, and the route reopens only through Larkhall (who half-knows) or the file +Marlow kept in her own quarters. Clue 12 failed means the relay reads as ordinary plant +and Revelation 4 arrives instead from Pennyfeather, one scene later. + +**Specials.** A special on clue 11 gets Marlow's own memo in her hand — the fortnight +paragraph — which is the single most damning object in the case. A special on clue 13 +gets Pennyfeather saying the thing she has never said aloud: *I think we should not be +here.* + +### The census, in the Registry + +There is one creature in this act and it is in the stacks behind Pennyfeather's desk, +counting. **It has been counting for fifty-two years and it is nearly finished.** + +`[CUS: Spot — something between the shelves is keeping a tally, and the tally is people]` + +It does not attack. It **counts** — one round, no roll, it simply looks — and an agent it +has counted is on a list on the far side for good. See the bestiary entry; the department +cannot get anybody off that list. + +**This is the scenario's one cheap lesson and it should be cheap:** the players will want +to fight it. Fighting it is legal and survivable. It changes nothing about Thursday, +because the tally is not the cause of the sum — it is a symptom of the same filing. Let +them learn that by doing it. + +> ⚠ **Do not let the census kill the act's tone.** It is two minutes of cold in a warm +> place. Get back to the tea. + +--- + +## Act Three — Renewal *(~50 min)* + +**Where:** the Control Room, Thursday, 06:00. **What it is for:** the decision, and its +price. + +> *Read aloud or paraphrase:* +> *Sowerby has shaved. The renewal folder is squared to the edge of the desk, the pen is +> the one his predecessor used, and there are eleven people standing along the back wall +> because they always come. He looks up and says: "You'll want to watch. It's quite short."* + +### The three endings, all real + +**1. CANCEL — clause 4, the warrant in the room.** +Any agent may cancel the Standing Order in person. There is no roll. It works, it has +always worked, and it is what a warrant card is *for*. + +- **What happens:** the "after" un-files. Region 12 was never attacked, and Bellhouse was + never executed. The 206 who went down in 1974 become people who went down for a drill + and came up on the Friday. +- **The cost, and do not soften it:** the sixty-one born below have no record above + ground and never had one. **They stop.** Kit Marlow stops. The GM should state this + plainly before the agent decides, through Pennyfeather, who has worked it out. +- **Coherence:** the cancelling agent spends **2 Coherence**, permanently, because they + are the authority that makes it true and reality now records them that way. + +**2. LET IT RENEW.** +Sowerby signs. Nothing visibly happens. Then the correction begins, and the **overwriter** +arrives to perform it — five bodies, correcting one fact the party relies on every round, +retroactively and truly. See the bestiary; it cannot be dropped and it is not *trying* to +fight anybody. It is doing the filing. + +- **What happens:** Region 12 is corrected to match the record. This is the end of the + world and the scenario does not flinch from letting the table choose it. +- **This option must stay available.** A choice with one acceptable answer is not a choice + and the players will smell it. + +**3. AMEND — the arrangement, and the best ending in the case.** +The order does not have to be cancelled. Its **scope** can be changed. Bellhouse governs +*Region 12 after the war*; amend the scope so that it governs somewhere genuinely empty +and always was, and the site keeps running, the people keep existing, and the ash stops. + +This is a **Borrowed Authority** problem and is run by those rules: + +- **The credential is Ellerby-Stannard**, who is dead, which is why it is a stretch rather + than routine — one tier beyond scope. +- **It is assembled from up to three dossier items, each a separate scene, using a + different skill, at most one of them at a keyboard.** The three that exist here: + - Marlow's own memo `[CUS: Research — her hand, her reasoning, in her quarters]` + - The 1962 commissioning survey naming an unpopulated alternate seat area + `[CUS: Knowledge — Sheldon was the second choice; the first had nobody on it]` + - Pennyfeather's counter-signature as Registrar `[CUS: Persuade — she has been waiting + fifty-two years for somebody to ask her to do something about it]` +- **The roll:** `[CUS: Anomaly Lore — the amendment has to be filed as a correction of a + 1974 clerical error, which is what it is]`, at −20 per red flag broken. Each dossier + item makes the credential better, never the roll easier. +- **Success:** the order stands, amended. Nobody dies. The ash stops by the weekend. +- **Failure:** the amendment does not take and the renewal proceeds on schedule — + fall through to ending 2 unless somebody cancels under clause 4 in the next few minutes. + **Say the clock out loud when this happens.** +- **Coherence:** widening a scope with Coherence is legal here and it always works. It + costs 1 per widening and the agent's file and Bellhouse's converge one step. Nothing in + this game converges them back. + +### Teague + +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 a lie then his whole life was an +administrative error, and that is unbearable. He is the act's only violence and he is +avoidable. + +**His one paragraph, printed so the GM can read it aloud:** *"I've read the same file you +have. I've read it more times than you have. And what it says is that on the fourth of +November 1974 this country was attacked and two hundred and six people did their duty. If +that's wrong then my mother died down here for nothing and my daughter was born down here +for nothing, and I'm not able to hold that. So I'm going to ask you to leave, and then I'm +going to ask you again."* + +**The script break:** say his daughter's name. He has one — Nell, nine, in the crèche — +and any agent who has been to the school knows it. Naming her puts him back in the room +as a father instead of a warden, and he steps aside. `[CUS: Insight — he is not +threatening anyone; he is asking to be argued out of it]`. *Success:* he stands down and +becomes the strongest voice for ending 3. *Failure:* he escorts them out of the Control +Room and they must find another way back in before 06:00 — which costs them the dossier +scene they had least secured, not the act. + +**If it comes to a fight:** he is one man with a 1974 service pistol against field agents +and he will lose, quickly, in front of his colleagues and his daughter's teacher. The +scenario does not stop the table doing this. It does not reward it either. **Everyone in +Bellhouse who was going to help them stops helping them.** + +### EXPOSURE — the one thing that will kill the party + +If the agents call the incident in as a containment failure rather than an arrangement, the +department sends a **quarantine unit**, and it gets there first. + +**Read the bestiary entry before you put it on the table.** It is recorded there as +lethal to a four-player party on its own, and its STERILISATION ORDER renders the site +with everyone still in it. It *can* be argued down with a higher authorisation — which is +another Borrowed Authority problem, and the same credential from ending 3 answers it. + +**This is the scenario telling the truth about its own setting:** the fight is the failure +state, and the paperwork is the way out. Do not spring the unit as a twist. If a player +says the words that summon it, say plainly what they have just done. +--- + +## NPC Roster — GM quick sheet + +Every NPC gets one line of essence first. That line is what to play if you have five +seconds and the table is looking at you. + +### Below + +**Controller Edwin Sowerby, 61** — *the man who has done his duty for fifty-two years and +needs it to have been worth doing.* +Went down aged nine with his mother, which makes him the oldest person in Bellhouse who +remembers the sky, and he does not talk about it. Signs the renewal because renewal is not +a decision (SO-H02, clause 5) and he has never been offered the chance to make it one. He +is courteous, precise and lonely. **If the players give him a decision he will take it +seriously** — he is not a wall, he is a man who has never been asked. Supports ending 3 +if Pennyfeather and Teague both back it. + +**Registrar Alice Pennyfeather, 52** — *the clerk who has already done the sum and is +waiting for somebody to ask her.* +Born below. Has taken the arithmetic to Sowerby three times and been told, correctly, that +renewal is not minuted as a decision. Hands over SO-H03 to anybody who asks her a straight +question. **She is the act's destination and the case's conscience**, and in ending 1 she +is the one who tells the agents what it will cost the children, because she has worked +that out too. + +**Dr Ivy Larkhall, 44** — *the doctor who has never had a patient with sunlight in their +history, and has written the best paper nobody will ever read about it.* +Born below. Curious rather than frightened, and the first person to ask the agents an +intelligent question. Half-knows about the drill: Marlow has said things in the night for +years. Will not break a confidence, but will say *ask her, and ask her kindly*. + +**Deputy Controller Edith Marlow, 101** — *the woman who filed a war because she thought +it would save a fortnight.* +In the end bed in the sick bay. Has not spoken plainly since 2019 and is not confused — +she is ashamed, and Psychology tells those apart (clue 11). Her own memo, in her quarters, +carries the fortnight paragraph and is the most damning object in the scenario. **She will +confirm it was a drill if she is asked kindly and will deny it if she is pressed.** + +**Warden Michael Teague, 38** — *the only man down here who has decided the surface is a +lie, because the alternative is unbearable.* +Born below. Head of the site's eleven-person police. Widower. His daughter Nell is nine +and in the crèche. Full paragraph and script break in Act Three. **Not a villain, and the +scenario should never call him one.** + +**Sub-Officer Kit Marlow, 17** — *a girl who has drawn the sky four thousand times from +one photograph and wants to know if she got the blue right.* +Edith's great-granddaughter, born below, oldest of the children, teaches the little ones +their regional geography from a 1971 atlas. **She is the cost of ending 1 and she should +be a person before she is a price** — give her a scene in Act Two, doing something +ordinary and competent, before Act Three asks anybody to decide anything. + +**The site, as a character** — two hundred and thirty-one people, warm corridors, floor +polish, soup, a library, a remembrance service for the surface dead held every year for +fifty-two years. *They were told Centre would come when it could.* + +### Above + +**Joan Wetherlaw, 67** — *has been sweeping ash off her yard for four years and has +stopped telling anybody.* +Farms three-quarters of a mile from the vent head. Her father was a works foreman at +Sheldon in 1974 and was told to stop digging; his papers are in a box she has never shown +anyone. Not a mystic and not a crank — a tired woman with a brush who has been right the +whole time. + +**Nell Teague, 9** — *has one question about horses and will ask it at the worst possible +moment.* In the crèche. Her name is the script break. + +### Creatures used — all from the bestiary, nothing new to build + +| Creature | Where | What it is for | +|---|---|---| +| **The census** | Act Two, the Registry stacks | Counting, for fifty-two years; ENUMERATED is permanent and the department cannot undo it | +| **The overwriter** | Act Three, ending 2 only | The correction, performing itself; cannot be dropped and is not trying to fight | +| **Quarantine unit** | EXPOSURE, if the agents call it in as containment | The failure state; argue it down with the ending-3 credential or die | + +--- + +## Casting — six from the duty roster + + + +> ⚠ **THE DECLARED CAST IS LOAD-BEARING ON THE BUILD.** The `` comment above +> is read by `check-rollable`, which holds every skill this document names to being +> reachable at 25% or better by somebody in that list. Change the cast and re-run the +> guards before trusting a single clue route. + +Deliberately **not** CLEAN GROUND's six, so the two cases exercise different sheets. + +| # | Agent | Why they are here | The routes they own | +|---|---|---|---| +| 1 | **Marta Holloway** — Senior Field Officer, lead | Signs for it and reads it first | Navigate (the ash edge), Stealth (the way in), Tradecraft | +| 2 | **Arun Bhattacharya** — Registry Officer | The return landed on his section's desk | Research (SO-H02, the birth register), Knowledge (the 1962 survey), Anomaly Lore (**the ending-3 roll**) | +| 3 | **Kate Renshaw** — Interview Officer | Because everyone down there wants to talk | Psychology (**Marlow**), Insight (Teague, Pennyfeather), Persuade (Joan, and Pennyfeather's counter-signature) | +| 4 | **Marek Kowalczyk** — Probationary, engineering | Somebody has to read the plant | Repair (Electronics) (**the relay**), Repair (Mechanical) (the pipe), Engineering (Field Systems) (the blast door) | +| 5 | **Dr Chidi Nkemdirim** — Probationary, medicine | The dog tissue is on his bench | Medicine (the dog), Science (Biology) (the ash), Insight | +| 6 | **Ben Okonkwo** — Field Officer, containment | In case it is the other kind of case. It is not | Athletics, Brawl, Firearm (Rifle) — **and the scenario is built so he never needs them** | + +**Casting note for Okonkwo's player, given before the game:** this case has no fight the +party has to win. He is not wasted — he is the one who carries Marlow's chair, holds the +adit, and stands beside Teague without raising anything. Tell his player that up front, the +way CLEAN GROUND tells Ashcroft's. + +**At four players,** cut Okonkwo and Nkemdirim; move the ash to Bhattacharya's Knowledge +and the dog to Renshaw's Insight, both of which are rated well enough to carry it. + +--- + +## Locations — quick reference + +| # | Location | Act | One line | +|---|---|---|---| +| 1 | Wetherlaw farm | 1 | Ash on the yard for four years, and a woman with a brush | +| 2 | The ash edge | 1 | A straight line for 400 m, then a right angle | +| 3 | Sheldon Moor vent head | 1 | A painted mushroom in the heather, warm to the hand | +| 4 | The postal pipe | 1 | Four-inch pneumatic, pressurised, sealed in 1974 | +| 5 | The service adit | 1 | Four hundred metres of 1962 concrete; the lights still work | +| 6 | Blast door and lobby | 1/2 | Never locked. A visitor book with three entries | +| 7 | Control Room | 2/3 | The tannoy, the 1974 map, the desk where it gets signed | +| 8 | Registry | 2 | Fifty-two years of files, the sum, and something counting in the stacks | +| 9 | Sick bay | 2 | Larkhall, and Edith Marlow in the end bed | +| 10 | Crèche and school | 2 | Nineteen children, a 1971 atlas, and Kit Marlow's drawings of the sky | +| 11 | Pipe room | 2 | The outgoing tray, and fifty-two years of unanswered post | +| 12 | Plant floor | 2/3 | Generators, the renewal relay, Teague's office | + +--- + +## GM notes — three things that do not get resolved + +Name these as *do not resolve* so a helpful GM does not answer them. + +1. **Where the answered post went.** Fifty-two years of returns went up the pipe. One came + back out, in May, on a real desk. Nothing in this case explains the other ten thousand. +2. **What the census was counting for.** It has been tallying since 1974 and it is nearly + finished. The scenario never says finished *for what*. +3. **Whether Marlow was right.** She thought a real one was coming inside the year. The + department's own 1974 traffic is not in this file and the players cannot get it. + +--- + +## Open questions for Tim + +- **Kit Marlow.** She is the cost of ending 1 and the draft may lean on a seventeen-year-old + too hard. The alternative is to put the weight on the whole sixty-one and never give one + of them a name — colder, and possibly better. +- **Runtime.** 45/55/50 is an estimate with nothing behind it. Act Two is the one most + likely to overrun: it is seven locations and six speaking parts. +- **Is ending 3 findable?** It depends on the players reading clause 4 *and* clause 5 and + thinking about scope rather than cancellation. It may need a nudge written into + Pennyfeather. +- **Does this want a fourth act?** CLEAN GROUND has one and uses it well. Three is the + brief and three is what this is, but the signing may be too thin to carry fifty minutes + on its own. diff --git a/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER_ART.md b/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER_ART.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e27995c --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER_ART.md @@ -0,0 +1,164 @@ +# STANDING ORDER — Artwork Prompt Sheet + +Generation prompts for every plate and portrait in STANDING ORDER. Kept here so +regeneration is possible; per house convention the prompt is part of the document. + + mj-gen "" --out --name --upscale 1 + +**What already exists and needs nothing.** The six declared pregens have portraits in +`art/portraits/pc_.webp`. The three creatures — **the census**, **the overwriter** +and the **quarantine unit** — are bestiary entries and their prompts live in +`BESTIARY_ART.md`, not here. Everything in this sheet is new work. + +--- + +## Art direction for this scenario + +House base style is ink sketch / pencil illustration — hand-drawn, single-weight line, +sparse wash, negative space, never photorealistic. STANDING ORDER adds one line: + +> **Civil defence, 1974.** A two-ink screen print in black and faded civil-defence +> orange on newsprint white. Coarse halftone, flat pale cream ground instead of sky, +> the register very slightly off. Everything is drawn as though it were a plate from a +> public information booklet about what to do afterwards — +> *including the things that are fine, and including the people who are alive.* + +**That last clause is the conceit.** Bellhouse is not a ruin and nobody in it is a ghost. +Drawing a warm corridor full of civil servants in the visual language of a leaflet about +nuclear attack is the whole scenario in one image: the end of the world, rendered as +guidance. + +Why this and not CLEAN GROUND's dyeline blue-grey drawing office: that case is a *survey*, +filed in 1962 by draughtsmen. This one is a *broadcast to the public*, printed in 1974 by +a government that expected to be obeyed. Different department, different press. + +### The three rules that make these prompts work + +Learned the hard way across Day One, OPEN DAY and LAST ADMISSION, and they are in +`~/.claude/skills/rpg/references/lessons.md`: + +1. **Say "two-ink screen print" and name both inks.** Palette drift and hallucinated + signage are the same failure — a naturalistic prompt lets the model reach for a + reference photograph, and reference photographs have shop fronts on them. +2. **"Flat pale cream ground instead of sky."** Asking for "no sky" produces a sky. +3. **Never make a count load-bearing in generated art.** Midjourney cannot count. The + nineteen children, the three signatures in the visitor book and the sixty-one born + below are all *handout and text* facts. No plate is allowed to contradict them. + +### Known artifact, accepted + +**Midjourney puts faint edition lettering in the lower margins** of the screen-print +prompts — pencil-scale marks that read as a printmaker's annotation. Four attempts at +suppressing it with "no text / no lettering" did not remove it on this style. It is +accepted here because it reads as part of the print rather than as signage, and because +it contradicts nothing. **If a plate ever grows legible lettering that says something, +regenerate it** — a picture that contradicts a clue is worse than no picture. + +--- + +## Plates — `art/scenes/` + +| Stem | Where it is used | +|---|---| +| `so_cover` | Cover plate | +| `so_wetherlaw` | Act One — the farmyard | +| `so_ash_edge` | Act One — clue 2, the surveyed line | +| `so_adit` | Act One — the service adit portal ✅ **generated** | +| `so_corridor` | Act Two — arrival below | +| `so_control_room` | Act Two / Three — the broadcast and the signing | +| `so_registry` | Act Two — the stacks, and the thing counting in them | +| `so_creche` | Act Two — the school, and the cost of ending 1 | + +**Shared prefix.** Every plate prompt begins with this and it is not optional: + +> `1974 British civil defence public information booklet illustration, two-ink screen +> print in black and faded civil-defence orange on newsprint white, hand-drawn +> single-weight ink line, coarse halftone dot texture, flat pale cream ground instead of +> sky, no text, no lettering, no signage, not photorealistic` + +### so_cover +> …*open moorland under a flat cream sky, a straight line of pale grit running across the +> heather from edge to edge and turning a precise right angle, a low concrete structure +> half-buried in the distance, nobody present* `--ar 3:2` + +### so_wetherlaw +> …*a small stone hill farm yard, fine pale dust drifted into the corners and against the +> wall like the tide left it, a yard brush leaning where somebody put it down, no people, +> no shops, no signage* `--ar 3:2` + +### so_ash_edge +> …*a field of moorland heather seen low and level, a hard straight boundary of pale grit +> crossing the whole frame and turning ninety degrees, the ground beyond it very slightly +> paler, no fence, no wall, no people* `--ar 3:2` + +### so_adit ✅ +> …*a low painted concrete portal set into open moorland heather, a dark circular opening +> under a heavy cantilevered slab, fine pale grit settling over the heather like milled +> dust, no people* `--ar 3:2` +> +> **Note:** prompted as a mushroom ventilation head and returned as an adit portal. Kept +> and re-captioned rather than regenerated, because it is a better adit than the vent head +> would have been. If a true ROC-post mushroom vent is ever wanted, prompt it as *"a low +> circular concrete mushroom vent the height of a man's knee"* — the word "mushroom" alone +> produced a monument. + +### so_corridor +> …*a warm underground government corridor from 1974, painted brick, linoleum floor, +> pipework along the ceiling, a noticeboard with papers pinned to it seen from too far away +> to read, one woman in a cardigan walking away from the viewer, ordinary and unhurried* +> `--ar 3:2` + +### so_control_room +> …*an underground regional government control room from 1974, a large wall map of an +> English region covered in pins, a long desk with a single folder squared to its edge, a +> tannoy microphone, several people standing quietly along the back wall, warm and orderly, +> nothing damaged* `--ar 3:2` + +### so_registry +> …*deep rows of underground archive shelving, fifty years of identical buff files, a +> clerk's desk at the near end with a squared sheet of paper and a pencil on it, the far +> end of the rows unlit, no figure visible in the dark* `--ar 3:2` + +### so_creche +> …*an underground schoolroom from 1974, small chairs, an old atlas open on a low table, +> children's crayon drawings of a blue sky pinned in a row along the wall, warm light, no +> children present* `--ar 3:2` +> +> **The empty room is deliberate.** Kit Marlow's drawings of a sky she has never seen do +> the work; children in the frame would make it sentimental and would also make a count +> load-bearing. + +--- + +## Portraits — `art/portraits/` + +**Shared prefix.** Portraits drop the halftone a little so a face reads at thumbnail size: + +> `1974 British civil defence booklet portrait plate, two-ink screen print in black and +> faded civil-defence orange on newsprint white, hand-drawn single-weight ink line, plain +> flat cream background, head and shoulders, no text, no lettering, not photorealistic` + +| Stem | Prompt tail | Essence it must carry | +|---|---|---| +| `so_sowerby` | *…a courteous British man of sixty-one in a 1970s suit and department lanyard, tired and very neatly turned out, looking slightly past the viewer* | Has done his duty for 52 years and needs it to have been worth doing | +| `so_pennyfeather` | *…a British woman of fifty-two in a cardigan, spectacles pushed up, holding a sheet of squared paper, patient and entirely certain* | Has already done the sum and is waiting to be asked | +| `so_larkhall` | *…a British woman of forty-four in a white coat over a jumper, curious rather than kind, head tilted as though mid-question* | Has never had a patient with sunlight in their history | +| `so_marlow` | *…a very old British woman of one hundred and one in a hospital bed, eyes open and entirely lucid, ashamed rather than confused* | Filed a war to save a fortnight | +| `so_teague` | *…a heavy-set British man of thirty-eight in a plain 1970s police-style uniform without insignia, jaw set, not angry, holding himself very still* | Has decided the surface is a lie because the alternative is unbearable | +| `so_kit_marlow` | *…a British girl of seventeen in a hand-me-down jumper, holding a rolled sheet of paper, hopeful and a little defiant* | Has drawn the sky four thousand times from one photograph | +| `so_joan_wetherlaw` | *…a British farming woman of sixty-seven in a waxed coat, weathered, holding a yard brush, unimpressed and patient* | Has been right for four years and has stopped telling anyone | + +--- + +## Not generated — draw these + +**The Bellhouse section drawing.** A cutaway of the site with the seven Act Two locations +numbered, and a key below the drawing. **This must be hand-built SVG and must not be +prompted.** Midjourney will not hold legible text or accurate geography, and this drawing's +whole job is labels. Two rules from AFTERIMAGE v3.1: numbered callouts with a key beneath +rather than labels sprayed across the plan, and **the drawing says only what the site says** +— it shows where the rooms are and nothing about the sum, which is Act Two's work. + +Hand out the section the moment they come through the blast door. A player-facing plan is a +turn-taking device: it lets the table split itself into stations instead of one person +narrating a corridor. diff --git a/tools/figures-baseline.json b/tools/figures-baseline.json index 1a8ee64..0e447bc 100644 --- a/tools/figures-baseline.json +++ b/tools/figures-baseline.json @@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ "tools/scenario-throughtrain.mjs": 8, "docs/scenarios/LAST_ADMISSION.md": 1, "docs/scenarios/OPEN_DAY.md": 0, + "docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md": 0, "docs/scenarios/THROUGH_TRAIN.md": 8 } }