slaguru666/RingBRP
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

STANDING ORDER: a three-act post-apocalyptic crossing case

Browse Source 
Two hundred and six people went underground in 1974 to govern the country after
the war. There was no war. The Deputy Controller filed the drill as live, on
purpose, to save the site a fortnight of arguing about whether it was allowed to
start — and reality took the filing.

The apocalypse in this one is clerical. At renewal 211 the site's population
record exceeds the surviving population of the region it governs, and a record
that cannot hold both resolves by correcting the region. Act Two shows the
players the sum; Act Three is the decision, and all three endings cost
something. Cancelling the order kills the sixty-one children born below, who
have no record above ground. The text says so and does not offer the GM a way to
make it painless.

Deliberately not CLEAN GROUND. That case is a filed valley found by accident and
resolved by cancellation; this is a filed institution the department built on
purpose, and its best ending amends the order's scope rather than cancelling it
— a Borrowed Authority problem, which is the setting's own thesis about
arrangements beating fights.

Three existing bestiary creatures, nothing new to build: the census counts in
the Registry, the overwriter performs the correction if the renewal goes
through, and the quarantine unit is the failure state you argue down.

Cast declared as a different six from CLEAN GROUND's so the two cases exercise
different sheets. All twenty-one guards pass: check-scenarios resolves 115 tags,
check-rollable holds every route to the declared cast, and check-figures records
the document at zero bare figures — it cites no measured number because it
prints none, the quarantine unit's lethality included.

The section drawing is hand-built SVG and must stay that way: every label on it
is load-bearing and no generator holds legible text. Numbered callouts with a
key beneath, per AFTERIMAGE v3.1.

NOT playtested. Not once, desk or human. Every timing in it is a guess.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
slaguru666
2026-09-15 21:14:01 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent fa30909dc9
commit 70acc1e60b
5 changed files with 989 additions and 0 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files
docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md
+655
View File
@@ -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
<!-- cast: pc_holloway, pc_kowalczyk, pc_renshaw, pc_bhattacharya, pc_nkemdirim, pc_okonkwo -->
> ⚠ **THE DECLARED CAST IS LOAD-BEARING ON THE BUILD.** The `<!-- cast: -->` 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.
docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER_ART.md
+164
View File
@@ -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 "<prompt>" --out <dir> --name <stem> --upscale 1
**What already exists and needs nothing.** The six declared pregens have portraits in
`art/portraits/pc_<key>.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.