THROUGH TRAIN rewritten into five acts

Act One is now an induction at the Bureau, Act Two puts the players through the
crossing and makes them find the train, Act Three is a town-side obstacle, Act
Four is the boarding, Act Five is the four minutes. 4h00 in five acts, was 3h30
in three.

The restructure earns one thing the old shape could not: THE CROSSING OPENS WHERE
THE RECORD SAYS THE LINE IS, which is an empty bench of scrub on the wrong side of
the wash. The agents arrive where the paperwork put the railway, not where the
railway is, so the fraud is the ground under their feet and finding the train is
real work. Registry's file has this wrong and Bewley believes the file.

- Act Three: Rance Doyle and five unpaid miners take the agents for company
  detectives, and they are not wrong to. Resolves on what the players SAY - no
  roll makes it go away, no roll makes it a fight. Losing costs them the 1881
  issue, not their lives. His brother Tom is aboard and dies at minute two of
  every pass, which is the wiring between the acts
- new cast: Bewley, Prosser, Rance Doyle, Shard, Tom Doyle, Cordera man
- new handouts: the company notice, and the six names in Ambrose's hand
- 8 GM pages, 10 handouts, 15 actors, 13 plates

MEASURED, 400 runs each: the Act Three standoff is 0.4/4 hurt from cover and
1.25/4 in the open, both ending early - but FOUGHT TO A FINISH it puts 1.75 of 4
down and wipes the party in 24% of runs. The early stop is what makes the act
survivable, not the miners being weak. My first draft of that table was guessed
and wrong in all three rows.

FOUND AND FIXED: there is no Ride skill in this game and never has been. The
boarding set-piece has asked for "[CUS: Ride, then Athletics]" since it was
written, through a playtest, which is an instruction to roll a thing nobody has.
Horses are now handled by a local and the agent rolls Athletics.

NEW GUARD: check-scenarios resolves every [CUS: Skill] tag in every scenario
against SKILL_CATALOGUE and fails the build on a skill that does not exist.
Verified it fails on the real bug before wiring it in. Sixth guard.

NOTE: the three new plates (Bureau, north bench, standoff) are placeholders in
this commit - Midjourney is still rendering them.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

README.md

@@ -180,7 +180,7 @@ The build runs all five guards before it writes anything:
 
 <!-- guards:start -->
 ```
-check-rules: OK — 96 rules, 21 files scanned, 3 aliases + 46 constant sets checked, 306 formulas verified
+check-rules: OK — 96 rules, 22 files scanned, 3 aliases + 46 constant sets checked, 306 formulas verified
 check-kits: OK — 25 roles, 10 trades, 218 catalogue items, every kit key resolves, every posting can use what it carries, every loadout distinct
 check-lang: OK — en.json, 995 keys, no leaf/branch collisions
 check-behaviour: OK — 67 behavioural tests

docs/scenarios/THROUGH_TRAIN.md

@@ -11,62 +11,71 @@
 - **System:** d100 roll-under. Special under a fifth, critical under a twentieth.
   96–99 never succeed; 00 always fumbles; a 60% skill fumbles on 98–00.
 - **Panic is live** — 0–5, up. A trigger costs a point with no roll; relief is rolled.
-  **This is the case where it earns its keep.**
+  **This is the case where it earns its keep.** Triggers are marked per act.
 - **Standing Order 9 is live** — nothing modern goes through. Charge for *using*, never
   for carrying. Anchors are exempt.
 - **Runs with 4–6 agents from the duty roster.** Not the "(before)" sheets — this is the
   job, and it wants people who have been trained.
 - **The four minutes are lethal.** Webley 1d10, Martini-Henry 2d6+2, against 11–16 hit
-   points. **Use the exposure table** — unrestricted fire from all nine wipes the party
-   five times in six.
+  points. **Use the exposure table in Act Five** — unrestricted fire from all nine wipes
+  the party five times in six.
 - **The mission is to CLOSE it**, which releases everyone aboard into their own history —
   including the two men who did not survive the real four minutes.
-- **Hard rule: at 2:45 on the clock, they are on the train.**
+- **Hard rule: at 2:55 on the clock, they are aboard.**
 - **Content warnings:** gun violence at close quarters, repeatedly; entrapment and
   confinement; bystanders wounded on screen; a decision that lets named people die;
-  period hardship and labour exploitation; heights.
+  period hardship and labour exploitation; heights; a sibling present at a death.
 
 ---
 
 ## Overview
 
-- **Setting:** Mercy Draw, Nevada — present day, and 3–4 November 1881.
+- **Setting:** the Bureau, present day — then Cordera, Nevada Territory, 4 November 1881.
 - **Tone:** Procedural, then unbearable. It is a paperwork error with sixty-one people
   inside it.
-- **Runtime:** 3h30 play + a 10 minute break.
-- **The crossing:** opens at 11:40 every day, for about four minutes, on the grade.
+- **Runtime:** 4h00 including a 10 minute break.
+- **The crossing:** opens at 11:40 every day, for about four minutes, on the grade at
+  Mercy Draw.
 
 ### Design intent
 
 1. **The supernatural is science fiction underneath.** Nobody is dead, nothing is
    haunting anybody, and the whole event has a mechanism the players can understand and
    explain back. If a table leaves thinking "ghost train", it has been run wrong.
-2. **The obstacle is a physical problem, not a mystery.** They will know what is
-   happening by the end of Act One. Acts Two and Three are about a train that cannot
-   stop and an arithmetic that cannot be beaten.
-3. **Standing Order 9 is the tutorial.** One shot at a time, no radio, a lantern that
-   runs out. The period kit *is* the difficulty setting, and it is the scene where
-   players learn what kind of game this is.
-4. **The ending is a decision priced on both sides**, with no roll and no correct
+2. **Act One is the induction.** For most tables this is the first hour they have ever
+   spent in the department. They should leave it knowing the building, the standing
+   order, what an anchor is, and who signs for them.
+3. **The train has to be found.** They arrive where the paperwork says the railway is,
+   which is a bench of empty ground. Act Two is an investigation with a map at the end
+   of it, not a corridor.
+4. **Standing Order 9 is the difficulty setting.** One shot at a time, no radio, a
+   lantern that runs out. The period kit *is* the tutorial.
+5. **The ending is a decision priced on both sides**, with no roll and no correct
    answer, taken in front of a woman holding a manifest.
-5. **There is a fight, and there is no villain in it.** Two armed parties, both with
-   genuine paper, both convinced the others are robbers. The players can survive it,
-   shape it and pull people out of it. They cannot end it — only the brakes end it.
+6. **There is no villain anywhere in this case.** Not in town, not on the train. Two
+   armed parties aboard, both with genuine paper. A crew of unpaid miners in Cordera who
+   are right to be suspicious. The players can survive all of it and shape some of it.
+   They cannot make anybody wrong.
 
 ---
 
 ## Session Timing
 
-| Section | Time | Cumulative | Checkpoint |
+| Act | Time | Cumulative | Checkpoint |
 |---|---|---|---|
-| Briefing — the standing order | ~20 min | 0:20 | kit swapped, somebody has complained |
-| Act One — Mercy Draw, now | ~50 min | 1:10 | they know it is a survey fraud, and they have heard 11:40 |
-| *Break* | *10 min* | *1:10* | lands on the whistle |
-| Act Two — Cordera, 1881 | ~70 min | 2:20 | they are on the train |
-| Act Three — Aboard | ~50 min | 3:10 | they have decided |
-| Epilogue — the register | ~20 min | 3:30 | sixty-one names, written down |
+| **One** — The Bureau | ~35 min | 0:35 | kit swapped, anchors issued, somebody has complained |
+| **Two** — Cordera, and where the train went | ~50 min | 1:25 | they know where the line actually is, and when it passes |
+| *Break* | *10 min* | *1:35* | — |
+| **Three** — Rance Doyle's men | ~35 min | 2:10 | resolved one way or another; they still have a route to the Draw |
+| **Four** — Getting aboard | ~45 min | 2:55 | **they are on the train** |
+| **Five** — The four minutes | ~50 min | 3:45 | they have decided |
+| Epilogue — the register | ~15 min | 4:00 | sixty-one names, written down |
 
-**Hard rule:** at 2:45 they are aboard, by the department's wagon if not by their own wit.
+**Hard rule:** at 2:55 they are aboard, by the department's wagon if not by their own wit.
+
+**If you are running short:** cut the town down to the telegraph office and the
+roundhouse (Act Two), and play Act Three as a single street confrontation with no fight.
+**Never cut the boarding.**
 
 ---
 
@@ -94,7 +103,17 @@ three seconds old**.
 a train; it captured four minutes, and those four minutes contain two armed parties
 shooting the length of car three. It has run about two million times.
 
-### The two sides — and neither is the villain
+### Why the agents arrive in the wrong place
+
+**The crossing opens where the record says the line is: the north bench.** It has to —
+that is the wrongness it is made of. Agents step off a real grade in the present and step
+out onto a bench of empty scrub in 1881, with no rails, no ballast and no Draw in front
+of them.
+
+This is not a trick played on them. **It is the case, stated as geography**, and a party
+that works out why they came out where they did has solved half of Act Two.
+
+### The two sides aboard — and neither is the villain
 
 | | Who | What they have | What they believe |
 |---|---|---|---|
@@ -122,13 +141,15 @@ of November 1881 resumes from 11:44, and every person aboard walks forward into
 they would have had.
 
 **Including the ones who did not survive the real four minutes.** History resumes as
-history: Josiah Ambrose and a miner named Doyle died in that gunfight, and when the loop
-lets go they die in it. Not because the agents killed them — because that is what
-happened, and it has been prevented from happening for a hundred and forty-five years.
+history: Josiah Ambrose and a miner named **Tom Doyle** died in that gunfight, and when
+the loop lets go they die in it. Not because the agents killed them — because that is
+what happened, and it has been prevented from happening for a hundred and forty-five
+years.
 
 **That is the weight of this ending and it is the whole point.** The agents are not
 choosing who lives. They are choosing to stop holding history still, and they will have
-met the people it lands on.
+met the people it lands on — and, if Act Three went a certain way, the brother of one of
+them.
 
 The department's position is unambiguous: **close it.** A crossing held open by a
 repeating event degrades, and when it fails on its own — Registry's read is within a
@@ -147,47 +168,53 @@ direct question honestly because he has been waiting a very long time to be aske
 | 12 Apr 1881 | Vane files the survey. North bench. |
 | Apr–Oct 1881 | Line laid on the south bench. Six months of paperwork says otherwise. |
 | **3 Nov 1881, 11:40** | The record gives way, with No. 9 inside it. |
+| 3 Nov, evening | Cordera learns No. 9 never reached Fallon. |
+| **4 Nov 1881** | **Play begins on this day.** Ambrose and five men have been gone a day. |
 | 1889 | Rails lifted. The grade is still there. |
 | 1974, 1991, 2009 | Three departmental attempts. No survivors. All tried to stop it. |
-| Every day, 11:40 | The crossing opens on the grade for about four minutes. |
+| Every day, 11:40 | The crossing opens on the north bench for about four minutes. |
 
 ### Revelations
 
-| # | Revelation |
-|---|---|
-| R1 | The filed survey puts the line on the north bench |
-| R2 | There has never been a railway on the north bench |
-| R3 | Six months of paperwork repeated it |
-| R4 | The dispatcher's book has no 11:45 entry |
-| R5 | The 11:40 sound is a train working *up* a grade — always accelerating |
-| R6 | Nobody aboard is dead, and by their clocks it has been nine hours |
-| R7 | The running is what holds the crossing open |
-| R8 | Coal that should have lasted four hours has lasted a hundred and forty-five years |
-| R9 | Kell will stop if told to, out loud, to his face — and only then |
-| R10 | Vane signed it, and knows exactly what stopping it costs |
-| R11 | The four minutes contain a gunfight, and it repeats exactly |
-| R12 | Both sides have genuine paper, and the company sold the money twice |
-| R13 | Closing it releases everyone into their own history — including the two who die in it |
+| # | Revelation | Where |
+|---|---|---|
+| R1 | The filed survey puts the line on the north bench | Act One handout |
+| R2 | There is no railway on the north bench — they are standing on it | Act Two, automatic |
+| R3 | The line is on the **south** bench, four miles out | Act Two |
+| R4 | Six months of paperwork repeated the wrong one | Act Two |
+| R5 | The dispatcher's book has no 11:45 entry | Act Two |
+| R6 | No. 9 went into the Draw and did not come out | Act Two |
+| R7 | Something still passes the Draw, roughly every forty minutes | Act Two |
+| R8 | Ambrose took five men out to serve a writ on it, and none came back | Act Three |
+| R9 | The sound is a train working *up* a grade — always accelerating | Act Four |
+| R10 | Nobody aboard is dead, and by their clocks it has been nine hours | Act Five |
+| R11 | The running is what holds the crossing open | Act Five |
+| R12 | Coal that should have lasted four hours has lasted a hundred and forty-five years | Act Five |
+| R13 | The four minutes contain a gunfight, and it repeats exactly | Act Five |
+| R14 | Both sides have genuine paper, and the company sold the money twice | Act Five |
+| R15 | Kell will stop if told to, out loud, to his face — and only then | Act Five |
+| R16 | Closing it releases everyone into their own history — including the two who die in it | Act Five |
 
 ---
 
 ## Player Experience
 
-You are handed a Webley, a single-shot rifle, an oil lantern and a pocket watch, and told
-that the handset stays behind. Then you stand in a dry wash in Nevada at 11:38 in the
-morning and listen to a train you cannot see work a grade that has had no rails on it
-since 1889. By lunchtime you know it is a survey fraud from 1881. By the evening you are
-lying on the top of a water tower waiting for forty seconds of slow track, and after that
-you are in a warm carriage that smells of coffee, being asked by a conductor with a
-manifest whether you are from the company. She has counted sixty-one every hour for a
-hundred and forty-five years. She would like that noted.
+You sign a form in a building with no sign on it, and a storeman takes your phone off you
+and gives you a revolver that holds six. Then you step off a railway embankment in Nevada
+and come out on the wrong side of a valley in 1881, where there is no railway at all. It
+takes you an afternoon and an argument with a dozen unpaid miners to find out where the
+line actually is. By evening you are lying on the top of a water tower waiting for forty
+seconds of slow track, and after that you are in a warm carriage that smells of coffee,
+being asked by a conductor with a manifest whether you are from the company. She has
+counted sixty-one every hour for a hundred and forty-five years. She would like that
+noted.
 
 ---
 
 ## The Countdown — the crossing clock (0–6)
 
-Move it on **each pass of the train**, when **somebody uses a modern object across**, and
-on a **fumbled boarding attempt**.
+Move it on **each pass of the train the agents watch go by**, when **somebody uses a
+modern object across**, and on a **fumbled boarding attempt**.
 
 | Clock | What |
 |---|---|
@@ -199,34 +226,103 @@ on a **fumbled boarding attempt**.
 | 5 | One pass left, and everybody can tell. |
 | 6 | It closes, with whoever is aboard. |
 
+**Act Three does not move the clock.** Whatever happens with Rance Doyle's men, it
+happens in a town four miles from the Draw and the crossing does not care.
+
 ---
 
 ## Handouts
 
 | ID | Description | When |
 |---|---|---|
-| TT-H01 | Case brief TT-004 | Briefing |
-| TT-H02 | **Standing Order 9** — period crossings | Briefing |
-| TT-H03 | Issue list, 1881 | Briefing |
+| TT-H01 | Case brief TT-004 | Act One |
+| TT-H02 | **Standing Order 9** — period crossings | Act One |
+| TT-H03 | Issue list, 1881 | Act One |
 | TT-H04 | **The filed survey** — the line on the north bench | Act One |
-| TT-H05 | Working timetable and the dispatcher's book | Act One |
-| TT-H06 | **Passenger manifest** — sixty-one souls, nine children | Act Three |
-| TT-H07 | **Letter of engagement** — found on Merritt | Act Three, when searched |
-| TT-H08 | **Writ of attachment** — found on Ambrose | Act Three, when searched |
+| TT-H05 | Company notice — No. 9 overdue, reward offered | Act Two |
+| TT-H06 | Working timetable and the dispatcher's book | Act Two |
+| TT-H07 | **The writ men's list** — six names, in Ambrose's hand | Act Three |
+| TT-H08 | **Passenger manifest** — sixty-one souls, nine children | Act Five |
+| TT-H09 | **Letter of engagement** — found on Merritt | Act Five, when searched |
+| TT-H10 | **Writ of attachment** — found on Ambrose | Act Five, when searched |
 
-The two papers are the ambiguity, and they only mean anything **held in the same hand**.
+**H09 and H10 are the ambiguity, and they only mean anything held in the same hand.**
 Give them separately and let the table put them together.
 
-The manifest is deliberately held back to Act Three. It is a list of names, and the
-players should not be holding it until the moment it starts to weigh something.
+**H07 is the wiring between the acts.** It is a list of six names written by a man the
+players have not met. In Act Five they will be standing in a car with all six of them.
+Hand it over in Act Three and never mention it again.
+
+The manifest is held back to Act Five. It is a list of names, and the players should not
+be holding it until the moment it starts to weigh something.
 
 ---
 
-## Briefing — the standing order *(~20 min)*
+# Act One — The Bureau *(~35 min)*
 
-> You will be crossing to November 1881. Nothing you are carrying goes with you. Stores
-> has laid out what you may take instead, and I would ask you not to argue with the
-> storeman, because he is right and you are in a hurry.
+> **Goal:** they learn where they work, what an anchor is, why the phone stays behind,
+> and what the case is.
+
+> Read aloud or paraphrase:
+>
+> The building has no sign on it. It has a commissionaire, a lift that only goes to four
+> of the six floors, and a smell of floor polish and old paper that you will come to know
+> very well. Somebody has left a birthday card going round the third floor for a woman in
+> Accounts. You are here because a train has been missing since 1881, and it is Tuesday.
+
+**Play this as an ordinary morning at an ordinary job.** The horror in this game is that
+the paperwork is real. Nobody is portentous. Nobody explains that the world is stranger
+than they know.
+
+### The four stops
+
+Run these as four short beats. Let the players wander between them; do not queue them up.
+
+| Stop | Who | What happens |
+|---|---|---|
+| **The desk** | a commissionaire with a ledger | They sign in. Names, times, and their **anchor numbers**. He will not be hurried. |
+| **Registry** | **Mr Bewley** | The case. The survey. The three previous attempts. |
+| **Stores** | **Mr Prosser** | The kit swap, and the argument. |
+| **Medical** | a nurse, briskly | Anchors issued. Two minutes. Do not make a scene of it. |
+
+### Registry — the briefing
+
+**Mr Bewley has the file and would prefer the players read it.** Give **TT-H01** and
+**TT-H04** and let them ask.
+
+What he will say, if asked:
+
+- **The crossing opens on the grade at Mercy Draw, Nevada, at 11:40, for about four
+  minutes.** It has done so every day for as long as the department has watched it.
+- **A train is inside it.** Cordera & Western No. 9, five cars, out of Cordera on 3
+  November 1881, never arrived at Fallon.
+- **Sixty-one people, by the manifest.** He will not hand the manifest over yet, and if
+  pressed he says so plainly: *"You will read it aboard. It reads differently there."*
+- **Three attempts are on file** — 1974, 1991, 2009. **No survivors. All three tried to
+  stop it.** He does not know why that failed and he says so.
+- **The order is to close it.** A crossing held open by a repeating event degrades. When
+  it fails on its own — his read is within the year — everyone inside is lost outright.
+- **The survey is the case.** *"Bring me the paper. The paper is the case."*
+
+> **The one thing Bewley gets wrong.** He believes the crossing puts you on the grade.
+> Every previous team went in expecting to arrive beside the line. **Do not correct
+> this.** It is on the file wrong, and the file is what they have.
+
+**[CUS: Research or Insight]** on the file: the three previous attempts all logged their
+last position as *"the north bench"*, which nobody has ever queried because nobody has
+ever come back to be asked about it. **Optional. It is a very good catch and it should
+feel like one.**
+
+### Stores — Standing Order 9
+
+**Give TT-H02 and TT-H03.** Mr Prosser has laid the kit out on a counter and he is not
+interested in negotiation.
+
+> Read aloud or paraphrase:
+>
+> Nothing you are carrying goes with you. I have laid out what you may take instead. You
+> may argue with me if you like, but I have been doing this for nineteen years and you
+> have been doing it since Thursday.
 
 **Nothing modern goes through.** Give both reasons:
 
@@ -239,9 +335,11 @@ players should not be holding it until the moment it starts to weigh something.
 **Charge for using, never for carrying.** A player who smuggles a torch across and never
 switches it on has made a good decision and should get away with it.
 
-**The anchor is exempt.** Everybody keeps theirs.
+**The anchor is exempt.** Everybody keeps theirs. If nobody asks what an anchor is, the
+nurse tells them: *it is the department's record that you exist and belong here, and it
+is the reason you can come back.*
 
-### The 1881 issue
+#### The 1881 issue
 
 | Instead of | They get |
 |---|---|
@@ -253,106 +351,325 @@ switches it on has made a good decision and should get away with it.
 | medkit | **chirurgeon's roll** and **laudanum** |
 | phone and GPS | **brass compass**, **pocket watch**, **spyglass** |
 
+Plus **period coin**, which will matter in Cordera, and **iron manacles**, which will not.
+
+### Failure case for Act One
+
+**There isn't one.** Nobody can fail the Bureau. If the table is quiet, cut to Prosser
+taking somebody's phone out of their hand and move on. **If it is running long at 35
+minutes, stop it** — the case is on the handouts and they can read on the drive.
+
+**Panic:** no triggers in Act One. Say the word "panic" once, explain the track in two
+sentences, and leave it.
+
 ---
 
-## Act One — Mercy Draw, now *(~50 min)*
+# Act Two — Cordera, and where the train went *(~50 min)*
 
-> **Goal:** find the fraud, hear the train, understand it is on a timetable.
+> **Goal:** find out where the line actually is, that something still passes it, and when.
 
-Nevada. A dry wash four miles long with a railway grade along the south side. Rails
-lifted in 1889; ballast and tie marks still there. Your watch says 11:38.
+### The crossing
 
-- **The south bench** — the grade, real and obvious.
-- **The north bench** — nothing, and never anything. `[CUS: Spot or Engineering]`
-- **The water tower footing**, half a mile up at the top of the grade. *Remember it.*
-- **11:40.** A whistle a long way off, then four minutes of a train working a grade,
-  getting no nearer. **Automatic — nobody rolls for this.**
+Mercy Draw, Nevada, 11:38. A dry wash four miles long. The grade runs along the **south**
+side — ballast and tie marks, rails lifted in 1889. **The crossing does not open there.**
+
+It opens on the **north bench**: a strip of empty scrub on the wrong side of the wash,
+where no railway has ever been.
+
+> Read aloud or paraphrase:
+>
+> The air over the north bench goes wrong at 11:40 — not shimmering, *creased*, like a
+> page folded and opened again. Somewhere behind it a whistle sounds, a long way off, and
+> a locomotive starts working a grade. You cannot see it. It does not get any nearer.
+
+**Everybody crosses. Nobody rolls for it.**
+
+> **The four minutes is the door, not the visit.** The crossing is *openable* for four
+> minutes at 11:40 — that is the window to step through. Once across, the agents are in
+> 1881 for as long as the crossing clock holds, which is an afternoon and an evening, not
+> four minutes. **Say this to the table the moment somebody starts counting seconds.**
+> The clock at 6 is the deadline, and it is measured in passes of the train, not minutes.
+
+> Read aloud or paraphrase:
+>
+> The other side is the fourth of November, 1881, at about four in the afternoon, and it
+> is twenty degrees colder. You are standing on a bench of scrub and sage on the north
+> side of a dry wash. There is no railway here. There is no railway anywhere you can see.
+
+**R2 is automatic and it should land hard.** They came out where the chart said the
+railway was. The chart is in their hands. **[CUS: Navigate or Engineering]** confirms in
+one roll that nothing has ever been built here — no cut, no fill, no ballast, nothing.
+
+**Cordera is visible**, about three miles south-west: smoke, a water tank, a grid of
+roofs.
+
+### Cordera
+
+**A railroad and mining town of about eighteen hundred.** Woodsmoke, horses, coal dust,
+and mud that freezes at night. Nobody is frightened yet. A train went missing yesterday
+and the town is treating it as a company problem, which is to say somebody else's.
+
+**Nobody here can help them stop it, and almost everybody will help them get near it.**
+The company wants its train back. Let the players use that.
+
+| Location | Who | What is here |
+|---|---|---|
+| **The company office** | a harried dispatcher | Orders on spikes, the working timetable, **the original survey in a drawer** |
+| **The telegraph office** | **Ada Reyes** | The dispatcher's book, and the only person in town who is ahead of it |
+| **The roundhouse** | fitters, a foreman | Men who know the road. One of them walked the Draw this morning and will not go back. |
+| **The Bullion** (saloon) | everybody | Talk, and the wrong kind of attention. **This is where Act Three finds them.** |
+| **The livery** | a liveryman who wants paying | Horses. This matters in Act Four. |
+| **The assay office** | a clerk | The company's notice, and the reward. |
 
 ### Clue trail
 
 | # | Clue | How found | Type |
 |---|---|---|---|
-| 1 | The filed survey puts the line on the **north** bench | **Automatic** — it is a handout with a line drawn on it | Essential |
-| 2 | There has never been a railway on the north bench | **Automatic** to anyone who walks it | Essential |
-| 3 | Six months of paperwork all say north bench | `[CUS: Research]`, or Registry provides | Essential |
-| 4 | No 11:45 entry in the dispatcher's book | `[CUS: Research]` | Essential |
-| 5 | E. Vane, surveyor, is on the manifest | `[CUS: Research]` | Optional |
-| 6 | Three previous attempts, no survivors, all tried to stop it | Registry, if asked | Optional |
-| 7 | The sound is a train *accelerating* up a grade | `[CUS: Listen or Engineering]` | Optional |
+| 1 | There is no railway on the north bench, and never has been | **Automatic** — they are standing on it | Essential |
+| 2 | The line is on the **south** bench, four miles out | Anyone in town, for the asking. **Automatic to a single question.** | Essential |
+| 3 | No. 9 left Cordera 3 Nov and never reached Fallon | **Automatic** — it is the talk of the town, and it is on **TT-H05** | Essential |
+| 4 | The filed survey and the built line disagree | Compare **TT-H04** with the ground or the drawer copy — `[CUS: Engineering, or automatic if they simply look]` | Essential |
+| 5 | Six months of orders all say north bench | `[CUS: Research]` at the company office, on the spiked orders | Essential |
+| 6 | **Something still passes the Draw, roughly every forty minutes** | The roundhouse man, or `[CUS: Listen]` within a mile of the wash | **Essential** |
+| 7 | No 11:45 entry in the dispatcher's book | `[CUS: Research]`, or Ada Reyes volunteers it if treated civilly | Optional |
+| 8 | Ada has sent the same query up the line forty times | Talk to her | Optional |
+| 9 | E. Vane, surveyor, was aboard | `[CUS: Research]` on the waybills | Optional |
+| 10 | Six men went out yesterday to serve a paper on the train | The saloon, `[CUS: Insight]` or buying a drink | Optional — **and it is the hook into Act Three** |
 
-**Fallbacks.** 1 and 2 are the handout and the ground. 3 and 4 arrive from Registry by
-telephone at the twenty-minute mark if nobody goes looking — Bewley is thorough and
-slightly impatient.
+**Clue 6 is the one the act exists for.** If they have not got it by 1:15, the roundhouse
+foreman comes and finds *them*: a section hand called **Tobin Cray** walked out to the
+Draw at first light to look for No. 9, heard it coming, and came back without looking.
 
-**They cannot board at this end.** Too fast, grade against them. Let them try: a bruise, a
-lesson, and the clock moves one.
+> Read aloud or paraphrase:
+>
+> I heard her working the grade, mister. Steam and rods and all of it, close enough to
+> throw a stone at. There's nothing on that line. I stood there till it came round again
+> and then I stopped standing there.
 
-> **Fast-track at 1:10:** the 11:40 comes round again and the door stays open long enough
-> to walk through. That is what degrading looks like.
+**Fallbacks.** Clues 1 and 3 cannot be missed. Clue 2 is one question to one person. If
+the party stalls on 4 or 5, the dispatcher — who wants his train found — puts the filed
+survey in their hands himself and asks them what they make of it.
+
+**Money.** Period coin from Stores buys drinks, a room, a liveryman's goodwill and a
+roundhouse man's hour. **A party that tries to pay with anything else has used a modern
+object across:** 1 Coherence, and the clock moves.
+
+**Panic triggers in Act Two:**
+- **Arriving on ground that should have a railway on it and does not** — 1 point, if a
+  player wants it. Offer; do not force.
+- **Hearing the train pass with nothing on the line** — 1 point, and this one is not
+  optional for anyone who goes and listens.
+
+### Failure case
+
+**They cannot fail to find the Draw** — the town will tell them where the line is. What
+they can fail to do is find out that something still runs on it, and the roundhouse
+fallback covers that. **If Act Two overruns, cut the assay office and the saloon talk and
+let Act Three come to them.**
 
 ---
 
-## Act Two — Cordera, 1881 *(~70 min)*
+# Act Three — Rance Doyle's men *(~35 min)*
 
-> **Goal:** the far side, the standing order in practice, and the boarding.
+> **Goal:** a town-side obstacle with the same shape as the one on the train, and a name
+> the players will meet again.
 
-The fourth of November, 1881. A town of four hundred that smells of woodsmoke and horses.
-Nobody is frightened yet — a train went into the Draw yesterday and has not come out, and
-the wire says it never arrived.
+**One-line essence: Rance Doyle wants his brother back, and the agents look exactly like
+the people who took him.**
 
-- **The company office** — dispatcher, orders on spikes, the original survey in a drawer.
-- **The livery** — horses. This matters.
-- **Ada Reyes**, telegraph, who has sent the same query forty times and has noticed the
-  missing 11:45.
-- **The Draw**, four miles out. The train passes about every forty minutes.
+### What is actually going on
 
-**Nobody in 1881 can help them stop it, and everybody will help them get near it.** The
-company wants its train back. Let the players use that.
+Eleven weeks ago the Cordera & Western stopped paying the mine. Nine days ago **Josiah
+Ambrose** got a writ of attachment out of a territorial judge in Fallon against the
+company payroll. **On 3 November he and five men went out to serve it on No. 9**, and
+none of them came back — because the train did not come back.
 
-### The set-piece — getting aboard
+The company's response was to post a **notice** (**TT-H05**) calling No. 9 overdue,
+offering a reward for information, and naming Ambrose's six as wanted for interfering
+with company property. There is a **company detective in town**, **Mr Shard**, buying
+drinks and asking who was friendly with the writ men.
 
-The train cannot stop and cannot be flagged. The only way on is to **match its speed**,
-and the only place it is slow is **the top of the grade at the water tower** — about eight
+**Then five strangers arrive in coats that do not fit, with money, asking about the
+train.**
+
+**Rance Doyle is not stupid and he is not wrong to draw the conclusion he draws.**
+
+### The confrontation
+
+**Where:** the street outside The Bullion, or the livery, or wherever the party is when
+the act needs to start. **Six men**, Rance at the front, two with revolvers, one with a
+shotgun, three with what was to hand.
+
+> Read aloud or paraphrase:
+>
+> There are six of them and they have arranged themselves across the street in the way
+> men do when they have talked about it first. The one at the front has a face like his
+> brother's, which you have no way of knowing yet. He says: *"You've been asking after the
+> train. So've we. Ours went out on it."*
+
+**Rance wants three things, in this order:** to know where his brother is, to know
+whether the agents are Shard's, and to be taken seriously.
+
+### How this resolves
+
+**There is no roll that makes this go away, and there is no roll that makes it a fight.**
+It resolves on what the players say.
+
+| They do | What happens |
+|---|---|
+| **Tell him the truth** — the train is still out there, still running, and they are going to it | **It works. No roll.** He believes them, because it matches what Cray said and nothing else has. He wants to come. |
+| **Show him TT-H04 or explain the survey** | Works as well as the truth, and faster. He cannot read a chart, but he can tell when somebody is not performing. |
+| Deny everything, stonewall, pull rank | `[CUS: Fast Talk or Persuade — difficult]`. Success buys an exit, not an ally. Failure goes to the standoff below. |
+| **Claim to be from the company, or get caught lying** | Straight to the standoff, and Rance's men mean it |
+| Draw first | The standoff, immediately, and the agents started it |
+
+### The standoff — and what losing costs
+
+**Rance's men are not trying to kill anybody.** They intend to take the agents somewhere
+quiet and find out what they know. **Run it as a fight that stops early.**
+
+- **Rance calls it off the moment one of his men goes down**, or one of the agents does.
+  He has already lost a brother this week.
+- **A downed agent is captured, not killed.** The dying rules apply and Rance's men will
+  fetch a doctor, because they are not murderers and they know what a murder charge does
+  to a strike.
+
+**MEASURED, 400 runs each, four duty-roster agents against the six:**
+
+| The agents | Result |
+|---|---|
+| **From cover, and Rance folds early** | 0.4 of 4 hurt, effectively nobody down, over in about 2 rounds |
+| **In the open, and Rance folds early** | 1.25 of 4 hurt, one party in eight loses somebody to the floor |
+| **Shoot to kill — fought to the finish** | **1.75 of 4 down, ten rounds, and the party is wiped in 24% of runs** |
+
+> **The early stop is what makes this act survivable, not the miners being weak.** Six
+> armed men fought to a finish are as dangerous as the payroll box in Act Five — nearly
+> one party in four does not walk out of the street. **If the agents start executing
+> people, do not quietly soften it.** Let Rance's men fight for their lives, and let the
+> table find out that a frontier mining town's grievance crew is not a random encounter.
+
+**Losing the standoff costs them the 1881 issue.** Rance's men take the Webleys, the
+Martini, the spyglass and the coin, and hold the agents in a back room for two hours.
+**Nobody dies and nothing is unrecoverable** — but Act Four now starts with an unarmed
+party, and Act Five is a gunfight. **Say this cost out loud before the first shot**, the
+way you say the payroll-box row in Act Five.
+
+**Getting the kit back:** ask Rance for it, once they have told him the truth. He returns
+it, minus the coin, which has been spent.
+
+### Rance wants to come
+
+**This is the important part of the act and it is easy to miss.**
+
+Once he believes them, **Rance Doyle asks to come to the Draw**, and he will follow at a
+distance if refused. He is a fit, angry, useful man with a horse and no idea what he is
+walking towards.
+
+| The players | What it buys, what it costs |
+|---|---|
+| **Take him as far as the Draw** | The default. He knows the ground, he gets them horses, and he stands on the bench and watches. |
+| **Take him aboard** | He is competent in the four minutes — and **he is in car three when his brother is shot, every pass.** Then they have to tell him what closing it does. **Powerful, and only run it if the table can hold it.** |
+| **Refuse him** | He follows anyway, arrives late, and is on the bench at the end. |
+| **Never tell him anything** | He is in the crowd at the epilogue asking a Registry man questions nobody will answer. |
+
+**Give TT-H07 here** — the list of six names in Ambrose's hand, which Rance has carried
+in his coat since Thursday. **Do not explain it.** In Act Five they will be standing in a
+car with all six.
+
+**Panic triggers in Act Three:**
+- Being taken and held — 1 point to anyone disarmed and locked in.
+- Nothing else. **This act is meant to be a hard hour in an ordinary world**, not a
+  supernatural one.
+
+### Failure case
+
+**If the table talks its way out in five minutes, that is a win and you have thirty
+minutes back** — spend them on Act Four, which always wants more. **If it goes to a
+fight and stalls,** Shard's arrival with two hired men breaks it up: everybody scatters,
+and now the agents owe Rance nothing and know nothing.
+
+---
+
+# Act Four — Getting aboard *(~45 min)*
+
+> **Goal:** the Draw, the arithmetic of a train that cannot stop, and forty seconds of
+> slow track.
+
+Four miles out. The line is on the south bench, exactly where the chart says it is not.
+
+> Read aloud or paraphrase:
+>
+> The Draw is a dry wash a quarter-mile across with a made grade running the length of the
+> south side. There is nothing on the line. At eleven minutes past the hour you hear a
+> whistle, and then a locomotive working hard up the grade towards you, and the sound goes
+> past at about thirty miles an hour, and there is nothing there. Four minutes later it is
+> quiet, and your watch says it will do it again at ten to.
+
+**It passes roughly every forty minutes.** Let them watch two passes before they commit
+to anything. **Each pass they watch moves the crossing clock one.**
+
+**R9 — the sound is a train *accelerating*, always** — is `[CUS: Listen or Engineering]`,
+or free to anybody who was at the roundhouse.
+
+### What they are up against
+
+**The train cannot stop and cannot be flagged.** Thirty miles an hour on the level, and
+the only place it is slow is **the top of the grade at the water tower** — about eight
 miles an hour, for perhaps forty seconds.
 
-1. **Ride it down.** Horses alongside on the bench, step across. `[CUS: Ride, then
-   Athletics]` — and the horse needs its own Ride roll to go near the train at all.
-2. **Drop from the tower.** Twelve feet onto a moving roof. `[CUS: Athletics — average;
-   **only a fumble is a fall**]`. **Do not make this difficult** — playtested at halved
-   skill it put four agents on 12–31% and all four missed, which stalls the one scene the
-   scenario is built around.
-3. **The wagon on the grade.** Four horses, a plank across. Slowest to arrange, safest to
-   cross, and it needs the company's help.
+**The water tower is half a mile up the grade** and it is still standing in 1881, which
+it will not be in the present day. Anybody who looks at the ground sees the answer.
+
+### The three routes
+
+**Say which route suits whom, out loud, before they choose.**
+
+| Route | Roll | Suits |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Drop from the tower** — twelve feet onto a moving roof | `[CUS: Athletics — average; **only a fumble is a fall**]` | Containment, the criminal, the Field Lead |
+| **Ride it down** — horses alongside on the bench, step across | `[CUS: Athletics — difficult]`. **A local does the riding** — Rance, one of his men, or the liveryman. No agent from 2026 rides well enough to bring a horse alongside a moving train. | Nobody, really. It is the fast option and the worst one. |
+| **The wagon on the grade** — four horses, a plank across | `[CUS: Athletics — easy]`, slowest to arrange, needs the company's or Rance's help | **The doctor and the Registry officer** |
+
+**There is no Ride skill in this game and the agents do not have one.** Any horse work
+is done by a local who is doing the players a favour, and the agent's roll is only for
+the step across. Say so plainly the moment somebody suggests horses.
 
 **The wagon is easier than the tower, and the tower is easier than the horses.** A party
-that spends an hour arranging the wagon has bought an easy roll and should get one.
+that spends twenty minutes arranging the wagon has bought an easy roll and should get one.
 
-**Say which route suits whom, out loud, before they choose.** Athletics on a duty-roster
-sheet runs from about 25% to 60%, and the split is not subtle: the Containment officer and
-the criminal take the tower, the Field Lead can, and **the doctor and the Registry officer
-should be on the wagon**. Playtested by putting all five on the tower: two missed twice,
-had to be carried across on the department's plank, and became passengers in their own
-set-piece — at a cost of two passes on the clock.
+> **Do not make the tower difficult.** Playtested at halved skill it put four agents on
+> 12–31% and all four missed, which stalls the one scene the scenario is built around.
+> Playtested with all five on the tower: two missed twice, had to be carried across on
+> the department's plank, and became passengers in their own set-piece.
 
-**Everybody has to get on.** A failed attempt gets the next pass, forty minutes later, and
-the clock moves — not a full stop.
+**Everybody has to get on.** A failed attempt gets the next pass, forty minutes later,
+and the clock moves — not a full stop.
 
 **Panic:** boarding is worth a point to anybody who wants one. Offer it; do not force it.
 
-> **At 2:45 they are aboard.** If two attempts have failed, the department's second wagon
+> **At 2:55 they are aboard.** If two attempts have failed, the department's second wagon
 > arrives with two more agents and a plank, and the players owe somebody a favour.
 
+### Failure case
+
+**They cannot fail this act, only pay for it.** Every failure is forty minutes and a
+click of the clock. If the clock reaches 5 during Act Four, tell them plainly: **one
+pass left.**
+
 ---
 
-## Act Three — Aboard, and the four minutes *(~50 min)*
+# Act Five — The four minutes *(~50 min)*
 
 > **Goal:** survive a gunfight nobody started for their benefit, work out that it repeats,
 > and close the crossing anyway.
 
-> It is warm. That is the first thing. Sixty-one people in five cars, and it smells of
-> bodies and coal smoke and coffee. Somebody has organised a rota for the water. A child
-> is asleep across two seats with a coat over her. They look up when you come through the
-> door, and one of them says: *"You want to be somewhere else in about six minutes."*
+> Read aloud or paraphrase:
+>
+> It is warm. That is the first thing. Sixty-one people in five cars and it smells of
+> bodies and coal smoke and coffee, and somebody has organised a rota for the water. A
+> child is asleep across two seats with a coat over her. They look up when you come
+> through the door, and one of them says: *"You want to be somewhere else in about six
+> minutes."*
 
 | Where | What |
 |---|---|
@@ -363,6 +680,8 @@ the clock moves — not a full stop.
 | Car four | Freight, the payroll box bolted down, the signed survey in the satchel |
 | Car five | **Elias Vane**, alone, watching the line come out from under |
 
+**Give TT-H08, the manifest, when Hester Bligh first speaks to them.**
+
 ### The four minutes
 
 Starts on the whistle for the grade. Run it in rounds. **It is the same four minutes every
@@ -371,10 +690,15 @@ time** — same men, same shots, same two passengers hit in the second minute.
 | Minute | What happens if nobody interferes |
 |---|---|
 | 1 | Ambrose's five come forward from car four. Merritt's four are at the front of car three. Somebody shouts *put it down*; both sides think they said it. |
-| 2 | First volley. **Two passengers are hit** — a miner named Doyle, and Mrs Danforth's arm. Every time. |
+| 2 | First volley. **Two passengers are hit** — **Tom Doyle**, and Mrs Danforth's arm. Every time. |
 | 3 | Merritt falls back to the car four door and holds it. Ambrose takes the overturned seats. Everybody reloads: a Webley is six, a Martini is one. |
 | 4 | Ambrose reaches the box. Merritt shoots him through the door. The whistle sounds, and it resets. |
 
+> **If Rance came aboard**, he is in car three from minute one and he has seen his
+> brother. He will go to him. **He cannot be talked out of it and he cannot be hurt** —
+> he is not part of the loop, so he *can* be shot, and the exposure table applies to him
+> as to any agent. **Play him as a man with no interest at all in the mission.**
+
 ### HOW MUCH FIRE THE AGENTS DRAW — read before running it
 
 **The two sides are shooting at each other, not at the agents.** Getting this wrong turns
@@ -455,14 +779,14 @@ Seven of the ten duty-roster agents have neither Persuade nor Status trained; pl
 three separate attempts on Kell all failed and the scenario had no way to end.
 
 **When the brakes go on, the loop lets go.** Four minutes finish for the first time since
-1881. Doyle and Ambrose do not get up. They never did.
+1881. Tom Doyle and Josiah Ambrose do not get up. They never did.
 
 ### The choices — no roll resolves this
 
 | Choice | What it costs |
 |---|---|
 | **Close it as ordered** | The mission, done. Fifty-nine released into their own century. Two men die of wounds taken in 1881, in 1881. |
-| **Close it, having pulled Doyle and Mrs Danforth clear** | Works for those two. Nobody can save Ambrose — only stopping the train stops Merritt shooting him, and stopping the train is what kills him. |
+| **Close it, having pulled Doyle and Mrs Danforth clear** | Works for Mrs Danforth. **It does not save Tom Doyle** — he is shot again on every pass they spend arranging it, and the wound that kills him is the one from the pass they stop on. Nobody can save Ambrose: only stopping the train stops Merritt shooting him, and stopping the train is what kills him. |
 | **Try to end the fight first** | Admirable, probably impossible. Every pass spent trying moves the crossing clock; at 6 it closes with everyone inside. |
 | **Refuse, leave it running** | Everyone lives, for a value of living four minutes long. It fails inside a year and then nobody is released at all. |
 
@@ -476,34 +800,46 @@ three separate attempts on Kell all failed and the scenario had no way to end.
 
 ---
 
-## Epilogue — the register *(~20 min)*
+## Epilogue — the register *(~15 min)*
 
 A Registry room, a form, and somebody writing down sixty-one names.
 
 | Ending | What the register says |
 |---|---|
 | **Closed as ordered** | Fifty-nine walk forward into their own century. Ambrose and Doyle die of wounds taken on 3 November 1881, four minutes after they took them. Registry counts it a success and it is one. |
-| **Closed, the two passengers pulled clear first** | As above, and Mrs Danforth keeps her arm. |
+| **Closed, Mrs Danforth pulled clear first** | As above, and she keeps her arm. |
 | **Closed late** | The same ending, more expensively. If the clock reached 6 first, add the agents to the list. |
 | **Left running** | Logged, monitored, inherited. Sixty-one people continue to live four minutes. When it fails, nobody is released at all. |
 
+**If Rance was aboard:** he is in the Registry corridor, and nobody has told him he cannot
+be. He wants to know why a government he has never heard of decided his brother should
+die on schedule. **Let a player answer him. Do not answer for them.**
+
+**If Rance was not aboard:** he is on the north bench at dusk with six horses and no
+riders coming back, and he is still there when the crossing closes.
+
 **Registry's note on any ending:** *"The department did not cause these deaths. It ceased
 to prevent them. The distinction matters to the file and it is not expected to matter to
 the agents."*
 
 ---
 
-## Cast
+## NPC Roster — quick sheet
 
-| Who | Wants | Key line |
+| Who | Essence | Key line |
 |---|---|---|
+| **Mr Bewley**, Registry | wants the chart and the truth written down | *"Bring me the paper. The paper is the case."* |
+| **Mr Prosser**, Stores | has done this nineteen years and will not be argued with | *"You may argue. I have laid out what you may take."* |
+| **Ada Reyes**, telegraph | an answer up the line | *"It never got to Fallon. I've sent it forty times."* |
+| **Tobin Cray**, section hand | to not go back out there | *"There's nothing on that line. I stopped standing there."* |
+| **Rance Doyle**, miner | his brother back, and to be taken seriously | *"You've been asking after the train. So've we. Ours went out on it."* |
+| **Mr Shard**, company detective | names, and the reward money | *"Who drank with them? That's all. Who drank with them."* |
+| **Marius Kell**, engineer | to be allowed to stop | *"You tell me when. I'll not do it before you say."* |
+| **Hester Bligh**, conductor | her passengers accounted for | *"Sixty-one aboard. I have counted them every hour since."* |
 | **Cass Merritt**, hired guard | to see the box to Fallon, as engaged | *"I have a letter. Whatever you have, I have a letter."* |
 | **Josiah Ambrose**, miner | eleven weeks of wages, lawfully | *"There is a judge's seal on this. Read it and then shoot me."* |
-| **Marius Kell**, engineer | to be allowed to stop | *"You tell me when. I'll not do it before you say."* |
+| **Tom Doyle**, miner | to go home. Dies at minute two, every time. | *"Rance said don't. I should've listened to Rance."* |
 | **Elias Vane**, surveyor | to be asked, at last | *"I signed it. Six months of honest men made it true."* |
-| **Hester Bligh**, conductor | her passengers accounted for | *"Sixty-one aboard. I have counted them every hour since."* |
-| **Ada Reyes**, telegraph | an answer up the line | *"It never got to Fallon. I've sent it forty times."* |
-| **Mr Bewley**, Registry | the chart, and the truth written down | *"Bring me the paper. The paper is the case."* |
 
 ---
 
@@ -516,15 +852,20 @@ the agents."*
 - **What is at the far end of the line.** Nobody aboard has reached it.
 - **Whether closing it was a rescue.** Fifty-nine people say yes. Two men do not get to
   say.
+- **Whether Rance forgives them.** He does not say, and Registry does not ask.
 
 ## GM notes
 
+- **Act One is not a briefing, it is a workplace.** The birthday card going round Accounts
+  is doing as much work as the case file.
 - **Play the passengers as people, hard** — and the nine men in the fight hardest of all.
 - **Never let the players win the fight.** They can survive it, shape it, and pull people
   out of it. They cannot end it. Only the brakes end it.
 - **Standing Order 9 is the tutorial.** Do not soften it and do not apologise for it.
-- **Cut first:** the town, down to the livery and the telegraph office. Never cut the
-  boarding.
+- **Rance is the emotional wiring of the whole case.** He turns a number into a surname.
+  If the table takes to him, take him aboard. If they do not, leave him on the bench.
+- **Cut first:** the assay office, the saloon talk, and the Act Three fight. **Never cut
+  the boarding.**
 - **If they crack it early,** run the passes — six of them, forty minutes apart — and let
   the table feel the arithmetic they are betting on.
 
@@ -536,8 +877,9 @@ the agents."*
 |---|---|---|---|
 | **LAST ADMISSION** | 2h | yes, one fight | no — prologue, civilians |
 | **OPEN DAY** | 2h15 | no | no — prologue, civilians |
-| **THROUGH TRAIN** | 3h30 | no | **yes** — the first real case |
+| **THROUGH TRAIN** | 4h | yes, twice | **yes** — the first real case |
 | **BLACK PLATFORM** | 3–4h | yes, heavily | no — a modern-day action case |
 
-Run a prologue, then THROUGH TRAIN. BLACK PLATFORM is the one to reach for when a table
-wants a fight.
+THROUGH TRAIN now opens with its own induction and does not need a prologue in front of
+it. Run a prologue first if the table wants to play civilians before they play agents.
+BLACK PLATFORM is the one to reach for when a table wants a fight.

package.json

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
   "scripts": {
     "build": "node tools/build-packs.mjs && node tools/update-readme.mjs",
     "icons": "node tools/make-icons.mjs",
-    "check": "node tools/check-rules.mjs && node tools/check-kits.mjs && node tools/check-lang.mjs && node tools/check-templates.mjs && node tools/check-behaviour.mjs",
+    "check": "node tools/check-rules.mjs && node tools/check-kits.mjs && node tools/check-lang.mjs && node tools/check-templates.mjs && node tools/check-behaviour.mjs && node tools/check-scenarios.mjs",
     "test": "npm run check",
     "readme": "node tools/update-readme.mjs"
   },

packs/armour/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/armour/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.522827 16edc3000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.522857 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.523016 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: 4591 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.523288 16edc3000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.523332 16edc3000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.062011 172aa7000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/armour/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.000759 16ec7f000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/expedition/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/expedition/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.542861 1705e7000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.542881 1705e7000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.543000 1705e7000 Level-0 table #5: 4129 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.543233 1705e7000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.543262 1705e7000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.141345 173abf000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/expedition/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.085840 1704a3000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/gear/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/gear/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.523809 16edc3000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.523911 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.524193 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: 31614 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.524392 16edc3000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.524442 16edc3000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.063575 173abf000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/gear/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.002659 1704a3000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/lastadmission/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/lastadmission/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.537220 1705e7000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.537462 1705e7000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.537820 1705e7000 Level-0 table #5: 46857 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.538102 1705e7000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.538144 1705e7000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.126868 1742cb000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/lastadmission/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.066464 16ec7f000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/npcs/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/npcs/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.511991 16edc3000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.512828 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.514313 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: 234672 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.514681 16edc3000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.514785 16edc3000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.101699 172aa7000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/npcs/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.040817 1704a3000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/powers/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/powers/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.520180 16edc3000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.520206 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.520334 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: 3295 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.520647 16edc3000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.520681 16edc3000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.136777 173abf000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/powers/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.079222 16f48b000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/pregens/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/pregens/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.501500 16edc3000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.503444 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.506554 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: 560581 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.506965 16edc3000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.507130 16edc3000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.086192 1742cb000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/pregens/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.025927 16fc97000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/primer/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/primer/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.526413 16edc3000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.526467 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.526727 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: 24730 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.526971 16edc3000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.526999 16edc3000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.134073 173abf000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/primer/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.075510 16fc97000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/prologue/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/prologue/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.538839 16f5cf000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.539012 16f5cf000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.539381 16f5cf000 Level-0 table #5: 44887 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.539604 16f5cf000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.539638 16f5cf000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.130966 172aa7000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/prologue/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.071063 16ec7f000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/rules/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/rules/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.527792 16f5cf000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.527874 16f5cf000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.528257 16f5cf000 Level-0 table #5: 37376 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.528527 16f5cf000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.528572 16f5cf000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.139904 172aa7000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/rules/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.083980 16fc97000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/skills/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/skills/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.517325 16edc3000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.517371 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.517580 16edc3000 Level-0 table #5: 7806 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.518061 16edc3000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.518138 16edc3000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.056617 172aa7000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/skills/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:16.994201 1704a3000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/slice/CURRENT

@@ -1 +1 @@
-MANIFEST-000004
+MANIFEST-000002

packs/slice/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.540416 16fddb000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.540459 16fddb000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.540720 16fddb000 Level-0 table #5: 16902 bytes OK
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.540972 16fddb000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/18-23:21:42.541026 16fddb000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/19-19:25:20.135477 1732b3000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/slice/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/18-23:21:17.077585 16fc97000 Delete type=3 #1