CLEAN GROUND: three things the GM says out loud, and the words they must not

The crossing, the first sight of the column, and Ivy at the stump — placed in
their acts rather than collected in a section, so the GM meets each one where
it is needed. Four sentences, three and three.

The notes around them carry more than the prose does. The crossing must not say
nuclear, 1962 or ash: the Geiger says the first, Bhattacharya says the second,
and ash is a word a player should reach for unaided. The column's six at the
back are the hollow men and are one item in a list, not a pause. Ivy's question
is reported rather than quoted so it survives both branches, and she does not
argue, plead or bargain — anything that makes her pitiable cheapens a decision
that has to be taken by people who respect her.

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

docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md

@@ -192,12 +192,33 @@ belongs to nobody in Britain, and dusk comes anyway.
 ## Act Two — Over *(~65 min)*
 
 **Beats**
-- The crossing. Read-aloud, ≤4 sentences. Ash on wet grass; the same valley; no birds.
+- **The crossing** — *read aloud or paraphrase:*
+
+  > The tree line is where it was and the wall is where it was, and every sheep is gone.
+  > Everything is grey with something that is not frost, and it lifts into the air where
+  > your boots go through it. It tastes of a fire that went out a long time ago and has
+  > not been rained on since. Nothing is calling — not a bird, not a thing in the grass.
+
+  - **Do not say "nuclear", "1962", or "ash".** The Geiger says the first, Bhattacharya
+    says the second, and *ash* is a word a player should be the one to use.
+  - If anyone asks what the grey is, the honest answer is that it is on their hands now.
+  - Nobody rolls anything here. Let the silence sit until a player breaks it.
 - **Coherence starts draining** — one per hour, and the record offers each agent a small,
   correct-feeling detail about why they belong here. `[CUS: Insight — that memory is new]`
-- First contact: **the column**, forty-one people, three generations, walking north in
-  good order at about two miles an hour. They stop. They offer water they cannot spare.
-  `[CUS: Persuade — they will believe almost anything except that it is 2026]`
+- **First contact: the column** — *read aloud or paraphrase:*
+
+  > They come over the shoulder of the hill in a line, forty-odd of them, walking at the
+  > pace of the slowest without anybody having to be told. The old are at the front, the
+  > children are in the middle, and six at the very back are not quite keeping up. The
+  > line stops when it sees you, and one woman walks forward with her hands held where
+  > you can see them.
+
+  - **The six at the back are the hollow men.** Do not name them and do not linger on
+    them. They are one item in a list, and the list moves on.
+  - Her hands are visible because this column has met armed men before. Never explain
+    that; let it be noticed or not.
+  - **Say nothing further until a player speaks.** They offer water they cannot spare.
+    `[CUS: Persuade — they will believe almost anything except that it is 2026]`
 - **Ivy Hetherington** (b. 1948, aged 14 when she arrived) leads by consent. She has
   walked the valley since before the agents' parents were born and has an almanac of a
   journey she has never completed.
@@ -261,6 +282,23 @@ matter — the entry is still filed, and the second one is already practising. G
 The decision, taken at the stump, at dawn, with Ivy Hetherington standing on the far
 side of it because she has walked south for the first time in sixty-four years.
 
+*Read aloud or paraphrase:*
+
+> She has walked south, which she has not done since she was fourteen, and she stops a
+> yard short of the cut stump because that is where the ground stops being hers. Behind
+> her the line has sat down in the heather to wait, the way it sits down every morning of
+> its life. She does not ask who you are, or what you are holding, or what the paper says
+> — she asks whether there is a north.
+
+- **This works in both branches.** Whether Bhattacharya told them at the briefing or they
+  found it in the depot, she arrives at the same question, and it is the one question the
+  agents cannot answer kindly and truthfully at the same time.
+- If the GM wants the line spoken rather than reported, it is **"Is there a north?"** and
+  nothing after it. Then stop talking. The silence is the scenario.
+- **She does not argue, plead, or bargain.** She has walked three thousand times and she
+  is not going to beg at the end of it. Anything that makes her pitiable cheapens the
+  decision, which has to be made by people who respect her.
+
 - **Cancel the entry.** The duplicate stops being a place the record has to supply. The
   seam closes for good. The forty-one are not killed, exactly, which is the worst
   available answer and the department will write it as a success.
@@ -464,8 +502,7 @@ twice.*
 ## What this outline does not yet have
 
 1. ~~Pregens.~~ **Done** — see Casting, above. Six from the duty roster, no new sheets.
-2. **The read-aloud text.** Three blocks only: the crossing, the first sight of the
-   column, and Ivy at the stump.
+2. ~~The read-aloud text.~~ **Done** — three blocks, in place in Act Two and the Close.
 3. **Handouts.** The 1962 authorisation, Ivy's almanac page, the coroner's note on the
    sheep-pen body.
 4. **A written exposure model for Act Four**, so the GM knows what a fight at the cordon