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CLEAN GROUND casts six from the duty roster, and Scent was never a test

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No new sheets: Ashcroft, Bhattacharya, Renshaw, Braithwaite, Pollard and
Okonkwo, cast for six non-overlapping lanes with an act each. Skill figures
read out of expandFromRegister rather than retyped, so the compendium stays
the authority.

Two defects the casting found. Scent's base chance is 0, so the 1% floor was
the whole of it and Act Four's "only test that works" was a roll nobody could
make; it is Xenology (Baseline) now, which is what the skill is for. That puts
the one reliable test on Braithwaite's sheet alone, so the scaling note refuses
to let him be dropped and the risk is logged as an open question.

Bhattacharya's private box now carries RESERVE ENTRY, which hands the
briefing-or-discover decision to a player instead of the GM.

Still an outline: no read-aloud, handouts, Act Four exposure model or playtest.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
slaguru666
2026-09-12 23:14:23 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent ca040b7926
commit ee4e687c6c
1 changed files with 178 additions and 6 deletions
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docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md
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@@ -241,7 +241,10 @@ requisition number on it and that number is enough to work the rest out from the
- `[CUS: Psychology — it is not pretending to be human; it thinks it is the file]`
- **Borrowed Authority** — pull the record. The copy checks out; *the column does not*.
The instrument is working correctly and is useless.
- `[CUS: Scent — the only test that works, and it is a 5% skill on most sheets]`
- `[CUS: Xenology (Baseline) — the only test that works, and only one sheet carries it]`
**Not Scent.** Scent's base chance is 0 and the 1% floor is all anybody has, so it
is not a route, it is a joke at the table's expense. Xenology (Baseline) is the
skill for what a baseline human body is and is not, and Braithwaite has it at 53.
- **REHEARSED** applies: it acts immediately before whoever it is copying, always.
- Panic triggers here: a voice from the wrong side of a door; two people answering to
the same name; the run at the cordon on all fours.
@@ -291,11 +294,176 @@ No roll resolves this. No NPC advises. Registry signs whatever they write.
---
## Casting — six from the duty roster
**Nothing new is built.** All six are existing compendium agents (`packs/pregens`, defined
in `tools/roster.mjs`), so their numbers cannot drift from the register and
`check-creatures` already validates them. **The compendium is the authority for every
figure below** — the handful quoted here are the ones a GM needs in hand at the table,
not a second definition of the sheet.
Not the "(before)" sheets. This is the job, and it wants people who have been inducted.
| | Agent | Lane | The one thing they are for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | **Dominic Ashcroft** `pc_ashcroft` | Coherence | He has been thin before and knows what it costs |
| 2 | **Arun Bhattacharya** `pc_bhattacharya` | Registry, lore | He has already read the file this case is about |
| 3 | **Kate Renshaw** `pc_renshaw` | People | She is the only one who can take Ivy's statement |
| 4 | **Neil Braithwaite** `pc_braithwaite` | Forensics | He is the only one who can tell a person from a copy |
| 5 | **Gareth Pollard** `pc_pollard` | Ground, nightwatch | He writes down the times, so he finds the missing hour |
| 6 | **Ben Okonkwo** `pc_okonkwo` | Containment | He is what stands at the cordon when it comes through |
Six lanes, no two overlapping, and every one of them has an act it owns: Braithwaite Act
One, Renshaw Act Two, Pollard and Bhattacharya Act Three, Braithwaite and Okonkwo Act
Four, Ashcroft the Close.
---
### 1. Dominic Ashcroft — Anchor Officer
*Holds the door open while everyone else goes through it, and stays filed correctly for
as long as that takes. Three years older than his birthday says, and does not discuss it.*
- **At the table:** Transposition 63, Anomaly Lore 63, Insight 63, Listen 63, Dodge 63.
- **He carries no weapon.** That is on the sheet on purpose and the GM must not fix it.
An anchor holding a door has both hands full.
- **Key relationship:** the department holds the other half of his cut school tie. He is
the only agent who already understands, in his body, what it means to peg an
arrangement to an object — which is exactly what was done to the Sike Head oak.
- **PRIVATE (do not share).** You have come back thin before. Over there the record will
offer you the easiest lie you have ever been told: that you have always been the anchor
for *this* valley, that the three missing years were spent here, and that it is a
relief. It will feel correct. *Do you tell the team how little of you is left before
the Close, or do you let them decide the Close without knowing?*
- **Playing Ashcroft:** speak last, and briefly. Volunteer for the thing nobody else
wants to hold. Never say you are frightened; say what time it is.
### 2. Arun Bhattacharya — Registry Officer, 56
*Thirty years in the registry. Has read files that were withdrawn before he finished them
and remembers what was in them anyway.*
- **At the table:** Research 63, Occult 63, Knowledge 63, Anomaly Lore 63, Language (Own) 63.
- **Key relationship:** a brass slide rule that belonged to his predecessor — who was a
junior clerk in October 1962.
- **PRIVATE (do not share).** You have seen **RESERVE ENTRY (NORTHERN)** before. One
afternoon in the nineties a file crossed your desk and was recalled before you reached
the end of it, and you have never been cleared to say a word about it. You know there
is a second Bewcastle Waste. You do not know there are people in it. *Do you tell them
at the briefing, or do you let them find it over there?*
- **This box answers the scenario's own open question** and hands it to a player. Told at
the briefing, CLEAN GROUND is a tragedy and the table spends four hours knowing. Held
back, it is a mystery and the reveal lands in Act Three. Either is correct. **It is not
the GM's call.**
- **Playing Bhattacharya:** ask for the reference number. Be unhurried in a way that
irritates people who are in danger. When you finally say the thing, say it once.
### 3. Kate Renshaw — Interview Officer
*Sits with the witness afterwards, for as long as it takes, and is very hard to lie to
twice.*
- **At the table:** Insight 63, Persuade 63, Listen 63, Anthropology 63, Psychology 40.
- **Key relationship:** **Ivy Hetherington.** Renshaw's whole craft is finishing a
statement, and Ivy is a statement sixty-four years long that nobody has ever taken.
- **PRIVATE (do not share).** You carry a hair clip belonging to a woman whose statement
you never finished. You have not forgiven yourself for it and you do not intend to
repeat it. *But a statement taken is a statement that can be filed — and in this case
filing is what makes the forty-one cancellable. Do you finish Ivy's, knowing that?*
- **The cruelty is deliberate:** she is the table's best reader of people, and Act Four
exists to prove that reading people is the wrong test. Insight 63 will tell her the
copy is sincere, because it is.
- **Playing Renshaw:** ask the smaller question. Let silences run past comfortable. Never
take a note in front of the person you are talking to.
### 4. Neil Braithwaite — Pathology Officer, 51
*Establishes what a thing was, which is usually the question the case turns on.*
- **At the table:** Medicine 53, Science (Biology) 53, **Xenology (Baseline) 53**,
Insight 53, Research 53. Issued an envsuit, which is the only reason anyone should be
relaxed about the Geiger.
- **He owns two clues outright:** the sheep-pen body in Act One, and the understudy in
Act Four. **Xenology (Baseline) is the only working test in the scenario** and only his
sheet carries it above the floor. If Braithwaite is not at the table, see scaling.
- **Key relationship:** his father's fountain pen, which signed death certificates.
- **PRIVATE (do not share).** You have signed a great many of these and you have never
once signed one you could not evidence. At the stump you will be asked to endorse
forty-one at a stroke, on the grounds that they were never properly alive on this side
of the record. *Will you put your father's pen to that?*
- **Playing Braithwaite:** talk to the body, not the room. Refuse to speculate, then
speculate precisely. Say "that is not what I said" whenever anyone rounds you up.
### 5. Gareth Pollard — Night Warden, 47
*Sits with a site all night so that nobody else has to, and writes down the times.*
- **At the table:** Listen 53, Spot 53, Stealth 53, Dodge 53, Brawl 53. Cudgel, riot
shield, stab vest — the only agent equipped to be hit rather than to shoot.
- **He is how the loop is found.** Act Three's evidence is not a clever roll, it is a
man with a notebook noticing that four hours of walking produced three hours of sky.
Give him the time every time he asks for it, accurately, and let him catch it himself.
- **PRIVATE (do not share).** Your wind-up alarm clock has not kept time since 2003 and
you have carried it anyway for twenty-three years, which everyone thinks is
sentimental. Over there it is the only instrument in the party that is not being
quietly corrected, because it was already wrong before you crossed. *When it disagrees
with your watch, which of the two do you believe in front of the others?*
- **Playing Pollard:** state times out loud, unprompted. Volunteer for the watch. Be the
last one to agree that everything is fine.
### 6. Ben Okonkwo — Containment, 33
*Goes through the door and holds the corridor while everyone else does the clever part.*
- **At the table:** Firearm (Rifle) 53, Brawl 53, Melee Weapon (Prybar) 53, Athletics 53,
Dodge 53. Breach suit and riot shield. He is in the frozen lethality party, so anything
the GM simulates with `tools/simulate.mjs` is measured with him in it.
- **Key relationship:** his sister's voice note, saved and never deleted.
- **PRIVATE (do not share).** The thing at the treeline has spent thirty years learning
to be people, and it learns by listening. Sooner or later it will use a voice you know.
*It is not her, you will know it is not her, and you will still have to decide what to
do with your hands.*
- **Playing Okonkwo:** go first, without being asked. Ask what the plan is once, then do
it. Never complain about being the one who is hit.
---
### Roster-level notes
**Party seams — recommended 2+2 splits** (let the table choose; this is the fallback):
| Act | Split |
|---|---|
| One | Braithwaite + Pollard at the pen and the stump · Renshaw + Bhattacharya with the farmer |
| Two | Renshaw + Ashcroft to the column · Okonkwo + Pollard on the flank, where the thing is |
| Three | Bhattacharya + Braithwaite at the depot · Pollard + Ashcroft walking the north seam |
| Four | **Do not split.** The whole point is that they are all in one room and one of them is wrong |
| Close | All six, at the stump, with Ivy on the far side |
**Player-count scaling.**
- **Six:** as written.
- **Five:** drop **Pollard**. His loop evidence moves to Ashcroft, who has Listen 63 and
a professional reason to notice the record correcting him. The cordon loses its shield.
- **Four:** drop **Okonkwo** as well, and Act Four becomes a pursuit rather than a stand —
which the scenario already permits, since killing the understudy cleanly changes
nothing. If the table wants a shooter, substitute **Joseph Agyeman** `pc_agyeman`
(Firearm (Pistol) 58, Spot 58, Insight 58, Tradecraft 58) for Okonkwo rather than
adding a seventh lane.
- **Never drop Braithwaite.** Xenology (Baseline) is the only test that works. If a
player insists on a sheet that hasn't got it, hand the lane to **Dr Chidi Nkemdirim**
`pc_nkemdirim` and accept that Act Four gets harder, or give the understudy a visible
physical tell and lose the ambiguity.
- **A walk-up seventh** plays **Rey Sandoval** `pc_sandoval` — Track 35 is the highest on
the roster and the thing runs on all fours, so there is a real lane waiting for them.
**Portraits** already exist in `art/portraits` for all six. No new art needed.
---
## What this outline does not yet have
1. **Pregens.** 4–6 duty-roster postings, each wired into the case — at minimum one who
can work a registry, one who can read ground, one who has crossed before and is
already a little thin.
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.
3. **Handouts.** The 1962 authorisation, Ivy's almanac page, the coroner's note on the
@@ -309,6 +477,10 @@ No roll resolves this. No NPC advises. Registry signs whatever they write.
- Is this a **convention 4-hour** or a **campaign opener**? The cancellation ending is a
one-shot ending; the "leave it filed" branch is a campaign spine.
- Which convention slot, if any — Contingency 2027 has room.
- Does the party get told about RESERVE ENTRY at Registry, or do they have to find it
over there? Telling them up front makes it a tragedy; withholding makes it a mystery.
- ~~Does the party get told about RESERVE ENTRY at Registry?~~ **Resolved by casting** —
it is Bhattacharya's private box, so a player decides it, not the GM. Say if you would
rather take that back and fix it yourself.
- How hard do you want the PC-replacement? Default here is NPC-first.
- **Scent is unusable** (base 0, 1% floor). I moved Act Four's working test to Xenology
(Baseline), which puts Braithwaite on the critical path. Worth deciding whether you want
the whole scenario's one reliable test sitting on a single sheet.