diff --git a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md index 46815b6..b24e57a 100644 --- a/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md +++ b/docs/scenarios/CLEAN_GROUND.md @@ -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.