THROUGH TRAIN: put the gunfight inside the loop

The loop is no longer just a train going round. It is FOUR MINUTES with a
gunfight in it, and those four minutes have run about two million times.

Two sides, and neither is the villain. Cass Merritt and three hired men have a
signed letter of engagement from the company telling them to surrender the
payroll to nobody "upon any pretext whatsoever, including the presentation of
any paper". Josiah Ambrose and four Cordera miners have a sealed writ of
attachment from a territorial judge naming that same payroll against eleven
weeks of unpaid wages. Both documents are genuine. Neither man has seen the
other's. The company sold the same money twice and is not aboard. Both are
handouts now, and they only mean anything held in the same hand.

The mission is restated everywhere it appears — briefing page, case brief, GM
essentials: CLOSE IT. Closing the crossing does not kill anybody, it lets them
go. The loop ends, 3 November 1881 resumes from 11:44, and everyone aboard walks
forward into the life they would have had — including Ambrose and a miner named
Doyle, who did not survive the real four minutes. The agents are not choosing
who lives; they are choosing to stop holding history still, having met the
people it lands on.

The standing order is louder in three places: NOTHING MODERN GOES THROUGH.

Two things the playtest found, both now written into the text:

  - THE FIGHT WAS A TPK GENERATOR. Modelled with all nine shooters firing at the
    party it wiped them 171 times in 200. The model was wrong — the two sides
    are shooting at EACH OTHER — so the scenario now carries a measured exposure
    table: head down draws nothing, acting from cover costs half a party member
    and no wipes over 300 runs, moving in the open costs one, and going for the
    payroll box wipes more than half of all parties. The GM is told to say that
    last row out loud BEFORE anybody commits to it.

  - THE LOOP RESETS AND THE AGENTS DO NOT. Everyone who belongs to 1881 is back
    up unhurt on the next pass. The agents keep their wounds. Nothing said so,
    and a player who assumes otherwise takes risks that kill them. It is now
    stated in capitals in both documents, with the played pass that prompted it
    — two of four down at 0 hit points, one untouched because he stayed on the
    floor.

Nine cast members, eight handouts, ten plates.

Version 1.4.0.

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

README.md

@@ -180,9 +180,9 @@ The build runs all five guards before it writes anything:
 
 <!-- guards:start -->
 ```
-check-rules: OK — 92 rules, 20 files scanned, 3 aliases + 45 constant sets checked, 291 formulas verified
+check-rules: OK — 92 rules, 21 files scanned, 3 aliases + 45 constant sets checked, 291 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, 977 keys, no leaf/branch collisions
-check-behaviour: OK — 57 behavioural tests
+check-lang: OK — en.json, 981 keys, no leaf/branch collisions
+check-behaviour: OK — 59 behavioural tests
 ```
 <!-- guards:end -->

docs/scenarios/THROUGH_TRAIN.md

@@ -0,0 +1,519 @@
+# Crossing starter — The Custodians: THROUGH TRAIN
+
+> *A train has been running the same four miles of track since the third of November,
+> 1881. It has never stopped. There are sixty-one people on it, nine of them are shooting
+> at each other, and the same four minutes has run about two million times.*
+
+---
+
+## GM ESSENTIALS
+
+- **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.**
+- **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.
+- **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.**
+- **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.
+
+---
+
+## Overview
+
+- **Setting:** Mercy Draw, Nevada — present day, and 3–4 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.
+
+### 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
+   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.
+
+---
+
+## Session Timing
+
+| Section | 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 |
+
+**Hard rule:** at 2:45 they are aboard, by the department's wagon if not by their own wit.
+
+---
+
+## Plot Summary (GM truth)
+
+**April 1881.** The Cordera & Western needed four miles of narrow gauge across a dry
+wash called **Mercy Draw**. The company surveyor, **Elias Vane**, was told what the chart
+had to say before he walked the ground. He filed a survey showing the line on the
+**north bench**. The line was laid on the **south bench**, because that is where the
+ground allowed it.
+
+Nobody was hurt by that. It is the dullest possible paperwork lie. And for six months
+every timetable, waybill, dispatch and telegraph order in the company's operation
+described a train running along the north bench.
+
+**Reality keeps a record of what belongs where.** It can be made to get it wrong by
+anything patient enough — and a train is the most patient arguer there is: a fixed line,
+a constant speed, on the hour, every day, saying the same wrong thing about where it was.
+
+**3 November 1881, 11:40.** The record gave way. Four miles of line came loose from the
+date with No. 9 and five cars on it, **sixty-one souls aboard**, and a **gunfight already
+three seconds old**.
+
+**The loop is four minutes long and the fight is inside it.** The crossing did not capture
+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
+
+| | Who | What they have | What they believe |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **The coats** | Four men hired by the company to see the payroll to Fallon, led by **Cass Merritt** | A signed letter of engagement, and the key to the box | That men who board at a water stop are robbers |
+| **The writ men** | Five Cordera miners, eleven weeks unpaid, led by **Josiah Ambrose** | A sealed writ of attachment from a territorial judge, naming that payroll | That they are lawfully seizing wages and being shot at for it |
+
+**The company sold the same money twice and is not aboard.** Both papers are genuine.
+Neither man has seen the other's. Nobody in car three is lying and nobody is wrong.
+**Do not adjudicate it.** The players can learn enough to see there is nothing to settle.
+
+**The running is what holds it open.** This is the thing the players must arrive at: the
+train is not trapped inside the crossing — the train *is* the crossing. A standing wave,
+sustained by its own motion the way a bow sustains a note.
+
+- **Nobody is dead.** They eat, sleep in shifts, and have organised a water rota. By
+  their clocks it has been about nine hours.
+- **Nobody can get off while it runs.** Three departmental attempts are on file; none
+  returned.
+- **Stop the train and the loop ends.** This is the mission, and it is not a mercy killing.
+
+### What closing it actually does — read this twice
+
+**Closing the crossing does not kill anybody. It lets them go.** The loop ends, the third
+of November 1881 resumes from 11:44, and every person aboard walks forward into the life
+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.
+
+**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.
+
+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
+year — everyone inside is lost outright rather than returned. Waiting is the only option
+that is definitely worse.
+
+**Elias Vane is aboard.** He rode his own line to see what he had signed for. He has had
+nine hours and a hundred and forty-five years to think about it. He understands the
+standing wave better than the department does, he has told nobody, and he will answer any
+direct question honestly because he has been waiting a very long time to be asked.
+
+### Timeline
+
+| When | What |
+|---|---|
+| 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. |
+| 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. |
+
+### 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 |
+
+---
+
+## 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.
+
+---
+
+## 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**.
+
+| Clock | What |
+|---|---|
+| 0 | Open. Four minutes at 11:40. |
+| 1 | Thinning. The whistle arrives a half-second before it should. |
+| 2 | Slipping. −1 Coherence to everyone across, once. |
+| 3 | The line flickers — a hundred yards of grade is briefly not there. |
+| 4 | The far end stops answering. Fallon's wire goes dead in 1881. |
+| 5 | One pass left, and everybody can tell. |
+| 6 | It closes, with whoever is aboard. |
+
+---
+
+## 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-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 |
+
+The two papers 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.
+
+---
+
+## Briefing — the standing order *(~20 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.
+
+**Nothing modern goes through.** Give both reasons:
+
+1. **It costs you.** An object that does not belong is a thing the far side must also be
+   wrong about. **Using** a modern item across costs **1 Coherence**, per object, first
+   time.
+2. **It is a beacon.** A crossing is a place where the record is already wrong. It
+   notices what does not fit, and the case clock moves.
+
+**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 1881 issue
+
+| Instead of | They get |
+|---|---|
+| service pistol | **Webley revolver** — 1d10, six shots, slow reload |
+| carbine | **Martini-Henry** — 2d6+2, **one shot**, then work the lever |
+| torch | **oil lantern** and lamp oil, which runs out |
+| the handset | **nothing.** Out of contact from the moment they cross. |
+| stab vest | **buff coat** or oilcloth coat |
+| medkit | **chirurgeon's roll** and **laudanum** |
+| phone and GPS | **brass compass**, **pocket watch**, **spyglass** |
+
+---
+
+## Act One — Mercy Draw, now *(~50 min)*
+
+> **Goal:** find the fraud, hear the train, understand it is on a timetable.
+
+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 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.**
+
+### 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 |
+
+**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.
+
+**They cannot board at this end.** Too fast, grade against them. Let them try: a bruise, a
+lesson, and the clock moves one.
+
+> **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.
+
+---
+
+## Act Two — Cordera, 1881 *(~70 min)*
+
+> **Goal:** the far side, the standing order in practice, and the boarding.
+
+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.
+
+- **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.
+
+**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.
+
+### The set-piece — getting aboard
+
+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
+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 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.
+
+**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
+> arrives with two more agents and a plank, and the players owe somebody a favour.
+
+---
+
+## Act Three — Aboard, and 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."*
+
+| Where | What |
+|---|---|
+| The locomotive | **Marius Kell**, who has not let go of the regulator |
+| Tender, car one | Coal that has not run out — the first hard evidence |
+| Car two | Most of the passengers. They lie down before it starts. They have a drill. |
+| **Car three** | **Where the fight happens.** Overturned seats at both ends. |
+| 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 |
+
+### The four minutes
+
+Starts on the whistle for the grade. Run it in rounds. **It is the same four minutes every
+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. |
+| 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. |
+
+### 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
+the scene into a massacre. Work out what each agent is *doing* and give them that much
+fire and no more.
+
+| The agent is | Shooters | Cover | Measured over 300 runs |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **Head down, not acting** | none | — | Untouched. A legitimate choice for a pass. |
+| **Acting from cover** | 1 | −30% | **2 of 4 hurt, half a party member down, no wipes.** The intended shape. |
+| **Moving in the open** | 2 | −30% | 3 of 4 hurt, one down. One party in 300 wiped. |
+| **Going for the payroll box** | 2 | none | **3½ of 4 down. More than half of all parties wiped.** |
+
+**Tell them the last row before they commit, not after.** Everything else is survivable.
+**Nobody rolls to hide** — taking cover is a decision, and it works.
+
+### THE LOOP RESETS. THE AGENTS DO NOT.
+
+Everybody who belongs to 1881 is back on their feet at the next pass, unhurt, with no
+memory of having been shot. **The agents are not part of the loop and their wounds are
+permanent.** Say this before the first volley — a player who thinks the reset will heal
+them will take risks that kill them.
+
+A downed agent is *down*, not dead: the dying rules apply, and the only medicine aboard is
+a chirurgeon's roll and a bottle of laudanum. First Aid is the whole answer, and somebody
+has to stop shooting to give it.
+
+*A playtested pass, four agents all acting from cover: two down at 0 hit points, one on a
+quarter, one untouched because he stayed on the floor. That is a bad pass rather than a
+typical one — the average is half a party member — but it is possible on the first one.*
+
+### What the players will try
+
+| They try | What it does |
+|---|---|
+| Shout, show a warrant card, take charge | Nothing. No authority aboard is recognised. `[CUS: Persuade at −30% on the first pass; easier later as they learn names]` |
+| Shoot one side | It works, and changes nothing. Everyone is back next pass. **Let that land in silence.** |
+| Get the passengers down | Genuinely useful. Doyle and Mrs Danforth can be pulled clear before minute two. |
+| Get to the payroll box | The obvious idea, and the one that kills them. See the table. |
+| Show one side the other's paper | **The good move.** It does not stop the fight; it is how they learn what they are looking at. |
+| Get to the locomotive | Through car two and the tender, under fire in the gap. This is the route to the ending. |
+
+### The paper — the ambiguity, made findable
+
+**Merritt** carries a letter of engagement from the company: see the box to Fallon,
+surrender it to no one *upon any pretext whatsoever, including the presentation of any
+paper*. **Ambrose** carries a sealed writ of attachment naming that same payroll against
+eleven weeks of unpaid wages.
+
+**Both genuine. Neither man has seen the other's.** An agent holding both has the whole
+truth: the company sold the same money twice, then put nine armed men on a train with it.
+
+**It does not stop the fight.** Merritt will not stand down for a judge he has never heard
+of while being shot at, and Ambrose has eleven weeks of nothing behind him.
+
+### Closing it
+
+**Kell will stop the train if a person he believes has authority tells him to, out loud,
+to his face.** He has waited a hundred and forty-five years to be told. Not on a note, not
+shouted from the tender. `[CUS: Persuade or Status — easier if they can tell him something
+true about what is happening to his train]`
+
+**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.
+
+### 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. |
+| **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. |
+
+### If they ask Vane
+
+> I filed a chart that said the line was somewhere it was not, because a man told me to
+> and I wanted the work. Six months of honest railwaymen repeating it made it true. Now —
+> you have seen the middle of the car. Two of those men do not get up when it stops. They
+> have not got up two million times and they will not get up now. I would still stop it.
+> It is not our place to hold a thing still because we have grown fond of it.
+
+---
+
+## Epilogue — the register *(~20 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 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. |
+
+**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
+
+| Who | Wants | Key line |
+|---|---|---|
+| **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."* |
+| **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."* |
+
+---
+
+## Do not resolve
+
+- **Who was in the right.** Both papers are genuine, the company sold the money twice,
+  and the company is not aboard to answer for it. If a player asks the GM to adjudicate,
+  do not.
+- **Why the coal has not run out.** The wave sustains it; that is as far as anyone gets.
+- **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.
+
+## GM notes
+
+- **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.
+- **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.
+
+---
+
+## Which scenario to run
+
+| | Length | Combat | Sends them across |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **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 |
+| **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.

lang/en.json

@@ -975,5 +975,9 @@
   "RINGBRP.Panic.NoChange": "No change.",
   "RINGBRP.Flavour.Panicking": "panicking ({mod}%)",
   "RINGBRP.Chat.ToEverything": "to everything",
-  "RINGBRP.Panic.Backfired": "Fumbled —"
+  "RINGBRP.Panic.Backfired": "Fumbled —",
+  "RINGBRP.Panic.SceneEnd": "Scene over",
+  "RINGBRP.Panic.SceneEndNote": "Panic clears when the scene does. Coherence does not.",
+  "RINGBRP.Party.Title": "The team, right now",
+  "RINGBRP.Party.Who": "Agent"
 }

packs/armour/CURRENT

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

packs/armour/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.247472 17253f000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.247505 17253f000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.247700 17253f000 Level-0 table #5: 4591 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.248094 17253f000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.248137 17253f000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.565994 16fde7000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/armour/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.473921 16e827000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/expedition/CURRENT

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

packs/expedition/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.267497 173d63000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.267518 173d63000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.267658 173d63000 Level-0 table #5: 4129 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.267918 173d63000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.267949 173d63000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.644697 16f5db000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/expedition/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.544854 16e827000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/gear/CURRENT

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

packs/gear/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.248920 173d63000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.249014 173d63000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.249313 173d63000 Level-0 table #5: 31614 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.249730 173d63000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.249796 173d63000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.567920 16edcf000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/gear/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.475804 17004b000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/lastadmission/CURRENT

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

packs/lastadmission/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.261246 17253f000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.261511 17253f000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.261915 17253f000 Level-0 table #5: 46857 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.262265 17253f000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.262307 17253f000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.626556 16edcf000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/lastadmission/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.528809 16f033000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/npcs/CURRENT

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

packs/npcs/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.235329 173d63000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.236302 173d63000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.238305 173d63000 Level-0 table #5: 234672 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.238754 173d63000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.238827 173d63000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.602723 1705f3000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/npcs/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.510747 16f83f000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/powers/CURRENT

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

packs/powers/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.244550 17253f000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.244581 17253f000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.244685 17253f000 Level-0 table #5: 3295 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.244965 17253f000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.245003 17253f000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.638639 16f5db000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/powers/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.539431 17004b000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/pregens/CURRENT

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

packs/pregens/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.222820 172d4b000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.225060 172d4b000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.229466 172d4b000 Level-0 table #5: 561098 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.229981 172d4b000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.230132 172d4b000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.589122 16f5db000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/pregens/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.496406 16e827000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/primer/CURRENT

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

packs/primer/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.251999 173d63000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.252036 173d63000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.252324 173d63000 Level-0 table #5: 21613 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.252692 173d63000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.252736 173d63000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.634914 16fde7000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/primer/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.536318 17004b000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/prologue/CURRENT

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

packs/prologue/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.263027 17253f000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.263228 17253f000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.263611 17253f000 Level-0 table #5: 44887 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.263871 17253f000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.263914 17253f000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.630970 1705f3000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/prologue/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.533004 16e827000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/rules/CURRENT

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

packs/rules/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.253858 172d4b000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.253959 172d4b000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.254345 172d4b000 Level-0 table #5: 36526 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.254740 172d4b000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.254786 172d4b000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.642943 16f5db000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/rules/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.542959 16f83f000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/skills/CURRENT

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

packs/skills/LOG

@@ -1,5 +1 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.241716 17253f000 Recovering log #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.241766 17253f000 Level-0 table #5: started
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.241955 17253f000 Level-0 table #5: 7806 bytes OK
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.242285 17253f000 Delete type=0 #3
-2026/08/17-23:24:47.242328 17253f000 Delete type=3 #2
+2026/08/18-22:19:38.559204 1705f3000 Delete type=3 #1

packs/skills/LOG.old

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2026/08/17-23:24:31.467729 16f033000 Delete type=3 #1