RingBRP/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md

Crossing case — The Custodians: STANDING ORDER

A thousand people are waiting under Sheldon Moor for the all-clear from a war that never happened. Every ninety days, somebody writes to tell them to keep waiting. It is not the government.

STATUS — read this before anything else

Version	v1.1, 16 September 2026 — simplified, and the children made part of the jeopardy
Can it be run?	Yes, from this document alone, with the compendium for sheets and the two cast actors.
Is it convention-ready?	No. It needs desk passes. The five earlier passes tested v0.7, a different plot. Their structural lessons are carried forward; their timings are not evidence for this version.
What it is	A three-act one-shot and the second appearance of Mr Smith, who was planted in THROUGH TRAIN.
Players	4–6 from the duty roster. The cast is declared in Casting and the build enforces it.
Runtime	45 / 75 / 50 plus a ten-minute break — 3h00 in a 3h15 slot. Unmeasured for this plot.

The things that are not obvious

1. The whole case in four lines. Mr Smith tricked a bunker into going underground in 1974. He has kept them there with letters ever since. On Thursday the bunker will broadcast his tape, and anyone who hears it joins his cult. The young children already know the tape by heart.
2. The brief is a rescue, and a polite one. Nobody below is expendable. A party that solves Bellhouse with violence has failed, even if it wins.
3. The people are not a cult and do not know they are becoming one. They are a 1970s council. The occult is small and quiet — never put an altar in this building.
4. Order of operations is Act Three. Opening the bunker sets off the broadcast. Stop the tape first, then open the door.
5. The children are the moral question, not a puzzle. Every answer costs somebody something. Do not steer the table to the "right" one.
6. Mr Smith is never met. No sheet, no portrait, no scene. He gets away.

Still to do

• Desk passes, in the house order: GM chair, Act Three stress, player-chair contrarian.
• Joan Wetherlaw's portrait. Mr Smith must never have one.

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GM ESSENTIALS

• System: d100 roll-under a percentage skill. Special under a fifth, critical under a twentieth; 96–99 always fail and 00 always fumbles.
• Coherence runs 10 → 0. The tape and the release cost it. Nothing here gives any back.
• Panic is live in the detention and the broadcast.
• Standing Order 9 is live. Nothing modern goes through; charge for using, never for carrying.
• A warrant card of the Department is inside scope at Bellhouse — Borrowed Authority, 1 Trust, no roll. The Standing Order names it.
• Hearing the song. Anyone who hears Mr Smith's song all the way through rolls POW×5. Failure: lose 1 Coherence and they are his — calm, obedient, waiting for Centre — until the case closes and a debrief brings them back. It is eleven minutes long on the tape. Stopping it before the end is always a complete answer.
• Content warnings: confinement underground; a detention that can turn violent; children under an occult influence, and a decision about taking children from their parents; a birth; an elderly woman's shame.

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Overview

1974. Bellhouse is a government bunker built into an old coal mine under Sheldon Moor, in the Peak District. It is running a practice drill for nuclear war.

A pleasant man in a grey coat — Mr Smith, "for Centre" — arrives with a letter saying the war is real. Deputy Controller Edith Marlow knows it is only the drill. She signs anyway, and has never been able to say why. 412 people go underground and the door shuts. Reality believes the paperwork: the mine is filled in, the bunker vanishes from every map, and the only way in is a crossing.

Now. Fifty-two years later there are 999 people below — 118 of the original intake, and 881 born there. They live like a 1970s council: rotas, ration books, a housing list, vegetable gardens under lamps in old coal tunnels. Every ninety days a letter arrives by pipe from Centre: it is still not safe; stay down. Centre is Mr Smith.

Mr Smith is a Cthulhu Mythos messenger — not a god, a go-between for the powers that sleep Outside. His experiment: can the most obedient people in England be turned into a congregation without ever being told? Three quiet signs show it working:

• The chant. Every bulletin ends with the whole site saying We hold. We count. We answer.
• The dream. Everyone born below has the same dream: a long corridor, a counter, a pleasant man who asks your name and writes it down.
• The drawings. The children draw the sun as a circle with a stroke through the top. It is the mark on Mr Smith's letters.

The tape. The bunker's Standing Order says that when it reaches 1,000 people it must come up and broadcast a recorded message to the region. In 2019 Centre sent a new tape. It is Mr Smith's song, and anyone who hears it to the end joins him. Region 12 has a million people in it.

The children. Since 2019 the tape's opening has played on the crèche speaker at three in the morning, "to settle the young". The 168 children under twelve have heard it every night of their lives and know the whole song by heart. They hum it. They do not know what it is.

This week. Ruth Cotter is due to have a baby: the thousandth. On Thursday at 07:00 the bunker will open and broadcast.

Design intent

1. A post-apocalypse that is a council meeting. The end of the world, administered kindly and in triplicate.
2. Quiet horror. Three small wrong things, no altars.
3. A rescue with a deadline. Stop the tape, then open the door.
4. One fight, and it is a detention. Real, measured, avoidable, and it costs a scene.
5. A choice about children with no clean answer.

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Session Timing

	Act	Budget	GM checkpoint
1	Getting In — the briefing, the moor, the crossing, the Enquiries desk	45 min	Through the crossing by 0:25
—	Break	10 min
2	Finding Out — the bunker, the guards, the song	75 min	They know about the tape and the children by 1:50
3	The Broadcast — Thursday, the thousandth, the choice	50 min	They are holding the tape by 2:35
	Total	3h00	in a 3h15 slot

The broadcast starts at 2:45 on the session clock — thirty-five minutes into Act Three — unless the table has stopped it.

If you are late, cut in this order: the Bureau to two lines; Joan to the vent head; the Vigil. Never cut the Enquiries desk, the crèche, or the choice.

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Plot Summary (GM truth)

Timeline

When	What
1881	Mr Smith tells Elias Vane what to put on a false survey (THROUGH TRAIN).
3 Nov 1974	Mr Smith brings the "live" order. Marlow signs it, knowing it was a drill.
4 Nov 1974	412 go down. The mine is filled in above them.
1974–2026	Fifty-two years of letters from Centre. 881 children born below.
2019	Centre sends a new broadcast tape. It starts playing to the crèche every night.
May 2026	One of the bunker's old 1974 letters turns up in the department's in-tray, with Mr Smith's mark on it.
Wednesday	Play begins. 999 people. Ruth Cotter is due.
Thursday 06:00	The baby is born. 07:00: the broadcast.

How they have survived

Coal from the mine for heat and power. Clean water from an old drainage tunnel. Vegetables, trout and hens in the old coal tunnels. A mill for cloth. A government stockpile that should have run out in 1996 and has been topped up "from Centre" every ninety days since, through a pipe four inches wide. Do not explain the stockpile.

Why nobody has looked outside

The periscope was sealed in 1974 against flash blindness, and only Centre can unseal it. Centre's letters always say the air above is poison.

What the song does

Anyone who hears it all the way through becomes Mr Smith's: calm, obedient, waiting for Centre. One person hearing it is a tragedy. A broadcast is a million people.

The children carry it. A child who knows the song hums it when they are tired, happy or frightened. An adult who hears a child hum it right through is affected exactly as if they heard the tape — slowly, one listener at a time, in playgrounds and bedrooms. Burning the tape does not take it out of 168 small heads.

It can be taken out. Kit Marlow has noticed the song only works as a whole. Play the tape to the children one last time with the final bars cut off, and the tune breaks in them: they stop humming it and cannot remember it by morning. That needs the tape — so the tape cannot be burned first — and somebody has to stand in the crèche and run the machine.

Revelations (4)

1. The bunker is full of living people who think the war happened. (Act One)
2. There was no war; Mr Smith's letters keep them down. (Act Two)
3. On Thursday the bunker will broadcast his song, and it will take whoever hears it. (Act Two)
4. The children already know the song. (Act Two)

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The Countdown — Act Two

Starts when Act Two starts.

Step	When	What happens
1	+15 min	The bulletin. The tannoy; the whole site stops; everyone says We hold. We count. We answer. Panic trigger.
2	+30 min	Centre's letter (SO-H05) arrives by pipe: deal with the strangers.
3	+45 min	The guards are sent. See The detention.
4	+65 min	Vigil, the yearly remembrance. The 1974 list of the dead is read — and there are no names on it. Backstop for Revelation 2.
5	+75 min	Ruth Cotter goes into labour. The act ends.

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Handouts

The section map is SO-H04, a plate in the compendium.

SO-H01 — Terms of engagement

Typed, from the Bureau. Give it in the briefing and let them keep it.

CASE SO-012 — BELLHOUSE.

1. The persons at the Seat are to be brought home. None is expendable.
2. Force is authorised in self-defence only.
3. Establish who has been writing to the Seat as Centre, and bring back his letters.
4. The Seat is released under clause 4 of its Order. Read clause 6 first.

What it is for. The brief, in writing. Term 4 is a hint.

SO-H02 — The 1974 letter

Buff, typed, stamped with a small circle cut by a stroke. It came out of the department's in-tray in May.

REGION 12 — SEAT RETURN — WEEK 1 ESTABLISHMENT: 412. CASUALTIES THIS PERIOD: NIL. QUERY TO CENTRE: CONFIRM THE GENTLEMAN WHO BROUGHT THE ORDER IS KNOWN TO YOU. SIGNED: E. MARLOW, DEPUTY CONTROLLER.

What it is for. Casualties nil — no war. The stamp is Mr Smith's mark.

SO-H03 — Standing Order 12

Foolscap. Pennyfeather hands it to anyone who asks.

4. This Seat shall not surface until this Order is cancelled by an officer holding a warrant of the Department in person at the Seat.

5. On cancellation the Seat shall surface and proceed under Annex D.

ANNEX D. The Seat at establishment one thousand shall surface and broadcast the recorded Address held at the Seat.

What it is for. Clause 4 is how to release them. Clause 6 is the trap: cancelling the order sets off the broadcast. Annex D says a thousand people means Thursday.

SO-H05 — Centre's letter

A flimsy, stamped with the mark. Arrives by pipe at Countdown step 2.

CENTRE TO SEAT 12. STRANGERS AT THE SEAT ARE TO BE DETAINED. THE SEAT WILL SPEAK ON THURSDAY AS ORDERED. THE YOUNG ARE TO BE SETTLED NIGHTLY AS BEFORE. J. SMITH, FOR CENTRE.

What it is for. The name and the mark match the 1974 letter and Vane's in THROUGH TRAIN. It sends the guards. Its third line points at the crèche.

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Act One — Getting In (~45 min)

What it is for: the job, the door, and a first test of good manners.

Read aloud or paraphrase: Mr Bewley lays a buff envelope on the Registry table. "This came out of my in-tray in May," he says. "It was posted in 1974. From a bunker that was filled in in 1975. And look at the stamp."

Beat 1 — The briefing (~10 min)

Mr Bewley gives SO-H01 and SO-H02 and tells them:

• Bellhouse was a government bunker. 412 people went down for a drill in 1974 and never came back up. The entrance is rubble.
• The only way in is a crossing, at a warm vent on Sheldon Moor, at dusk.
• The stamp is the mark on Mr Smith's letter to Elias Vane in 1881. "Bring me his letters."

Mr Prosser issues 1974 kit: a hand lamp, a service revolver he hopes they won't need, a 1974 Geiger counter, greatcoats, and warrant cards. No phones.

Beat 2 — Sheldon Moor (~15 min)

Read aloud or paraphrase: Coal soot lies black on the verges for a mile. Joan Wetherlaw meets you at her gate with a yard brush. "Coal smoke," she says. "Fifty years of it. From a moor with no chimney."

Joan walks them up to the vent. She tells them — [CUS: Persuade — she has never told anyone] — that a man in grey once asked her to sign for a parcel addressed to Bellhouse, and she cannot picture his face. Failure: she does not mention it; nothing depends on it.

No roll: the vent is warm to the hand and smells of a coal fire. Somebody down there is alive.

Beat 3 — The crossing (~5 min)

Read aloud or paraphrase: At dusk the warm air over the vent goes wrong — creased, like a page folded and opened. Below you, a tannoy is announcing the evening shift.

Nobody rolls to cross. They come out inside, behind a blast door shut since 1974.

Beat 4 — The Enquiries desk (~15 min)

Read aloud or paraphrase: A warm lobby that smells of floor polish and soup. A man in a cardigan behind a desk marked ENQUIRIES looks up, looks at the sealed door behind you, and says, very carefully: "Name and section, please."

Nobody has arrived since 1974. Mr Ogden calls the Controller. Warden Teague arrives with one guard. Everyone is frightened; nobody is hostile yet.

How they introduce themselves matters:

• Warrant cards work — no roll. They are accepted as Department officers. "But Centre didn't tell us you were coming."
• Claiming to be from Centre — [CUS: Tradecraft — the right words, the right patience]. Failure: the lie is spotted, because Centre never sends anyone.
• "There was no war." Said to Teague, it makes him an enemy for the rest of the case.

Controller Sowerby interviews them. [CUS: Persuade — give him something he can file]. Success: they are visitors with an escort. Failure: they are held in the interview room — the door is not even locked, and Kit Marlow brings the tea. Either way, Sowerby writes to Centre about them.

⚠ No fight in Act One. Teague and one guard will not start anything, and would lose: against the four-player cut that pair detains everyone in 4% of fights.

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Act Two — Finding Out (~75 min)

What it is for: meet the people, find the truth, find the song.

Read aloud or paraphrase: Shift change. The corridor is full of cardigans and overalls, a child on somebody's shoulders, a noticeboard with a housing list. Everybody looks at you, and then — because they were brought up properly — everybody looks away.

How to run the bunker

• A council, not a bunker. Queues, complaints, minutes, tea. Say this line three times, in three mouths: Centre will tell us when.
• Everything the agents do is noted — a guard's pocketbook, a clerk on a phone — and reaches Sowerby within the hour.
• Show at least two of the three wrong things (the chant, the dream, the drawings) before the guards arrive.

The four places that matter

Place	Who	What they find
Control Room	Sowerby	The tannoy; a file of Centre's letters, all in Mr Smith's hand; the studio safe with the tape
Registry	Pennyfeather	The Standing Order (SO-H03)
Sick bay	Dr Larkhall; Edith Marlow, 101; Ruth Cotter	The truth about 1974; the shared dream; the baby due Thursday
Crèche	Kit Marlow, 17; the children, including Teague's daughter Nell, 9	The drawings; the humming; the three o'clock speaker

The rest — the vegetable tunnels, the plant floor, the Vigil hall, the Sump cells — is colour. Use it when the table wanders.

Clue trail — Act Two

#	Clue	Where	How found	What it gives	Type
1	They believe the war happened	Anywhere	No roll — the bulletin	Revelation 1	Essential
2	Marlow's shame	Sick bay	[CUS: Insight — asked kindly about 1974, she says: "It was the drill. He said, then it had better be. I signed."]	Revelation 2	Essential
2b	Marlow's box	Sick-bay shelf	[CUS: Research — the real 1974 drill order, and her note: "I knew."]	Revelation 2, second road	Essential
3	Centre's letters	Control Room	No roll — Sowerby shows them, or SO-H05 arrives	Mr Smith's name and mark	Essential
4	The Order	Registry	No roll — Pennyfeather hands over SO-H03	Revelation 3: clause 6 and Annex D	Essential
5	The tape	Control Room studio	[CUS: Research — the studio log: NEW TAPE FROM CENTRE, 2019. PLAYED NIGHTLY TO CRÈCHE, OPENING ONLY]	The tape is the broadcast, and the children hear it	Essential
6	The humming	Crèche	[CUS: Listen — the little ones are all humming the same slow tune, and it does not end; they start again]	Revelation 4	Essential
7	The dream	Sick bay, Larkhall	[CUS: Insight — ask her what's odd about the born-below and she shows you her notes: 881 people, one dream]	Mr Smith's hand on the people	Supporting
8	What it all is	Anywhere, once two wrong things are seen	[CUS: Occult — the chant, the dream and the drawings are one procedure: a congregation being gathered]	Names the horror	Supporting

Failure costs a scene, never the clue. A failed Research is a clerk fetching it later. A failed Listen in the crèche means Kit tells them instead: "They hum it all day. Nell hummed it at her dad's tea. He didn't like it." A failed Insight with Marlow closes that route; the box (2b) and the Vigil still give it.

Revelation 4 is also given by Larkhall at Countdown step 5 if nobody has found it: "The little ones won't stop humming. I've had to ask Ruth to keep the baby away from the crèche."

Kit Marlow — the key to the children

Give her a scene doing something ordinary — teaching geography from a 1971 atlas — before anyone asks her anything. Then she tells them, unprompted:

• The speaker plays at three every morning. She was too old to learn the tune when it started. The under-twelves all know it.
• She has noticed the song only works whole. "If Nell stops halfway she just looks confused and goes back to her crayons. It has to finish."
• That is the cure, if the table thinks of it: play the children the tape with the ending cut off. If nobody thinks of it by the end of the act, Kit says it.

The detention — Countdown step 3

Centre's letter says detain the strangers. Sowerby obeys. Teague and his guards come to take the agents to the Sump cells.

Read aloud or paraphrase: Teague comes round the corner with three men behind him, holding his truncheon the way a man holds something he hopes not to use. "The Controller asks you to come with me. I'll ask you twice."

Four players: Teague and three guards. Six players: Teague and five.

What the fight is, measured — 2,000 runs each against this scenario's cast. Detention figures are sound; death figures are a ceiling, because the guards stop hitting anyone who is down.

Detail	Against	Agents down	Whole party detained	Deaths (ceiling)
Teague and three	the four-player cut	2.89	60.3%	1.31
Teague and three	the declared six	1.16	0.3%	0.59
Teague and five	the declared six	3.51	15.7%	2.07

A small party usually loses. A big party wins and breaks the brief. Either way, fighting is the worst option.

The ways through:

• Go quietly. The Sump is dry and clean. It costs one scene to get out: Kit brings the key, or Teague relents, or [CUS: Repair (Mechanical) — a 1962 lock nobody has oiled].
• Talk. [CUS: Persuade — a warrant card and an honest account are a reason]. Success: he escorts them instead.
• Nell. Mention his daughter — and, if they know, the song she hums. He stands his men down and is on their side from now on.
• Run. [CUS: Stealth — through the lamp-lit vegetable tunnels]. Failure: cornered at the Sump.
• Fight. Panic trigger at the first agent down. Everyone who saw it stops helping.

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Act Three — The Broadcast (~50 min)

What it is for: stop the tape, decide about the children, open the door.

Read aloud or paraphrase: Thursday, six in the morning. The whole bunker is in the Vigil hall. Sowerby reads Centre's letter aloud, and then — down the corridor — a baby starts to cry. Somebody whispers: "That's a thousand." Sowerby closes the folder. "The broadcast is at seven," he says. "We're going home."

He believes it. At 07:00 (the session's 2:45) he plays the tape to the region through the old mast on the moor.

Step 1 — Get the tape

It is in the studio safe. Sowerby has the key.

• He hands it over if they show him Marlow's box beside Centre's letters — the drill order and the orders that kept them down are in different hands. No roll. This is his turning point, and he asks them not to play it.
• Take it. [CUS: Tradecraft — the key off his chain during the assembly], or [CUS: Repair (Mechanical) — the old safe]. Failure costs time, not the tape.
• Last resort — the mast. [CUS: Repair (Electronics) — pull the transmitter valves on the plant floor]. This stops the broadcast but leaves the tape where it is.

Step 2 — The choice about the children

Once they hold the tape, the table has to decide. Put all three options on the table, plainly. Do not hint at a right answer.

A. Burn the tape. Bring everyone up.

• The region is safe today.
• The 168 children still know the song. The department cannot let it loose in schools, so the children are taken into department care, separated from their parents, for as long as it takes — and nobody knows how long that is.
• Teague will not let them take Nell. Play that.

B. Burn the tape. Leave the families below.

• The region is safe. The door stays shut for the families with young children — about four hundred people — and everyone else comes up.
• They are safe, fed and together, and they are prisoners of a lie the agents now know is a lie. Mr Smith's letters will keep coming.

C. Cure the children first. Then burn the tape. Then bring everyone up.

• The best ending, and the hardest. It needs:
  1. Kit's idea — play the tape with the ending cut off. (No roll if they talked to Kit; otherwise [CUS: Listen — the song only bites at the end].)
  2. The cut. [CUS: Repair (Electronics) — splice out the last minute of an eleven-minute tape]. Failure: the cut is wrong and must be redone — ten minutes gone.
  3. Somebody runs the machine in the crèche with the children. That agent hears ten minutes of it and rolls POW×5. Failure: 2 Coherence, and they will have the dream for the rest of their life.
  4. It must be done before 07:00. If Sowerby has not handed over the tape willingly, he is looking for it.
• Success: by morning the children have forgotten the tune. Then burn the tape.

Step 3 — Open the door

• An agent cancels the Standing Order with their warrant card. No roll. They spend 2 Coherence.
• Or Sowerby cancels it himself, if he turned. No Coherence spent. This is the best way to end it.
• ⚠ If they open the door before stopping the tape, the broadcast starts immediately. Say so if a player reaches for the warrant card too early — SO-H01 already told them.

If the broadcast goes out

The song plays on the tannoy and on the moor. It is eleven minutes long.

• Every agent in earshot rolls POW×5 at the end. Panic trigger at the first note.
• It can still be stopped: the mast, or the tape pulled from the machine by hand. Stopped before the end, nobody outside is taken.
• If it finishes, say this and stop: In farmhouses and flats and school buses across the Peak District, people stop what they are doing and say, quietly, "We hold. We count. We answer." Region 12 belongs to Mr Smith.

The endings

Ending	What happens
C — cured, burned, opened	A thousand people come home, with their children. The agent who ran the machine dreams of a counter and a pleasant man for the rest of their life.
A — burned, opened	Everyone comes up. The children go into care. Some parents never forgive the department. Teague is arrested at the crèche door.
B — burned, families kept below	Six hundred come up. Four hundred stay down, safe and lied to. Next month there is a letter from Centre.
Broadcast stopped at the mast only	The tape still exists. Decide again — or leave it for the next case.
Broadcast finished	Region 12 is Mr Smith's.

Whatever the ending, close the case with this:

Three days later a buff envelope arrives in Bewley's in-tray, stamped with a circle and a stroke, addressed to the agents by name. Inside is one line: "With thanks for the count. — J. Smith, for Centre."

If they call in containment instead

If the agents report the children as a containment problem rather than a rescue, the department sends a quarantine unit. It will seal the bunker with everyone inside. Its recorded wipe rate against a four-agent party is 87.4%. Count down six rounds out loud, and let them talk it down: [CUS: Anomaly Lore — the Standing Order outranks a containment order] at −20. SO-H01 exists so nobody does this by accident.

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NPC Roster — GM quick sheet

Below

Controller Edwin Sowerby, 61 — has obeyed Centre for fifty years and is starting to be afraid of it. Went down aged nine. Sends the guards because Centre says so. Turns when he sees Mr Smith's letters beside the real 1974 order.

Registrar Alice Pennyfeather, 51 — the first child born below; hands over the Order to anyone who asks.

Dr Ivy Larkhall, 44 — has found that 881 people share one dream. Delivers Ruth's baby. Treats anyone hurt, on either side.

Edith Marlow, 101 — signed for a stranger in 1974 and has been ashamed ever since. The only person who has seen Mr Smith, and she cannot picture him. Kind questions work; pressure does not.

Warden Michael Teague, 38 — head of the bunker's guards, and Nell's dad. Widower. Leads the detention himself, with a truncheon; leaves his pistol locked up. Not a villain. He will fight anyone who tries to take his daughter.

Kit Marlow, 17 — teaches the little ones, and has noticed the song. Edith's great-granddaughter. The key to the cure.

Nell Teague, 9 — hums the song at tea.

Mr Ogden, Enquiries — has no form for visitors.

Ruth Cotter, 24 — due on Thursday; would like people to stop calling her baby "the thousandth".

Above

Joan Wetherlaw, 67 — has swept coal soot off her yard all her life. Signed for Mr Smith's parcel once.

Mr Bewley, Registry — wants the letters. Mr Prosser, Stores — issues the 1974 kit.

Never met

Mr Smith, for Centre — a Cthulhu Mythos messenger: a grey coat, a pleasant manner, and a face nobody can picture. A go-between for the powers that sleep Outside, not one of them. No sheet, no portrait, no scene. He gets away.

Cast actors — in the compendium

Actor	Where
Bellhouse warden	Act Two — one actor for all the guards
Warden Michael Teague	Acts One and Two

The quarantine unit is in the bestiary.

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Casting — six from the duty roster

⚠ The cast marker above is read by the build. check-rollable holds every roll in this document to 25% or better on somebody listed, and detention-tables measures the Act Two fight against these six.

Agent	What they do here
Marta Holloway — lead	Tradecraft 63 (Enquiries; Sowerby's key), Stealth 63 (running)
Arun Bhattacharya — Registry	Research 63 (Marlow's box, the studio log), Occult 63 (what it all is), Anomaly Lore 63
Kate Renshaw — interviews	Persuade 63 (Joan, Sowerby, Teague), Insight 63 (Marlow, Larkhall), Listen 63 (the humming, the cut)
Marek Kowalczyk — engineer	Repair (Electronics) 58 (the tape cut, the mast), Repair (Mechanical) 58 (the safe, the cell lock)
Dr Chidi Nkemdirim — medic	Backs Renshaw's Insight at 58; helps Larkhall with the birth
Ben Okonkwo — containment	The detention. His best move is to stand still and not hit anyone

At four players, cut Okonkwo and Nkemdirim. Nothing essential needs them. The detention is much harder at four, and the table above says how much.

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Locations — quick reference

The underground is eight blueprint scenes in the Adventure, one sheet each, drawn as the 1962 drawing office issued them with fifty years of pencil amendments. They are 2800×2000 at five feet to the square, so tokens and the Foundry grid line up. North is to the left on every sheet, matching the section drawing (SO-H04): Level 1 runs from the lobby at the north end to the sick bay and the stair down at the south; Level 2 runs from the crèche under the sick bay north to the pipe room and plant; an incline from the plant floor goes down to the pit galleries. Every corridor end says which sheet it leads to. Nothing on a sheet gives away a GM secret; the pencil notes are what the people below wrote.

#	Location	Act	Blueprint scene	One line
1	Wetherlaw farm	1	—	Coal soot, and Joan with a brush
2	The soot edge	1	—	A straight line of soot across the fields
3	The vent	1	—	Warm, smells of coal; the crossing
4	The postal pipe	1/2	—	How Centre's letters arrive
5	The adit	1	—	Filled with rubble in 1975
6	Lobby and Enquiries	1	Sheet 1	Mr Ogden; the crossing lands in the blast lock; the wardens' post and the armoury
7	Control Room and studio	2/3	Sheet 2	Sowerby's office, the studio safe, the tape
8	Registry	2	Sheet 3	Pennyfeather and the Order, in the strongroom
9	Sick bay	2/3	Sheet 4	Marlow's side room, Larkhall's office, the delivery room
10	Crèche	2/3	Sheet 5	Kit, Nell, the drawings, the dormitory speaker
11	Pipe room	2	Sheet 6	Centre's in-tray
12	Plant floor	3	Sheet 6	The transmitter room — the mast route
13	Vigil hall	2/3	Sheet 8	The chant; Thursday's assembly, all 999 standing
14	The vegetable tunnels	2	Sheet 7	Beds, trout tanks, hens, the Buffer Depot — the run route
15	The Sump	2	Sheet 7	Four cells; the detention ends here

Which sheet when: Sheet 1 for Act One's arrival and interview. For the detention, whichever sheet the guards catch them on, then Sheet 7. Sheet 2 for getting the tape, Sheet 5 for the cure, and Sheets 8 and 6 for the broadcast: the assembly, and the transmitter.

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GM notes — three things that do not get resolved

1. What Mr Smith is for. He is a messenger. Whose, and what he reports, the case does not say.
2. Where the stockpile comes from. Do not explain it.
3. How long the children stay in care (ending A), and whether the dream ever stops for the born-below.

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Open questions for Tim

• Ending A's cost. Taking 168 children from their parents is heavy. It is the point of the choice — but check it sits right for a convention table.
• The cure's price. One agent dreaming for life, or 2 Coherence. Too light? Too heavy?
• Runtime. Unmeasured. Act Three now holds a decision and a race; desk pass 1 should time it first.