RingBRP/docs/scenarios/STANDING_ORDER.md

Crossing case — The Custodians: STANDING ORDER

Two hundred and six people went underground in 1974 to govern the country after the war. There was no war. They have been governing it for fifty-two years, the order that put them there renews itself every ninety days, and the next renewal is on Thursday.

STATUS — read this before anything else

Version	v0.1, 15 September 2026 — first draft, written in one pass
Can it be run?	Yes, from this document alone, with the compendium for sheets and the three bestiary creatures.
Is it convention-ready?	No. No playtest of any kind, desk or human. The clock in Session Timing is an estimate and nothing has tested it. Treat every timing as a guess until somebody runs it.
What it is	A three-act one-shot. It ends in the session; there is no second part and the text must not promise one.
Players	4–6 from the duty roster. The cast is declared in Casting and the build enforces it.
Runtime	Budgeted 3h00 of play in three acts of 45 / 55 / 50 minutes plus a ten-minute break. Untested.

The three things that are not obvious

1. Nobody in Bellhouse is a monster and almost nobody is hostile. The population are civil servants doing an appalling job impeccably, and they will offer the agents tea before they ask them anything. The GM reflex under pressure is to make the underground people sinister. Do not. The horror is that they are correct.
2. The apocalypse is not a bomb, it is a reconciliation. When the site's population record exceeds the surviving population of the region it governs, the record resolves the contradiction by making the region match. That is the threat, it is arithmetic, and Act Two is where the players are shown the sum.
3. Act Three is a decision, not a fight. All three endings are real and all three cost something. If the table reaches for violence the scenario still works, but see EXPOSURE — the quarantine unit will kill them and is meant to be argued with.

Still to do

• A desk playtest. None has been run. The act timings, the Act Two interview load and whether Act Three's third option is findable are all unverified.
• Handout production. The three handouts are written here as text and have no print pack. CLEAN GROUND's CLEAN_GROUND_HANDOUTS.html is the model.
• A decision on Kit Marlow — see Open questions. She is the cost of the tidiest ending and the draft may be leaning on a seventeen-year-old too hard.

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GM ESSENTIALS

• System: d100 roll-under a percentage skill. Special under a fifth of the skill, critical under a twentieth; 96–99 always fail and 00 always fumbles.
• Opposed rolls: a tie goes to whoever is being acted upon. Resisting is stronger than the numbers look. Two beats in Act Two depend on this.
• Coherence runs 10 → 0 and measures how well-filed an agent is. Spending it is how the supernatural works, and nothing in this scenario gives any of it back.
• Borrowed Authority: a named credential with a scope. Inside its scope there is no roll — it costs 1 Trust and it works. One tier beyond is a roll at −20 per red flag broken. Two tiers beyond is impossible at any skill. Act Three's best ending is a Borrowed Authority problem, so read that section of the rules before you run this.
• A warrant card is a named authority. This matters more here than in any other case in the corpus, and Act Three turns on it.

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Overview

The department commissioned Regional Seat of Government 12 — Bellhouse, under Sheldon Moor in the Peak District — in 1962, and staffed it in 1974 during a genuine war scare. Its Standing Order says: on execution, the site assumes the government of Region 12 and does not surface until this order is cancelled by the named authority.

The order was executed on 4 November 1974 as a drill. Deputy Controller Edith Marlow filed the drill as live, on purpose, because she believed a real one was coming inside the year and wanted the site already running when it did.

Reality took the filing. Two hundred and six people went down. Down there the war happened, and they have been governing its aftermath for fifty-two years: issuing ration books, logging fallout that nobody up here can measure, answering correspondence from towns that are perfectly fine.

The order renews every ninety days by standing instruction. Each renewal writes a little more of the "after" into the moor above, which is why a farm at Wetherlaw has been sweeping ash off its yard for four years. Renewal 211 is due on Thursday, and Registry has done the sum: at 211 the site's population record exceeds Region 12's surviving population on paper. A record cannot hold both. It resolves by correction.

Design intent

1. The end of the world is a document, and the people administering it are kind. This is a post-apocalyptic scenario in which the apocalypse is entirely clerical and every person responsible for it believed they were doing their duty.
2. It is an arrangement case, not a fight. Two of the three endings involve no violence at all, and the one creature that can wipe the party is there to be talked down. The bestiary entries are load-bearing but the dice are not the point.
3. The cost is named and not softened. The tidy ending kills sixty-one children who have no record above ground. The text says so plainly and does not offer the GM a way to make it painless. If the table finds a fourth way out, let them have it.
4. It is deliberately NOT CLEAN GROUND. That case is a filed valley of people walking north forever, found by accident, resolved by cancellation. This one is a filed institution that works, that the department built on purpose, and that can be amended rather than cancelled.
5. Three things stay unresolved. They are named in the GM notes as do not resolve.

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Session Timing

⚠ Every figure in this table is an estimate and nothing has tested it. The first desk pass is also the first test of this clock.

	Act	Budget	GM checkpoint
1	The Returns — Wetherlaw farm, the vent head, getting in	45 min	They are at the blast door by 0:40
—	Break	10 min
2	Bellhouse — the population, the Registry, the sum	55 min	Pennyfeather has shown them the sum by 1:45
3	Renewal — Thursday, the signing, the decision	50 min	The signing starts no later than 2:35

If you are running late, cut in this order: the vent-head climb in Act One (put them at the postal pipe instead), then the crèche visit in Act Two (move Kit Marlow into the corridor outside the Registry), then Teague's confrontation in Act Three (he stands down when Sowerby tells him to, off-screen). Do not cut Pennyfeather's sum or the signing.

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Plot Summary (GM truth)

Bellhouse is real, it is where the map says it is, and everyone in it is alive.

In 1962 the department built RSG 12 into the limestone under Sheldon Moor, as one of a dozen regional seats. In October 1974 the scare was severe enough that the site was staffed and exercised. The exercise order and the live order are the same document with a different box ticked.

Edith Marlow ticked the other box. She was Deputy Controller, she was fifty, and she had read the same traffic as everyone else and drawn a harder conclusion. Her reasoning is in her own hand in the file: a site that begins governing after the event is a site that spends its first fortnight arguing about whether it is allowed to. She removed that fortnight.

Reality keeps a record of what belongs where. The record now said Region 12 had been attacked, and so it had. Not up here — down there, and in the ground between.

What the last fifty-two years have been. Two hundred and six went down; the population below is now two hundred and thirty-one, of whom sixty-one were born there and have no record anywhere else. They govern a region they have never seen. They receive correspondence — it arrives — and they answer it, and their answers go up a pipe that does not come out anywhere. Their fallout readings are real readings of a real contamination that exists only inside the order.

What changed four years ago. Renewals began pushing the boundary outward. Ash that is not ash falls on Wetherlaw farm, three-quarters of a mile from the vent head. Joan Wetherlaw's dog went out into it in 2024 and came back with an extra week of life in its records and none in its body.

Why the department is here now. Four months ago one of Bellhouse's returns came out of the pipe onto a real desk in Registry — franked 1974, answering a question nobody had asked. Bhattacharya's section traced it. In doing so they found the renewal schedule and, in the site's own establishment returns, the sum.

The sum. Region 12's surviving population, as the order records it, decays a little each renewal. Bellhouse's population grows. At renewal 211 — Thursday — the second number passes the first. A governing record whose government is larger than the governed is a contradiction, and this one resolves the way records do: it corrects the region.

Timeline

When	What
1962	RSG 12 "Bellhouse" commissioned under Sheldon Moor. Standing Order drafted.
Oct 1974	War scare. Site staffed and exercised; 206 personnel go down.
4 Nov 1974	Marlow files the drill as live. The order executes.
1974–2022	Fifty-two years of government. 61 children born below. Marlow, now 101, is in the sick bay and has not spoken plainly since 2019.
2022	Renewals begin to push the boundary. Ash starts falling at Wetherlaw.
2024	Joan Wetherlaw's dog goes out into the ash and comes back wrong.
May 2026	A Bellhouse return arrives in Registry, franked 1974.
Thursday	Renewal 211. The sum crosses.

Revelations (5, and that is all)

1. The site is live and the people in it are alive. (Act One)
2. They believe the war happened, and by their record it did. (Act Two, first ten minutes)
3. It was a drill, and one person filed it wrong on purpose. (Act Two, Marlow)
4. The renewal is what pushes the boundary out. (Act Two, Kowalczyk or Pennyfeather)
5. At 211 the sum crosses and the region is corrected to match. (Act Two, Pennyfeather)

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The Countdown — what Bellhouse does on schedule

The site does not react to the agents. It runs its day. Print this and run it off the clock whether or not the players are anywhere near it.

Step	When	What happens, whatever the players are doing
0	On arrival	Shift change. The corridors are briefly full. Nobody is looking for intruders because there has never been one.
1	+25 min	The broadcast. Sowerby reads the daily regional bulletin over the tannoy — casualty figures, ration adjustments, a weather report for a sky nobody has seen. It is four minutes long and the whole site stops to listen.
2	+50 min	Teague is told there are strangers below. From here he is looking for them. He is not yet hostile; he is a policeman with an anomaly.
3	+1h20	The establishment return is posted. Pennyfeather files the population count that makes Thursday's sum what it is. Stopping this does not stop Thursday — the number is already true — but a player who tries has understood the case.
4	+2h00	Vigil. The site's fifty-two-year remembrance for the surface dead. Everyone attends. It is genuinely moving and it is for nothing.
5	Thursday, 06:00	Renewal 211. Sowerby signs, Teague countersigns, Pennyfeather files. Act Three.

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Handouts

SO-H01 — The return that came out of the pipe

A4, buff, typed on a manual machine, franked 4 NOV 1974. Give it in the briefing.

REGION 12 — SEAT RETURN — WEEK 1 ESTABLISHMENT: 206. CASUALTIES THIS PERIOD: NIL. REGIONAL SURVIVING POPULATION (EST.): 1,140,000. SUPPLY: 11 YEARS AT CURRENT SCALE. QUERY TO CENTRE: CONFIRM AUTHORITY TO ISSUE RATION DOCUMENTS IN OWN NAME. QUERY TO CENTRE: CONFIRM DISPOSAL OF SURFACE REMAINS AT SHELDON. SIGNED: E. MARLOW, DEPUTY CONTROLLER.

What it is for. Two hidden things. Casualties this period: nil is wrong for week one after an attack and right for week one of a drill. And the second query asks about bodies at Sheldon, which is where the vent head is — the first hint the boundary was always touching the surface.

SO-H02 — Standing Order 12, extract

A4, foolscap, two paragraphs and a signature block. Registry supplies it on request.

4. On execution this Seat assumes the government of Region 12 and shall not surface until this Order is cancelled by the named authority or by an officer holding a warrant of the Department in person at the Seat.

5. This Order renews at ninety days by the signature of the Controller, countersigned, and is thereafter filed. Renewal is not a decision and shall not be minuted as one.

NAMED AUTHORITY: SIR HUGH ELLERBY-STANNARD, PERMANENT UNDER-SECRETARY.

What it is for. It is the whole of Act Three. Ellerby-Stannard died in 1981 — but clause 4 offers a second door, an officer holding a warrant in person at the Seat, and every agent at the table is holding one. Clause 5 is the other half: renewal is not a decision, which is exactly why nobody down there has ever reconsidered it.

SO-H03 — Pennyfeather's working

A single sheet of squared paper, pencil, in a clerk's hand. She gives it to whoever asks her a straight question.

RENEWAL 209 — SEAT 229 — REGION 1,140,000 → 231 est. decay applied RENEWAL 210 — SEAT 231 — REGION 242 RENEWAL 211 — SEAT 231 — REGION 219 ———————— SEAT EXCEEDS REGION AT 211. I have taken this to the Controller three times. It is not minuted because renewal is not a decision. — A.P.

What it is for. This is Revelation 5 in a player's hands. Note the last line: she has already tried, through the proper channel, and the proper channel is the problem.

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Act One — The Returns (~45 min)

Where: Wetherlaw farm and the vent head on Sheldon Moor, a wet afternoon in September. What it is for: establish that the boundary is real, expanding, and has a door in it.

Read aloud or paraphrase: The ash starts about a mile before the farm. It lies on the verges and it does not wash off in the rain, which has been falling on it for four years. Joan Wetherlaw meets you at the gate with a yard brush in her hand and says: "You're not from the council."

Hooks — how the table gets here

Use whichever fits the group; all three are live and the department used all three.

• The return in Registry. Bhattacharya's section has SO-H01 on a desk. It is fifty-two years old, it is answering a question nobody asked, and it arrived in May.
• The farm. Joan Wetherlaw wrote to DEFRA about her yard in 2023 and was sent a leaflet. The letter reached the department by the route those letters take.
• The dog. A veterinary practice in Bakewell submitted tissue it could not classify. It is on Nkemdirim's bench in the briefing, and it is nine days older than the animal.

Clue trail — Act One

#	Clue	Where	How found	What it gives	Type
1	The ash is not ash	The verges, the yard	[CUS: Science (Biology) — it is not combustion product and it is not mineral; it has a grain structure, like something milled]	The boundary is a place, not a contamination	Essential
2	The ash has an edge	Walking the field boundary	[CUS: Navigate — the line is straight for 400 m and then turns exactly 90°, which weather does not do]	It is surveyed. Somebody drew it	Essential
3	The dog's records	Joan's kitchen, the vet's note	[CUS: Medicine — nine days of healing in an animal that was gone overnight]	Time runs differently inside	Supporting
4	Joan's fifty-two years	Joan herself	[CUS: Persuade — she has a box of her father's papers she has never shown anyone]	Her father was a Sheldon works foreman in 1974 and was told to stop digging	Supporting
5	The vent head	Sheldon Moor, 3/4 mile up	[CUS: Spot — a mushroom vent in the heather, painted to lose itself, warm to the hand]	The site is live — something down there is breathing	Essential
6	The postal pipe	Beside the vent head	[CUS: Repair (Mechanical) — a sealed 4-inch pneumatic line, pressurised, and the seal is 1974 and unbroken]	The route in, and where SO-H01 came from	Essential
7	The blast door	End of the service adit	[CUS: Engineering (Field Systems) — it is not locked. It has never been locked. It opens from this side]	Nobody built this to keep anyone out	Essential

Every clue's failure case is the same and it is deliberate: nothing here is hidden. On a failure the agent does not find it yet; Joan, who has lived with all of it for four years, points at it within the minute. She is not being mysterious. She has been trying to show somebody for four years. A special on any of the above gets the same fact plus the detail that it has been like this since 2022 and not before.

The three beats

1. The yard. Joan, the brush, the ash. She is sixty-seven, she is tired of not being believed, and she will talk for as long as anyone lets her. [CUS: Insight — she is not frightened of the ash; she is frightened of being told again that there is nothing there]. Success: she produces her father's box unprompted. Failure: she produces it anyway, later, when somebody is kind to her. Nothing is gated on this roll — it changes when, not whether.
2. The walk up. Forty minutes of moor in the wet. Use it for the ash edge (clue 2) and for whatever the table wants to talk about. [CUS: Athletics — average; only a fumble is a fall, and a fall here is a twisted ankle and nothing worse].
3. The vent head and the adit. The way in. [CUS: Stealth — they can be inside without being seen, which matters at Countdown step 2]. Success: Teague is told about them later rather than sooner — push step 2 back twenty minutes. Failure: somebody below logs an unscheduled opening, which is exactly what step 2 is. There is no penalty beyond that and the door still opens.

⚠ Do not put a fight in Act One. The scenario has one creature above ground and it is not here. If the table needs something to do with their hands, give them the adit: it is four hundred metres of 1962 concrete and the lights still work.

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Act Two — Bellhouse (~55 min)

Where: the site. What it is for: the players meet a functioning civil service at the end of the world, and are shown the sum.

Read aloud or paraphrase: The corridor is warm and smells of floor polish and soup. A woman in a cardigan and a department lanyard steps out of an office, sees four strangers, and says — with no alarm whatever — "Oh, are you from Centre? Only we've been writing."

How to run the population

Nobody attacks. Nobody is suspicious. Everybody is delighted. Fifty-two years of posting returns into a pipe and somebody has finally come. The agents will be offered tea within ninety seconds and it is real tea, rationed, and giving it to them costs somebody their allowance.

Say this three times over the act, in three different mouths: we were told Centre would come when it could. That is the load-bearing line. They are not mad, or trapped, or cursed. They were told to hold on, and they held on.

The one instruction that matters: if the GM feels the act sagging, do not introduce a threat. Introduce a person — the man who has run the site's library for forty years and wants to know whether the National Theatre reopened; the woman who is teaching children the geography of a county she has never stood in. The act's engine is grief, not danger.

Locations below

Location	What is there	Why the players come here
The blast door and lobby	A visitor book, opened 1974, three entries, all from that week	First proof anybody has ever thought about the outside
The Control Room	Sowerby, the tannoy, the regional map with 1974 pins	The broadcast (Countdown 1); the man who signs
Registry	Pennyfeather, the establishment returns, fifty-two years of files	The sum — the act's destination
The sick bay	Dr Ivy Larkhall; Edith Marlow, 101, in the end bed	Revelation 3 — it was a drill
The crèche and school	Nineteen children under eleven; Kit Marlow, 17, teaching them	The cost of Act Three, made a person
The pipe room	The pneumatic head, the outgoing tray, fifty-two years of unanswered post	Where SO-H01 came from; Kowalczyk's route to Revelation 4
The plant floor	Generators, the renewal relay, Teague's office	How the renewal physically happens

Clue trail — Act Two

#	Clue	Where	How found	What it gives	Type
8	They think it happened	Anywhere, first ten minutes	[CUS: no roll — the tannoy bulletin does it for you]	Revelation 2	Essential
9	The visitor book	The lobby	[CUS: Spot — three signatures in one week in 1974 and nothing after]	Nobody has ever come back	Supporting
10	The order itself	Registry, on request	[CUS: Research — SO-H02, filed where it should be, because everything here is]	Clause 4's second door	Essential
11	The drill	The sick bay, from Marlow	[CUS: Psychology — she is not confused, she is ashamed, and those present differently]	Revelation 3	Essential
12	The relay	Plant floor	[CUS: Repair (Electronics) — the renewal is wired to a relay that also drives the perimeter survey]	Revelation 4: renewal is the expansion	Essential
13	The sum	Registry, from Pennyfeather	[CUS: Insight — she has been waiting to be asked; ask her anything straight and she produces SO-H03]	Revelation 5	Essential
14	Sixty-one	Registry, the birth register	[CUS: Research — sixty-one born below, no NHS number, no birth certificate above ground]	The cost of cancellation	Essential
15	What Teague has decided	Plant floor, or he finds them	[CUS: Listen — he asks each of them separately where they were on the day]	He is testing a theory he cannot afford to be wrong about	Supporting

Failure cases. Clues 10, 13 and 14 are filed, and this is the most orderly place in the world: a failed Research or Insight costs ten minutes and a second attempt, never the clue. Clue 11 is the exception — fail the Psychology with Marlow and she does not say it today, and the route reopens only through Larkhall (who half-knows) or the file Marlow kept in her own quarters. Clue 12 failed means the relay reads as ordinary plant and Revelation 4 arrives instead from Pennyfeather, one scene later.

Specials. A special on clue 11 gets Marlow's own memo in her hand — the fortnight paragraph — which is the single most damning object in the case. A special on clue 13 gets Pennyfeather saying the thing she has never said aloud: I think we should not be here.

The census, in the Registry

There is one creature in this act and it is in the stacks behind Pennyfeather's desk, counting. It has been counting for fifty-two years and it is nearly finished.

[CUS: Spot — something between the shelves is keeping a tally, and the tally is people]

It does not attack. It counts — one round, no roll, it simply looks — and an agent it has counted is on a list on the far side for good. See the bestiary entry; the department cannot get anybody off that list.

This is the scenario's one cheap lesson and it should be cheap: the players will want to fight it. Fighting it is legal and survivable. It changes nothing about Thursday, because the tally is not the cause of the sum — it is a symptom of the same filing. Let them learn that by doing it.

⚠ Do not let the census kill the act's tone. It is two minutes of cold in a warm place. Get back to the tea.

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Act Three — Renewal (~50 min)

Where: the Control Room, Thursday, 06:00. What it is for: the decision, and its price.

Read aloud or paraphrase: Sowerby has shaved. The renewal folder is squared to the edge of the desk, the pen is the one his predecessor used, and there are eleven people standing along the back wall because they always come. He looks up and says: "You'll want to watch. It's quite short."

The three endings, all real

1. CANCEL — clause 4, the warrant in the room. Any agent may cancel the Standing Order in person. There is no roll. It works, it has always worked, and it is what a warrant card is for.

• What happens: the "after" un-files. Region 12 was never attacked, and Bellhouse was never executed. The 206 who went down in 1974 become people who went down for a drill and came up on the Friday.
• The cost, and do not soften it: the sixty-one born below have no record above ground and never had one. They stop. Kit Marlow stops. The GM should state this plainly before the agent decides, through Pennyfeather, who has worked it out.
• Coherence: the cancelling agent spends 2 Coherence, permanently, because they are the authority that makes it true and reality now records them that way.

2. LET IT RENEW. Sowerby signs. Nothing visibly happens. Then the correction begins, and the overwriter arrives to perform it — five bodies, correcting one fact the party relies on every round, retroactively and truly. See the bestiary; it cannot be dropped and it is not trying to fight anybody. It is doing the filing.

• What happens: Region 12 is corrected to match the record. This is the end of the world and the scenario does not flinch from letting the table choose it.
• This option must stay available. A choice with one acceptable answer is not a choice and the players will smell it.

3. AMEND — the arrangement, and the best ending in the case. The order does not have to be cancelled. Its scope can be changed. Bellhouse governs Region 12 after the war; amend the scope so that it governs somewhere genuinely empty and always was, and the site keeps running, the people keep existing, and the ash stops.

This is a Borrowed Authority problem and is run by those rules:

• The credential is Ellerby-Stannard, who is dead, which is why it is a stretch rather than routine — one tier beyond scope.
• It is assembled from up to three dossier items, each a separate scene, using a different skill, at most one of them at a keyboard. The three that exist here:
  • Marlow's own memo [CUS: Research — her hand, her reasoning, in her quarters]
  • The 1962 commissioning survey naming an unpopulated alternate seat area [CUS: Knowledge — Sheldon was the second choice; the first had nobody on it]
  • Pennyfeather's counter-signature as Registrar [CUS: Persuade — she has been waiting fifty-two years for somebody to ask her to do something about it]
• The roll: [CUS: Anomaly Lore — the amendment has to be filed as a correction of a 1974 clerical error, which is what it is], at −20 per red flag broken. Each dossier item makes the credential better, never the roll easier.
• Success: the order stands, amended. Nobody dies. The ash stops by the weekend.
• Failure: the amendment does not take and the renewal proceeds on schedule — fall through to ending 2 unless somebody cancels under clause 4 in the next few minutes. Say the clock out loud when this happens.
• Coherence: widening a scope with Coherence is legal here and it always works. It costs 1 per widening and the agent's file and Bellhouse's converge one step. Nothing in this game converges them back.

Teague

Warden Michael Teague, thirty-eight, born below, is the only person in Bellhouse who has decided the surface is a lie — because if it is not a lie then his whole life was an administrative error, and that is unbearable. He is the act's only violence and he is avoidable.

His one paragraph, printed so the GM can read it aloud: "I've read the same file you have. I've read it more times than you have. And what it says is that on the fourth of November 1974 this country was attacked and two hundred and six people did their duty. If that's wrong then my mother died down here for nothing and my daughter was born down here for nothing, and I'm not able to hold that. So I'm going to ask you to leave, and then I'm going to ask you again."

The script break: say his daughter's name. He has one — Nell, nine, in the crèche — and any agent who has been to the school knows it. Naming her puts him back in the room as a father instead of a warden, and he steps aside. [CUS: Insight — he is not threatening anyone; he is asking to be argued out of it]. Success: he stands down and becomes the strongest voice for ending 3. Failure: he escorts them out of the Control Room and they must find another way back in before 06:00 — which costs them the dossier scene they had least secured, not the act.

If it comes to a fight: he is one man with a 1974 service pistol against field agents and he will lose, quickly, in front of his colleagues and his daughter's teacher. The scenario does not stop the table doing this. It does not reward it either. Everyone in Bellhouse who was going to help them stops helping them.

EXPOSURE — the one thing that will kill the party

If the agents call the incident in as a containment failure rather than an arrangement, the department sends a quarantine unit, and it gets there first.

Read the bestiary entry before you put it on the table. It is recorded there as lethal to a four-player party on its own, and its STERILISATION ORDER renders the site with everyone still in it. It can be argued down with a higher authorisation — which is another Borrowed Authority problem, and the same credential from ending 3 answers it.

This is the scenario telling the truth about its own setting: the fight is the failure state, and the paperwork is the way out. Do not spring the unit as a twist. If a player says the words that summon it, say plainly what they have just done.

NPC Roster — GM quick sheet

Every NPC gets one line of essence first. That line is what to play if you have five seconds and the table is looking at you.

Below

Controller Edwin Sowerby, 61 — the man who has done his duty for fifty-two years and needs it to have been worth doing. Went down aged nine with his mother, which makes him the oldest person in Bellhouse who remembers the sky, and he does not talk about it. Signs the renewal because renewal is not a decision (SO-H02, clause 5) and he has never been offered the chance to make it one. He is courteous, precise and lonely. If the players give him a decision he will take it seriously — he is not a wall, he is a man who has never been asked. Supports ending 3 if Pennyfeather and Teague both back it.

Registrar Alice Pennyfeather, 52 — the clerk who has already done the sum and is waiting for somebody to ask her. Born below. Has taken the arithmetic to Sowerby three times and been told, correctly, that renewal is not minuted as a decision. Hands over SO-H03 to anybody who asks her a straight question. She is the act's destination and the case's conscience, and in ending 1 she is the one who tells the agents what it will cost the children, because she has worked that out too.

Dr Ivy Larkhall, 44 — the doctor who has never had a patient with sunlight in their history, and has written the best paper nobody will ever read about it. Born below. Curious rather than frightened, and the first person to ask the agents an intelligent question. Half-knows about the drill: Marlow has said things in the night for years. Will not break a confidence, but will say ask her, and ask her kindly.

Deputy Controller Edith Marlow, 101 — the woman who filed a war because she thought it would save a fortnight. In the end bed in the sick bay. Has not spoken plainly since 2019 and is not confused — she is ashamed, and Psychology tells those apart (clue 11). Her own memo, in her quarters, carries the fortnight paragraph and is the most damning object in the scenario. She will confirm it was a drill if she is asked kindly and will deny it if she is pressed.

Warden Michael Teague, 38 — the only man down here who has decided the surface is a lie, because the alternative is unbearable. Born below. Head of the site's eleven-person police. Widower. His daughter Nell is nine and in the crèche. Full paragraph and script break in Act Three. Not a villain, and the scenario should never call him one.

Sub-Officer Kit Marlow, 17 — a girl who has drawn the sky four thousand times from one photograph and wants to know if she got the blue right. Edith's great-granddaughter, born below, oldest of the children, teaches the little ones their regional geography from a 1971 atlas. She is the cost of ending 1 and she should be a person before she is a price — give her a scene in Act Two, doing something ordinary and competent, before Act Three asks anybody to decide anything.

The site, as a character — two hundred and thirty-one people, warm corridors, floor polish, soup, a library, a remembrance service for the surface dead held every year for fifty-two years. They were told Centre would come when it could.

Above

Joan Wetherlaw, 67 — has been sweeping ash off her yard for four years and has stopped telling anybody. Farms three-quarters of a mile from the vent head. Her father was a works foreman at Sheldon in 1974 and was told to stop digging; his papers are in a box she has never shown anyone. Not a mystic and not a crank — a tired woman with a brush who has been right the whole time.

Nell Teague, 9 — has one question about horses and will ask it at the worst possible moment. In the crèche. Her name is the script break.

Creatures used — all from the bestiary, nothing new to build

Creature	Where	What it is for
The census	Act Two, the Registry stacks	Counting, for fifty-two years; ENUMERATED is permanent and the department cannot undo it
The overwriter	Act Three, ending 2 only	The correction, performing itself; cannot be dropped and is not trying to fight
Quarantine unit	EXPOSURE, if the agents call it in as containment	The failure state; argue it down with the ending-3 credential or die

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Casting — six from the duty roster

⚠ THE DECLARED CAST IS LOAD-BEARING ON THE BUILD. The <!-- cast: --> comment above is read by check-rollable, which holds every skill this document names to being reachable at 25% or better by somebody in that list. Change the cast and re-run the guards before trusting a single clue route.

Deliberately not CLEAN GROUND's six, so the two cases exercise different sheets.

#	Agent	Why they are here	The routes they own
1	Marta Holloway — Senior Field Officer, lead	Signs for it and reads it first	Navigate (the ash edge), Stealth (the way in), Tradecraft
2	Arun Bhattacharya — Registry Officer	The return landed on his section's desk	Research (SO-H02, the birth register), Knowledge (the 1962 survey), Anomaly Lore (the ending-3 roll)
3	Kate Renshaw — Interview Officer	Because everyone down there wants to talk	Psychology (Marlow), Insight (Teague, Pennyfeather), Persuade (Joan, and Pennyfeather's counter-signature)
4	Marek Kowalczyk — Probationary, engineering	Somebody has to read the plant	Repair (Electronics) (the relay), Repair (Mechanical) (the pipe), Engineering (Field Systems) (the blast door)
5	Dr Chidi Nkemdirim — Probationary, medicine	The dog tissue is on his bench	Medicine (the dog), Science (Biology) (the ash), Insight
6	Ben Okonkwo — Field Officer, containment	In case it is the other kind of case. It is not	Athletics, Brawl, Firearm (Rifle) — and the scenario is built so he never needs them

Casting note for Okonkwo's player, given before the game: this case has no fight the party has to win. He is not wasted — he is the one who carries Marlow's chair, holds the adit, and stands beside Teague without raising anything. Tell his player that up front, the way CLEAN GROUND tells Ashcroft's.

At four players, cut Okonkwo and Nkemdirim; move the ash to Bhattacharya's Knowledge and the dog to Renshaw's Insight, both of which are rated well enough to carry it.

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Locations — quick reference

#	Location	Act	One line
1	Wetherlaw farm	1	Ash on the yard for four years, and a woman with a brush
2	The ash edge	1	A straight line for 400 m, then a right angle
3	Sheldon Moor vent head	1	A painted mushroom in the heather, warm to the hand
4	The postal pipe	1	Four-inch pneumatic, pressurised, sealed in 1974
5	The service adit	1	Four hundred metres of 1962 concrete; the lights still work
6	Blast door and lobby	1/2	Never locked. A visitor book with three entries
7	Control Room	2/3	The tannoy, the 1974 map, the desk where it gets signed
8	Registry	2	Fifty-two years of files, the sum, and something counting in the stacks
9	Sick bay	2	Larkhall, and Edith Marlow in the end bed
10	Crèche and school	2	Nineteen children, a 1971 atlas, and Kit Marlow's drawings of the sky
11	Pipe room	2	The outgoing tray, and fifty-two years of unanswered post
12	Plant floor	2/3	Generators, the renewal relay, Teague's office

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GM notes — three things that do not get resolved

Name these as do not resolve so a helpful GM does not answer them.

1. Where the answered post went. Fifty-two years of returns went up the pipe. One came back out, in May, on a real desk. Nothing in this case explains the other ten thousand.
2. What the census was counting for. It has been tallying since 1974 and it is nearly finished. The scenario never says finished for what.
3. Whether Marlow was right. She thought a real one was coming inside the year. The department's own 1974 traffic is not in this file and the players cannot get it.

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Open questions for Tim

• Kit Marlow. She is the cost of ending 1 and the draft may lean on a seventeen-year-old too hard. The alternative is to put the weight on the whole sixty-one and never give one of them a name — colder, and possibly better.
• Runtime. 45/55/50 is an estimate with nothing behind it. Act Two is the one most likely to overrun: it is seven locations and six speaking parts.
• Is ending 3 findable? It depends on the players reading clause 4 and clause 5 and thinking about scope rather than cancellation. It may need a nudge written into Pennyfeather.
• Does this want a fourth act? CLEAN GROUND has one and uses it well. Three is the brief and three is what this is, but the signing may be too thin to carry fifty minutes on its own.