RingBRP/docs/scenarios/THROUGH_TRAIN.md

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 and they are all alive.

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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.
• Hard rule: at 2:45 on the clock, they are on the train.
• Content warnings: entrapment and confinement; a decision that condemns named people including children; period racism and hardship implied but not staged; heights; one death by fire in backstory.

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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. What this is not: a fight. There is no antagonist. Kell is not possessed, Vane is not a villain, and the train is not malevolent — it is a note being held.

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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.

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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 and sixty-one souls aboard.

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. Step down and you are on ground outside the error. Three departmental attempts are on file; none returned; all three tried to stop it first.
• Stop the train and the note ends — and everything it holds open ends with it.

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, and only if told to
R10	Vane signed it, and knows exactly what stopping it costs
R11	Sixty-one people, six passes, four hours — and the crossing may not hold

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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.

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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.

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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

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Act Three — Aboard (~50 min)

Goal: sixty-one people, one man who knows, and a decision that costs either way.

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: "Are you from the company?"

Where	What
The locomotive	Marius Kell, engineer, who has not let go of the regulator
Tender, car one	Coal that has not run out — the first hard evidence
Cars two and three	Most of the sixty-one. Organised, rationed, glad to see anyone
Car four	Freight, the company safe, the signed survey
Car five	Elias Vane, alone, watching the line come out from under

The three facts aboard

1. The coal has not run out. [CUS: Engineering or Spot]
2. Kell cannot let go — not will not. He worked out on day one that slowing is the end of everything, and he has been right for a hundred and forty-five years. He is not mad and not possessed. He is tired.
3. Vane knows, and will say so to a direct question.

Getting people off

Off the moving train is survivable. Off the crossing is not. A person put off at the top of the grade — the same forty seconds the agents used — lands in 1881 and lives.

Sixty-one people. Six passes. Four hours. They cannot do it in the time they have. That is deliberate: the ending is what they choose to do about the arithmetic.

The choices — no roll resolves this

Choice	Cost
Everyone off, then stop it	Four hours while the crossing degrades. It may not hold. The right answer, and a gamble.
Stop it now	Clean close, clean file. Sixty-one people end. Kell will do it if asked.
Children and crew off, then stop it	The compromise every table finds. It works — and it means choosing, by name, off a manifest they are holding.
Leave it running	Everyone lives today. It fails inside a year with everyone aboard. A real option; the scenario logs it without punishing it.

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. That is all I did. It took six months of honest railwaymen repeating it to make it true. If you stop us I would call that fair, and I would ask you to put the children off first.

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Epilogue — the register (~20 min)

A Registry room, a form, and somebody writing down sixty-one names.

Ending	What the register says
All off, then stopped	Sixty-one resettled in 1881, new papers, no way home. Two find their way into the department's files within the decade.
Stopped with people aboard	Closes clean. The file closes clean. Nobody is quite the same about a timetable.
Partial	However many were put off, put off. The rest are a number in a column, and the agent who chose is named.
Left running	Logged, monitored, inherited by whoever holds the case in a year. Defensible. Nobody thanks them.

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Cast

Who	Wants	Key line
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."

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Do not resolve

• 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 the people put off in 1881 were saved or exiled. Both. It should sit badly.

GM notes

• Play the passengers as people, hard. The scenario dies the moment they become a number, and it lives on the fact that they are not.
• 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.

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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.