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, nine of them are shooting at each other, and the same four minutes has run about two million times.

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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.
• 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.

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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. 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.

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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, 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

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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
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.

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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.

Say which route suits whom, out loud, before they choose. Athletics on a duty-roster sheet runs from about 25% to 60%, and the split is not subtle: the Containment officer and the criminal take the tower, the Field Lead can, and the doctor and the Registry officer should be on the wagon. Playtested by putting all five on the tower: two missed twice, had to be carried across on the department's plank, and became passengers in their own set-piece — at a cost of two passes on the clock.

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, 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.

NO ROLL IS NEEDED TO SEE EITHER PAPER. Between passes Merritt shows his letter to anybody who asks — he is proud of it, it is his authority, and he has had a hundred and forty-five years with nobody to show it to. Ambrose shows the writ to anybody not currently shooting at him, because having it read is the entire thing he wants. Do not put Persuade in front of this. Playtested with a real team, the Field Lead's Persuade was 15% and fell to 1% under the crowd penalty — which turned the scene the scenario is proudest of into an impossible roll.

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. Getting there means the gap between the cars — [CUS: Athletics].

Convincing him takes NO ROLL if they can tell him one true thing about his own train. That the coal has not run out. That it is the same four minutes. That the line was never on the north bench. Any of it. The moment somebody who knows what is wrong says so, he asks them to say when.

Only a party that can tell him nothing has to roll — Persuade or Status at average, and a failure means he wants another pass to think. Do not gate the ending on Persuade. Seven of the ten duty-roster agents have neither Persuade nor Status trained; playtested, three separate attempts on Kell all failed and the scenario had no way to end.

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.

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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
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."

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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."

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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.

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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.