// SC-101 — The Card at the Desk. Opening candidate hooks. // // Scene files stay thin: set the stage, <> into hook nodes, return. // // Evidence rule: each candidate gets exactly one of each evidence type — // object, testimony, document, intuition. Preserve that balance; do not // stack types so trust becomes an artifact of imbalance. // See Assets/Candidates/candidates.json. // // Beat order: hooks fire in sequence from SC101_Desk (STANDING ORDER → // HOUSE POUR → FACEWORK → CONFLUENCE). Each remains an independently authored // node. Never <>-guard a hook on another hook having fired, on any // $self_lean_*, or on skill_rank(...). // // Passive pattern (clue-bearing): // one voice per hook, from the candidate's attached pair; // the line is that character's argument, never a report; // exactly one $self_lean_* write; set $found_ alongside it. // // Four-voice exception: this opening uses four voice introductions (one per // pair) against the writing handbook's "cap introductions at three voices" // rule. Deliberate and for SC-101 only — do not "correct" it down to three, // and do not copy it as a new precedent elsewhere. // // Body stays neutral on purpose: no lean, no candidate attachment. title: Start position: -17,-276 --- <> === title: SC101_Desk position: -19,-36 --- <> <> Narrator: The mahogany doors are too heavy for the hinges someone recently, badly, tightened — you feel the extra half-second of resistance before either side gives. Beyond them: a hall built for four hundred people politely disagreeing about tariffs, hosting perhaps sixty, none of whom look like they've read the programme. Narrator: Someone left a card with your name on it at the registration desk three hours before you decided to come. You don't remember deciding. <> <> <> <> Narrator: You're drawn toward a seat — toward a waiting conversation you didn't agree to have yet. <> === title: SC101_Hook_MadeAsset position: -40,567 --- CONFLUENCE: One: the seating chart's alphabetical. Two: one gap in it, held open past the start time. Three, and three is the one, {$player_name}: whoever printed this knew you'd be late to your own arrival. Which means somebody in this room has already met you, {$player_name}, and you're the only one who doesn't know it. <> <> === title: SC101_Hook_Journalist position: -299,452 --- FACEWORK: His hands gave it away before his face did — a flinch toward you, checked, turned into reaching for a drink that wasn't there. That's not a stranger's hands. What did you do to earn that flinch? <> <> === title: SC101_Hook_Inheritor position: 335,366 --- STANDING ORDER: You are standing in a doorway, {$player_name_full}. That's the whole of what's certain. Build outward from there — a person who starts anywhere else is a person coming apart in public. <> <> === title: SC101_Hook_Neutral position: 87,310 --- HOUSE POUR: Cigar smoke, spilled aperitif, and under it — cold, sharp — the ammonia bite of a floor mopped in a hurry, love. Someone's trying to make this room smell like money. It smells like panic with good cologne on top. ===