nightclub-arcadia/writing/scenes/sc101-the-card-at-the-desk.md

id, title, act, status, yarn_file, location, reenterable

id	title	act	status	yarn_file	location	reenterable
SC101	The Card at the Desk	I	in-engine	Assets/Dialogue/Scenes/SC101.yarn	The conference hall — registration desk, the bar, the table	yes

SC-101 — The Card at the Desk

The opening. Playable end to end, and it exits into SC-102, which is still a one-line stub.

An opening scene is not a normal node in the sandbox. It has no entry conditions and almost nothing to gate. Its job is to sell the register in one sitting — the voice-committee narration, the tone, the world's texture of disrepair, and one open question the player carries into Act I.

Purpose

Establish that the protagonist does not know who they are, that other people appear to, and that this was arranged before they decided to come.

Cast

Speaking: Narrator, the Bartender, Chevalier Cassian Thal, Bradford Kane (silent — unwritten).

Voices introduced: CONFLUENCE (Reason), FACEWORK (Social), STANDING ORDER (Self), HOUSE POUR (Body). Also appearing: PROVENANCE, AMNESTY, THE FLOAT.

Entry conditions

None.

Critical outputs

Clue id	Routes
made_asset_intuition	CONFLUENCE hook at the desk ($visited_desk)
journalist_intuition	FACEWORK hook at the desk ($visited_desk)
inheritor_intuition	STANDING ORDER hook at the desk ($visited_desk)

All three are single-route, which is acceptable only because they are intuitions rather than gates: they fire passively, with no roll, so no build can miss them. The object, testimony and document clues for all three candidates are still Planned with no sceneId — see the registry in Assets/Candidates/candidates.json.

Optional outputs

• The Atlantean cross on the place card — Hard PROVENANCE, one route, missable by design.
• The Cyprus connection — Hard PROVENANCE with Chevalier Cassian Thal, then an inquiry.
• Mr. Doss, surfaced from either the Bartender or the Chevalier — two independent routes.
• The Estate drink, and whether it tastes like the protagonist's own past.

Shape

Hub-and-spoke throughout. The chair menu (SC101_Hook_Menu_Chair_Interaction) is the hub and re-evaluates which variation shows after every sub-conversation returns.

Opening frame

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.

Beats

1. Arrival at the desk. A card with the protagonist's name, left three hours before they decided to come. Pure orientation, no plot delivery.
2. Four voices introduce themselves, one per pair, each reading the room differently.
3. The bar. The Bartender recognises someone the protagonist does not remember being.
4. The table. The place card, and a symbol that does not belong in Switzerland.
5. Two seated gentlemen. One of them mirrors back whatever the protagonist has been projecting.
6. Exit into SC-102 once a reading has been declared.

Checks

#	Voice	Colour/Gate	DC band	Success →	Failure type	Failure →
1	PROVENANCE	colour	Hard	the cross is identified as not-Swiss, sets the flag	Wrong Truth	"This is probably related to Switzerland." Same calm, no hedge.
2	PROVENANCE	colour	Hard	Basel reads as old money, opens the Cyprus inquiry	Wrong Truth	the inquiry never opens; nothing signals that it existed

Both are colour, not gates: failure changes what the protagonist believes, never what they can reach. The desk hooks are check-free by design — a roll there would produce a pass/fail state that reads as evidence about identity, which this scene must not deliver.

Branch points

id	The choice	Reconverges at	Persistent effect
B1	Admit the fugue to the Bartender, or claim "the usual"	bar conversation end	$revealed_fugue_to_bartender; lean to Made Asset or Inheritor
B2	Whether the Estate tastes familiar	drink node end	±1 Inheritor lean, first glass only
B3	Accept or deny the Chevalier's reading	SC101_Deny_Candidate loop	$declared_candidate_to_chevalier_cassian_thal; lean

Flags

Sets: $seen_sc_101, $visited_desk, $found_*_intuition (×3), $spoke_to_bartender, $revealed_fugue_to_bartender, $looking_for_doss, $had_the_estate_drink, $sat_down_at_table, $saw_knights_atlantean_cross_on_place_card, $spoke_to_chevalier_cassian_thal, $spoke_to_bradford_kane, $inquired_about_cyprus, $declared_candidate_to_chevalier_cassian_thal, $self_lean_*

Reads: all of the above, plus $player_name, $player_name_full, $player_alias

Constraints specific to this scene

These are deliberate. Do not "fix" them.

1. Four voice introductions, against the cap of three. One per pair — Self, Body, Social, Reason — because each candidate carries one intuition from a different voice-pair, and cutting to three would drop a candidate's intuition channel from its earliest appearance. HOUSE POUR is the non-lean control and the one to cut if the cap is ever enforced strictly. This is a logged exception for SC-101 only; do not copy it as precedent elsewhere.
2. Evidence balance. Each candidate gets exactly one of each evidence type. Never stack types, or trust becomes an artefact of imbalance rather than of play.
3. Beat order is fixed. Hooks fire in sequence from SC101_Desk: STANDING ORDER → HOUSE POUR → FACEWORK → CONFLUENCE. Each stays an independently authored node. Never <<if>>-guard a hook on another hook having fired, on any $self_lean_*, or on skill_rank(...).
4. The passive pattern for clue-bearing hooks. 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, with $found_<clue_id> set alongside it.
5. The body of the scene stays neutral. No lean, no candidate attachment outside the hooks.
6. The Chevalier's tie bias. top_skill receives made_asset first and returns its first argument on a tie, so an even score reads as Made Asset. Deliberate, not an accident of argument order.

Open work

• SC101_Hook_Questions_Bartender_Talk is placeholder text ("Question 1 / Answer 1"). It is a working loop with nothing in it, and the natural home for the missing testimony clues.
• Bradford Kane is reachable and silent.
• The Atlantean cross is never connected to the knight who is sitting right there.
• Tone could not be certified against a voice sheet when this scene was specced, because one did not exist. See STYLE.md §9 — four fields there still need deciding.