in: Story, Main campaign, Acts
Act I: The Long Wake
In the alpha Story · facts checked 2 November 2026
Act I: The Long Wake is the first act of Arborwake: The Long Wake. The Evening Pair no longer lines up with a familiar route. The act teaches that changed activity can alter the world without proving inflammation or injury.
Scenes#
| Scene | What happens |
|---|---|
| I1. A rhythm without its usual pause | In Nearfield Glade, the north pulse and one route drift apart. Pip says the route still works. Mote says the timing changed. Both are right about different facts. |
| I2. First Pressure Front | A short first outing into the Dendritic Gardens. A forecast activity shift moves through a few patches. There is no debris, infection or breach. The player chooses where to stand and which connection needs Care. |
| I3. Two equally untidy signals | Two patches show irregular pulses. One has a local work demand. The other has an upstream change in activity. Tend helps only where a source exists. |
| I4. A room where different help matters | In Memory Meadow, the player tries the Sentinel and the Warden on the same small problem. The Coordinator is not available here. |
| I5. A home more capable than one worker | At Hearth, the player assigns support or builds a project. Pip finishes work more reliably, but another task may now be uncovered. |
At the act curtain, a traveller from Threadway mentions similar changes near Starwell.
What the act teaches#
- A path existing is different from a signal arriving normally.
- Sometimes there is no removable culprit. The world shows this by the lack of a valid Tend target.
- Preparation and position matter, and one mobile cell has limits.
- Mote's expectation is right in one patch; Pip's caution is right in the other.
The plan says the Pressure Front must not claim to reproduce stress neuroinflammation experimentally. The specific inflammatory relay comes in Act II.
Development#
- Plan: scenes I1–I5 are in plan v0.5 Part IV. On 29 October the user moved the story away from Breach-first, so the first disturbance is a pressure front. See Withdrawn story directions.
- In the alpha The Placeholder alpha has journal chapters I1–I5 in
campaign.js. I2 asks the player to clear the room Before the Front; I3 asks for First Light and A Quieter Return; I4 asks the player to try a Sentinel or Warden lesson in Memory Meadow. Clearing I2 sets the flagsfirst-disturbanceandpressure-front-seen, which open later side-story steps. This wiki has read the code, not played the chapters. - The encounters are now turn-based (user, 1 November). See Turn-based encounters.
See also#
Sources#
- .GAME_PLAN/ARBORWAKE_THE_LONG_WAKE_COMPLETE_GAME_PLAN_v0.5.md (working copy, not in Git)
b89f778c2:src/main-game/game/campaign.js1ded4c01c:docs/integrated-design-v2/STRESS_STORY.md
What links here (23)
- Act II: The Boundary Is Not a Wall
- Act III: What Stays After the Signal
- Act IV: The Interval
- Act V: The Break
- An Errand That Was Already Underway
- An Hour Without a Request
- Arborwake alpha
- Arborwake: The Long Wake
- Ensemble scenes
- Epilogue: The Next Ordinary Day
- Evening Pair
- Prologue: The Last Regular Evening
- Ranger
- Someone Else's Shift
- Studios
- The Border of an Agreement
- The Five Stretches
- The Names at the Edge
- The Part Between
- The Stretch Between Neighbours
- The Uninteresting Ones
- Who Takes the New Road?
- Withdrawn story directions