in: Story, Side stories, Quests
An Hour Without a Request
Approved Quest · facts checked 2 November 2026
An Hour Without a Request is the side story of Stella, the anchored astrocyte of Hearth Grove. Other residents ask her for help constantly, and nobody visits when the route is stable. One of her requests is simply a visit when nothing is wrong.
Steps#
| Step | Title | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| S0 | Work that does not look like movement | The Ranger sees Stella's support at one connection. It cannot protect every route. |
| S1 | The third request | After a disturbance, three requests arrive. The player sees that support is finite. |
| S2 | The interval she asked for | A quiet visit. Stella does not need to be grateful for it. |
| S3 | A request made properly | A neighbour asks for bounded support without asking Stella to leave her region. Completes the story. |
| S4 | Afterward | Ambient. Stella reacts to her connection's real state. |
“Is it the west one?” “No.” “Then I can't reach it from here.”
Lesson#
Support does not erase the cause of a disturbance. A resident at one site is not a universal healer. Stella is competent without being everywhere.
Reward#
S3 unlocks the Imprint Within Reach once. The dossier describes a small improvement to Care on targets that already have support. It never creates an astrocyte area, never grants Ward and never makes Stella travel.
Development#
- Design: dossier Part VII-A, with research anchors on astrocytic potassium and glutamate buffering and metabolic support. The dossier notes that those papers do not establish the fictional errands.
- In the alpha The Placeholder alpha's controller records
support-inspectedat a support site it labelsstella, which S0 needs. Turn-room linking recordsvalid-request-supported, which S3 needs. The alpha does not recordrequests-weighed, which S1 needs, so the story cannot complete there. This wiki has read the code, not played it. - Stella has no named sprite in the alpha. Her design was approved on 2 November. See Stella.
See also#
Sources#
- .GAME_PLAN/ARBORWAKE_COMPANIONS_NARRATIVE_AND_SYSTEMS_DOSSIER_v0.5.md (working copy, not in Git)
- .GAME_PLAN/ARBORWAKE_THE_LONG_WAKE_COMPLETE_GAME_PLAN_v0.5.md (working copy, not in Git)
b89f778c2:src/main-game/game/vendor/services/sidequests/catalog.jsb89f778c2:src/main-game/game/controller.js
What links here (24)
- Act I: The Long Wake
- 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
- Arborwake: The Long Wake
- Astrocyte
- Ensemble scenes
- Epilogue: The Next Ordinary Day
- Evening Pair
- Imprints
- Prologue: The Last Regular Evening
- Someone Else's Shift
- Stella
- 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
- Within Reach