Apothecary

The Apothecary is a shop on the Threadway street that deals in signalling. It sells no vials, medicines or bottled cures. Instead it adjusts the Ranger's own signal before an outing, lets you rest once during an outing, and sends a calming visit to your residents at home.

How it works#

The Apothecary is a closed façade. Press E at its door to enter its room, then press E at the counter. The menu shows its services in this order during an outing: rest, the calming visit, then tuning (locked).

Tuning follows an inverted U: a small setting helps, and pushing further costs more than it gives. The calming visit lowers stress and strain by 2; it never resets them to 0.

The calming look (user, 1 November): a hole opens in the ground at Hearth, an astrocyte's process pokes out, sparkles play, and the calming is done. The astrocyte's body stays anchored and never travels.

Numbers#

All prices are Claude B's design values for playtesting. Companion stress runs from 0 to 4, rises only from play (a hit in a room, a disturbed duty, covering someone else's duty) and falls by 1 every return. It never harms a resident permanently.

In the brain#

Claude's research note behind the redesign draws on findings that a signal's effect depends on its dose and on the receiving cell's state (for example, an inverted-U effect of IL-1 on memory in rodents). It also notes that calm comes from neighbours' contact, not from a dose. That is why the calming visitor is an anchored Astrocyte and why nothing is bottled. These are fictional game mechanics, not treatments.

Development#

• Redesign (user, 1 November): "nothing bottled"; field gear moved to the Workshop; signal tuning and companion stress added; the calming visitor is an astrocyte; the recovery parcel was removed. The user kept the name "Apothecary".
• Rest moved here from Starwell and the outing rest stops (user, 1 November).
• Approval: the HUD session sent fresh screenshots, and the user approved the redesigned menus on 2 November ("Approved").
• Rules: services v3 on Claude B's branch (apothecaryRest, buyCalmingVisit, calmingArrival).
• Alpha: Placeholder 69c7b5470 connects tuning, rest and the calming visit to the shared ledger. On a field return, the game runs the return order startCycle → strainReturn → calmingArrival. The lead reports this as integrated; it is not certified by a full campaign playthrough. The room behind the door is a placeholder.

See also#

Signal tuning · Calming · Strain · Endurance · Workshop · Threadway

Sources#

1. 69c7b5470:src/main-game/game/vendor/services/catalog.jscopy
2. 69c7b5470:src/main-game/game/vendor/services/rules.jscopy
3. 69c7b5470:src/main-game/threadway3d/places.jscopy
4. b89f778c2:docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-02-lead-reconciled-game-integration.mdcopy
5. docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-01-claude-apothecary-brief-for-b.md (working copy, not in Git)
6. docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-01-claude-apothecary-signals-research.md (working copy, not in Git)
7. docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-01-claude-workstreams-todo.md (working copy, not in Git)
8. docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-02-lead-full-project-reconciliation-audit.md (working copy, not in Git)