The Part Between is the side story of Nell, a rooted neuron at Hearth Grove. Nell is linked to the Evening Pair. Nell dislikes being treated as a permanent emergency because of one irregular afternoon.
Steps#
| Step | Title | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| NELL0 | The time somebody waits for | A neighbour waits for the paired signal. The Ranger sees it twice. |
| NELL1 | The extra pause | The pair arrives late. Mote notices. Pip says what usually happens. Observing and leaving is a valid choice. |
| NELL2 | Who gets to call it normal? | Mote has written "failed". Nell objects. The player can mark it unusual, needing another look or recovered. |
| NELL3 | The ordinary next pair | The connection is stable again. Completes the story. |
Lesson#
An irregular pulse is not an absent connection, and silence is never called death by default. Mote agrees to tell an irregular pulse from a lost one. Nell agrees that a long gap may be worth a check. Both keep their temperaments.
Reward#
NELL3 unlocks the seventh Imprint, The Space Between. It makes the "connection works again" sign after an action readable for longer. Unlike Clear Interval, it never warns ahead.
Development#
- Approval: the user approved Nell as a new name, with a seventh Imprint, on 31 October. Claude B added the steps and the kit id
confirming(claude/skillsb1f8b1eb). - Nell uses one of the three existing home-neuron slots, so the story adds no fourth neuron.
- In the alpha The Placeholder alpha's controller records
saw-pair-twice,function-inspectedandstable-confirmedat the north line, which NELL0, NELL1 and NELL3 need. It does not recordrecord-status-chosen, which NELL2 needs, so the story cannot complete there. This wiki has read the code, not played it.
See also#
Sources#
- .GAME_PLAN/ARBORWAKE_COMPANIONS_NARRATIVE_AND_SYSTEMS_DOSSIER_v0.5.md (working copy, not in Git)
- docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-10-31-claude-side-plot-implementation.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 (23)
- 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
- An Hour Without a Request
- Arborwake: The Long Wake
- Ensemble scenes
- Epilogue: The Next Ordinary Day
- Evening Pair
- Imprints
- Nell
- Prologue: The Last Regular Evening
- Someone Else's Shift
- The Border of an Agreement
- The Five Stretches
- The Names at the Edge
- The Space Between
- The Stretch Between Neighbours
- The Uninteresting Ones
- Who Takes the New Road?
- Withdrawn story directions