Keeper's Brief for the Table — 08-11-2026 — KEEPER ONLY

Direction for running tonight, in four parts. Nothing herein goes to player paper.

I — The opening: Fiona, out of the water

Read-aloud, or near it. The evening starts with her, Landis, and Ali; Taxe arrives late.

The cold wakes you before the light does. You are floating — on your back, arms out, the way a leaf sits on a pond — and the sky above you is a color Midlandia never had a name for. There is salt in your mouth. There is nothing under your feet, and there has been nothing under your feet for longer than you can account for. You are bare as the day you were born, and the sea does not care, and — you find, surprising yourself — neither, much, do you. The palace would have cared. The palace is gone.

Then the smell reaches you: salt, yes, but under it — tar, rope, coffee, a man's pipe — and the vision comes the way they always come, quick and sideways, gone before you can hold it: a narrow table. Chairs with names on them. One chair empty, and someone laughing. You blink the sea out of your eyes and the hull is already beside you — low, silver, patient, as though it had been standing there the whole time and the ocean had brought you to it rather than it to you.

A rope ladder unrolls. A coat comes down over the rail first — good wool, worn at the cuffs — and behind it a warm, unhurried voice: "Take your time. The water's already done the introducing." Aboard the Silver Surfer, the man in the coat's twin writes something in a ledger without looking at it, and does not ask your name as though he needed it.

Staging notes: the coat lands before any remark — dignity first, comedy after. Omar at the rail is an option: the fellow water-arrival ("when Omar washes up, be gentle"). The harbor-smell vision is deliberately the narrow table — it lands her fear-of-the-Future in scene one without exposition, and tees up her announced entrance: "I know why you needed me! Now what?" Later, someone asks her Q10 back: "why do you think the water chose you?" The water's rhyme is chosen despite the checkbox — let the city's water-history hum near her, unexplained. Tone-check the huntress line; the fancy crossbow (like Chewy's) is yours to hand her. Nothing says interim — on paper or aloud.

II — Omar, playing without Cinco

Taxe arrives late; Cinco's matters are not spent before he sits. Omar's own, safe to run solo:

1. The Littlemaker, priced at the desk — the trait menu: three sets, Landis-priced, plus the priced open door. A live scene of Landis pricing Omar's pick is a whole act.
2. The Quartermaster's Book — Omar alone, never Cinco. The fax-back is due before the next in-person session; press it in person — Cinco's absence is the lawful window.
3. Page 6 and the seat — the unsigned page; the kept seat held against his return. If he takes it, the letter from Landis to Omar unlocks — the bylaws were drawn for his benefit.
4. The Woken and the proxy seat — pursued? disclosed? McPower unnamed. PvP deception is legal; a secret planted while Cinco is absent is the mechanic working as designed.
5. Fiona's welcome — Omar as her first councilor: he washed up too. Seed one small dispute in front of her; she steps in.
6. The Count — 4–4, dual kings. A tie is a standing invitation.

Hold for Cinco: the name-blur and medication staging, the Maiden confirmation, the governance holding beyond Omar's one question.

III — The watches, as they stand

Ladder: Tier 1 = Small Work, 1 watch · Tier 2 = Work, 3 · Tier 3 = Great Work, 5, and founds a department. All clocks unwitnessed since 08-04.

How the Maiden's build works into the schedule of watches: the build is not its own watch — it is the fruit of Tier 2's three, and lands when they are spent and the subject secured.

IV — Front of mind

1. Ali's founding condition is told at the table tonight; the "unvetoable" question stays open by design.
2. The Wraith broadcast is the largest clock — the fleet learns Atlantis stands in ~1.5 sessions from 08-04. Two wraith loose within the city; capture preferred.
3. The minutes meet the Senate for the first time — the record rule fires: the count's leader crowned. The Count reads 4–4.
4. Leah's three rails: never interim · open through her nose · Landis and Omar carry her first hour.
5. The last sitting is not reopened until the 08-04 audio lands.
6. The two emails are cut and unsent — sending before the session lets tonight's table press the same blanks in person.
7. Landis is never pinned — the name passes in talk and blurs under grasp. Late-evening material, with Taxe.
8. The Storm stays off player paper.

Cut 08-11-2026 by Fen, Keeper of the Annex. Point-in-time copy; the vault governs wherever the two drift.