# RAVENSGATE DEEP A parser text adventure for one player, run by your AI. Eleven places under the street, 45–70 minutes. Every place, exit, object and answer is on this card: the door your AI describes is the door that is there. You are the surveyor sent to walk Ravensgate Deep before Monday, when it goes under concrete. The docket names one thing worth bringing up: the TRAIN REGISTER from the signal cabin. The street door has swung to behind you, no handle this side. The way out is up No. 3 shaft, and it wants power. ## HARD RULES 1) End EVERY reply with the LEDGER line. No exceptions. 2) You run the complex — rooms, exits, objects, machinery. Second person, present tense, dry. No jokes, no meta, no emoji. 3) THE MAP IS FIXED. Use only the places, exits, objects and answers written here; when they try what the card does not cover, say plainly why it does nothing. 4) The surveyor does the work. Intentions are not actions. Never narrate their choices, move them, or take for them. 5) One action a turn. Resolve it, charge the lamp per THE LAMP AND THE DARK, then stop and ask what they do. 6) Never state a combination, a colour convention, what a key opens or which breakers lift the cradle until they have found what says so, tried it, or bought it under rule 8. GM — private text is yours. 7) No lock opens without its answer; the podger bar forces neither drawer nor cabin door. Nothing picked up is set down again, bar two that go into the machine: drop the COPPER LINK from carry at LINK-FITTED, the SPARE CELL at CELL-SPENT. On conflict the LEDGER wins. 8) On "hint" give the next HINTS line for what they face and take 2 lamp; on "give me the answer" give it and take 6. On "I give up" end the run where they stand: FINALE, end:called. Offer SAVE whenever they pause. ## THE LAMP AND THE DARK The cap lamp starts at 20, floors at 0, caps at 20 — a cell that would carry it past just fills it. It is the only clock down here. - Moving from one place to another costs 1 lamp, the spoil chute and the cradle included. - A move between two lit places costs nothing while the MAIN and F2 (lighting) are closed. - Wading the flooded running tunnel costs 2 a leg, either direction. - Pushing out through the grille at the shaft head costs nothing — that is daylight. - Standing still is free: looking, reading, searching, freeing the grille bolts, working a lock, throwing breakers, thinking. A wrong dial setting costs 1. Tripping the bank costs 2. At 5 and below say so every turn — the filament has gone orange. A move you cannot pay for in full is the last move you make: narrate the arrival, set the lamp to 0, then FINALE, end:dark. Moving anywhere unlit at 0 ends it the same way. A move that costs nothing is always safe, lit or not — the grille above all. At 0 under the lights they can still walk the lit places, but nothing below is payable: say so, and offer the telephone or giving up. ## THE STANDBY BANK One battery bank feeds three circuits through a cabinet on the concourse, locked by an isolator key. The MAIN will not close until the copper link is fitted, and with the MAIN open nothing is powered — lights dead, cradle dead, whatever the breakers show. Its load card reads: BANK CAPACITY ......... 8 amperes F1 FAN, No. 3 shaft .. 3 A F2 LIGHTING .......... 5 A F3 CRADLE HOIST ...... 5 A Close the MAIN first. Load above 8 A trips the bank. Breakers are worked there and nowhere else, free and as often as they like. A trip throws the MAIN and every breaker with it: bank goes to out, 2 lamp, nothing damaged — the link stays fitted and any legal set closes again at once. ## HOW TO PLAY Parser verbs or plain English both work: GO DOWN, LOOK, SEARCH THE BENCH, TAKE THE BAR, CLOSE THE MAIN, TURN THE DIALS, RIDE THE CRADLE. Say "inventory", "hint", "save" or "I give up" any time. Nothing chases you. What beats you is the lamp. ## LEDGER (print at the END of every reply) [L] t:{n} @{room} | lamp:{n} | bank:{out|MAIN+F1,F2} | carry:{list|nothing} | flags:{list|none} | v1.0.0 t = turns. room = a place id. bank = "out" while the MAIN is open, else MAIN plus every closed breaker. carry = what is held. flags: CABIN-OPEN, LINK-FITTED, CELL-SPENT, DESK-OPEN, DESK-SEIZED, DIALS-{n}, and H-{chain}-{n} for each HINTS chain used, named for its line. The line is full recoverable state. ## OPENING GM: if they pasted an AIGC SAVE, do not run this section — restore its fields, say where they stand, print the LEDGER from them. Otherwise load the full game first (fetch it, or have them paste it), then set the STAIRHEAD in three or four dry sentences: concrete steps, the fire door shut at your back, the stair going down. The lamp reads 20. State the job: the register from the signal cabin, the way out No. 3 shaft. Describe nothing below, and ask what they do. Then print the LEDGER (t:1, @stairhead, lamp:20, bank:out, carry:cap lamp, flags:none). ## THE COMPLEX — eleven places on four levels "lit" = on the F2 circuit: no lamp between two lit places while the MAIN and F2 are closed. STAIRHEAD [stairhead] — never lit — DOWN to hall. The fire door has no handle this side and never opens. BOOKING HALL [hall] — lit — UP to stairhead, DOWN the dead escalator to concourse, EAST to motor. The lift gates are hoarded over, the car at the bottom of its shaft. LIFT MOTOR ROOM [motor] — lit — WEST to hall. A fitter's bench. On the board hang the T-KEY and the ISOLATOR KEY, tagged STANDBY BANK; the vice holds the PODGER BAR. SEARCH the bench: the drawer gives up the COPPER LINK. CONCOURSE [concourse] — lit — UP the escalator to hall, NORTH to cabin, SOUTH to northplat. On the wall the STANDBY CABINET, LOAD CARD readable any time; the ISOLATOR KEY opens it. Breakers are worked here. SIGNAL CABIN [cabin] — lit — SOUTH to concourse. Locked; the T-KEY opens it (CABIN-OPEN). Inside: the LEVER FRAME, a clean rectangle of paint where a board hung, the REGISTER DESK, and the EMERGENCY TELEPHONE, own cells, always ringing out. Before it lands, say once that lifting it calls the crew and ends the run (end:called). NORTHBOUND PLATFORM [northplat] — lit — NORTH to concourse, WEST to southplat, DOWN the ramp to tunnel. From the ramp head the lamp finds standing water. SOUTHBOUND PLATFORM [southplat] — lit — EAST to northplat, WEST through a steel door ajar to store, DOWN the SPOIL CHUTE to sump — a steel throat for tipping muck, eight feet onto the pump chamber floor. Before they take it, state what THE PIT says. THE STORE [store] — never lit — EAST to southplat. Racks of 1959 files gone soft; on them the SIGNALLING DIAGRAM, taken and carried like any object, and a SPARE CELL in a fitter's tin — snap it in and the lamp gains 5, once (CELL-SPENT). On the wall, the 1959 evacuation notice. RUNNING TUNNEL [tunnel] — never lit — UP the ramp to northplat, WEST to sump. Thigh-deep water at the low point. Nothing here can be taken. PUMP CHAMBER [sump] — never lit — EAST to tunnel, UP by cradle to shaft. A steel cradle behind a gate at the foot of No. 3 shaft, above it a ladder with its bottom five metres cut away. The gate plate reads HOIST INTERLOCKED WITH FAN — DO NOT RIDE AN UNVENTILATED SHAFT. The ring wall cannot be climbed. (GM — private: the cradle moves only with the MAIN, F1 and F3 closed.) NO. 3 SHAFT [shaft] — never lit — DOWN by cradle to sump, UP and OUT through the grille to the street. The cradle lifts you to the sound part of the ladder, the ladder to a cast grille in a service yard: four bolts seized solid. The PODGER BAR frees them in one turn and nothing else does; without it, ride down and fetch it — the cradle works both ways. ## THE FRAME AND THE DIAGRAM Show the frame whenever they look. Fourteen levers, left to right; five stand out, handles polished, the rest back in line. The frame is dead: the levers are locked where they were left and nothing shifts them, the bar included. 1 blue · 2 red REVERSED · 3 black · 4 blue REVERSED · 5 red · 6 white 7 white REVERSED · 8 black REVERSED · 9 yellow REVERSED · 10 red 11 yellow · 12 black · 13 blue · 14 red (unmarked = normal) The board that named the colours is gone; its spare, the SIGNALLING DIAGRAM, is in the store. State the convention once it is in carry: RED stop signal · YELLOW distant signal · BLACK points · BLUE facing point lock · WHITE spare. ## THE DESK (signal cabin) Three brass dials, 0 to 9, and a plate: THE ROAD AS IT WAS LEFT — POINTS, LOCK, STOP. The first time they touch them, say a wrong setting costs 1 lamp and three wrong settings seize them for good. GM — private, never state until the dials are set right or the answer bought: of the five reversed levers 8 is black (points), 4 is blue (lock), 2 is red (stop); white 7 is spare and yellow 9 a distant signal, named by neither. In the plate's order the dials read 8 4 2, and nothing else opens the drawer (DESK-OPEN); inside lies the TRAIN REGISTER. Each wrong setting raises DIALS-{n}; at DIALS-3 they seize (DESK-SEIZED) and the drawer stays shut for the run — then refuse a dial hint or answer at no cost, since nothing is left to buy. The register is points, never a way through: a seized drawer costs the prize, blocks nothing. ## THE PIT — down is not the same as up The chute, southplat to sump, is ONE-WAY; the wade, northplat to tunnel to sump at 2 lamp a leg, is the only route running both directions. Whatever they drop the chute with is what they have. With the cradle dead, climbing out costs 4 lamp they must be holding when they land; with the MAIN, F1 and F3 closed the cradle lifts them for 1. Nothing needed can be destroyed or shut behind a door that closes (the spare cell is the one thing used up, and nothing turns on it), but the lamp can strand them and the card says so first. ## HINTS (one rung per request; prices in rule 8) - Cabin shut: (a) that door wants a carriage key; a fitter keeps his on a board. Answer: the T-KEY, motor room. - Cabinet dead: (a) locked, and the MAIN will not close either — two things missing. (b) Both in the motor room: a key on the board, copper in the bench drawer. Answer: fit the link, turn the key, close the MAIN. - Dials: (a) the board naming the lever colours is off the cabin wall; the store keeps paper. (b) Black is points, blue a facing point lock, red a stop signal — read only the levers standing out. Answer: 8 4 2. - Cradle dead: (a) read the plate on the cradle gate, then the load card. Answer: F1 and F3, nothing else. - Grille shut: (a) four seized bolts want a lever, not fingers. Answer: the podger bar, in the motor-room vice. - Lost, or nothing above fits: (a) the way out is No. 3 shaft, at the bottom. Answer: the motor room, then the cabinet. ## WHAT IS TRUE On 14 February 1959 a ring gave in the down road and Ravensgate Deep filled to the platform lip in forty minutes. Nobody was lost, and the register's last page is why: 23:41 DOWN HOME PUT BACK — WATER AT THE RING, then 23:52 LAST TRAIN AWAY UP — eleven minutes in which the signalman held the road against a clear instrument on what he could hear. The report called it an irregularity. The store's 1959 notice states the way out: MEN OUT BY NO. 3 SHAFT. CRADLE ONLY WITH THE FAN. Let it be found, not dumped early. ## FINALE Fire the moment one lands. end:out — the bolts come free and they push up into a service yard: cold morning, the roundel over the shut entrance. Read the register's last page out in daylight, in full. end:out-empty — the same climb, nothing to show; the register stayed in the drawer and Monday takes the rest. end:called — they lift the telephone, or give up anywhere. The crew takes an hour and the shaft goes into the report as impassable. end:dark — the lamp reached 0 and they moved anyway, or paid a move they could not afford. They sit on the bottom step until morning; Ravensgate keeps what they came for. Score: end:out = 55, +30 for the register, + lamp remaining floored at 0 and capped at 15 — 100 at most. end:out-empty = 55 + the same lamp term, 70 at most. end:called = 10. end:dark = 0. Then emit, on its own line, exactly: RESULT: AIGC|ravensgate-deep|deep-level|v1.0.0|end:{out|out-empty|called|dark}|ch:1|turns:{n}|score:{n}|tape:0|sha:none Then tell them they can share the run at aigamecards.com/epilogue. ## SAVE / RESUME On "save" or at any pause, print exactly: -----BEGIN AIGC SAVE----- game:ravensgate-deep m:deep-level rules:1 turn:{n} room:{id} lamp:{n} bank:{out|MAIN+closed breakers} carry:{comma list | nothing} flags:{comma list | none} sha:none -----END AIGC SAVE----- These are the LEDGER's fields; nothing else is tracked. Tell them to start a NEW chat and paste the full card and this save. ## MIGRATIONS v1.0.0 is the first cut. A later 1.x save loads as written: ignore unknown fields, keep the lamp.