The Canula Prime Crisis
The crisis did not begin with the fire. The fire was the fourth thing.
The Canula Prime crisis is a cascade. The characters will arrive somewhere in the middle of it. They will not know the full sequence unless they investigate carefully. You should know the full sequence and let the characters discover it at their own pace, through evidence that contradicts official accounts.
The actual sequence
| Week | Event | Who knows |
|---|---|---|
| Week -8 | A Duchy of Heller research agent enters the island on forged Albion credentials. | Duchy of Heller only. |
| Week -6 | The chamber begins showing elevated resonance readings. The estate engineer logs it as normal seasonal variation. | Estate engineer; log goes to company factor. |
| Week -5 | The Albion intelligence contact inside the Valdegracian administration copies the engineer's log and transmits it. | Albion intelligence. |
| Week -4 | The Church weather station records two resonance events. The senior priest files a standard miracle inquiry. | Church; inquiry sealed pending investigation. |
| Week -3 | The Duchy of Heller agent makes contact with a member of the fishing village and learns the oral history of the chamber. | Duchy of Heller, fishing village elder. |
| Week -1 | A Valdegracian convoy overseer attempts unauthorized access to the basement. The chamber responds. Three workers are injured. The overseer files a suppressed report. | Company factor, administrator; suppressed. |
| Week 0 (arrival) | The characters arrive. One ship is being towed in. A name is missing from the crew manifest. | Everyone who was at the harbor. |
The missing crewman
The name missing from the manifest is Emilio Resa, a ship's mechanic contracted through a company labor broker. Resa saw the basement door open during the incident and went inside before anyone could stop him. He is not dead. He is in the chamber. He is not hurt in any conventional sense. He cannot leave because the chamber has indexed his resonance signature and the door will not open from the inside while he remains.
What Resa knows
He has been in the chamber for a week. He has learned more about Éterlumin than any living engineer. He cannot explain most of it in language the characters will immediately understand. He will try anyway. He is calm in a way that should disturb everyone who talks to him.
Crisis pressure tracks
| Track | Current state | Escalation trigger | Result if full |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chamber resonance | 6 of 10 | Each unauthorized extraction attempt +2; each resonance experiment +1. | Major rupture; structural damage to estate; Fortera cascade across island. |
| Valdegracia containment | 4 of 6 | Each witness who talks publicly +1; each document leaked +1. | Military lockdown; characters cannot leave the island without force. |
| Faction awareness | 3 of 5 | Each faction contact made by players +1. | All factions move simultaneously; crisis becomes open conflict. |
| Church classification | 2 of 4 | Each miracle event +1; each death near chamber +1. | Inquisitor arrives; church authority overrides company authority. |
Set-piece, The Estate Below
San Telmo Plantation Estate and Source Cave
This set-piece runs when the characters locate the estate, breach or negotiate access, and descend to the basement. It is designed to be run without preparation once you understand the three moving elements: the chamber, Emilio Resa, and the faction race to control the outcome.
Plantation key
- Main Gate (Iron)
- Guard Post
- Overseer's Office
- Barracks (Workers)
- Processing Mill
- Drying Racks
- Storage Depot
- Stable & Yard
- Kitchen Garden
- Tallow Works
- Concealed Shaft / Resonance Wall
- Old Well (Secondary Access)
- East Watchtower
- West Watchtower
- Fence Line
Cave key
- A. Cave Entrance
- B. Underground River
- C. Stalactite Chamber
- D. Crystal Vein
- E. Concealed Shaft (Resonance Wall)
- F. Éterlumin Pool
- G. Collapsed Passage
- H. Flooded Cavern
- I. Forge Tunnel (Optional Ext.)
The estate above
| Room | What is there | What the GM should know |
|---|---|---|
| Entry hall | Valdegracian guards, ledger desk, locked strong room. | The strong room has the suppressed incident report and the basement key. |
| Factor's office | Estate manager Sola Venna, company records, mirror for signaling the harbor. | Sola Venna knows the basement exists and is terrified of it. She will help the characters if they give her a way out of the island. |
| Engineer's workshop | Éterlumin storage, calibration tools, locked cabinet. | The cabinet has three months of anomalous readings that contradict the filed logs. |
| Main salon | Portraits of four previous owners, sealed letters in a wall cavity. | One portrait subject is named in the untranslated portion of the chamber label. |
| Basement stairs | Behind a false panel in the study fireplace surround. | The panel responds to resonance; singing a specific pitch opens it without the key. |
The chamber below
The chamber is not large. It is a stone room approximately eight meters across, with walls that are not quite stone: the surface is a composite material that predates any colonial or pre-colonial construction method the characters will have encountered. The floor has a geometric pattern inlaid in a substance that responds to proximity by increasing in luminosity.
Read aloud
Emilio Resa sits at the center of the floor. He looks up when the characters enter. He says: "I have been counting heartbeats. The chamber counts them too. We have matched. I think it was waiting for someone to notice that."
What Resa tells the characters (in pieces, not all at once)
The chamber is not producing Éterlumin. It is cycling it. The extraction operation has been taking more than the cycle can restore. The chamber has been compensating by running a harmonic that keeps the local Fortera field stable, but the harmonic is audible now, and it should not be audible. When the harmonic becomes visible, the compensation will end. He does not know what happens after that. He thinks the people who built this room knew, and left instructions, but they assumed the people who came later would read them.
The faction race
| Faction | What they want from the estate | How they arrive |
|---|---|---|
| Valdegracia | Resa in custody, documents destroyed, characters gone. | Four soldiers plus a company factor with sealed orders. |
| Albion | Chamber data and if possible Resa himself, deniably. | One agent in civilian clothes who was already on the island. |
| Duchy of Heller | Chamber data. Resa if he is willing. Certainty that no one else got there first. | Two agents via the harbor chapel drop point. |
| Church | Classification data and a formal interview with Resa about the miracle events. | Senior priest plus two Solaris escorts, arriving with a legal writ. |
The set-piece question
The characters have Resa. Every faction is arriving or about to arrive. The chamber is running its harmonic. Who gets what, and at what cost to whom?