Living document. Updated as installments are drafted and lore decisions are made. Questions are grouped by status.
Questions marked 🔒 are spoiler-protected — do not surface to narrators or playtesters until the relevant story beat is reached.
Questions marked ✅ are resolved — answer is in canon. Kept here for reference and to confirm the resolution is consistent across files.
Questions marked 〜 are partially resolved — enough is known to proceed with writing, but final detail remains open.
Part 1 — Resolved Questions ✅¶
These were open questions that now have answers in the lore. The resolutions are noted and cross-referenced.
The Flicker and the Azimuth — Relationship¶
✅ RESOLVED
The Flicker is not the Azimuth. The ice planet is not the Azimuth.
The Flicker is the ice planet's broadcast — maintained for at least two centuries of documented history. The ice planet is the transmitter. The Azimuth is what the ice planet has been broadcasting about.
The structured signal Ana found — excluded from models as noise — contains predictive models of the Azimuth's arrival. The Flicker was always a warning. The Azimuth is what it was warning about.
See: The Flicker | The Azimuth Event | The Azimuth Process
The Devotion — Why the Orientation Shift¶
✅ RESOLVED
The Devotion was never pointing at the ice planet. It was pointing at whatever the ice planet was responding to. When the surface reorganisation of the ice planet begins, the Devotion shifts from the ice planet's azimuth to the Azimuth plasma formation at the gravitational centre — because the Azimuth was always the object. The ice planet was only the direction the signal came from.
See: The Azimuth Process
What Ana Found¶
✅ RESOLVED
A structured frequency in the probe telemetry archive that the senior Hephaistos-9 team had excluded from their models as instrumental noise. It was not noise. It was structured, repeating, and contained predictive models of something forming at the system's gravitational centre — the Azimuth's arrival, modelled from the approach data the ice planet had been accumulating for longer than any human instrument programme.
The Hephaistos-9 team's final weeks were spent beginning to decode these models. That work is what the kill team was sent to suppress.
See: The Azimuth Event
What Is on the Data Module¶
✅ RESOLVED (substantially)
Ana's encoded archive: fourteen months of structured frequency data, her raw analysis, and her partial decoding of the predictive models. Alone, it is missing one parameter that was classified above her clearance.
Gebreysius's additional parameter: a piece of probe telemetry data from a series classified above Ana's clearance. Left in a handwritten note under his dead hand, taped to the underside of his desk.
Combined: the full dataset. The predictive model resolves. The Azimuth's arrival is described and its approach trajectory confirmed. This is what the kill team was sent to prevent becoming known.
Did Gebreysius Survive?¶
✅ RESOLVED
No. His body is found at his desk in the inner section of Hephaistos-9 during Return. He had time — approximately forty-seven minutes between Gebreysius contacting the Praxis corporate liaison and the kill team arriving — to write his note, tape the keycard to the underside of his desk, and sit down. He used the time correctly.
He addressed the note to the next researcher. He did not know who would come back. He hoped someone would.
Who Is the Cinder-7 Survivors' Leader?¶
✅ RESOLVED
Colonel Mirai. Age 38. The only member of the Cinder-7 crew still on active contract with Vanguard Orbital. She is conducting an unauthorised parallel operation on personal time. She became a Colonel by staying in Vanguard specifically because the resources, network, and institutional memory required to find Janus were inside the Corps. Leaving would have meant doing this without those tools and without the specific authority that makes her harder to dismiss.
The three people who died at Cinder-7 were her people. She has known Janus was right for four years. This does not help.
See: Characters — Colonel Mirai | Scene — Clearance
When and How Did Janus Leave the Corps?¶
〜 SUBSTANTIALLY RESOLVED
The Clearance scene (Standard Date 2843.280) establishes the circumstances precisely: voluntary-administrative separation, processed at Vantage Station's departure level, Gate 7-C, on the day Janus's separation documents were signed. Colonel Mirai was present. She made it formal.
The separation carries no punitive classification on record. This is, as Mirai notes, its own kind of statement about how the Corps handles outcomes it cannot formally address.
What remains unstated: the exact sequence of events between Cinder-7 (2843, exact day unknown) and the separation (2843.280). The Corps review, the interviews, the decision chain — all classified.
See: Scene — Clearance | Timeline — 2843
Where Is the Hangar — Ship or Structure?¶
✅ RESOLVED (continuity note C3 closed)
A Rust Alliance salvage barge. This is stated in story-anchor.md's
setting section. The player learns this in Anchor's prologue — Janus
can read the exterior markings or the Allianz figure names the vessel.
The open question in Drift's writer's notes is resolved by this
context and can be removed from future printings of that bible.
See: Story — Anchor
What Did Kirk's Transmission Do?¶
〜 SUBSTANTIALLY RESOLVED
Kirk transmitted on Whisper's contingency frequency — a rotating cipher protocol included in his operational briefing for post-execution extraction. The recipient was the black ship's crew. The transmission confirmed: mission completed, extraction requested.
The secondary transmitter itself (the device Janus observed Kirk concealing) was a short-range burst unit, single-use, Vanguard Corps adjacent in manufacture. Whether Kirk reported observing the data module being hidden in the capsule foam before losing consciousness is not established. If he did, this is why the android was deployed rather than an immediate retrieval.
See: Characters — Kirk Vasquez | Characters — Whisper
What Did Kirk Mean by I'm Sorry?¶
✅ RESOLVED
It was genuine. Not just for the valve — for all of it. For the eighteen months, for what the operation enabled, for the specific weight of having done something irreversible to a man Kirk had spent eighteen months in proximity to and cannot cleanly separate from the person he was performing alongside. It was the first moment in the capsule where Kirk stopped managing the distance between the performance and the person.
See: Arc — Kirk
The 0.3-Second Response — First Element¶
✅ RESOLVED
The fragment Ana decoded: You have less time than you think.
Confirmed as accurate by the ice planet's record in the chamber. This is the first of three elements in the full response, readable in the index structure Gelon can interpret.
See: The Azimuth Process | Book Two — The Ice Planet
The Azimuth Process — Has It Happened Before?¶
✅ RESOLVED
Yes. The ice planet's record in the chamber documents a previous visit — geological time prior, before the system's current inhabitation cycle. The process arrived, reorganised, moved on. The system recovered. It took approximately four thousand years.
The ice planet was here the last time. It recorded the full sequence. The record is in the chamber.
See: The Azimuth Process
The Vanguard Transformation — What Triggered It?¶
✅ RESOLVED
The Azimuth. Marshal Caul's assessment to the directorate established it clearly: Vanguard cannot stop the Azimuth, but it can control access to information about it and position to determine what happens next. The decision to transform from military service conglomerate to independent sovereign power is enacted — not announced — specifically in the context of needing to be a sovereign power when the Azimuth's implications become publicly undeniable.
See: The Azimuth Event
Why Did the Railgun Stop?¶
✅ RESOLVED (spoiler-protected)
🔒 The Flicker destroyed the black ship's targeting hardware — a Praxis-manufactured tactical computation system. Sudden cessation, clean and complete, identical to the failure mode observed in neural implants. The Flicker chose this moment. Whether chose is the right word is the question the series has been building toward.
This is not explained within the installment. The player observes the power anomaly clearing. The explanation is available only to someone who has connected the Flicker's effect on Praxis hardware to this event.
Part 2 — Open Questions (Genuinely Unresolved)¶
These questions do not have answers in current canon. Some are deliberately permanent. Some await placement in the middle installments or Book Two. A few are authorial decisions not yet made.
Janus — Personal History¶
What specifically happened at Cinder-7? The decision type is established: innocent lives on one side, team members on the other, seconds to decide, three team members did not come back. The specific tactical conditions — what made it unsolvable, what the innocent lives were, what the situation looked like at the moment — are not stated. This is an author's decision for the Cinder-7 flashback, whenever that scene is written.
Why does Janus have a Fabric protocol on the TAP-7? The canon gap (2843–2846: Corps exit to Hephaistos-9 assignment) is where Fabric contact occurred. The why — what drove a recently separated Vanguard operative to patch Fabric access onto military equipment and then apparently not examine the decision — is one of the most interesting questions about Janus's pre-story arc. Candidate: the Fabric found him first, during the gap, and the contact produced the patch as a condition of something he needed. What he needed is part of the Whisper thread. Not placed in canon.
Why did Janus recognise the Fabric relay frequency? Related to the above. He knew it deliberately. This implies he had used it before. This is Fabric contact in the gap.
The Cinder-7 Survivors¶
What happened in the corridor at Hephaistos-9 — after? 🔒 Mirai let Janus go at Gate 7-C. She let him go again at Hephaistos-9 for operational reasons — the black ship in the dock, wrong moment. The conversation she demanded at Gate 7-C has still not happened. Whether it happens on the ice planet (Book Two), or somewhere else, or whether the events of Return change what the conversation is about — not placed in current canon.
What did Janus say when Mirai asked her question? 🔒 The question and answer are not stated. The confrontation resolves before violence because the black ship arrives. Whether the answer was enough — for Mirai, or for Janus — is the open beat.
What happened in the corridor while the kill team boarded? 🔒 The survivors held the corridor while Ana and Janus reached the compute room. What occurred there is not shown. Who is still standing when the compute room sequence ends is not stated.
Who directed the survivors to Hephaistos-9? 🔒 Someone with inside access to unregistered nav data gave them the station's coordinates — hoping the team would be neutralised before the compute room, with clean deniability. A Whisper-adjacent move is the most consistent explanation, but Whisper's interest is the Flicker, not neutralising Janus. This does not fully resolve.
Kirk Vasquez¶
What does Kirk do after extraction? The middle installments. His debrief, what he learns about what he enabled, the specific moment he understands the research team is dead. Whether the people he reported to were worth trusting. None of this is placed in current canon beyond the arc outline.
When does Kirk and Janus meet again? 🔒 Placed in the middle installments. The circumstances, what Kirk says, and whether Janus's answer to eighteen months of proximity built on a lie differs from what Kirk expected — not stated.
The Apex debt — chosen or manufactured? Not resolved. Relevant to whether Kirk is a victim of his handlers or a willing instrument, which is the most interesting unresolved question about him.
Ana Hamato¶
Does Ana have a Fabric contact deliberately, and when did she get one? She used a Fabric routing cipher in her dead-drop note. The Fabric node in the city has her alias and short-stay address. She either already had a Fabric contact before arriving in the city, or she established one there. The timeline of her Fabric relationship is not stated.
What is Ana's contingency plan if no one follows the chain? The thirty-day window she gave Janus expired while he was unconscious. She built an expiry date into the arrangement — she was prepared to continue alone indefinitely. What continue alone indefinitely looks like is not stated beyond the general outline of her arc.
Whisper¶
Permanent open question — by design. Whisper's identity is never fully resolved. The questions below are the shape of the mystery, not promises of answers.
Who is Whisper? Never stated. Never to be stated.
What is the personal connection to the Flicker? One specific detail from Whisper's past makes the obsession feel personal rather than strategic. Ana finds a fragment of it. Janus finds a different fragment. Neither is enough. The detail itself is not placed in current canon.
How long has Whisper been running Flicker-adjacent operations? Longer than the Hephaistos-9 program. How much longer is not established. Whether Whisper's operational history connects to the Flicker's documented appearance as signal (minimum two centuries) or only to the modern research period is not stated.
Is Whisper one person or a role? Kirk does not know. The writing discipline — forensically empty, no stylistic markers — is either one person managing their own trail for a very long time, or a succession of operators maintaining a consistent format. Both are consistent with what is observable.
The Nanotracker and the Android¶
When does Janus find it? 🔒 The tenderness at the base of his neck in Anchor is attributed to hypoxia. The discovery moment — and the retroactive realisation of every dead-drop location, Fabric node access, and contact that has been logged and transmitted — is a major story beat in the middle installments. Not placed in current canon.
Does the Fabric node detect the android? 🔒 The Fabric's operational security may include sweep protocols for surveillance hardware in node-adjacent areas. If it does, the node operator knows the android exists — and may have flagged it to the Fabric network — before Janus does. This changes the geometry of who knows what about Janus's situation. Not resolved.
The Parallel Arc¶
What is the document Seren is carrying, and what does it connect to? An access credential from Davan's household. The access level it represents came from proximity to Syndra Vael's network, not from Davan's own position. The specific infrastructure it connects to — and therefore why Gelon recognises it when Seren shows it — is not stated. This is a middle installments decision.
What does Seren say when Davan says I did not know? The most important line Seren has in the story. Not stated in current canon. The author writes this.
Does Seren ever get the implant removed? The arc resolves with Seren having a different relationship with the implant — not acceptance, but a working understanding of the boundary. Whether physical removal also occurs is not stated.
Why has the Devotion never taken Gelon? Two explanations — he has been weighing them for years and has not decided which he believes. The first: structural resistance in the GL-1-73 production run, something early-generation units have that later ones don't. The second: he has already processed what the Devotion processes, slowly, over twenty years of watching the azimuth. Not resolved in current canon. The author decides.
Does Yamar ever ask about his family? The arrangement between Gelon and Yamar about the past does not require discussion. Whether Yamar asks — and what Gelon knows about the family ship that he has never said — is not stated. Gelon has forty minutes of waiting outside a crawlspace in his memory that he has thought about many times.
The Flicker — Remaining Questions¶
Why are the hull holes quadrilateral? Four documented incidents. No force signature. No material recovered. The perfect quadrilateral shape suggests intentionality or structure — but whether this is the destructive signal, the structured signal, the Azimuth process itself, or something else entirely is not established.
Why is the Rust Alliance immune? The absence of implant hardware is the obvious answer. Whether the immunity is simply the absence of susceptible hardware, or whether whatever designed the Flicker's frequencies specifically excluded unmodified populations, is not stated. The second option has implications for the Flicker's origin and intent that the first does not.
Who first documented and identified the Alliance immunity? Not stated. Whether Praxis identified it and treats it as a research asset, or whether it is only known to the Alliance themselves and sympathetic observers, is an open question with political implications.
Book Two — Remaining Questions¶
What is the third element of the full response? Gelon reads it in the chamber. He does not share it immediately. When he shares it on the ship, it changes the frame of everything that follows. Not stated in current canon. The author writes this.
What is in the oldest layers of the ice planet's record? Gelon reads the recent layers in the chamber sequence. The oldest layers — further back than the previous visit four thousand years ago, potentially much further back than that — are not reached in the Book Two first arc. Whether they are reached later is not stated.
Does the process respond to the team's presence in the chamber? The walls are different on the way out than on the way in. This is the normal progression — it was already happening. Whether anything changes at a rate or in a way that suggests the process is aware of the visitors is not resolved.
Does Mirai follow the team to the ice planet? Not stated. She was at Hephaistos-9. The ice planet is the next location in the sequence. Whether her pursuit survives what she witnessed — and whether the conversation she demanded at Gate 7-C happens in the cave system — is the open beat of her arc in Book Two.
What does Sera-7 know from Keth-Nine's transmissions? The content of the changed transmissions — longer, more coherent, no longer fragmentary — is not shared outside the collective's senior active members. It connects with what the team brings back from the ice planet. The comparison has not yet been staged in canon.
Part 3 — Continuity Notes¶
Misalignments, ambiguities, and decisions that need resolving before scenes go to production.
C1 — Anchor Epilogue Timing Arithmetic¶
File: story-anchor.md — Epilogue
The established dates produce a gap: if Ana departed 2847.208, arrived 2847.214, stayed 17 days (~2847.231), and the meeting date is 6 weeks later (~2847.273), Janus arriving at ~2847.218 places the meeting date 55 days in the future, not 5 weeks in the past.
Preferred resolution: Janus is explicitly one week behind Ana —
meaning the meeting date has not yet passed when he finds the note.
This matches "that date was one week from now" or similar framing.
The phrase "five weeks ago" in current text should be changed to
"seven days from today" or similar urgency-positive framing.
Adjust the note's language in the next draft of story-anchor.md.
C2 — Flashback F3 Narrative Perspective¶
File: story-before-the-incident.md — Flashback F3
F3 contains Ana's internal reasoning — information Janus cannot have. The main story uses Janus's POV / second person. This is a structural collision.
Preferred resolution: Split F3. The observable facts surface in Drift as a brief omniscient narrator interlude (clearly framed as such, distinguished from Janus's POV). The full discovery scene is reserved for Ana's own playable section in a later installment, where her perspective is POV-appropriate.
C3 — Hangar Location ✅ CLOSED¶
The hangar is a Rust Alliance salvage barge. This is stated in
story-anchor.md's setting section. Remove the open question from
Drift's writer's notes in the next draft. Ensure the reveal is
a story beat in Anchor's prologue — Janus reading the exterior
or the Allianz figure naming the vessel.
C4 — TAP-7 Fabric Protocol Origin¶
File: story-anchor.md — Transit Hub Third Level Down;
story-before-the-incident.md
The pre-incident arc does not account for when or why Janus patched the Fabric protocol onto the TAP-7. The canon gap (2843–2846) is the likely window — but it is not tagged as such in the before-the-incident arc.
Resolution needed: Add a canon gap marker to the before-the-incident arc noting the undocumented period between Corps exit and Hephaistos-9. Flag that Fabric contact — and the TAP-7 patch — occurred in this period. The why remains open; the when is now the gap window.
C5 — Ana's Real Name in Transit Logs vs. Alias in Housing¶
File: story-anchor.md — Transit Hub Public Level and Third Level Down
She was cautious enough to use an alias for housing but not for the transit arrival log — which is more publicly exposed.
Preferred resolution: State explicitly in the transit hub scene that the arrival record is the seam between the public Ana and the hidden one — she arrived, assessed the city, then went to ground under a second name. The transit record is the last trace before she switched identities. Janus would recognise this as an intelligent operational decision, not a mistake.
C6 — Nanotracker Pings vs. Fabric Node Operational Security¶
File: story-anchor.md — Writer's Note; characters.md — Headhunter Android
The nanotracker pings on any network-connected terminal. The Fabric node is designed to be invisible to standard network surveillance. If the tracker pings on the node access, the android has the node's location — which breaks the Fabric's operational security model.
Preferred resolution: The Fabric node is hardwired — the TAP-7 connects via physical interface only, no wireless network transaction occurs. The nanotracker does not ping. The node location is not compromised by Janus's visit. However: the Fabric node's own sweep protocols may detect the android following Janus into the transit hub. This is dramatically richer and should be staged in the installment — the Fabric becomes aware of the android before Janus does.
C7 — Drift Score System — Passive Score Point¶
File: story-drift.md — Score System
"Survive to unconsciousness +1" is not a player choice. Every playthrough receives this point.
Preferred resolution: Replace with a final active choice before unconsciousness — e.g., Janus choosing to leave a Fabric relay message with his location, or choosing not to confront Kirk about the frequency one last time. This preserves 5-point maximum with all five requiring agency.
C8 — Kirk's Secondary Transmitter — Missing Examine Action¶
File: story-drift.md — Interactive Section
No EXAMINE DEVICE action exists for the transmitter Kirk concealed
in his inner suit pocket, despite the prologue specifically drawing
the player's attention to it.
Resolution needed: Add EXAMINE SUIT POCKET or similar available
action. The result should be: the pocket is sealed, accessing it would
be a significant boundary crossing. Janus notes it and files it.
This is better than an invisible wall and preserves the Janus
characterisation (patient, observational, not impulsive).
C9 — Whisper Hint Placement¶
File: characters.md — Whisper / The Hints
No specific hints have been placed in any installment yet. The architecture exists; the content does not.
Required before production of any installment beyond Anchor:
- Ana's first Whisper history fragment — what installment, what it is (without naming or gendering Whisper)
- Janus's first Whisper method fragment — candidate: the writing style of Kirk's operational instructions, recognised in a later installment as the specific discipline of someone managing their own paper trail
- The personal detail (Rule 3) — must be decided in the writer's room before it can be correctly foreshadowed, even if placement is deferred
See also: Timeline | Characters | Arc Index | Story — Echos in the Cold | Story — Drift | Story — Before the Incident | Story — Anchor | Story — Return