Teaching the first fight
The Lien got a walkthrough for new players, played over the real first fight, and a set of tip scenes for Argos and the companions. The operator recorded all fifteen lines, then found that a stray click could cut one off, so banners now advance only through a Next button.
Written up later from the repo's history and dated to the days it describes.
The Lien had a glossary of 25 entries and no teaching. On October 10 the operator agreed a design for a new-player walkthrough, tracked as #465, in one conversation. By the evening of October 11 it was in the game with recorded narration, along with a second feature built on top of it.
An overlay, not a tutorial level
The walkthrough plays over the real first fight. The spec gives the reason: a separate tutorial battle would go stale the next time the game was rebalanced. It teaches only what a first fight needs, which is the hand and Breath, Block against a telegraphed blow, the queue as a phrase, and the Twelve Bar strip. Resonance, Stance, Answers and the Shed wait for the glossary or for the moment they first appear.
To let the beats name real cards, the first fight of a brand-new profile is fixed. It has the same opening hand against a weak enemy, through a seed seam the game already had. Checking the script against the code turned up three constraints. The seed's opening five must include a Block card, because one beat waits for it. The enemy must not be able to die in round one, because a later beat says he swings. And the starter deck is twelve cards now, so the seed had to be chosen against that deck and pinned with a test.
There is no up-front question. A flag on the profile records that the walkthrough was seen, and a profile with any history (a lost run, a song worked out, a deed taken) counts as seen, so nobody who has been playing has it sprung on them. A Settings button asks for it again on the next new game. It cannot start a fight directly, because a battle needs a run and a player that only the main menu creates.
The wanderer's own voice
The narration is written in the first person, in the wanderer's voice, because the operator records it. The script went through three drafts on October 10. The second was a fact check against the code, which found two lines that were wrong. Every line is written to be spoken, and the text on screen is the same words. A missing recording is silence, so the audio is a file drop with no code change.
The build ran in small steps with the test floor rising as it went, from 3024 to 3053 over the day. A sequencer, a pure class, decides which beat comes next from battle events. A director on the battle scene raises those events from the real fight. A banner shows the text near the part of the screen the beat is about, with an outline drawn around the target.
Tip scenes
The same machinery got a second use on October 11. When a player unlocks a new mechanic, the next battle plays a short run of banners about it. The first two unlocks are Argos and companions. Licks, Answer cards and enemy mechanics were left for later, until these two have been seen to read well. The director and sequencer now take a list of beats, so the walkthrough passes its eight and nothing about it changed.
Final review changed the design in one place. A companion's scene had a beat about their school of cards, and that beat almost never showed, because the starter deck holds no card of any companion's school. The scene was marked seen at the end of the first fight whether or not every beat had fired. The fix split it into two scenes and changed the rule, so a scene is marked seen only if at least one beat showed. The school scene now waits, fight after fight, until a card of that school is dealt. It goes last, so a deck without one never holds up Argos or the rides scene.
The stray click
The operator recorded fifteen clips on October 11, eight walkthrough lines and seven tip lines, and then played the tip scenes with the recordings in. A banner went away on any press anywhere, and the press still reached the card or button under it. A stray click cut a recorded voice off in the middle of a line.
The rule changed the same day. A Next button is now the only way to advance a banner, and Enter or Space also work so a keyboard player is not stuck. While a banner is up the board takes no input, so the cards, End Turn and the combat keyboard do nothing. Next is enabled from the start, because the operator chose to allow skipping. Escape is left alone so a pause menu can never be trapped behind a banner.
Two details are worth keeping. Only presses are swallowed, never releases, because a card press can raise a banner while the button is still held, and swallowing its release can leave the interface thinking the button is stuck down. And a touch never advances a banner by itself, because one tap arrives as a touch press and an emulated mouse press at the same spot, and advancing on both would dismiss the next banner too.
Whether seven beats feel like a walkthrough or a lecture is something no test can say. Those checks sit in the smoke ledger as items to pass by hand.