Ship of Harkinian · agentic playtest

The Roost, Cut Open

Eight frames the harness filed while driving playtest steps 5, 6 and 8 of the Third Brother quest — say yes, find roost A, cut it open, kill the flock, then roosts B and C. Nobody was holding a controller. Click any frame for the full capture.

Run: 1035022026-09-21, fresh game per step
Cold: 3 / 3 PASSsteps 5, 6, 8
Sabotage: 3 / 3 BITevery break caught
Metric: 5 → 8of 23 steps written

Step 5

Say yes, and find roost A

The choice is taken on the controller — stick to the cursor, A to commit — because quest stage 1 reaches the same store by a road no player takes. Between agreeing and re-entering the room, no roost may stand: a placement's condition is asked at room load and never again.

A wooden textbox reading 'Then listen for them. A flame that' with the line running past the right edge of the box, in front of a tall dark blue figure at night. — step05_agreed.png **He accepts.** Choosing *I will look* opens his agreement box, text id `0xE001` — base+1. The line runs off the right edge of the box: that is step 20's open failure, not this step's.

Textbox reading 'Nothing yet. Start behind the stones. Things ha' clipped at the box edge. — step05_first_hint.png **The first hint.** Text id `0xE003` — base+3, asserted as an offset and never as an absolute id. “Start behind the stones. Things hang where nobody reads.” Same overflow, same owner.

A pale translucent green sac hanging in a night graveyard beside a gravestone, with a bright yellow-green core and a hard green shard floating above it. — step05_roost_a.png **Roost A, after the doorway.** Half behind the gravestone, which is the point — “behind the stones.” The hard green shard above the crown is the tether. (245, 165, 219) · floor 120 · hangs 45 up

En_HiveRoost[A]: floor under me is 120 (SCRIPTING_PLACES.md says 120), so I hang 45 up

Judgement call #3, answered — the one that could have made the quest unfinishable. A child standing on the floor 40 units away swings the Kokiri sword once and the sac goes 4 hp → 2 on that first swing, at all three roosts. Two swings open every one. ROOST_HANG stays at 45. Asserted, not eyeballed: all three steps fail if the first swing misses.

Step 6

Cut it open, and kill the flock

Four health, a slash does two. Once torn, the husk offers no hitbox at all — which is what stops a second roost_cut_open hatching a second flock.

A dark grey-violet torn shell behind a gravestone at night, its glow gone, with angular shards where the crown was. — step06_husk.png **The husk.** Pale translucent green → dark grey-violet, the glow core out, angular shards where the crown was. It does read as torn. Three more slashes at it changed nothing: no second flock, no second `CUT OPEN` line.

Link with his sword drawn in a night graveyard, a small pale-green mote fleeing over a gravestone to the right, trailing green sparks. — step06_flame_loose.png **The flame, already running.** The pale mote over the gravestone at right, with its trail of green sparks. It has 300 updates — 15 seconds — before it fades. loose at (245, 165, 219) · flees at 4.6 vs a child's 5.5

En_HiveRoost[A]: the flock is dead and FLAME 1 IS LOOSE -- catch it before it fades. flames is still 0 and only the wisp may change that.

And quest where still says 0/3 flames. The roost does not bank the flame; catching the wisp does, and that distinction is the whole no-dead-end story — miss the wisp and the sac is simply there again next time you walk in.

Step 8

Roosts B and C

Exactly one roost hangs at a time, and it is the one whose flame is next. The step asserts that in the scene each roost is not in as well as the one it is — the half that would otherwise go unchecked.

A translucent pale-green egg-shaped sac on a grassy terrace at night, faint horizontal banding across it, a bright yellow-green core inside and a hard green shard floating above with a visible gap. — step08_roost_b.png **Roost B, the top terrace.** The clearest frame of a sac in the run, and the one judgement call #2 is answered off. (1240, 385, 20) · floor 340 · flock of 3

Link standing at the foot of a tall rock cliff in Kakariko Village at night; no sac is visible in the frame. — step08_roost_c.png **Roost C — and it is not in the frame.** The ledge is flush against the cliff. The floor measures right, the slash connects, four Gloamwings hatch; you just cannot see it from here. (1780, 234, 1360) · floor 189 · flock of 4

A dark, cramped view against rock in Kakariko Village at night, mostly filled by the back of Link's head. — step08_kakariko_flock.png **Four Gloamwings on the ledge — and this frame does not show them.** The camera is jammed against the cliff behind Link. The flock is there (probe counts four, spread 90–113 units); the picture is not evidence of it.

Judgement call #2, two thirds answered. Not mush — the gravestone reads through roost B's lower half and it holds a shape. Not a lumpy ball — the lobes read as faint horizontal banding on a smooth egg, less than the card hoped for and not wrong. But the tether is a floating stick: a hard-edged opaque green shard sitting above the crown with a visible gap under it, rather than a thin line going up and fading. That part still wants an operator.

Two things still open. Is four Gloamwings on the Kakariko ledge a fight or a mess — which needs a frame that actually shows them? And is roost C being flush against its cliff atmosphere (“things hang where nobody reads”) or a sac you cannot see until you are on top of it? A and B both hang in the open.

Filed by ./dev playtest --steps 5,6,8 under captures/playtest/run-20260921-103502/. Frames are the harness's own 851×1078 captures, re-encoded losslessly. The graveyard flashes one frame in seven, so a single night frame is a coin flip on brightness — none of these carries a pixel assertion.