Pieces

When you clear a night mid-campaign, the dealer hands you back a Piece. A memory, a year, a name — small things he has been keeping for you. The campaign isn’t a slow erosion; it’s a slow recovery. You walk into the next morning a little more whole.

A failed night (last call) costs no Piece. It just doesn’t yield one. The opportunity is what’s at risk, never something already yours.

The eight Pieces

Piece	id	Phrasing
A year you were owed	year	”a year you were owed.”
A memory of your family	memory	”a memory of your family.”
A name	name	”a name. it had been on the tip of your tongue.”
A face	face	”a face you used to know.”
A season	season	”a season. you can feel it again.”
A song	song	”a song you used to hum.”
A habit	habit	”a habit. your hand goes there again.”
A room	room	”a room you grew up in. it is back.”

Five-line narrative arcs

Each Piece carries a 5-line arc — the player’s evolving relationship with the recovered memory across the campaign. Indices:

• 0 First return — the recovery-screen line (“He hands you back ____.”)
• 1 Settling — the morning after, the memory is still surprising.
• 2 Beginning to have it again — a few days later, the shape is familiar but new.
• 3 Quiet ownership — the dealer notices you have it now. He does not say so directly.
• 4 Final word — late-week, the memory is yours in the way memories ought to be.

For example, “a song you used to hum”:

arc[0] "a song you used to hum."
arc[1] "You started to hum it just now. The melody came easily."
arc[2] "The song surfaces when you are not paying attention. As songs do."
arc[3] "He sometimes hums one bar of it himself, and stops, and lets you have it."
arc[4] "The song is yours. He has not sung it since."

The Recovery Screen

When a cleared night happens mid-campaign, the player sees:

DAWN

"I have been keeping this for you. It is, perhaps, time."

HE HANDS BACK
a face you used to know.

YOU HAVE RECOVERED
a song you used to hum.
a name. it had been on the tip of your tongue.

The “you have recovered…” remembrance panel surfaces every prior recovery in the campaign (using each Piece’s arc[0] phrasing). Three cleared nights in one campaign means the recovery screen accumulates into a small ledger of what’s been returned to you.

A last call lands on a different screen — the Quiet Morning — which sheds 1-2 charms (arcana) but leaves the Piece shelf untouched.

Selection

Piece selection is deterministic per run seed. The same seed always recovers the same Piece, so share codes are honest. Within a campaign, the controller picks from the Pieces the player hasn’t already recovered — exhausted Pieces fall back to “an unnamed thing” phrasing for the rest of the campaign.

Where this lives

• lib/sim/pieces.dart — Piece enum, arc extension, arcLine(i).
• lib/ui/diminishment_screen.dart — both the Recovery and Quiet Morning screens.
• test/sim/pieces_arc_test.dart — 9 tests (5 lines per Piece minimum, unique phrasings, etc.).
• test/integration/pieces_remembrance_flow_test.dart — three consecutive cleared nights accumulate correctly.

Cross-campaign permanence

Recovered Pieces persist in MetaProgression.piecesRecovered across campaigns. A player who has recovered the song in their first campaign cannot recover the same song twice. The Piece pool can be exhausted (8 Pieces total); beyond that, “unnamed pieces” phrasing applies for now (a future content batch will name more).

Why recovery, not loss

The dealer is fundamentally fond of the player — see Dealer voice. A campaign built around taking pieces makes him a thief. A campaign built around handing them back makes him a custodian — someone who has been keeping the small things safe while you found your way back to them. The horror is the same: he will eventually run out of things to give back. But the relationship runs on warmth, not loss.

“I have been keeping things for you. Songs, faces, the way a season used to feel. Nothing important to me; everything important to you. Take what’s yours.” — Pale Jack, Book of Hours, “On Pieces”