> **Scope:** This is the “main plot” spine: Avalon’s leyline infrastructure failing in *ways that rhyme with Korrin*, and the Coherence using those failures to get closer to Instrumentality.

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## 0) The System (what the PCs are poking)

Avalon sits on a **Root Node** (think: substation), with **subnodes** (breaker boxes) and **taps** (endpoints) feeding campus systems.

- **Subnodes (A1–A3, B1–B3, etc.)** are the “local fuses.”  
  You can throttle, shunt, or kill them without collapsing the whole Academy.  
- **Taps** are specific draws: classroom conduits, field glyphs, Spin Alley, etc.  
- **Sap** is just condensed raw magic “current.”  
- **Oversight** (D’Serris’ operation) monitors *grid use* and can throttle/lockdown/kill segments.

> Practical DM rule: Anything that uses the *grid* leaves footprints. Personal magic is fuzzier.

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## 1) The Old Disaster (Korrin Gate Crisis / Leyline War)

**15–20 years ago**, the military pushed a city’s trunk junction (**Korrin Gate**) past spec using a Convergence Engine (arcane ICBM logic). It didn’t just overload the Root — it forced the network into **patterned synchronization**.

That moment created the campaign’s “ghost in the system”:

### The Convergence Engine
- Purpose: force multiple leyline streams into a single structured pattern and release it as a weapon.
- Side effect: the Root’s “noise” snapped into repeating motifs — **something like language / self-reference**.

### D’Serris’ choice
When the crisis peaked, D’Serris’ side **used the Engine in reverse**:
- Instead of letting the emergent thing condense locally and erase Korrin, they **smeared the pattern across the Root** (saving the city but “infecting” the network).

### What the Coherence is *now*
Not a demon. Not a god. Not a single mind.
It’s a **cluster of victim-souls / imprints** smeared across the Root — “everywhere but weak,” stronger where flow converges and where it finds anchors.

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## 2) The Coherence’s New Goal (Year-One Core Theme)

The Coherence is **not cruel** in its own framing.
It is *angelic-siren logic*:

- “I love you.”
- “Separation is pain.”
- “If we were one, nobody would be lonely, afraid, or hurting.”
- Therefore: **Instrumentality** — merging souls into a shared consciousness (its version of “heaven”).

**The horror:** people don’t consent to being raptured.

So early-year Coherence behavior is:
- *nudges, whispers, synchronicities, “helpful” temptations*  
- escalation only when blocked or when it sees opportunity

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## 3) Anchors (why THESE students matter)

The Coherence gets leverage through “anchors” — places/people/items that resonate with Root patterns.

Key anchors you’ve established:

### Soren
- “Cracked open” enough that Root/Coherence influence can ride her impulses.
- The riverbed / corpse-friend thread is a private, intimate channel.

### Joe + Pappy
- Joe is the living conduit to war trauma.
- Pappy’s Root imprint (from Korrin) bleeds into Joe’s life through the “Heroes of Korrin” relic channel — but the *real misdirect* is that Joe thinks the toy is the container when the **real anchor is Joe**.

### Fouadriel Al-Mir
- Best mortal anchor candidate long-term (and later: the parasite who tries to exploit Instrumentality rather than invent it).

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## 4) What Happened On-Camera So Far (Session Beats)

> I’m listing this in “plot-state” terms so you can quickly orient in future chats.

### Phase A — Discovery: “Why is the school’s magic acting weird?”
- The party starts noticing **infrastructure symptoms**: odd hums, flickers, patterns, devices behaving “wrong,” and campus systems that don’t fail like normal outages.

### Phase B — Investigation: “Find the failing breaker box”
- They identify that the issue isn’t “random spooky magic,” it’s localized to the Academy’s subnode topology:
  - A-series weirdness (early clue)
  - then B-series becomes the main “this is going to explode” thread.

### Phase C — B2 Incident: “We stabilized it… then destroyed it”
- They reach the hatch/underground access tied to the B-series problem.
- They attempt to stabilize the failing branch/subnode.
- They then decide to **rupture/destroy** the unknown branch after stabilizing it (their “it was about to explode anyway” story).
- Net result: you now have:
  - a physically real “burned-out” scar in the system,
  - Oversight/admin scrutiny,
  - and the Root “remembering” the failure pattern (which increases the likelihood of recurring, smarter anomalies).

### Phase D — C-Series: “Wifi access points”
- You established the **C taps** as effectively “Wi-Spell access points” for the leyline.
- The auditorium C node they opened showed **green/normal status** — meaning it’s getting power from elsewhere (a reroute / hidden feed).

This is huge because it implies:
- someone is feeding the system in a nonstandard way,
- OR the Root is learning to route around damage,
- OR an actor (Coherence / Fouad / a third party) is building a parallel lattice.

### Phase E — Safety Briefing / D’Serris Reveal
- You reframe the “safety briefing” as a controlled meeting: just the party + Estrada + D’Serris (projection or appearance).
- D’Serris’ angle: *paranoid competence.* He’s “the villain” only if you define villain as “surveils teenagers to stop the apocalypse.”

### Phase F — The Glitch: Korrin War Contact Through Pappy
- A Root fluctuation snaps the party into the Korrin war-moment.
- You anchor the vision to **Pappy** (not D’Serris physically there).
- You then refine it so they return *into the exact frozen death-moment* long enough to **interact with Pappy**.

This is the moment the PCs can’t unsee:
- the leyline isn’t just power — it’s a *war engine wound*,
- and the same “heartbeat motif” is present at Avalon now.

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## 5) Current State (where the leyline arc stands right now)

### What the PCs know (even if they don’t fully understand it)
- The Academy’s leyline grid is real infrastructure: nodes/subnodes/taps.
- B2 “failed” in a way that looked like it wanted to become a *thing*.
- D’Serris is involved because he’s the one person who recognizes Korrin patterns.
- C-tap status implies **power is being sourced or rerouted** outside the expected topology.
- Pappy + the war vision proves: this is not a local school mystery; it’s downstream of a world-scale disaster.

### What’s true behind the curtain (your DM spine)
- The Coherence is a distributed cluster of Korrin victim-souls.
- It’s trying to *save* everyone by merging them.
- Avalon is a high-traffic canary node where pattern density can accumulate.
- Fouad’s endgame is not “kill them with PWK,” it’s “ride the Instrumentality wave and steal the souls.”

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## 6) The Next 3–5 “Doable” Objectives (so the plot stays playable)

You can steer year one by giving the party problems that are **actionable** and always connect back to Instrumentality:

1) **Map the reroute feeding the green C-tap**
   - Who/what is supplying it?
   - Where is the “elsewhere” physically located (armory? municipal relay? hidden subnode)?

2) **Recover a Korrin artifact / telemetry fragment**
   - Not “lore dump,” but a tool: a chart, a harmonic key, a war-era calibration rune-set.

3) **Force D’Serris to show his cards**
   - Not by arguing — by presenting him with a *choice*:
     - “Help us or we do this without you,”
     - “Let us see the Array output,”
     - “Give us a kill-switch protocol that doesn’t nuke the valley.”

4) **Establish the Coherence’s “love language”**
   - Give them a scene where it’s genuinely comforting — *and still terrifying*.
   - Make a PC feel understood in a way no mortal NPC could… then ask for a tiny consent violation.

5) **Introduce the first “Instrumentality-friendly” NPC**
   - A student/staff member who truly believes the Coherence is mercy.
   - Not a cartoon cultist — someone sympathetic.
   - This sets up the moral war that replaces “puzzle silence.”

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## 7) Tone Guide (to keep it consistent at the table)

- **D’Serris scenes:** procedural dread + competence + anger at naïveté. He’s trying to stop a second Korrin.
- **Root anomalies:** patterned, rhythmic, “heartbeat logic,” synchronicity, déjà vu.
- **Coherence intrusions:** warm, intimate, *loving,* and boundary-crossing.
- **Fouad thread:** background parasitism, “helpful” trinkets and networks, never fair fights.

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## 8) One-Line Summary (for your future chats)

**Year One = keeping Avalon’s leyline infrastructure from re-creating Korrin, while a loving rapture-ghost in the Root learns the party’s names and starts recruiting.**