fixing plotholes, streamlining

Core Move.md

@@ -75,10 +75,15 @@ them, closed business.
 
 This turns Mags from a **knowledge vending machine** into a source of **leads, not
 answers.** Players earn understanding by cross-referencing books + cult + Guest +
-Vetch's trip, not by unlocking one trusted NPC.
+the Ethereal creatures seen in Orenn's silver mirror, not by unlocking one trusted NPC.
 
 ## The thin point, the tear, and the two circles
 
+The **thin point and the tear are the same physical place** in the Deep Cellar's
+Old Work. “Thin point” names the natural planar weakness; “tear” or “rift” names
+what the old summoners did to that weakness. There is no second thin point in the
+upper cellar.
+
 - **Binding circle** (upper cellar): a *Magic Circle against fiends* — a **cage for
   a creature.** This was the den's **summoning-and-command circle** (you call a
   fiend into it so it can't claw you while you bind it). In the finale it's the
@@ -90,6 +95,17 @@ Vetch's trip, not by unlocking one trusted NPC.
 The one-liner: *the binding circle is a cage you put a monster in; the containment
 circle is a cork you put in a hole.* Both are **legacy** — the den's, not theirs.
 
+- **Vacancy and Hollowing require the tear.** Both vessel-workings must be performed
+  inside the Old Work's containment circle, where the breach can expose and redirect
+  a spirit. The upper binding circle cannot substitute for it.
+- **Destroying Xarrul requires no special place.** It has one hit point pool across
+  both planes and dies only if reduced to 0 HP in the Ethereal Plane. Hunters cover
+  both sides because Xarrul can dodge a group confined to either one; there are no
+  synchronized final blows. No thin point, rift or circle is additionally required.
+- **Xarrul's physical lair is at the tear.** During the lockdown, the sealed house
+  carries its influence everywhere, so the entire Nether Inn counts as its lair for
+  lair-action mechanics.
+
 ## The diffuse bleed = the obliviousness engine
 
 The Opening and the failing tear are the **same physical phenomenon** — a thinning
@@ -112,9 +128,9 @@ everything misfiled outward:**
 - City map pinned with district deaths/disappearances/madness — some are **Thera's
   soul-harvest** (real, human), some are people the tear frayed. Lumped as
   "someone's working the district."
-- A watch-list of patrons who "changed" — **Bren** (raving), **Vetch** (chasing
-  stronger dust). Filed as recruits/addicts/marks; actually the thin point
-  fraying them.
+- A watch-list of patrons who "changed" — **Bren** (raving), several neighbours
+  reporting the same cold dreams, and regulars who stopped returning. Filed as
+  recruits, marks or street-level fallout; actually the thin point fraying them.
 - The **Order of Mending** file — Guest's intel, meeting frequency, a name
   (*Vyre?*), the bronze pins. His strongest, realest lead — and the exact thing
   that let him misattribute everything else.
@@ -137,18 +153,20 @@ everything misfiled outward:**
   it.** (The module already calls it *"the tavern's stored wards"* — this reveals
   what they were for.) Mags inherited it as *"the panic button that bolts the doors"*
   and has no idea it seals across planes.
-- **Why Xarrul needs it.** While the house bled freely across planes — a leaky, open
-  boundary — the fiend's crossing effort *dissipated*; it could only jaunt partway,
-  for seconds. Sealing the house turns it into a **closed cross-planar vessel**: now
-  the one thing already inside on the ethereal side (Xarrul) can finish its crossing
-  through the tear without the energy leaking away, and the summoners' "limit the
-  breach to a single entity" safeguard *guarantees* that entity is it. The
-  containment button built to protect the city is a bespoke door for exactly one
-  guest. Mags thinks she's building a cage; she's finishing Xarrul's door.
-- **Before the crystal breaks:** partway jaunts only — enough to kill an
-  unsuspecting Orenn in the dark, no more. **After:** a closed vessel; Xarrul crosses
-  in earnest over the night, and when the **seal lapses at midnight** it walks out
-  real. The **lockdown timer IS the clock.**
+- **Why Xarrul needs it.** The emergency device trades a cork for a bottle. It pulls
+  power away from the internal planar seals and spends that power on an exterior
+  shell around every version of the house. That lets the one intruder already at the
+  fault cross fully into the Material interior while ensuring nothing can escape on
+  any plane. Mags thinks she is only building a cage; she is also opening the cage's
+  inner door.
+- **Before the crystal breaks:** Xarrul is stuck on the Ethereal side. A full night
+  working the tear stores one three-round Material incursion, and it can hold only
+  one. It spends tonight's charge on Brand → Visions → Multiattack against Orenn.
+  **After:** it has crossed into the sealed interior and regains Ethereal Jaunt there,
+  but cannot leave in any form. The shell also prevents the Guest's Astral release,
+  so the Vacancy cannot begin during lockdown. At midnight the shell lapses and
+  power returns to the inner seals, creating the single three-round Vacancy window
+  before the tear reseals. The **lockdown timer IS the clock.**
 - **Not luck.** Xarrul is ancient and patient and has watched the house
   ethereally for a long time. The tavern has a **known, ritualized response to a
   killing** (the whole no-kill premise). Xarrul weaponizes the house's own
@@ -158,15 +176,27 @@ everything misfiled outward:**
 - **One murder, three payoffs:** (1) removes the one watcher circling it;
   (2) triggers the keystone lockdown; (3) frames the outsiders → conscripts the
   PCs, keeps the factions hunting each other, seals everyone in.
+- **The Guest stays Xarrul's hand.** Xarrul first promised never to kill the Guest,
+  which rules out forced Hollowing of the changeling. Their later compact permits
+  Xarrul to kill Orenn as the one death needed to close the house, then forbids it
+  from killing anyone else until the exchange finishes (except direct defense against
+  binding, banishment, or destruction). The promise does not make Xarrul responsible
+  for violence the factions choose themselves, so provoking faction war is its central
+  loophole. If the Guest dies, the exchange becomes impossible and the restraint lifts
+  immediately; its killer becomes Xarrul's first replacement-vessel target. When the
+  Guest is delivered Astral, that temporary restraint also ends; if the transfer was
+  secret Xarrul leaves disguised, while an exposed transfer may lead to cleanup.
+- **The Deep Cellar is leverage, not a progress bar.** Once lockdown begins, Xarrul
+  has already crossed into the sealed interior. It guards the cellar because it
+  contains the Guest, the anti-fiend tools, evidence of the compact, and the only
+  place where Xarrul must surrender Jaunt during the midnight Vacancy.
 
 ## Consequences that fall out for free
 
-- **The obstacle inverts into a weapon.** Once players learn what the crystal did,
-  **breaching an exit** (already in the rules) becomes an anti-Xarrul tactic:
-  puncturing the shell on a plane re-opens the boundary, the closed vessel goes leaky
-  again, and the crossing destabilizes — Xarrul can't complete tonight (at worst it
-  slips away ethereally to try elsewhere later). The thing they wanted to escape is
-  the thing they smash on purpose.
+- **The exterior shell is not a weapon.** The party can break the mundane door and
+  expose the planar surface behind it, but cannot puncture, dispel or invert the shell
+  during the session. Their leverage is inside: the Guest, the bell, the foundation
+  sigils, the binding circle, planar sight and political control of the room.
 - **The seal makes the source findable (the inflection).** Before tonight the
   failing tear leaked and *diffused across the whole district* — wide, flat, no
   gradient — which is exactly why Orenn read it as a city problem and never localized
@@ -183,7 +213,7 @@ no moral bias. Single goal — **to be real**, to cross and live — and it is
 determined, picking the most viable course of action regardless of the morality of
 it. It was used as an evil tool for centuries; it will not shy from evil acts now.
 But it **won't reach for harm without a reason** — no threat, no attack. **Not
-reckless.** A mastermind, not a liar: manipulating events is not deceiving those it
+reckless.** A manipulator, not a liar: manipulating events is not deceiving those it
 deals with. This *sharpens* the Open Door choice — siding with something ruthless
 *and* honest, because the cult is worse.
 
@@ -191,7 +221,7 @@ deals with. This *sharpens* the Open Door choice — siding with something ruthl
 
 Late-game, the players — or Mags — realize the lockdown *she* triggered to protect
 everyone is what let Xarrul cross. It killed Orenn and then used her grief and her
-protocol to finish its door. Fits her fatalism and the Warden's Mark; fuels her in
+protocol to trade the inner barrier for an outer cage. Fits her fatalism and the Warden's Mark; fuels her in
 the finale rather than paralyzing her.
 
 ## Blast radius — files to bring into line