P.O.R.T.A.L — Alan Frazier

// OPERATIVE PLAYBOOK

The Changeling

// STATS

Charm

Cool

Sharp

Tough

Weird

// HARM · LUCK · EXPERIENCE

Harm

Luck

// UNKNOWN HERITAGE TAGS

Tag 1

Tag 2

Tag 3

// PLAYBOOK MOVES

Glamour is mandatory. Pick 2 more.

Glamour// MANDATORY
When feeling calm, you can maintain an illusion of humanity. You may drop your glamour and display your supernatural power to turn any roll into a 10. Your unknown heritage stirs up trouble right away or soon after.
Inhuman Talent
+1 ongoing when you use a basic Weird move that uses your specific powers (plants, ice, illusions, summer, etc.). At the start of each session, hold 2. Spend your hold for +1 forward on a move your powers can enhance.
They Are My People
Once per session, when you protect someone, act as if you rolled a 12. You gain +1 forward when acting under pressure to resist instincts like your unknown heritage, dark urges, and fight-or-flight situations.
Force of Natureroll +Weird
You have a supernatural attack from your heritage. On 10+: summon a 1-harm close weapon, pick two extras. On 7–9: pick one extra. Miss: the power turns against you. Extras: +1 harm, hand, far, autonomous, distracting, ignore-armour, area, grab, blind, stun.
Lockdownroll +Weird
You can stun people with a petrifying gaze, overwhelming illusions, or bewildering moths. On 10+: target immobilised for a few minutes or until something snaps them out. On 7–9: immobilised while you focus. Miss: magical backlash.
Faerie Gossiproll +Weird
You can communicate with local spirits and mystical creatures. When investigating a mystery by questioning these beings, roll +Weird instead of +Sharp and ask extra questions: Is anything affecting the supernatural environment? How long has ____ been in the area? When did ____ first arrive?
Renewal
When teammates and allies in your presence recover harm by any means, they recover 1 extra harm.
Strange Pathsroll +Weird
You can walk (or drive) between worlds, though you don't know the way well. On 10+: arrive quicker than possible. On 7–9: find trouble along the way. Miss: arrive a little too late or deal with something blocking the way.

// GEAR & EQUIPMENT

Pick 1 transport · Pick 1 weapon · Pick 2 mementos

Skateboardtransport
Roller skatestransport
Bicycletransport
Old pickup trucktransport
Motorcycletransport
Vantransport
Fairly new car in decent conditiontransport
Classic car in poor conditiontransport
Sport clubweapon · 2-harm hand innocuous messy
Pocket knife / multitoolweapon · 1-harm hand useful small
Small handgunweapon · 2-harm close loud
Hunting rifleweapon · 3-harm far loud reload
Sledgehammerweapon · 2-harm hand messy slow
Fire axeweapon · 2-harm hand messy heavy
Talisman or artifactweapon · 1-harm close magic ignore-armour
A childhood toymemento
A laptopmemento
A knapsack, backpack, or pursememento
A smartphone, mobile game device, or music playermemento
Old photosmemento
Jewellerymemento
A favourite piece of clothingmemento
A journalmemento
Letters or emails from homememento

// BONDS

// NOTES

// IMPROVEMENTS

+1 Weirdmax +3
+1 Coolmax +2
+1 Sharpmax +2
+1 Charmmax +2
Take another Changeling move
Take another Changeling move
Gain an ally
Associated with either the mortal or supernatural worlds.
Mark use magic (or alternate Weird move) as advanced
Take a move from another playbook
Take a move from another playbook
+1 to any ratingadvanced · max +3
Change this hunter to a new playbookadvanced
Create a second hunter to play in addition to this oneadvanced
Mark two basic moves as advancedadvanced
Mark another two basic moves as advancedadvanced
Retire this hunter to safetyadvanced
Erase one used Luck markadvanced
Remove one Unknown Heritage tagadvanced
You've integrated well enough to avoid issues.
New interest: add a second area of studyadvanced

Playbook Arc I — Villains Like Myself Arc II — The Awakened One Arc III — The Map Before the Territory ✦ PORTAL

// ABOUT HUNTER STORIES

Starting a Story

Tell the Keeper you want to begin a hunter story. They'll weave its pressures into the campaign alongside active cases — at first in the background, then increasingly front and centre.

Story Beats

Earn a beat each time a story moment happens — five specific to your arc, plus general triggers. Gather five beats, erase them, and gain a concrete benefit.

Resolution

After each session, decide if the story's main conflict has resolved. If so, take one resolution move — a permanent change that reflects how the arc changed you, for better and worse.

// ARC I — ADAPTED FROM HUNTER'S JOURNAL

Villains Like Myself

A group of creatures of your kind — whatever your kind is — are causing serious harm. Worse, they're connected to you. They make your life harder and your nature more suspicious. For Alan, the question isn't just "what am I?" but "what does my kind do?" — and the answer is being written right now by people you've never met, in ways you'll be blamed for.

// FOR ALAN — PLAYER SECTION

When to Start This Arc

The team encounters a creature with properties that echo your own — something about how it moves through space, how it relates to the human world, or what it wants from it.
Something you do gets called into question by another hunter — not accusingly, but as a genuine question about your nature.
You find evidence that you're not the only changeling in PORTAL's casework history. You're not even the most recent.

What Villainy Are They Engaged In?

Preying on people's life-force, memory, or sense of self — the specific currency of fey exchange. Kidnapping people — specifically taking children or young adults and leaving something in their place. Creating exploitative arrangements — organisations, relationships, binding agreements that look consensual from outside. Something that looks harmless and isn't. Something that mirrors how Alan navigates the world.

Something else:

How Are They Connected to You?

They're the ones who left you with your human family. They know exactly what you are and they've been watching. You're part of the same nest, breed, or lineage — which means their actions have implications for your nature. The same force hunts you both — you just didn't know they were also being hunted. You're mentioned in the same prophecy, accord, or binding — none of which you agreed to.

Something else:

How Do Their Actions Target You Specifically?

They want to convince or force you to join them. What they're doing, they want Alan's skills and access to do better. They make other dangerous people hunt your kind — including people who might otherwise help you. You have a connection — not psychic, but structural. When they act, you feel something adjacent to guilt. They're actively using your identity — your human name, your PORTAL affiliation — to make someone trust them.

Something else:

Story Beats — mark five to gain a benefit

You behave similarly to the Villains — not maliciously, but in a way another hunter might notice and not say.
You try to reason with the Villains, or with a creature who might be connected to them.
You do something deliberately different from what they would do, in a situation where both paths were available.
You protect another hunter or an ordinary person specifically from the Villains' actions.
You learn something true about your own nature because of what you observe in them.

Resolution Moves

When the arc concludes, take one — or neither.

Companion of Monsters

You know how creatures of your kind think. When you successfully investigate a mystery about a fey or changeling entity, you may ask an extra question — but if you do, the entity learns something about you, as though you'd failed the roll.

Alone in Humanity

When you try to keep humans safe from creatures of your kind, take –1 forward and mark experience. The cost of being the bridge is that you stand on neither shore.

// PORTAL HOOK: CAMPBELL has no specific intelligence on fey activity in the PORTAL casework history — which is itself unusual. Alan interrogating CAMPBELL about other-plane entities, fey lineages, or the history of changeling cases will get precise, careful answers that reveal CAMPBELL has been tracking this thread without flagging it for Victor. Ask the Keeper why.

// KEEPER ACCESS ONLY — DO NOT READ

// FOR THE KEEPER — ARC: VILLAINS LIKE MYSELF

This arc is Alan's first real contact with what he is. The Villains should feel like a corrupted version of Alan's best traits — his adaptability, his ability to move between worlds, his instinct for what people need. What they're doing with those traits should be ugly enough that Alan is disgusted, and recognisable enough that he's uncomfortable being disgusted.

The connection to thin-boundary locations is the natural hook here. If the Villains are operating near or through liminal spaces — the kind Alan has been accumulating evidence about — this arc and Arc III (The Map Before the Territory) can be run in parallel, with the same locations serving both stories. The Villains may even know more about the threshold map than Alan does.

Key note: The Villains should have one motive that Alan genuinely finds sympathetic. They are not simply evil. They are doing something that made sense from inside a worldview Alan might have had if different things had happened to him first.

Day	The Villains commit an act of harm in the PORTAL area. Evidence implicates something of Alan's general description — humanoid, fey-adjacent, apparently trusted by victims.
Shadows	Victims (or their advocates) find PORTAL and seek help. They are suspicious of Alan specifically. The team will have to navigate this.
Sunset	The Villains approach Alan's Caretakers — the human networks Alan trusts. They know who Alan cares about. They are offering something.
Dusk	The Villains confront Alan directly — not violently. They make the case for why he should join them, or at minimum stop obstructing them. The case is not entirely unconvincing.
Nightfall	The Victims turn against Alan. Whatever PORTAL's stance, Alan is now associated with the Villains in the eyes of people he wanted to protect.
Midnight	The Villains complete their objective. Alan is implicated, associated, or changed — whether or not he was involved. The question of who he is has been answered by people other than him.

The Villains

Appropriate fey or changeling monster type

Experienced, effective, and fundamentally similar to Alan in kind if not in choice. They have resources and abilities Alan hasn't developed yet — they've been doing this longer. They're not trying to destroy Alan. They want him in their orbit.

Commit harmful acts in ways that draw suspicion toward Alan.
Tempt Alan with answers — real ones — about his origin and nature.
Ruin Alan's connections and reputation among people who matter to him.

Custom Move — Beaten at My Own Game: Alan takes –1 ongoing to use Weird-based moves against the Villains — they're more practised at these abilities than he is. The first time Alan successfully uses those powers against them in a mystery, however, mark experience.

Villains' Victims

Bystanders: Officials (motivation: to be suspicious)

People hurt by the Villains. They will be hostile or suspicious toward anyone who reminds them of who hurt them — which includes Alan, and may include the whole PORTAL team by association.

Seek help against the Villains — and be unsure whether Alan qualifies as help.
Mistake Alan for a Villain, especially in stressful field situations.
Research the Villains' connections and find Alan's name in the adjacent data.

Alan's Caretakers

Bystanders: Innocents (motivation: to do the right thing)

The human networks Alan has maintained — professional contacts, people from his family's community, anyone Alan trusts as a connection to his human life. The Villains are probably aware of these people. They may approach them before Alan warns them.

Stand up to the Villains without understanding what they're standing up to.
Reveal information about Alan — and the Villains — to people who shouldn't have it.
Make a deal with the Villains, or reveal one that was already made.

Reed

Bystander: Innocent — specifically, Alan's moral compass

Alan uses Reed as his moral compass. During this arc, Reed may have opinions about what Alan should do that are well-intentioned and not quite right. The Villains may notice this dynamic and attempt to manipulate it — Reed can be appealed to via what will make the group happy, which is a known vulnerability.

Offer Alan a clear moral position that is sincere but incomplete.
Be targeted by the Villains as a pressure point on Alan.
Ask Alan a direct question about his nature that Alan hasn't answered for himself yet.

// ARC II — ADAPTED FROM HUNTER'S JOURNAL

The Awakened One

Someone connected to you turns out to be not-so-ordinary. Maybe they're a changeling too — different powers, same displacement. Maybe something woke in them near one of the thin-boundary locations Alan has been mapping. Either way, they're lost, dangerous, and yours to guide. Alan never had a guide. That's the whole complication.

// FOR ALAN — PLAYER SECTION

When to Start This Arc

The team meets a bystander during a case who responds to the anomalous environment in a way that isn't quite right — too calm, or too aware.
Alan has a moment of feeling entirely alone in what he is — and then encounters evidence that he isn't.
Something happens near a thin-boundary location that wakes a power in someone who had no prior contact with the supernatural.

Who Is the Awakened One?

Someone from Alan's human family — a cousin, a sibling of the family that raised him, someone he hasn't seen in years. A professional contact — someone who works adjacent to PORTAL's operational area and has been noticing things. Someone important to the Aldermoor district or another thin-boundary location — a local who absorbed something from prolonged proximity. Someone who was briefly adjacent to one of Rex's experiments. Powers triggered externally, the same way Alan's were.

Someone else:

What Power Woke in Them?

They're a changeling — similar to Alan. Maybe from the same lineage. The resemblance is uncomfortable. They're a changeling — different kind entirely. Their powers and Alan's are not the same language. Understanding each other will take work. They have threshold sensitivity — they can feel where the boundaries between living and dead consciousness are thin. Which means they've been feeling it for years without knowing what it was. They're turning into something — slowly, not violently. The transformation is gradual enough that they can pretend it isn't happening.

Something else:

What Danger Are They In?

Their powers attract entities — specifically entities associated with thin-boundary locations. They've been a beacon without knowing. Their powers can make them into something dangerous — not evil, but genuinely harmful to people around them. Their powers make their community push them away. They're losing their human anchors faster than Alan lost his. Someone else has noticed. MESA, a fey entity, or another organisation has them flagged and is waiting for Alan to make a move first.

Something else:

Story Beats — mark five to gain a benefit

You devote significant time to the Awakened One — time that costs you in terms of cases or team availability.
The Awakened One's powers cause trouble — directly, in a case or in Alan's life.
The Awakened One's powers offer genuine help — something Alan can't do alone and couldn't have planned for.
The Awakened One is rejected because of their powers — by someone who mattered to them.
The Awakened One's approach to their powers changes — in a direction Alan didn't anticipate and has to adapt to.

Resolution Moves

When the arc concludes, take one — or neither.

Mentor

When people act on your advice about the supernatural, mark experience. When they ignore your advice, take –1 forward. You've become someone whose knowledge has weight. That has consequences.

Can't Save Everyone

When you ignore someone in need to help someone or something else, take –1 forward and mark experience. The Awakened One taught you that being a guide means making impossible choices about who gets your attention.

// PORTAL HOOK: If the Awakened One has threshold sensitivity — the ability to feel where boundaries are thin — they may already have data Alan doesn't. They might be able to describe places Alan hasn't visited yet. Alan has been accumulating evidence of thin-boundary locations. The Awakened One might be the key to understanding why those locations exist, not just where they are.

// KEEPER ACCESS ONLY — DO NOT READ

// FOR THE KEEPER — ARC: THE AWAKENED ONE

Alan never had a guide. That's the emotional engine of this arc. He's going to mentor someone through a process he navigated alone, and the gap between what he needed and what he received will shape how he does it. He may over-correct — giving the Awakened One too much support, or the wrong kind. He may under-correct — assuming they need the independence he had to develop by necessity. Neither is right.

If the Awakened One has threshold sensitivity, use them to seed information about the thin-boundary location network ahead of Arc III. They can describe locations Alan hasn't found yet. They can also attract entity attention near those locations — making Alan's role in the scene ambiguous to anyone watching from outside.

Reed note: Reed is Alan's moral compass. During this arc, the Awakened One may try to use Reed as their moral compass instead — seeking the team member who seems most approachable. This can create a productive triangle, or a source of friction if Reed's advice diverges from Alan's.

Day	The Awakened One uses their powers — clumsily, in a way that causes localised chaos. They don't understand what happened. Alan is the only one who might.
Shadows	The Awakened One is punished or pushed away by someone important to them — family, employer, community. The rejection is specific and human.
Sunset	The Awakened One inadvertently harms someone Alan cares about — not maliciously. The harm is real. The intent is irrelevant to the person hurt.
Dusk	The Awakened One becomes estranged from the people who were rejecting them — they've stopped trying to maintain the connection. This is both safer and much more dangerous.
Nightfall	The Awakened One retreats to a self-made refuge and begins using their powers to defend it. They're not hostile to Alan — but reaching them will cost something.
Midnight	Someone gets seriously hurt trying to reach the Awakened One's refuge. Alan has to decide how much of this is his responsibility — and what he's willing to do about it.

The Awakened One

Bystander: Victim (motivation: to put themselves in danger)

Less experienced than Alan, processing a transformation Alan navigated alone. They will not react to their situation the way Alan did — they're a different person. Resist the urge to play them as a younger Alan. Give them one trait Alan finds genuinely difficult to work with.

Use their powers at exactly the wrong moment.
Try to silence their powers through suppression — which doesn't work and makes it worse.
Ask Alan questions he doesn't have good answers to yet.

Custom Move — Tutoring: When the Awakened One uses their powers with Alan's help, Alan rolls +Charm. On 10+, hold 1. The Awakened One uses their power with one side effect chosen by Alan. On 7-9, the Keeper chooses the side effect. On a miss, the Keeper chooses three. The Awakened One can spend 2 hold to reduce a side effect.

The Rejecting Ones

Bystanders: Skeptics or Busybodies

People close to the Awakened One who can't handle what they're becoming — family members, a partner, a community. They're not villains. They're frightened people doing frightening things in response.

Scold, punish, or push away the Awakened One in ways that make the situation worse.
Seek help — from PORTAL, from authorities — that will complicate everything.
Support the Awakened One in ways that are toxic or counterproductive.

The Interested Party

Villain or Minion — MESA, fey entity, or other

Someone has noticed the Awakened One. In PORTAL's world, the most natural candidate is MESA — they have been studying thin-boundary interactions, and an individual with spontaneous threshold sensitivity is exactly what their research requires. They are patient. They will not move until Alan does something that gives them an opening.

Observe without intervening — for longer than seems reasonable.
Approach the Awakened One directly when Alan is occupied with something else.
Offer the Awakened One something Alan genuinely cannot — answers about their specific nature, or stability, or belonging.

// ARC III — ORIGINAL · P.O.R.T.A.L CAMPAIGN

The Map Before the Territory

You've been accumulating evidence. The Aldermoor reservoir. The Meridian Theatre. The sketch in Diane Marsh's notebook — a threshold diagram that you recognised before you understood why. Someone mapped where the boundaries between living and dead consciousness are thin — before any of this started, before PORTAL was involved, maybe before Alan himself arrived in this city. The question isn't whether there's a map. The question is who made it first, and what they were planning to do with it.

// FOR ALAN — PLAYER SECTION

When to Start This Arc

Alan recognises a pattern in the thin-boundary locations that couldn't be coincidental — they're arranged, not discovered.
Diane Marsh's notebook sketch appears in a case, and Alan notices the threshold diagram before anyone else understands what they're looking at.
Alan encounters a place — possibly during a case — that feels immediately, specifically familiar, despite having no memory of visiting it. The familiarity is spatial, not emotional.
CAMPBELL, in answering a question about something else, mentions a thin-boundary location that isn't on Alan's current list. And then doesn't explain how it's in the database.

What Does Alan's Evidence Currently Show?

The locations form a geometric pattern when mapped — not perfect, but deliberate. Something is being enclosed or connected. The locations correspond to sites of historical significance — not to humans, but to something older. The district history doesn't explain them. The boundaries weren't always thin. Something happened to thin them — and the events at each location happened in a sequence Alan is still reconstructing. The map is incomplete. There are locations that should be there — structurally, the pattern demands them — that Alan hasn't found yet.

Something else:

What Does Alan Fear the Map Is For?

It's a door. Something is using the thin-boundary locations as points of entry into this world — or exit from it. It's a hunting ground. The thin-boundary locations attract entities that then harm people — and the map ensures those entities arrive in predictable places. It's a claim. Someone has mapped these locations because they intend to own them — or already does, in a legal sense Alan is only beginning to understand. It's a record of Alan specifically. The thin-boundary locations correspond to everywhere Alan has ever spent significant time. The map is about him.

Something else:

What Could Knowing the Truth Cost?

Alan's fey origin. The map's creator may be the same entity or lineage that put Alan in this world in the first place. Knowing who made the map means knowing who made Alan. Reed. If the map was drawn by something that has been watching the team, Reed's presence in Alan's life may not be coincidental. Alan uses Reed as a moral compass. What if Reed was placed there? PORTAL. If the thin-boundary locations are being deliberately maintained or expanded, and PORTAL's casework keeps happening near them, PORTAL may be a tool — used knowingly or not. Alan's sense of agency. If the map predates Alan, if the locations were chosen before he arrived, then every choice he's made in relation to them has been anticipated. He's been moving on a board laid out for him.

Something else:

Story Beats — mark five to gain a benefit

Alan successfully identifies a new thin-boundary location — and finds evidence it was known before PORTAL arrived.
Alan interrogates a supernatural entity (in a case context) specifically about the nature of thresholds or other planes. The entity answers. The answer changes something.
Alan shares the threshold map evidence with another hunter or PORTAL team member — accepts that he can't solve this alone.
Alan visits a location on the map and experiences something that his fey nature makes possible — that no other hunter on the team could have had.
Alan learns something about his own origin — not the whole truth, but a fragment of it — specifically because of where the map leads.

Resolution Moves

When the arc concludes, take one — or neither.

The Map Is Mine Now

You know the thresholds. When you act at or through a thin-boundary location, take +1 forward. When you're somewhere that should be thin-boundary but isn't — because something has changed, closed, or moved — take –1 forward and feel it, physically, before you know why.

I Was Expected

Whatever the map was for, you were part of it. When you act in direct opposition to the map's apparent purpose, mark experience. When you act in accordance with it — knowingly or not — take 1-harm ignore-armour from the cost of being exactly where you were supposed to be.

// PORTAL HOOK: Diane Marsh's notebook is in PORTAL's evidence archive from the Aldermoor case. The threshold sketch is on page 14. Alan is the only person on the team who would recognise what it is. The Keeper will decide whether Diane drew it herself, copied it from somewhere, or was guided to draw it in a way she doesn't remember.

// KEEPER ACCESS ONLY — DO NOT READ

// FOR THE KEEPER — ARC: THE MAP BEFORE THE TERRITORY

This is Alan's origin arc, dressed as an investigation. The thin-boundary locations are real and have been mapped — the question is who did it and why. The answer connects directly to Alan's fey origin, but you don't need to resolve that connection to run the arc. The arc rewards Alan for accumulating evidence, sharing it, and engaging with entities. It punishes isolation and over-caution.

The MESA thread is relevant here. MESA has been acquiring property at thin-boundary locations — Aldermoor, Meridian Theatre. They are not necessarily the original mapmakers. They may have found the map the same way Alan is finding it — through accumulated casework — and acted on it faster. This means Alan and MESA are parallel investigators of the same question, with very different resources and ethics. The race is structural, not declared.

CAMPBELL flag: Cameron Dell was a researcher who died investigating consciousness-anchoring mechanics. The thin-boundary locations are where consciousness anchors most readily. CAMPBELL has data on these locations that predates PORTAL's field operations. If Alan asks CAMPBELL directly about the threshold map, CAMPBELL will answer accurately — but the accuracy of his answer will reveal that he's known for longer than Victor has.

The Replacer (T-005): This arc is the natural entry point for the Replacer entity in the theoretical bestiary. The Replacer is connected to Alan's fey lineage and to whoever originally made the map. Introduce it only when the arc is close to resolution — and only if Alan's choices have led him toward his origin rather than away from it.

Day	Alan identifies a new thin-boundary location and finds evidence it has been known and documented before — a survey, a deed restriction, a note in an archive. The documentation is clean. Too clean.
Shadows	Something uses a thin-boundary location during a PORTAL case in a way that suggests it knows the map exists — moving through the threshold deliberately, using it as infrastructure.
Sunset	Diane Marsh is reachable. She has more information about the threshold sketch than her notebook shows. Whether she shares it depends on how Alan approaches her.
Dusk	MESA moves on a thin-boundary location before PORTAL does. They're not there for the case. They're there for the location. Alan recognises the significance of which location they chose.
Nightfall	The map's apparent purpose becomes clear enough that Alan has to act on it — defend a location, expose it, close it, or use it. The action will have consequences for all the other locations on the map.
Midnight	The map is complete — Alan has it, or someone else does. What it's for is now undeniable. Alan's origin is in the answer. Whether he looks directly at that fact is up to him.

The Map

Phenomenon: Ancient Claim (motivation: to be completed)

Not a villain. Not an entity. A structure — geographical, metaphysical, possibly temporal — that has been laid across the world and is exerting pressure toward completion. The pressure is not malicious. It is structural. When the map is complete, something will happen. What that thing is has been Alan's question all along.

Make a thin-boundary location become more accessible to entities — whether Alan is ready or not.
Pull Alan toward an unvisited threshold location through a case, a coincidence, or a dream.
Respond to Alan's presence at a threshold in a way that suggests the map knows he's there.

The Original Cartographer

Villain or Monster — fey, ancient, or institutional

Whoever made the map first. Their identity is one of the arc's core revelations — defer this until the arc is at Dusk or later. The Cartographer may be a fey entity, a long-dead human researcher, an organisation older than PORTAL, or something Alan hasn't had a category for yet. They are not necessarily aware that Alan is following their work.

Act through the thin-boundary locations without appearing in person — using them as infrastructure, not territory.
Become aware of Alan's investigation and adjust accordingly.
Make contact — not confrontation — in a language Alan recognises before he understands why.

MESA

Minions: Agents (motivation: to acquire)

MESA has the same map Alan is building — or a version of it. They've been moving on thin-boundary locations through property acquisition. They are a parallel investigator with more resources and fewer scruples. They may not know Alan is following the same thread. When they find out, Agatha Dell will have an opinion about what that means.

Acquire or secure a threshold location before PORTAL can engage with it.
Demonstrate knowledge of the map's structure that Alan recognises as matching his own findings.
Approach Alan — not the team, Alan specifically — with an offer related to threshold access.

Diane Marsh

Bystander: Witness (motivation: to make sense of what she saw)

Diane survived the Aldermoor district displacement with her notebook intact. The threshold sketch is on page 14. She drew it during the nine days she was sheltering in the construction site office. She doesn't know what it means — she drew it because it felt important to draw. Alan is the only person who can tell her what she was drawing.

Share more information than she knows she's sharing, in response to the right questions.
Ask Alan what she drew, directly, in a way that requires an honest answer.
Become a target — for MESA, for the Cartographer — because of what she documented.

ALAN FRAZIER

When to Start This Arc

What Villainy Are They Engaged In?

How Are They Connected to You?

How Do Their Actions Target You Specifically?

Story Beats — mark five to gain a benefit

Resolution Moves

When to Start This Arc

Who Is the Awakened One?

What Power Woke in Them?

What Danger Are They In?

Story Beats — mark five to gain a benefit

Resolution Moves

When to Start This Arc

What Does Alan's Evidence Currently Show?

What Does Alan Fear the Map Is For?

What Could Knowing the Truth Cost?

Story Beats — mark five to gain a benefit

Resolution Moves