Consequence Map — The Maren Recordings
1. The Epicenter
Cade has been aboard the carrier for eleven days. In that time, they shared their real name with Maren — not an alias, not a cover, their actual name — and helped a dockworker named Sol stash stolen medical supplies behind a ventilation panel on Deck Four. These were small acts of trust in a place designed to punish it. Now, at the close of Act One, Cade finds a thumbnail-sized transmitter embedded in the lining of Maren's jacket, still warm, still broadcasting. The signal is routed to Kessler's faction — the information brokers who control the starboard server racks and have been systematically dismantling the other two factions' leverage for weeks. Every conversation Cade has had with Maren since boarding — every mention of their sibling's debt, every unguarded opinion about the ship's power structure, every stray detail about their cryptographic methods — has been transcribed, timestamped, and sold.
Three options exist. Each one costs something that cannot be recovered.
Option A — Confront Maren directly. Walk into the shared workspace, put the transmitter on the table, and force a reckoning. This is the loud path. It trades secrecy for moral authority and demands an immediate answer.
Option B — Destroy the recording device in secret. Disable or destroy the transmitter without Maren's knowledge. This is the silent path. It stops the bleeding without opening the wound, but it leaves Maren's loyalties unresolved and Kessler's faction unaware that their pipeline has been severed.
Option C — Say nothing and feed Maren false information. Leave the transmitter intact, act as though nothing has changed, and begin using Maren as an unwitting channel to pump disinformation into Kessler's network. This is the cold path. It weaponizes the betrayal, but it requires Cade to maintain intimacy with someone they now know is selling them.
The immediate stakes: Cade's real name is already in Kessler's files. Their cryptographic approach has been partially exposed. The clock is not on when Cade will act — it is on when Kessler will act on what they already know.
2. Immediate Echoes (0–5 Minutes)
Option A — Confront
Sensory shifts. The workspace fluorescents are already buzzing at their usual migraine frequency, but the moment Cade sets the transmitter on the table, the ambient ship noise seems to drain away. Sound design collapses to the close-mic range — Cade's breathing, the click of the transmitter against the metal surface, Maren's chair scraping backward half an inch. The overhead lights do not change, but the camera framing tightens until the room feels like an interrogation cell. The hum of the server racks two compartments over becomes audible for the first time — a reminder that the ship is always listening, even when Maren isn't.
Immediate character reactions. Maren does not deny it. That is the first thing Cade notices. There is a three-second window — exactly long enough for a lie — and Maren lets it pass. Their hands go flat on the table, palms down, a gesture that reads as either surrender or stabilization. They say, "How long have you known?" — not "What is that?" or "I can explain." This tells Cade that Maren expected discovery eventually and had rehearsed past the denial phase. If anyone else is within earshot — the ship's walls are thin — the confrontation is no longer private. A deckhand named Aris, who works a station fourteen feet from the workspace door, pauses their welding torch. Aris now knows that Cade and Maren are fractured. This information will circulate through the lower-deck crew within two hours.
The lock-in. The confrontation is overheard. Cade cannot walk this back. The transmitter is now on the table in a semi-public space, which means Maren cannot plausibly continue recording without Cade's knowledge, but it also means Kessler's faction will learn — through Aris or through the absence of new transcripts — that their pipeline is blown. Cade has approximately four hours before Kessler recalculates their strategy. The lock-in is temporal: the information asymmetry Cade held for the thirty seconds between finding the device and confronting Maren is now gone. Everyone knows. No one has an advantage.
Option B — Destroy Device Secretly
Sensory shifts. This happens in a private moment — Maren is at the mess hall, and Cade is alone with the jacket. The destruction itself is quiet: Cade uses a soldering iron to fry the transmitter's chipset, then replaces the jacket lining with a few stitches from a repair kit. The sensory shift is internal. The workspace, which had felt like a shared sanctuary, now feels like a crime scene Cade is cleaning. The overhead light has a faint amber cast that Cade never noticed before — or maybe they are just noticing everything now. The ambient ship noise returns to full volume, but it sounds different. Mechanical. Indifferent. The carrier doesn't care who betrayed whom.
Immediate character reactions. None. That is the point. Maren returns from the mess hall, picks up the jacket, puts it on, and says something unremarkable about the food. Cade responds normally. The performance begins immediately, and Cade discovers that performing normalcy with someone who sold you is a specific kind of exhaustion that compounds with every interaction. No NPCs register any change, because no change is visible. The world continues exactly as it was, except that Cade is now carrying a secret about a secret.
The lock-in. The transmitter is dead, but Cade does not know if Maren has a backup device, a secondary channel, or a dead-drop protocol with Kessler's people. The destruction solves the hardware problem but not the human problem. The lock-in is informational: Cade now knows Maren is compromised, but Maren does not know that Cade knows. This asymmetry is powerful but unstable — it will degrade the moment Maren notices the transmitter is non-functional, which she will, the next time Kessler's handlers ask why the feed went dark. Cade has bought time, not safety. The clock is quieter than in Option A, but it is still running.
Option C — Feed False Information
Sensory shifts. The moment Cade decides to leave the transmitter active and begin feeding lies, the workspace undergoes a subtle tonal inversion. It is still the same room, but Cade now sees it as a stage. Every object becomes a prop. The workbench where Cade and Maren debug encryption keys together is now a set piece in a performance that only Cade knows is happening. The lighting does not change, but the color grading warms slightly — an almost imperceptible shift toward amber that mirrors the false intimacy Cade is now manufacturing. Sound design introduces a faint, persistent low-frequency tone beneath dialogue scenes with Maren — not loud enough to consciously register, but present enough to create subliminal unease.
Immediate character reactions. Maren reacts to Cade's first planted falsehood — a casual mention that they've been asked to work on the port-side servers, which is untrue — with a nod and a question that is slightly too specific. Cade notices that Maren's follow-up questions have always been slightly too specific. What felt like curiosity now reveals itself as extraction technique. This recontextualization is the real sensory shift: Cade replays every previous conversation with Maren through a new filter and realizes the shape of the betrayal is older and more systematic than the transmitter alone would suggest.
The lock-in. The transmitter stays active. Kessler's faction continues receiving data, but the data is now poisoned. The lock-in is strategic: Cade has committed to a sustained deception that requires them to track two versions of reality — the true one and the one they are feeding Maren. Any slip, any moment where the real and the false versions collide in Maren's presence, will expose not just the counter-operation but the fact that Cade has known about the betrayal all along. The lock-in is also emotional: Cade must continue to perform trust with Maren across meals, work shifts, and the close quarters of a ship where privacy is a fantasy. Every authentic moment they share from this point forward is counterfeit, and Cade has to decide how long they can sustain that without it corroding something internal.
3. Local Consequences (Current Scene / Act)
Option A — Confront
Material losses/gains. Cade gains moral clarity and Maren's unguarded reaction — which, depending on how the confrontation unfolds, may include partial intelligence about Kessler's operation (how long the recordings have been running, what was transmitted, who receives the transcripts). Cade loses operational secrecy: their real name, their debt motivation, and fragments of their cryptographic methodology are now confirmed assets in Kessler's files, and Cade can no longer pretend otherwise. Cade also loses Maren as a functional work partner — even if Maren offers an explanation or apology, the workspace dynamic is fractured, and any remaining Act One tasks that required two cryptographers now take twice as long or require finding a substitute.
Path divergence. The Act Two objective shifts from "secure the next encryption contract" to "damage control." Cade must determine exactly what Kessler knows and whether the leaked information is enough for Kessler to compromise Cade's cryptographic work retroactively. This creates an urgent side objective: access Kessler's transcript archive. Additionally, the confrontation forces Maren into a decision of their own — stay and attempt repair, defect fully to Kessler, or disappear into the ship's lower decks where unaffiliated crews operate. Maren's choice becomes a variable that Cade cannot control, and Act Two's structure bends around whichever direction Maren runs.
Option B — Destroy Device Secretly
Material losses/gains. Cade gains time and preserves the appearance of normalcy. The data pipeline to Kessler is severed, which means no new intelligence is flowing. Cade loses the opportunity to learn what Maren knows about Kessler's operation, because asking questions about it would reveal that Cade found the device. Cade also loses a degree of psychological stability — the knowledge of Maren's betrayal is now a private burden with no outlet, and the energy required to maintain the pretense is a resource drain that affects focus during cryptographic work.
Path divergence. The Act Two objective remains nominally the same — secure the next encryption contract — but Cade is now operating with a compromised partner they cannot trust and cannot confront. The path diverges not in plot but in strategy: Cade must begin siloing sensitive work away from Maren without making the compartmentalization obvious. This means taking on extra shifts, fabricating reasons to work alone, and gradually building an independent operational capacity that Maren was supposed to be part of. The subplot becomes a resource management problem: how much can Cade accomplish alone before the workload gap becomes suspicious?
Option C — Feed False Information
Material losses/gains. Cade gains a strategic weapon — a direct, active channel into Kessler's intelligence apparatus. Every false data point Cade feeds Maren has the potential to misdirect Kessler's faction, waste their resources, or lure them into vulnerable positions. Cade loses authenticity. Not as a metaphor — as a material resource. Cade's ability to speak honestly in the workspace, to think out loud, to brainstorm solutions with a partner, is gone. Every word spoken within range of the transmitter is now a calculated output. This means Cade's actual problem-solving must happen in stolen moments, in locations Maren cannot access, during shifts when the transmitter is physically out of range. Cryptographic work quality may degrade because Cade is splitting cognitive resources between real work and the parallel fiction.
Path divergence. The Act Two objective gains a secondary layer: Cade is now running a counter-intelligence operation inside their own partnership. The immediate next objective — the encryption contract — becomes a vehicle for the disinformation campaign. Cade can embed false technical details in the work they show Maren, leading Kessler to believe Cade's encryption schema has a vulnerability it doesn't have (or masking a real vulnerability by drawing attention elsewhere). This path is the most complex but also the most fragile — it requires sustained performance and introduces a failure mode that doesn't exist in the other options: the possibility that Cade's false information accidentally becomes true, or that Kessler acts on the disinformation in a way Cade didn't anticipate and the collateral damages someone Cade needs.
4. Delayed Ripples (Next Act / Late Game)
Option A — Confront
The Return. Maren resurfaces in Act Three. If the confrontation was hostile and Maren fled to Kessler, they appear as a fully embedded operative in Kessler's faction — now holding the title of communications analyst, wearing a Kessler-issue jacket, and refusing to make eye contact with Cade across the carrier's central atrium. Maren has weaponized everything they know about Cade and has become the single most dangerous person on the ship, not because of their own capabilities but because they are the only person who has heard Cade speak unguarded. If the confrontation left room for ambiguity — if Cade demanded an explanation and Maren gave one that was partially sympathetic (debt, coercion, fear) — then Maren resurfaces in Act Three as an unaffiliated agent operating in the spaces between factions, sending Cade anonymous tips that are 80% accurate and 20% self-serving. The user must decide, in each instance, whether to trust information from someone who already proved they could not be trusted.
The Callback. In Act Four, Cade faces a moment where they must decide whether to expose a different character's secret to protect themselves. The narrative mirrors the Maren confrontation exactly — same structural geometry, different characters. If Cade confronted Maren, the thematic question is whether confrontation was the right template, whether directness is always courage or sometimes just impatience. The Act Four version of the dilemma is designed so that the "confront" option has clearly worse tactical outcomes, forcing Cade to reckon with whether their Act One instinct was moral principle or just a reflex.
Option B — Destroy Device Secretly
The Return. In Act Three, Kessler's faction realizes their intelligence pipeline from Maren has gone silent. They do not know why. Two possibilities are investigated: Maren was discovered and eliminated the device herself to protect her cover, or someone else found it. Kessler dispatches an operative named Dray to audit Maren's environment. Dray is methodical, patient, and arrives on Cade's deck with a cover story about recalibrating network switches. Dray's investigation becomes a slow-burn subplot across Acts Three and Four — a tightening circle of inquiry that forces Cade to manage not just Maren's unknowing presence but Dray's knowing scrutiny. If Dray determines that Cade destroyed the device, Kessler's faction reclassifies Cade from "asset to monitor" to "threat to neutralize." If Dray concludes Maren self-sabotaged, Maren becomes the target instead, and Cade must decide whether to let Maren take the fall for something Cade did.
The Callback. In Act Four, Cade discovers that Sol — the dockworker they helped hide medical supplies — has been secretly protecting Cade in return, intercepting a Kessler courier who was carrying a dossier on Cade's real identity. Sol destroyed the dossier without telling Cade. The parallel is surgical: Sol did for Cade exactly what Cade did with the transmitter — destroyed a dangerous object in secret, without confrontation, to protect someone. Cade must reconcile the fact that the strategy they chose with Maren — silent, unilateral action — is the same strategy that just saved their life from a different direction. The question the narrative poses is whether secret protection is an act of love or an act of control, and whether the answer changes depending on whether you are the one doing it or the one it is done to.
Option C — Feed False Information
The Return. In Act Three, the false information Cade fed Maren has metastasized. Kessler's faction acted on the disinformation — they redeployed resources to the port-side servers (which Cade falsely claimed to be working on), diverted security personnel to guard a nonexistent data cache, and adjusted their negotiation posture with the third faction based on an inaccurate assessment of Cade's technical capabilities. The results are mixed and chaotic. Some of Kessler's misallocations created genuine openings that Cade can exploit. Others created collateral damage that Cade did not intend: a deckhand on port-side was interrogated and roughed up by Kessler's people looking for the data cache that doesn't exist. That deckhand is a friend of Sol's. The false information has achieved its tactical objective but has generated human cost in a direction Cade didn't model.
The Callback. In Act Four, Cade intercepts a communication that reveals Maren has been feeding false information of their own — not to Cade, but to Kessler. Maren's betrayal was real, but it was also more complicated than a simple sale. Maren has been editing the transcripts before transmission, removing certain details, emphasizing others, constructing a version of Cade that serves Maren's own agenda within Kessler's faction. The callback is a mirror: Cade was running a disinformation campaign through Maren while Maren was running a disinformation campaign through Kessler. Neither of them was the only manipulator. The narrative forces Cade to ask whether they are angry at Maren for the betrayal or impressed by the craftsmanship — and what it means that Cade chose the exact same strategy independently.
5. Compound Interactions
Compound with Sharing Real Name
The fact that Cade shared their real name with Maren in the prologue is the wound beneath the wound. The transmitter is a betrayal of trust; the real name is a betrayal of safety. Kessler's faction now has Cade's actual identity — not a work alias, not a cover, but the name attached to their sibling's medical records, their previous contracts, their entire pre-ship life. This transforms the Maren situation from a professional compromise into a personal exposure.
If Cade confronts (A): The confrontation carries an additional emotional charge. Cade can use the real name as leverage — "I gave you my name" — which elevates the scene from a tactical dispute to a personal betrayal. Maren's response to this specific detail becomes a character-defining moment: do they flinch, or do they hold eye contact? In Act Three, Cade's real name surfaces in a Kessler negotiation — spoken aloud by someone who should not know it — and the sound of it in a hostile mouth is a sensory callback that lands harder because the user chose to make the original disclosure personal. If TRUST variables are tracked, Cade's willingness to share real names with anyone in the future drops to near-zero, which affects dialogue options for the rest of the game.
If Cade destroys device (B): The real name is already out. Destroying the transmitter stops new data but cannot retrieve what was already sent. This creates a persistent background anxiety: Cade knows their real identity is in Kessler's archive, and no amount of silent hardware destruction changes that. In Act Four, Kessler uses the real name to locate Cade's sibling outside the ship — not to harm them, but to send a message demonstrating reach. The real name becomes the single most consequential decision of the entire game, and Cade made it in the prologue, before they knew the rules.
If Cade feeds disinformation (C): Cade can attempt to muddy the real name by feeding Maren a false backstory — claiming the name was itself an alias, that their real identity is something else entirely. This only works if Kessler hasn't already cross-referenced the name against external databases. If the disinformation succeeds, Cade creates a fog around their identity that provides partial cover. If it fails — if Kessler already verified the name — then the attempt to retract it looks desperate and confirms its authenticity. The compound interaction creates a gamble: the disinformation path's power depends on how fast Kessler's people work, and Cade has no way to know.
Compound with Helping Sol Hide Medical Supplies
Sol is the only person on the ship who owes Cade a genuine, unrequested debt. Cade helped Sol hide medical supplies from the security chief — an act that was either compassionate or reckless, depending on whether the supplies were for Sol's crew or for resale. This previous choice now interacts with the Maren decision in structurally different ways.
If Cade confronts (A): The confrontation becomes semi-public knowledge (Aris overheard). Sol, hearing about the fracture through the lower-deck network, approaches Cade within twelve hours and offers to store Cade's sensitive equipment in the same hidden compartment where the medical supplies are stashed. This is a material resource gain that only exists because of the Sol decision — a hidden workspace Maren and Kessler cannot access. However, using Sol's compartment ties Cade's operational security to Sol's, meaning if the security chief ever finds the medical supplies, they find Cade's equipment too. The previous act of kindness becomes an entangled liability.
If Cade destroys device (B): Sol's subplot intersects through Dray, Kessler's auditor. In Act Three, Dray's investigation into the dead transmitter leads them to sweep Deck Four — the same deck where Sol's medical supplies are hidden. If Cade's device destruction left any forensic trace (scorch marks from the soldering iron, residue on the workbench), Dray's sweep might find it, and the sweep might also find Sol's stash. The compound interaction creates a scenario where Cade's secret action to protect themselves accidentally endangers the one person who showed them uncomplicated loyalty. Cade's choice to act in silence may end up generating more damage than the confrontation would have.
If Cade feeds disinformation (C): Cade can use Sol's medical supply situation as raw material for the disinformation campaign — mentioning to Maren that they've heard rumors about stolen medical supplies on a different deck, redirecting Kessler's attention away from Sol's actual location while simultaneously creating a false intelligence trail. This is the most tactically elegant use of the Sol connection, but it instrumentalizes Sol's trust. Sol hid those supplies for human reasons — sick crewmates, limited access to the ship's medical bay — and Cade is now converting that private act into a strategic asset without Sol's knowledge or consent. In Act Four, if Sol learns that Cade used the supply situation as disinformation fodder, Sol's loyalty inverts. The debt is considered paid, and not kindly.
6. The World State Mutation
Invisible Variables
MAREN_TRUST_INTEGRITY — A hidden composite variable that tracks whether the Cade-Maren relationship is intact, fractured-known, or fractured-hidden.
- Option A sets it to
fractured-known (both parties acknowledge the break). This is the most stable state — painful but clear. NPCs calibrate their own behavior toward Cade based on the visible fracture.
- Option B sets it to
fractured-hidden-by-cade (Cade knows, Maren doesn't know Cade knows). This is the most volatile state. It can transition to fractured-known at any moment if Maren discovers the destroyed device, and the transition will be more explosive for the delay.
- Option C sets it to
fractured-weaponized (Cade knows and is actively exploiting the relationship). This state has a hidden decay timer — the longer Cade sustains the performance, the higher the probability per interaction that Maren detects an inconsistency. The timer is invisible to the user.
KESSLER_INTELLIGENCE_CONFIDENCE — A hidden meter tracking how much Kessler's faction trusts the data they have on Cade.
- Option A drops it immediately (the pipeline is blown and Kessler knows it — they must assume all recent data may have been performed for the transmitter).
- Option B drops it on a delay (the pipeline goes silent, prompting a confidence reassessment that unfolds across Act Two).
- Option C inverts it (Kessler's confidence stays high, but the data they are confident about is wrong — the most dangerous state, because Kessler will act decisively on bad information).
CADE_ISOLATION_INDEX — A hidden counter tracking how many people on the ship Cade can speak honestly with. At game start, this number was two (Maren and Sol). After this choice point:
- Option A reduces it to one (Sol). Cade's isolation is public and generates NPC sympathy.
- Option B reduces it to one (Sol). Cade's isolation is private and generates no NPC response.
- Option C reduces it to one (Sol), but functionally to zero — because even Sol cannot be told about the disinformation operation without risking the channel. Cade is operationally alone.
SOL_DEBT_LEDGER — A hidden flag recording that Sol owes Cade. This flag can be spent once. Each option path creates a different most-likely trigger for spending it, and once spent, it transitions to SOL_DEBT_SETTLED and Sol's behavior toward Cade becomes transactional rather than grateful.
Atmospheric Shift
Option A — Confront. The carrier's atmosphere shifts toward a siege tone. Lighting in common areas takes on a cooler, more clinical hue. NPC conversations in Cade's earshot trend toward suspicion and faction-talk. The background music — previously a low ambient drone with industrial texture — gains a rhythmic undercurrent, suggesting forward momentum and countdown. The ship feels like it is choosing sides, because it is. Cade's moral standing is publicly legible: they are someone who confronts betrayal directly, which makes them either admirable or dangerous depending on which faction is assessing them. The third faction — the one neither Cade nor Kessler controls — begins paying attention to Cade for the first time.
Option B — Destroy Device Secretly. The atmosphere shifts toward paranoia. Not loudly — the lighting doesn't change, the NPCs don't whisper differently — but the environmental sound design introduces micro-details that weren't there before. A door that Cade is sure was closed is now ajar. A tool on the workbench is angled differently than Cade left it. These may be procedurally generated red herrings or genuine signals that someone is investigating; the system does not distinguish between the two, and neither can Cade. The ship feels watched. The color grading gains a barely perceptible green shift — the palette of surveillance footage. Cade's moral standing is invisible to the world, which means Cade must carry it alone, and the atmosphere reflects that internal solitude.
Option C — Feed False Information. The atmosphere shifts toward performance. The carrier begins to feel like a theater. Lighting in scenes with Maren becomes slightly warmer, slightly more composed — the visual language of a set rather than a space. Background NPCs seem to move in patterns that feel almost choreographed, though this is Cade's projective paranoia rather than a world-state change. The music gains an additional layer — a faint melodic line that sounds almost playful, almost cruel, reflecting the dark satisfaction of running a successful manipulation. Cade's moral standing is complex: they have chosen the most strategically sophisticated option, but it requires them to become the thing they are angry at Maren for being. The color palette subtly mirrors Kessler's faction branding — a visual suggestion that Cade, in choosing to manipulate, has moved closer to the faction they are fighting against.