The Living

The living described here are the strangers of a Survivor night, who owe each other nothing.

Cooperation Is a Choice

The game never forces cooperation and never forbids it. Survivors may share items, heal one another, carry the wounded, open doors together, defend a position, divide roles, and give a dose of Elpis to someone else. "All of us, together." "Each of us finds one item." "Split up. We'll meet at the clock tower." All of these are valid.

Speaking and Silence

Voice is part of the sound system. Survivors speak with their own voices, out of their own mouths, to whoever is near enough to hear. How hard a survivor speaks decides how far they are heard, not how loud their player's microphone is (Presentation and Technology, Voice, in Practice). A whispered plan is a Hush, ordinary speech is a Murmur, and shouting for help is a Clamor the dead can hear as well. The place shapes every voice: an alley or a stairwell throws it back as an echo, a tiled hall rings with it, and open streets and rain swallow it. A voice thrown back by an alley or a stairwell carries farther than its tier, to the living and the dead alike, so a survivor who shouts in an alley is heard two streets away. Knowing where to whisper is part of staying alive. Gestures matter: a raised hand, a lowered weapon, a signal to follow. Trust is built in seconds, in the space between two survivors who have just met in the dark.

The Mark Between Strangers

Nothing tells anyone who has been bitten, and cloth hides a Mark until Fracture (The Infection, The Mark). So the first thing anyone does with a stranger is look them over, and the second is ask them to show their arms. A survivor in Seed carries what looks like any other wound, and it says nothing about what they carry. A bite on the back of a leg, or a needle's mark behind an ear, can walk past someone looking a survivor in the face, and a survivor never infected looks, from a few steps away and in the dark, exactly the same. From Fever on, wherever the lines show, they say which virus is doing it. In Fracture they reach the face whatever the wound, and a survivor in Fracture looks like someone about to die. A cured survivor carries a pale scar, and everyone knows what that means: someone who can no longer be lost to the virus, and who has nothing left to want from anyone but a seat.

Is this person going to turn beside me? Are they holding a dose? Did they earn it, or take it? Is that red Mark a T-Virus carrier who will bring the dogs down on both of us? A survivor past the Threshold has nothing left to lose and everything left to take, and sensible people ask a stranger to bare their arms, their legs, and their neck before they lower their weapons. A stranger who will not is telling them something, and so is one who does it too quickly.

The Mark Within a Squad

A squad is not told either. Voice carries only as far as a voice carries (Speaking and Silence), so a squad that splits up hears nothing of each other until it meets again. If one of them is bitten while they are apart, nothing reaches the others: no sound, no sign, no word but the one the bitten survivor chooses to give when they come back.

• Telling is a choice. A bitten survivor can say so at once, wait, or say nothing. Saying so may cost them the squad's trust, its last spray, or its seat. Saying nothing costs them nothing until it is seen.
• The signs are the world's. A sleeve torn and bloody since the last time anyone looked. A limp, a hand held to the arm. A scream heard far off while they were apart. A survivor who suddenly wants to go somewhere they cannot explain, because ΜΝΗΜΗ has given them a road in their ear (Elpis in the Night). The dogs that will not leave one of them alone.
• Showing is the ritual. Squads that trust each other learn to bare their arms every time they meet again. Squads that do not learn who refuses.
• Someone else's eyes. No one can examine their own back or the back of their own neck (Survival, Self-Examination). A survivor who wants to be sure needs someone to look, and has to turn their back to do it. A wound there can be tended only by someone else's hands (Survival, Tending a Wound).
• The clock settles it. No lie outlasts Fracture. A survivor who hid a bite through Seed and Fever is found out the moment the lines reach their face, at the worst time to be found out: with the fewest minutes left, and the squad's dose already spent or promised.
• The other side. A clean survivor with a torn sleeve looks exactly like a bitten one. Being believed is as hard as being honest.
• The squad pays at the door. A squadmate who gets out still infected costs every other member who got out a quarter of their award, whatever stage their Mark reached (The Economy, Exposure). A bite hidden to the end is hidden from no one's award.

Where else the night makes survivors choose between each other, and worked examples of it, are in Dilemmas.

The Clean

A survivor who has never been infected is the only one in the city who can win everything: a seat, a clean report, and the top of the Ledger. They also cannot walk a road or ask for a strain: she talks to them in the earpiece as she talks to anyone, and never offers them either. Their night is the public objectives, the ways out, and the long work of not being touched. The objectives are also how they learn where the night will end (Objectives, Restrictions, and Events), and the Ledger counts what they did, not only that they stayed clean (Survivor). Every bite, every rat, every tap of water, every stranger with a vial, every district left still too long is a threat to the one thing they have that no one else can earn back.

Betrayal

Survivors are free to be anything: a leader, a coward, a liar, a lone wolf, a saint. A survivor can help someone and abandon them minutes later, share ammunition and take it back, call a stranger to a place that is not as safe as it sounds. The game does not label anyone a hero or a villain. It lets the world judge.

Betrayal is a calculated risk, never a free move:

• Violence is loud. A killing draws the dead and the living.
• Allies are finite. A betrayed ally is one fewer pair of hands, eyes, and ears.
• The betrayed come back. A survivor left to turn may rise as something that plays on, and remembers who left them. Even one who rises as the Mass rises close to where they were left.