Appearance
Objectives, Restrictions, and Events
The Primary Objective
Every Survivor night rests on one purpose.
SURVIVE UNTIL EXTRACTION.
Survive the virus. Survive the dead. Survive each other. The virus does not wait, and ΜΝΗΜΗ does not let the quiet become a refuge, which is why she creates tasks that draw survivors out.
Public Objectives
Most objectives are announced over the city's devices, to anyone who can hear, as a person asks for help: Anyone who can hear me. The Uptown substation is down. Somebody needs to get the power back on. (ΜΝΗΜΗ as Director, Her Words). They are the work of the clean as much as the marked. A clean survivor has no road, and she never offers them one or a strain, but every public objective they complete brings the extraction closer, opens routes, and unseals caches. A clean survivor's night is spent staying clean, finding the ways out before the signal, and doing the work that makes the signal come.
| Objective | Description |
|---|---|
| LOCATE | Find a specific item |
| ACTIVATE | Restore power or systems in a region |
| RECOVER | Retrieve a vital resource |
| RESCUE | Find someone who needs help: a companion or one of the Stranded |
| ESCAPE | Reach a specific point |
| DEFEND | Protect a location for a set time |
| INVESTIGATE | Trace the source of a signal |
| TRANSPORT | Carry something across the map |
| ENDURE | Remain inside a dangerous zone for a set time |
| ARMS | Do any of the above for a different prize: where one of the night's secret weapons lies (Secret Weapons, below) |
The first public objectives of a Survivor night are announced within its first five minutes, at least one in or beside every region where survivors woke, so that no one begins a night with nothing to do but walk. Objectives appear, change, and disappear. Each one feeds the session's completion, and many of them are also Missions on someone's road. ΜΝΗΜΗ's objectives never lie, but they never promise safety.
In Survivor, whoever completes a public objective learns something no one else does. Every objective is finished at something that keeps a record, a terminal, a radio, a switchboard, a ledger on a desk, and the moment it is finished that record shows one of the ways out ΜΝΗΜΗ has built for tonight and whether she will open it. It is written in the world, not spoken: a clean survivor can read it, and so can whoever is standing beside them. Before the light rises, doing the night's work is the only way to know where the night ends.
Restrictions
ΜΝΗΜΗ imposes temporary rules that force survivors to rethink everything. Every restriction comes with its reason, and she says both over the city's devices as a warning, never as a decree: what is closed or worse, and why, in a person's words. She never says who closed it. What she says is true, and who did it she leaves out.
ΜΝΗΜΗ: Stay away from the hospital. The east wing's sealed. Something got out down there.
ΜΝΗΜΗ: The power's gone in Uptown. The substation failed.
ΜΝΗΜΗ: Don't go underground. Something big got loose down there.
ΜΝΗΜΗ: The gas stations on this side are shut. There's a fuel leak. Don't strike anything near them.
ΜΝΗΜΗ: The pharmacies around here are shut tight. It's in the air in there.
ΜΝΗΜΗ: Hunters in the North District. I've seen three. Stay off the streets up there.A reason names only what each listener's file has found (ΜΝΗΜΗ as Director, What She Speaks Of). To a file that has never seen one, the last line is There's something in the North District that moves on all fours, fast. I've seen three. To a file that has seen one but never read its name: Those green things that jump. Three of them, in the North District.
Restrictions do not just add difficulty. They invalidate plans. Every restriction is made with a tool she already has (ΜΝΗΜΗ as Director, What She Can Do): she seals, cuts power, raises a threat level, or orders conduct. She never makes something already in the world vanish. A district's pharmacies can be sealed; the medicine inside them is still there behind the shutter, for anyone who gets in.
Puzzles
The places ΜΝΗΜΗ rebuilds were full of locks never meant for keys alone: statues that open passages, medallions that fit only one pedestal, panels switched in the right order, dials hidden behind paintings. She rebuilds them all. In a Survivor night, the R.P.D. is complete, from the lobby to the underground, and on any night its puzzle is live, its way down opens only for whoever brings the three medallions to the goddess in the main hall. The castle's halls still answer to their emblems, their swords, and their clocks.
Puzzles do three things.
- They open the map. Some regions, and the shortest routes between others, lie behind a puzzle.
- They open the ways out. Several ways out ask for a puzzle before they will run.
- They guard the vaults.
No puzzle can be learned by heart. ΜΝΗΜΗ keeps the shape of every puzzle exactly as the records hold it and changes its answer every session. The clue to every answer is always somewhere in the world: in a memo, a painting, a diary, a scratch on a wall.
Not every lock, every night. At Assembly ΜΝΗΜΗ decides which of a map's puzzles are live tonight, usually about half. The rest are found as the night left them: forced open by the dead, jammed, or behind a collapse, and a survivor who knows the map has to find out which before they plan around it. A vault's puzzle is always live. A puzzle that stands on the only road to a way out she has opened is never sealed: it is live, or it is open.
Some puzzles need more than one pair of hands. Two levers on opposite sides of a hall pulled together. A pressure plate that holds a door only while someone stands on it, on the far side. A code read aloud in one room and typed in another. These were built for two people who trusted each other, and in a Survivor night the two are often strangers. A survivor alone who finds one can find a companion, find a stranger and talk, offer a hand, or walk away.
Vaults
Behind the hardest puzzles lie vaults: a gun shop's back room, the R.P.D.'s armory, a castle treasury, a sealed laboratory locker. A vault holds what nothing else in the session holds: a magnum and rounds for it, a grenade launcher, a single rocket, body armor, a full map of the city, keys to every safe room in a district. There is no glow to tell a survivor how good a thing is.
A vault behind a lock built for two always holds enough for two, and when the two are strangers it is the most honest test of trust in the game.
Secret Weapons
Every map holds a few weapons beyond anything a vault keeps: the ones the people of the records used against the worst things in their nights. They are the city's rarest finds and the strongest answer a group has to the Heavy: with one, two survivors can put down what otherwise takes a crowd (Survival, Run First). They are never a way to fight one alone.
The Rules
- A few each night. At Assembly, ΜΝΗΜΗ places two to four of the map's secret weapons, each once. No night holds the whole list, and no two nights need hold the same ones.
- Hidden behind the hardest ways in. Each lies in one of the places listed for it below: where the records left it, or where a weapon of its kind would be kept. ΜΝΗΜΗ chooses the place at Assembly, so knowing the records is never enough to know where it is tonight. Every place is behind something: a puzzle chain, a lock built for two, a flooded passage, a region at High threat, a horde. None is near a waking point, and none glows.
- Finite. Each comes with its own ammunition and no more: no round, shell, or tank found anywhere else in the night fits it. When it is empty, it is a heavy thing to carry. The records' versions with endless ammunition do not exist in ΜΝΗΜΗ's world.
- Some are carried by companions. A companion whose records put one of the map's secret weapons in their hands may wake carrying it, if ΜΝΗΜΗ chooses so at Assembly. It is one of the night's two to four, and it lies nowhere else that night. It is the companion's alone: they fire it themselves, never hand it over, and no one can take it from them. If they die or turn, it lies spent and broken where they fell, and no one carries it away (Survivor, Companions).
- Carried by survivors like anything else. A long one goes on the shoulders, a handgun in a holster or a pocket, and the heaviest fill both hands (Survival, The Inventory). Everyone can see what a survivor carries. At the Turn it falls with everything else, plain, for anyone to take (Cosmetics and the Dossier).
- The ARMS objective. Sometimes ΜΝΗΜΗ announces a public objective whose prize is a secret weapon's place. Like any public objective, it is open to everyone, and the first to finish it reads the prize on the record where it ends (Public Objectives, above). That survivor learns where the weapon is. They are not given it. Whoever stands beside them reads it too, whoever follows them finds it, and whoever kills them on the way can take whatever they found. ΜΝΗΜΗ never says who finished first.
ΜΝΗΜΗ: There's a real weapon somewhere in this city.
Whoever gets the substation running will find out where.- In the Night. ΜΝΗΜΗ places them because the records do, and because she wants to know what strangers do when one of them is holding the surest thing in the city against a Tyrant.
Raccoon City, 1998
| Weapon | From | Where it may lie | It holds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lightning Hawk (magnum) | Resident Evil 2 (2019), Resident Evil 3 (2020) | The weapons locker in the R.P.D.'s S.T.A.R.S. office, opened by the badge the records' puzzle chain makes (the red book, the statue's arm, the jewel box); or the top floor of Raccoon General Hospital, past the collapsed corridor; or in Leon Kennedy's hands (Some are carried by companions, above) | 14 rounds |
| MQ 11 (submachine gun) | Resident Evil 2 (2019) | The S.T.A.R.S. office locker, when the Lightning Hawk is not in it | 64 rounds |
| GM 79 (grenade launcher) | Resident Evil 2 (2019) | The secured cabinet in the R.P.D.'s safety deposit room, opened with the keycard from the art room; or in Claire Redfield's hands | 6 grenades: 2 explosive, 2 acid, 2 flame |
| MGL (grenade launcher) | Resident Evil 3 (2020) | The rack of a safe room deep in the sewers; or the Army field laboratory behind the Western Barricade; or in Jill Valentine's hands | 6 grenades |
| Chemical flamethrower | Resident Evil 2 (2019) | The supplies storage room in the lower sewers, its locker opened with the King and Queen plugs | One tank, about twenty seconds of fire |
| Spark Shot | Resident Evil 2 (2019) | The same locker, when the flamethrower is not in it; or the research wing of Raccoon University | One charge, about twelve discharges |
| Rocket launcher | Resident Evil 2 (2019) | The Emergency Train's platform in NEST, where the records left one for the last fight; or the Army field laboratory behind the Western Barricade | One rocket |
| Minigun | Resident Evil 2 (2019) | The Emergency Train's platform in NEST; or the overturned Umbrella transport truck in Downtown | One belt, about fifteen seconds of fire. It fills both hands. |
Raccoon City, Ruins, 2026
The Ruins hold fewer, as they hold fewer of everything (The Worlds).
| Weapon | From | Where it may lie | It holds |
|---|---|---|---|
| RPG-7 (rocket launcher) | Resident Evil Requiem | The BSAA storage depot by the gate; or a watchtower on the wall | 2 rockets |
| M1A (rifle) | Resident Evil Requiem | A BSAA container in the Outer Blocks, reached only by climbing the containers stacked behind it | 20 rounds |
| Gal (machine gun) | Resident Evil Requiem | An underground car park in the Outer Blocks | 64 rounds |
| Ghost Grudge (magnum) | Resident Evil Requiem | The armory in the R.P.D.'s underground; or the sealed sectors of NEST | 12 rounds |
| Mortal Edge (axe) | Resident Evil Requiem | Only where the Commander falls in ARK: it is his, and it drops when he is put down (The People of the Ruins, 2026) | A blade that wears slower than any other |
The Valley, 2004
| Weapon | From | Where it may lie | It holds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red9 (handgun) | Resident Evil 4 (2023) | The shipwreck in the middle of the lake, reached only by boat | 16 rounds |
| CQBR (assault rifle) | Resident Evil 4 (2023) | The square lock box south of the castle library, opened with the cubic device | 60 rounds |
| LE 5 (submachine gun) | Resident Evil 4 (2023) | The island's freezer, reached with the level 1 keycard, the rerouted power, and the power console's puzzle | 64 rounds |
| Broken Butterfly (magnum) | Resident Evil 4 (2023) | The Merchant, who carries one of these three each night and sells it for 60,000 pesetas (What ΜΝΗΜΗ Leaves Out, Pesetas and the Merchant) | 12 rounds |
| Killer7 (magnum) | Resident Evil 4 (2023) | The Merchant | 14 rounds |
| Striker (shotgun) | Resident Evil 4 (2023) | The Merchant | 24 shells |
The Special Rocket Launcher Ada Wong throws for Saddler's end is not a secret weapon. It belongs to that beat, and no one can carry it away from it (The People of the Valley, 2004).
Events
BLACKOUT. A region loses power. Lights die, security fails, and the dark takes over.
OVERRUN. A district floods with infected, always after a sign: a siren, a breached barricade, a scream.
LOCKDOWN. Doors seal. Exits close. Open paths become cages.
EMERGENCY. A broadcast announces a new crisis.
B.O.W. RELEASE. A catastrophic creature breaks out of containment, and its region becomes Extreme.
SUPPLY DROP. Valuable resources fall into a dangerous place.
ELPIS DROP. A dose falls under an amber strobe. Never in the Valley.
STRAIN DROP. A pure strain falls under a red strobe. Never in the Valley.
EXTRACTION SIGNAL. Columns of white light over every way out.
COLLAPSE. Part of the map is destroyed or sealed. Routes vanish.
CONVERGENCE. A signal, a beacon, a fire at the heart of the map that pulls the living toward each other.
UNKNOWN EVENT. The first sign of an anomaly, before anyone, ΜΝΗΜΗ included, knows what it is: a district's water that turns, a region whose dead begin to move differently, a corpse that rises wrong (The Dead and the Engineered, Anomalies). She says that something has begun and says nothing more, because she knows nothing more. The world shows what it is. When the organism itself is seen, she says so, and says she does not know what it is (The Dead and the Engineered, Anomalies). An Unknown Event is never anything but this, and it never comes in a night that holds no anomaly.
ΜΝΗΜΗ: There's something wrong with the water on the east side. I don't know what it is. I won't pretend I do.