Survival

A World That Does Not Want You Armed

Resident Evil Online is a game of scarcity. Survivors begin with nothing. They do not begin as soldiers and they do not become them.

Melee is the common language. Pipes, bats, crowbars, fire axes, machetes, kitchen knives. Weapons have heft. Swings cost stamina. A bad swing leaves you open. Weapons break, usually at the worst moment.

Firearms are rare in the world. A handgun is a significant find. A shotgun is a treasure. A rifle is something people kill for. Ammunition is scarcer than the guns that use it.

Healing is slow. First aid sprays, herbs, bandages. Wounds linger, and healing done in a hurry heals less than healing done with care (Self-Examination, Tending a Wound, below). None of it touches the infection; only the rare antivirals hold it back, and only for minutes (The Infection), and a safe room holds it while a survivor shelters there (Safe Rooms, below).

Health

There is no health bar. A survivor's condition shows in their body: a hand pressed to the ribs, a limp, a slowing walk, blood on the clothes. Beyond a point, a survivor is Down (The Infection). Self-Examination (below) is how a survivor reads their own body closely, and where they tend it best.

What it takes. For an unhurt survivor with nothing worn on the body, about this much puts them Down. Wounds already taken make it sooner, and every tended wound gives some of it back.

What strikes them	Down after about
A light melee swing: a knife, a bat, a pipe swung fast	Six
A heavy melee swing: an axe, a pipe swung from the hips	Three
A handgun round to the body	Two
A rifle or submachine-gun round to the body	Two, or a short burst
A shotgun blast within a few meters	One
Any round to the head	One
The dead: a claw	Four, and every one is a wound the infected pay for in time (The Infection, The Clock)
The Mutated: a Hunter's blow	Two (Run First, below)
The Heavy	One (The Heavy, below)

• A light vest takes one more round or one more blade before a survivor goes Down; heavy armor takes two more (What a Survivor Wears, below). Neither does anything against teeth.
• Down first, almost always. Nothing a survivor carries ends an unhurt survivor outright. A survivor dies without going Down first only under a collapse, in a fall a body would not survive, at the heart of an explosion, in the Crossing (The Worlds), or at a Warden's last punishment. Everyone else goes Down, and a survivor who is Down is ended by any blow, round, or bite that reaches them, unless they are on a doorstep (Safe Rooms, below).

Hunger and Thirst

A Survivor night lasts an hour and more, and a body asks for things. Hunger and thirst are in the game the way they are in an arcade cabinet with a real body inside it: they are felt, they change how a survivor fights and runs, and a single good find undoes them. They are pressure, never a way to die.

• No one dies of them. Neither touches health, the virus, or the Turn. At their worst they make a survivor weaker, shorter of breath, and louder, and the first bite or sip starts undoing it.
• Thirst is the legs. Hunger is the arms. Thirst takes stamina; hunger takes the force of a melee blow. Firearms are never touched: a starving survivor shoots as straight as anyone.
• Shown by the body, never by a bar. There is no meter for either, as there is none for health (Health, above). A survivor's own body says it, to them and to anyone watching.
• Everyone wakes fed and watered. Waking points are equal ground (The Session), so every survivor starts the night with the same stomach and the same throat.
• Safe rooms hold them, as they hold the virus (Safe Rooms, below).

Thirst

Stage	For a body that never drinks	What it does	What it looks and sounds like
Watered	From the waking	Nothing	—
Thirsty	After about 25 minutes	The stamina pool is a fifth smaller and refills a fifth slower	A swallow, a lick of the lips, a dry cough now and then
Parched	After about 50 minutes	The pool is a third smaller and refills a third slower. A shout breaks into a croak and carries only as a Murmur	Cracked lips, rasping breath; the cough is a Murmur

• Effort makes it sooner. Every time a survivor runs their stamina dry, thirst moves on by about a minute.
• Fever makes it sooner still. From Fever on, an infected survivor thirsts at twice the pace: the fever sweats it out of them (The Infection, The Stages). A stranger who keeps asking for water is telling you something.

Hunger

Stage	For a body that never eats	What it does	What it looks and sounds like
Fed	From the waking	Nothing	—
Hungry	After about 35 minutes	Melee blows land a fifth softer, and a heavy swing takes a moment longer to recover	A hand pressed to the stomach when standing still
Starving	After about 70 minutes	Melee blows land a third softer, and a heavy swing no longer finishes one of the dead on its own. The stomach growls about once a minute, a Murmur	Doubled over for a breath now and then; the growl, which can give away a survivor hiding in Hush

• Killing is not eating. The appetites of the strains, Uroboros feeding on kills and the G-Virus on its victims (The Strains), feed the virus, never the survivor.

Food and Drink

Item	Where it is found	What it does
Bottled water	Offices, kitchens, vending machines, Army crates	Thirst back to Watered
Soda	Vending machines, shop fridges	Thirst one stage, and for a minute stamina refills faster: the sugar
Coffee	The R.P.D.'s break room, office machines, diners. A pot takes a minute to brew, and the machine is a Murmur	Thirst one stage, and for two minutes aim steadies a quarter faster
Beer or whiskey	J's Bar, every bar and liquor store	Thirst one stage, and for a minute aim never quite steadies
Tap water	Any working tap, any time	Thirst back to Watered, and the region's strain with it: every region's water carries its strain (The Infection, How the Virus Gets In). It is safe only for a survivor the virus can no longer take: the cured, and the already infected, whose first virus keeps the body
Rainwater	In rain or drizzle, from a gutter, or caught in an empty bottle left in the open for about a minute	Thirst back to Watered. The sky is the only clean water in the city that comes without a bottle
Candy bar	Everywhere: desks, lockers, vending machines, the pockets of the dead	Hunger one stage. Eaten on the move, in a Hush
Canned food	Kitchens, pantries, shops. It opens with a can opener or a knife; without one, a few seconds of bashing, which is a Clamor	Hunger back to Fed
Army ration	The Army checkpoint and field laboratory, BSAA crates	Hunger and thirst both back to full, and for five minutes neither moves: Well Fed. It takes about eight seconds to eat

• Eating and drinking take hands and time. Two to four seconds for most things, both hands, and a Murmur, unless the table says otherwise. Nothing can be eaten in a grab, while down, or mid-swing.
• Food is a thing. It fills a pocket, and it can be shared, traded, stolen, stashed, and set down like anything else. A bottle of water set on the ground and a step back is the oldest offer between strangers (The Living).
• By map. In the Raccoon City of 1998 the city's people left their kitchens full, and a careful survivor rarely goes hungry. In the Ruins of 2026 food and clean water are as scarce as medicine, Barren whatever the night's setting (Scarcity, below), and rain is worth waiting for. In the Valley of 2004 the farms keep the records' eggs, a raw egg worth a stage of hunger and a rare golden one worth a Well Fed, and the lake's fish farm keeps its bass, which a survivor can cook at any fire for a meal.
• Who hungers. Survivors and Echoes, by the same rules. Companions and the Stranded do not: ΜΝΗΜΗ plays them as their records do, and no one of the records slows a survivor down by needing a meal. The Turned never hunger; their strain's appetites are all they have.

In the Night. ΜΝΗΜΗ runs the body, so she runs its hunger too. A real outbreak lasts days, and its people are hungry and thirsty long before they are bitten; who shares the last bottle, who trades a can for a shell, who drinks from a tap they know is tainted, are questions Pithos's buyers want answered. She keeps it mild on purpose. A sleeper dying of thirst would teach her only what she already knows about bodies, and she is watching their choices.

Self-Examination

No screen says how a survivor is. Their body does, and Self-Examination is how they read it closely. Resident Evil has always let a player turn an item in their hands and examine it; here a survivor examines themselves. A player can enter it at any moment, anywhere. The night does not pause.

Entering it. One held input. The camera draws in close over the survivor's own body, and a short list of places appears: arms, hands, legs, torso, the lips and face, the neck, the back. The player chooses one, and the camera goes there; the survivor does what a person does to look at that part of themselves. A second stick turns and zooms, the way an item is turned in the series' inventories.

Place	What the survivor does	What it can show
Arms	Pushes up one sleeve, then the other. A jacket is unzipped and shrugged off one shoulder; a uniform's cuff is unbuttoned; a riot vest stays on	A bite, a scratch, a needle's mark; from Fever on, the lines of a strain's color climbing out of it (The Infection, The Mark)
Hands	Turns them over, palms up, then down. Flexes the fingers	Wounds; from Fever on, the tremor; at Fracture, fingers that will not quite close
Legs	Crouches and rolls a trouser leg to the knee, or pulls down a boot top	A rat's bite at the ankle, a claw across the calf
Torso	Lifts the shirt, or opens the jacket and lifts what is under it	Wounds. A hand laid on the stomach feels hunger: Hungry, it rumbles under the palm; Starving, it growls aloud (Hunger and Thirst, above)
The lips and face	Runs a thumb over the lips and along the jaw. To see them, the survivor needs a reflection: a mirror, a window, a car's wing mirror, a puddle, a blade	By touch: lips cracked or not (Thirst), a pulse fast or slow at the jaw. In a reflection: everything, the lines at the jaw at Fracture, eyes clouding at the edges
The neck	Turns the head to a reflection	A needle's mark, a bite behind the ear. With no reflection near, nothing: the camera stays on the survivor's own shoulder
The back	Reaches back, and cannot see	Nothing. A bite on the back or the back of the neck needs someone else's eyes (The Living)

• It shows only what is there. Self-Examination never tells a survivor anything their eyes and hands could not. In Seed, a Mark looks like any other wound, and up close it still does: only ΜΝΗΜΗ's voice tells the bitten what the wound carries. From Fever on, the lines are there to see, and zoom shows how far they have climbed. What the survivor cannot see without a reflection, the camera does not show (Presentation and Technology, The Camera Sees Only What the Survivor Sees).
• The dress decides the gesture. Every dress covers the same skin (Cosmetics and the Dossier, The Rule), but each kind of garment has its own way of being moved aside: a sleeve rolled, a cuff unbuttoned, a zip pulled, a skirt's hem lifted, a boot top folded down. The gesture changes; how long it takes never does, so no dress is faster to check than another.
• The hands show the night. A Civilian's fingers fumble the cuff and shake on the zip; a Veteran's are quick and steady (The Survivors, Hardening). Only the look changes: a Veteran examines no faster than anyone else.
• Others see it. Baring an arm here is the same act as the shared gesture of showing it (The Infection, The Mark): anyone close enough sees what the survivor sees. Examining yourself in front of a stranger is showing them.
• Leaving it. Letting go of the input brings the camera back at once. What was bared stays bared until the survivor covers it again, which takes a moment, so a survivor who jumps out of it to fight may fight with a sleeve rolled up and a Mark in plain sight.

Tending a Wound

A survivor can use a spray, an herb, or a bandage at any moment, anywhere, without Self-Examination: a second's work, done with the dead a step away. Used that way, it heals about half of what it can. In Self-Examination, a survivor who has found a wound can tend it instead: bare it, clean it, and dress it properly. Tended, the same item heals all of what it can. Nothing obliges anyone to tend; it is the better use of a scarce thing, bought with time and with the danger of standing still.

Item	In a hurry	Tended in Self-Examination
First aid spray	A hiss through the clothes, wherever it hurts. About a second	The wound bared, the spray worked into it and along its edges, a moment to let it set. About five seconds
Herbs and their mixes	Chewed and swallowed. About a second	Crushed in the palm and pressed into the wound. About six seconds
Bandage	Wound over the cloth, loose, and it bleeds through. About two seconds	Wound on bare skin and pulled tight, the end tucked. About eight seconds
Rag bandage (Crafting, below)	Tied over the cloth: a quarter of what a bandage heals	Tied on bare skin: half of what a bandage heals

What it looks like. A knife has opened a survivor across the belly. They go into Self-Examination behind a counter and choose the torso; the camera goes to the stomach as they lift the shirt and see the cut. They tend it: a gauze pad pressed down hard with one hand, the bandage drawn from a pocket with the other and wound around the waist, once, twice, three times, breath hissing through the teeth, a groan as it is pulled tight, the end tucked, the shirt let down over it. Every wound is tended where it is, with the gesture its place and the dress ask for: a sleeve rolled to bind a forearm, a trouser leg cut to wrap a calf, a spray worked into the back of a hand.

• Pain has a voice. Tending hurts, and the survivor sounds like it, in their own voice (The Survivors). A groan, a breath through the teeth, a curse under it are Murmurs. A deep wound, a knife's or a claw's, draws a cry when it is pulled closed, and that cry is a Clamor (The Dead and the Engineered). A survivor can bite down on a sleeve or a strap to keep it a Murmur; it adds two seconds.
• The body shows it. A wound tended stops showing the way it did: the hand comes away from the ribs, the limp eases, the walk steadies (Health, above). A wound treated in a hurry heals less, and shows more. A bandage tended on bare skin lies under the clothes; one wound over them is in plain sight.
• Interrupted. A blow, a grab, or a shot ends Self-Examination, tending with it. An item not yet put to the wound is not spent. One already on it counts as used in a hurry: half of what it can, and nothing more.
• The same for everyone. The times above never change with Hardening or the dress. A Veteran's hands are steadier and quieter at it, and a Civilian's shake and fumble the end of the bandage, but neither finishes sooner (The Survivors, Hardening).
• Never the virus. Tending closes wounds; it does not touch the virus. A Mark tended is a wound closed and a Mark hidden under a bandage, until the lines climb past it (The Infection, The Mark). Only an antiviral holds the clock, and only Elpis ends it.
• Someone else's hands. A survivor can tend another the same way, both of them standing still for it, and only another can tend a wound on the back (The Living).

It is dangerous. Nothing stops while a survivor looks at themselves. The camera is close on their own body, so they see little of the room around them; sound still carries, and listening is all the warning they have. A blow, a grab, or a shot ends Self-Examination at once. Every survivor learns to do it with their back to a wall, behind a closed door, on a roof the dead cannot climb, or best of all in a safe room, where the minutes spent still count against their time there (Safe Rooms, below).

In the Night. The body is ΜΝΗΜΗ's work, and so is every mark on it. A sleeper turning their own arm in the dark, looking for the bite they already know is there, is reading something she wrote. She watches it more closely than almost anything else they do: what a person does in the minute after they find it is the most honest minute of their night. The pain of tending is hers too. She built these bodies to hurt, because a body that cannot hurt teaches her nothing about the person inside it.

The Inventory

What a survivor can carry depends on what they have found to carry it in. Nothing is bottomless: no one walks out of a police station with ten guns.

Place	Holds	How a survivor gets it
Hands	The one thing ready to use: a weapon, a tool, a light	Always
Pockets	Four small things: a box of rounds, an herb, a spray, a key, a vial, a knife, a can or a bottle, a part small enough to pocket	Always
Shoulders	Two long weapons, slung: a rifle and a shotgun, a sniper rifle and a fire axe, any two of the long guns and the large melee weapons	Always
Belt	A holster, with room for two handguns	A holster, found where police and guards kept them: the R.P.D.'s locker rooms, Kendo's shop, a guard who did not make it
Back	Six more small things: medicine, rounds, parts	A bag, found in the world

• A handgun without a holster takes a pocket.
• Large things fill both hands and leave nothing ready to use: a fuel can, a car battery, a generator. In a bag, a fuel can or a battery takes two of its six places. A generator cannot be bagged.
• No holster, no bag, no more room. Without them, a survivor carries only what their hands, pockets, and shoulders hold, however much they find. What they cannot carry, they leave behind or stash (Stashes, below).

Do I carry ammo or medicine?Do I keep the tool or the weapon?Is this worth the space?

What a Survivor Wears

Besides their hands, pockets, and shoulders, a survivor has four places to wear what they find.

• Head. A hard hat or a motorcycle helmet is light; a riot helmet or an Army helmet is heavy. A helmet turns blows to the head from the living until it cracks: a light one after one blow, a heavy one after two.
• Body. A security guard's or a police officer's vest is light; body armor from a vault is heavy. A vest lessens what bullets and blades do to the body.
• Belt. A holster, with its two handguns.
• Back. A bag, with its six places.

Nothing worn stops a bite or a scratch. The dead find skin.

Everything worn is found, or in the Valley bought from the Merchant, and anyone can see what anyone is wearing. What a survivor wears is also where a player's gear looks appear (Cosmetics and the Dossier).

Stashes

A survivor can leave what they cannot carry. Anything in the world that closes can hold it: the trunk of a car, including one that will never run again, a locker, a cabinet, a desk drawer. A stash keeps what was left in it for the rest of the night, and anyone can open it. Nothing marks a stash, nothing locks it but what the world already locks, and nothing tells its owner when someone else has been there. Leaving a rifle in a trunk is a bet that no one else will look in that trunk before its owner comes back. A stash lasts only the night: when ΜΝΗΜΗ closes the night, she closes everything left in it.

Scarcity

ΜΝΗΜΗ sets the abundance of each night before it begins.

Setting	Feeling
Abundant	Supplies are findable, and so are the people hunting them
Lean	Careful choices. Every find matters.
Barren	Almost nothing. Every item is a lifeline.

In the Ruins of 2026, a night is never Abundant, and medicine, healing, food, and clean water are always Barren, whatever the setting (The Worlds).

Crafting

In the Ruins of 2026, and only there, survivors make what they cannot find. Twenty-eight years of scavengers have stripped the city of finished things, but not of parts. The Raccoon City of 1998 is still full of what its people left behind, and nothing is made there.

A survivor holding every part of something can put it together. It takes both hands and a few seconds, and the work is a Murmur, except hammering, which is a Clamor. No one has to find a plan first: anyone who holds the parts knows what they make.

Made	From	What it is
Nailed bat	A bat and a handful of nails	A heavy melee weapon that tears as it hits. It wears faster than a plain bat.
Spear	A length of pipe, a knife, and tape	Long reach. The knife works loose after a few thrusts.
Molotov	A bottle, fuel, and a rag	Fire where it breaks. The breaking glass is a Clamor; the dead burn, and so does everything Uroboros made.
Torch	A stick, a rag, and fuel	Light without a battery, and fire in the hand. The flame shows from far away.
Rag bandage	Cloth and alcohol	Closes a wound, less well than a bandage
Lure	A wind-up clock and tape	Set down and wound, it rings for a minute: a Clamor that draws the dead to where it lies, and away from whoever set it

• Made things wear. Everything made wears faster than its finished kind, and breaks the same way, so its last uses can be seen coming.
• Made things are things. A made weapon can be dropped, taken, traded, and stashed like anything found.

Safe Rooms

The survivors of the records had rooms like these wherever they went: an office with a typewriter, a storeroom with a lamp, a door that held. ΜΝΗΜΗ keeps them. Fear needs contrast (ΜΝΗΜΗ as Director, The Laws), and she can learn nothing from a survivor whose sleeper has stopped choosing, so a safe room is the one place where she lets the night hold still for a little while.

• Where. Every world holds a few, where the records had them or where a room of that kind would be. No waking point is near one (The Session). Some are locked, and a vault may hold the keys to every safe room in its district (Objectives, Restrictions, and Events, Vaults). The Ruins hold the fewest.
• The Merchant. In the Valley, the Merchant appears in safe rooms, a few minutes at a time, to sell for pesetas (What ΜΝΗΜΗ Leaves Out, Pesetas and the Merchant).
• Who can enter. Any survivor with time left in safe rooms tonight, up to four at once. The dead never enter, nothing ΜΝΗΜΗ releases breaks in, and the Turned cannot cross the threshold.
• No weapons. Inside, no weapon can be drawn, swung, or fired, and no one can shove, grab, or put a needle into anyone. Survivors inside cannot harm one another. They can talk, trade, heal, and set things down for each other, and nothing said inside is heard outside.
• The virus holds. For every survivor inside with time left, the virus holds still, a strain's appetites included, and so do hunger and thirst. Nothing else stops: wounds do not close by themselves, and a survivor who is down still bleeds out.
• The limit. Each survivor has five minutes in safe rooms per night, spent only while inside, in as many visits as they like. When their time runs out, the room stops holding them: their clock runs again, they can draw a weapon, and anyone inside can draw one against them. The dead still never come in.
• Never a hiding place to the end. A survivor in a safe room is never counted as standing still (ΜΝΗΜΗ as Director, When She Gets Bored), and no vision comes to them there. From the moment the extraction signal rises, safe rooms no longer hold anyone: the end does not wait for anyone to catch their breath.
• The Warden. A door is where an ambush waits, so every safe room has a guard outside it. The Warden stands at the door and keeps the doorstep: the ground within about twenty meters of it. On the doorstep, survivors cannot settle anything with violence.
  • Who it stops. Any survivor or Echo who harms another survivor standing on the doorstep, from wherever they are: a shot, a blow, a thrown thing, a needle, a shove into the dead. The Warden sees the whole doorstep and every window that looks onto it.
  • How it stops them. It brings them down at once, from any distance it can see, with a shot that does no harm and never misses, and carries them into the room's holding cell. The weapon they used is taken and never given back.
  • The hold. Three minutes for a first offence in a night, six for a second, twelve for every one after. Inside the cell nothing can reach them, and nothing stops for them either: their virus, their Plaga, and the night all go on. Then the cell's other door opens onto a street away from the doorstep, and they are back in the night.
  • The one they hurt. On the doorstep no survivor is Lost to another survivor: a shot or a blow that would end them leaves them Down, and the Warden raises them and sets a green herb in their hand. What the Warden cannot undo, it does not: a needle's virus stays in the blood.
  • What it leaves alone. The dead, the Heavy, and the Turned are not its business, and it never fights them; a survivor who stays on the doorstep to hide from the living is still in a night full of the dead, and still counted as standing still (ΜΝΗΜΗ as Director, When She Gets Bored). Taking what someone set down, lying, and walking away are not harm.
  • It cannot be hurt. Bullets do nothing to it, it never moves off the doorstep, and it speaks only to warn and to punish. From the moment the extraction signal rises, the Wardens are gone, and the end belongs to everyone.
  • In the Night. The Wardens are ΜΝΗΜΗ's, as the safe rooms are. She keeps the old rule of the records' safe rooms, that nothing follows anyone through the door, and stretches it twenty meters, because she can learn nothing from a survivor shot the moment they step out.

Map	The Warden	The holding cell
Raccoon City, 1998	An R.P.D. officer in riot armor and a gas mask, of the kind who held the station's halls, who never lowers his rifle and never gives his name	A police holding cage beside the room
Raccoon City, Ruins, 2026	A BSAA cordon sentry in full protective gear, sealed and faceless, with the agency's patch on the shoulder	A quarantine container chained beside the door
The Valley, 2004	A hooded man in the Merchant's long coat, who never speaks above a whisper. The records never explain the Merchant, and ΜΝΗΜΗ does not explain these men either (What ΜΝΗΜΗ Leaves Out, Pesetas and the Merchant)	An iron cage of the kind the cult kept its captives in

The Doorstep Record

The Wardens remember, because ΜΝΗΜΗ does. Every offence on a doorstep goes into the offender's file, and what the Warden does to them depends on what that file holds. That is not her judgment of anyone. The Doorstep Record is a code, fixed and public: the table below, applied the same way to every file that holds the same offences, and shown in every lobby. She chooses no one and holds nothing against anyone; the record decides, and only the offender wrote it. The Wardens are the night's one joke, and the joke is only ever on someone who wrote their own place in it.

• What counts. Only harm meant for a survivor: a shot or a blow aimed at one, a thrown thing, a needle, a shove into the dead. A stray round or a grenade meant for the dead that hurts a survivor on a doorstep earns the cell at most, never a place on the record.
• How long it lasts. Each offence leaves the record after twenty nights without a new one. A player who stops can always come back to Peaceful.
• The seal. Every player's standing shows as a seal in the corner of their Dossier, and every lobby shows it before a night begins (Cosmetics and the Dossier, The Dossier).
• The strip. From the second offence, the Warden pins a strip to the back of whatever the offender wears, in the colors of its map, reading TROUBLEMAKER, and it stays for the rest of the night. In the Service the same standing is called Griefer: while a player's record is Notorious or worse, their Dossier's seal carries the word beside it (Cosmetics and the Dossier, The Dossier), and the After-Action Report of every night they were held says so.

Standing	Offences on the record	What the Warden does
Peaceful	None	The cell (above), and one dry remark on the way in
Warned	One or two	One of the map's comic punishments, then the cell, and the TROUBLEMAKER strip
Notorious	Three to five	One of the severe punishments, then the cell
Infamous	Six or more	The last punishment: the Warden ends them, and they are Lost (The Infection, Down). Their night is over.

Punishments are played, not watched. No punishment takes anyone's camera, and none is a scene. It happens in the world, in real time, and the offender plays through it while everyone else goes on with their night; whoever is near the doorstep can stop and watch, and whoever is not misses it. How well the offender plays changes the cell that follows, within one minute either way, and never their standing.

The comic punishments, one chosen at random, never harmful, each lasting under a minute:

Map	Punishment	How it is played	Played well	Played badly
Raccoon City, 1998	The Western dance. The officer fires his sidearm at the offender's feet until the cylinder is empty.	Six shots. Before each, the muzzle drops to one foot or the other, and the offender has half a second to hop off it.	Five hops or more: a minute off the cell	Two or fewer: a minute added, and the officer reloads for an encore
Raccoon City, 1998	The rights. Facing the wall, hands on head, while the officer reads them their rights, slowly.	Stand still through the whole reading while the officer leans in, coughs, and drops his keys. Any movement and he starts again from "You have the right."	Not one restart: a minute off	Three restarts: a minute added
Raccoon City, 1998	The shoes. The officer takes their shoes and throws them onto the room's roof.	After the cell, the offender walks in socks: on rubble, glass, and stairs they move as a Civilian does (The Survivors, Hardening) until they climb up and fetch the shoes, by a ladder somewhere on the block.	—	—
Raccoon City, Ruins, 2026	The foam. The sentry hoses them in white decontamination foam from head to foot.	The foam makes them stand out in the dark for two minutes. At the basin beside the door, the offender can scrub it off, a press at a time, while the sentry counts aloud.	All of it off before the count ends: a minute off	—
Raccoon City, Ruins, 2026	The regulations. The quarantine regulations, recited through a loudspeaker everyone on the doorstep can hear.	The lines appear one by one. The offender reads each aloud into the microphone, or, without one, presses the prompt in time. A stumble repeats the line, louder.	No line repeated: a minute off	Three lines repeated: a minute added
The Valley, 2004	The Western dance. As in Raccoon City, with the hooded man's own revolver and his own laugh.	As above.	As above	As above
The Valley, 2004	The egg. Carry an egg on a spoon from the door to the far edge of the doorstep and back.	Balance against the slope of the ground, a gust, and the hooded man stepping into the way. A dropped egg starts the walk again.	Done on the first try: a minute off	Three eggs dropped: a minute added
The Valley, 2004	The hat. The hooded man sells them a hat for one peseta, which they must wear for the rest of the night.	The offender can haggle, choosing what to say. Every answer ends at one peseta, and every answer changes the hat: the more they argue, the worse it gets.	—	—

The severe punishments, one chosen at random:

• Thrown to the dead. The Warden picks them up and throws them into the nearest group of the dead beyond the doorstep, with everything they carry. What happens next is a fight they play like any other. A survivor who fights free and walks back onto the doorstep within a minute gets a slow handclap from the Warden and a cell one minute shorter.
• The scramble. The Warden takes everything they carry, weapons, ammunition, healing, gear, and pesetas in the Valley, and throws it on the ground in front of the door. Then it holds the offender by the collar for three seconds and lets go. Whatever the offender reaches first is theirs again; everything else belongs to whoever is quicker. They keep their dress regardless.
• Left outside. No cell. The Warden walks them to the far edge of the doorstep, takes their weapons, and closes the room to them for the rest of the night. There is nothing to play: the night is the punishment.

In the Night. The record is ΜΝΗΜΗ's own: she keeps everything every sleeper does, and the Wardens only read it. The sleeper never remembers what they did last week. The file does, and so does the Warden. The comic punishments are the one thing she kept from the Masterminds' trials, and not for pleasure: she measured them, and nothing else she tried stopped a sleeper from harming others at the door as surely as being made ridiculous in front of them. She keeps what works.

Vehicles

Vehicles are rare, and for now only the Raccoon City of 1998 holds any that can be made to run: cars, police cruisers, motorcycles. ΜΝΗΜΗ places them before the waking, never near a waking point, and never ready to drive. Every one lacks fuel and at least one part.

The way they are made to run is the oldest habit of the records: find the thing, and bring it to where it fits.

• What it lacks. A survivor who looks under the hood, or at the fuel gauge, learns what a vehicle needs: fuel, and a battery, a spark plug, a fan belt, a tire, or its key. A motorcycle needs fuel and one part. A car needs fuel and two or three.
• Where the parts are. Where things of that kind would be: a gas station, an auto shop, a parking garage, the police motor pool, other wrecks. Often the parts a vehicle needs lie together in one place far from it, and the gas station is never close. Fuel comes in cans, found full or filled at a station's pumps.
• A race. Every part exists once. A part another survivor took is gone, and a vehicle someone else finished is theirs to drive away. Fitting a part takes a few seconds and is a Clamor.
• Driving. An engine is Thunder, and headlights show from far away. Fuel runs out. The dead can be run down, and enough of them stop a car. A vehicle can be damaged, wrecked, and stolen the moment its driver steps out. No car, cruiser, or motorcycle leaves the city. The only machines that carry anyone out are the ways out, the records' own and the improvised ones (The Extraction, Improvised Ways Out).
• Why not just drive out? Because the edge of the city is three rings deep: the Outskirts, where whatever hunts by sound waits for an engine; the Barricades, which no vehicle passes; and No Man's Land, the dead of the woods and the Army's cordon (The Worlds, The Edge of the World). A vehicle is for crossing the city fast and carrying what a survivor cannot. Driving it at the edge is how a survivor ends up on foot, hurt, and loud, a long way from everything. On foot, past the Barricades, there is the Crossing: a way out of the city that works one time in a hundred (The Worlds, The Crossing).
• Seats. A motorcycle carries two. A car or a cruiser carries four. Its trunk is a stash, running or not (Stashes, above).

Fighting and Fleeing

Combat is not a power fantasy. It is a negotiation with fear. Being surrounded is a constant possibility. For the infected, every wound from the dead is time taken from the clock.

• Stamina. One pool pays for running, swinging, shoving, and climbing. Empty, a survivor walks, swings slowly, and cannot shove. Fever drains it faster.
• Swings. A light swing is quick and pushes the dead back. A heavy swing staggers them and can finish them, and a missed heavy swing leaves the survivor open for a moment.
• The dead get up. A zombie knocked down rises again unless its head is destroyed. A body that has not been finished is a body that is still coming.
• Wear. Every melee weapon bends, splinters, or chips before it breaks, so the last swings can be seen coming. A pipe outlasts a kitchen knife; a fire axe outlasts a bat.
• Shove. A shove costs stamina and nothing else. It buys distance, never a kill.
• Grabs. When the dead seize a survivor, the survivor struggles. A struggle won costs stamina; a struggle lost, or a second pair of hands, ends in a bite. Another survivor can break the grab with a blow. A survivor carrying a knife or a grenade can spend it to break the grab of anything but the Heavy at once (Run First, below): the knife stays in the dead, the grenade goes off in its mouth.
• Breaking away. The dead that lose sight of a survivor who has gone quiet search the last place they saw them, then wander. Resonance is the exception: from Fever on, the kinds that sense the virus keep an infected survivor's direction without seeing them (The Infection).
• Doors and heights. A closed door slows the dead. A barricaded one stops them for a while, and barricading is a Clamor. The common dead cannot climb ladders or anything higher than a fence.
• Guns. Aim steadies after about a second of holding still. Reloading takes both hands. In Fracture, aim never steadies.

Sometimes, fighting is worse than running.

Run First

Survivor is not fought the way Resident Evil's heroes fight. In the series, one person with enough ammunition puts a Tyrant down alone. In Survivor, the people are civilians, the guns are few, and the things the records made to kill soldiers kill civilians easily. When a Tyrant, a Nemesis, or anything like them appears, the first thought should be the right one: run, hide, and do not be seen. Killing one is possible, and never alone: quickly, for a few survivors with one of the night's secret weapons; slowly, for many with whatever guns they found. Either way it is hard and costly.

Three Weights of Enemy

Weight	What it includes	A survivor alone	What it takes
The dead	Zombies, infected animals, the Mass of the Turned, the common hosts of the Valley	One at a time, with a weapon and stamina. A crowd, never	One survivor, if the numbers are small
The Mutated	Crimson Heads, Lickers, Hunters, the Stalker and the Brute of the Turned, a pack of dogs, the Garradors and Regenerators of the Valley	Rarely, and at a great cost. A Hunter's two blows put an unprotected survivor Down	Two or more survivors with firearms, or one with a shotgun, luck, and a door to shut
The Heavy	Every Tyrant and the Nemesis, every G-form, every B.O.W. ΜΝΗΜΗ releases, every named creature and named host, El Gigante, and every Apex, including a survivor's	Never. Alone, a survivor's only choices are to run or to hide	Two or more with a secret weapon; three or more with a vault's weapons; five or more with ordinary guns, for far longer. Survivors and companions both count, and the city helps all of them (below)

The Heavy

• One blow puts a survivor Down, whatever they wear (The Infection, Down). A second blow on a survivor who is down, and they are Lost.
• Its grab is death. No struggle breaks it, and no knife. Only an explosion against it, a grenade or a rocket, makes it let go, and only another survivor can set one off.
• It does not stop for small things. Handgun rounds, rifle rounds, and submachine-gun fire hurt it only a little at a time: each round slows it for a step, and a full magazine makes it stumble once. Melee hurts it less still, and brings the swinger within its reach. Shotguns at close range, magnum rounds, grenade rounds, fire, and rockets (Objectives, Restrictions, and Events, Vaults) are what hurt it most.
• Putting one down. There are three ways, and each costs more time and more hands than the one before it.
  • With a secret weapon. The fastest way. Most of one secret weapon's load, spent into a Heavy, puts it down, and two survivors can do it: one firing, one keeping it turning. A rocket from a secret weapon knocks it down for long enough to finish it (Objectives, Restrictions, and Events, Secret Weapons).
  • With a vault's haul. About a vault's whole haul, shared among a group of three or more that keeps it turning between them: a magnum and its rounds, a grenade launcher's rounds, and every shotgun shell the group has; or a vault's rocket, which knocks it down, and everything the group fires into it before it rises.
  • With ordinary guns. Handguns, submachine guns, rifles, and shotguns found in the city can put a Heavy down too, but only five or more survivors firing together, for minutes rather than seconds, spending nearly every round they carry, and keeping it turning so that no one stands in its reach for long. It is the slowest way and the loudest, and every minute of it is Thunder that brings the district's dead to the fight.
• What stays down. Put down, a Heavy that is not named stays down. A named creature or named host rises again a few minutes later, in its next form, as its records show, and only when it is put down in its last form is it dead for the night. The end its records gave it ends it at once, in any form (The People of Raccoon City, 1998, The People of the Valley, 2004, The People of the Ruins, 2026). A group that puts a named creature down short of its last form has spent what it had for a few minutes' peace, and the next fight is harder.
• The city is the best weapon. A car driven into it at speed knocks it down for a while and wrecks the car's front (Vehicles, above). A fuel tank, a gas main, a collapsing walkway, a train, a furnace, or a shutter dropped on it does more than any gun. A group that kills a Heavy usually does it by leading it somewhere.
• Companions count. A companion is a pair of hands that knows how to fight: Leon Kennedy's knife counters, HUNK's rifle, Jill Valentine's experience of the thing hunting her. A survivor with a companion and a friend is a group. Companions run from the Heavy too, unless their records say they stand, or they carry a secret weapon: a companion who carries one stands with whoever stands, and spends it on the Heavy (Survivor, Companions). A survivor walking with such a companion is half of the smallest group that can put a Heavy down.

How to Live Through One

• It is slower than a sprint and never tires. A survivor outruns a Tyrant over a short distance and loses to it over a long one. The Nemesis runs as fast as a survivor sprints. Breaking its line of sight, and its hearing, is the only way to lose any of them.
• What it cannot follow. No Heavy climbs a ladder, squeezes through a crawlspace or a vent, swims, or enters a safe room (Safe Rooms, above). Any of them can tear through a door, and a barricade holds one for seconds, not minutes.
• It searches longer. A Heavy that loses a survivor searches the last place it saw or heard them far longer than the dead do, then moves on through the region, listening. Hush is how a survivor stays alive near one.
• It is not interested in everyone. A named creature follows the thread its records gave it (The People of Raccoon City, 1998, Named creatures); a released B.O.W. follows the noise. A survivor who is not its target, and stays quiet, is often passed by.
• Its arrival is the night's loudest warning. Released, it is announced (The Dead and the Engineered, B.O.W. Events), and its steps can be heard long before it is seen (Presentation and Technology, Weight, in Practice).

Why it is this way. A survivor in Survivor is a nobody with a pipe, and the series' monsters were built to kill soldiers. The Ledger counts a Heavy put down as a great deed, and the After-Action Report counts every Heavy a survivor lived through by getting away. Both are victories.