The Refuge

A future feature · Not scheduled · Not a priority

The Refuge is not part of the current game, and it is not scheduled. It is kept here as a possible future, behind every mode and every map in the order of arrival, and it opens only if the service can pay for it without taking anything from Survivor (Seasons and New Content, The Order of Arrival; The Service, Promise 14).

The Idea

Today, when a night ends, a player goes back to the menus of the Waiting Dark. With the Refuge, they would go back to a room of their own instead: a private place they built, where they stand as their survivor and do everything the menus do now.

A player who loves the safe rooms of Resident Evil 2 builds one, object by object, until it is the room they remember: the item box against the wall, the typewriter and its ink ribbon, the green herbs in the corner, the lamp, the save-room music on a radio. When the helicopter lifts off, or the night closes on them in a street, they wake in that room.

Built From the Diorama

The Refuge is a diorama a player can walk into as their survivor (Cosmetics and the Dossier, The Diorama). It uses the same pieces, models, kits, lights, and weather, and the same limits, so nothing new has to be sold for it and nothing bought for a diorama is wasted. A player chooses one of their dioramas to be their Refuge, or builds one for the purpose.

What a Player Does There

Every function of the Waiting Dark's menus has a place in the room. The player walks to it and uses it, as they would use anything in a night.

In the Refuge	What it does	The menu it replaces
A mirror or a locker	Change the survivor's body, face, dress, and gear looks	The survivor creator and dress
The item box	See and arrange everything the player owns	The collection
A desk with the Ledger	Read the player's own page of the Ledger and the last After-Action Reports	The Ledger and the reports
The typewriter	Write the Dossier: its frame, plaques, emblems, and Portrait	The Dossier
A catalog on the table	Open the Wardrobe	The store
A radio	The Casefile, the season's events, and ΜΝΗΜΗ's remarks	The Casefile and news
The door	Ask for a night: the queue, the classic rotation or the Ruins	The queue
A photograph pinned to the wall	The friends list and the party	Friends and parties

Guests

A Refuge is a place to bring people.

• Invitations. The owner invites friends or their party, up to seven guests at once. A guest walks in as their own survivor, in their own looks, and can leave whenever they like.
• Talking. Inside, everyone speaks with their own voice, out of their own mouth, carried by the room as any voice is (Presentation and Technology, Voice, in Practice): a whisper by the typewriter, a shout from the stairs. Text chat works too, as it does everywhere in the Waiting Dark. Conduct applies here as anywhere (The Service, Conduct).
• Queueing together. A party can gather in a Refuge and walk out through its door into the same night, where each of them still wakes alone.
• Showing it off. Guests can look at everything the owner has placed: the diorama's models, the trophies on the shelves (Cosmetics and the Dossier, Trophies), the Portrait on the wall. They can touch nothing they do not own.
• No harm. No weapon can be drawn in a Refuge, by anyone, ever. It is the safest room in the game.

The Arcade

A Refuge can hold an arcade: cabinets that play the classic arcade games Capcom made, for the owner and their guests.

• The games. Capcom's own arcade library, emulated as Capcom already emulates it in Capcom Arcade Stadium (2021) and Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium: games such as 1942, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Final Fight, Strider, and Street Fighter II. Which games are offered is Capcom's to choose, and grows with the service.
• The cabinets. Each cabinet is a diorama piece that plays one game (Cosmetics and the Dossier, The Diorama). Cabinets are sold in the Wardrobe like any other piece, a few are earned, and the rarest are trophies. A Refuge holds up to six.
• Playing together. A cabinet made for two takes two players side by side: two guests can play Street Fighter II against each other while the rest watch over their shoulders.
• Scores. Every cabinet keeps a high-score table for its Refuge, and the owner's friends can compare their best scores across Refuges. The arcade never pays Ribbons, never counts toward Hardening, and never touches a night.
• In the Night. The arcade is the strangest thing ΜΝΗΜΗ would ever keep: the records of a company that made games before it made viruses, playable in the dark between nights.

The Rules It Would Keep

• The menus never go away. Every function in the Refuge stays one button away as an ordinary menu, at any moment. A player who wants to change their dress and queue again in ten seconds never has to walk across a room to do it.
• It is the owner's. No one enters a Refuge uninvited (Guests, above). The owner can send anyone out at any moment, and nothing a guest does there changes anything the owner owns.
• It stays out of the night. The Refuge exists only in the Waiting Dark. The Wardrobe is never shown inside a night (The Service, Promise 13), and nothing in the Refuge changes how a night plays.
• It works offline. Like everything a player owns, the Refuge stays theirs and playable without a connection (Offline and Ownership).
• It loads between nights, not during them, and a player who prefers the menus can turn the Refuge off.

In the Night

The Waiting Dark is dark and quiet because ΜΝΗΜΗ has never had a reason to make it anything else (The Sleepers and the Remembered, The Waiting Dark). The Refuge would be her giving a sleeper a room in it: a place built from the Archive, to the sleeper's own design, where they wait between nights with the door shut and the typewriter ready. She would learn from what they build, as she learns from everything. And a sleeper who has built their Refuge as the safe room of a night they have no memory of living would be one more thing in her file that the sleeper could not explain.

What It Would Cost

The Refuge reuses the diorama's pieces, the survivor's own body and animation, and the Waiting Dark's functions, so most of it already exists. What it adds is the survivor's camera and controls inside a diorama, the interactive objects listed above, guests and their voices, the arcade's emulation, which Capcom already has from its Arcade Stadium collections, and the testing of every menu function in both forms. It is not costed in The Business Case, and it would be weighed against everything else the service could build with the same money.