"Who Decides" — Arc 1 Beat Sheet

Signal arc. Lean planning reference — leave room to improvise. Approximate pacing: 2 beats per session.

The Through-Line

Signal forces the city — and the players — to answer one question: Who gave these people the right to decide?

His diagnosis is not entirely wrong. That’s what makes him dangerous.

Session Log

Session 2 — Played

Hall arrival: Team arrived at Local 44. Met Sloane (Arachne) and Adrian (Breakpoint). Hall is established as base of operations.

Beat 4 — Sterling Reveal / Darkstar “Death” / Renegade Reframe (played): Signal broadcast Sterling’s parentage publicly, showed “corpse” footage of Darkstar, and reframed the Renegade as the hero who did what the Alliance couldn’t. Sterling recognized the corpse as fake. Carter Williams became a sympathetic public figure — complicating Avi’s position (she recognized Carter as her assaulter).

Beat 5 — Nightfall Confrontation (played, deviated significantly): Beat 5 was planned as Nightfall approaching the team. Instead: Casper, Jason, and Rhys pursued Nightfall proactively. They tracked Nightfall to an Eclipse research building, found Morgan destroying PROMETHEUS equipment. Jason confronted Nightfall directly. Key revelations:

The Wavelengths brought Nightfall’s powers through an unknown force that pushes same-spectrum hosts to compete and pair
Nightfall admitted Mary was the third person they killed with low-frequency powers (two others unnamed)
Nightfall attempted to pair with Jason — the Wavelength ecology’s intended resolution
Jason rejected the pairing — first High Spectrum host to refuse complementary pairing

This significantly alters the planned dynamic: Morgan is not approaching with open hands to join. Jason has rejected the offer. The Nightfall thread is now adversarial in a more complicated way.

Beat 6 — PROMETHEUS (played, early and improvised): Beat 6 was planned as a facility infiltration guided by Nightfall. Instead: the team found the Eclipse research building organically through Sloane’s intel about Nightfall’s movements, saw Nightfall destroying PROMETHEUS equipment, extracted intel about PROMETHEUS, and decided to destroy the research center. The infiltration was not stealth — it was destructive. Eclipse knows the team hit their facility.

Sterling extraction: Adrian and Sloane organized an extraction for Sterling after Signal’s outing. Avi joined and brought Mason Matthews — Adrian’s civilian friend (and cat burglar). Mason is now partially inside the team’s orbit.

Vane mayoral bid: Casimir Vane announced a run for mayor. The DA fundraiser gala is reframed as a benefit for first responders — tomorrow night.

Seeds planted:

Nightfall’s 3 kills confirmed (2 unnamed beyond Artemis)
Jason rejected Wavelength pairing — Low Spectrum energy unanchored, countdown continues
Eclipse research center destroyed — Eclipse knows the team hit them
Sterling outed publicly — legitimacy crisis
Mason Matthews brought into team orbit via extraction
Vane mayoral bid announced
First responders gala — tomorrow (ticking clock for Beat 8)

Beats

Beat 1 — The Handoff

The Alliance assembles the new team at Alliance Tower for a formal reveal. The old guard is present — but not for long. Mid-ceremony, the Alliance is called away to respond to a threat abroad. (This is the first signal of Darkstar’s involvement — the “threat” will later be revealed as the Renegade Force attacking Darkstar’s ship.) The new team is left alone in the tower, partially introduced to the city, fully on their own.

Status: Adapted — the warehouse event replaced this as the origin beat. The formal Alliance handoff happened under different circumstances.

GM Notes:

Use this beat to establish team dynamics before pressure hits
The Alliance’s departure should feel matter-of-fact, not dramatic — this is how it works, now it’s your problem
Plant the detail that the threat is off-world; don’t elaborate yet

Beat 1.5 — Aubrey’s Text (Nova / Avi)

Aubrey reaches out to Avi by text. No demand, no explanation required. Something like: “I saw Carter last week. I don’t know what I’m telling you except I thought you should know.”

This is a civilian thread Avi can pull, ignore, or sit on. If they follow up, Aubrey eventually describes the person Carter was with — a face that connects to Signal’s network.

Status: Planted in Session 1.

GM Notes:

This is Avi’s beat to initiate or not. Do not prompt it beyond surfacing the text.
Aubrey is an unwitting Signal-adjacent witness. Full details in characters/pcs/avi-park-nova.md.

Beat 2 — The Press Room

Status: PLAYED — Session 1

What happened: The new team stepped into a public press conference to formally introduce themselves. Senator Okafor was present. Signal hacked all A.E.G.I.S. comms simultaneously — full blackout. SHADE constructs (cyborg cadavers in A.E.G.I.S. uniforms) attacked mid-conference and moved on the Senator. Riley pursued to protect Senator Okafor. The players dealt with the constructs.

Avi’s telepathy cracked the constructs’ minds during the fight and extracted three pieces of intel: the bodies are built from humans, Casimir Vane commissioned them, Signal was controlling them at the time.

Signal used the A.E.G.I.S. blackout window to broadcast Kiara’s full origin publicly: her engineered nature, original Earth-removal mission, Auditor “defective” designation, barista civilian identity, and the internal A.E.G.I.S. transcript of their argument with Paragon over whether to trust her.

Agent Lila Ortega (MANIFEST director) was present and attacked. Players saved her. Team now has influence over Lila Ortega.

A.E.G.I.S. went into full lockdown following the hack.

Departure consequence: Kiara left Earth at the end of this session following the broadcast.

Original GM Notes (still relevant for future reference):

The fight should feel like a public embarrassment as much as a threat — cameras were rolling
Riley’s pursuit kept him off the board; the players had to close it themselves
Smart play: containing the constructs quickly limits Signal’s broadcast footage

Beat 3 — Signal’s First Broadcast

Status: PARTIALLY PLAYED — Session 1

Signal’s Kiara reveal happened during Beat 2 rather than as a separate broadcast beat. The beat’s second half — broadcasting the Alliance struggling against Carter Williams and Darkstar’s ship — may still be delivered as a follow-up broadcast or folded into the next session’s opening.

Adjust: The Kiara reveal is done. Signal’s ongoing broadcast initiative is established. His next move is the Sterling reveal (Beat 4).

Original GM Notes:

Signal’s tone: calm, almost sympathetic. He is not angry. He is concerned.
End on his sign-off — a question, not a threat. He places it and leaves.

Beat 3.5 — Carter Surfaces (Nova / Avi)

STATUS: RESOLVED — Session 1

Grainy footage — security camera or phone video — showed a figure stopping a car with their hands, walking away from something that should have been fatal. The face wasn’t clearly identifiable to the public, but Avi recognized him. This is the person who assaulted her. She does not yet know his name or what he’s become.

Current state: Avi is carrying this recognition. She has not yet connected the face to Carter Williams or the Renegade Force. The footage is circulating publicly.

GM Notes:

Avi’s recognition is a player-initiated moment, not an NPC prompt — let her decide when and how to act on it
Signal has not deployed Carter yet. This footage was incidental — Carter slipping, not Signal’s plan
If Aubrey’s text thread is pulled, it collides with Avi’s recognition in potentially explosive ways

Beat 4 — Sterling Reveal

Reveal 1 — Starfall: STATUS: DONE — Signal surfaced Kiara’s origin during Beat 2. This reveal is spent.

Reveal 2 — Sterling / Darkstar: STATUS: DONE — Session 2

Signal revealed Sterling is Darkstar’s son publicly. Showed “corpse” footage of Darkstar, reframed the Renegade as the hero who did what the Alliance couldn’t. Sterling recognized the corpse as a fake. The city believes Darkstar is dead. Carter Williams is now a sympathetic public figure. Avi’s position is complicated — she recognized Carter as her assaulter, but the public narrative casts him as a hero.

The team’s legitimacy is under direct attack. Sterling is carrying information no one else has — the corpse is a lie — and what he does with that is his call.

The Renegade kill: Signal follows the parentage reveal with footage of the Renegade Force destroying Darkstar’s ship — a threat the Alliance knew about for years and refused to deal with permanently. His framing: They knew. They chose not to act. Someone else had to. The Renegade gets reframed as the one who did what the Alliance couldn’t. Carter Williams becomes a sympathetic figure — the person who stepped up when the institution wouldn’t.

The corpse footage: Signal closes with footage of what appears to be Darkstar’s body — confirmation that the threat is over. The visual capstone. The Alliance failed. Someone else solved the problem.

Sterling notices it’s a fake. He knows his father’s biology. He knows dark matter energy signatures. Whatever Signal showed the city — the decay pattern is wrong, the energy is wrong, something is wrong. Darkstar isn’t confirmed dead. The city believes it. A.E.G.I.S. believes it. Signal is broadcasting it. Sterling knows none of them are right.

Red Pill Cameo: The city is already reactive from the Kiara reveals. Owen Watson transforms in a charged public space — a protest outside Alliance Tower, a press scrum. His emotional amplification field makes the crowd worse.

GM Notes:

Signal’s framing is a legitimacy attack, not a trust break. The question he’s placing isn’t “did Sterling deceive you?” It’s “why are you fighting alongside something that was built to cull you?”
Sterling’s arc here is external pressure, not internal crisis — he has chosen humanity and is holding that choice. What the beat costs him is the city’s willingness to accept that choice.
The fake corpse gives Sterling leverage. The city is questioning him, but he has information no one else has. The corpse is a lie. That’s power — if he chooses to use it. He can also choose to sit on it, which is its own statement.
The Renegade sympathy reframing complicates everything. If the city sees Carter Williams as the person who did what the Alliance wouldn’t, Avi’s position (she recognized Carter as her assaulter) becomes much harder. The public narrative doesn’t match her experience. That tension is productive.
The Alliance looks weak in a new way. Not just “harboring Darkstar’s son” — they failed to act on a cosmic threat, and someone else had to. This is Signal’s institutional critique sharpened.
The Scion Respect mechanic becomes harder after this beat, not easier. The city’s greatest leader may now be actively hostile. Earn that difficulty.
Watch for Raze’s timing. If Raze surfaces publicly while this narrative is hot, he doesn’t need to say anything — his existence confirms the fear. Signal won’t even need to frame it. But Raze may also notice the fake — or he may not. Sterling knowing Darkstar may be alive while Raze believes he’s dead is its own kind of leverage.
The civilian anchor matters. Sterling proving himself through a fight won is less legible to the public than a human moment. Celeste Timber is out there. The story should put that option in reach without forcing it.
Red Pill cameo removed from this arc. Owen Watson is available as a scene complication if needed later.

Beat 5 — Nightfall Comes In

Morgan Vale approaches the team — not attacking, not threatening. Asking.

They believe heroes ultimately serve humanity. They want to be part of something that does. What they did to Artemis was real, and they are not pretending otherwise. But they are here.

They also bring something concrete: they recognized the constructs from the press room. The abandoned A.E.G.I.S. materials lab where Morgan manifested was an Eclipse-adjacent site. They have been inside Eclipse infrastructure before.

Jason has to decide what to do with that — and with them.

STATUS: PLAYED — Session 2 (deviated from plan)

Beat 5 was planned as Morgan approaching the team with open hands. Instead: Casper, Jason, and Rhys tracked Nightfall to an Eclipse research building where Morgan was destroying PROMETHEUS equipment. Jason confronted Morgan directly.

What happened:

Morgan revealed the Wavelength nature of powers — same-spectrum hosts are driven by an ecology to compete and pair
Nightfall admitted Mary was the third person they’ve killed with low-frequency powers (two others unnamed)
Nightfall attempted to pair with Jason (Wavelength ecology’s intended resolution)
Jason rejected the pairing — the first High Spectrum host to refuse complementary pairing
The confrontation was adversarial, not a voluntary approach

Key deviation from plan: Morgan did not offer open hands to the team. Jason rejected the pairing. The Nightfall thread is now adversarial in a more complicated way. Morgan still has Eclipse infrastructure knowledge and Wavelength knowledge, but the offer was refused. The question of whether they can still be useful — and whether Jason can work with them at all — is unresolved.

Original GM Notes (still relevant):

Do not resolve the Jason/Nightfall dynamic in one scene. It is an ongoing friction point.
The practical offer (Eclipse knowledge, infiltration capability) gives the team a rational reason to work with Nightfall even if no one is ready to trust them.
This is Jason’s beat above all others.

Beat 6 — PROMETHEUS

STATUS: PARTIALLY PLAYED — Session 2 (early, improvised)

Beat 6 was planned as a stealth infiltration guided by Nightfall. Instead: the team found the Eclipse research building through Sloane’s intel on Nightfall’s movements, saw Nightfall inside destroying PROMETHEUS equipment, extracted what intel they could, and decided to destroy the facility.

What the team found: PROMETHEUS equipment in an Eclipse research lab. Information about the program. The scale of what they saw is unclear — they may not have had time for a full assessment before destroying the site.

Key difference from plan: No stealth. No Nightfall guide. The facility is destroyed, not infiltrated. Eclipse knows the team was there. This accelerates the Eclipse retaliation timeline (Beat 7) and means the team may have less evidence than the planned stealth approach would have yielded.

Original GM Notes (still relevant):

The Eclipse thread leads to a black site facility. Nightfall is what makes the insertion possible.

Inside: the construction infrastructure for the cyborg cadavers. The scale is wrong. A terminal. An email chain. Casimir Vane’s name on an order demanding the program accelerate.

GM Notes:

The facility should feel wrong before it feels dangerous
Don’t hand them the Vane/Signal connection here — that comes at the Gala
Let them take something out that points toward the Gala
Smart play: get in, get the evidence, get out without triggering the facility

Beat 7 — Eclipse Ambush / Secret Drop 3 & 4

Eclipse Ambush: Eclipse knows the team was in the facility. They move to retrieve or destroy what the team pulled out.

Reveal 3 — Paragon Force: Signal publishes evidence that the Paragon Force can be consciously released and directed by its host — and that the previous Paragon chose Ethan Roberts. Signal’s framing: Your protector was selected by his predecessor. He has always had the option to put it down. He has not. Ask him why.

Reveal 4 — Half-Life / Decay: Signal outs Casper’s history as Decay. Whatever A.E.G.I.S. has on file. One of your new heroes has a file. Read it.

GM Notes:

The ambush’s stakes are the Gala evidence — if the team loses it here, they arrive with less leverage
Reveal 3 is the endgame setup — plant it here so Monument Circle lands
Reveal 4 is a trust moment: does the team already know? How do they respond now that the public does?

Beat 8 — The Gala

Vane Capital’s fundraiser gala — reframed as a fundraiser for the city’s DA. Casimir is out on bail and throwing it brazenly. The team arrives with PROMETHEUS evidence in hand.

The find: Something at the Gala confirms that Vane’s Eclipse funding connects upstream to Signal’s operation. Vane is not Signal. But Signal’s campaign would not be possible without Vane’s resources.

GM Notes:

Casimir is not obviously a villain in person — make the players work for the connection
The DA framing makes his brazenness the point: he is not hiding, he is demonstrating that he doesn’t have to
End the session on the moment of discovery, not the confrontation

Beat 9 — Signal Dismantles the Alliance

Before Carter is unleashed, Signal removes each Alliance member from the board.

Kiara / Starfall — ALREADY RESOLVED (Session 1). Her “defective” designation was broadcast publicly. She left Earth on her own terms.

Ethan / Paragon — Ethan removes himself. Monument Circle broadcast corners him into releasing the Force voluntarily.

Natalia / Vanguard — A.E.G.I.S. uses public chaos as cover. Director Shaw invokes the monitoring framework and detains her.

Elena / Riftfire — Riverside Ward burns. Her students are there. She goes.

Javier / Quantum — Signal leaks his containment suit schematics to Eclipse. Eclipse moves on his lab. He goes dark to prevent a reality instability event.

GM Notes:

Each removal should feel inevitable in retrospect
Natalia’s detention seeds Arc 2’s institutional overreach
Kiara’s early removal means one Alliance pillar is already gone when the endgame begins

Beat 10 — The Endgame

Monument Circle. Signal engineers the public confrontation. Paragon releases the Force voluntarily. Carter refuses the agreement. Riley breaks covering Ethan’s gap. The players are all that’s left.

Avi has to be present. The Carter/Avi confrontation happens here, in the wreckage of Monument Circle, on Carter’s terms.

Carter is reachable. His Guilty condition is the thread.

Signal escapes. The arc does not resolve him.

GM Notes:

The partial win is the honest shape of this arc
Carter’s fate should emerge from play, not from prep
Worst-case state going into Arc 2: supers officially outlawed, team operating as vigilantes, Alliance gone

Signal’s Reveal Schedule (Summary)

Session	Reveal	Who Knew Before	Signal’s Weapon	Status
Session 1	Starfall engineered as a weapon / Kiara’s origin	Kiara, Paragon, A.E.G.I.S.	Public trust in Paragon and Alliance	DONE
Session 2	Sterling is Darkstar’s son + Renegade killed Darkstar + “corpse” footage	Sterling, team	Public legitimacy of the team; Alliance institutional failure; Renegade public sympathy	DONE
Session 2	Darkstar “death” (fake corpse) / Renegade as hero	Sterling (knows it’s fake)	Alliance institutional failure; Renegade sympathy; Sterling carries secret	DONE
Mid	Paragon Force can be released / Ethan was chosen	Ethan	Paragon’s legitimacy; endgame setup	Pending
Mid	Half-Life was Decay	Casper (player)	Public exposure; team trust	Pending
Endgame	Riley/Carter tape	Signal, Riley	Recluse’s moral authority; held as the final weapon	Pending

Alliance Dismantling Summary

Member	How Signal Removes Them	Status
Paragon / Ethan	Ethan removes himself — Monument Circle broadcast corners him into releasing the Force	Pending
Starfall / Kiara	Broadcast forced her hand — she left on her own terms	DONE — Session 1
Vanguard / Natalia	A.E.G.I.S. detains her under crisis authority	Pending
Riftfire / Elena	Riverside Ward burns; her students are there	Pending
Quantum / Javier	Eclipse destabilizes his containment suit; he goes dark	Pending

Arc End State (Target)

Paragon Force released — Ethan Roberts, ordinary human
Riley Thomas in a coma — self-inflicted via deterioration, not Signal’s hand
Alliance fractured and gone — each member removed by their own defining vulnerability
Signal at large — real name and Renegade history still unknown
PROMETHEUS network damaged but not destroyed
Vane/Eclipse connection documented but not yet publicly proven
Natalia detained by A.E.G.I.S. — seeds Arc 2’s institutional overreach
Nightfall’s status on or adjacent to the team: unresolved
Carter Williams and the Renegade Force: fate determined by play

Last updated: April 2026 Session 2 logged. Beat 4 played — Sterling outed, Darkstar “death” broadcast, Renegade reframed. Beat 5 played (deviated) — Jason confronted Nightfall, rejected pairing. Beat 6 played (early) — Eclipse lab destroyed. Vane mayoral bid. Sterling extraction by Adrian/Sloane/Avi/Mason.