Open threads: prompts for future adaptations

Full spoilers.

These are the eleven questions that docs/story-diagnostic.md (section e) found the text opening and never answering by its last block, c32-b111. Each is listed with the blocks that raise it and the blocks that come nearest to touching it. Each prompt names what the text fixes, so an adaptation can fill the gap without contradicting it.

Source: the committed chapter text in content/snowmoon/text/. Block IDs are c<chapter>-b<idx>.

The three adaptations seeded in this folder (dog-dawn/, lily-classroom/, room-change/) take their scenes from answered or relayed events, not from these threads. dog-dawn/ also turns on gaps the diagnostic did not list among the eleven: where Deluin was during the battle and how he got out.

1. The purple letter

• Raised: c7-b141–c7-b144. After the city final, Zei finds a dark purple letter among his prizes. Its inscription is "dun fe tin di zei de kin kie" (c7-b142), "For Zei's eyes only" (c7-b143). He puts it in his pocket without scanning its code (c7-b144).
• Nearest: Zei's next scene (c9-b50–c9-b56) has him following watch directions deep into the mountain pyramid to meet Den. The text never says the letter sent him there.
• Prompt: What is in the letter, and who wrote it? Fixed by the text: it was a prize that Bai did not get (c7-b141); it carries a scannable code (c7-b144); and the next thing Zei does on the page is meet the Kungaupei (c9-b56).

2. Who shouted "Order member"

• Raised: c1-b73: "HEY EVERYONE, IT'S AN ORDER MEMBER!", someone behind him yelled.
• Nearest:
  • Gladias reads it as part of "a sort of deliberately engineered game" that keeps Order members careful (c1-b76).
  • A robed stranger then runs as a decoy (c1-b77).
  • The anonymous sender says "I saw you at the concert" (c1-b138).
• Prompt: Who shouted, and why? Fixed by the text: the shouter stands behind him at a Dreadknot concert (c1-b73). The crowd films the decoy (c1-b77). A large man films Gladias's face (c1-b78), and Gladias deletes that footage (c1-b82–c1-b84). The decoy is not identified either.

3. How Delwart tracked Gladias down

• Raised: c3-b86 (Gladias: "You track me down…"), c3-b101 (Delwart knows his Tier 3 vote).
• Nearest: Balme, another Keeper, says the same of Delwart: "Somehow he had been able to track me down" (c20-b103). Bai later says Delwart "had planted evidence for months against Gladias and Mov" (c29-b127).
• Prompt: How did Delwart find Order members whose identities are meant to be private (c1-b76)? Fixed by the text: he contacts them by anonymous verified message (c1-b138, c1-b140; c20-b103). He knows a private vote (c3-b101). The book later calls him an Arctic agent (c21-b71).

4. The spying device in the Keeper booth

• Raised: c10-b116. Eighteen finds "a small bump on the table" hiding a spying device with a camera (c10-b114, c10-b116, c10-b120).
• Nearest: Nine examines it and guesses it was aimed at business decisions, not the Order (c10-b118–c10-b119). Eighteen leads the group to another booth (c10-b124–c10-b126). Nobody returns to it.
• Prompt: Who planted it, and what did it see? Fixed by the text: it was skillfully inserted and the table repaired (c10-b116). It could read lips and necks (c10-b120). It was found with the help of a drone's infrared check and a nonlinear junction detector (c10-b122).

5. The Ephelion poster

• Raised: c3-b4–c3-b6. A poster taped at four corners in a Y-shaped tunnel intersection; its text is the screen at c3-b5. Gladias wonders "what kind of Veridian" would put it up (c3-b6).
• Nearest: at c6-b143 the poster "with Lord Ephelion's message was gone".
• Prompt: Who put it up, and who took it down? Fixed by the text: where it was (c3-b4), what it said (c3-b5), and that it was gone a few days later (c6-b143).

6. Who pulled Tafindel back inside

• Raised: c26-b110. During the extraction, "Someone had grabbed Tafindel, and pulled him back inside."
• Nearest: his assistant is named as "their man on the inside" when both escape (c26-b132). The extraction succeeds by Mu's improvised plan (c26-b146–c26-b156).
• Prompt: Who grabbed him, and why? A guard, a cautious ally, or the assistant? Fixed by the text: the moment the check mark turned back to a yellow triangle (c26-b109), the Arctic drones opening fire (c26-b111), and the later escape of both men (c26-b132).

7. The traitors behind Rear base #3

• Raised: c29-b108: "Most likely cause: internal traitors revealed the location of the base."
• Nearest: Den is commander of Group South (c29-b26–c29-b27). His death is later confirmed by his funeral (c31-b93). Mu takes over (c29-b110).
• Prompt: Who revealed the base, and did anyone find out? Fixed by the text: the strike was "highly accurate", by Arctic missiles (c29-b108). It came during the battle on the night of Snowmoon 29–30 (c29-b54).

8. Kidnapping an Arctic drone

• Raised: c22-b138: "the next step is that we want to actually kidnap an Arctic drone and bring it back to Dzego for analysis."
• Nearest: Zei asks Jahn for an introduction to a second defense company to help (c22-b140–c22-b142). The only recovered Arctic drone the book mentions is a damaged one that Veridia recovered from Northshore (c28-b47).
• Prompt: Did the Dzego operation in Redshire ever take a drone? Fixed by the text: the earlier drone trap and how narrowly it held (c22-b76, c22-b129), and the Arctics confiscating electronics in Redshire (c22-b135).

9. Super-pandemics

• Raised: c11-b107: "Super-pandemics. Like, deliberately released by the Arctics."
• Nearest:
  • A Keeper answers that the Arctics are "a super opaque society" (c11-b109).
  • Belgor says some in Dzego fear "a deliberately-released pandemic" (c17-b78).
  • Deluin, back from Glasscrown, says that if he could shut one thing down "it would be the research on superviruses" (c31-b46).
• Prompt: What is the Arctic supervirus research, and how close did it come to use? Fixed by the text: Deluin's remark that the research exists (c31-b46), and Dzego's interest in air filters and ultraviolet lights (c17-b78).

10. What Zei tells his mother

• Raised: c9-b140. He "could not tell the full truth. The Kungaupei forbade it - and his mom had already watched him heal from one bomb."
• Nearest: he hopes to be posted to Pafogai "so that he could see Fin and his mom again" (c15-b88). His mother, Min, is not in a scene after chapter 5 (c5-b4, c5-b7, c5-b26).
• Prompt: What did Min know, or guess, while her son ran drone battles? Fixed by the text: the compute box he meant to buy her with prize money (c4-b73, c7-b138, c9-b18), and the secrecy rule (c9-b140).

11. The next round

• Raised: c32-b88 (Verdow: "The Arctic Emperor is upset. He can't do anything to us right now, but he's definitely scheming. There will be a next round."), c32-b97 ("We might have that peace, we might not.").
• Nearest:
  • The terms: the Arctics kept Redshire and lost Northshore and Thaldur (c32-b30), after Tafindel's proposed trade (c31-b60).
  • Thaldur's people helping open captured technology (c32-b28).
  • Bai considering a year in Thaldur (c32-b98).
• Prompt: What does the next round look like, from either side? Fixed by the text: Verdow's estimate of "five years from now" to "twenty years from now" (c32-b88), and the settlement as stated in c32-b28–c32-b30.