The crisis advances through state, not a detached campaign script. Successful automation increases demand; deeper extraction changes dungeon response; infrastructure loss creates replacement and defence demand; foreign societies observe harm, dependency, and opportunity; institutions act according to their own knowledge and interests.
Player-visible phases
- Useful abundance: workshop automation and dungeon products solve ordinary needs.
- Anomalies: route changes, strange fauna, unstable supplies, and disputed measurements appear locally.
- Correlated pressure: distant symptoms, repeated functional targeting, testimony, and market changes make isolation less credible.
- Political fracture: inspections, moratoria, strikes, sanctions, sabotage, and public mandates change available work.
- Mobilization: procurement, route control, requisition, intervention, and ecological defence reshape both modes.
- Recognition: players encounter evidence that the Deep World and industrial civilization are adaptive nested systems.
No phase requires one villain or one mandatory player conclusion. The external Ghostlight world supplies independent foreign choices; Delvehold commits the Greathold’s realized response. Authored crisis anchors may constrain timing or guarantee important evidence, but they cannot dictate unearned local outcomes.