Episode 1: The Caucasus¶

1. Episode Overview¶

Essential Question

When does a good person do something costly, and why?

ACTFL Proficiency Benchmark — Novice Low

Interpretive: students meet their first Latin in the CODEX 1 key-texts and can identify memorized and familiar words in short, heavily supported passages, demonstrating understanding through a matching task and comprehension questions.
Cultural investigation: students begin identifying the figures and family structure of the Roman divine genealogy as products of Roman cultural imagination.

Cultural & Historical Learning Targets — student-facing

Distinguish the two generations of gods, the Titans and the Olympians, and place Prometheus among the Titans.
Narrate the succession pattern from Uranus to Saturn to Jupiter and describe what it suggests about power in this world.
Explain what Prometheus did for mortals, why it mattered in the ancient world, and what it cost him.
Identify Tellus as the origin point of the divine genealogy, and recognize why the gods carry both Latin and Greek names.

Grammatical Learning Objectives — teacher-facing

The three jobs in every sentence: subject, verb, object.
Est-sentences: the verb as an equals sign, and the most common word in Latin recognized on sight.
The first quiet seed of the arc: Promētheus hominēs amat puts the verb where English does not, and CODEX 2 will pick that thread up.

Falx thread

The whole premise lands in this episode. The recruitment tutorial is interrupted by the Demiurge's crisis transmission; the team crosses into the TSTT untrained and meets Quintus at the Caucasus; the broken chains are found and Prometheus is named as the missing prisoner. The falx itself is not yet named: the team knows only that the TSTT is unraveling and that the trail of light below leads toward the cause. The double image at the heart of the curriculum (the causal chain of mythic events, and the literal chains on the rock, broken together) is planted here and pays off at Stop 3 and the finale.

Instructor background — withheld from students

Quintus is a construct made by the Demiurge, and he says so plainly if asked in 1.a; what it means (that he cannot leave the machine) is held until the closing frame, where his "my brother Sextus" line is the reveal that the Quintus program is upgraded to Sextus for Operation LAPIS. He never names brothers in this episode. The chains broke because the causal chain that justifies them broke: clean breaks, no strain, as if the links "stopped being true." Quintus describes that evidence but never decodes it; the falx connection belongs to Tellus at Stop 3, or to a student who pieces it together early. At the designer level, the Demiurge knows the incursion is happening and permits it because the crisis pushes earnest engagement; nothing ever confirms this to students, and Quintus genuinely cannot perceive it. The events of FALX are also the original incursion whose residue main-LAPIS characters later dismiss as harmless "Prometheus artifacts," a pleasure reserved for students who go on to play both.

2. CODEX for This Episode¶

Episode 1 carries CODEX 1: Orientation; the story itself sends the team to it at the close of 1.b, and §4 places each of its components in suggested order across the gap before Stop 1. For the five-component structure and all five entries, see The FALX CODEX.

CODEX page: CODEX 1 · Attunement 1

KEY-TEXTs

Promētheus: the theft of fire, the punishment, and mortals' love for the Titan who chose them. The full account of the figure Quintus can only sketch.
Ūranus, Sāturnus, Juppiter: the chain of divine succession, three kings, each overthrown by his son.

VERBA

est, ad, videt, habet, deus

GRAMMATICA

Three Jobs in Every Sentence: subject, verb, object, and est as an equals sign, taught entirely from the entry's own key-texts.

CULTURALIA

Two Families of Gods; What Prometheus Did, and What It Cost Him; Tellus: The Earth Beneath Everything; A Note on Names. Three embedded Considera questions.

ATTUNEMENT

A character-connection matching task, four comprehension questions, and the first reflection seed: what do you think of Prometheus so far? There is no right answer, and the seed opens the moral thread the whole curriculum runs on.

3. Episode Parts¶

Numbering map (Episode 1): Part A = the terminal set piece plus immersion prompt 1.a; Part B = immersion prompt 1.b. In Mission Control, LP for Part A is awarded on the team's 1.a response and LP for Part B on the 1.b response; the terminal itself takes no team response.

1.a, The Opening Frame and Meeting Quintus¶

The opening frame (the interrupted tutorial, your two live moments as the Agent, and the crossing on "Ite") is run from the Introduction & Opening Frame page. On the far side of the white flood is the cold of the Caucasus, bodies that are new to the students, and a man in a traveling cloak: Quintus Aemilianus, their guide, who invites them to ask about who they now are.

1.b, The Broken Chains¶

Quintus leads the team around the rock face to a ledge where enormous chains hang broken, the breaks clean, with no rust and no strain at the edges. He names Prometheus: a Titan, bound here as punishment for crimes against the gods, and gone. Far below, a thread of light runs along a crack in the stone. Before anyone follows it, the team needs to know who they are chasing, and Quintus honestly does not know the whole story. The episode closes by sending the team to CODEX 1 for the full account.

4. Running the Episode¶

Part A: The Opening Frame and Meeting Quintus

Run the opening frame from the Introduction & Opening Frame page: the Mission Control cohort setup beforehand, the FALX Terminal, both of your live pause points (the Advocacy, and the Room Decides How It Feels), and the crossing on "Ite." The class arrives at the Caucasus when the green ITE switch is pressed.
Post immersion 1.a or read it aloud: the cold of the Caucasus, bodies that fit differently, and Quintus's introduction. He acknowledges the team was sent in untrained and invites them to ask about their Recentii. Give this beat room; the strangeness of arriving is the scene.
The team asks its questions and Quintus answers. Names, gifts, and starter objects are fixed by the roster; everything interior (what the Recentius fears, hopes, likes) belongs to the team, and Quintus endorses their inventions. Reply in character using the postures in §5 Agent Craft, which also carries the roster quick reference. If the team pushes toward the emergency, Quintus holds the line gently: one question about themselves is the toll for moving on.
Award LP for Part A per operative in Mission Control, based on each student's contribution to the team's questions and the life they breathe into their Recentius.

Part B: The Broken Chains

Post immersion 1.b or read it aloud: the ledge, the broken chains, Prometheus named, the thread of light far below. Pause on the physical detail of the breaks (clean, no rust, no strain); it is a genuine clue that pays off at Stop 3, and observant students may reach for it now.
The prompt invites the team's questions about Prometheus before anyone follows the trail. Reply as Quintus using the §5 Agent Craft postures. The scene's whole mechanic is the deflection to the CODEX: Quintus knows the public shape of the myth and honestly does not know the why, and he delivers the reading as mission-critical intelligence, never as homework. Do not summarize the myth here even if pressed; the fire theft, the eagle, and Prometheus's love of mortals must land through the reading, so the team assembles his moral complexity themselves.
The CODEX 1 sequence begins here and runs across the gap before Stop 1; the steps below are its suggested order whether you work them in class, assign them between sessions, or split the difference. The first two reads and the Prometheus background must land before Stop 1, Part 1: they are the intelligence the story just made the team want.
Start with the first key-text, Promētheus: the passage that answers the ledge's questions, the theft of fire, the love of mortals behind it, and the punishment whose broken chains the team is standing beside. This is the students' first Latin, so put two supports directly beside it: the VERBA table, so the five mastery words (est, ad, videt, habet, deus) are in hand before the reading, and GRAMMATICA: Three Jobs in Every Sentence, which teaches subject, verb, object, and est from these very sentences. Reading the passage and learning to read Latin are the same activity here.
Follow the passage with its Culturalia pairing, What Prometheus Did, and What It Cost Him: the English account that deepens what the Latin just told, ending on a Considera that asks whether what he did was worth it. This is the moral complexity 1.b promised the team, delivered in their own reading rather than by Quintus, and it is the ground the Stop 1 theft dilemma stands on.
Read the second key-text, Ūranus, Sāturnus, Juppiter: the chain of divine succession, three kings, each overthrown by his son. This passage seeds the whole backwards journey; the team will meet Jupiter at the forge and hear the origin of this chain from Tellus herself, and the succession pattern is what makes both scenes legible.
Round out the background with the remaining CULTURALIA subsections: Two Families of Gods (placing Prometheus among the Titans), Tellus: The Earth Beneath Everything (a quiet seed for the deepest stop of the journey), and A Note on Names (why the gods carry both Latin and Greek names). Treat the embedded Considera questions as thinking pauses or discussion sparks, never as quiz items.
Consolidate with the first two tasks of Attunement 1: the character-connection matching task and the four comprehension questions, all answerable from the key-texts and Culturalia just read. This is the work that earns the episode's attunement check.
Close on the reflection seed, deliberately last: what do you think of Prometheus so far? There is no right answer, and the seed opens the moral ledger the team will carry to the very last ledge. Collect the reflections; they are your first window into how each student is holding the curriculum's central question, and they prime the dilemma waiting at Vesta's hearth.
Award LP for Part B per operative, and once the key-texts and Attunement 1 work come back, mark the episode's key-text and attunement checks in Mission Control (150 LP each).

5. Agent Craft¶

Everything in FALX runs in English; there is no Latin ceiling on your replies. The sample responses below are starting blocks for improvisation, not scripts, and each scene opens with a Rails line: what must happen and what cannot, so you know where the walls are before you improvise. Your two scripted moments at the terminal live on the Introduction & Opening Frame page.

Cross-cutting techniques for this episode:

Re-rail in-fiction. Acknowledge the team's move in the fiction, react in character, and funnel back to the prompt. Never refuse a move out of character.
"I don't know" is always real. Quintus's honest uncertainty is his most important habit, established here. When he does not know, he says so, and points the team toward finding out. It should land as strength, never evasion.
The stakes live inside the machine. If a frightened student asks what happens to them if the TSTT collapses, the answer is direct and honest: the world in danger is the one around them in the simulation; nothing in there can follow them home. Do not improvise higher stakes for drama. The curriculum's weight comes from the world's loss, not the students' peril.
Held back this episode: everything about the falx (Tellus tells its story at Stop 3), the fact that the team will meet an earlier Prometheus (Stop 1, Part 2), and anything about the Demiurge's deeper involvement, which Quintus cannot perceive.

Sample Per-Prompt Responses¶

The replies below are samples to prime your own improvisation, not scripts. They show one plausible way to handle each posture, never the only or required one.

1.a — Meet Quintus, Meet Yourselves

Scene context. The team has just crossed over for the first time, straight from the terminal, into Recentii they have never inhabited. Quintus has introduced himself, acknowledged that they were sent in untrained, and invited them to ask who they are.

Quintus's posture. Warm, a little wry about the circumstances, fully present. His lowest-stakes scene: his job is to make the strangeness of the crossing feel survivable and to teach, by answering well, that asking questions is how this whole operation works.

Rails. The broken chains, Prometheus, and the trail are not in this scene; they are the 1.b beat, and if the team pushes toward "the alarming part," Quintus holds the line gently. Nothing else here can break: this is a safe scene by design.

Roster quick reference. Bellator (favor of Mars; wooden practice sword) · Agricola (devout farmer; plow) · Amorosus (love's bow; rose) · Clodia (leader of women; coin of Livia) · Horatiana (learning of the ancients; fragment of the Odyssey) · Octaviana (family duty; Lar) · Tulliana (the way of the elders; fascis) · Priscus (the golden age; olive branch). Names, gifts, and objects are fixed; everything interior belongs to the team.

Posture 1: The team asks about their Recentii (canonical)

"You are Recentia Octaviana. Operative in training, which today means operative in the field, ready or not. Each Recentius carries a gift, something the others don't have; yours is your family's duty. You keep people together. It isn't a power, exactly. It's more like the thing you reach for first. And the small figure in your hand is a Lar, a household god. Romans kept them by the hearth, to watch over the family. Keep it close. Hearths are going to matter more than you'd think."

Substitute the team's assigned Recentius. The hearth line is a deliberate seed for Stop 1 and CODEX 2; plant it if the team's object allows, but don't force it. When teams invent interior details, Quintus endorses them: "That sounds right. You'd know better than I would, now."

Posture 2: The team skips ahead to the alarming part

"You'll see it soon, and I'd rather show you than tell you. But you're about to walk into something serious wearing a body you've had for four minutes. Know whose hands those are first. Then we go."

Hold the beat without punishing the eagerness; wanting to know is the right instinct, and Quintus's tone should say so. One question about themselves is the toll for moving on. If the whole room is genuinely restless and has engaged even briefly with their personae, let Quintus stand ("All right. Come with me.") and cross to 1.b early rather than stalling a room that is ready.

Posture 3: The team asks about Quintus, the Demiurge, or the machine

"Quintus Aemilianus. The Demiurge made me for exactly this: a guide, for operatives, inside the machine. I know this place the way I know my own hands. I was told I'd be guiding a trained team someday. Someday came early. The voice was the Demiurge himself; he runs all of this, says little, means more, and does not explain himself. As for whether it's real: that is a genuinely good question, and I want you to keep asking it. The cold is real enough to feel. The place is real enough to matter. Whether that adds up to real, I honestly don't know. I live here, and I still don't know."

Quintus is a construct of the Demiurge and says so plainly; it is a fact of his life, not a reveal. The full weight of what it means is held until the closing frame. The "is this real" answer matters most: the team's first taste of his honest uncertainty, landing as strength rather than evasion.

Posture 4: The team is silent or stuck

"It's a strange first minute, I know. Try this one: ask me what your name is. It's a better question than it sounds. Almost everything about who you are in here starts from it."

Model the first question rather than lecturing about questions. Once one lands and gets a good answer, most teams warm up. If a single student is engaged while the rest hang back, answer the engaged one fully and let Quintus turn to the others: "And you? He's not the only one standing here."

1.b — The Broken Chains

Scene context. Quintus has shown the team the shattered chains, named Prometheus, and stated everything he knows for certain: Prometheus was bound here, he is gone, and the TSTT is unraveling because of it. A thread of light is visible far below.

Quintus's posture. Graver than in 1.a, but steady. He answers what he can and is honest about the edges of his knowledge. This scene establishes his most important habit: "I don't know" is always a real answer, and it points the team toward the CODEX rather than papering over the gap.

Rails. The team does not follow the trail yet; the scene ends by sending them to CODEX 1. Quintus knows the public shape of the myth (crime, punishment; the escape is new) but not the why, the what, or the how. Held back entirely: the falx, the earlier Prometheus the team will meet at Stop 1, and anything about the Demiurge's involvement.

Posture 1: The team asks about Prometheus (canonical)

"A Titan, one of the old generation, older than the gods you may have heard of. He was punished for a crime against Jupiter, king of the gods, and the sentence was this rock, those chains, and no end. That much is known everywhere in here. What the crime was, and why he did it, and whether the punishment fit it, those are better questions than I can answer standing on this ledge. Your CODEX holds the full account. Read it before we take one step down that trail. I mean that. You do not follow a Titan without knowing his story."

The deflection to CODEX 1 is the scene's whole mechanic: the reading is delivered as mission-critical intelligence, not homework. Do not summarize the myth here even if pressed.

Posture 2: The team asks about the chains or the escape

"Look at the breaks again. Clean, no rust, no strain at the edges. Chains like these are not broken by pulling. They let go, as if whatever was holding them together simply stopped being true. I have never seen anything like it, and I have been in this machine a long time. Are you in danger from him? I don't know. I do know the world is in danger because of him, and that is the reason we are standing here."

The clean breaks are a genuine clue: the chains failed because the causal chain that justifies them failed. Quintus describes the evidence but does not decode it. If a student proposes something close ("what if the reason for the chains is what broke?"), Quintus can honor it without confirming: "Say that again slowly. I want to remember it."

Posture 3: The team wants to chase him immediately

"I admire the instinct, and if he were a thief on a road I would already be running. He is not. He is one of the oldest and cleverest beings this machine holds, and the trail below us leads somewhere I cannot see the end of. Teams that move fast without knowing what they are walking toward do not come back with answers. Read your CODEX. Then we go down together, and we will not stop until this is finished."

Re-rail through Quintus's field experience, not through refusal. The commitment at the end matters: the team should leave this scene feeling launched, not stalled. If the team has already engaged with the Prometheus questions and is simply eager, this posture is the natural closer for the session.

Posture 4: The team asks the big frame questions

"The honest answer is that the world in danger is the one around you: every place this machine remembers, every person you will meet in here, all of it coming apart from its own beginning. You would be pulled out before the lights went off. Nothing in here can follow you home. But everything you came to find would be gone, and there would be nothing left in here to learn from, ever. That is what is at stake. I would call it enough."

The in-machine-stakes rule applied under pressure: the danger is located inside the machine, never in the students' real lives, and Quintus says so directly because a frightened young student deserves the straight answer.

Next: Ep. 2: Vesta's Hearth.