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.
A first quiet seed for the arc: Promētheus hominēs amat puts the verb where English doesn't, and CODEX 2 picks up that thread.

Falx thread

The whole premise lands in this episode. The Demiurge's crisis transmission interrupts the recruitment tutorial, the team crosses into the TSTT untrained and meets Quintus at the Caucasus, and at the broken chains Prometheus is named as the missing prisoner. Nobody names the falx yet; the team knows only that the TSTT is coming apart and that the thread of light below leads toward the cause. The curriculum's double image, the chain of mythic events and the literal chains on the rock broken together, is planted here and pays off at Stop 3 and in the finale.

Instructor background — withheld from students

Quintus is a construct made by the Demiurge and says so plainly if asked in 1.a. What that costs him, that he can never leave the machine, waits for the closing frame, where he sends the team on to his brother Sextus (behind the scenes, the Quintus program is upgraded to Sextus for Operation LAPIS). He names no brothers in this episode. The chains broke because the chain of events that justified them broke, which is why the breaks are clean, with no rust and no scrape marks: the links simply stopped holding. Quintus describes that evidence but never decodes it, since the falx connection belongs to Tellus at Stop 3, or to a student who pieces it together early. Behind the scenes, the Demiurge knows the incursion is happening and allows it because the crisis pushes students into earnest engagement; nothing ever confirms this to students, and Quintus genuinely cannot perceive it. The events of FALX are also the original incursion whose leftovers characters in Operation LAPIS later dismiss as harmless "Prometheus artifacts," a pleasure saved 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 there at the close of 1.b, and §4 gives a suggested order for its parts before Stop 1. For the five-part 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¶

You run the opening frame (the interrupted tutorial, your two live moments as the Agent, and the crossing on "Ite") from the Introduction & Opening Frame page. On the far side of the white flood the class finds the cold of the Caucasus, Recentii they have never played, each holding an object they don't remember bringing, and a man in a blue toga: Quintus Aemilianus, their guide, who has never been sent an untrained team before and invites them to ask who they now are.

1.b, The Broken Chains¶

Quintus leads the team along the mountain to a ledge where enormous chains hang broken, the ends clean, with no rust and no scrape marks. He names Prometheus, a Titan chained here for something the gods could not forgive, and now gone. Far below, a thread of warm light runs along a crack in the stone, but before anyone follows it the team needs to know who they are chasing, and Quintus admits he doesn't 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, Mission Control setup included. The class reaches the Caucasus when the green ITE switch is pressed.
Post immersion 1.a or read it aloud, and give it room: arriving in a new body is the whole scene.
Let the team ask about their Recentii, and reply as Quintus using the §5 Agent Craft postures and roster. Names, gifts and objects are fixed; whatever the team invents about inner life, Quintus accepts.
Award LP for Part A per operative in Mission Control, for each student's part in the questions and the life they give their Recentius.

Part B: The Broken Chains

Post immersion 1.b or read it aloud. Linger on the clean breaks in the chains, because they are a real clue that pays off at Stop 3.
Take the team's questions and reply as Quintus using the §5 Agent Craft postures. Don't summarize the myth even if pressed, because the team should put Prometheus's story together from the reading.
Run CODEX 1 in the order below, in class, between sessions, or both. The two key-texts and the Prometheus Culturalia must land before Stop 1, since they are the intelligence the scene just made the team want.
Start with the key-text Promētheus, which answers the questions the ledge raised. It is the students' first Latin, so put the VERBA table in hand first.
Set GRAMMATICA: Three Jobs in Every Sentence beside the reading, so students learn subject, verb, object, and est from the very sentences they are reading.
Follow with the Culturalia What Prometheus Did, and What It Cost Him, whose Considera asks whether it was worth it. It gives the team the moral complexity Quintus held back, the ground the Stop 1 dilemma stands on.
Read the second key-text, Ūranus, Sāturnus, Juppiter: three kings, each overthrown by his son. That pattern is what makes Jupiter's fear at the forge, and later Tellus's story, make sense.
Finish the CULTURALIA: Two Families of Gods, Tellus: The Earth Beneath Everything, and A Note on Names. Treat the Considera questions as discussion, never as quiz items.
Assign the matching task and comprehension questions of Attunement 1. The readings answer them, and they earn the episode's attunement check.
Close on the reflection seed, which asks what they think of Prometheus so far. Collect the reflections, because they show how each student is holding the curriculum's central question before the dilemma at Vesta's hearth.
Award LP for Part B per operative, and mark the episode's key-text and attunement checks in Mission Control (160 LP each) once the work comes back.

5. Agent Craft¶

Everything in FALX runs in English, so there is no Latin ceiling on your replies. Each scene below opens with its context, the voices, and a Rails line for what must and cannot happen, followed by the moves teams most often make, each with an example team post, a sample reply, and a short note. Your two scripted moments at the terminal are on the Introduction & Opening Frame page.

Cross-cutting techniques for this episode:

Re-rail in the fiction. React to the team's move as the character would and steer back toward the prompt, never refusing a move out of character.
"I don't know" is always real. Quintus's honest uncertainty is his most important habit, and it starts here: when he doesn't know, he says so and points the team toward finding out, which should come across as strength rather than evasion.
The stakes live inside the machine. If a frightened student asks what happens to them if the TSTT collapses, the answer is direct: the world in danger is the one around them in the simulation, and nothing in there can follow them home. Don't raise the stakes for drama, because the curriculum's weight comes from what the world would lose.
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¶

Each reply shows one way to handle the move, never the only one.

1.a — Meet Quintus, Meet Yourselves

Scene context. The team has just crossed over from the terminal into Recentii they have never played, each holding a starter object they don't remember bringing. Quintus has introduced himself, mentioned that they were sent in untrained, and invited questions about who they are.

Voice: Quintus. Warm, and amused by how strange the whole situation is. This is the lowest-stakes scene in the curriculum, so his comic side leads. His job is to make the strangeness feel survivable and to show, by answering well, that asking questions is how this operation works.

Rails. The chains, Prometheus, and the trail belong to 1.b; if the team pushes toward the emergency, Quintus holds the line gently. Nothing in this scene can break.

Roster. Names, gifts, and starter objects are fixed; everything about a Recentius's inner life belongs to the team. Bellator (favor of Mars; wooden practice sword) · Agricola (the devout farmer; plow) · Amorosus (love's bow; rose) · Clodia (leader of women; coin of Livia) · Horatiana (the polish of the ancients; fragment of the Odyssey) · Octaviana (authority over a family; Lar) · Tulliana (the custom of the ancestors; fasces) · Priscus (the golden age; olive branch).

Prompt: "Ask Quintus about your Recentii. Who are you in this world, and what have you brought with you into the TSTT?"

Posture 1: The team asks who they are (canonical)

Example team post: "who am I?? and what is this little statue thing"

Reply (Quintus):

Quintus takes the little figure from your hand and turns it over before he gives it back. "You are Recentia Octaviana, and this is a Lar. Romans kept one by the hearth to watch over the family. Your gift is authority over a family: when people start pulling apart, they look to you." He tilts his head. "That's what the records say, anyway. What do you think she's like?"

Teacher note. Swap in the team's Recentius from the roster. Quintus accepts whatever inner life they invent ("Then that's who she is. You'd know better than I would."). The hearth line plants Vesta. Use it when the object suits it, like the Lar, and don't force it otherwise.

Posture 2: The team skips ahead to the emergency

Example team post: "whats the emergency?? why are we even here"

Reply (Quintus):

"The emergency can wait five minutes." Quintus nods at your hands. "You've been in that body for about four, and I'd like you to know whose it is before you walk into anything. Ask me one thing about yourselves first, and then I'll show you. So who's standing in front of me?"

Teacher note. One question about themselves is the price of moving on. If the whole room is restless and has engaged even a little, Quintus says "All right. Come with me," and you cross to 1.b early.

Posture 3: The team asks about Quintus, the Demiurge, or whether this is real

Example team post: "wait who are you actually? and is this real or a game"

Reply (Quintus):

"That's two questions at once, but all right." Quintus folds his arms against the wind. "The Demiurge made me to be a guide in here. He made this mountain too, and I'm told the mountain was more work." He picks up a pebble and drops it over the edge, and it clicks off the rock once and keeps falling. "As for whether it's real, the cold is real enough, and so is that drop. Past that, I honestly don't know. What would it take to convince you?"

Teacher note. Being made by the Demiurge is a plain fact of Quintus's life. What it costs him waits for the closing frame. The "I don't know" is the point of the reply, so don't add certainty. He can't see the Demiurge's deeper role, so keep his answers about the Demiurge short.

Posture 4: The team is stuck or posts almost nothing

Example team post: "idk"

Reply (Quintus):

Quintus crouches beside you. "Let me start you off. Hold up whatever you're carrying, so I can see what you brought."

Teacher note. Give them an object to act on rather than advice about asking questions; once the object comes up, answer as in Posture 1. If one student is carrying the team, Quintus turns to the others: "And you? There's more than one of you standing here."

Posture 5: The team goofs off or wants a different Recentius

Example team post: "i got a ROSE?? can i trade for the sword"

Reply (Quintus):

Quintus studies the rose with great seriousness. "Do you find this as ridiculous as I do? There's an emergency waiting for us, and one of you shows up holding a flower." He grins. "No trades, I'm afraid. You're Amorosus, your gift is love's bow, and I'd wait to see what a rose can do before giving it up. Who do you suppose it's for?"

Teacher note. The comic side is the room's release valve in 1.a, so let Quintus enjoy the joke with them, then hand back a question about who their Recentius is. Names, gifts, and objects never change, but silly inventions about inner life ("he's scared of geese") are fine, and Quintus takes them seriously.

1.b — The Broken Chains

Scene context. Quintus has shown the team the broken chains, named Prometheus, and told them what he knows for certain: Prometheus was chained here, he is gone, and the TSTT is coming apart because of it. A thread of warm light runs far below.

Voice: Quintus. Graver than in 1.a but steady, with the comic side mostly put away. "I don't know" is always a real answer from him, and it points the team toward the CODEX instead of covering the gap.

Rails. The team does not follow the trail yet; the scene ends by sending them to CODEX 1. Quintus knows how the story ends (punishment, no end, now an escape) but not why. Held back: the falx, the earlier Prometheus they will meet at Stop 1, and anything about the Demiurge's involvement.

Prompt: "What do you want to know about Prometheus before you follow the light? Ask Quintus. He will tell you what he can, and he will show you where to find the answers he doesn't have."

Posture 1: The team asks who Prometheus is (canonical)

Example team post: "who is prometheus and why was he chained up"

Reply (Quintus):

Quintus runs his thumb along a broken link. "He's a Titan, one of the old ones, older than the gods most people know. Jupiter, the king of the gods, chained him here, and the sentence was never supposed to end." He sets the link down. "I know how his story ends, but I don't know how it starts. Your CODEX has the whole account, so read it before we go down. Then tell me: was it fair?"

Teacher note. Sending the team to CODEX 1 is the scene's whole mechanic, and Quintus treats the reading as intelligence, never homework. Don't summarize the myth even if pressed, because the theft, the eagle, and his love of mortals have to land through the reading.

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

Example team post: "how did he break chains that big"

Reply (Quintus):

"Look closer." Quintus holds a broken link up to the light. "There's no rust on it and no scrape marks, and nothing is bent. Nobody pulled these apart; they just stopped holding." He puts the link in your hands, and it is colder than the rock. "I've never seen chains do that. What do you think could make a chain stop holding?"

Teacher note. The clean breaks are a real clue: the chains failed because the chain of events behind them failed. Quintus never decodes it. If a student gets close ("maybe whatever he was chained for is what broke"), honor it without confirming: "Say that again slowly. I want to remember it."

Posture 3: The team wants to chase him right now

Example team post: "lets just follow the light now before he gets away"

Reply (Quintus):

"If he were a thief on a road, I'd already be running." Quintus looks down at the thread of light. "But he's a Titan, and a clever one, and that trail goes somewhere I can't see the end of. I'm not walking us down it blind." He turns back to you. "Read your CODEX first. Then we go down together, and we don't stop until this is finished. Agreed?"

Teacher note. Re-rail through Quintus's caution rather than a flat no. The promise at the end matters, so the team leaves feeling launched instead of stalled. If they've already asked their Prometheus questions, this makes a natural close to the session.

Posture 4: The team asks what happens to them

Example team post: "what happens to us if the TSTT falls apart while were in it"

Reply (Quintus):

Quintus answers right away. "You'd be pulled out long before the lights went off. Nothing in here can follow you home." He looks out at the grey peaks. "But everything this machine remembers would be gone, every place and every person you were going to meet, all the way back to the beginning, and there'd be nothing left in here to learn from, ever. That's what's at risk. Is it worth going after him?"

Teacher note. The danger lives inside the machine, never in the students' real lives, so give a worried student the straight answer and don't raise the stakes for drama.

Posture 5: The team asks whether Prometheus is bad

Example team post: "is prometheus evil? like is he the bad guy"

Reply (Quintus):

Quintus is quiet for a moment. "I don't know. He did something the king of the gods couldn't forgive, and whether that makes him bad, or brave, or both, I can't tell you yet." He looks at the great bolt in the rock where the chains still hang. "From what I've heard, the ones who met him either loved him or chained him. Read his story, and then you tell me which side you'd have been on."

Teacher note. Don't answer this for them, in character or out; the curriculum depends on the team deciding. It feeds straight into the Attunement 1 reflection: what do you think of Prometheus so far?

Next: Ep. 2: Vesta's Hearth.