Running Operation FALX¶
This page is the operational shape of the curriculum: how the fifteen periods map onto the six episodes, what a session sounds like, how the opening frame is delivered, where the CODEX fits between sessions, and how Mission Control tracks it all. Per-episode workflows, with every resource placed at its story beat, live on the individual pages of the Episode Guide.
The Shape of the Curriculum¶
Six episodes, each in two parts, across roughly fifteen periods. Episode 1 is the opening frame and the arrival at the Caucasus; Episodes 2 through 5 are the four stops of the journey, each pairing an act of restoration (Part A) with a morally weighted choice that grows harder stop by stop (Part B); Episode 6 is the finale, the team's narration above Rome and the closing frame.
| Period | Content | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Opening frame: recruitment interrupted, the Demiurge's transmission, Agent advocacy, entry into the TSTT | 1 · A |
| 2 | Caucasus arrival: Quintus, the broken chains, Prometheus named | 1 · B |
| 3 | Stop 1, Part 1: settle Vesta's hearth | 2 · A |
| 4 | Stop 1, Part 2: the theft of fire; receive the flame | 2 · B |
| 5 | Stop 2, Part 1: restore fading Vulcan with the flame | 3 · A |
| 6 | Stop 2, Part 2: convince Jupiter to accept the lightning bolt | 3 · B |
| 7–8 | Stop 3, Part 1: descend to Tellus; activate her memory | 4 · A |
| 9–10 | Stop 3, Part 2: the cross-cosmic appeal to Prometheus (it fails) | 4 · B |
| 11 | Stop 4, Part 1: ascend through the healed stops; the question reframed | 5 · A |
| 12–13 | Stop 4, Part 2: the confrontation at the Caucasus (it succeeds) | 5 · B |
| 14 | Rome: the team narrates its journey for Quintus | 6 · A |
| 15 | Closing frame: farewell, debrief, reward | 6 · B |
Pacing is flexible. The multi-period rows expand or contract as your class needs, and fifteen periods is a plan, not a cap.
The Session Rhythm¶
A FALX session follows the same beat structure every time, which is part of what makes the curriculum manageable alongside a full teaching load:
- Read the prompt. Post or read aloud the episode's immersion prompt. Each prompt runs 150 to 300 words and reads aloud in about a minute: a brief recap, the scene, a line from Quintus, and the situation now in front of the team.
- The team deliberates. The prompt always ends on a task or a dilemma, never a directive. Teams discuss and decide together what their Recentius does, and every closing prompt asks them to declare the choice and state their reasoning aloud. Choice with reasoning is the first rep of the curriculum's persuasion practice, from the very first session.
- You reply in character. Respond as the figure in the scene (Quintus, Vesta, Prometheus, Jupiter), acknowledging the team's move in-fiction and moving the story forward. The Agent Craft section of each episode page carries sample replies for the most likely team postures, plus a Rails line telling you what must happen and what cannot, so you always know where the walls are before improvising.
- Watch the flame. From Stop 1 onward the team carries a piece of Vesta's fire, and it is the story's built-in feedback: it brightens when the team is succeeding at restoration or persuasion and steadies when the world re-coheres. Let the flame do the commenting; the narrator never grades the team out loud.
- Close and prime. The episode pages tell you when a session closes into a CODEX assignment and which components to point students at (see below).
Two conventions from Operation LAPIS carry over whole: let reasonable actions work, and re-rail in-fiction rather than out of character. The mythic events are on rails (the theft happens, the appeal fails, Jupiter accepts, the confrontation succeeds), but the team's moral position and the texture of every scene belong to them.
The Opening Frame¶
Period 1 is unlike everything after it. Students believe they are booting Operation LAPIS: the session runs through an interactive terminal, the FALX Terminal, styled as a 1960s console. Partway through the cozy tutorial, the Demiurge's transmission breaks in: the TSTT is unraveling, there is no time, and the untrained recruits are going in now.
The frame has two live pause points where you, the Agent, step out from behind the console as an in-fiction character. In the first, you advocate for your students: they are not ready, they have not completed training. The Demiurge agrees that they are not ready, and sends them anyway; your part is to argue genuinely, lose well, and choose to go in with them. In the second, the room's felt response, eager or afraid, is acknowledged by the Demiurge without changing the outcome. The frame ends on a single word of Latin, "Ite," and a switch that crosses the class into the first immersion at the Caucasus.
The full sequence, including your spoken lines for both pause points, is covered on the Introduction & Opening Frame page of the Episode Guide. The final terminal returns at Period 15 for the Demiurge's debrief and the reward.
The CODEX Between Sessions¶
Five CODEX entries carry the curriculum's Latin, and each entry is a multi-part device, not a single reading: Key-texts, VERBA, GRAMMATICA, Culturalia, and Attunement each do different work at different moments. The CODEX is a before-and-during resource. Its entries prime students for what they are about to encounter, and the in-fiction framing treats the reading as mission-critical intelligence (the story literally sends the team to CODEX 1 before it will let them follow the trail).
The general cadence: an entry is assigned at the close of the session in its row on the period table, due before the next immersion session. Within that cadence, each component has its own placement, and the episode pages place them individually: a key-text lands before the beat it narrates, Culturalia seeds the scene it textures, GRAMMATICA rides with the key-texts it is taught from, and the Attunement reflection seed rehearses the moral or rhetorical work of the coming session. The reflection seeds for CODEX 4 and CODEX 5 are the load-bearing case: they have students draft, in writing and in advance, the very arguments the team will make to Prometheus, first the cosmic-order case that fails and then the humanity-centered case that succeeds.
Full entry-by-entry detail and all live links are on The FALX CODEX.
Mission Control¶
FALX has its own curriculum type in Mission Control. When you create the cohort, choose Operation FALX from the curriculum dropdown; the choice is set once at creation and cannot be changed afterward. The FALX operative dossier is slimmer than the LAPIS one: all six episodes are visible at once with no drill-down.
Characters work exactly as in LAPIS. Teams share one of the eight Recentius personas, with the full character sheet: traits, Puncta Virtūtis, dēnāriī, and the Arma equipment screen. Expect advancement to be modest across six episodes; the character layer is there for identity and continuity into LAPIS more than for deep progression, and a single well-timed PV or gear grant lands hard with younger students precisely because it is rare. See Character Mechanics for the machinery.
LP is awarded per episode part, exactly as in the LAPIS RPG. After each session, award LP to each operative in the episode's Part A or Part B slot based on their individual contribution to the team's discussion and declaration, calibrated to the same rubric LAPIS uses; see Latinity Points & Grading. For the finale, the Rome narration (Episode 6, Part A) is the LP-bearing summative performance; the closing frame (Part B) is teacher-delivered and is typically left blank rather than graded.
Each episode carries one attunement check and one key-text check, worth 150 LP apiece, marked with checkboxes on the LP grid or through the cohort-wide bulk-mark page. Mark them as teams complete the corresponding CODEX components for Episodes 1 through 5; Episode 6 has no CODEX entry.
Extra-Operational Awards work as in LAPIS for anything outside the episode grid (a vocabulary check, the final performance as a rubric-scored artifact, a project). Carta Collēctiōnis and Mission-Specific Assets are LAPIS features and do not appear in FALX cohorts.
Next: The FALX CODEX, then the Episode Guide.