# CONTENT PASS — Shortages, Sanctions, and Convoys (Phase 7C)

> Every file must answer three questions:
> 1. What decision does this create?
> 2. What truth does this reinforce?
> 3. Why isn't an existing content unit already doing this?

## Goal
- What we are adding: Managed scarcity — the feeling that the universe is beginning to tighten, and that every cargo run enters someone else's strategy
- What truths this batch must reinforce: All four existing truths, expressed through rationing, prioritization, privilege, delay, rerouting, and selective enforcement

## Thesis
Scarcity is never neutral. Someone benefits, someone starves, someone gets authorized passage. The world is tilting.

## Design warning
This is NOT a war pack. Too early, too blunt. This pack is about:
- rationing, prioritization, privilege
- delay, rerouting, selective enforcement
- "temporary" emergency powers
- the feeling that ordinary commerce is becoming someone else's logistics

## Included units
- Stations: Queue of Flags (relief-choked transfer port)
- Lanes: Mercy Track (convoy-protected relief lane), Red Wake (improvised shortage bypass)
- Crew: Ilen Marr (convoy scheduler, supply politics expert)
- Contracts: Priority Relief (ration-critical delivery), Embargo Slip (forbidden but necessary)
- Encounters: Convoy Refusal (denied passage, bumped priority)
- Threads: Dry Ledger (manufactured scarcity)
- Goods: Ration Grain (political survival cargo), Coolant Ampoules (infrastructure critical)

## Proof coverage
- Crew truth: Ilen changes supply politics, convoy access, and priority reading
- Combat truth: Convoy Refusal can escalate. Red Wake creates combat-terrain pressure.
- Culture truth: Queue of Flags makes shortage visible as social and political, not just economic
- Plot truth: Dry Ledger deepens conspiracy into engineered desperation
- Economy truth: Ration Grain and Coolant Ampoules reshape route value. Priority Relief creates time pressure. Embargo Slip creates moral/legal divergence.

## Risks
- Drift risk: Making this feel like a "war is coming" pack instead of managed scarcity
- Repetition risk: Ilen could feel like another Compact-adjacent legalist. Must be supply politics, not document law.
- Overlap: Dry Ledger must not duplicate Paper Fleet. PF is institutional disappearance. DL is manufactured desperation.
- What to cut first if weak: Coolant Ampoules (most abstract good). Red Wake (if too similar to Cinder Span).

## Exit criteria
- Content complete: all units implemented in code
- Validator passes: graph connected, goods referenced, no orphans
- Distinctiveness check: every unit creates pressure the previous packs didn't have
- Pressure test: at least one session where scarcity changes route and contract choice
