The world: rooms, doors, darkness, regions

The story header

Every .story file opens with a header: title, id, and any story-wide facts. Fernhill declares two story states (the timeline flips them later) and turns on the state-machine extension for the boiler:

story "The Folly at Fernhill" by "The Sharpee Project"
  id: fernhill
  version: 0.1.0
  blurb: One winter night to find the deed that keeps Fernhill in the family.
  states: evening, midnight
  use state-machines

Rooms and the compass

A room is a create block with exits as plain facts. Prose after the facts is the room's description:

create the Gravel Drive
  a room
  aka drive
  south to the Iron Gates
  north to the Fountain Court

  The drive curves between bare lime trees, gravel crunching underfoot.

aka adds player-facing synonyms. Exits are one-directional facts; declare each side where it belongs.

Doors: the through form

A door is its own entity, referenced from an exit line with through. The exit declares the geometry once; the reverse direction is inferred:

create the Cellar Stairs
  a room
  down to the Cellar through the cellar door

create the cellar door
  a door, lockable with the tarnished key
  aka grey door

  A heavy grey door, locked as long as anyone can remember.

lockable with the tarnished key is the declarative capability family you'll see throughout the next chapter: the key is named right on the adjective, and LOCK/UNLOCK just work. The pantry door shows the two-sided variant (lockable, starts unlocked): the player can bolt themselves in and the door refuses from the other side.

Darkness and light

create the Cellar
  a room
  dark

create the oil lamp
  aka lamp
  light-source, switchable
  in the Cellar Stairs

A dark room refuses sight-dependent actions until a lit light source is present. There is nothing else to wire: darkness is a fact about the room, and light is a fact about the lamp.

Blocked exits are live conditions

The greenhouse's north door is frost-sealed until the estate's boiler runs. That is one line, and it reads the boiler's LIVE state, so the moment the boiler comes on, the way opens, with no events or recomputes involved:

create the Greenhouse
  a room
  north to Folly Hill
  north is blocked while the boiler is off: frost-sealed

The word after the colon names the refusal phrase. An unconditional block works the same way (south is blocked: long-road on the Iron Gates; the cab is gone, so you're not leaving).

Regions and crossing reactions

Regions group rooms and give them shared behavior. Fernhill has two, and the Grounds narrate every crossing in both directions:

create the Grounds
  a region
  containing the Iron Gates, the Gravel Drive, the Fountain Court
  containing the Greenhouse, the Boiler Shed, Folly Hill

  on every turn while one chance in 6
    phrase night-wind
  end on

  after entering it
    phrase cold-returns
    play ambient night-wind when client has sound
  end after

  after leaving it
    stop ambient when client has sound
    phrase out-of-the-wind
  end after

There are three patterns in one block: a region daemon (the chance-gated wind, which only fires while the player is somewhere in the Grounds), and the two crossing reactions. The play ambient lines are the browser layer: they cost text players nothing, and the last chapter returns to them. Story-level daemons live in the header the same way (Fernhill's distant church bell).

First-visit prose

create the Iron Gates
  a room

  first time
    The cab is already grinding away down the lane, its lamps swallowed
    by the dark. An auction notice is nailed to the left-hand gate…

  Wrought-iron gates stand open on one hinge apiece…

The first time paragraph narrates once, on first arrival; the ordinary description takes over after. Fernhill uses it to open the game.