A siege with an end date. Twenty days, counted down in the corner of the screen from the first morning. Every morning you give each of your people one job: DEFEND the wall tonight, STRIP a block in the town for food, scrap, ammo or fuel, HOLD a block so it pays every dawn and opens another road to your wall every night, BUILD on a pad inside the fence, or REST. Morale falls every single day of a siege, and a survivor who runs out of it does not sulk: they take a pack and walk out of the gate at dawn. The wall coming down does not end the game. Losing the people does. Book II of the Vesper Cycle.