When to Stop
The complete signal hierarchy—from the signals that require immediate cessation to the reading of natural saturation
— Mr. Lucius Thorne
The Signal Hierarchy
Stopping signals exist in a hierarchy defined by urgency and by the mechanism that triggers them. Understanding the hierarchy allows the Striker to respond appropriately to each category without treating all stopping signals as equally urgent or equally requiring the same response.
Immediate, unconditional stop signals:
·?The safeword or non-verbal stop signal, communicated clearly
·?Loss of consciousness or any significant impairment of consciousness
·?Nerve symptoms: tingling, numbness, weakness in any distribution
·?Significant respiratory change: breathing that becomes labored, very rapid, or irregular
·?Significant bleeding or skin breaking beyond minor abrasion
·?The Striker’s integrated read that something is wrong—this is the most important signal and requires no additional confirmation
Prompt reduction or stopping signals—requiring assessment and likely pause or transition:
·?Postural signals suggesting the current intensity exceeds current capacity
·?Breath pattern indicating significant sympathetic overdrive
·?Vocalization quality that has shifted from engagement to endurance
·?Absence of response where response was present
Natural completion signals—saturation indicating the encounter has given what it was designed to give:
·?A quality of settledness or completeness in the Receiver’s state
·?The arc has reached its natural peak and the Receiver has been in it
·?The Striker’s read that continuing will not add to what has been produced
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The Saturation Read
Saturation—the state in which the encounter has completed itself—is one of the subtler readings the Striker must develop.
It is distinguishable from distress, from reaching limit, and from the Receiver simply being less responsive in early stages of depth.
Saturation has a quality of wholeness: the encounter feels complete rather than truncated.
Reading saturation accurately prevents two failure modes: stopping too early (before the encounter has reached its intended destination) and continuing too long (past the point where the encounter is still serving the Receiver).
The Striker who reads saturation and acts on it—who closes the encounter when the read says it is complete rather than when the plan says it should be complete—is serving the encounter’s actual purpose rather than their own plan.