The Broken Hourglass Weekly Update

Planewalker Games' official website has received its usual weekly update for The Broken Hourglass, this time discussing the code that allows the game to skip specific events.
Most of the time, scripters simply want to add a special occurrence on top of the event which is already taking place, such as:

- We just entered the Wasteland district, so we want to spawn an encounter with scavengers.
- We just scored a hit with a special weapon, so we want to add some bonus damage or a special effect.
- Horace just spotted the PC, so we want him to approach and initiate dialogue.

But what do you do if an event is about to take place-but you want to stop it from occurring? What if the party is trying to rest somewhere resting is not allowed? What if we want to block someone from opening a door?
What if Blue Valkyrie is about to die, but we want to delay that death?