canon/tiers/01_Tier_1_Foundation/T1_Integrity_Paths_Worldstates_Master [ACTIVE v2.1].md
RULED ADDENDUM POINTER (2026-07-26; INTEGRATED July 27, 2026): docs/COMBAT_PROGRAM_ADDENDUM.md
§§9-12 are Josh's ruled canon and bind this doc on the companion and familiar axis. Where each
ruling landed here — addendum §9 (companion loadout and bonus parity plus INVESTMENT PROTECTION
on departure) at §8.11.6, with the departure-contract touchpoint at §8.11.2; addendum §12
(player-shaped ally stat spreads; the INTELLIGENCE-as-AI-quality axis and its mandatory
tradeoff) at §8.11.7 and §8.11.8, with the familiar-axis touchpoint at §8.11.5; addendum §11
plus the §12 team-composition ruling (companions and familiars as build components, team
composition as content, ally spreads entering the balance sweeps) at §8.11.9; the
twenty-eighth sitting item J4 (direct ally control, the character-not-unit law, the
Final Fantasy VII Remake style switch, and the dead order channel) at §8.11.10.
Touchpoints at
§1.1, §1.2, §1.3, and §11.1. Held elsewhere by authority — the bonus pools, selectable minor
and major picks, loadout-set unlocks, and the MYTHIC rarity apex at T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec
and T1\_Ability\_Tree; the six-attribute progression at T1\_Ability\_Tree; the Tier C raid-role
scaling of this same architecture at T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec. Also:
docs/NATURAL_VOICE_DOCTRINE.md binds every player-facing string this doc generates.Last updated: July 27, 2026\.
This document is the canonical reference for the three-path system, the five world states, integrity mechanics, the canonical six-option dialogue system per CVD §10, the three ending architectures, and the Five Integrity Three Path Convergence Framework that maps continuous integrity signal to discrete narrative outcome.
The three paths Truly Good, Good Enough, Evil and the intermediate integrity levels that produce world-state texture without producing distinct ending architecture. The five world states mapped to integrity levels. How integrity score changes per choice type. How appearance changes per integrity. How dialogue options reflect integrity per the canonical six-option voice system. How the world responds at each state across antagonist operational presence, community recovery, journal status, and fauna behavior. The three ending architectures with shared content across all three endings at Ch 76-77 waterfall reveal and unseen-reader epilogue, and path-distinct content for everything that precedes and surrounds the shared reveal. The convergence node architecture that prevents infinite branching by collapsing five integrity levels into three narrative path buckets at canonical anchor points. The journal mechanic as the path-integrity framework's player-facing artifact per CVD §17.9 Pillar 6 anchor. Pillar 12 Three-Layer Engagement Architecture fauna substrate at Layer 3 canonical-truth covering integrity-visible aesthetic shift and vril-substrate response, plus Layer 2 depth-substrate cross-reference to folklore behavior substrate where regional folklore tradition diverges from documented zoology per §8.9.4. Pillar 12 Layer 3 canonical truth fauna behavior substrate per §8.9 covers integrity\_visible\_aesthetic\_shift and vril\_substrate\_response on regional fauna; T0\_Creature\_Roster fauna\_behavior\_substrate column populates against this authority per Pipeline Contracts §7.3 Section 3\. The integrity-side coupling of the assimilation-integrity choice per §5.5, where a protagonist who has assimilated into a culture carrying a documented morally-complex practice faces a playable participate-or-subvert decision that feeds the three-path and magnitude model and the mark the protagonist leaves on that community. The shared relational ladder and the companion-loyalty system per §8.11, including the companion and familiar build coupling per §8.11.6 through §8.11.10 — loadout and bonus parity with the protagonist, the investment-protection rule that returns a departing companion's gear and transferable investment, the player-shaped ally stat spread and its intelligence-as-artificial-intelligence-quality axis, and team composition as a build surface whose availability the integrity signal shapes.
Per-chapter integrity consequences live at T2 ChapterDesign briefs. Specific dialogue implementations live at T1\_Story\_Spine and at quest writing scope. Vril polarity physics lives at T1\_Vril\_and\_Magic\_System\_Master; this doc cross-cites §1, §5.7, and §10.6 of T1\_Vril and owns the integrity-side coupling spec. World-state geography variants live at T1\_World\_Geography\_Master; this doc cross-cites the per-region world-state framing. Character-specific appearance implementation lives at T3\_Core\_Characters; this doc owns the path-shift architecture. Combat encounter type spec including environmental and atmospheric boss mechanic lives at T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec; this doc owns world-state interaction with combat type resolution. Faction relationships at the per-region per-faction level live at T8 region pages; this doc owns the integrity-faction interaction framework only. The build machinery the companion axis consumes is owned elsewhere and cross-referenced here, never restated: the selectable minor and major bonus pools per proficiency tier, the second and third loadout sets and their vril-site quick-change, spec purposes, and the rarity ladder through LEGENDARY and MYTHIC live at T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec and T1\_Ability\_Tree; the six-attribute progression and its decay-and-maintenance mechanics live at T1\_Ability\_Tree; the endgame build-role taxonomy and the build-space sweeps live at T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec and T1\_Ability\_Tree with Phase 5M and 5H owning the measurement; per-familiar bond-quest content lives at T3\_Familiars\_Named and T5\_Familiar\_Bond\_Questlines; the Tier C raid-role scaling of the same party architecture lives at T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec; and the ally behavior-tree runtime is a build-lane engineering scope, not canon owned here. This doc owns the relational and integrity-side coupling of all of it.
Project 2 Book Processing reads this doc for Category 7 antagonist family and Category 1 anthropology source material framing per the three-path system reframing per CVD §17.2. Project 3 Region Building reads this doc for Section 19 World State Versions Modern Revisit substrate at every T8 region page plus Pillar 12 Layer 3 fauna behavior substrate per §8.9 at every T8 region page Section 3 Fauna and Animal Life authoring per Pipeline Contracts §7.3 Section 3\. Project 4A Main Story Quests reads this doc for the Foundational chapter anchors at Ch 38 Azores, Ch 55 Atacama, Ch 57 Australia, Ch 58 Antarctica, Ch 65 path lock-in, Ch 69 the Duat, Ch 76 Cassius Velheim, Ch 75 Father Encounter, Ch 76-77 Finale. Project 4B Trade and Side Questline Quests reads this doc for trade mastery outcomes, side questline completion outcomes, and legendary weapon acquisition path-gated content. Project 5 UE5 reads this doc for appearance-shift rendering, six-option dialogue UI rendering including non-verbal action options, world-state environmental rendering variants, and Save State System worldstate variable persistence per T0\_Worldstate\_Variables. Project 6 Music reads this doc for per-world-state musical variant architecture per AIVA region-driven track. Project 7 Art reads this doc for protagonist visual canon across path × age-stage variants and for NPC reaction visual response per integrity signature. Project 5 UE5 additionally reads §8.11.6 through §8.11.10 for the companion build surface — loadout-parity persistence, the departure investment-return transaction, and intelligence-tiered ally behavior selection — against the WS\_027 and WS\_028 runtime rows per T0\_Worldstate\_Variables.
The integrity score is a signed numeric value on the range minus one hundred to plus one hundred. It begins at a starting value determined by Ch 1 fairy realm choices including species selection, best friend selection, and biography parameter initialization. It accumulates across the seventy-seven-chapter arc through player choices.
The score is bidirectional, moving positive on generative and connective and honest choices, moving negative on corrosive and disconnective and deceptive choices. It is persistent across all chapters without reset. It is visible in consequence in the living world, and additionally as an integrity bar in the menu (SUPERSEDED IN PLACE — Josh ruling 2026-08-08, verbatim "Nah we do want to show an integrity bar in the menu somewhere": a menu surface displays the integrity bar; the earlier no-UI-readout clause now scopes to GAMEPLAY surfaces only — no HUD readout, and the world's consequence-reads remain the primary channel). The player reads their integrity through the world's response covering NPC reactions, recharge source responsiveness, protagonist appearance, dialogue option tone, and journal entry texture — and may consult the bar in the menu. The score is coupled to vril polarity per T1\_Vril\_and\_Magic\_System\_Master §1 and §5.7 — integrity and vril signature polarity are the same signal read at two layers, where integrity is the cumulative-choice layer and vril polarity is the consciousness-state substrate layer.
Integrity is not a reputation meter. It does not track what NPCs have observed the protagonist do. It tracks the protagonist's actual integrity state — a cumulative vibrational-consciousness parameter that conscious beings in-world read directly through vril-signature perception per CVD §3 Component 7 Metaphysical Real.
This distinction has concrete implementation consequences. NPCs respond to integrity even where they have no observational knowledge of the protagonist's prior choices. Recharge sources respond to integrity directly per T1\_Vril §5.7. The Ch 57 Australian elder recognition reads integrity directly, not any observable prior action set. The Grand Sage at Ch 76-77 reads integrity as the culminating vibrational signature.
The integrity score is canonically a real property of the protagonist within the world, not a bookkeeping device of the game engine.
Integrity is one of several biography parameters that together generate the protagonist's voice, appearance, and dialogue option set. Per CVD §10 Protagonist Voice System, the generative parameters include integrity score covering the cumulative-choice value, appearance score coupled to integrity per Section 7 and reflecting direct appearance-affecting choices, relationship history covering familiar bond state and healer's child relationship state and other named NPC relationship accumulators, and current age stage covering Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood per the protagonist's age progression across the arc.
Voice is generated from the full parameter set. The voice the player hears at any moment in the arc is the voice their biography parameters compose at that moment. A Truly Good path protagonist sounds different from an Evil path protagonist; a child-stage Sympathetic biography reads in a different register than an adult-stage Defiant biography. Voice generation uses ElevenLabs synthetic generation during development per Pipeline Contracts §4 ElevenLabs canonical scope; professional cast recording follows post-crowdfunding against the established biography-parameter voice profiles.
The integrity-and-path system operates on three distinct levels.
The first level is the continuous integrity score on the range minus one hundred to plus one hundred per §2.1. This is the underlying signal generated by player choices across the arc.
The second level is the five integrity levels L1 through L5 mapped to the integrity score bands per §3.2. The five levels map 1:1 to the five world states per Section 4 and produce continuous world-state texture across Ch 2 through Ch 65\.
The third level is the three path buckets Truly Good, Good Enough, Evil per §3.3. The three path buckets are the canonical Finale architecture; the Ch 65 path lock-in convergence node collapses the five-level signal into the three-bucket commitment that drives Ch 66-77 ending content.
The five integrity bands with their score ranges per CVD §9.2 canonical authority:
The five bands produce continuous world-state texture; world responsiveness, NPC reactions, recharge source response, and appearance shifts modulate continuously across the band structure rather than snapping at hard boundaries. A protagonist at integrity plus seventy-five experiences a stronger luminous signature than one at plus sixty-two; both are within L1 Truly Good but the signal is continuous within the band. The L5 Pure Evil terminal band carries operational coldness in voice register per CVD §15 voice and tone discipline.
The three path buckets per CVD §7.2 canonical:
Protagonists locking at L3 Drifting at Ch 65 collapse to the nearest path bucket per the convergence rule per §3.5. L4 Evil and L5 Pure Evil terminal both lock to the Evil path bucket at Ch 65; the L5 terminal-band texture carries through Ch 66-77 ending content per the operational coldness register at CVD §15. The intermediate L3 Drifting band does not produce a distinct ending architecture; it produces continuous Ch 2-65 world-state texture that converges to the nearest path bucket at the lock-in node.
The Ch 65 pre-fairy-realm gathering is the canonical path lock-in convergence node per Pipeline Contracts §9.4.1 canonical hard-line set. From Ch 65 onward across Ch 66-77 the path is fixed; subsequent choices do not move the lock-in state.
Choices in Ch 66-77 still have consequences within the locked path. They affect specific Finale beat implementation covering which Duat dialogue plays per Ch 69, which Cassius Velheim phase progression engages per Ch 76, which father encounter variant runs per Ch 76 Phase 2, and which six-option cumulative pattern shapes the Ch 76-77 ending cutscene specifics on the Truly Good and Good Enough paths per the canonical maximum-weight deployment register.
The lock-in mechanism respects the integrity signal the player has built across sixty-four chapters of play. Late-game flipping is not supported by design — the three-path architecture rewards sustained choice patterns across the arc, not tactical last-chapter swings.
Tie-break at the Ch 65 lock (Josh-RULED, 2026-07-15): a Drifting-band score of exactly 0 — equidistant between GOOD_ENOUGH and EVIL under the nearest-path collapse — resolves to EVIL. The middle band yields no ending of its own; at perfect equidistance the collapse takes the corrosive pole.
The Five Integrity Three Path Convergence Framework prevents infinite branching at canonical convergence nodes across the arc. Convergence nodes are canonical anchor points where the continuous five-level signal collapses to the three-path bucket commitment for downstream content authoring.
The Ch 65 path lock-in is the primary convergence node. Additional convergence nodes operate at canonical hard-line chapter anchors where path-distinct content branches require the three-bucket commitment for authoring scope. Convergence node scenes per Pipeline Contracts §5.2 carry one scene row per path bucket; runtime path resolution reads worldstate at scene assembly time and selects the path-bucket-matching row.
Within-path level variation captures in long-term consequence text per region page Section 11 quest encounter substrate rather than additional branches. The discipline keeps narrative authoring tractable while preserving the continuous integrity signal at the world-state and texture layer.
The three paths are not a morality theater. The player does not earn points for performative virtue or wickedness. The Truly Good path is the sustained-generative-pattern outcome characterized by cumulative choices that generate connection, honesty, and engagement with conscious beings and communities. The Evil path is the sustained-corrosive-pattern outcome characterized by cumulative choices that generate disconnection, self-loss, and the hollowing the antagonist family's name etymology describes — Latin cassus, hollow, empty, per T3\_Core\_Characters Cassius Velheim canon.
Negative-vril accumulation is the outcome of cumulative self-loss, not a performance of villainy per T1\_Vril §1 integrity-vril coupling. This framing is canonical and binds all dialogue writing, quest writing, art direction, and music direction. Cassius Velheim is sophisticated, not monstrous. The Architect omits but does not lie. The Evil-path protagonist is hollowed, not cartoonish.
The five world states map 1:1 to the five integrity bands per CVD §9.2:
The mapping is canonical per CVD §9.2 five-band authority. Pipeline Contracts §1.5 World State Versions Modern Revisit references this mapping; any band-naming drift in Pipeline Contracts §1.5 source surfaces as a §19 drift-handling-protocol entry for Phase 5M reconciliation.
Integrity plus sixty to plus one hundred. Antagonist operations exposed across the regions the protagonist has engaged. Communities supported during the arc have visibly recovered. Familiar present at Ch 58 reunion canonical per §9.2. Journal public and credited per §8.4 Ch 57 public on Truly Good path.
Atmospheric vril density per T1\_Vril §10.6 at the highest band; approaches threshold for fairy-realm perceptibility restoration. Recharge sources release vital energy readily per T1\_Vril §5.7. Ch 57 Australian elder recognition, Ch 29 Sámi sacred sieidi, Ch 42 Haiti Vodou ritual sites respond fully.
Integrity plus twenty to plus fifty-nine. Most antagonist operations challenged. Most communities recovering. Journal public.
Atmospheric vril density per T1\_Vril §10.6 elevated above baseline; most communities experience restored vril-tradition accessibility. Recharge sources responsive though not maximally so. Legendary familiar reunion does not occur in full at Ch 58 per §9.3 — reunion is World State 1 only.
Integrity minus nineteen to plus nineteen. Mixed outcomes — some operations challenged, others intact. Some communities recovering, others static. Presence rather than direction.
Atmospheric vril density per T1\_Vril §10.6 at baseline status-quo depletion. Recharge sources respond with attenuation. The protagonist's presence is registered by the world but does not generate the recovery signal World State 2 produces or the harm signal World State 4 produces.
Integrity minus fifty-nine to minus twenty. Antagonist operations mostly intact. Direct community help during the protagonist's visit but no institutional change persists. Journal suppressed.
Atmospheric vril density per T1\_Vril §10.6 below baseline; some vril-parallel traditions lose accessibility. Recharge sources respond reluctantly. Certain protected sites — Ch 57 Australia recognition sites, Ch 29 Sámi sacred sieidi, Ch 42 Haiti Vodou ritual sites — begin to not respond.
Integrity minus one hundred to minus sixty. Antagonist operations strengthened through the protagonist's passage. Communities damaged. Journal never completed.
Atmospheric vril density per T1\_Vril §10.6 at the lowest band; depletion accelerated; fairy realm moved further below the perceptibility threshold. Recharge sources may not respond to the protagonist's vril signature at all. The Ch 57 Australia recognition does not occur in its full form on this path — presence perceived, recognition withheld.
World state evaluates continuously across Ch 2-65, not only at Ch 65 lock-in. The five-state presentation affects per-chapter content throughout the arc per region page Section 19 World State Versions Modern Revisit substrate per Pipeline Contracts §1.5. Chapter-specific per-state variants are owned by ChapterDesign briefs and region page Section 19 authoring; this doc owns the band architecture and the state-property mapping.
World states operate at the solo region layer per the canonical solo-and-MMO two-simultaneous-layers architecture absorbed from T1\_GDD\_Systems §4.1. Every player has their own private-instance copy of the game world, permanently and uniquely shaped by their choices. Other players can visit and explore another player's solo region but cannot leave any permanent mark. The solo region is the player's physical autobiography in terrain, NPC relationships, and world state.
The MMO shared world layer carries its own integrity coupling per T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec which has its own mechanics for territorial integrity, guild integrity, and per-region MMO-state response. World state in the MMO layer operates against guild-level rather than individual-protagonist integrity; the spec lives at T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec.
Choices made during ancient world chapters Ch 2-38 shape the modern world chapters Ch 39-58 and the continental revisits Ch 59-65 in the player's solo region. Towns supported during late adolescence chapters develop and thrive in adult chapters. Towns abandoned or harmed become harder environments with different resource profiles. NPC family lines evolve — a cousin of someone the player helped in Ch 11 responds differently in Ch 39 than a cousin of someone the player harmed.
The persistence is canonical per T1\_GDD\_Systems §4.2 absorbed into this doc. The Ch 59-65 continental revisits beat per T1\_World\_Geography\_Master is the canonical opportunity for the protagonist to directly observe these accumulated states. Truly Good path shows communities visibly recovered from the states the protagonist left them in ancient-world chapters; Evil path shows communities damaged in ways the protagonist can trace to their own ancient-world choices.
Choices that move integrity fall into categories with characteristic magnitudes.
Foundational choices are large-magnitude integrity shifts tied to chapter-anchor beats. They may shift integrity by ten to twenty-five points. The Foundational-beat catalog at §5.4 enumerates the canonical anchors.
Substantial choices are mid-magnitude integrity shifts tied to per-chapter primary boss encounters, trade master encounters, and named-NPC relationship beats. They may shift integrity by three to ten points.
Accumulative choices are small-magnitude integrity shifts tied to per-encounter dialogue selections, combat approaches, and environmental interactions. They may shift integrity by half a point to three points each. They are the most numerous category and produce most of the integrity signal across a full playthrough.
Signature choices have path-dependent integrity effects. A choice to engage an antagonist operative with lethal force shifts integrity differently for a Truly Good path protagonist (small negative, cost of sustained combat approach) than for an Evil path protagonist (small positive, consistency with accumulated pattern).
Lethal violence against human adversaries is core gameplay, not a gated exception — thieves, bandits, hostile factions, war combatants, gladiators, and contract or integrity-gated targets are all lawful combat, and emergent sandbox violence against ordinary NPCs is permitted. Maturity is expressed as weight and consequence: a kill ripples through the NPC's community and persona state per §8.7 and is remembered per §4.9, never a moral scorecard and never a hard gate on progression per §8.7.
Positive-integrity choices are characteristically generative. They produce connection, healing, documentation, honest inscription, community restoration, familiar bonding, honest journal entries.
Negative-integrity choices are characteristically corrosive. They produce disconnection, harm, secrecy, deceptive inscription, community damage, familiar distancing, falsified or suppressed journal entries.
This is canonical framing per CVD §17.4. It is not a good-versus-evil moral scorecard. A protagonist who consistently prioritizes sustained generative engagement with the world accumulates positive integrity as the natural consequence of sustained generative action. A protagonist who consistently prioritizes self-loss, disconnection, and corrosion accumulates negative integrity as the natural consequence of sustained corrosive action.
The integrity signal is robust against individual choice noise. A Truly Good path protagonist who makes three negative-integrity choices across seventy-seven chapters does not drop out of L1; the cumulative pattern dominates.
Implementation consequences. Individual choices produce integrity shifts but do not unilaterally flip world states. World-state presentation responds to cumulative integrity, not to the most recent choice. Late-game integrity correction is possible but requires sustained pattern change, not tactical flipping.
The canonical Foundational-choice chapter anchors:
Per-chapter Substantial-beat content lives at T2 ChapterDesign briefs. This doc locks the Foundational-beat catalog at the canonical-anchor identity level. Per-beat encounter detail covering specific dialogue, specific quest implementation, specific combat mechanics lives at T2 and at quest writing scope.
The protagonist crosses the seventy-seven-chapter arc under a standing concealment of what she is — the fairy-realm origin and the vril signature it carries. Assimilation is the generative expression of that concealment. Where the protagonist enters a culture, hides the origin, and is taken in — building traveling-companion bonds, named-NPC relationships, and faction standing from inside a community rather than passing through it as a stranger — she has assimilated. This sub-section establishes the assimilation-integrity choice as a first-class integrity mechanic grounded in the §5.1 choice-type architecture and the §5.2 generative-and-corrosive distinction; it invents no new magnitude band and no numerical canon.
The identity-concealment arc-state is owned by T99\_Story\_Spine\_Build\_Logic §9.6 and carried in every Story Spine entry as the identity\_hiding\_status and identity\_hiding\_pressure fields; per-chapter assimilation-beat and dialogue implementation is owned by T1\_Story\_Spine and quest writing scope. This doc owns the integrity-side coupling only, in the same division of authority by which §2.1 owns the integrity-side coupling to vril polarity while T1\_Vril owns the vril-side physics.
Where a culture the protagonist has assimilated into carries a documented morally-complex practice — a practice the historical record holds honestly and the Care Doctrine represents without sanitizing per CVD §17.1 historical-honesty principle — the assimilation produces a canonical integrity choice. The protagonist, embedded and trusted, is positioned either to participate in the practice's harm or to subvert it while holding her cover. The choice is playable, not narrated: it resolves through the canonical six-option dialogue-and-action system per §6, at the participate-or-subvert axis, and the option register may be a spoken line, a physical action, or a combination per §6.2.
The choice resolves across the same generative-and-corrosive distinction as all integrity change per §5.2.
The participate-or-subvert axis is not a fifth path. It feeds the continuous integrity signal and converges through the Ch 65 lock-in per §3.4 and the convergence rule per §3.5 exactly as every other choice does.
The assimilation-integrity choice routes through the existing magnitude classes per §5.1 — Substantial where it is a per-chapter embedded-community beat, Foundational where a chapter's canonical anchor makes the assimilation choice a large-magnitude arc beat and the chapter appears in the §5.4 Foundational catalog. The magnitude class per chapter is set by the chapter's ChapterDesign brief and Story Spine entry against the §5.1 architecture; this doc does not pre-assign per-chapter magnitude, and it introduces no new band.
The choice does not resolve only into the integrity score. It writes into the mark the protagonist leaves on the community — the world-state texture that persists and accumulates per §4.9 and §8.3, and the faction standing with that specific community per §8.7. The mark carries value. A community the protagonist protected from inside remembers it, and that memory is a real property of the community's world-state that the Ch 59-65 continental revisits let the protagonist directly observe per §8.3, cascading through documented NPC family lines per §4.9. A community the protagonist harmed from inside carries the corrosive mark forward the same way. Faction standing with the assimilated community updates per §8.7 independently of the protagonist-level integrity score — the protagonist may be integrity-positive at the arc level yet faction-negative with a specific community she participated in harming, per §8.7.
The mark is the assimilation choice's durable, local consequence layer. It is distinct from the five-band world state, which reads cumulative integrity per §4; the mark is the community-specific record of what the protagonist did while she was one of them.
The assimilation-integrity choice binds to the Care Doctrine per CVD §17.1 and the community-protection discipline. The morally-complex practice is represented honestly, including its hard parts, per the Care Doctrine historical-honesty principle — sanitizing the practice would be its own erasure, denying a culture its full agency and place in history. The Care Doctrine protection is collective, not individual. The faithful living community as a whole is never villain-framed, never narratively cast as the antagonist, and never presented as a combat target to be exterminated, per the Care Doctrine respect-the-living principle; the story antagonist routes instead through the complicit broker, state, or institution that drives the harm. This collective protection does not make individual members of the community unkillable — hostile individuals (a raider, a complicit broker, a corrupted knowledge-holder) remain lawful playable adversaries per the violence-core standard, and lethal human combat carries weight and consequence rather than a kill-ban. The assimilation-integrity choice carries the moral weight through the participate-or-subvert decision and the mark it leaves, not through the community being framed as an enemy. Where the practice's harm has a combat layer, that layer routes through the oppressor or corrupted-individual apparatus. The single narrow bar: genocide of a living culture is never an encouraged or enabled goal.
The canonical first-anchor instance is the Ch 12 Dahomey captive-raiding assimilation-integrity test per the Story Spine Ch 12 entry — the protagonist, embedded in the West African communities and trusted from inside, either participates in a raid or subverts it from inside while holding her cover, with the combat routed through the European Atlantic-trade apparatus and the choice-and-mark carrying the weight. Per-chapter assimilation-integrity anchors beyond this are authored at the Story Spine cascade against this architecture and are not pre-assigned here.
Per CVD §10 voice system, every dialogue beat in the game presents six options:
The six options are canonical across all dialogue-bearing chapters. The four biography-shaped options Sympathetic, Detached, Curious, Defiant carry tone, vocabulary, and framing shifts based on the biography parameter set per §2.3 — a Sympathetic option for a Truly Good path protagonist at adult age stage with a bonded Kira familiar reads in a different register than the same chapter's Sympathetic option for an Evil path protagonist at adult age stage with a lost Kira familiar.
A dialogue option is not always a verbal line. Depending on the scene, an option may be a spoken line per the conventional RPG dialogue selection, a physical action covering stepping toward or away, placing a hand on a shoulder, taking or refusing an offered object, or a combination covering speaking a line while performing an action.
This is canonical per CVD §10.2. The dialogue UI and animation system supports non-verbal selections at the same option-selection layer as verbal ones. Silence is also a valid option register per the canonical six-option system at scenes where silence carries dramatic weight.
All six options per dialogue beat are fully written in the canonical dialogue set. None are procedurally generated. None are placeholder text. All six are fully voiced per Pipeline Contracts §4 ElevenLabs canonical scope during development with synthetic generation against biography-parameter voice substrate, and post-crowdfunding via professional cast recording against the established biography-parameter voice profiles.
The four biography-shaped options Sympathetic, Detached, Curious, Defiant reflect the cumulative biography-parameter state of the specific protagonist in this specific playthrough. They carry integrity information through tone but do not shift integrity when chosen; they reflect existing state rather than forcing new shift.
The Truly Good and Truly Bad options are the choices that force new integrity shift most directly. In a Truly Good path playthrough, the Truly Good option typically feels consistent with the protagonist's existing trajectory and the Truly Bad option feels dissonant. In an Evil path playthrough, this inverts. The consistency-with-trajectory quality is what gives the path system its tonal coherence.
All four biography-shaped options reflect the protagonist's fairy realm origin canonically. The protagonist arrived via the Ch 1 rift fall. Their dialogue perspective consistently reflects this non-native-to-human-world vantage across all seventy-seven chapters. Even in late modern-world chapters where the protagonist has integrated with human-world communities, the biography option set retains this origin-perspective quality.
The six-option system operates at standard register across the dialogue-bearing chapters of the arc. At Ch 75 Father Encounter, the system operates at canonical maximum-weight deployment per Pipeline Contracts §6.4.1 canonical hard-line quest set. The cumulative six-option selections across Ch 75's dialogue determine the Ch 76-77 ending cutscene specific content per the canonical maximum-weight register; the system has been building across seventy-four chapters of accumulated voice-generation-parameter state and accumulated choice-history, and Ch 75 is the canonical chapter where the accumulated state produces the canonical peak-expression beat the dialogue architecture has been designed for.
The six-option system at Ch 76 Phase 2 is not a path-determination mechanic — path is locked at Ch 65 per §3.4 — but the canonical ending-content determination mechanic that operates within the path-locked framework. The maximum-weight deployment runs on Truly Good and Good Enough paths; Evil path does not produce extended six-option dialogue per its canonical combat-resolution framing.
Documented per the CG-16b convention (director pass following the 2026-07-21 ruling batch, EXECUTE-ON-LANDING per OPEN\_DECISIONS\_BRIEF\_2026-07-20 Section 2; the schema-side twin lives at Pipeline Contracts §6.5).
The cumulative six-option selection history is carried by the system-level accumulator WS\_018. Each six-option dialogue selection appends its option-slot enum to WS\_018 (the SIX-OPTION-7 fork row's slot-append per Story Spine §9.5), and the maximum-weight deployment register at §6.6 reads that accumulated pattern. WS\_018 is a system-level accumulator EXEMPT from micro-fork-promotion — appending a slot to the accumulator is not itself a durable-state branch that must become its own fork node, so the six-option system does not multiply the fork graph even though every dialogue beat writes to it.
The six-option wheel is scoped to spoken dialogue moments. Pre-verbal chapters — before the protagonist can speak, up to protagonist speech at approximately Ch 3 — carry their responses in the Action-form or silence-form register of §6.2 (the spoken, action, or combination axis, CVD §10.2), not as spoken six-option wheels; the spoken form switches on at protagonist speech. The player side of the wheel resolves to the literal protagonist token, with CHAR\_0001 as its persona row.
Preserved veto surface (the one feel component): if the childhood arc is intended as pure authored close-third with no player agency until speech, then the pre-verbal chapters carry no six-option nodes at all; this is surfaced to Josh as a preference, not resolved here.
The integrity score and the protagonist's vril polarity signature are coupled per T1\_Vril §1, and this coupling produces appearance shifts across integrity levels.
Truly Good and Good shifts produce a luminous signature — warm gold-white visual register per art direction. Skin clarity, eye brightness, posture openness, hair vitality, luminescent quality to vril-intensive actions.
Evil and Pure Evil terminal shifts produce a hardening and desaturation signature — cool blue-purple visual register. Skin hardening, eye coldness, posture tightness, hair desaturation, cool quality to vril-intensive actions.
Neutral shifts produce an ambiguous visual signature — no strong signal in either direction; the protagonist appears in-between.
Appearance shifts are level-specific rather than score-specific. A World State 1 Luminous protagonist at integrity plus eighty-five and a World State 2 Restored protagonist at integrity plus thirty-five both show generative-direction appearance content, but the World State 1 protagonist's luminous signature is stronger. The signal is continuous across the level, but the directional framing is path-bucket-based at the rendering layer.
This prevents pixel-level appearance hunting where players attempt to tune the exact integrity score for a specific visual outcome while preserving a meaningful continuous signal across the full range.
Appearance also shifts with age stage independently of integrity. The protagonist ages across the seventy-seven-chapter arc; facial and body features evolve accordingly. The integrity appearance shift layers on top of the age-stage appearance baseline.
Implementation consequence per Pipeline Contracts §1 UE5 canonical scope and §2 Meshy mesh pipeline: every age stage has a generative-direction appearance variant, a corrosive-direction appearance variant, and a neutral appearance variant. The art asset pipeline produces all three variants for every age stage.
NPCs in the world see the appearance shift as a direct vril-signature perception, not as a read of observable behavioral history. This is consistent with §2.2 — integrity is a real property of the protagonist, not reputation bookkeeping.
The Ch 57 Australian elder reads appearance-shift-as-vril-signature. The Grand Sage at Ch 76-77 reads the cumulative vril-signature as the culminating state. Other high-consciousness NPCs covering the Architect, certain vril-adept antagonist-family operatives, named healers, the healer's child from Ch 13 onward read appearance shifts and respond accordingly per character canon. The recognition-mechanism subtype schema classifying how each region carries this direct integrity-read event lives at §8.10.
Appearance score is one of the biography parameters feeding voice generation per §2.3. The luminous generative-direction appearance state produces a different voice configuration than the hardened corrosive-direction appearance state. Appearance and voice are coupled downstream of integrity; they are not independent parameters per CVD §10.
World responsiveness at each state resolves across three canonical axes.
The antagonist operations axis covers how intact or exposed the Velheim Inner Council's local operational manifestations are in each region the protagonist has engaged. Operational manifestations live at T4\_House\_of\_Velheim\_Canonical canonical authority.
The community recovery axis covers how visibly recovered or damaged the human communities the protagonist has engaged with are.
The journal status axis covers the status of the healer's child's journal — Ch 13 begins, Ch 38 transferred to protagonist, Ch 56 decision-to-publish, Ch 57 public on Truly Good path, Ch 58 shared, suppressed on lower paths, never completed on Evil path.
World State 1 Luminous Truly Good. Antagonist operations exposed across the six local manifestation types plus the Political Access Ch 59-65 campaign. Communities visibly recovered. Journal fully public and credited.
World State 2 Restored Good. Most operations challenged. Most communities recovering. Journal public.
World State 3 Neutral. Mixed outcomes — some operations challenged, others intact. Some communities recovering, others static. Presence rather than direction.
World State 4 Damaged. Antagonist operations mostly intact. Direct community help during the protagonist's visit but no institutional change persists. Journal suppressed.
World State 5 Corrupted. Antagonist operations strengthened through the protagonist's passage. Communities damaged. Journal never completed.
Community status and antagonist operational status accumulate across the arc. A community the protagonist engaged at Ch 4 Bali is still at the state set when they left, modified by subsequent integrity-pattern influence. The Ch 59-65 continental revisits beat per T1\_World\_Geography\_Master is the canonical opportunity for the protagonist to directly observe these accumulated states.
On Truly Good path, Ch 59-65 revisits show communities visibly recovered from the states the protagonist left them in ancient-world chapters. On Evil path, revisits show communities damaged in ways the protagonist can trace to their own ancient-world choices.
Per T1\_Languages\_and\_Scripts\_Master §5.3 and Pipeline Contracts §1.9 Journal Mechanic Canonical Authority:
The journal's voice carries path-variable texture per CVD §17.9 Pillar 6 Journal Player-Facing canonical:
The journal voice texture is canonical at the world-state response layer. Specific entry-by-entry text generation is owned by quest writing scope per Pipeline Contracts §6.
Per T1\_Vril §5.7, recharge sources respond to the protagonist's vril signature directly. World State 1 protagonists experience maximally responsive recharge sources. World State 5 protagonists experience attenuated recharge, and certain protected sites covering Ch 57 Australia recognition sites, Ch 29 Sámi sacred sieidi, Ch 42 Haiti Vodou ritual sites do not respond to negative-vril signatures at all. This produces path-specific gameplay difficulty modulation without explicit integrity-gating.
Faction standing tracks the protagonist's treatment of specific cultural groups, villages, and organizations. Each faction's standing updates independently. High standing with one faction may produce low standing with rivals — faction relationships are locally real, not symmetrically modeled.
Faction standing interacts with integrity but is distinct from it. High integrity does not automatically produce high faction standing — a protagonist may be integrity-positive at the protagonist level but faction-negative with a specific group they have wronged. Faction standing modifies NPC reactions covering greeting, dialogue option availability, quest availability, pricing. Faction standing opens and closes specific opportunities and gates entry to certain optional questline branches; it cascades through documented NPC relationships. It never hard-gates main-story progression — every faction and relationship state leaves multiple viable paths forward, and no choice (including a killing) can produce a dead end. The no-dead-end guarantee is canonical per the non-blocking multi-path standard.
Per-chapter faction lists, faction relationships, and faction-gated content are owned by T2 ChapterDesign briefs and T8 region pages Section 8 Politics Territories and Faction Relationships per Pipeline Contracts §7. This doc owns the integrity-faction interaction framework only.
Authoring guidance — the five relationship-reaction factors (D-FIVE-FACTORS RULED, Josh 2026-07-21: folded here as authoring guidance, not a system). When authoring a faction relationship at region-page Section 8 or quest scope, read the reaction against five factors together: Integrity (WS\_001 and the world-state band per §4), Faction standing (WS\_021 under the §8.11 nine-band ladder), Wealth (the protagonist's visible means at the encounter), Appearance (WS\_006 appearance\_score), and Ability Tree standing (the demonstrated capability tier). These are an authoring checklist for writing believable per-faction reactions, not a scoring formula and not a new mechanic — each factor already lives in its own owning system, and no new worldstate variable attaches to this list. Provenance: relocated from a Pipeline Contracts §7.3 line whose "Five Factors framework per CVD §13" cite was doubly false (no such framework existed anywhere in the corpus; CVD §13 is the World Boss and MMO layer); the enumeration itself was grounded and is preserved here as its home.
The environmental and atmospheric boss mechanic per T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec is one playable combat encounter type — it resolves through perception, vril-management, and restraint rather than through raw damage, and it is the canonical playable surface for relief and culturally protected chapters where combat is never framed against a community. It composes with, and never displaces, the lethal-combat surface of the arc; its presence is action, not combat absence. Resolution gates on Intuition plus Constitution plus Integrity.
Failure states scale with world state. Combat-scale vril expenditure destroys both genuine vril echo and negative consciousness manifestation, producing environmental degradation and faction loss. Insufficient vril management feeds the negative manifestation; the negative strengthens for the Ch 39-plus revisit. Documented instances across the arc include Ch 10 San Rock Art Spirit (first instance establishing the mechanic), Ch 20 Silk Road oasis ruins, Ch 29 Sámi drum site, Ch 38 Azores triple-plate junction vril convergence at midpoint, Ch 45-46 Amazon visionary-site echo, Ch 57 Australia Dreaming-site protocol.
This doc owns the world-state interaction with combat resolution at the integrity-gating layer. T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec owns the combat encounter type spec.
Per CVD §5 Pillar 12 (1.13 v4.1) Three-Layer Engagement Architecture, fauna behavior in the game world expresses canonical truth at Layer 3 — metaphysical-as-operational presentation where the integrity signal and the regional vril substrate are real properties that conscious fauna read directly. This sub-section establishes T1\_Integrity\_Paths\_Worldstates\_Master as the canonical authority for the Layer 3 fauna behavior substrate.
Layer 3 canonical truth fauna substrate authority lives at this doc. Two canonical Layer 3 mechanics route through this authority — integrity\_visible\_aesthetic\_shift on fauna behavior per integrity-band protagonist state, and vril\_substrate\_response on fauna behavior per regional vril\_density. A third mechanic, folklore\_behavior\_substrate, operates at Pillar 12 Layer 2 depth substrate for fauna where regional folklore tradition diverges from documented zoology; this doc cross-references the Layer 2 mechanic at the integration architecture layer because both Layer 3 mechanics layer on top of either the documented-zoology baseline or the folkloric-zoology baseline whichever the regional substrate establishes.
The canonical authority distributes as follows. T1\_Integrity\_Paths\_Worldstates\_Master owns the integrity-and-vril-driven fauna substrate mechanics at the canonical authority layer. T8 region page Section 3 Fauna and Animal Life owns per-region per-species substrate authoring against primary-source ethological corpus and regional folklore corpus. T0\_Creature\_Roster carries the per-creature fauna\_behavior\_substrate object as runtime data layer per Pipeline Contracts §7.6 column expansion. T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec owns predator-prey ecology canonical authority within regional combat identity per CVD §5 Pillar 10\. The four-doc distribution mirrors the canonical\_zones authority distribution at T1\_World\_Geography\_Master §14 — substrate authority at this doc, structured form at T0, prose authoring at T8 region page, combat-mechanic specifics at T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec.
This authority is canonical per Pipeline Contracts §7.3 Section 3 attribution: "Per-creature fauna\_behavior\_substrate canonical authority distributes across T8 Region Page Section 3 per-region authoring against primary-source ethological corpus, T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec for predator-prey ecology canonical authority within regional combat identity per Pillar 10, and T1\_Integrity\_Paths\_Worldstates\_Master for Pillar 12 Layer 3 integrity-visible aesthetic shift on fauna behavior."
Per §2.2 Integrity Is a Real Property and §7.4 What Other Conscious Beings Perceive, integrity is a canonically real property of the protagonist that conscious beings in-world read directly through vril-signature perception. Conscious fauna read the integrity signal at the same vril-signature perception layer.
The integrity\_visible\_aesthetic\_shift mechanic on fauna covers fauna behavior modulation per integrity-band protagonist state across the five integrity levels per §3.2.
The mechanic operates at the player\_response\_modifiers field on T0\_Creature\_Roster per Pipeline Contracts §7.3 Section 3\. Per-species modifier substrate authors at T8 region page Section 3 against primary-source ethological corpus plus the integrity-band canonical framework above. UE5 PCG fauna behavior simulation per Pipeline Contracts §1.2 reads the per-species modifier at runtime; fauna behavior modulates against the protagonist's worldstate integrity-band variable per T0\_Worldstate\_Variables runtime evaluation.
The aesthetic shift carries visual register per CVD art direction. Approach registers carry warm-direction art-direction shifts in fauna posture, gait, sound, glance pattern. Flight and alarm registers carry cool-direction art-direction shifts at higher-intensity expression. The visual register pairs with the appearance shift architecture per §7 — fauna read protagonist appearance signature directly, and their behavioral expression carries the matched aesthetic register.
Per T1\_Vril\_and\_Magic\_System\_Master §1 vril physics and §10.6 atmospheric vril density by world state, regional vril substrate is canonically a real property of the world that conscious fauna read directly. The vril\_substrate\_response mechanic on fauna covers fauna behavior modulation per regional vril\_density.
The vril\_density input to this mechanic is the per-zone vril\_density enum value on the canonical\_zones object array per T1\_World\_Geography\_Master §14.2 plus T0\_Vril\_Site\_Registry canonical anchor proximity at runtime. The five vril\_density bands — null, low, mid, high, anchor — produce five canonical fauna response patterns.
The mechanic operates at the vril\_substrate\_response object on T0\_Creature\_Roster per Pipeline Contracts §7.3 Section 3\. The vril\_density\_threshold field on the object specifies the per-species threshold at which substrate-aware behavior canonically activates (for example, raven canonical substrate-aware threshold at vril\_density mid, dolphin canonical substrate-aware threshold at vril\_density mid, forest-elephant canonical substrate-aware threshold at vril\_density high). Per-species threshold substrate authors at T8 region page Section 3 against primary-source ethological corpus plus regional canonical vril-substrate substrate.
UE5 PCG fauna behavior simulation per Pipeline Contracts §1.2 reads the per-species vril\_substrate\_response object at runtime. T0\_Vril\_Site\_Registry canonical anchor proximity evaluation modulates fauna behavior at anchor-proximity zones per the canonical anchor band substrate. T0\_Region\_Index canonical\_zones object array vril\_density per zone modulates fauna behavior at the per-zone band substrate per §13.7 cross-reference at T1\_World\_Geography\_Master.
The folklore\_behavior\_substrate field on T0\_Creature\_Roster per Pipeline Contracts §7.3 Section 3 captures canonical mythological behavior per regional tradition where Layer 2 depth substrate diverges from documented zoology. The mechanic operates at Pillar 12 Layer 2 depth substrate per CVD §5 — investigatable cultural substrate that the player can engage through journal entries, regional folklore corpus references, and per-region cultural-tradition authoring.
This doc references the Layer 2 mechanic at the integration architecture layer because the two Layer 3 mechanics established at §8.9.2 and §8.9.3 layer on top of either the documented-zoology baseline or the folkloric-zoology baseline whichever the regional substrate establishes. Where regional folklore tradition canonically establishes a fauna behavior register that diverges from documented zoology — for example, Iroko tree spirit-ecological-participant behavior at Ch 11-13 West African substrate, ayahuasca-serpent vision-mediated behavior at Ch 50 Amazon substrate, raven-as-Odin-messenger psychopomp behavior at Ch 26 Norse substrate — the integrity\_visible\_aesthetic\_shift and vril\_substrate\_response mechanics modulate the folkloric baseline rather than the documented-zoology baseline.
Canonical authority for folklore\_behavior\_substrate routes through T8 region page Section 3 per-region authoring against regional folklore corpus per Pipeline Contracts §7.3 Section 3\. T1\_Integrity\_Paths\_Worldstates\_Master cross-references the Layer 2 mechanic at this sub-section to canonically establish the integration with Layer 3 substrate; the canonical authority for the Layer 2 mechanic itself lives at T8 region page Section 3\.
The integration discipline at canonical authoring time: per-species fauna\_behavior\_substrate authoring at T8 region page Section 3 establishes the baseline (documented or folkloric); the player\_response\_modifiers field per §8.9.2 modulates the baseline per integrity band; the vril\_substrate\_response object per §8.9.3 modulates the baseline per regional vril\_density. The three layers compose at runtime through UE5 PCG fauna behavior simulation per Pipeline Contracts §1.2.
The Pillar 12 Layer 3 fauna behavior substrate couples to canonical hard lines at three anchor points.
Phase 6 Story Spine cascade restart canonically routes per-region fauna substrate population through T8 region page Section 3 authoring per Pipeline Contracts §7.3. Per-region authoring cadence per Architecture doc Phase 5 Restructure Progress section advances at one region per weekend post-Phase-5-close. The Pillar 12 Layer 3 fauna substrate authority at this sub-section operates as canonical input to T8 region page Section 3 authoring at every region across the cascade.
T0\_Creature\_Roster column expansion at the fauna\_behavior\_substrate object lands at Phase 5M T0\_Schema\_Dictionary canonical lock per Pipeline Contracts §7.6 minimum-viable column adds. The three Layer 3 fields established at §8.9.2 and §8.9.3 — player\_response\_modifiers, vril\_substrate\_response, integrity\_visible\_aesthetic\_shift — populate at Schema Dictionary lock per the field-granular populated\_from column convention per Pipeline Contracts §7.6.
Per §2.2 Integrity Is a Real Property and §7.4 What Other Conscious Beings Perceive, high-consciousness beings in-world read the protagonist's integrity directly as vril signature rather than as a read of observable behavioral history. Recognition is the canonical name for this direct integrity-read event where a conscious being registers what the protagonist is. This sub-section establishes the canonical recognition-mechanism subtype schema that classifies how a given region's recognition event is carried.
Recognition-mechanism canon resolves into two top-level subtypes.
The recognition-via-individual-perceiver subtype covers recognition carried by a specific conscious perceiver — a tradition-holder, elder, or practitioner who reads the protagonist's vril signature directly. The recognition event is anchored in an individual or a defined perceiver role.
The recognition-via-land subtype covers recognition carried by the territory itself rather than by an individual perceiver. The canonical first instance is the Ch 11 Mbuti hunter at the Ituri Forest — the forest already knows. Ch 57 Australia carries the recognition-via-land subtype at the Dreaming-substrate register, consistent with the §8.9.5 Ch 57 recognition-only fauna framing and the §10.8 Ch 57 absolute hard line.
The two subtypes are not strictly mutually exclusive; a region can layer both mechanisms. The dominant register canonically registers per chapter. Ch 57 Australia layers an individual-perceiver reading — the §7.4 Australian elder who reads the appearance-shift-as-vril-signature — over its dominant recognition-via-land register.
The recognition-via-individual-perceiver subtype resolves into canonical registers distinguished by the perceiver context.
The Ch 29 Sámi noaidi tradition recognition carries the recognition-via-individual-perceiver subtype.
Recognition intensity couples to world state per §8.6 and §4 — protected-site recognition responds fully at World State 1 Luminous, attenuates through the middle bands, and is withheld at World State 5 Corrupted where presence is perceived but recognition is not returned, consistent with §4.6 and §8.9.5.
The recognition-mechanism subtype pattern emerged as canonical at Ch 11. Chapters prior to Ch 11 retain their original recognition-mechanism canonical registrations via the subtype schema above; no prior-chapter Story Spine entry rewrites are required per forward-build canon.
Forward-arc region builds either map to an existing recognition-mechanism subtype and register or register a new register under a subtype. Subtype and register assignment per chapter is a Range Review Grid 6 Convergence Node audit criterion at cascade. Per-chapter subtype and register assignment beyond the canonical anchors established here — Ch 8 Mijikenda kaya-elder, Ch 11 Mbuti land, Ch 29 Sámi noaidi individual-perceiver, Ch 57 Australia land — is authored at the Story Spine cascade against this schema and is not pre-assigned here.
This sub-section is the canonical T1 authority for the shared relational ladder and the companion-loyalty system, per the D-REL-BANDS rulings (Josh, 2026-07-16) and the companion cast ratification D-CAST (Josh, 2026-07-19), recorded at docs/spine/DECISIONS\_PENDING\_JOSH.md with the full briefs at docs/spine/RELATIONSHIP\_TIER\_BANDS\_BRIEF.md and docs/spine/COMPANION\_CAST\_BRIEF.md and the measurement record at docs/spine/RATE\_MISMATCH\_ANALYSIS.md. Worldstate rows WS\_008, WS\_027, and WS\_028 cite this section as canonical authority, and the reputation ladder registry's tier\_thresholds cells carry this section's global default. This section closes the WS7 open authority flag — the companion-loyalty system's canonical home is this doc, no longer a memory plus a proposal.
One numeric ladder spans every relational axis — faction standing per WS\_021 and T0\_Reputation\_Ladder\_Registry, per-NPC bond\_state per WS\_008, and companion loyalty\_score per WS\_027. The score domain is signed -100 to +100. The nine bands, ruled as the plain symmetric Scheme C with these internal band names: Nemesis -100 to -90, Hostile -89 to -70, Wary -69 to -40, Cool -39 to -10, Neutral -9 to +9, Friendly +10 to +39, Honored +40 to +69, Revered +70 to +89, Exalted +90 to +100.
Display labels are per-axis over the shared numbers, per the ruled naming-method lists:
The STANDING grammar is the care solve: every label is a participle of reception naming the player's earned position, never what a people are. A group rendered as Hunted describes the player as the hunted party; the anti-genocide grounding lives at the attackability-and-consequence model, not at §8.7, whose standing direction runs the other way.
The ruled departure design is opposition-magnitude. A 0 to 100 belief-distance scalar is computed from the player's integrity band — never from observed deeds, because integrity is a real property per §2.2. The scalar maps onto the existing loyalty\_departure\_threshold enum: complete\_opposition triggers at 85, major\_opposition at 60, any\_sustained\_misalignment at 35, never carries no trigger, and circumstance\_only is not integrity-driven at all and departs by plot. loyalty\_score acts as capped inertia: the effective trigger is the threshold plus score divided by ten, and the effective trigger caps at 90. Alignment record (wiring commit, 2026-07-19): the ruling as ratified stated the inertia bonus "capped at +15"; on the -100 to +100 score domain the maximum reachable bonus is +10, so the +15 figure is unreachable and recorded inert — this alignment changes no behavior and the ratified invariant is untouched.
The invariant, ratified and not tunable: opposition tops out at 100 and the effective trigger caps at 90, so complete opposition always forces departure and investment can never buy immunity. The eight magnitudes are authored starting values playtest may move without a re-ruling; the shape and the 90-cap invariant may not be tuned away.
WAVERING fires at the effective trigger minus 15 and is the visible warning window before departure — the band that makes the WS\_028 transition enum computable. DRAWN is the mirror at alignment of 60 or more, driving drawn\_conditional joins. A departure must sustain across two chapter nodes before DEPARTED fires. Every DEPARTED event carries a non-empty rerouted\_paths set per the no-dead-end contract — losing a companion reshapes routes and never blocks — and every DEPARTED event also carries the investment return per §8.11.6: the departing companion gives back the gear and the transferable build investment the player put into them. The two clauses are one contract. A departure costs the player the person and the routes that person opened, never the kit and never the hours of build investment; the DEPARTED event is not complete until both the reroute set and the return are resolved.
A for\_life companion never departs via the loyalty mechanic. On the Evil path the bond does not break — it inverts: the companion leaves the player's side and stands in opposition, per the ruling of 2026-07-17. The canonical instance is Ntala (CHAR\_0002): on the Truly Good and Good Enough paths she travels for life; on the Evil path the bond inverts and she becomes an additional endgame opposition encounter, the arc's moral anchor standing against what the player has become. The Ch 65 Evil-path staging is the inversion beginning, not a departure-rule departure. The opposition-encounter design — seating, mechanics, spare-or-kill semantics, and the grief-never-triumph care register — is a follow-on ratification, not settled here.
The nine bands above are the global default. A per-faction threshold override — one guild grinding faster than another — is genuine tuning, creative-within-vision, applied showing the path. A per-axis override — companions as a class differing from factions as a class — is the declined Ruling-2 variant and requires a new ruling; it may not be waved through as tuning. The registry cannot distinguish the two moves, because both look identical in a per-row tier\_thresholds cell, so this distinction is held here in doctrine.
Relational movement writes are qualitative class-and-direction tokens per the §5.1 integrity precedent — never point values. Per-beat numeric rates are runtime clamps owned by the runtime generative layer's relationship tick per docs/RUNTIME\_GENERATIVE\_LAYER.md, not canon-authored magnitudes.
WS\_012 familiar\_bond\_state is a separate axis from this ladder. Its corpus-attested shape is the familiar bond-quest ladder — approach, accepted, mastery, with qualitative per-familiar bond-event writes — and the Ch 58 reunion outcome record per §9.5. Whether the familiar axis joins the shared nine-band ladder is deliberately open and requires its own ruling, because the Ch 58 reunion branches off path buckets, not tiers. Do not conflate the two in any consumer: the NPC bond\_state per WS\_008 is unwritten in the executed spine to date, while the familiar axis carries 99 writes across 38 nodes.
The data home for the bond-gated familiar abilities is the deferred bond\_abilities child table — the T0\_Familiar\_Registry extension registered per docs/registry\_extensions.json, keyed on familiar\_id with a bond\_level enum, and unminted until that extension lands. The spread and its level-up choice state per §8.11.7 extend WS\_012 alongside it.
The bond axis and the stat-spread axis per §8.11.7 compose without merging. The bond ladder gates what a familiar can do — which bond abilities and which Enhanced Ability Mastery pairings are available at approach, accepted, and mastery — and the player-shaped stat spread tunes how the familiar does it. A familiar at mastery bond with a low-intelligence spread has its full ability set and a simple behavior register; a familiar at approach bond with a high-intelligence spread reads the fight well and has little unlocked to act on. Neither axis substitutes for the other, and the open ladder-joining question above is not settled by the spread layer.
Per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §9 (RULED, Josh 2026-07-26). Companions carry the same build apparatus the protagonist carries. A companion has gear slots, an ability loadout, the selectable minor and major bonus picks drawn from each proficiency tier's pool, and the purchasable second and third loadout sets with their quick-change at a waterfall or vril recharge site. A companion is built, not equipped once and forgotten. The pools, the picks, the loadout-set unlocks, and the vril-site interaction are owned by T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec and T1\_Ability\_Tree and are consumed here without restatement; this sub-section owns what parity means when the relationship moves.
INVESTMENT PROTECTION is the canonical rule and the reason parity is safe to grant. A companion who departs under §8.11.2 returns the transferable build investment to the player — the equipment issued to them, the imprint runes carried on that equipment, and the consumable stock they were holding. The companion's own accumulated levels, attribute spread, and proficiency picks are intrinsic to the person and leave with them; a companion is not a stat block the player harvests on the way out.
The transferable-versus-intrinsic split is a director-applied interim interpretation of the ruling, reversible at ratification: the ruling states that a departing companion returns the gear, and the line between what returns and what leaves is drawn here so consumers have one reading to build against rather than several. Two edges resolve as follows under that interim reading. The ally's level-up growth and attribute spread per §8.11.7 are intrinsic and leave with the ally, and the player's spent choice budget is not refunded — those levels were the ally's own growth shaped by the player, not a currency the player banked in them. The purchasable second and third loadout-set slots are player-level unlocks: they persist with the player, apply across whoever is on the bench, and never depart with a companion, because the player bought the slot rather than buying it into the person. Transferable investment — gear and the imprint-rune items carried on it — returns per the contract above and the §8.11.2 departure contract. Both readings hold pending the schema-pass ratification, which is where the split is confirmed or redrawn.
The doctrine behind the rule, which binds every downstream consumer: the moral weight of a departure sits on the relationship. The player loses a person they travelled with, the routes that person opened reshape per the rerouted\_paths contract at §8.11.2, and the world reads the loss. The player does not lose their kit. A stripped inventory would convert a relational consequence into a resource penalty and would teach players to protect their gear rather than their relationships, which inverts what the integrity system is for — integrity is a real property per §2.2, and a departure is that property's honest consequence, not a punishment mechanic.
Two boundary cases resolve as follows. A companion who returns under the WS\_028 REBONDED transition returns as who they were — their spread, specialties, and combat style persist across the absence, and re-equipping is the player's choice to make again. A for\_life companion under the §8.11.3 inversion never departs and so never triggers the return, because no DEPARTED event fires; whether the inverted companion carries the player-built kit into the endgame opposition encounter belongs to that encounter's follow-on ratification per §8.11.3, and the investment-protection doctrine binds whatever shape it takes — the player's investment is never confiscated as a penalty for the path they walked.
Persistence rides the per-companion roster object at WS\_027 per T0\_Worldstate\_Variables, which will carry loadout state alongside the loyalty fields once the schema pass authors the columns; until that pass lands, no consumer may read a loadout field on WS\_027, because the field does not yet exist. The return transaction rides the DEPARTED event at WS\_028 beside rerouted\_paths. Column expansion authors at the schema pass; this doc carries the canonical authority and the registry carries the runtime layer, per the §11.1 division.
Per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §12 (RULED, Josh 2026-07-26). Companions and familiars carry stat spreads the player builds. The player makes the stat choices at each ally level-up, and equipment influence shifts the resulting profile further. The spread drives the ally's specialties and preferred combat styles: how an ally fights emerges from how the player built them, not from a fixed authored archetype. Two players travelling with the same companion field two genuinely different allies, and the difference is theirs.
The attribute substrate is the canonical six-attribute roster owned by T1\_Ability\_Tree — Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Agility, Accuracy, Intelligence — read here on the ally side rather than the protagonist side. No new attribute is minted for allies. The roster is the seed the ally system draws on; per-ally specialty derivation, the combat-style vocabulary, and the equipment-influence rules expand through the factory as chapters land their companion and familiar content, and the enumerations that follow are seeds for that expansion rather than closed lists.
Three properties of the spread are canonical here.
Persistence rides the per-companion roster object at WS\_027 and the familiar bond state at WS\_012, extended with the spread and its level-up choice state at the schema pass. The bond-gated ability side has its own data home in the deferred bond\_abilities child table per §8.11.5 — the T0\_Familiar\_Registry extension registered per docs/registry\_extensions.json — and the spread state extends WS\_012 alongside that table rather than inside it. Magnitudes — per-point weights, derivation thresholds, equipment-influence coefficients — defer to Phase 5M calibration; this doc locks the shape.
Per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §12 (RULED, Josh 2026-07-26). Intelligence on an ally spread buys behavior quality. A more intelligent ally detects more patterns, acts more proactively, and stays more aware. The player invests in the ally's mind the same way they invest in its arms, and the investment is legible in play.
The three behavior domains intelligence buys, as the seed set the factory expands per ally and per chapter:
The tradeoff is mandatory and is the point of the axis. Intelligence competes with the combat attributes on the same spread, so an ally cannot be both maximally capable and maximally clever. A low-intelligence wall or a low-intelligence glass cannon is a legitimate and fully supported spec whose simpler behavior register is the accepted cost of what it does well, and a high-intelligence support that reads the fight for the player is a legitimate spec whose lower raw output is the accepted cost of that reading. Neither is the correct answer; the balance the player strikes per ally and per role is the customization.
Two disciplines bind this axis.
The intelligence reading is continuous with existing canon rather than new to it — T1\_Ability\_Tree already reads Intelligence as the attribute unlocking vril capacity, puzzle-solve rate, and dialogue-option breadth on the protagonist, and the ally-side reading extends the same attribute into behavior-tree quality. The behavior-tree runtime that consumes the intelligence tier is build-lane engineering scope; the tiering, the domains, and the tradeoff are canon here.
Per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §11 and §12 (RULED, Josh 2026-07-26). Companions and familiars are first-class components of the player's build, not narrative accessories that travel alongside it. A healer companion is what makes a glass-damage protagonist spec viable; a tank companion is what frees the protagonist to build support. The party is a build surface, and building it is content in its own right — a properly built team is meant to be fun to customize and build, at the same register as the protagonist's own theorycraft.
The role axes the party fills — group and single-target, across support, heals, and damage — and the build axes they cross with — mastery builds and their hybrids, per-weapon-class builds, elemental and element-combination builds, and custom-forge merge builds — are owned by T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec and T1\_Ability\_Tree as the endgame build-role taxonomy. This sub-section records the two things that taxonomy needs from the integrity side.
Ally stat spreads and party compositions enter the build-space sweeps that Phase 5M and 5H own per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §10. Team combinatorics are part of the measured space: viability breadth is counted per role axis with the party included, a role axis that only one ally build can serve is a defect, and the no-dead-end guarantee at §8.7 is the hard floor the sweeps run under — no composition, and no loss of a companion, may produce a dead end. The sweeps measure; they do not license narrowing the path-agnostic breadth above.
Per docs/spine/DECISIONS\_PENDING\_JOSH.md, the twenty-eighth sitting item J4 (RULED, Josh 2026-07-30). An ally is a character and not a unit. The player may choose to control one manually by switching to them, in the register of a Final Fantasy VII Remake party switch, and while an ally is not under the player's control it acts as that character — according to how it has been specialized and how its stats have been awarded.
The three consequences this sub-section owns.
Two boundaries hold. The integrity-gated familiar direction that T3\_Familiars\_Named §1.4 already carries is unaffected and is not an order channel: a familiar the player may direct to attack at its own integrity band is existing familiar canon, and the bands that forbid direction still forbid it. Behaviour quality remains a build property and never an integrity property, so nothing here moves the belief-distance scalar at §8.11.2, and direct control confers no loyalty.
The runtime that implements the switch — input routing, the camera and HUD handover, and the suspension of the ally's own behaviour tree while the player drives it — is build-lane engineering scope. What is ruled here is that the switch exists, that the uncontrolled ally acts as its built character, and that no order verb accompanies either state.
All three endings share two canonical content beats that play identically regardless of path.
Shared Beat 1 is the Ch 76-77 waterfall reveal. The Grand Sage steps into the water. Her reflection is the protagonist's face. The exact words run, unmodified, across all three endings: "God is you. God is all of us. We are the collective consciousness." The communication mode is understood rather than spoken aloud per Grand Sage canonical authority — communication only through visions, intuition pulses, and vibrational imprints.
Shared Beat 2 is the unseen-reader epilogue. A table with the healer's child's journal open on it. The reader is unseen — no face, no identifying features. Pages turn. Fade to black. The epilogue plays identically in all three endings. On Evil path the journal was never completed per §8.4; the unseen reader is turning pages in the partial journal that does exist, not in a completed one. The unseen-reader frame holds across paths regardless.
Legendary familiar reunited at Ch 58 Antarctica. Father encounter as reunion at Ch 75 — legendary familiar present, vril-healing consent-beat with sovereign-level deployment, six-option maximum-weight dialogue determining Ch 76-77 ending cutscene specifics, full grief-geography resolution-trajectory onset. Cassius Velheim resolved cleanly at Ch 76 Phase 3 — accumulated negative vril purged per T1\_Vril §11.4, the only canonical instance in the arc of full negative-vril-purge on a single individual. The Duat agreement refused at Ch 69\. Journal fully public from Ch 57\. Ch 66 Atlantis passage-decision engages pre-fall Atlantean vril-engineering at full-encounter scale; Vimana fifth operational mode dimensional-space accessed canonically; Ch 65 ending-path-lock Truly Good threshold achievable. Fairy realm restoration possible as the consequence state.
Familiar not fully reunited at Ch 58 — footprints-before-arrival pattern; the familiar departed before protagonist's arrival; healer's child journal records the trace, shared-journal activation partial. Father encounter as negotiation at Ch 75 — familiar nearby but not present, earned mutual-recognition of human-world-understanding-worth-separation-cost, six-option maximum-weight dialogue with harder-response-register demand, partial grief-geography resolution, earned-partial-reconciliation register. Cassius Velheim retreats at Ch 76 — returns in sequel content. The Duat agreement varies per sub-path within Good Enough; refused in most variants but with less finality than Truly Good. Journal public but contested. Ch 66 Atlantis passage-decision limited engagement; surface-knowledge only; Ch 65 ending-path-lock Good Enough threshold achievable but requires no Ch 65 misstep. Partial fairy realm restoration as the consequence state.
Familiar absent at Ch 58 — trace-only pattern; only the deepest residue, no footprints, no scent, only a faint persisting vril-signature that the protagonist's own corrupted vril-state cannot stably read; healer's child journal does not engage the trace, shared-journal activation does not occur. Father encounter as combat at Ch 75 — the hardest fight in the game; familiar absent; father at full ruling-sovereign capacity; protagonist at transmitted-consciousness-structure-augmented capability; sustained-capability-overcoming-peak-capability resolution; father defeated at sovereign capacity register with compromised-sovereignty-state ending-consequence. Cassius Velheim victory at Ch 76 — costs something specific owned by ChapterDesign Ch 66-77 and T3\_Core\_Characters Cassius Velheim canon. The Duat agreement accepted at Ch 69\. Ch 66 Atlantis passage-decision weaponizes Atlantean fragments — temporary power gain Ch 66-73 at integrity cost; Ch 76 Cassius confrontation difficulty-spike as Cassius leverages weaponized fragments; Ch 75 father encounter combat variant gates here as well, the tarnished-vril burden the father must keep from the realm includes Atlantean fragment residue. Journal never completed. Fairy realm under compromised conditions as the consequence state.
The Ch 58 Child Familiar reunion is canonically Truly Good path only per T3\_Familiars\_Named §5 and T3\_Core\_Characters §2.11. Path-branching at the Ch 58 reunion-attempt:
This is a hard line per CVD §17.9. The Ch 76-77 Grand Sage waterfall reveal and the unseen-reader epilogue play identically in all three endings. The Grand Sage's identity reveal — that the Grand Sage is the protagonist's own collective consciousness reflected back per Grand Sage canonical authority — is the game's central reveal, and it happens for every player regardless of path.
The three endings differ in everything that precedes the Ch 76-77 beat — the arc toward the reveal — and in the consequence-state framing that precedes and surrounds the epilogue covering fairy realm restoration possible / partial restoration / compromised conditions. They do not differ in the reveal itself.
The reveal is not a reward for good play. It is what the game is about, and it is offered to every player who completes the arc.
Non-negotiable regardless of player choice, integrity path, or Claude session context.
Per CVD §17.9: never hint at the Grand Sage's identity before Ch 76-77. The Grand Sage's identity as the protagonist's own collective consciousness reflected back is the game's central reveal. It is not stated or foreshadowed in any in-game content before the Ch 76-77 beat across dialogue, journal entries, inscription content, NPC exposition, environmental storytelling, art direction, music. Foreshadowing the reveal undermines the game's primary payoff.
This hard line applies to in-game content. This canonical reference doc documents the reveal because it is the authoritative source of truth for the ending architectures. Production docs cite this doc; in-game content does not cite the reveal.
Per T1\_Vril §11.4: the Ch 76 Phase 3 mechanic — Cassius Velheim's accumulated negative vril being purged — is available on the Truly Good path only. On Good Enough Cassius retreats and returns in sequel. On Evil Cassius achieves victory that costs something specific. The purge is not authored as available on Good Enough or Evil paths. No other canonical negative-vril purge runs across the arc on a single individual; this is the only instance.
Per §9.1 and §9.6: the Ch 76-77 Grand Sage waterfall reveal and the unseen-reader epilogue play identically in all three endings. Path-variant waterfall content is not authored. Path-variant epilogue content is not authored. The exact words "God is you. God is all of us. We are the collective consciousness." run unmodified on all three paths.
Per §6.3 and CVD §10 Protagonist Voice System: all six options per dialogue beat are fully written and fully voiced. No placeholder text. No procedurally generated options. No unvoiced options. This applies equally to the four biography-shaped options and to the Truly Good and Truly Bad direction options.
Per T1\_Vril §1: the player's integrity drift toward Evil path is not authored as the player choosing evil for its own sake. Negative-vril accumulation is the outcome of cumulative self-loss, not a performance of villainy. This applies to all dialogue writing, quest writing, art direction, music direction. The Evil path is the sustained-corrosive-pattern outcome. Cassius Velheim is sophisticated, not monstrous. The Architect omits but does not lie. The Evil-path protagonist is hollowed, not cartoonish.
Per §3.1 through §3.5: the three path buckets Truly Good, Good Enough, Evil are the canonical Finale architecture. The five integrity levels produce continuous Ch 2-65 world-state texture; the Ch 65 lock-in convergence node collapses level into path bucket. A "Neutral ending" or a "Drifting ending" as separate from Good Enough or Evil endings respectively is not authored. The Finale runs on the three-path lock-in logic.
Per CVD §17.7: Velheim and Cassius Velheim are the canonical antagonist family and patriarch names. Dual references with Rockfella or House of Voss legacy naming are not maintained. Cassius Velheim antagonist family identity holds at all dialogue, all quest content, all cinematic content, all journal entries, all NPC exposition.
Per CVD §17.1 absolute hard line: Ch 57 Australia is the only chapter in the seventy-seven-chapter arc with no canonical antagonist family presence, and combat is never framed against the Aboriginal community. These two protections are absolute (HL_0106). They do not make the chapter combat-absent — the playable surface runs at relief-tier intensity through the environmental and atmospheric, astral (Dreaming), vril-substrate-defense, and dangerous-fauna combat layers per the CVD Pillar 3 C-Refined ruling and T1_World_Geography_Master Ruling 5. AIATSIS protocol substrate per CVD §17.1 binds at all chapter authoring. Aboriginal songline content remains at no-songline-imitating-content discipline; the chapter references substrate-respectful upstream framing without compositing songline-imitating content.
T1\_Vril\_and\_Magic\_System\_Master cross-cites this doc on integrity-vril coupling at §1, recharge accessibility integrity coupling at §5.7, atmospheric vril density by world state at §10.6, Ch 76 Phase 3 purge at §11.4. This doc cross-cites T1\_Vril at the same anchors with this doc owning the integrity-side spec and T1\_Vril owning the vril-side spec.
T1\_World\_Geography\_Master cross-cites this doc on Ch 38 Azores, Ch 55 Atacama, Ch 57 Australia, Ch 58 Antarctica, Ch 65 lock-in, Ch 76-77 Waterfall, per-world-state geographic variants. This doc references T1\_World\_Geography\_Master for region-side spec and owns the world-state band identity.
T1\_Languages\_and\_Scripts\_Master cross-cites this doc on journal status at Ch 13 begin, Ch 38 transfer, Ch 56 decision-to-publish, Ch 57 public, Ch 58 shared, Ch 77 epilogue. This doc owns the journal-as-path-artifact spec; T1\_Languages owns the inscription-script-side spec.
T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec cross-cites this doc on world-state interaction with combat resolution type and integrity-gating at environmental and atmospheric boss encounters. This doc owns the integrity-gating layer; T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec owns combat encounter type.
T1\_Story\_Spine and T99\_Story\_Spine\_Build\_Logic cross-cite this doc on the assimilation-integrity choice per §5.5. T99\_Story\_Spine\_Build\_Logic §9.6 owns the identity-concealment arc-state spec covering the identity\_hiding\_status and identity\_hiding\_pressure fields carried in every Story Spine entry; T1\_Story\_Spine owns the per-chapter assimilation-beat and dialogue implementation; this doc owns the integrity-side coupling — the participate-or-subvert magnitude and path effect per §5.5 and the mark-the-protagonist-leaves world-state and faction consequence per §4.9, §8.3, and §8.7.
T3\_Core\_Characters cross-cites this doc on Cassius Velheim Ch 76 Phase 3, the Elven King Ch 75 father encounter path variants, the Architect Ch 69 the Duat negotiation, the Grand Sage Ch 76-77 reveal, the healer's child journal mechanics from Ch 13 onward. This doc owns the path-architecture spec; T3 owns character canon. This doc owns the recognition-mechanism subtype schema per §8.10 as an integrity-read worldstate; per-character recognition portrayal (for example Mama Klara's foundational-mystery recognition) remains T3_Core_Characters character canon.
T4\_House\_of\_Velheim\_Canonical cross-cites this doc on antagonist operational types and per-world-state intactness and exposure mechanics. This doc owns the world-state response framework; T4 owns the operational spec.
T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec cross-cites this doc on MMO-layer integrity coupling. This doc owns solo-region world-state spec; the MMO layer carries its own integrity coupling at guild and territorial scope owned by T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec. T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec additionally cross-cites the companion build architecture at §8.11.6 through §8.11.10 as the single-player training ground for the Tier C raid-role and World Boss operational architecture — one role, stat, and build architecture across both arenas per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §12. This doc owns the solo-party and loyalty side; T1\_Tier\_C\_MMO\_Spec owns the raid-role and World Boss side.
T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec and T1\_Ability\_Tree cross-cite this doc on the companion and familiar axis of the ruled build systems per docs/COMBAT\_PROGRAM\_ADDENDUM.md §§9-12. Those docs own the selectable minor and major bonus pools, the loadout sets and their vril-site quick-change, spec purposes, the rarity ladder through LEGENDARY and MYTHIC, the six-attribute progression, and the endgame build-role taxonomy with its build-space sweeps. This doc owns the companion parity statement, the investment-protection rule and its place in the DEPARTED event contract, the player-shaped ally stat spread, the intelligence-as-behavior-quality axis and its mandatory tradeoff, and the integrity coupling that decides which allies a player can field.
T3\_Familiars\_Named and T5\_Familiar\_Bond\_Questlines consume this doc's familiar stat-spread layer per §8.11.7. The interface is stated here as the intended one: neither doc carries the reciprocal cite today — T5 is a title-only stub — and the reciprocal cite lands when T3 and T5 populate against this layer. Those docs own the thirty-three legendary-tier species, the twenty-two player familiar slots including the path-variable twenty-second, and per-familiar bond-quest content; this doc owns the spread-and-bond composition rule at §8.11.5 and the build-component reading at §8.11.9.
T0\_Creature\_Roster carries per-species fauna\_behavior\_substrate object populated against §8.9 canonical authority per Pipeline Contracts §7.6 minimum-viable adds. This doc owns Layer 3 integrity-visible aesthetic shift, vril-substrate response on fauna behavior, and folklore behavior substrate. T0\_Creature\_Roster is the runtime persistence layer; T8 region page Section 3 plus T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec own the complementary per-region and predator-prey-ecology canonical authority per §8.9.4.
T8 Region Page Section 3 Fauna and Animal Life cross-cites this doc on Pillar 12 Layer 3 fauna behavior substrate per §8.9. This doc owns the integrity, vril, and folklore behavior canonical authority; per-region Section 3 prose owns the per-region fauna catalog plus species-specific substrate authoring against primary-source ethological and folklore corpora.
T0\_Worldstate\_Variables registry rows populate from this doc per Pipeline Contracts §1.6 expansion. This doc is the canonical authority for the variable spec; the registry is the runtime persistence layer.
T1\_World\_Geography\_Master cross-cites this doc on per-region canonical\_zones vril\_density substrate input to §8.9 Pillar 12 Layer 3 fauna behavior substrate. T1\_World\_Geography\_Master §14 owns the per-region canonical\_zones substrate authority including per-zone vril\_density enum; this doc owns the fauna behavior modulation against the per-zone vril\_density input per §8.9.3.
T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec cross-cites this doc on Pillar 12 Layer 3 integrity-visible aesthetic shift on fauna behavior at predator-prey combat encounters. T1\_Combat\_System\_Spec owns predator-prey ecology canonical authority within regional combat identity per CVD §5 Pillar 10; this doc owns the integrity-band fauna behavior modulation at the canonical authority layer per §8.9.2.
T0\_Creature\_Roster fauna\_behavior\_substrate object populates against this doc's §8.9 canonical authority for the player\_response\_modifiers, vril\_substrate\_response, and integrity\_visible\_aesthetic\_shift fields per Pipeline Contracts §7.3 Section 3 plus §7.6 minimum-viable column adds. T0\_Creature\_Roster carries the runtime data layer; this doc carries the canonical authority. The folklore\_behavior\_substrate field on T0\_Creature\_Roster carries Layer 2 depth substrate per §8.9.4 cross-reference; canonical authority for that field routes through T8 region page Section 3 per-region authoring against regional folklore corpus, not through this doc.
Project 2 Book Processing consumes this doc for source material framing per the three-path system reframing. Source material that frames opposition as good versus evil reframes per §3.6 and §10.5 hard lines.
Project 3 Region Building consumes this doc at every region page Section 19 World State Versions Modern Revisit, Section 11 Velheim Family Presence three-path response substrate, and Section 3 Fauna and Animal Life Pillar 12 Layer 3 fauna behavior substrate per §8.9.
Project 4A Main Story Quests implements the Foundational chapter anchors at §5.4 with path-specific beat variants. The Ch 57, Ch 58, Ch 65, Ch 69, Ch 76 (Cassius Phase 1 and the Father Phase 2), Ch 76-77 beats are directly owned here in path-architecture terms.
Project 4B Trade and Side Questline Quests gates trade mastery outcomes, side questline completion outcomes, and legendary weapon acquisition by integrity path. Ability-2 vril-seat bonus interactions at Tier 3-plus weapon mastery intersect appearance-integrity coupling per §7.
Project 5 UE5 renders appearance shifts across three path-bucket variants per age stage, dialogue UI for six options including non-verbal action options, world-state environmental rendering variants per region. T0\_Worldstate\_Variables persists via Save State System per Pipeline Contracts §1.8.
Project 6 Music produces per-world-state musical stem variants per region per Y1 milestone, with music-as-vril-projection framing coupled to appearance-path framing per the region-driven music track (local ACE-Step/YuE lane) per Pipeline Contracts §3.
Project 7 Art produces protagonist design across three path-bucket × age-stage variants, NPC reaction design across path-specific responses, environmental design variants per world state, the luminous and hardened and ambiguous visual signature architecture.