BE_0002_S2_the_vital_force_theft.md

creatures/BE_0002_S2_the_vital_force_theft.md

BE_0002_S2 — the Polo's Vital-Force Theft, the encounter: an argument, then a hunt

CANON SUBORDINATION — this document is PROPOSAL-TIER: it serves canon and never outranks it.

The canon: the CVD · the T1 foundation docs · the T0 registries (registries/) · the spine

(docs/spine/CH_*.md) · the region pages (_source/02_Tier_2_Region_Pages/). Authority order: docs/DOC_MAP.md § 0.

Canon served (scanned from this document's own citations — widen it by hand where it is thin):

T0_Boss_Attack_Rail · T0_Boss_Encounter_Registry · T0_Creature_Roster · docs/spine/CH_02.md

READ THAT CANON FIRST — open it and derive from it before you build anything from this document.

If this document disagrees with canon, CANON WINS and this document is the defect — fix the

document, never the canon. Nothing here is applied until it is ratified into canon.

STATUS: PROPOSAL-TIER design sheet. The BODY is designed on CR_0151_the_wa_sent_night_form.md; this

sheet designs the ENCOUNTER — the materialized argument, the sending, and the geometry of the fail.

1. identity

• canon_id: BE_0002_S2
• canon_name: The Polo's Vital-Force Theft (materialized-argument mini-encounter)
• display_name: the thing that keeps offering
• chapter: CH_02, beat CH02_B06 (phase one at kelimutu_crater_lakes; phase two resolves in

liang_bua_cave)

• boss_kind: sub · target_type folklore_malevolent_being · ontology_class CONDEMNED · care_tier standard
• primary_verb: refuse · secondary_verb: strike · axis_split 40/35/25 (Patterns-forward)
• win_condition: PERCEIVE;REFUTE;REDUCE · collect_verb CONTAIN_PURGE · has_nonkill_path TRUE
• defender_element: none — RULED, and the wa sits OUTSIDE the D1-27 ability element law because the

category is abilities and the wa casts nothing

• ws_writes: ws.liang_bua_deep_layer_pressure
• register: ENCOUNTER
• body_sheet: CR_0151_the_wa_sent_night_form.md
• rows_read: T0_Boss_Encounter_Registry @ BE_0002_S2 · T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0151 · docs/spine/CH_02.md CH02_B06 and "Where the light is at Liang Bua" · flores_island.md § 5

2. base_species

Phase one has no body. Phase two's body is CR_0151's two sends. The encounter's own subject is the

ARGUMENT, and section 4 designs it as a thing with a shape.

3. lore_source

Cited in full on the body sheet. The two lines this encounter is built on: the bound spirit leaves the

sleeping body at night to hunt and can be SENT AHEAD OF ITS OWNER AS A FORERUNNER [SRC_00469]; and the

displacement of a soul, mae, by a harmful essence, wa, taken on through an illicit pact [SRC_00457].

The encounter is those two sentences in order — the pact offered, and the forerunner sent when it is

refused.

4. elevation

THE ARGUMENT IS THE FIRST BODY, AND IT NEEDS A SHAPE. A materialized-argument encounter fails the

moment it becomes a dialogue box with a health bar. The design gives the offer three physical

registers and no floating text:

• THE PLACE ANSWERS. The offer is made at Tiwu Ata Polo, the lake of the wicked dead, and each

escalation moves the water one step toward the black-and-blood-red shift the chapter already names

as the corruption's endpoint tell. The player watches the argument's progress on a lake.

• THE GIFT IS PHYSICAL AND ITS VRIL RUNS HOLLOW. Each offer arrives as a real object or a real relief

— warmth, a full stomach, the familiar back. The Neophyte vril-trace read is DRAINED-NOT-FULL, and

the design makes that a material read: the offered thing is right in every way except that it does

not take the light the way its material should. A given cloth does not wet. A given fire warms

without consuming its fuel. This is the light law used as a horror mechanic — a thing that fails to

interact with light correctly is more wrong than a thing that shines.

• THE VOICE HAS NO SOURCE IN FRAME, AND THAT IS THE POINT. Phase one grants the polo voice-register

presence only. The four-beat source-in-frame rule is deliberately BROKEN here and the breach is the

content: everything else in this game that speaks can be located.

ONE-LINE ENCOUNTER READ: a lake going the colour of old blood while something offers a child exactly

what the child wants, in objects that do not wet.

5. articulation_delta

None in phase one. Phase two's articulation is on the body sheet. The encounter adds one rule: THE

OFFERED OBJECTS PERSIST. What the player refuses stays in the world for the rest of the beat, so the

chamber the hunt runs through in phase two is littered with the things that were offered — which is

the argument still standing while the hunt happens.

6. fight_grammar

PHASE ONE — HOLD REFUSAL THROUGH THE ESCALATION. The offer escalates on a window; the counters are to

sense the emptying through the awakening vril-trace and to hold refusal through the escalation window.

The design shape: each escalation is a better offer and a shorter window, so the pressure is real and

the reward for reading early is time. There is no fail-wall — refusal is a mandatory main-spine action

and the encounter is reward-both-ways.

PHASE TWO — THE SENDING, AND THE FAIL IS A DISTANCE. Full shape-to-answer table on the body sheet.

The encounter-level design:

• THE GOAL, NOT THE TIMER. The sending runs FOR the Liang Bua cave mouth, because it is a night form

and daylight is it escaping the one condition that holds it. The player must cut that line or put it

down before it gets there. The anchor is real authored geometry — the seam between a karst interior

and a forest approach — and the daylight there is a real light already in the scene rather than an

authored glow.

• THE DARK IS THE ARENA AND IT RUNS BOTH WAYS. Concealment is the pressure, not a hazard to remove.

The torch finds the mark and the torch is what the mark is looking for.

• TWO COUNTERS, BOTH CANON: break line of sight against the mata mbere tell, and strike the wa when the

red eye commits.

• THE PHASE STRUCTURE IS EVOLVE-NOT-SWAP: the offer's own escalation BECOMES the sending. The last

refusal and the first stalk beat are one continuous motion.

REWARD BOTH WAYS: the win breaks the wa and leaves a corruption-residue reagent — the crafting seed of

a much later lineage. The loss reveals the exact shape of the bargain-that-empties, the wa feeds, the

hunter it hollowed stays hollowed one beat longer, and the deep layers are more dangerous on the next

descent.

WHAT THIS ENCOUNTER IS FOR, STRUCTURALLY. It is the arc's first on-screen vril-bargain-that-empties at

individual scale, at seed scale, felt and never declared. The player learns the SHAPE of an offer that

takes more than it gives, years before anything explains why that shape matters. Nothing about the

later pattern may be said here, and nothing needs to be — the encounter teaches by making the player

refuse something they wanted.

7. care_read

Full read on the body sheet and it governs both. The encounter-level additions:

• THE OFFER MUST BE GENUINELY TEMPTING OR THE BEAT IS A LECTURE. The anti-timid pass records this as

the encounter's real risk: an offer that is obviously poisoned costs the player nothing to refuse

and teaches nothing. The offers are what a lone, cold, emptied, frightened child actually wants, and

the last one is the familiar the child has just lost. That is the beat working.

• THE FLOOR IS UNTOUCHED. No child harm is depicted; the player IS the child, the child survives every

branch, and the loss branch costs world-state pressure rather than the child.

• NO ACCUSED VILLAGER IS EVER A TARGET, in either phase, on any route.
• INVENTION DECLARATION: the lake as the offer's progress meter, the offered-thing-that-does-not-take-

the-light material read, the deliberately source-less voice, and the offered objects persisting into

the phase-two chamber are INVENTED BY THIS SHEET as the game's own design and are named as ours. The

escalating offer, the vril-trace drained-not-full read, the hold-refusal-through-the-escalation

counter, the sending, the cave-mouth fail geometry, the corruption-residue reagent and the

reward-both-ways structure are CANON and are quoted rather than designed. The polo, the wa and the

forerunner sending are CITED to SRC_00469 and SRC_00457 on the body sheet.

• REVEAL: no antagonist family token. The polo predates the family and the antagonist-network row says

so.

8. plate_brief

• PLATE A: Tiwu Ata Polo at the endpoint shift, the water black shot through with blood-red, the

crater rim at dusk, one small figure at the water's edge with their back to camera.

• PLATE B: a refused offer lying on wet stone in the rain — a folded cloth that is dry, the rain

standing on it in beads that do not soak in.

• PLATE C: the Liang Bua chamber floor littered with the refused objects, seen by torchlight, the

chamber dark beyond the torch's throw.

9. boarded_debts

• Carried from the body sheet: pip_count and pip_reveal_threshold EMPTY on this row where every

sibling carries them; hitzone_parts, phase_trigger, escalation_vector, phase_voice_array

EMPTY; T0_Boss_Attack_Rail 0 rows.

• THE SITE-CELL MISMATCH IS PRE-EXISTING AND ALREADY NAMED BY THE CHAPTER: the beat's site cell reads

kelimutu_crater_lakes while phase two resolves in liang_bua_cave. A build resolving the light

anchor from the site cell alone lands in the wrong zone and must read the beat's PHASE. The clean

repair is a per-phase site binding on the beat contract, and it rides with whichever pass owns those

line-cited pointers.

• THE OFFERED-OBJECT MATERIAL HAS NO HOME. "Right in every way except that it does not take the light

correctly" is a material specification with no column and no shader class. It is the phase-one read

in its entirety and a build with nowhere to put it will fall back to a glow.

Generated by harness/site/structure_site.py — the URL path is the repo path. review root