creatures/BE_0005_datu_siahaan.md
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_Character_Index·docs/spine/CH_05.md·_source/02_Tier_2_Region_Pages/sumatra_java.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. This row carries THREE subjects in three registers — the man, the
killing-spirit he unbinds, and the war-construct he animates — and this sheet designs all three
because they arrive in one encounter. It cites canon rows and writes none.
FAMILY_BRIEFED — the arc's FIRST, and section 7's reveal read is therefore the strictest in the slice
ganjang he unbinds, and the pangulubalang and roused singa facade he animates
T0_Boss_Encounter_Registry @ BE_0005 · T0_Character_Index @ CHAR_0031, CHAR_0038 · docs/spine/CH_05.md § Boss structure · _source/02_Tier_2_Region_Pages/sumatra_java.md § 5
THE DATU: *Homo sapiens*, a Batak ritual-authority chief who disgraces his office. Ordinary skeleton,
ordinary ROM, human register zero on anatomy. What he carries is his INSTRUMENT-CHAIN: the staff, the
bark books, the lime and the eggs, the jars. A datu is a man whose power is a kit, and the kit is the
design.
THE BEGU GANJANG: humanoid archetype and TALL — the region page's own adjective, and the only one it
gives. Elongated in the LIMB and NECK chains rather than scaled up wholesale, so the proportions read
wrong at human width. Declared ROM ordinary at every joint; the reach is length, not flexibility.
THE PANGULUBALANG: a construct, and its base is a SCULPTED FIGURE — a carved wooden guardian animated
by the substance in the jar. Armature: a rigid carved body of five members with lashed joints, ROM
about 25 degrees per lashing, no twist. It moves like carved wood because it is carved wood.
THE SINGA FACADE: architecture. A Batak great-house built as a living body — the long pandingdingan
support beams are the serpent's body and separately carved singa heads are tenoned to the beam-ends
as its face, so the whole facade is ONE composite guardian of buffalo, horse and serpent-dragon
watching the street [SRC_00446]. Its articulation is the building's: the beams flex, the tenoned heads
turn on their joints, and nothing detaches.
from ulubalang, a champion in war [SRC_00226, print p. 69-72]. Its origin is the grimmest thing in
the region's record and IT SHIPS WHOLE: the captive spirit of a human being ritually put to death,
with the substance rendered from the corpse animating a guardian figure or turned against an enemy
[SRC_00446, print p. 47, p. 24]. It was kept in a ceramic jar, the most feared object in a datu's
paraphernalia and THE FIRST THING THE EARLIEST CHRISTIAN CONVERTS BURNED — the tradition's own
repudiation, from inside [SRC_00446, print p. 47, p. 59].
wakes as an architectural guardian to be out-manoeuvred or dismantled. ORDINARY VILLAGERS' HOUSES
STAY INERT AND PROTECTED: the hostility is walled to ONE MAN'S COMPOUND [SRC_00446].
THE NECKS of those who resist the man who keeps it, held strictly distinct from the revered sombaon
and sumangot it COUNTERFEITS [SRC_00446].
generalized to the Batak, to the datu-office, or to any community.
traces his instruments, finds a jar-bound captive, and FREES IT with the healer's rite. Weight and
consequence, not spectacle, and not softened away.
THE BEGU GANJANG — primary axis A1 SCALE BAND with its physical consequence stated, and the band is
narrow and vertical. It is TALL: roughly half again a standing man, achieved entirely in the tibia,
femur and cervical chains, so it is a normal-width body on stilts with a neck that puts its head above
a doorway. The physical consequence is stated and is the fight: a body that long has a slow turn, a
long fall, and NO close guard, so it fights at reach and cannot answer anything inside its own arm.
The design gives it the honoured dead's OUTLINE — the carriage, the drape, the stillness of an
ancestral presence — with the specific things missing that the real honored dead have (the rank
vocabulary is CR_0163's; "sombaon" here was loose usage for the honored dead generally, repaired
2026-08-12): no face turned to the house, no seat, no attendance. It is what a revered ancestor looks like from behind, walking
away, forever. That reads as wrong to a player who has met the honoured dead earlier in the
chapter, which is exactly the tradition's own distinction rendered as a look.
literally and it is the boss's signature — everything it does is aimed at one place, so the player
learns one defensive priority and the fight has a spine.
THE PANGULUBALANG — primary axis A8 MATERIAL SUBSTITUTION. A carved figure animated by what is in the
jar: wood, lashing, and the dark stain where the substance was applied, which is the only mark on it
and the only thing that is not carpentry. Its part economy is its LASHINGS — cut one and a member
hangs, cut two and it comes apart — which is the cleanest possible part economy and it falls out of
the real object's real construction.
player traces the instruments, finds the jar, and FREES the captive with the healer's rite. The
construct is not a monster that must be destroyed; it is a person who must be let go, and the
jar-burning is the tradition's own repudiation of it. That is the most important design fact on this
row and it changes the whole fight from a demolition into a release.
THE SINGA FACADE — primary axis A8 again, at building scale. The house wakes: the pandingdingan beams
flex along their length, the tenoned singa heads turn on the beam-ends, and the facade that was
watching the street begins to watch the player. NOTHING DETACHES AND NOTHING WALKS. It is a wall, and
the encounter is out-manoeuvring or dismantling it, which the region page states in exactly those
words.
ONE-LINE READS: a man with a kit of instruments and two things he did not make; something the height
of a doorway that only ever reaches for a throat; a carved champion held together by cord with a stain
where it was fed; and a house-front that turns its faces.
hands and the pelvis stay human-scaled, which is what makes the proportion read as wrong rather than
as giant. Every joint keeps ordinary ROM — the anatomy law binds, and a stretched thing that also
bends impossibly is a blob.
degrees with no twist. Weight passes through the members to a wide carved base, and it moves by
planting and pivoting rather than by stepping.
tenoned with a real socket and a declared rotation. The building's load path is unchanged when it
moves, because the design's constraint is that it never stops being a building.
TWO PHASES, EVOLVE-NOT-SWAP: broker interception at the port, then the compound duel where he unbinds
the begu ganjang and animates the pangulubalang — layering horn-telegraphed guard-interrupts and the
spirit's neck-strike onto the existing duel set.
| tell shape | body origin | one answer | counter class worn on the body |
|---|---|---|---|
| the horn-interrupt | the datu's own signal; the guard's stance breaks to answer it | stagger-strike or gap-dodge — the row's own counter | strike or dodge |
| the neck-strike | the begu ganjang's whole length loads and the reach goes for one place | break its hold alongside Healer Boru Simanjuntak's ward — the row's own counter | the ward lane |
| the counterfeit stillness | it stands like an honoured ancestor and does not move | PERCEIVE the tell against the honoured sombaon and sumangot dead — the row's own counter, and it is a look, not a lore check | the puzzle lane |
| the pangulubalang plant | a carved member sets and the construct pivots on it | cut the lashing on the loaded side | part-break |
| the facade turn | a tenoned singa head rotates toward the player | that beam is about to flex; leave its arc | positioning |
THE PERCEIVE COUNTER IS THE CHAPTER'S CARE MECHANIC MADE PLAYABLE, and it is worth stating plainly:
the player has to tell a counterfeit from the honoured dead, and getting it right is how the fight is
won. A game that asks the player to LEARN a tradition's own distinction in order to survive has
honoured that tradition harder than any codex entry could.
THE PACIFY ROUTE IS REAL AND IT BYPASSES PHASE TWO: bring the decoded institutional-destruction
evidence and both men are taken alive to answer for what they sold — the good path, and the one that
reopens the strait cleanly. THE KILLING BLOW STAYS WITHIN REACH ON THE SELLER ALONE, and its cost is
what the strait villages remember of the day their datu was killed in front of them, NOT an automatic
integrity penalty. That is HL_0123 stated on the row: maturity is weight and consequence, never a
kill-ban.
ESCALATION, four channels: POSTURE — the datu stops standing as an authority and starts standing as a
fighter, and the two things he keeps come forward as he goes back. BREATH — his, audible, for the
first time. VOCALIZATION — the instrument-chain: the horn, then the called binding, then nothing.
NEW OPENER — the neck-strike replaces the guard-interrupt.
terms, and the region page says so three separate ways: the malevolence belongs to individuals who
cross their own tradition's line and is never generalized; ordinary villagers' houses stay inert and
protected with the hostility walled to one man's compound; and the honoured sombaon and sumangot are
the thing the killing-spirit COUNTERFEITS rather than a version of. Healer Boru Simanjuntak is the
legitimate Batak healer who keeps the ancestral dead rightly and wards the houses — a protected
practitioner and the player's ally in the fight.
(folklore, faced), a captive spirit (a construct that is FREED rather than destroyed), and roused
architecture (a construct, dismantled).
it: the origin is the grimmest thing in the record and it ships whole, staged as the moral floor of
the corrupt individual's method, with weight and consequence, not spectacle, and NOT SOFTENED AWAY.
This sheet does not soften it and does not stage it — the ritual killing is history the player finds
the evidence of, never a scene the player watches. The tradition's own repudiation (the converts
burning the jars first) is in the record and is available as the player's own resolution.
animated statue and dropping the captive-spirit origin, on the grounds that a bound murdered person
is heavy content. REFUSED, and the region page refuses it first in its own words. The devil's-advocate
check confirms the refusal: the origin is what makes the datu's crime legible, the tradition
condemned it from inside, and sanitising it would leave a generic golem where a moral floor belongs.
The §17 floor is untouched — no ritual killing is depicted, no child harm, no sexual violence.
and the region page states the constraint plainly: no House-of-Velheim name surfaces, the family
does not yet exist to the player, and his motive presents as PURELY LOCAL AND OPPORTUNISTIC. Nothing
in this sheet's player-facing lines — the display name, the barks, the ledger text — may carry a
pattern token, a hint of a wider chain, or a "someone briefed him" implication. The pattern's
sanctioned reveal is thirty-three chapters away.
pangulubalang's five-member lashed armature, its stain and its cut-the-lashing part economy; the
facade's beam-flex and head-turn grammar; and the five tell shapes are INVENTED BY THIS SHEET. The
pangulubalang's nature, name-etymology, origin and jar; the pupuk animating architecture; the singa
facade's composite construction; the begu ganjang's tallness, neck-attack and counterfeiting; the
one-compound walling; and the pacify route with its priced killing blow are CITED.
lime, eggs, and a sealed ceramic jar set apart from the rest. The jar is the composition's subject.
narrow, draped, seen from behind and slightly turned.
stain across the chest, standing on a wide carved base.
their length, the tenoned singa heads turned out toward the viewer.
hitzone_parts, phase_trigger, escalation_vector, phase_voice_array, defender_element allEMPTY on a main boss carrying three distinct bodies.
T0_Boss_Attack_Rail 0 rows. designed subject with a material, an armature and a part economy, and none of them has a CR_ row
the way CR_0151 exists for the polo. The region page routes folkloric beings to
Creature_Roster.folklore_attribution and names all three, so the routing is declared and the rows
are absent — which means their care registers and ontology classes live in region-page prose only.
This is the same gap the Ch-4 leyak raises, now at three times the size.
healer's rite" is a complete quest beat sitting in region-page prose with no quest-seed id.