creatures/CR_0024_sumatran_tiger.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_Creature_Roster·T0_Familiar_Registry·T0_Hard_Lines·T3_Creatures_Tameable·T3_Familiars_Named·T1_Story_Spine·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, written to docs/proposals/bestiary/BESTIARY_ELEVATION_DOCTRINE.md
and critic-gated against its ten refusal tests. It cites canon rows and writes none.
healer's warded village night ring) and the Sumatran rainforest between the Batak highlands and the
Srivijayan coastal ports, which is the bond quest's own declared ground
REAL_FAUNA register at doctrine § 3D · primary_axis A4 hypertrophy and atrophy
T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0024 · T0_Familiar_Registry @ FAM_08 · T3_Familiars_Named § 3 G1 L378-408 · T3_Creatures_Tameable § 1.2, § 1.3, § 4, § 5 Ch 05 L82-120,
L222-238, L322-337 · docs/spine/CH_05.md L12, L95, L116, L142, L284 · sumatra_java.md § 3
L172-180, L234-241, L380-401 · T1_Story_Spine L357 ·
build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/QUADRUPED.json § sub_plans.carnivoran_digitigrade ·
build/3d/characters/mesh_routing/CREATURE_DEMAND_RULED_STATE_L11.json CH_05
ONE ROW, TWO ROUTES, AND THE SHEET IS BUILT ON KEEPING THEM APART. FAM_08 :: creature_ref is CR_0024
and Khan bonds at CH05_B05, while this same row carries PERMITTED, DANGEROUS, APEX and a big-game drop
anchor. The spine states the sequence plainly: "the Sumatran tiger before the Khan bond and the Tonle
Sap crocodiles as ambient/permitted fauna — no boss registry row (the fauna ride T0_Creature_Roster:
CR_0024, CR_0133)" [CH_05.md:116]. The region page states the register:
"the apex predator — Khan's species, OBSERVE-and-respectful-distance primary, combat defensive-only
where it threatens; ambient and combat_permitted before the bond" [sumatra_java.md:173-175]. So the
fight exists, it is DEFENSIVE, and the animal in front of the player is an individual who may or may
not be the one they are going to bond with. Telling those individuals apart is this sheet's design.
RE-DERIVED FROM THE ANATOMY REFERENCE TABLE. The doctrine's § 2.1 inline licence is expired; the table
is on disk and this block is taken from it. BUCKET COVERAGE: build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/QUADRUPED.json
§ sub_plans.carnivoran_digitigrade covers this row through its declared scope "generic canid/felid"
rather than by a census row id — CR_0024 is not listed among the sub-plan's census rows, and the table's
own reference taxon is *Canis lupus familiaris*, with felid ranges carried as BOUNDS and the substitution
declared rather than as felid values [ANATOMY_REFERENCE.md § "What this table does not know", QUADRUPED /
felid-specific goniometric ranges: UNMEASURED]. Every degree below is therefore a BOUND, not a measurement
of a tiger.
vertebrae 20-23, taxon-variable; and the joint the design turns on — THE CLAVICLE IS VESTIGIAL OR
ABSENT and the forelimb hangs in a MUSCULAR SLING (synsarcosis), so the scapula TRANSLATES on the
ribcage and there is no bony shoulder joint to the trunk at all. Deform-bone chain per the table:
root, pelvis, spine_lumbar, spine_thoracic, spine_cervical, head, jaw, and the mirrored
scapula / humerus / radioulna / carpus / metacarpus / digits and femur / tibia / tarsus / metatarsus /
toes chains off a tail_00 root at the pelvis; minimum 34 deform bones, bilateral symmetry required
protraction-retraction ±25 and rotation ±15, as EXCURSION about neutral; glenohumeral flexion-extension
57-165, abduction-adduction ±20, axial rotation ±15; elbow 36-165 with pronation-supination ±25 and
never a free axis; carpus 32-196, hyperextending past straight as the shock absorber; hip 50-162,
abduction-adduction ±30, axial rotation ±20; stifle 42-162 with ±10 of rotation available only near
flexion; hock 39-165 and IT NEVER HYPEREXTENDS; intervertebral thoracolumbar, per joint, sagittal ±8,
lateral ±6, axial ±4 — and the table's governing rule, THE MAMMALIAN SPINE BENDS SAGITTALLY AND NOT
LATERALLY
and claw protraction as a joint state with its own excursion rather than a texture swap. The table
carries a jaw deform bone and no gape range, so these are ours and are marked as such.
forefoot lagging the ipsilateral hindfoot by 10-30 percent of the cycle; the run is the ROTARY gallop
LH-RH-RF-LF, which the table names as the felid gallop, and in a rotary galloper the back contributes
a second suspension phase so there are TWO airborne moments per cycle rather than one
and T3_Familiars_Named:386 attests "smaller body size canonical to island dwarfism" without a
comparative ranking): about 2.5 m head-to-tail [T3_Familiars_Named:386; the row's own height_m 2.5
on length_axis body_length], and silent despite the mass [T3_Familiars_Named:386]
the last third of the tail held clear of the ground
source is Sibeth, *The Batak: Peoples of the Island of Sumatra*, recorded as the documented
Batak ancestor-figure tiger tradition [T1_Story_Spine:357]. There is no SRC_ id for this claim
anywhere in the corpus and § 9 boards that.
violence toward the sacred-status tiger carries path-consequence and does not arise unless the
protagonist initiates [T1_Story_Spine:357]. That single sentence is the care read's whole shape:
consequence, never prohibition.
black stripes than mainland subspecies, alert golden-amber eyes, silent movement [T3_Familiars_Named:384, 386].
that stalks and assesses before acting, and one that treats the protagonist as a fellow apex being
rather than as prey or threat [T3_Familiars_Named:388].
before a journey, before a harvest and before moving a herd, and the stake for a badly chosen day is
the party waiting outside the shelter, exposed to wild animals [SRC_00158, p. 170; sumatra_java.md:234-241].
The same passage puts the herds on the map and says the corridor is what "give[s] the tiger, the
clouded leopard and the sun bear something to be a threat to."
range, behaviour, habitat, hunting method or population state for this species, and refuses to invent
one [sumatra_java.md:380-391]. This sheet honours that: every ethological line below is either cited
to the T3 docs above or labelled AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY.
attests an ancestor figure and nothing further, and this sheet adds nothing to it.
ONE-LINE SILHOUETTE READ: a small dark tiger carrying its head below its shoulders, with a throat too
heavy for its size and a shoulder pattern you have learned to read like a hand of script.
PRIMARY — A4 HYPERTROPHY AND ATROPHY, on the apparatus the animal already owns, and it is what the
one-line read leads with. Two systems are built out past the species baseline until they read at
gameplay distance. The THROAT: the ventral neck between the mandible's angle and the manubrium carries
heavy muscle mass, so the animal's front reads over-built, and the mechanism is real work — this body
lifts and carries a carcass heavier than itself and the architecture says so. The NAPE SHELF is the
same system's second half and it is the axis's real teeth, because it costs the animal something:
mass over the cervical-thoracic junction cuts lateral neck sweep, so the tiger must turn its whole
forequarter to look, and that forced whole-body turn is the encounter's most legible telegraph. The
ROAR is the third: the partly-ligamentous hyoid is the real precondition, and the elevation is that the
low component is INFRASONIC and the world shows it rather than the mix carrying it — dust lifting off a
leaf, a puddle's surface breaking, a herd turning as one animal. Nothing emits. The tiger is announced
by what moves around it, and it is slowed by the very structure that makes it frightening.
SUPPORTING — A9 THE MARK, spent as the STRIPE FIELD AS IDENTITY. One mark, and it is the animal's own.
A tiger's stripe field is individually unique and permanent (AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY — the table carries no
pelage data), and the island canon already gives this subspecies darker ground and closer-set bars
[T3_Familiars_Named:386]. The design authors each individual's SHOULDER FIELD as a distinct,
high-contrast pattern at glyph scale — one region, readable broadside at combat distance, and the same
one every time. MECHANISM: this is the chapter's own verb applied to an animal. Ch 5 opens by holding a
Surat Batak pustaha against Old-Javanese temple stone until the two click as cousins [CH05_B01], and the
chapter's whole movement is the child who is a hidden text learning to read others the way one reads
inscription [CH_05.md:22]. The player who has learned to read pattern learns to read THIS pattern, and
the payoff is exact: they can tell which tiger is in front of them. Khan is not a different creature —
he is a different FIELD.
SUPPORTING — A5 AGE AND STATE, the country written on the body. The coat carries the region's own
material: ashfall grey worked into the guard hairs along the spine and shoulders, the wet-season darkening
that sinks the ground colour and lifts the bars, healed-over gore scars along one flank at buffalo-horn
height, and a lower canine broken and worn blunt at the tip. MECHANISM: time held on one range. This
animal was here before the quest and will be after it, and the doctrine's cheapest, strongest axis pays
for that with no light at all.
EMISSION: none anywhere. The animal reads by being lit — wet coat, ash, and the flat sheen of a golden
eye catching a torch already in the scene.
hyoid keeps its real partly-ligamentous construction; the added mass sits between the mandibular angle
and the manubrium. ROM is unchanged: the head still drops to a carcass and still lifts one clear.
Weight passes from the mandible down the cervical chain into the shoulder girdle, and because the
table rules the clavicle vestigial or absent with the forelimb slung in synsarcosis, the forequarter
takes that load through a MUSCLE SLING with the scapula translating on the ribcage — a spring rather
than a strut, and the reason the animal can carry a kill without its shoulder taking a shock.
DECLARED COST expressed in the table's own convention: it removes roughly a third of the available
lateral excursion at the thoracolumbar and cervical junction, against the table's per-joint lateral
bound of ±6 degrees. That cost is the design. The animal turns with its whole forequarter because its
neck can no longer do the work alone, and the turn it must make instead is spent through the
scapulothoracic protraction-retraction the table bounds at ±25 — which is why the telegraph is a
SHOULDER event and reads at distance where a head-turn would not.
and the outer thigh, which are the two regions that stay presented in a stalking crouch.
ACROSS THE MIDLINE through a floating clavicle. The table forbids both halves: the clavicle is
vestigial or absent, and glenohumeral abduction-adduction is bounded at ±20 with the note that the
non-sagittal axes are small and stabilising. The swat is therefore built where the reach actually
lives — scapulothoracic PROTRACTION at up to 25 degrees of excursion carrying the whole limb forward,
plus glenohumeral flexion inside 57-165, plus the ±25 of elbow pronation-supination that turns the paw
over. The arc is shorter than the old draft claimed and it starts at the shoulder blade, which makes
it a better telegraph, not a worse one.
walk are the real animal's and are governed by the anatomy law and the table unchanged.
NO BOSS ROW EXISTS. The spine declares this an ambient threat with "no boss registry row (the fauna ride
T0_Creature_Roster: CR_0024, CR_0133)" [CH_05.md:116], so the encounter verbs are taken from the row's own
cells — collect_verb DOCUMENT;FIGHT, temperament_prior ambush — plus the third route the DANGEROUS
grade carries: evasion documentation or a trade-mastery non-combat approach [T3_Creatures_Tameable § 1.2,
§ 1.3]. THREE PEER PATHS, and the sheet builds all three: the DEFENSIVE ENCOUNTER below, the HUNT LOOP
that § 1.3 grants this row by name, and the seven-observation chain.
THE PART ECONOMY'S HOME IS SURFACES, held on the ARENA rather than on the body, and the sheet declares it
by name. There is nothing to break on a tiger. What there is instead is a set of APPROACH LANES into a
warded village ring or a herd's night line, and the player closes them one at a time — a fire, a thorn
line, a lit gate, high ground. The three currencies hold: a closed lane is a PERMANENT SUBTRACTION from
the animal's live openers that night; each closure is a LEGIBILITY GAIN because the sweep narrows and the
remaining tell reads earlier; and the MATERIAL the economy wants is the player's own stock of fuel, thorn
and time, which the night spends.
| tell shape | body origin | one answer | counter class worn on the body |
|---|---|---|---|
| the broadside hold | the animal turns its flank deliberately at distance and stands | hold still and hold the eye — this is the respectful-distance register and the only tell that is not an attack | stillness read |
| the freeze at a lane mouth | whole body stops, head drops below the shoulder line, hindquarters set | leave the lane; do not strike into it | positioning |
| the forequarter square | the nape shelf loads and the whole forequarter turns, because the neck cannot | dodge, and the direction is where the shoulders point | dodge-only |
| the reaching swat | the scapula protracts on the ribcage and carries the whole limb forward, the shoulder flexing inside its bound and the forearm turning over | the paw is a presented contact surface and it is meetable | parry-only |
| the throat drop | the head goes to the throat line with the gape past its walking opening | break the line to the target it is on, not the line to the tiger | positioning |
| the world moves and nothing is visible | the infrasonic component of the roar | put your back to something solid | environment read |
ESCALATION ON THE FOUR CHANNELS. POSTURE — the head goes below the shoulder line and STAYS there; the
stalk has become the commit. BREATH — the animal's breathing goes out of the mix entirely, and what is
left audible is the player's own and the herd's. VOCALIZATION — the chuff, which is the assessment sound,
stops, and the infrasound replaces it, so the escalation is a channel changing from heard to seen. NEW
OPENER — it stops taking livestock and starts coming at the light, because a habituated animal has
learned what a torch means (INVENTED, § 7).
THE OPENER AND ITS VARIANTS. THE OPENER IS THE FOREQUARTER SQUARE, and the doctrine's own definition
forces it: the opener is the creature's most legible and least punishing MOVE, with its dangerous moves
built as recognizable variants of that root. The forequarter square is that root because the nape shelf
makes it unavoidable — every committed thing this body does begins with the shoulders coming round.
Its variants share the body origin and lengthen from it:
origin, longer wind, and the punish for having read the square as the whole move.
follows it is the pounce.
THE BROADSIDE HOLD IS A PRE-OPENER REGISTER BEAT, NOT THE OPENER. It is the animal declaring the
respectful-distance register the region page names as primary, it costs the player nothing, and it
carries no attack inside it. Naming it the opener would have taught the player that the encounter's
root move is one that never hits them, which is a teaching-order defect rather than a tell.
THE HUNT LOOP, BUILT AS A PEER PATH. T3_Creatures_Tameable § 1.3 grants PERMITTED DANGEROUS-status
rows the full hunt loop by name, and this row is both. It runs alongside the defensive encounter rather
than under it, and it is the player choosing to go and find the animal instead of waiting for it:
The boundary marks in the turf block are the readable half — scrapes, scent trees, bark scored at
shoulder height — and their freshness is the whole skill.
at long range the animal is FEEDING or LYING UP and its head is down, which is the only window the
approach has; at middle range the head comes up and the ears turn while the body does not, and the
player must stop inside that beat; at close range the forequarter squares, and the approach is over
because the encounter has become the defensive one above. The hunt's whole tension is that its fail
state is the fight.
table's rarity grades, against the row's own rng_drop_anchor DROP_BIGGAME_HIDE_MEAT.
thins, the predator that fed on it moves, and the community that shares the range remembers who took
what." The range-thinning and the community memory have no cell today; ws.community_state_per_region
is the boarded data home and § 9 carries it. On a species the Batak hold as an ancestor figure, that
memory is the path-consequence T1_Story_Spine:357 already rules — earned, reversible, never a gate.
completionist path, so no Beastiary completion, no quest and no bond is behind a kill.
RELOCATION AND TURF. The animal is territorial with precise boundary maintenance [T3_Familiars_Named:388].
It enters on the same lanes on consecutive nights, it leaves carrying what it took, and its boundary is
readable before the animal is: scrapes, scent trees, and bark scored at shoulder height. That is the
tracking loop the region page says its own corpus cannot yet supply, and it is declared as ours.
THE NON-KILL PATH IS THE ROW'S FIRST VERB. collect_verb leads with DOCUMENT, and the seven-observation
completionist chain is the canonical benchmark [T3_Creatures_Tameable § 1.3]. Its progress lives in the
ANIMAL rather than in a HUD: at the first observation it leaves at the sight of the player, and by the
seventh it lets them be there. That ladder ends exactly where the bond quest begins — tracking without
being detected for a canonical distance, and acceptance signalled by being permitted to approach the kill
and share meat [T3_Familiars_Named:392, 394; FAM_08 bond_formation_beat_ref CH05_B05].
consequence in its own cell: hunting an ordinary animal touches nothing of the collective protection,
and a lane must not re-apply collective protection to game animals [CR_0024 cultural_care_register,
carrying CR_0049's rule forward verbatim]. The Batak community is never the target; the chapter's
combat routes through the corrupt datu, his begu ganjang and his pangulubalang [CH_05.md:246].
ontology_class is EMPTY on this row. The sheet treats it as ordinary fauna carryinga real cultural STATUS, designs to that, and does not write the cell.
DIRECTLY. T3_Creatures_Tameable § 4.1 L230 names the chapters whose community-and-species relationship
establishes the protected register and routes engagement through the relationship rather than around it
— Ch 11 Baka-honeyguide, Ch 12 Vodun-python, Ch 29 Sámi-reindeer, Ch 42 Haiti, Ch 57 Australia. CH_05
IS NOT ON THAT LIST, and its absence is the ruling: the Batak ancestor-figure status is real and is
carried in weight, and it does not convert this row into a protected-register row. The kill is
available, it is never required, and the community remembers — the same worldstate machinery
FORK_CH05_B already uses for the chapter's other reversible choices, never a hard gate, per the
multi-path law [CH_05.md:276].
extinction-threatened species are presented at their conservation status against primary-source
conservation data, that real-world extinction events during the launch window update Beastiary entries
to witness-record content, and that a player who met the species before extinction retains the entry as
a canonical witness record at the worldstate persistence layer. FAM_08's own memorial-variance clause
[T3_Familiars_Named:406] is the same rule at familiar tier.
stripe field is an identity system and identity-bearing subjects carry a plate as conditioning. Khan is
identity-bearing without qualification and routes to attended design.
issue built only the defensive encounter and left the hunt loop unbuilt, on the reasoning that a
player hunting an ancestor-figure species was the timid-safe omission. That was the over-conservative
error the calibration names, and canon refutes it in its own words: T3_Creatures_Tameable § 1.3
grants QUARRY-status AND PERMITTED DANGEROUS-status species the full loop — "tracking ... approach into
the wind under the species' own alert behaviour, the kill with the weapon and element the animal's hide
and mass actually answer to, field-dressing into hide, meat, sinew and trophy at the drop table's
rarity grades, and the consequence: the range thins, the predator that fed on it moves, and the
community that shares the range remembers who took what." This row is PERMITTED and DANGEROUS and
carries DROP_BIGGAME_HIDE_MEAT. The loop is BUILT above, at full weight, with the consequence attached
rather than the content removed — which is the rename-reframe tool applied to a mechanic.
Khan's species is a Batak ancestor figure. REFUSED — collective protection does not make a game animal
unkillable, the row carries PERMITTED and DROP_BIGGAME_HIDE_MEAT, canon itself rules the sacred-status
bonding permissible and puts the cost on path-consequence [T1_Story_Spine:357], and protecting an apex
predator is precisely the error the calibration names. (2) Cutting the livestock predation because a
tiger taking a village's stock makes a community's loss into content. REFUSED — the region page attests
the herd corridor and names this animal as what the herds are a threat FROM, and a predator with nothing
to prey on is a stat block rather than a resident.
heavy throat, the nape shelf and its declared ROM cost, the six tells, the opener-and-variants tree,
the closed-lane surface economy, the torch-learning escalation, the boundary marks, and the hunt loop's
three approach-phase body origins (head-down feed, ears-turn-body-still, forequarter square) are
INVENTED BY THIS SHEET as the game's own. The ancestor-figure status, the appearance and behaviour
canon, the tracking-and-share-kill bond protocol, the DANGEROUS grade's three routes, the hunt loop's
five stages and its consequence sentence, the protected-register chapter list, the T4 witness-record
handling and the wrong-day exposure are CITED. The skeleton, joint bounds and gait formalism are
RE-DERIVED FROM THE ANATOMY REFERENCE TABLE and are bounds rather than felid measurements.
family's first appearance at Ch 8 [CH_05.md:117]. The T4 extraction-sector and extinction material is a
modern-stratum tie scoped by the fauna doc's own cross-ref [T3_Creatures_Tameable:337, :702] and never
reaches a player surface at 1200 CE.
Written affirmatively. Every line names what IS in frame.
head carried below the shoulder line, close-set black bars over deep orange, golden-amber eyes on
camera, the shoulder field filling a third of the frame and reading as a pattern.
jaw open at the kill-bite gape.
of them Khan's.
lane open at its edge, the animal present as the herd's turned heads.
flank scar at buffalo-horn height, and a blunted lower canine.
turned and the body still, seen from a hunter's low position downwind through undergrowth.
@ CR_0024 :: folklore_behavior_substrate and folklore_attribution_source are EMPTY whileT3_Familiars_Named:384 carries the Batak ancestor-figure tradition and T1_Story_Spine:357 names Sibeth
as its source. THE CLAIM HAS NO SRC_ ID ANYWHERE IN THE CORPUS — the region page's own Section-3
sourcing gap is why. A SRC_ mint for Sibeth is the unblocking action.
@ CR_0024 :: ontology_class is EMPTY on a row carrying a full cultural_care_register paragraph, and cultural_depiction_required is EMPTY on a row whose cultural status is canon.
@ CR_0024 :: hard_line_anchors is EMPTY while its own familiar FAM_08 carries HL_0057; HL_0058.@ CR_0024 :: familiar_cross_ref carries prose, not a joinable id. FAM_08 :: creature_ref DOES resolveto CR_0024, so the round trip is broken on one leg only — the creature-roster leg.
@ CR_0024 :: integrity_visible_aesthetic_shift and vril_substrate_response are EMPTY. T1_IPW § 8.9names them the Layer-3 data home, and an apex predator reading the protagonist's integrity signal is the
most legible instance of that mechanic anywhere in the chapter.
@ CR_0024 :: kit_ref is EMPTY, which is the standing L11 boarded item on this row.@ CR_0024 :: familiar_slot_eligible is EMPTY on the one creature row in the chapter that IS a named familiar's species — FAM_08 :: creature_ref resolves to CR_0024 and slot_code is G1. Any lane that
filters the roster for familiar-eligible species finds nothing here.
T3_Creatures_Tameable § 1.3 rules that a taken range thins, thepredator that fed on it moves, and the community remembers who took what. Nothing on this row or in
T0_Worldstate_Variables carries range-thinning; ws.community_state_per_region is the nearest
existing home and is the one this sheet boards, because the chapter's own forks already write it.
T0_Boss_Attack_Rail carries no row for this creature because thespine deliberately gives it none, so an ambient apex with a real six-shape moveset has nowhere to land.
CR_0027 boards. § 2.4 assigns SURFACES to "a being with no body — the places it may occupy, removed one
at a time." This encounter uses SURFACES on a creature that plainly HAS a body, and the surfaces removed
are the ARENA's approach lanes, closed by the PLAYER rather than broken by the player's attacks. Both
extensions are outside the home's stated definition and both are the honest description of the
encounter. Either SURFACES widens to cover bodied creatures whose economy is spatial, or the enumeration
gains a ninth home for player-closed approach geometry.
registry row", which contradicted the existence of CR_0024 and CR_0133 as live roster rows and read as
a prohibition on rowing the fauna at all. It was repaired at source on 2026-08-12 and now reads "no boss
registry row (the fauna ride T0_Creature_Roster: CR_0024, CR_0133)". This sheet's § 1 and § 6 quote the
live text. No further action; boarded only so a later reader does not re-derive the old tension.
sumatra_java.md:380-391declares no attestation for this species' behaviour on its shelf; T3_Familiars_Named:384-394 carries
cultural status, appearance and a behavioural register, and T1_Story_Spine:357 names the sources for
both. The page's statement is true of its own six audited records and reads as global. Finding, not edit.