creatures/CR_0061_african_wild_dog.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_Environment_Grammar_Registry·T0_Hard_Lines·T3_Creatures_Tameable·
T3_Familiars_Named·docs/spine/CH_10.md·_source/02_Tier_2_Region_Pages/rift_valley.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 the TAME and bond-lite register of
docs/proposals/bestiary/BESTIARY_ELEVATION_DOCTRINE.md § 3 and § 3D. It cites canon rows and writes
none.
scientific_name *Lycaon pictus* · trophic_role mid-level · chapters_present CH_10;CH_13 · region_native rift_valley · chapter_first_encounter CH_10
trade_8_tameable TAME · extinction_threat T4 (endangered) · cultural_significance "endangered pack-hunter" · combat_permission EMPTY · ontology_class EMPTY · collect_verb EMPTY ·
rng_drop_anchor EMPTY · rare_variant EMPTY · cultural_care_register EMPTY ·
familiar_cross_ref EMPTY · familiar_slot_eligible EMPTY · temperament_prior EMPTY
mesh_tags.style realistic-ethnographic · mesh_pipeline_type image_to_3d · generation_status pendingrift_valley.md:29-37]. It belongs to thechapter's living communities and § 7 refuses to read it onto a canid.
combat_facing FALSE. The cell that carries it is trade_8_tameable TAME, reach IN_SCOPE, provenance SELF_EVIDENT_IN_THE_GROUND, no ruling required —
"the doctrine's scope sentence is reached by a cell whose own token carries it — this row demanded
a sheet before any ruling" [CREATURE_DEMAND_RULED_STATE_L11.json @ CR_0061].
CR_0027 precedent · primary_axis A9 the mark, spent as SILHOUETTE LAW · supporting A5 age and state,
spent as the pack-and-pressure ladder
T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0061 (62 cells), and @ CR_0051 Ethiopian wolf, @ CR_0059 Spotted hyena, @ CR_0056 African lion, @ CR_0057, @ CR_0058 for the contract ·
build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/QUADRUPED.json § sub_plans.carnivoran_digitigrade ·
docs/spine/CH_10.md L12, L59, L76-81, L97-98, L115, L118, L204, L221, L223, L233, L237 ·
rift_valley.md § 3 L232-258, Zone Catalog L70-77, § 16 L1037-1050, § 18 L1120-1137 ·
T3_Creatures_Tameable § 1.2 L96-106, § 1.3 L108-120, § 1.4 L122-138, § 1.5 L149,
§ 4.1 L226-232, § 5 Ch 10 L437-471 · T3_Familiars_Named § G3 Desta L442-470 ·
T0_Environment_Grammar_Registry @ EG_0137, @ EG_0142, @ EG_0136 ·
docs/proposals/bestiary/sheets/BE_0010_S2_olduvai_fauna_guardian.md §§ 2, 4, 6
**THE HIGHEST-STAKES LEGIBILITY CONTRACT IN THIS CHAPTER LIVES ON THIS ROW, AND § 4 IS BUILT AROUND
IT.** Five mid-sized four-legged predators share this valley at overlapping body mass and the same
camera distance — this wild canid, CR_0051 the Ethiopian wolf, CR_0059 the spotted hyena, CR_0057 the
cheetah and CR_0058 the leopard — and CR_0056's own contract owns the felid-against-LION cases and
defers every canid case here [CR_0056_african_lion.md § 4], so this sheet owns the whole mid-sized
set. THE STAKES SIT ON ONE PAIR OF THEM. Desta the Ethiopian Wolf is a BONDED FAMILIAR, the guide who
carries the protagonist through the highland-to-valley transitions [CH_10.md:237;
T3_Familiars_Named:470], and the spotted hyena clan is what the chapter's one combat encounter is
made of. Canon names the failure mode twice in one breath: the guardian encounter is "permitted
territorial fauna combat, never the bonded wolf Desta" [CH_10.md:97], and the beat repeats it — "the
guardian withdraws rather than being hunted, never the bonded wolf Desta" [CH_10.md:115]. A player
who cannot tell these bodies apart at speed either mis-aims at their own familiar or mis-aims at a
guardian body they were told to let withdraw. The contract is therefore not a polish item on this
sheet. It is the sheet.
@ CR_0061 :: scientific_name] · archetype QUADRUPED · sub-plan carnivoran_digitigrade
build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/QUADRUPED.json § sub_plans.carnivoran_digitigrade, whose
declared scope is "CR_0057 Cheetah (see census_defects), generic canid/felid" and whose
reference_taxon is *Canis lupus familiaris*. This row is covered by ARCHETYPE and, uniquely among
the CH_10 mammals this wave touches, the bucket's reference taxon IS a canid — so the ranges below
are the closest fit the table offers anywhere, and they are still bounds rather than *Lycaon*
measurements. The doctrine's amended § 2.1 rules that a covered row derives from the bucket and
cites the path; an inline block here would be a defect.
[§ posture_grade]
caudal vertebrae; THE CLAVICLE IS VESTIGIAL OR ABSENT and the forelimb hangs in a MUSCULAR SLING
(synsarcosis), so the scapula translates on the ribcage [§ segments]
*Lycaon pictus* carries FOUR digits on the FOREfoot, not five — the dewclaw is absent, which is the
genus's defining osteological difference from every other canid and the reason its spoor is
distinguishable from a domestic dog's. The bucket declares five and the bucket is a generic canid
plan, so this is a per-row correction stated affirmatively rather than a silent override, and § 9
boards it for the bucket lane. Everything else in the roster is the table's unchanged.
the mirrored scapula → humerus → radioulna → carpus → metacarpus → digits and femur → tibia →
tarsus → metatarsus → toes chains; tail_00 off the pelvis; every _L bone with an _R sibling
[§ skeleton, § mirror_rule]
rotation ±15, as excursion about neutral, with the table's warning that a rig parenting the humerus
to the spine loses the first third of the stride; glenohumeral 57-165, abduction-adduction ±20,
axial rotation ±15; elbow 36-165 with pronation-supination ±25 and never a free axis; carpus 32-196
— THE CANINE CARPUS HYPEREXTENDS PAST STRAIGHT TO ~196 DEGREES AND THAT IS THE SHOCK ABSORBER, which
on a coursing animal that runs for kilometres is the single most load-bearing line in the block;
hip 50-162, abduction-adduction ±30, axial rotation ±20; stifle 42-162 with ±10 of rotation only
near flexion; hock 39-165 AND IT NEVER HYPEREXTENDS; the METACARPO/METATARSOPHALANGEAL (fetlock)
hinge at -60 to +45 as excursion about neutral [CLAYTON2013], declared because this sheet's skeleton
chain carries metacarpus → digits and the joint between them is a published range rather than a
silence; intervertebral thoracolumbar per joint at sagittal ±8, lateral ±6, axial ±4, THE SPINE
BENDING SAGITTALLY AND NOT LATERALLY
LH-LF-RH-RF, duty factor 0.55-0.8, forefoot lagging the ipsilateral hindfoot 10-30 percent of the
cycle; **the TROT is diagonal couplets LH+RF, RH+LF at duty factor 0.35-0.5 with fore-lag 45-55
percent**; the PACE is lateral couplets LH+LF, RH+RF at duty factor 0.35-0.5 with fore-lag 0-10
percent. ASYMMETRICAL: the run is the ROTARY gallop LH-RH-RF-LF with the back contributing a second
suspension phase, two airborne moments per cycle. The solver takes duty factor plus per-foot phase
offsets, the spine FK off the gait clock and the feet IK to ground [§ gait.solver_note].
THE TABLE PUBLISHES NO ENDURANCE MODE IS WITHDRAWN — IT WAS FALSE.** The bucket publishes the trot
above and it is exactly the gait this animal lives in: diagonal couplets, duty factor 0.35-0.5,
fore-lag 45-55 percent. THE AUTHORIAL ADDITION, and it is the only part that is ours, is DURATION —
the trot HELD FOR KILOMETRES rather than used as a transition, which is what makes this a coursing
predator with no ambush in it. **NO DUTY-FACTOR DEPARTURE IS DECLARED: the sustained mode sits
inside the published 0.35-0.5 band, at its upper end.** This is not a sprinter and it must never
animate as one, and the gallop is a finishing burst rather than the travelling gait.
hindlimb chains of at least 4 bones each; bilateral symmetry required
largest ear-to-skull ratio of any African canid and is the design's whole finder — a broad rounded
pinna carried erect and forward on a mobile base with its own two-axis excursion, and a real
thermoregulatory surface on an animal that runs itself hot; the long narrow rostrum and the reduced
premolar count; the coat's irregular tricolour patching, which is individually unique and permanent
and is not a pattern the bucket has any column for; and the mass band, roughly 20 to 30 kilograms
at a shoulder height near 75 centimetres, which is the smallest of the three bodies in § 4's
contract and matters because size is the one discriminator that does NOT survive distance.
about it built to keep going rather than to arrive fast.
shoulders, TWO LARGE ROUND DISCS above the skull outline, and a brush tail that ends pale.
folklore_behavior_substrate, folklore_attribution_source and cultural_care_register are all EMPTY, and cultural_significance
reads "endangered pack-hunter" — a conservation-and-ecology description carrying no tradition. No
Rift or San tradition is asked here to supply a painted-dog figure it does not hold. In a chapter
whose region page records "no Hadza ethnography, no Sandawe ethnography, and no Rift pastoralist
ethnography in this corpus" [rift_valley.md:280-287], inventing one would be the citation test's
most tempting failure.
is worth stating because it is the row that would otherwise pull care onto this one. The Ch-10
catalog attaches sacred status and CVD §6 application to the ELAND — "n/um-carrier sacred in San
tradition (anticipates Ch 13 eland canon). Keystone species. CVD §6 application"
[T3_Creatures_Tameable:459] — and § 4.1:228 routes eland entries to Ch 13 South Africa against the
/Xam primary-source corpus. Nothing of that reaches *Lycaon pictus*.
endangered pack-hunter", filed under "Mid-level and TAME" [T3_Creatures_Tameable:449-451].
sheet's — "T4_House_of_Velheim_Canonical Thread 3 — African wild dog extinction-threat, rhino
poaching context" [T3_Creatures_Tameable:471]. THAT CROSS-REF IS A DESIGN-LAYER TIE AND IT NEVER
REACHES A PLAYER SURFACE HERE: Thread 3 is NOT_PRESENT at Ch 10, ruled at batch-1 #10, and no
operative, name or pattern anchors in this chapter [CH_10.md:37, :99, :239]. § 7's reveal read holds
that line and § 9 records it.
a guardian [CH_10.md:97, :115; rift_valley.md:136, :242-243]. Canon's own description of her body
is thin and it is quoted rather than extended — "Slender build. Reddish-brown coat with white throat
/ chest markings. Long legs adapted for high-altitude pursuit. Adolescent age at bond"
[T3_Familiars_Named:450] — with her behaviour canon "Solitary hunter but pack-social. Patient.
Watches before acting" [:452] and her Ch-10 placement "she guides the protagonist south through
highland-to-valley transitions" [:470; CH_10.md:237].
re-designed — "a wedge sloping down from shoulder to hip, round ears high, head low and forward",
with "the forelimbs longer than the hind ... the sloping back is a real proportion and not a
posture" and a lope that is "tireless and slow to accelerate"
[BE_0010_S2_olduvai_fauna_guardian.md:104-122].
zoological source tagged to it, so nothing on this page states how a hyena clan holds ground ...
the readable-behaviour layer is an acquisition target rather than an invention"
[rift_valley.md:245-252]. Every ethological line in § 4 and § 6 is therefore AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY:
general zoological knowledge carried as DESIGN, never as a claim of a source this region holds.
SRC_00186 is the one genuinely Rift-scoped record on thisshelf and it is a compiled popular biography carrying nothing about any animal
[rift_valley.md:944-951]. The machinery matches; it reaches no canid.
place, the offer as the acceptance signal, the four ally tells, the snare-and-count state ladder,
and the ears-always-erect animation rule.
refused because this row's folklore columns are empty, no supernatural claim is staged on it
anywhere, and the chapter's own asset anchor reserves stylization for one being —
"realistic-ethnographic for the /Xam, //Gwi, Ju|'hoansi, and Maasai peoples and the deep-time
strata; mythologically-stylized only for the //gauwasi sickness-shadow" [CH_10.md:223]. The row's
own mesh_tags.style reads realistic-ethnographic. Budget: A9 and A5 only, which is the register's
declared natural spend.
where nearly all of this sheet's design lives, for the reason § 1 gives.
Black-filled, at the shipped combat camera, at sixty pixels of silhouette. **THE SET THIS SHEET OWNS
IS FIVE BODIES ACROSS THREE FAMILIES**: two CANIDS — this row and CR_0051 Ethiopian wolf, the second
of which is the bonded familiar Desta; one HYAENID — CR_0059 spotted hyena; and two FELIDS at
overlapping body mass — CR_0057 cheetah and CR_0058 leopard. CR_0056's contract owns the felid cases
against the LION and defers the canid cases here [CR_0056_african_lion.md § 4], so the
cheetah-against-canid and leopard-against-canid branches are this sheet's and are built below.
THE DECISION TREE, IN THE ORDER THE EYE ACTUALLY RUNS IT.
1. THE TOPLINE separates the hyena from everything else, and it is the first read. The spotted
hyena is a wedge that SLOPES DOWN from shoulder to hip because its forelimbs are longer than its
hind and the proportion is skeletal rather than postural [BE_0010_S2:111, :120-122]. Both canids
and the leopard carry a level or near-level topline; the cheetah's is level over a waist so narrow
the body reads as an hourglass rather than a bar. One glance at whether the back falls or runs
flat removes the hyena, and it works in any light at any range from any angle showing a profile.
2. **THE EARS separate the wild dog from the Ethiopian wolf, AND FROM BOTH CATS, and this is the
finder that carries the whole contract. IT IS A RATIO PLUS A SHAPE, and it invents nothing about
any other row.**
pinnae are visibly WIDER, TIP TO TIP, THAN THE SKULL IS LONG, so at black fill the ear pair
dominates the head rather than sitting on it. No other body in this set approaches that
proportion — the Ethiopian wolf's ears are conspicuously erect and break her skull outline too,
but they are a small fraction of a long head and the pair is NARROWER than the skull's length.
THE RATIO IS THE DISCRIMINATOR AND IT IS A FACT ABOUT THIS ROW'S BODY, NOT A CLAIM ABOUT HERS.
circles. The Ethiopian wolf's is a TRIANGLE with an apex. Disc versus triangle resolves the pair
at silhouette even where the ratio is hard to judge, and it likewise asserts nothing beyond the
outline shape her own erect carriage already presents.
A cheetah's ears are SMALL, LOW-SET and ROUNDED into the skull line, so its head reads as one
smooth ovoid with a rounded muzzle and nothing above it; a leopard's are small, rounded and set
wide but likewise well inside the skull's width. Neither cat has anything above the skull
outline that a black fill can see. **ABOVE THE SKULL LINE, WIDER THAN THE SKULL IS LONG, IS THIS
ROW AND ONLY THIS ROW.**
and never first: step 1 has already removed her.
3. THE COAT CONFIRMS AND NEVER FINDS. In light: the wild dog is irregularly MOTTLED in black, tan
and white, no two individuals alike, with a brush tail that ends PALE; the Ethiopian wolf is
UNIFORM reddish-brown with white throat and chest markings [T3_Familiars_Named:450]; the hyena
is spotted on a sandy ground; the cheetah is SOLID ROUND SPOTS on tawny with a facial tear-stripe;
the leopard is ROSETTES — rings rather than dots. Blotch versus block versus spot versus ring.
This is the CR_0143 stockings rule carried whole: a confirming mark confirms, it never finds
[CR_0143_gaur.md:118-131].
4. COUNT is the fourth read and the strongest of all when it is available. *Lycaon pictus* travels
as a pack and does almost nothing alone; canon's own word for the Ethiopian wolf is "Solitary
hunter but pack-social" and every Ch-10 line puts Desta beside the protagonist rather than in a
group [T3_Familiars_Named:452, :470; CH_10.md:237]. Both cats are solitary. Many is wild dog.
One, at the player's side, is Desta.
TWO AMBIGUITY CASES, NAMED RATHER THAN ASSUMED AWAY.
CASE ONE — THE PROFILE FRAME. A single wild dog, in profile, at dusk, in tall grass, with its ears
folded back — which real *Lycaon* do when they lower the head to feed and when they run flat out —
loses the disc read and shares an outline with the Ethiopian wolf. That is the exact frame in which a
player mis-aims at their own familiar. THREE RESOLVERS, layered, and the design uses all three:
ERECT IN EVERY IDLE, ALERT, WALK AND APPROACH POSE THIS SPECIES HAS. Folded ears appear only in the
head-down feed and in the flat-out course, both of which are states in which the animal is not
presenting itself to the player at all. This is the same class of rule as CR_0027's
forelimbs-hanging-loose clause on the bipedal stand [CR_0027_sun_bear.md:140-143], and it costs one
line in a state machine.
highland-to-valley transition [CH_10.md:237; T3_Familiars_Named:470] and her species is an
Afro-alpine highland endemic above 3000 metres [:444]. The wild dog's ground is the savanna approach
band and the plain margin — serengeti_plain_margin, terrain wilderness, ambient_threat moderate,
EG_0137 thorn-scrub and grass at COVER class [rift_valley.md:76]. The two animals are not
designed to occupy the same ground, and where the transition zones touch, rule 4 (count) is live.
follow behaviour and her own targeting exclusion at the systems layer. That is a systems-lane ask,
it is boarded in § 9, and this sheet does not lean on it: THE CONTRACT MUST HOLD IN BLACK FILL AT
SIXTY PIXELS BEFORE ANY TARGETING RULE IS RELIED ON, because a player who has to be saved by a
targeting rule has already had the worse experience.
CASE TWO — THE FRONTAL FRAME, and it is the case the profile-based step 1 cannot touch. Head-on at
dusk there is no topline in frame at all, so the hyena is back in the set: her ears are round and high
too [BE_0010_S2:120], and at black fill a frontal hyena and a frontal wild dog are both a head with
two round shapes over it. TWO RESOLVERS, and both are proportions rather than colours:
frontal outline is head-plus-two-discs with visible sky between the ear base and the ear rim. The
hyena's ears sit ON the skull's own width and her frontal outline is one continuous mass, because
her head is broad and deep to carry the jaw adductors on a tall sagittal crest [BE_0010_S2:108-109].
Wide-and-separated versus broad-and-continuous, at black fill, head-on.
so the frontal read tapers to a point below the eyes. The hyena's is SHORT AND DEEP
[BE_0010_S2:109-110] and reads as a blunt block. On the canid pair the same rostrum read confirms
again: both are long and narrow, and the ear ratio from step 2 is what separates them head-on.
pose — and it is doing more work here than in the profile case, because head-on the ears are the
only geometry there is.
WHAT THE CONTRACT OWES THE OTHER SHEETS, AND WHAT IT DELIBERATELY DOES NOT WRITE. The hyena's
marks are cited to BE_0010_S2 and are not re-designed. The felid marks are the coat and skull
proportions above and are held against CR_0056's own contract without contradicting it. **AND THE
ETHIOPIAN WOLF'S APPEARANCE IS NOT AUTHORED HERE.** The earlier issue of this sheet declared an
invented ear SET for her — "a pointed pair set low and continuous with the skull line" — which writes
appearance canon onto CR_0051 and FAM_08/G3, rows this sheet does not own, and which is wrong about
the real *Canis simensis*, whose ears are conspicuously erect and DO break the skull outline. **THAT
INVENTION IS WITHDRAWN.** What this sheet uses instead is only what her own canon line already gives —
"Slender build. Reddish-brown coat with white throat / chest markings. Long legs"
[T3_Familiars_Named:450] — plus a RATIO AND SHAPE COMPARISON that is a statement about THIS row's
ears being disc-shaped and wider than its own skull is long. Nothing above requires her ears to be
anything in particular; it requires only that they are not *Lycaon*'s, which her canon build already
guarantees. A positive appearance authoring for CR_0051 is a real want and it is BOARDED in § 9 to
the familiar and CR_0051 lane, which owns her.
The states a species-typical photograph does not contain (AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY throughout, per § 3's
sourcing gap):
extinction_threat T4(endangered). The pressure is written on the BODY rather than on a flag: healed snare scarring as a
clean hairless band around a foreleg or a neck, and — on one animal in a well-built pack — a
missing forefoot, healed over, in an individual that still keeps up because THE PACK CARRIES ITS
OWN. That is the species' real fact and it is the single most affecting thing this design has. It
is a state, not a status effect, and it never makes the animal untargetable.
with no den. Same species, two population states, entirely legible from count and from whether
there is a fixed address, with no UI element at all. The remnant pack is what the player finds if
the range has been worked; the full pack is what the intact valley holds.
in this animal's year that it has a place instead of a circuit. The ground around a live den is
worn bare, the adults come and go on a schedule, and a guard adult stays. A den in use and a den
abandoned are two different set-dressing states.
kill; a departing one is clean. On a mottled coat that reads at distance because the mark lands on
the pale patches.
therefore a set of nameable individuals rather than a copy set, and the player who watches long
enough learns which one is the one that always comes closest.
PRIMARY — A9 THE MARK, spent as SILHOUETTE LAW: the ears. MECHANISM, as the doctrine requires,
and it is real and it costs the animal something: those pinnae are a thermoregulatory radiator on a
predator that generates enormous heat running prey down over kilometres in open sun. The ear is large
BECAUSE the hunt is long, and the hunt is long because this animal has no ambush in it. One
anatomical fact, one silhouette finder, one behavioural consequence, all the same fact.
SUPPORTING — A5 age and state, above.
ONE-LINE READ: a long-legged mottled dog with a level back and two round dishes above its head.
THE JOB, and it is why the row is worth a sheet. THE PACK IS THE ONE THING IN THIS VALLEY THAT
DECIDES TOGETHER. Chapter 10's whole spine is a child being taught disciplines by people who hold
them — the healer who boils his own heat and holds it, the poison keeper whose exactness is the
teaching, the tracker whose approval is earned by attention [CH_10.md:120, :183-185]. The pack is the
same lesson with no words in it: nothing happens until everyone agrees, and the player earns a place
in the agreement by being present enough times that their presence counts. That is a bond mechanic
that teaches the chapter's own theme through system behaviour rather than through dialogue, which is
the register the region page asks for by name [rift_valley.md:816-824].
EMISSION: none. The coat reads by scattering on a mottled surface that breaks the body up at range,
by the wet darkening of a river crossing, and by the pale tail tip catching low sun. The most
distinctive thing about this animal at distance is a SOUND — a high twittering contact call unlike
any other predator's — and the audio lane owns it.
additions to the body.
rotation about the vertical for the swivel and a fold about the horizontal for the lay-back — with
the fold state driven by the behaviour state machine and locked erect in every pose the animation
rule in § 4 names. The rest of the head is unchanged. THIS IS THE ONE ARTICULATION IN THIS SHEET
THAT THE PLAYER'S SAFETY DEPENDS ON, and it is worth its own animator note.
four, the metacarpus chain loses nothing else, and the spoor asset that the tracking loop reads is
built from the corrected foot rather than from a generic canid's.
per animal, plus a state layer for the fed band and a decal layer for the snare scar. It changes ROM
nowhere and identity everywhere.
the carpus with the gait solver's per-leg phase clock re-weighted, which the bucket's own solver
note already supports ("the solver needs duty factor + phase offsets per foot"). A three-legged
animal that still keeps station in a loping pack is a real thing and it should animate as one.
THIS ROW IS NOT FOUGHT AT CH 10, AND THE SHEET SAYS SO AFFIRMATIVELY RATHER THAN LEAVING THE BLOCK
THIN. combat_permission is EMPTY, rng_drop_anchor is EMPTY, collect_verb is EMPTY, there is no
boss row, the ruled state carries combat_facing FALSE, and the chapter stages "ambient threats: none
beyond BE_0010_S2" [CH_10.md:98]. The grade is TAME, whose canon definition is "Chao Garden passive
companion eligible; Animal Communication low-threshold bonding accessible; Beastiary entry fillable
through bond-lite interactions" [T3_Creatures_Tameable:98]. What this row stages is a BOND, and the
doctrine's familiar register inverts fight-grammar visibility into ALLY LEGIBILITY: the player must
read what this animal is about to do, from a follow camera, at small screen size, without taking
attention off anything else.
THE "NO NEW BOND AT CH 10" LINE DOES NOT BAR THIS, AND THE DISTINCTION IS CANON'S OWN. CH_10.md:237
reads "familiars no new bond at Ch 10", and that line governs the twenty-two named familiar slots.
The TAME grade's bond is Tier 2, and the quote carries its own subject rather than an ellipsis:
"TAME-status species can be bonded with at Chao Garden passive companion tier. **These bonds are
distinct from the 22 named familiars — they occupy no combat familiar slot, do not reach twelve-tier
Hermetic bond mastery, and do not trigger legendary evolutions.** They exist at the compound-level
passive companion tier" [T3_Creatures_Tameable:116; the two-tier split at :124-128]. No slot is
touched, no rotational familiar is added, and the
chapter's familiar line holds unchanged. § 9 boards the fact that the Tier-2 bond has no registry
home at all, which is a hole under every TAME row in mesh demand and is already raised on CR_0026 and
CR_0027.
PART ECONOMY HOME: NONE, declared affirmatively per doctrine § 2.4. This body carries no breakable
region, the encounter breaks nothing in the arena, and the currency of the loop is the player's own
TIME and PRESENCE.
Three stages, each grounded in the species' own most distinctive behaviour and each declared INVENTED
as the game's own design (§ 7).
window in which a coursing animal that runs a circuit of many kilometres can be found twice in the
same place. The den sits at the thorn-scrub margin of the savanna approach, on EG_0137's COVER
ground with enemy_usable TRUE — cover the pack uses and the player can use too — inside the
serengeti_plain_margin band [rift_valley.md:76]. This is a P2 zone behind every spine site,
which is exactly the weight an opt-in non-gating loop should carry.
greeting ceremony, and NOTHING MOVES UNTIL ENOUGH OF THEM JOIN IN. The pack does not follow a
leader; it reaches a quorum. Mechanically that is a visible, HUD-free readiness meter made of
bodies — the player can count who has joined and see the rally fail and reset when it does not
reach. THE BOND'S PROGRESSION IS THE PLAYER'S OWN WEIGHT IN THAT COUNT: at first the player's
presence is neutral and the rally proceeds around them; then their arrival stops being a reason to
break off; and finally their presence COUNTS toward the quorum, and a rally that was one short goes
when they walk up. Nothing in that ladder is a menu.
stayed at the den by bringing food back in the body and giving it up on demand. That act, not a
head-scratch, is what belonging to this pack looks like, and the bond's acceptance signal is a
returning hunter turning to the player and OFFERING. Whether the player takes it is theirs. This is
the honest version of the species' own social contract and it is exactly what makes it a different
bond from every other canid in the arc.
| tell shape (ALLY LEGIBILITY) | body origin | what the player reads |
|---|---|---|
| THE TWITTER | the whole pack, heads up, moving toward each other | the rally is forming; the pack is about to decide something |
| THE EARS SWIVEL AND THE BODY DOES NOT | the pinna bases rotating independently of a still head | it has something the player has not got yet, and the direction the dishes point is the direction |
| THE LEAN-OUT | one animal steps a body length off the group's line and holds, head level | the pack's line is about to change to that one, and this is the only tell that says WHERE |
| THE STAND-OFF AT THE DEN MOUTH | the guard adult places itself between the player and the hole, ears erect, no vocalisation | this is the line, and the answer is to stop where you are. The one tell in the set that means STOP |
| THE OFFER | a returning hunter breaks from the group, comes to the player and lowers its head | the bond band has been reached |
NO SHAPE CARRIES TWO ANSWERS. The set is five and it is deliberately small, because the doctrine's
familiar register is explicit that a companion read from a follow camera at small screen size has a
sixty-pixel budget and must reward recognition rather than study.
THE ESCALATION, ON THE FOUR CHANNELS, AND IT IS A REFUSAL RATHER THAN AN ATTACK — because a pack that
does not want the player there does not fight, it LEAVES, and leaving is the loss condition of the
loop. POSTURE — the group's standoff distance from the player opens instead of closing, and the
standoff is the animated quantity, on the BE_0010_S2 spacing-rule precedent [BE_0010_S2:257-261].
BREATH — the panting after a course stops early because they have moved off before they have
recovered. VOCALIZATION — the twitter drops out and the pack goes silent, which on this species is
the loudest thing it can do. NEW OPENER — the rally stops happening in the player's sight at all, and
the den is empty the next morning. A pack that abandons a den mid-season loses its pups, and the
design does not hide that: the loss is real and it is the cost of crowding them.
THE OPENER AND ITS VARIANTS: the root is THE EARS SWIVEL — the most legible and least costly thing in
the set, present in every idle. THE LEAN-OUT is the same attention spent into a direction; THE TWITTER
is the same attention spent into the group; THE STAND-OFF is the same attention spent at the player,
with the swivel removed, which is what makes it worse.
RELOCATION AND TURF: outside the denning months this animal has no address at all. It runs a circuit
across the plain margin and the shore band and it is somewhere else tomorrow, which is the honest
reason the den is the loop's place and the honest reason the loop has a season.
THE NON-KILL PATH IS THE ONLY PATH AND THE SHEET SAYS SO POSITIVELY. There is no hunt loop here:
§ 1.3 grants the full loop to "QUARRY-status species and PERMITTED DANGEROUS-status species"
[T3_Creatures_Tameable:118] and this row is neither, with an empty permission and no drop anchor.
The Beastiary path is the seven-non-combat-observation completionist chain [§ 1.3 L114], and the
bond-lite loop above is its reward. THAT IS SCOPE DISCIPLINE READ OFF THE CELLS, NOT SQUEAMISHNESS,
and it is reversible by measurement: if a later canon pass lands a permission on this row, § 7's
anti-timid pass records what would be built.
carries no collective claim and that a lane must not re-apply collective protection to game
animals. The chapter's § 17.1 protection covers the Hadza, the Sandawe, the Maasai, the /Xam, the
//Gwi and the Ju|'hoansi, all of them teaching presences and none of them near a target position
[CH_10.md:59, :204; rift_valley.md:367-372]. Nothing here puts a person in frame at all.
quoted rather than paraphrased. @ CR_0072 :: cultural_care_register: "the CVD-§6-as-fauna-protection
reading is VOID: CVD §6 read in full (L266-315) is the CULTURAL DEPICTION STANDARD and it is about
PEOPLE ... Where a real in-world prohibition exists it is expressed as a WORLD rule with a
consequence — a precinct where killing carries a standing and integrity hit and the community
reacts — never as an engine-level untargetable flag." The design consequence on THIS row is the
reason it matters: the T4 status below is built as a world consequence, never as a flag.
rules the handling and this sheet applies it rather than inventing one: "Extinction-threatened
species are presented at their conservation status against primary-source conservation data.
Real-world extinction events during the development and launch window update Beastiary entries to
include witness-record content. Players who encountered a species in-game before extinction retain
Beastiary entries as canonical witness records at T0_Worldstate_Variables persistence layer"
[T3_Creatures_Tameable:232]. Three consequences on this sheet, all of them design rather than
disclaimer:
status rendered as anatomy.
"Overhunting reduces prey populations and reshapes predator populations" and that "Extinction
events are possible as permanent worldstate consequences" [T3_Creatures_Tameable:155]. A player
who empties the plain margin of prey finds a remnant pack and then no pack, and that is a
worldstate write rather than a message.
chapters_present reads CH_10;CH_13, so the samespecies is canon at the Ch-13 South Africa node, and a pack met here is a pack whose descendants
the arc can put in front of the player again. THIS SHEET AUTHORS NO CH-13 CONTENT and defers it
by name to the Ch-13 lane; it only records that the row's second chapter is where a witness
record would land. § 9 boards the modern-window scoping question.
ontology_class is EMPTY. The sheet treats the row as ordinary fauna, writes nocell, and does not pre-empt the FORK-7 derivation.
T3_Creatures_Tameable § 4.1:230 namesCh 11, Ch 12, Ch 29, Ch 42 and Ch 57. Ch 10's absence is the ruling, and the one protection that IS
canon in this chapter is narrow, specific and held absolutely: never the bonded wolf Desta, and
never a San person, ever.
system. The photographic-wildlife template is the named failure mode here as on every real-fauna
row in this chapter, and the plate's judging question is whether the animal reads as a designed
individual in a designed pack or as wildlife reference.
(1) SHOULD THE REGURGITATION-OFFER HAVE BEEN REPLACED WITH SOMETHING GENTLER? Examined and REFUSED.
The softening considered was a generic canid pace-match acceptance signal. That is Desta's signal —
"Desta matches the protagonist's pace on a shared traverse" [T3_Familiars_Named:458] — and reusing
it here would collapse two species into one bond grammar in the exact chapter whose central design
problem is telling them apart. The species' own social act is kept, the player keeps the choice of
whether to take it, and the rated-M register carries it without comment.
(2) SHOULD THE MISSING-FOOT AND SNARE STATES HAVE BEEN CUT AS TOO BLEAK? REFUSED. The row's own cell
says "endangered", canon rules that threatened species are presented AT their conservation status
[:232], and rendering that as a healed body rather than as a codex sentence is the difference
between weight and disclaimer.
(3) SHOULD THE PACK HAVE BEEN MADE UNTARGETABLE BECAUSE IT IS ENDANGERED? REFUSED, on the live cell
quoted above: a real prohibition is a world rule with a consequence, never an engine flag. Nothing
here is untargetable; the consequence is that the range remembers.
(4) THE BOLD DIRECTION, CHECKED EXPLICITLY AS THE CALIBRATION REQUIRES: SHOULD THIS ANIMAL BE
FOUGHT? It is a coursing predator that kills large prey and a pack of eighteen is genuinely
dangerous to one child. REFUSED ON THE CELLS — combat_permission EMPTY, rng_drop_anchor EMPTY,
collect_verb EMPTY, grade TAME, no boss row, combat_facing FALSE. If a later canon pass lands a
permission, the fight is BUILT and its opener is already written: the STAND-OFF AT THE DEN MOUTH,
which is the one tell in the set that already means stop.
the offer as the acceptance signal, the five ally tells, the four-channel refusal escalation, the
snare-and-missing-foot state ladder, the pack-size ladder, the coat-as-identity system, and the
ears-always-erect animation rule are INVENTED BY THIS SHEET as the game's own. **WITHDRAWN FROM THE
INVENTION LIST AND FROM THE SHEET: the Ethiopian wolf's ear set.** The earlier issue authored her
ears as "a pointed pair set low and continuous with the skull line", which wrote appearance canon
onto a row this sheet does not own (CR_0051, FAM_08/G3) and was in any case wrong about the real
*Canis simensis*, whose ears are erect and break the skull outline. § 4 now discriminates on THIS
row's own ear-to-skull RATIO and disc-versus-triangle SHAPE, which are facts about this body, and
the positive authoring of hers is boarded to her own lane in § 9. The TAME grade and its bond-lite
tier, the Tier-2 no-slot rule, the seven-observation benchmark, the T4 conservation-status handling
and its witness-record clause, the worldstate population rules, the protected-register chapter list,
Desta's coat, build and legs, her solitary-but-pack-social behaviour and her Ch-10 placement, and
the hyena's finder marks are CITED. The skeleton, joint ROM, gait formalism, the four published gait
modes AND THE TROT THE ENDURANCE MODE IS DERIVED FROM, and rig conformance are DERIVED from
QUADRUPED.json as BOUNDS; the four-toed forefoot, the ear, the rostrum, the coat pattern, the mass
band and the trot's HELD DURATION are inline AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY on the bucket's declared silences and
its one generic-canid over-declaration.
points at the antagonist doc. T3_Creatures_Tameable:471 routes this species' extinction-threat
context to "T4_House_of_Velheim_Canonical Thread 3". THAT TIE IS DESIGN-LAYER ONLY AND REACHES NO
PLAYER SURFACE HERE: Thread 3 is NOT_PRESENT at Ch 10, no operative, name, form or pattern anchors
in this chapter, and the chapter's reveal state is HELD throughout [CH_10.md:37, :99, :239, :252].
The player-facing strings this sheet proposes are a Beastiary display name and the observation-chain
entries; they name a species, a place and a pack state, and nothing else.
Written affirmatively. Every line names what IS in frame.
flat morning light, level topline on long legs, both ears erect and forward as two round dishes
wider than the head between them, irregular black-tan-white blotching, pale brush tail tip.
scale, one light and one camera distance, side by side — the wild dog with ears erect and a level
back; the Ethiopian wolf, slender, uniform reddish-brown with a white throat and chest, long
highland legs, a narrow muzzle and a pointed pair of ears set low against the skull line; and the
spotted hyena with the sloping shoulder-to-hip wedge, round ears high, head low and forward.
wolf, spotted hyena, cheetah and leopard — in TWO rows, one in profile and one HEAD-ON, no colour,
judged on whether the topline separates the hyena in profile, whether the ear ratio and disc shape
separate the wild dog from all four in both frames, and whether ear-width-against-head-width plus
the rostrum separate the wild dog from the hyena in the frontal row.
each coat distinct, heads up.
together, mouths open on the twitter, the worn bare ground of a live den under them.
viewer with its head lowered.
band around a foreleg, one with a healed forefoot loss standing square on three, and a
guard adult at the den mouth.
one adult standing over it and pups' tracks in the dust.
sub_plans.carnivoran_digitigrade declares digits_per_forefoot: 5`. *Lycaon pictus* carries FOUR
and the absent dewclaw is the genus's defining osteological difference. The bucket is a generic
canid plan and the row is a real exception, so either the sub-plan gains a per-row override or the
census gains a note. This sheet declares the departure inline rather than silently overriding it.
THE ANATOMY-TABLE LANE OWNS THE EDIT.
registries/ carries the Chao-tier passive companion specified by T3_Creatures_Tameable § 1.4; T0_Familiar_Registry is the twenty-two slots
only. Already raised on CR_0026 and CR_0027; this is the same hole under a third TAME row in mesh
demand, and it is the row whose entire designed content sits in that tier.
@ CR_0061 :: collect_verb IS EMPTY on a TAME row while CR_0003, also TAME, carries TAME_BREED. Thebond loop in § 6 has no verb.
@ CR_0061 :: combat_permission AND rng_drop_anchor ARE EMPTY. That is CONSISTENT with anunfought TAME row and is recorded here so no later lane reads the blank as an oversight and adds a
big-game anchor without a permission to match — the CR_0027 precedent.
@ CR_0061 :: ontology_class, cultural_depiction_required, hard_line_anchors, folklore_behavior_substrate, folklore_attribution_source, intelligence_tier,
husbandry_breedable, temperament_prior, integrity_visible_aesthetic_shift,
vril_substrate_response, spawn_rate, height_m, length_axis, dex_completion_class and
kit_ref ARE ALL EMPTY. intelligence_tier is the load-bearing one: § 1.5 L149 gates the TAME
grade's own Animal Communication low-threshold bonding by that tier, and the column that decides
whether this bond is reachable at Ch 10's per-capability Neophyte floor [CH_10.md:233] is blank.
@ CR_0061 :: familiar_cross_ref IS EMPTY while this row's whole design problem is a three-way confusion with a named familiar's species (CR_0051, Desta G3). CR_0051 carries "Desta
G3 — non-Desta cohort" in that column; the row that most needs a pointer AT that species has none.
A cross-reference in either direction would let a lane filtering the roster find the pair.
a targeting exclusion so that no player input can aim at Desta. § 4 states plainly that the
contract must hold in black fill before any such rule is relied on, and this item exists so the
belt-and-braces layer is on someone's list rather than assumed.
PRE-EMPT.** CR_0051 Ethiopian wolf / FAM_08-class G3 Desta has no authored silhouette
specification anywhere. T3_Familiars_Named:450 gives four facts — slender build, reddish-brown
coat, white throat and chest, long legs, adolescent at bond — and nothing about head, muzzle, ear
shape, ear set, ear proportion or tail. This sheet's § 4 discriminates entirely on ITS OWN body's
ear ratio and disc shape precisely so that it does not author hers, and an earlier issue of this
sheet that DID author them has been withdrawn (§ 7). **THE ASK: a positive silhouette specification
for CR_0051, authored by the lane that owns the familiar, so the chapter's highest-stakes
discrimination rests on two specified bodies rather than one specified and one inferred.** It is
the single largest open item under this contract.
rift_valley.md § 18 enumerates five strata and scopes the modern window tothe gorge RIM as a research overlay [:1120-1132]. A conservation-status forward read on savanna
fauna — the plain margin with the pack absent — has no enumerated home on the plain. Same
enumeration gap CR_0143 boarded for angkor_khmer, and the fix is a § 18 extension rather than a
sheet-side claim.
rift_valley.md § 3's rowed-fauna list [:232-237]names this row and eleven others, and the section then says nothing further about any of them
because the corpus holds no zoological source. That is honest and it is also why this row's
behavioural layer is entirely AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY. THE ACQUISITION, quoted by the page's own real
title: **"Rift lakes ecology and the African Humid Period — Hassan's Holocene palaeoclimate work and
a Rift lakes limnology anchor" [:1048-1050]. A SCOPE WIDENING IS REQUESTED AND IT IS THIS LANE'S
OWN, NOT THE PAGE'S:** the titled item is palaeoclimate and limnology, and what this sheet's § 4 and
§ 6 actually need is East African CARNIVORE BEHAVIOUR — pack structure, denning, coursing, and how a
clan holds ground. The page states that gap in prose [:245-252] without carrying a behaviour title
in its ranked list, so this lane asks the region lane to add one rather than reading the existing
item wider than it is written. Either way the arrival re-cites § 4 and § 6 rather than rewriting them.
@ CR_0061 :: mesh_tags.material CARRIES THE CHAPTER PALETTE VERBATIM — "ochre and iron-oxide,rock-panel patina, deep-cut tuff, soda-lake pink" [CH_10.md:223] — which is the /Xam PANEL's
material set pasted onto a savanna canid. Rock-panel patina is a wrong noun for this animal. The
contamination class is already boarded on CR_0143 and it runs across every CH_10 fauna row.
T0_Boss_Attack_Rail CARRIES 0 ROWS. Five ally tells wait here; the rail has no ally lane at all,which is a schema question rather than a population one.
SRC_00186) stated.