creatures/CR_0133_siamese_crocodile.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·docs/spine/CH_05.md·_source/02_Tier_2_Region_Pages/angkor_khmer.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.
reversing-flood Tonle Sap edge), with the moat water at angkor_wat as ambient range
wild)
because west_baray is the 1177 two-peer river-war combat-staging surface [angkor_khmer.md:85]
[build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/AQUATIC.json; ANATOMY_REFERENCE.md], which names this row as
an exemplar
T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0133 · docs/spine/CH_05.md L12, L99, L102-103, L116, L265 · angkor_khmer.md § 3 L173-184, § 10 L666-669, § 17 L1103-1105 ·
CREATURE_DEMAND_RULED_STATE_L11.json CH_05 ·
build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/AQUATIC.json crocodilian_semiaquatic
WHY THIS ROW IS COMBAT-FACING AND WHAT IT IS FACING FOR. The chapter does not stage a crocodile hunt
and this sheet does not invent one. It stages WATER THAT KILLS: the Bayon naval reliefs carve a
crocodile in the water below the war-galleys devouring a fallen soldier, which is the canon-grounded
way the water itself is made lethal in the west_baray set-piece — the flood-pulse water is a
combatant, not a backdrop [angkor_khmer.md:177-180]. The spine concurs and names the register:
the Tonle Sap crocodiles are staged as ambient/permitted fauna [CH_05.md:116] and as ambient/threat
presences as the reliefs themselves depict them [CH_05.md:265]. The design job is therefore an
APEX resident with real agency inside a puzzle chapter, never a boss bolted onto a flow-puzzle.
DERIVED FROM THE ANATOMY REFERENCE TABLE, NOT DECLARED INLINE. The per-archetype table is on disk and
this row is one of its named exemplars, so the doctrine § 2.1 inline-licence no longer applies here:
the block below is re-derived from build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/AQUATIC.json sub-plan
crocodilian_semiaquatic, and every figure carries the bucket's own basis. Where the bucket is
silent, the line is labelled INLINE_DECLARED.
the body wave in — and this plan waves SIDEWAYS. Its land plan cross-references SPRAWLING_QUADRUPED
/ varanid_lacertilian: the same sprawl, the same femoral long-axis rotation, and the same high-walk
postural range, exploited further than any lizard.
declared LATERAL.
dorsal osteoderm plates linked to the axial skeleton, so the back is stiffer than a lizard's. Four
sprawling limbs, five digits on the manus and four webbed on the pes (INLINE_DECLARED). The raised
bony cranial crest behind the eyes is the species' own diagnostic and this design's mark
(INLINE_DECLARED).
degrees per joint and dorsoventral -8 to +8 [REILLY1998, HILDEBRAND2001]; coxofemoral long-axis
rotation -30 to +30 and protraction/retraction -35 to +35 [REILLY1998, BLOB2001]. Trunk-segment
figures are not carried for this sub-plan and are INLINE_DECLARED where § 5 needs one. Jaw gape past
80 degrees on a closure-dominant apparatus whose opening muscles are weak (INLINE_DECLARED).
against the body and still — the legs are folded, never paddling, and the tail is the engine. LAND
is three postures and not one: belly-crawl at rest, HIGH WALK at speed, and a bounding gallop.
The signature clip is the death roll, a long-axis body roll driven from the tail and trunk together.
costs a full body-length; in water the mass vanishes and the tail alone carries it.
on stone, a long low wedge with the tail trailing straight
ORDINARY_FAUNA and no folklore attribution is carried. The Khmer folkloric water-being of this
region is the naga, which is protective and dynastic and deliberately LEFT [CH_05.md:330;
angkor_khmer.md:186-189]. This sheet touches none of it.
naval relief's crocodile taking a fallen soldier [angkor_khmer.md:177-180;
T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0133 :: cultural_significance]. That relief is this design's SOURCE and is
never its asset — real cultural architecture is reference-built and the sacred monuments are
referenced, not reproduced [angkor_khmer.md:575-577; CH_05.md:266].
sluices are dated Khmer hydraulic works [angkor_khmer.md:117-124], and the Tonle Sap's annual
flow-reversal is live as the region's defining hydrology and the flow-puzzle's physics
[angkor_khmer.md:139-141]. An animal that has lived its whole life in rectangular water with dressed
stone edges is a different animal from one in a river, and part four is where that is spent.
ONE-LINE SILHOUETTE READ: a crocodile whose back is one continuous rust-seamed bone keel running from
a raised brow-bar to the tail, and whose whole underside is bare polished hide.
PRIMARY — A4 HYPERTROPHY AND ATROPHY, both poles on one body.
into a single continuous keeled pavement from crest to tail base. MECHANISM: crocodilian osteoderms
are living vascular bone that remodels around injury, and this animal has been speared from above
for decades in water men fight over. Every healed strike is a plugged crater in the pavement, and
the pavement is the sum of them. The animal is armoured BY its history, which is why no photograph
of the species contains this back.
over dressed sandstone and laterite has worn them to smooth, polished leather with the keels gone
and the scale seams flattened. The animal is a fortress above and bare below, and the fight is about getting
underneath it. Hypertrophy that does not hand the player an answer is decoration; this one is the
answer.
SUPPORTING — A5 AGE AND STATE. Laterite is iron-rich and this reservoir carries it: an ochre-to-rust
mineral bloom has dried into the sutures of the dorsal pavement and reads as a seam-map of the plates
at any distance. One caudal vertebra carries an old ossified break, so the tail's stroke is
asymmetric and the animal swims a shallow arc rather than a line — which is a free identification of
this individual across a whole reservoir.
SUPPORTING — A9 THE MARK. The species' bony post-orbital crest, carried further: one hard horizontal
bar at the waterline, and the only part of the body above water when the animal is hunting. It is the
region's crocodile read, and it is deliberately one shape and no more. The region's three water reads
form one legibility system taught across three sheets — ONE BAR is this animal and means commit; two
points at one speed is the water monitor (CR_0146); a line of pale bibs at one speed is the otter
troupe (CR_0148).
EMISSION: none. The animal reads by wetting-darkening on the pavement, by the rust in the seams
catching hard plain daylight, and by occluding the reservoir's flat sky-reflection.
the pectoral girdle and mid-trunk drops to near zero, so the animal cannot bend its front half and
must turn from the hips. The anatomy bucket carries no trunk-segment figure for this sub-plan, so
the baseline this reduces FROM is INLINE_DECLARED and the reduction is the design's own; the
direction is the bucket's, which already rules the osteodermal back stiffer than a lizard's. It is
a ROM change rather than a texture.
and they do not deform.
reduced on one side only. Weight passes through it exactly as before; the stroke does not.
nothing bolted on.
THE ENCOUNTER VERBS, WITH THEIR PROVENANCE SPLIT: CR_0133 carries no T0_Boss_Encounter_Registry row
and no attack-rail rows, and the chapter's boss seat at west_baray belongs to BE_0005_S4, the court
official and the ward-constructs [CH_05.md:115, L162]. AMBUSH DERIVES from a cell — the row's
temperament_prior is ambush. HOLD DERIVES FROM NO CELL and is THIS SHEET'S MINT, coined for the
turf behaviour in § 6 below; it is named as the sheet's own so no lane reads it back as canon. The
part-economy home is BODY.
| tell shape | body origin | the one answer | counter class |
|---|---|---|---|
| the waterline rise (OPENER) | the tail sculls once and the whole dorsal keel breaks surface — one bar becomes a full seam-map | leave the water plane: gain the dike crown, the sluice wall or the mebon stonework | dodge |
| the cocked tail | mass shifts caudally and the tail loads laterally to one side before any forward motion | step ACROSS the loaded side; the animal cannot lunge over its own load | dodge |
| the fold-and-lock | forelimbs fold flat to the flanks and the neck goes rigid and straight — this only follows a grab | meet the presented nuchal pavement at a plugged crater, which is the one meetable surface it offers | parry |
| the stone haul (TURF) | the high walk with the belly clear, up a dressed sluice ramp | give the ramp up and take the water it just left | dodge |
standing silhouette and is the highest point of the body, so its break is visible without a HUD;
breaking it subtracts the fold-and-lock from the live moveset permanently, makes the remaining tells
read easier because the neck is now free and visibly so, and yields bone plate the economy wants.
The crest bar occupies roughly 3 per cent of the standing silhouette and 100 per cent of what is
visible when the animal is submerged, which is the fraction that actually matters; breaking it
subtracts the waterline rise, because the animal will no longer hold the surface.
out, which is a threat display and also a commitment. BREATH: the gular fold pumps visibly in the
throat between moves. VOCALIZATION: the headslap — the jaws clap the surface once, a percussive
crack that carries across the whole reservoir. NEW OPENER: after escalation the opener is the stone
haul, not the rise; it comes out of the water first and the arena changes.
variants are the same body origin with a longer wind (the rise held two beats before the lunge) and
a wider arc (the rise carried into a lateral sweep of the whole body across a sluice mouth).
flow-puzzle, which is the encounter's agency proof: the animal is doing something that is not about
the player — it is where the fish are when the gate opens.
nor HOLD is staged inside the protected site: the moat is the cosmic ocean of an honored space and
the chapter holds it as honored space and not a loot-arena [CH_05.md:99], while the build rule holds
the protected sacred sites as referenced type-accurate set-dressing and never staged as loot-arenas
[angkor_khmer.md:1103-1105]. The animal is VISIBLE in the moat water and it is not an encounter
there; every verb above lives on the west_baray reservoir, its dikes, its sluice line and the Tonle
Sap edge, which the zone catalog carries as the one combat surface [angkor_khmer.md:75]. This is
the same protected-site read CR_0146 runs for the moats it shares.
the shape on CR_0005 at the Ch-2 fed spring: residents vacate in a direction and the direction is a
free early-warning system. THE DISCRIMINATOR RULED FOR CH_05, stated identically on all four sheets
that carry it: A WATER READ ANSWERS TO WATER AND A STONE READ ANSWERS TO STONE. The monitor going
in (CR_0146) and the otter troupe's alarm chorus (CR_0148) both answer to THIS animal coming up;
the macaque troop leaving a gallery (CR_0140) answers to the wards rousing and never to a
crocodile. One shape, two answers, and the medium is the tell that keeps them apart.
non-kill obligation sits on the corrupt operatives, never on fauna [CH_05.md:276].
not re-apply collective protection to a game animal. The §17.1 protection that IS live on this
surface belongs to the Khmer and Cham communities and the two-peer war's peoples, and no line here
touches them [CH_05.md:246; angkor_khmer.md:359-366].
permitted and unrewarded — the row withholds its drop anchor and says why: staged as flood-pulse
water-hazard, not a materials hunt [T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0133 :: notes].
dorsal pavement, so a photographic-wildlife template is the wrong route and the sheet says so.
life (extinction_threat T4). It is carried as scarcity of encounter — a small number of individuals
in a very large reservoir, one of them this animal — and never as a lecture and never as a
farmable population.
man-eating register because a crocodile taking a soldier reads as gruesome: refused, because the
image is the Khmer's own carved record of their own water [angkor_khmer.md:177-180] and this is a
rated-R AAA action RPG. Second, making the animal unkillable on conservation grounds: refused, and
it is exactly the care-tier inflation the standing law names — the honest tool is the withheld drop
anchor already on the row, which removes the incentive without removing the encounter.
_source/02_Tier_2_Region_Pages/angkor_khmer.md and matched SRC_00322 at L44 and throughout § 5,
§ 13 and § 14 — that is the page's ONLY SRC_ id across 1383 lines. The matcher works, and no SRC_
id on the page reaches this row; every lore claim here is therefore cited to file:line or to the
registry cell, and the rest is declared invented.
atrophy, the laterite seam-bloom, the ossified caudal break, the four tells, the sluice turf and the
three-read water legibility system are INVENTED BY THIS SHEET as the game's own design. The
anatomy is DERIVED FROM THE ANATOMY BUCKET (AQUATIC / crocodilian_semiaquatic) and the headslap and
the roll are INLINE_DECLARED where that bucket is silent. The relief image, the
water-as-combatant staging, the engineered hydrology, the permission and the withheld drop anchor
are CITED.
and three points breaking it, the dike crown far behind. The plate that teaches the silhouette.
above, the fused dorsal pavement filling the frame with ochre-rust dried into every suture and the
plugged craters catching the light as shallow dishes.
hide turned up, the contrast against the pavement carried in one image.
fish running the channel.
the idle read (one bar and three points at the waterline) beside the wind-up read (the full
seam-map keel surfacing) — with the two breakables outlined at their declared fractions, the nuchal
shield at roughly 8 per cent of the standing silhouette and the crest bar at roughly 3 per cent
standing and the whole of the submerged read. Judged on whether idle and wind-up separate in fill
alone.
T0_Boss_Encounter_Registry has NO row for the west_baray water hazard, and T0_Boss_Attack_Railhas none either. This sheet's four tells, its part economy and its escalation channels have no
registry home; they sit entirely in prose.
hitzone_parts has no home for this row at all — the doctrine's declared BODY case, and the columnis not reachable from a creature row.
height_m and length_axis are EMPTY on this row while the mesh lane is being asked for an APEXwater body. Scale is undeclared at the exact place a mesh pipeline reads it.
kit_ref is EMPTY, carried forward from the L11 demand state.rng_drop_anchor is withheld with the reason in notes. PERMITTED-but-unrewarded is a real anddeliberate design posture shared with CR_0140, and it has no column — a lane filtering on
combat_permission alone will read it as a hunt target.
spawn_rate is FLAGGED behind the tuning firewall, which is correct, but the encounter's scarcityclaim in § 7 depends on it and nothing joins the two.
thread_anchor on this row is Thread 2, the Serpent thread, on a crocodilian. The chapter's Thread2 subjects are Naga Padoha and the Khmer naga [CH_05.md:43], and the column cannot express the
difference between carrying a thread and being its subject — the identical debt CR_0147 boards.
silent. The CR_0002 template ruled the block in on 2026-08-06 (mass and density, declared ROM,
zones, damage-type matrix) and requires a MEASURED enclosed_volume_m3 read off a shipped mesh at
canon scale. This row's generation_status is pending and mesh_id_ref is EMPTY, so the measured
leg cannot be taken and a guessed volume would poison
harness/asset_factory/emit_creature_physical.py at its source. Deferred to the mesh landing, with
the § 2 ROM table already re-derived from the anatomy bucket and ready to carry into § 10.2.