CR_0142_kouprey.md

creatures/CR_0142_kouprey.md

CR_0142 — the kouprey, the animal that is mostly sign

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.

It cites canon rows and writes none.

1. identity

• canon_id: CR_0142 · canon_name Kouprey · chapter CH_05 · region angkor_khmer
• species_class: mammal · tier_classification MEGAFAUNA · trophic_role mega-herbivore
• ontology_class: ORDINARY_FAUNA · combat_permission EMPTY on the row · collect_verb EMPTY on the row
• trade_8_tameable DANGEROUS · temperament_prior wary · rng_drop_anchor DROP_BIGGAME_HIDE_MEAT
• extinction_threat: T4 (critically endangered; possibly extinct today)
• cultural_care_register: light-care — national animal (modern symbol)
• care_tier: standard [CH_05.md:12 — cultural_depiction_tier standard; the chapter's ELEVATED scope

is the Cham and war surfaces, which this row does not touch]

• ruled demand: DEMAND_RULED_IN by RULING_7, combat_facing FALSE. DANGEROUS is the taming trade's own

word for a body the trade cannot take safely — it puts the row in scope and stages no fight.

MEGAFAUNA reaches nothing (RULING_8); ORDINARY_FAUNA routes care, never scope (RULING_10).

• primary_axis: A10 negative space, spent as ENCOUNTER SCARCITY off the body · supporting A9 the mark

and A5 age and state, the REAL_FAUNA register's declared natural spend (doctrine § 3D)

• rows_read: T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0142 (62 cells) · `build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/

QUADRUPED.json · angkor_khmer.md § 2 L154-171, § 3 L173-191, § 18 L1109-1122 · CH_05.md` L12,

L78, L246, L265-267 · docs/proposals/bestiary/sheets/CR_0140_long_tailed_macaque.md

THE SAME-REGION PERMISSION COMPARISON, TAKEN FROM THE LIVE CELLS. combat_permission is EMPTY here

while CR_0133 Siamese crocodile reads PERMITTED and CR_0140 long-tailed macaque reads PERMITTED. The

"PROTECTED" reading of CR_0140 that circulated in the earlier sheets is STALE notes prose; the live

cell is PERMITTED and its cultural_care_register rules the reading. That is settled on the landed

CR_0140 sheet and is cited rather than re-derived here [CR_0140_long_tailed_macaque.md:32-35].

2. base_species

• binomial: *Bos sauveli* · archetype QUADRUPED · sub-plan ungulate_unguligrade
• DERIVED FROM THE ANATOMY REFERENCE TABLE, not declared inline:

build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/QUADRUPED.json § sub_plans.ungulate_unguligrade, whose

reference_taxon is *Equus caballus* and *Bos taurus* and whose exemplar line reads "generic

bovid/equid". The doctrine's inline-declaration licence expired 2026-08-12 and a covered row now

derives from the bucket and cites the path (doctrine § 2.1, amended).

• posture grade: erect / parasagittal — the limbs are carried UNDER the body and swung in the sagittal

plane [QUADRUPED.json § posture_grade]

• segments: 4 limbs; 2 weight-bearing digits per foot plus 2 dew claws; 25 presacral vertebrae;

clavicle absent; radius and ulna FUSED, tibia and fibula fused or the fibula vestigial, metacarpals

reduced to a single cannon bone [§ sub_plans.ungulate_unguligrade.segments]

• skeleton chain: root → pelvis → spine_lumbar → spine_thoracic → spine_cervical → head → jaw; scapula

→ humerus → radioulna → carpus → metacarpus as a SINGLE cannon bone → a pastern chain P1, P2, P3 in

place of digits; femur → tibia → tarsus → metatarsus → toes; tail_00 off the pelvis. Every _L bone

carries an identical _R sibling [§ skeleton, § mirror_rule]

• declared ROM, every range the table's: the scapulothoracic is a SYNSARCOSIS with no bony joint — the

scapula slides on the ribcage through ±25 degrees protraction/retraction and ±15 rotation, and a rig

that parents the humerus straight to the spine loses the whole first third of the stride [DYCE2010,

SISSON1975]; glenohumeral flexion/extension 57 to 165 degrees, abduction/adduction ±20, axial

rotation ±15 [JAEGER2002, MILLERS2013]; elbow flexion/extension 36 to 165 with pronation/supination

locked at [0, 0] by radioulnar fusion [SISSON1975]; carpus flexion/extension 90 to 180 with a HARD

STOP at 180 and no hyperextension, ever [DENOIX2014]; the fetlock is the primary elastic element and

freezing it kills the gallop

• gait: the transverse gallop, plus the canter — a three-beat asymmetrical gait with a defined lead

[§ gait]. It matters on this row: a standing start into a gallop on a dry-forest floor is the

loudest thing the animal does.

• rig conformance: minimum 34 deform bones; spine chain 5 to 24; two forelimb and two hindlimb chains

of at least 4 bones each; bilateral symmetry required [QUADRUPED.json § rig_conformance]

• WHERE THE TABLE IS SILENT, SAID AFFIRMATIVELY — these values stay inline and labeled

AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY. The table publishes no cervical ROM and no cervical/thoracic/lumbar split of the

25 presacral vertebrae, so the short-range neck this design rests on is inline: the head turns with

the shoulders, which is the physical fact under the broadside stand. The table covers bone and joint

only, so the horn (bone core in a keratin sheath, growing through life, never shed — the bull's

arching outward then up then forward, the cow's in a narrower lyre), the PENDULOUS DEWLAP of loose

skin from throat to brisket, and the coat are inline. The dewlap is passive skin with no joint and

is not a table object at all. The table's own standing caveat carries: goniometry measures the

PASSIVE envelope, and what a live animal reaches under its own power is smaller by an amount the

sources do not separate [QUADRUPED.json § unmeasured].

• mass, stance, gait read: roughly 700 to 900 kg standing 1.7 to 1.9 m at the shoulder — TALL rather

than heavy, and the proportion is the identity

• resting silhouette: a narrow deep body slung high between long legs, a hanging bag of skin under the

throat, and a horn line ending in something frayed rather than in a point

3. lore_source

• NO LIVING-TRADITION CLAIM ATTACHES TO THIS ROW, AFFIRMATIVELY DECLARED. folklore_behavior_substrate

and folklore_attribution_source are both empty. The one culture-facing cell,

cultural_care_register, names a MODERN national symbol and nothing a 1200 person could hold.

• POSITIVE CONTROL FOR THE CITATION TEST, and it is the wave's own: SRC_00322 is the only SRC_ id

anywhere in angkor_khmer.md, and the live worked control for a fauna-row tradition claim with no

SRC_ reaching it is carried on CR_0148, whose cultural_significance asserts a human

cooperative-fishing practice the page never cites [CR_0148_smooth_coated_otter.md:64-70, :202-205].

The ruler matches; it does not reach this row, because this row claims no tradition.

• The row's own cell: the wild forest ox of the Cambodian dry dipterocarp forest, later Cambodia's

national animal, extant and huntable at the 1200 frame [`T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0142 ::

cultural_significance`]. The last clause is the design permission and it is the row's, not this

sheet's.

• The country: the Angkor plain is monsoon-forest-and-paddy with the Tonle Sap flood-forest ringing

the lake, foliage dense in the flood-forest and thinning on the open baray and the paddy grid

[angkor_khmer.md:154-156; :169-171].

• ERA DISCIPLINE ON THE CARE CELL: the national-animal reading is a MODERN symbol and the row says so

on its face. Canon holds forward and modern strata out of the 1200 scene as design-layer context

[angkor_khmer.md:1114-1122], so no in-world line at 1200 calls this animal an emblem. It is a wild

ox in a dry forest to everybody the player meets.

• PROVENANCE, DIRECTIONAL, AND ALREADY BOARDED COHORT-WIDE. The row's source_ref cites angkor_khmer

§ 3, and § 3 names no kouprey. The relation is DIRECTIONAL and the page states it: "the page

CONSUMES the T0_Creature_Roster rows the spine already staged and FEEDS region-ambient detail"

[angkor_khmer.md:175-176] — the roster is upstream, so the row does not depend on the section for

its existence. The same dangle runs the whole CR_0133-CR_0150 cohort and CR_0140's notes cell

already boards it as wanting a director ruling rather than a per-row patch

[CR_0140_long_tailed_macaque.md:72-74]. A second leg of the same gap: CH_05.md:265

creatures_and_fauna enumerates the excursion's asset anchors and names no wild bovid either.

4. elevation

• register: REAL_FAUNA (TRUE_TO_LIFE) — doctrine § 3D. Elevation is refused because the row's folklore

columns are empty, it stages no supernatural claim, and the chapter's care architecture depends on

the mundane world reading as real: this is the chapter where the naga is the only

mythologically-stylized presence [CH_05.md:267].

• THE REPLICA TEST DISCHARGES BY CONTRACT PLUS LADDER, per § 3D, and both are stated below.

THE LEGIBILITY CONTRACT — stated identically on all three bovid sheets. THREE WILD BOVIDS SHARE THIS

CHAPTER, so silhouette-first discrimination is the first design obligation. THE FINDERS: the GAUR is

found by its BROKEN TOPLINE, a ridge peaking over the shoulder and dropping to the ordinary back

inside a hand's width — the only topline in the chapter with a step in it; the BANTENG is found by the

WHITE RUMP DISC at the HERD grain, which inverts the animal's read front-to-back and makes herd facing

legible; the KOUPREY is found by LEG AND HANG — the tallest-legged and lightest-bodied of the three,

daylight under the belly, a dewlap falling toward the ground, and horn tips that end frayed rather

than pointed. THE AMBIGUITY CASE, named rather than assumed away: a mature blue-black banteng bull

carries white socks too, so at colour-only range he and a gaur resolve to the same read. THE RESOLVER

is stocking EXTENT measured against leg height — the banteng's white runs high and clean to knee and

hock, the gaur's is a shorter boot on a much longer leg — with the rump-disc check (banteng) or the

ridge-step check (gaur) confirming whenever the rear or the topline is in frame. STOCKINGS CONFIRM;

THEY NEVER FIND.

THE STATE LADDER, and on this row it is a SIGN LADDER — the states and evidence a species-typical

photograph does not contain, because what the player collects is not the animal.

• FIRST, THE HORN SCARS. A kouprey bull horns soil and standing timber, and the habit is what shreds

the keratin at his horn tips. So the forest carries a mark nothing else in the region makes: bark

stripped and gouged at one fixed height on trunk after trunk, the shreds combed the same direction.

It is a signature before the player knows whose it is.

• SECOND, THE GROUND. Wallows with a long body-print rather than a round one; tracks splayed wide for

a light body carried on long legs over a soft floor; and in the dust of a lie-up, a single dragged

line where the dewlap rested.

• THIRD, THE ANIMAL, ONCE, AND NOT CLOSE. A grey shape at the far edge of open dry forest in the last

light, standing, head turned, already leaving. The player gets the silhouette and never the study.

• FOURTH, AND IT IS AN AGE STATE: the oldest bull is the one the player sees, because he is the one

who stands longest before leaving — fray at maximum, dewlap at its longest and dust-loaded, horn

sheath grooved with its own growth.

PRIMARY — A10 NEGATIVE SPACE, spent as ENCOUNTER SCARCITY and spent OFF the body rather than on it,

which is the register's boundary condition. What is missing is not a piece of the animal, it is the

BODY: the herd whole, in daylight, at range, is not in the game because it was not in the world.

MECHANISM, behaviour rather than magic: a wary animal of open forest with a longer flight distance

than anything else its size, moving mostly at the ends of the day, and scarce.

SUPPORTING — A9 THE MARK, and it is real anatomy rather than an invention: the bull's horn tips fray,

the keratin splitting and splaying into a shredded bell that no other wild cattle carry. One mark,

high-contrast against sky at the only moment the player ever sees the animal, and it explains itself

the moment the player has already walked past the gouged trees.

ONE-LINE READ: a tall grey ox on too much leg, a bag of skin swinging under its throat, and horns that

end in shreds.

EMISSION: none. It reads by occluding the light behind it at the forest edge, by dust, and by the wet

darkening of a wallowed flank.

5. articulation_delta

• Nothing is added to the skeleton derived in § 2.
• The dewlap is a simulated passive skin volume attached along the throat-to-brisket line with its own

swing on the stride and its own settle at rest. Not a static flap — the swing is half the identity

at distance, and the table carries no object for it, so it is authored here.

• The frayed horn tip is geometry with a declared split plane at the sheath, authored per-bull on an

age parameter, not a decal.

• The world-side sign — gouged trunk band, long wallow print, dewlap drag line — is placed dressing

with a declared height and orientation rule, and it is the same asset family the animal's own

behaviour would produce. Sign and animal author together or the ladder breaks.

6. fight_grammar

combat_facing is FALSE, combat_permission is EMPTY, and DANGEROUS is a taming-trade grade rather

than a fight flag. This block states affirmatively what the row stages: THREAT DISPLAY, COMMITMENT and

PRESENCE, one answer per shape.

PART ECONOMY HOME: NONE, declared affirmatively — this body carries no breakable region. The currency

of the encounter is DISTANCE.

THE ESCALATION, ON THE FOUR CHANNELS. POSTURE: browsing head-low, to head-up broadside, to head-level

walk-down — three heights of one head, readable in black fill. BREATH: the flank pumping visibly, the

dewlap swinging out of time with the stride at the top of it. VOCALIZATION: silence, which for this

animal IS the channel — an ox that has stopped making the low contact grunts of feeding has decided

something. NEW OPENER: the ground horn, which never appears in the browsing state at all.

THE OPENER AND ITS VARIANTS: the root is the broadside stand, the most legible and least punishing

move in the set. The ground horn is the same origin with the head taken through its full arc; the

walk-down is the same stand with the display subtracted. Teaching order is show, throw, come.

RELOCATION AND TURF, AN INFERENCE AND LABELED AS ONE: canon publishes a foliage-DENSITY gradient

(dense flood-forest, thinning on the open baray and the paddy grid) as a build note for scatter

[angkor_khmer.md:169-171]. Reading that gradient as this animal's turf — it owns the dry open forest

and the ends of the day and concedes the paddy grid and the open baray — is this sheet's inference

from the density figures, not a canon statement about the kouprey. The turf is a schedule rather than

a wall: a player who reads it can walk the same ground at noon and meet nothing.

7. care_read

• COLLECTIVE READ: ORDINARY_FAUNA carries no collective claim and the doctrine forbids re-applying

collective protection to game animals. Hunting a wild ox touches nothing of the § 17.1 protection,

which is about communities and is fully live elsewhere in this chapter [CH_05.md:246]. Nothing here

puts a person in a target position.

• ONTOLOGY ROUTING: ORDINARY_FAUNA. Care routes staging, never scope (RULING_10). The light-care

national-animal note governs the AUTHORIAL register only and never surfaces in-world at 1200.

• ROUTE: ordinary asset path with a concept plate as conditioning, because the sign set and the animal

are one identity system and a generator asked for the animal alone produces the wrong chapter.

• EXTINCTION WEIGHT IS REAL, IT IS THE HEAVIEST ON ANY ROW IN THIS CHAPTER, AND THE WINDOW IS KEPT.

The row reads T4, critically endangered, possibly extinct today. TRUE HISTORY is never scrubbed. The

forward reading is a design-layer site-cued time-fluctuation window showing the same dry forest with

the gouged trunks healed over and grey, no fresh scar at that height anywhere, and every other read

the player learned still working — so the player who climbed the sign ladder reads the loss with no

codex line. THE LICENCE IS NOT CLEAN AND THE SHEET SAYS SO: § 18's forward-strata enumeration lists

the megadrought decline, the elite drift, 1431 Ayutthaya and the Cham strata, and admits no

modern-FAUNA stratum [angkor_khmer.md:1114-1122]. The window is kept and the enumeration gap is

boarded as a region-page debt in § 9 rather than claimed as licence.

• ANTI-TIMID PASS, RECORDED. The reduction considered was staging the animal fully — a herd in the

open, seen whole, so the asset is not wasted. REFUSED, and the refusal is this sheet's central

claim: a fully-staged kouprey is a photograph of a grey cow, and the scarcity is not timidity but

the only design that makes the row worth building. A second reduction was considered and refused,

softening the ground-horn commitment so the animal never actually comes. It comes.

• INVENTION DECLARATION: the four-rung sign ladder, the gouged-trunk signature at fixed height, the

dewlap drag line, the four tells, the silence-as-channel escalation and the time-window absence read

are INVENTED BY THIS SHEET as the game's own. The skeleton, joint roster, ROM, gait and rig

conformance are DERIVED from QUADRUPED.json and cited there. The frayed horn tips, the long dewlap,

the proportions and the horning habit are inline AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY on the table's declared silences.

The dry-dipterocarp habitat, the huntable-at-1200 permission, the national-animal note and the T4

status are CITED to the row; the country and the foliage gradient are CITED to the page.

• REVEAL READ: clean.

8. plate_brief

• PLATE A, the sign: a stand of dry dipterocarp in flat light, three trunks gouged and bark-shred at

one matched height with the shreds combed one direction, tracks in the dust below.

• PLATE B, the animal at distance: a lone grey bull at the open forest edge in last light, side-on,

head turned toward the viewer, daylight under the belly, dewlap hanging.

• PLATE C, the horn: a close study of one bull's horn tip, the keratin split and splayed into its

shredded bell, grooved sheath below.

• PLATE D, the old bull: full-body, dewlap at its longest and dust-loaded, fray at maximum, shoulder

ridge showing.

• PLATE E, silhouette: black fill at combat-camera distance, the broadside stand beside the head-level

walk-down, judged in black fill alone.

• PLATE F, the window: the same stand as PLATE A in the same light with the gouges old, grey and grown

over — the pair that carries the read.

9. boarded_debts

• REGION-PAGE DEBT, F2: angkor_khmer.md § 18's forward-strata enumeration [:1114-1122] admits a

megadrought stratum, an elite-drift stratum, 1431, and the Cham strata, but no modern-FAUNA stratum.

The extinction time-window this sheet designs therefore has no enumerated home on the page, and this

is the row where it bites hardest because the species may be extinct in life. The enumeration wants

extending by the region lane; this sheet keeps the window and boards the gap.

• source_ref cites angkor_khmer § 3, which names no kouprey, and CH_05.md:265's creatures_and_fauna

anchor names no wild bovid either. Both legs of the cohort-wide CR_0133-CR_0150 dangle already

boarded on CR_0140's notes cell as wanting a director ruling rather than a per-row patch.

• combat_permission is EMPTY while CR_0133 reads PERMITTED and CR_0140 reads PERMITTED — two

populated cells and a blank across three angkor_khmer rows.

• collect_verb is EMPTY while rng_drop_anchor is set to DROP_BIGGAME_HIDE_MEAT — a drop anchor

with no verb that produces it, and notes already flags the drop table as an empty forward

reference.

• dex_completion_class is EMPTY.
• height_m and length_axis are EMPTY while tier_classification is MEGAFAUNA — no size on the row

whose class is size, and the tall-legged proportion is this animal's entire identity.

• spawn_rate is EMPTY and flagged in notes; on a row whose whole design is scarcity, the scarcity

has no number and no home.

• primary_region_ids is EMPTY while region_native carries angkor_khmer.
• cultural_care_register carries light-care here while CR_0143 and CR_0144 leave the same column

empty on three animals of one guild in one region.

• extinction_threat carries a present-tense real-world reading with no column anywhere a

time-fluctuation window can consume, so the strongest design read this row supports lives only in

prose.

• mesh_tags.material IS CONTAMINATED, not merely thin. The cell carries all six of the CH_05 chapter

palette's terms — "volcanic andesite, keris and pustaha bark, caldera water, ashfall, Angkor

sandstone-and-laterite, and Cham reddish brick" [CH_05.md:267] — copied whole onto an angkor_khmer

animal. Four of the six (volcanic andesite, keris and pustaha bark, caldera water, ashfall) are the

Batak and Javanese anchor's materials and are WRONG NOUNS for a dry-forest ox; a generator reading

this cell is being fed the other half of the chapter.

• kit_ref is EMPTY, which the L11 ruling already boards for the class.

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