creatures/CR_0145_asian_elephant_angkor.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.
It cites canon rows and writes none.
cultural_depiction_tier standard; the chapter's ELEVATED scopeis the Cham and war surfaces. The west_baray river-war IS an ELEVATED surface, so the war cohort's
staging inherits it while the animal itself sits at standard.]
nothing (RULING_8, which names this row in its own grounds) and ORDINARY_FAUNA routes care, never
scope (RULING_10)
familiar slot and no bond window exist and canon rules it directly: no new familiar bonds on the
excursion, Khan (G1) bonded at the anchor and travels forward [angkor_khmer.md:184-185; CH_05.md:284]
state-read. Both are the REAL_FAUNA register's declared natural spend (doctrine § 3D).
T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0145 (62 cells) · `build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/ QUADRUPED.json and index.json · angkor_khmer.md` § 2 L154-156, § 3 L173-185, § 4 L201-212,
§ 6 L537-549, § 7 L577-580, § 9 L634-636, § 18 L1109-1122 · CH_05.md L12, L103, L157, L246,
L265-267, L284 · docs/proposals/bestiary/sheets/CR_0140_long_tailed_macaque.md
THE ROW IS THE ANGKOR WAR-AND-TEMPLE COHORT AND SAYS SO ON ITS FACE — notes reads "distinct
angkor_khmer war/temple cohort of E. maximus." The roster carries five other elephant rows, including
CR_0036 Sri Lankan (CH_06, OBSERVE) and CR_0040 Indian (CH_07, TAME, PERMITTED). Row is the unit:
nothing from CR_0036's framing, its OBSERVE cell or its own boarded permission debt is imported here.
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 — TWO
STATES OF ONE COLUMN across the angkor_khmer rows, PERMITTED and blank, and this row holds the blank.
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].
build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/QUADRUPED.json. The bucket's own defining sentence covers this
animal — a mammal that carries its limbs UNDER the body and swings them in the sagittal plane, at
posture grade erect / parasagittal [§ one_line, § posture_grade] — so the following are DERIVED
and not declared here: the clavicle is absent and the forelimb hangs in a MUSCULAR SLING, so the
SCAPULOTHORACIC is a synsarcosis with no bony joint, the scapula sliding 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]; the chain shape root →
pelvis → spine_lumbar → spine_thoracic → spine_cervical → head → jaw with scapula → humerus →
radioulna → carpus → metacarpus → digits and femur → tibia → tarsus → metatarsus → toes, every _L
bone carrying an identical _R sibling [§ skeleton, § mirror_rule]; and rig conformance at a
minimum 34 deform bones, a spine chain of 5 to 24, two forelimb and two hindlimb chains of at least
4 bones each, bilateral symmetry required [§ rig_conformance].
wrong for a graviportal proboscidean: carnivoran_digitigrade is digitigrade with 5 fore and 4 hind
digits, and ungulate_unguligrade reduces the metacarpus to a single cannon bone with a pastern
chain and 1 to 2 weight-bearing digits. Verified by search across all eight archetype files: the
table names no elephant, no proboscidean, no graviportal posture grade, and nothing whatever on a
trunk. The values below are therefore inline and labeled AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY, which the amended § 2.1
permits exactly where no bucket covers the archetype. A table debt is boarded in § 9.
with the bones over a fibrous digital cushion, five digits spread on that cushion, no cannon bone
and no pastern chain; a cervical chain held short and thick, so the head turns with the body and not
on the neck; 19 to 20 thoracic and 3 to 4 lumbar vertebrae under a topline that peaks at the head
and dips behind the shoulder; a TRUNK of no bones and some forty thousand muscle fascicles with one
dorsal finger at the tip — a muscular hydrostat with bend, twist and elongation at any point along
its length and a tip grip finer than a hand's; an ear that pivots through roughly 90 degrees at the
base and is the animal's readable flag; upper incisors grown out as tusks that advance from the
socket through life; six molar sets that erupt and are pushed forward one at a time.
its: 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]. The limbs swing in
a narrow sagittal arc with almost no lateral reach, so a turn is a walked turn of the whole body.
speed — which is why a charging elephant is quiet underfoot and arrives faster than it looks
line, two ear planes, a trunk to the ground
folklore_behavior_substrate and folklore_attribution_source are both empty. What the row carries is a HISTORY of human use, not a
tradition about a being, and every clause of it is cited below.
SRC_00322 is the only SRC_ id anywhere in angkor_khmer.md, and the live worked control for a fauna-row claim about a human
practice with no SRC_ reaching it is carried on CR_0148, whose cultural_significance asserts a
cooperative-fishing tradition the page never cites [CR_0148_smooth_coated_otter.md:64-70, :202-205].
The ruler matches, and unlike CR_0148 this row's human-use claims DO resolve on the page, below.
crossbow worked by two men atop an elephant — appears in both the Bayon and Banteay Chhmar reliefs,
its battlefield use CONTESTED against parade and prestige display and staged as spectacle rather
than as a decisive mechanic [angkor_khmer.md:181-184]. Elephants are in the 1177 war's arms list
both ways [angkor_khmer.md:545].
[T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0145 :: cultural_significance].
purpose-dug canals, laterite carried the structural core [angkor_khmer.md:577-580; :634-636]; the
plain's rice is the surplus that fed the corvée workforce and the temple domains
[angkor_khmer.md:154-156]; one domain's inscribed scale is Ta Prohm's foundation stele recording the
temple domain supporting roughly 12,640 resident servants and drawing goods and service from roughly
79,365 people ACROSS THE REALM, OWNING SOME 3,140 VILLAGES [angkor_khmer.md:203-205] — and the page
attaches the caveat this sheet carries with it, that these are a state's SELF-ACCOUNT of its own
scale, read as such and never as a modern census [angkor_khmer.md:207-208]; and at the 1200 frame
Angkor Thom and the Bayon are under active construction [angkor_khmer.md:1109-1112]. Stone is moving
while the player is there.
working culture rather than to the animal — the same shape the familiar register uses when a bond's
practice belongs to the person who teaches it.
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].
stated plainly: the OUTLIVED BULL below is a state the SPECIES-TYPICAL photograph does not carry,
and the register's discharge is the contract and the ladder rather than any claim about what some
individual photograph might contain.
THE LEGIBILITY CONTRACT. The elephant sits OUTSIDE the chapter's three-bovid contract and states its
distinctness rather than joining it: grey where they are black, red or dust-grey; attended and on a
road where they are unattended in timber; and three to five times the mass of the largest of them. No
shape in this chapter resolves to an elephant at any range. Its contract is therefore INTERNAL, run
between its own two cohorts, and the TUSK PAIR carries it — which is the A9 spend below.
THE STATE LADDER — three states of one body, and it is the register's discharge.
so the animal moving stone is the colour of the monument it is building; a hairless polished band
across the shoulders and behind the ears where harness and a keeper's feet ride; tusk tips squared
flat and ringed with a metal band; a healed rope-mark gone pale at one pastern. MECHANISM: elephant
skin is thick, seamed and dust-holding, and a working surface polishes.
dry-forest dust rather than quarry grit, no polished bands, and the flight distance of an animal
never within reach of a person.
longer mill its food (AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY); a temple domain with a rice surplus and a keeper feeds
past that line. Deep temporal hollows, a collapsed cheek, ribs legible on a well-fed frame, tusks
longer than any free bull carries because nothing stopped them advancing, and cut softened fodder at
the edge of frame. The reading underneath it — that the empire keeps what it uses, for as long as it
uses it — is DESIGN-LAYER ONLY: it is never spoken by an NPC, never a codex line, and never a
player-facing frame. It is why the state is built, not something the state says.
PRIMARY — A5 AGE AND STATE, spent as WORKED STATE. The ladder above is the axis.
SUPPORTING — A9 THE MARK, and it is the tusk pair, because one mark carries the internal contract at
distance. Squared, flat-tipped and banded means WORKED and means a person is within thirty metres.
Whole, unequal and pointed means FREE and means the distance is the player's to keep. One feature, it
reads in black fill at any range, and it inverts cleanly between the two cohorts.
ONE-LINE READ: an elephant whose two tusks do not match, wearing the colour of the stone it moves.
APPEAL, A SHIP REQUIREMENT UNDER § 3.1's BEAUTY-BAR CLAUSE, and it is not cute-ification: the
proportions already carry it — a small eye in a very large head, the ear plane that frames it, and a
trunk whose tip finger is the most expressive object on any animal in the chapter. Appeal here means
the working relationship is legible as a relationship.
EMISSION: none. It reads by dust, by wetting-darkening after a wallow, by the sheen on a polished
harness band, and by occluding what is behind it.
accumulation — not painted texture, not mesh change — and they persist and read at distance.
it, so worked and free are one asset with a swapped tip and ring rather than two models.
line, rides above the dipped back and takes its load through the girth strap rather than the spine.
It is declared EQUIPMENT, not body.
combat_facing is FALSE and combat_permission is EMPTY. This animal is not staged as a fight, and
this block states affirmatively what it does stage: ALLY LEGIBILITY in the § 3.1 sense beside THREAT
LEGIBILITY, on one body, one answer per shape. THE KEEPER-ANSWER TELL IS THE ALLY-LEGIBILITY WORK on
this row: the player must read what an attended animal is about to do, from a follow camera, without
taking attention off the keeper it belongs to.
PART ECONOMY HOME: NONE on the animal, declared affirmatively — no region of this body is a breakable
part. The war cohort's carried platform and double-bow frame are EQUIPMENT and belong to the
west_baray staging, where canon already rules them spectacle [angkor_khmer.md:181-184; CH_05.md:103].
| tell shape | body origin | the one answer |
|---|---|---|
| the answer to the keeper | ear planes fold flat back, trunk drops slack, the body stays still, head at ordinary carriage | it is in the work and a person is behind it — the route past is the keeper's to grant, so the ask is made to the keeper |
| the load set | forefeet step wide, head and shoulder drop into the strap | mass is going somewhere next beat — stand off the line the load will travel, not off the animal |
| the mock charge | ears spread to their full plane, head high, trunk out, loud | it is making itself large and it will stop — hold ground, because moving turns this into the next row |
| the real charge | ears clamped flat to the neck, trunk curled tight under the chin, head LOWERED, quiet underfoot | it is coming through — go lateral and put timber between, because a gait with no suspended phase cannot be outrun |
THE BLACK-FILL DISCRIMINANT BETWEEN THE TWO EAR-FLAT SHAPES, NAMED, because the keeper answer and the
real charge both fold the ears back and would otherwise collide in silhouette. Two axes separate them
and both survive black fill. HEAD HEIGHT: the keeper answer holds ordinary carriage with the head on
its resting line; the real charge drops the head below it. TRUNK SILHOUETTE: the keeper answer hangs
the trunk SLACK AND STILL as a long straight line to the ground; the real charge CURLS IT UNDER THE
CHIN, which removes that line from the silhouette entirely. Head on the line with a hanging trunk is
work; head below the line with no trunk line is a charge.
THE ESCALATION, ON THE FOUR CHANNELS, nameable before any meter — a free bull in musth, every channel
real anatomy. POSTURE: head carried unnaturally high, chin tucked. BREATH and body: a wet dark streak
down each cheek from the swollen temporal gland, and a continuous dribble darkening the hind legs.
VOCALIZATION: a low pulsed rumble felt before it is heard. NEW OPENER: the animal that had been
feeding walks a straight line at whatever it noticed. Two of the four survive black fill.
OPENER AND VARIANTS: the root is the mock charge — legible, loud, survivable. The real charge is the
same origin with ears and trunk closed and no sound in it; the musth walk-down is the same line with
no wind-up at all. Teaching order is ears out, ears flat, no ears at all.
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 — worked animals on the
quarry-and-canal line and the temple approach and always attended, free bulls on the dense
flood-forest margin and thinning out on the open grid — is this sheet's inference from the density
figures, not a canon statement about the elephant.
collective protection to game animals. The protection live in this chapter is about PEOPLE — combat
routes through the corrupt official and the apparatus and never through the Khmer or Cham
communities, the temple servants and dancers, or either people of the river-war [CH_05.md:246;
angkor_khmer.md:359-366]. Nothing here puts a person in a target position; the keepers are hosts.
heritage register is honoured by rendering the working culture as competent craft with a real
relationship in it, at the realistic-ethnographic style register canon sets [CH_05.md:267].
identity system. The protected sacred sites this animal works among stay referenced type-accurate
set-dressing and are never staged as loot-arenas [angkor_khmer.md:1102-1105].
animal is abundant and is a state asset, which is the truth of the frame; the forward reading is a
design-layer site-cued time-fluctuation window showing the same quarry road with the ruts weathered
round and nothing on it. 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.
of the set-piece on modern welfare grounds: refused, because canon stages it and rules only its
battlefield decisiveness contested, and a twentieth-century welfare frame in 1200 is an anachronism
wearing care as a costume. Cutting the outlived bull as too grim for an ordinary-fauna row: refused,
because the state is real physiology and it is the ladder's strongest rung.
squared-and-banded versus whole-and-unequal tusk read, the outlived-bull state, the four tells, the
head-height-and-trunk black-fill discriminant and the musth escalation channels are INVENTED BY THIS
SHEET as the game's own. The scapulothoracic synsarcosis, the chain shape, the mirror rule and the
rig conformance floor are DERIVED from QUADRUPED.json and cited there. The columnar limbs, the
cushion, the trunk, the ear pivot, the tusk advance and the molar succession are inline
AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY, permitted because no bucket covers this archetype and declared as such in § 2.
The war and ballista elephant with its contested use, the temple-labour and royal-mount roles, the
quarry-and-canal transport, the corvée-feeding surplus, the domain self-account and the active
construction are CITED above.
token, and the design-layer reading in § 4 is marked never-surfaced on its face.
sandstone dust dried into every skin fold, a polished band across the shoulders, tusk tips squared
and ringed, a keeper walking at the shoulder.
forest dust, foliage closing behind it, full distance kept.
whole and unequal — the plate that proves the mark carries the state.
collapsed cheek line, very long advanced tusks, cut softened fodder heaped at its feet.
on its resting line and the trunk hanging as a straight line, the ears-spread mock charge, and the
ears-flat real charge with the head dropped and the trunk curled under the chin — judged in black
fill alone.
build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/QUADRUPED.json publishes two sub-plans, carnivoran_digitigrade and ungulate_unguligrade, and neither covers a graviportal proboscidean.
The bucket has no columnar-limb, digital-cushion, five-spread-digit plan and no object at all for a
boneless muscular hydrostat, so every elephant row in the roster (CR_0036, CR_0040, CR_0062,
CR_0074, CR_0114, CR_0145) currently derives nothing below the archetype line. The bucket wants a
graviportal_proboscidean sub-plan, and the rig_conformance floor of 34 deform bones is far below
what a trunk alone requires.
angkor_khmer.md § 18's forward-strata enumeration [:1114-1122] admits amegadrought stratum, an elite-drift stratum, 1431, and the Cham strata, but no modern-FAUNA stratum,
so the extinction time-window this sheet designs has no enumerated home on the page.
combat_permission is EMPTY while CR_0133 reads PERMITTED and CR_0140 reads PERMITTED — two statesof one column across the angkor_khmer rows, and this row holds the blank.
collect_verb and dex_completion_class are EMPTY; the row is TAME with a keeper relationship andno verb names it.
husbandry_breedable, husbandry_venue, offspring_tier_lock and trait_halo_pool are EMPTY on aTAME megafauna row whose subject is a managed working population.
rng_drop_anchor is deliberately withheld with the reason living only in notes prose — a recordeddecision with no machine-readable home.
height_m and length_axis are EMPTY while tier_classification is MEGAFAUNA — no size on the rowwhose class is size.
intelligence_tier is EMPTY on the chapter's one keystone row with a taught working relationship.spawn_rate is EMPTY and flagged in notes; primary_region_ids is EMPTY while region_nativecarries angkor_khmer, so two region columns disagree by omission.
mesh_tags.material IS CONTAMINATED, not merely thin. The cell carries all six of the CH_05 chapterpalette'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 are the Batak and Javanese anchor's materials and are WRONG NOUNS for an
Angkor working elephant; 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.