CR_0146_water_monitor.md

creatures/CR_0146_water_monitor.md

CR_0146 — the water monitor, the margin that finds what the flood leaves

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.

1. identity

• canon_id: CR_0146
• canon_name: Water monitor
• chapter: CH_05 · region angkor_khmer · sites west_baray (the dike crowns, the sluice line and the

Tonle Sap flood-forest margin), angkor_wat and bayon_taprohm (the moat edges and gallery drains)

• species_class: reptile · tier_classification PREDATOR · trade_8_tameable OBSERVE
• ontology_class: ORDINARY_FAUNA · combat_permission EMPTY on the row · temperament_prior wary
• trophic_role: mid-level predator · care_tier: standard (CH_05.md:12)
• anatomy bucket: SPRAWLING_QUADRUPED / varanid_lacertilian

[build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/SPRAWLING_QUADRUPED.json; ANATOMY_REFERENCE.md], which names

this row as an exemplar

• register: REAL_FAUNA (TRUE_TO_LIFE), doctrine § 3D — declared on the elevation block's face at § 4 ·

combat-facing FALSE on the ruled demand table (DEMAND_RULED_IN via RULING_8, taming axis

OUT_OF_SCOPE via RULING_5)

• primary_axis: A5 age and state
• rows_read: T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0146, CR_0005, CR_0001 · docs/spine/CH_05.md L12, L78, L99,

L102-103 · angkor_khmer.md § 3 L173-184, § 1 L139-141, § 17 L1103-1105 ·

CREATURE_DEMAND_RULED_STATE_L11.json CH_05 · DIRECTOR_RULING_L11.json RULING_5, RULING_8 ·

build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/SPRAWLING_QUADRUPED.json varanid_lacertilian

WHAT THIS ROW IS AND IS NOT. It is IN mesh demand because a predator present in a traversable region

is a body the player can be threatened by (RULING_8), and it is OUT of the taming axis because OBSERVE

is the registry's own word for watched-and-never-taken (RULING_5). It is therefore a full design

subject with NO staged encounter, and the fight-grammar block below says that affirmatively rather

than leaving itself thin.

2. base_species

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/SPRAWLING_QUADRUPED.json

sub-plan varanid_lacertilian. Where the bucket is silent, the line is labelled INLINE_DECLARED.

An earlier draft of this sheet carried two figures the bucket contradicts and both are corrected

here: the tail is a THIRD of the animal and not more than half, and the forelimb's fore-aft excursion

is -40 to +40 degrees and not 140.

• binomial: Varanus salvator
• archetype: SPRAWLING_QUADRUPED / varanid_lacertilian — the SAME bucket and sub-plan as CR_0005 and

CR_0001. Four limbs held OUT to the side, and the bucket's own one-line warning is the design note:

the propulsive movement is long-axis ROTATION of the femur and the trunk undulates laterally,

neither of which a mammal rig can express.

• rig conformance (bucket): minimum 30 deform bones; a spine chain of 5 to 32; two forelimb and two

hindlimb chains of at least 4 bones each; a tail chain of at least 8; and femur.long_axis_rotation

is a REQUIRED axis.

• segments (bucket): four limbs, five digits per foot, 22-29 presacral vertebrae, and 50-plus caudals

— the tail is a THIRD of the animal and is simultaneously a weapon, a counterweight and a swimming

organ. The pectoral girdle is a real bony girdle WITH an interclavicle and clavicles, so unlike a

mammal this forelimb is bolted on rather than slung. The laterally compressed tail's raised dorsal

keel and the long recurved claws are INLINE_DECLARED, as is the cervical chain of 9 and its lateral

sweep past 90 degrees, which the bucket does not carry.

• declared ROM (bucket, measurement basis unless noted): coxofemoral protraction/retraction -30 to

+30, adduction/depression -10 to +30, and LONG-AXIS ROTATION -30 to +30 [BRINKMAN1981, REILLY1998,

BLOB2001]; knee -90 to 0; mesotarsal ankle -60 to +30, and the reptilian ankle runs BETWEEN the two

tarsal rows rather than between tibia and tarsus [HILDEBRAND2001]; glenohumeral

protraction/retraction -40 to +40, elevation/depression -15 to +30, long-axis rotation -40 to +40

[BLOB2001]; trunk intervertebral lateral -10 to +10 per joint, sagittal -5 to +5, axial -5 to +5;

caudal intervertebral lateral -15 to +15, sagittal -10 to +10.

• THE MUST-GET-RIGHT AXIS, CARRIED FORWARD AS THE BUCKET FLAGS IT: long-axis femoral rotation IS the

engine. In a sprawling hind limb the femur rotates about its own length through roughly 50 to 60

degrees per step cycle, and that roll is what swings the foot back — retraction alone does not do

it, and a rig without the roll axis produces the characteristic wrong-looking lizard walk. Any

animation or previz pass on this row that omits it has failed the row, not the schedule.

• gait (bucket): lateral sequence in diagonal couplets — LH, LF, RH, RF with the diagonal pair close

in phase — duty factor 0.5 to 0.8, and a STANDING lateral trunk wave of one full wavelength with

its nodes at the girdles, adding 20 to 40 per cent of stride length. The postural range runs from

sprawl at low speed to HIGH WALK at speed, where the femur adducts toward the body and the belly

clears the ground. The gular pump is a visible throat pulse that lets varanids alone among lizards

run and breathe at once; the bucket declares its range unmeasured rather than guessing one, and so

does this sheet.

• mass and stance: heavy for a lizard and never slow — it swims with the limbs folded flat against

the flanks and the tail alone driving, it climbs dressed stone without hesitation, and on land it

runs in the high walk with the body clear of the ground.

• resting silhouette: a long low dark wedge on a dike crown with the head UP and the tail straight

behind it, forming one unbroken line

THE MONITOR LADDER, AND IT IS A TEACHING SEQUENCE. CR_0005 is the small intact animal at Ch 2 and

CR_0001 is the guardian it could become. This row is the third rung and the first one in water: the

same bucket, the same sub-plan, the same head-up alert wedge a player already knows, arriving at

three times CR_0005's length in a medium where the grammar changes. The shape is familiar and the

medium is not, and that is the lesson this row teaches. THE LADDER IS THE LANE'S PATTERN, NOT THE

DOCTRINE'S: it was established on CR_0005 as the un-elevated twin of CR_0001 and it has since been

merged into the § 3D REAL_FAUNA ratification of 2026-08-12, which is now its home.

3. lore_source

• NO LIVING-TRADITION CLAIM ATTACHES TO THIS ANIMAL and the row makes none: ontology_class is

ORDINARY_FAUNA and no folklore attribution is carried.

• WHAT CANON GIVES IT IS AN ECOLOGICAL ROLE AND A LANDSCAPE: the ubiquitous scavenger-predator of the

barays, temple moats, and Tonle Sap flood-forest [`T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0146 ::

cultural_significance`]. The landscape is the engineered one — reservoirs, moats, canals, dikes and

the gridded rice-fields [angkor_khmer.md:117-124] — and its clock is the Tonle Sap's annual

flow-reversal, live as the region's defining hydrology [angkor_khmer.md:139-141].

• PROVENANCE, DECLARED: the row's source_ref cites angkor_khmer § 3, which names the flood-forest

fishery and the crocodile but no monitor. The cohort-wide dangle recorded on CR_0140's notes cell

covers this row too, and this sheet grounds on the roster row itself rather than claiming a

region-page sentence it does not have.

4. elevation

register: REAL_FAUNA (TRUE_TO_LIFE) — doctrine § 3D, ratified 2026-08-12, and this row is one of the

six instances it was ratified from.

WHY ELEVATION IS REFUSED, IN ONE LINE: the row's folklore columns are empty, canon stages no

supernatural claim on it, and the chapter's care architecture depends on the mundane world reading as

real so that the naga stands alone as the region's one mythologically-stylized water-serpent

[CH_05.md:267, L330].

THE LEGIBILITY CONTRACT, which is half of how the replica test discharges in this register, stated

identically across the set: the region runs a THREE-READ WATER DISCRIMINATION SYSTEM against the

confusable neighbours on the same reservoir surface — ONE BAR is the Siamese crocodile (CR_0133) and

means commit; TWO POINTS at one speed is this animal and means ignore; a LINE OF PALE BIBS at one

speed is the smooth-coated otter troupe (CR_0148) and means the fish have moved. The system only

works because all three are built, and this row is the false alarm the player must learn to dismiss.

THE STATE LADDER, which is the other half: forest-typical, moat-resident, and old moat-resident, and

this animal is the third rung — the biofilm waterline band, the laterite dorsal dusting that dries

between swims, the worn and nicked tail keel, the claw broken back to the quick, and the juvenile

ocellus bands surviving only as a chalky ghost in the lateral folds. A photograph of a

species-typical Varanus salvator carries none of that ladder.

ONE-LINE SILHOUETTE READ: a two-and-a-half-metre dark lizard lying along a laterite dike crown with a

band of biofilm black at its waterline and the ghost of a juvenile ladder still showing in the folds.

ELEVATION BUDGET: ONE PRIMARY AND ONE SUPPORTING AXIS, A5 AND A9, WHICH ARE THIS REGISTER'S OWN

NATURAL SPEND. This is ordinary fauna with no folklore role and no staged fight, and the design work

is STATE and LEGIBILITY, not addition.

PRIMARY — A5 AGE AND STATE, the moat animal. MECHANISM: still water over dressed stone, a reservoir

that carries iron-rich laterite silt, and a year that floods and drains.

• A dark biofilm band sits in the scale interstices along both flanks exactly at the animal's own

floating waterline, because the animal spends its hours with that line at the surface and algae

grows where the light and the water meet. It reads as a drawn line along the body and it is the

clearest thing on the animal at any distance.

• An ochre laterite dusting sits on the dorsum and dries pale between swims, so the animal is

two-toned along a horizontal seam and the seam moves as the flood-pulse moves.

• The tail keel's trailing edge is nicked and worn from a lifetime of dressed stone, and one claw on

the left manus is broken back to the quick. This is an individual, not a species plate.

• The juvenile ocellus bands have faded, as they do in life, and survive only as a chalky residue in

the lateral skin folds — a ghost ladder visible when the animal turns and gone when it is straight.

SUPPORTING — A9 THE MARK, and it is a SWIMMING SILHOUETTE rather than a feature. With the limbs folded

the animal shows exactly two things above water: the head, and the tip of the keeled tail, separated

by a gap of nothing, both moving at one speed. That two-point read is this animal's identity at

distance and it is the second entry in the region's three-read water legibility system taught across

three sheets — ONE BAR is the Siamese crocodile (CR_0133) and means commit; TWO POINTS at one speed is

this animal and means ignore; a LINE OF PALE BIBS at one speed is the otter troupe (CR_0148) and means

the fish have moved.

EMISSION: none. It reads by wetting-darkening, by the biofilm band, and by occluding the reservoir's

flat sky-reflection.

5. articulation_delta

• Nothing is added to the skeleton and nothing is subtracted from the declared ROM. The blob test

passes because there is nothing bolted on to name.

• The biofilm band and the laterite dusting are material layers with a declared boundary — the band

follows the flotation line and therefore sits at a fixed height on the flank, not at a fixed

distance from the spine — so the two states read correctly whether the animal is in water or on

stone.

• The broken claw and the nicked keel are geometry edits to existing parts with no new joints.
• The ghost ladder is a residue layer inside the skin folds, so it is occluded at rest and revealed

when the trunk flexes laterally. That is an articulation-driven reveal and it is declared as one.

6. fight_grammar

NO STAGED ENCOUNTER EXISTS ON THIS ROW, AND THAT IS AN AFFIRMATIVE STATEMENT. combat_permission is

EMPTY, no T0_Boss_Encounter_Registry row cites this id, and the ruled demand table carries it

combat_facing FALSE. The part-economy home is NONE. What the row DOES stage is presence, threat

register and observation, and here is what each one is.

• PRESENCE. It is the region's most ubiquitous large predator and it is at every water margin the

player crosses: the dike crown, the moat coping, the sluice apron, the flood-forest edge. It is

never an event, and being never an event is what makes the region feel occupied.

• THREAT REGISTER, REAL AND UNSTAGED. temperament_prior is wary, which the CR_0005 sheet already

defined for this archetype: it does not flee at a distance, it flees at a BEHAVIOUR. A straight

approach line and a raised hand move it; a curved approach and a low hand do not. It holds a carcass

against a player who wants the ground, it will not give the ground quickly, and it is entirely

capable of hurting whoever forces the point. The player is never REQUIRED to force it.

• OBSERVATION. The taming axis is OBSERVE, which is watched-never-taken (RULING_5), and the animal

ships as itself on the ordinary asset path.

• DISCRIMINATION, which is the row's real gameplay contribution. On the same reservoir surface as

CR_0133, this animal is the false alarm the player must learn to dismiss. Two points at one speed,

every time, and it costs nothing. The system only works because both animals are built.

• WHAT IT DOES TO THE ARENA, AND THE RESIDENTS-LEAVE SHAPE RULED. It goes into the water when the

crocodile comes up, and it goes in a direction. THE SHAPE IS THE LANE'S, established on CR_0005 at

the Ch-2 fed spring and not the doctrine's, and it is now merged into the § 3D ratification; the

lesson is unchanged — something larger is coming, and the direction is free. THE DISCRIMINATOR,

stated identically on all four CH_05 sheets that carry the shape: A WATER READ ANSWERS TO WATER AND

A STONE READ ANSWERS TO STONE. This animal's departure and the otter troupe's alarm chorus

(CR_0148) both answer to CR_0133 coming up; the macaque troop leaving a gallery (CR_0140) answers

to the wards rousing and never to a crocodile.

• THE PROTECTED-SITE READ, WHICH THIS ROW SHARES WITH CR_0133. At angkor_wat and bayon_taprohm the

moats and gallery drains are inside honored space that the chapter holds as honored space and not a

loot-arena [CH_05.md:99] and the build rule holds as referenced set-dressing never staged as a

loot-arena [angkor_khmer.md:1103-1105]. This animal is PRESENT there and is nothing more than

present; every behaviour above that costs the player anything lives on the west_baray dikes, the

sluice apron and the flood-forest margin.

7. care_read

• COLLECTIVE READ: nothing engaged. ORDINARY_FAUNA carries no collective claim and this sheet does

not re-apply collective protection to a game animal.

• ONTOLOGY ROUTING: ORDINARY_FAUNA, no folklore attribution, no cultural depiction requirement. It is

a scavenger on a sacred precinct's moats, which is honest ecology and not desecration; the sacred

handling in this chapter attaches to the monuments and the people, and it is untouched by an

animal drinking at the edge of them [CH_05.md:246].

• ROUTE: ordinary asset path. This is one of the rows a photographic reference template serves

correctly, and the sheet says so rather than inventing a reason to elevate it.

• ANTI-TIMID PASS, RECORDED. The reduction considered was dropping the scavenging register — the

animal at a carcass, the animal on the war-water's margin after the set-piece — because a scavenger

in frame after a battle reads as grim. REFUSED. It is the row's own cited role, the region's own

ecology, and squeamishness about scavenging in a rated-R game with a two-peer river-war in it is

precisely the timid option the calibration names.

• CITATION-SEARCH POSITIVE CONTROL, STATED AFFIRMATIVELY: the search ran over

_source/02_Tier_2_Region_Pages/angkor_khmer.md and matched SRC_00322 at L44 and throughout § 5,

§ 13 and § 14 — the page's ONLY SRC_ id across 1383 lines. The matcher works, and no SRC_ id on the

page reaches this row, which is why every claim here is cited to file:line or to the registry cell.

• INVENTION DECLARATION: the biofilm waterline band, the laterite dusting, the nicked keel and broken

claw, the ghost ladder and the two-point water read are INVENTED BY THIS SHEET as the game's own

design. The anatomy, the folded-limb swim, the fading juvenile ocelli and the wary flight-at-a-

behaviour are DERIVED FROM THE ANATOMY BUCKET (SPRAWLING_QUADRUPED / varanid_lacertilian), with the

cervical figures INLINE_DECLARED where that bucket is silent. The scavenger-predator role, the baray-moat-flood-forest range and

the flow-reversal hydrology are CITED.

• REVEAL READ: clean.

8. plate_brief

• PLATE A, the margin: the animal full length on a laterite dike crown in hard daylight, head up, tail

straight behind, the biofilm band and the ochre dorsum both in frame at one angle.

• PLATE B, the swim: the two-point read from the player's eye height — head and keel tip above a flat

reservoir surface with the body visible as a dark shape beneath it.

• PLATE C, the turn: a three-quarter body flexed laterally on stone, the ghost ladder showing in the

opened flank folds, the broken left claw in frame.

• PLATE D, the discrimination plate: the same water at the same distance carrying a two-point read and

a one-bar read side by side, judged on whether they separate at combat distance.

9. boarded_debts

• combat_permission is EMPTY on this row while it carries tier PREDATOR and stands at every water

margin in the region. The same empty-cell trap CR_0005 boarded: a lane filtering on the column will

read the blank as a prohibition.

• rng_drop_anchor is withheld with the reason in notes — hide-yield deferred to a later pass. The

deferral is recorded in free text and no column carries it.

• height_m, length_axis, kit_ref and mesh_id_ref are EMPTY while generation_status is

pending, so the mesh lane has no declared scale for the region's largest lizard.

• source_ref cites angkor_khmer § 3, which names no monitor. The cohort-wide provenance dangle

flagged on CR_0140's notes is unresolved and covers this row.

• The three-read water legibility system in § 4 spans CR_0133, CR_0146 and CR_0148 and has no home

outside these three sheets. Cross-creature legibility contracts have no registry surface at all,

and § 3D now makes such a contract a TEST CONDITION for this register — a test whose evidence lives

only in prose.

• NO § 10 physical_profile BLOCK IS AUTHORED ON THIS SHEET, and the gap is named rather than left

silent. The CR_0002 template ruled the block in on 2026-08-06 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.

Generated by harness/site/structure_site.py — the URL path is the repo path. review root