creatures/CR_0148_smooth_coated_otter.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.
reservoir and canal system
(CH_05.md:12)
combat-facing FALSE on the ruled demand table (DEMAND_RULED_IN via RULING_8 PREDATOR-is-IN, taming
axis OUT_OF_SCOPE via RULING_5)
T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0148 · docs/spine/CH_05.md L12, L78, L102-103 · angkor_khmer.md § 2 L155-157, § 3 L173-184, § 1 L139-141, § 4 L359-362 ·
CREATURE_DEMAND_RULED_STATE_L11.json CH_05 · DIRECTOR_RULING_L11.json RULING_5, RULING_8 ·
build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/index.json and QUADRUPED.json (checked, no covering sub-plan)
THE ONE SOCIAL ROW IN THE SET, AND ITS REGISTER IS A TRANSPOSITION — ADOPTED PROVISIONAL. The
doctrine's crew sub-case (§ 3A.2) rules that where a row's subject is a GROUP, no individual carries
the identity and the elevation lands on formation. That clause was written for human crews, and this
sheet imports its PRINCIPLE onto an animal troupe. What is imported and what is declined is stated on
the face so a critic can check it rather than infer it:
the silhouette is the formation, and every plate in § 8 is composed for the group.
rather than to one body: how many heads are up, the porpoising rhythm going ragged, the sentinel's
chirp becoming a chorus, and the raft breaking for the bank.
nothing. This row's economy is nearest ARCHITECTURE in the doctrine's own enumeration — the slide,
the spraint stone, the rolling patch, the worn log are places rather than possessions — but the
part economy proper is declared NONE in § 6, because nothing here is removed one at a time and
nothing subtracts from a moveset.
subject and has no purchase on a game animal. The clause's own question is nevertheless useful here
and § 9 puts it to work.
NO ANATOMY BUCKET COVERS THIS ROW, AND THE ABSENCE IS DECLARED RATHER THAN PAPERED OVER. The
per-archetype reference table is on disk at build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/ and it was checked
before this block was written: its eight buckets are QUADRUPED, SPRAWLING_QUADRUPED, LIMBLESS,
WINGED, AQUATIC, ARBOREAL_PRIMATE, MULTI_LEGGED and HUMANOID, and the only plausible home — QUADRUPED
— carries exactly two sub-plans, carnivoran_digitigrade (exemplars CR_0057 and generic canid/felid)
and ungulate_unguligrade (CR_0065 and generic bovid/equid). NO MUSTELID SUB-PLAN EXISTS, no
amphibious-carnivoran sub-plan exists, this row appears in no bucket's exemplar list, and the AQUATIC
bucket's four plans are cetacean/sirenian, chelonian, crocodilian and fish — none of them a
limb-propelled amphibious mammal that also bounds on land. Forcing this animal into
carnivoran_digitigrade would import a canid's sagittal-plane limb swing onto a body whose swimming
engine is dorsoventral trunk undulation, which is the same class of error the table exists to
prevent. The doctrine § 2.1 inline licence therefore STILL GOVERNS THIS ROW, the block below is
labelled INLINE_DECLARED throughout, and the arrival of a mustelid sub-plan supersedes it in place.
over subadults. The troupe is the unit and every plate below is composed for it.
lumbar vertebrae with a cervical chain of 7; four short limbs with five webbed digits each and claws present but small; and
the species' own diagnostic — a tail that is DORSOVENTRALLY FLATTENED rather than round, unique
among the otters, so it drives as a horizontal blade
sagittal plane and that dorsoventral undulation is the swimming engine; the neck rotates past 130 degrees so the animal can
look behind itself without turning; the forepaw holds and manipulates food against the chest at the
surface; the hindlimb rows through roughly 120 degrees
and sculling with only the head clear when it is watching
a head and a pale throat and nothing else
fishing-with-otters tradition [T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0148 :: cultural_significance]. That
sentence is the whole of the canon claim, it is a claim about a HUMAN PRACTICE, and this sheet does
not extend it by a single detail.
source_ref cites angkor_khmer § 3, andthat section names the dense fishery and the crocodile but no otter and no cooperative-fishing
practice. The cohort-wide dangle CR_0140's notes cell flags for CR_0133-CR_0150 covers this row,
and it matters more here than anywhere else in the set because this is the only row in the five
whose cell asserts a living human tradition. NO SRC_ CITATION EXISTS FOR IT ON THE PAGE. The claim
is carried as the registry row's own, it is not elaborated, and closing the citation is a boarded
obligation in § 9 — not a gap to fill by inference.
exactly: a bond or a practice that a person teaches belongs to that person's entry and is never
presented as a property of the animal. The Tonle Sap fisherfolk are protected non-targets and honored
hosts in this chapter — the region page names them exactly, "the farmers and fisherfolk," among the
protected non-targets [angkor_khmer.md:361]; the chapter's own protected-non-target roster at
CH_05.md:246 names farmers and market-people and does NOT name fisherfolk, so that leg is dropped
here rather than stretched. The practice is theirs, and the
player does not acquire it by acquiring an otter. The row agrees on its own terms: the taming axis
is OBSERVE.
floods seasonally, the flood-pulse fishery is one of the most productive inland fisheries on earth,
and the Bayon reliefs themselves carve markets of women selling fish beside the war
[angkor_khmer.md:155-157]. The chapter routes that fishery into the gathering loop [CH_05.md:78].
A troupe of fish-eating predators in that water is not decoration; it is competition.
register: REAL_FAUNA (TRUE_TO_LIFE) — doctrine § 3D, ratified 2026-08-12.
WHY ELEVATION IS REFUSED, IN ONE LINE: the row's folklore columns are empty, its only cultural claim
is about a HUMAN practice rather than about the animal, and the chapter's care architecture depends
on the mundane world reading as real so the naga stands alone as the region's one
mythologically-stylized water being [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 the water monitor (CR_0146) and means ignore; a LINE OF PALE
BIBS at one speed is this troupe and means the fish have moved. This row's entry carries a COUNT as
well as a shape, which is the one read in the system that cannot be produced by a single body.
THE STATE LADDER, which is the other half, and on this row it runs at group and landscape scale
because the register's unit is the troupe: unoccupied bank, freshly worked bank, and long-resident
holt — the slide bare and polished, the spraint stone crusted pale, the rolling patch dried and dead
in an oval, the log's bark worn off along the top. Read together they say how long the troupe has
been here. The body's own ladder is the wet-and-dry coat cycle, pale dusty brown to near-black and
back, repeated every few minutes by five animals. No photograph of a species-typical Lutrogale
perspicillata contains either ladder.
ONE-LINE SILHOUETTE READ: five pale throat-bibs in a line on flat reservoir water, all moving at one
speed, closing on the same point.
ELEVATION BUDGET: ONE PRIMARY AND ONE SUPPORTING AXIS, A5 AND A9, WHICH ARE THIS REGISTER'S OWN
NATURAL SPEND, AND BOTH SPENT AT GROUP SCALE.
PRIMARY — A5 AGE AND STATE, INVERTED: the state is written on the LANDSCAPE rather than on the animal.
MECHANISM: otters maintain sites, and a resident troupe rebuilds the same ones every season.
bodies and greasy where the water meets it.
crusted pale with fish-bone residue and stained dark around the crust.
they dry themselves there after every fishing round.
That set is a design gift with no analogue elsewhere in the region: the player can read that the
troupe is here, and roughly how long it has been here, before a single otter is on screen. It costs
one prop set and it makes the water feel inhabited by something with a routine.
SUPPORTING — A9 THE MARK, and it is a GROUP mark. The pale throat-and-chest bib is the one
high-contrast feature on an otherwise uniform dark brown animal, and when the head is up in water it
is the only thing visible. Five bibs in a line moving at one speed is the third and final 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 the water monitor (CR_0146) and
means ignore; a LINE OF PALE BIBS at one speed is this troupe and means the fish have moved. One
mark, no second, and the count carries the identity.
EMISSION: none. The coat is short and smooth and it reads by wetting-darkening more strongly than any
other body in this set: dry, the animal is a pale dusty brown; wet, it is near-black and slick and it
sheds visible water when it hauls out. That transition, repeated every few minutes by five animals,
is the material read.
behaviour on haul-out, not two meshes.
placements relative to the dike crown and the water line, and they persist whether or not the
troupe is on screen. They are the row's real deliverable and they are named as arena work so no lane
mistakes them for creature-mesh scope.
for the drive, a tight raft for rest, and a single sentinel head-up while the rest are down.
NO STAGED ENCOUNTER EXISTS ON THIS ROW, AND THAT IS AN AFFIRMATIVE STATEMENT. combat_permission is
EMPTY, no boss row cites this id, and the ruled demand table carries it combat_facing FALSE. The
part-economy home is NONE. What the row stages, at group scale:
frame, which is the only row in this set that announces itself through the landscape.
pushed ahead of them, then the collapse of the line into the take. It has a wind, a commit and a
resolution, exactly like an attack does, and the player answers it by watching or by leaving. This
is the doctrine's agency test satisfied without a fight: the troupe is doing something that is not
about the player, and it is the best thing in the water that day.
gathering loop [CH_05.md:78]. A resident troupe works the same shallows, so the player's gathering
and the otters' drive want the same water at the same hour. Nothing is blocked and no permission is
required; the player simply learns when the shallows are theirs.
a sentinel. The troupe's chirp-and-clear reaction is the region's earliest and most audible warning
that the crocodile has come up. THE RESIDENTS-LEAVE SHAPE IS THE LANE'S, established on CR_0005 at
the Ch-2 fed spring and not the doctrine's, since merged into the § 3D ratification; this is its
fourth instance and the first one with a VOICE. The lesson is unchanged — something larger is
coming — and THE DISCRIMINATOR is 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 troupe's alarm and the
monitor going in (CR_0146) 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. A player who learns this hears
CR_0133 before they see it.
heads are up; BREATH is the porpoising rhythm going ragged; VOICE is the sentinel's chirp becoming a
chorus; and the NEW OPENER is the raft breaking for the bank, which is the troupe deciding to stop
working. Nothing here is a fight and every channel is still legible, which is the point of writing
them down.
sheet does not re-apply collective protection to a game animal.
otters is a living human craft, it belongs to the fisherfolk who hold it, and § 3 keeps it there.
The failure mode this guards against is specific and it is not squeamishness: a player who could
tame an otter and acquire the practice would be acquiring a living community's craft as a game
reward, which is the ownership problem the familiar register already rules on. The row's OBSERVE
cell prevents it, and the sheet records why the cell is correct rather than treating it as a limit.
identity-bearing.
(extinction_threat T4), carried as ONE resident troupe on this water rather than as a population
that respawns, and never as a lecture.
cooperative-fishing material entirely, on the grounds that the page carries no source for it and a
living practice with a thin citation is safer deleted. REFUSED — removal is not the tool. The
reframe is: the practice stays, held under the fisherfolk who own it, described no further than the
registry cell describes it, and the citation obligation is boarded for the lane that can discharge
it. The other direction was checked too: building a tameable fishing-otter companion because it
would be charming would take a community's craft as a player reward, and the row already says
OBSERVE.
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 demonstrably
works, which is what makes the § 3 finding a real absence rather than a failed search: no SRC_ id
on the page reaches this row or its cooperative-fishing claim.
the sentinel-alarm service to CR_0133, and the group-scale escalation channels are INVENTED BY THIS
SHEET as the game's own design. The anatomy, the flattened tail, the cooperative drive, the site
marking and the vocal alarm are INLINE_DECLARED under the doctrine 2.1 licence, because no anatomy
sub-plan covers this row. The Tonle Sap fishing-otter role, the
cooperative-fishing tradition as a bare claim, the fishery, the flood-pulse hydrology and the
gathering-loop routing are CITED.
the crusted spraint stone and the flattened rolling patch in one frame.
seen from the bank at player eye height.
water, the pale bib carrying the contrast.
brown, the flattened blade tails laid out behind them.
cultural_significance cell; angkor_khmer § 3 names no otter and no such practice, and no SRC_ id
on the page reaches it. A living human practice asserted in a registry cell with no citation is the
highest-priority debt on this sheet.
combat_permission is EMPTY on this row while it carries tier PREDATOR. Same empty-cell trap asCR_0146 and CR_0147.
FROM. The doctrine's crew sub-case is written for human crews; this sheet imports formation-identity
and collective escalation, declines the TOOLS economy (this row's is nearest ARCHITECTURE) and
declines the headed/headless clause (§ 1), and the transposition is ADOPTED PROVISIONAL pending a
doctrine amendment or a rejection. THE PAIRING IS THE EVIDENCE: CR_0140 in this same wave is the
HEADED variant — a troop with one bandoliered escalating male a player will remember as an
individual — and this row is the HEADLESS one, five interchangeable bibs where the count is the
identity and no otter is anybody. Both were built from the same chapter and both are correct, and
the clause's own test is the one that separates them: what will the player remember the place FOR.
At a gallery the answer is the temple, so the troop is allowed a face; on the reservoir margin the
answer is the water and its work, so the troupe is not given one. The registry can express neither
— one creature_id describes five animals whose whole design is their formation, and no column
carries a group count.
rng_drop_anchor withheld with the reason in notes; the withheld-drop posture still has nocolumn.
height_m, length_axis, kit_ref and mesh_id_ref are EMPTY while generation_status ispending, and a troupe row needs a count as well as a scale — there is no column for the count.
source_ref cites angkor_khmer § 3, which names no otter. The cohort-wide provenance dangle flagged on CR_0140's notes is unresolved and is most acute here.
build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/ carries no mustelid and noamphibious-carnivoran sub-plan, so this is the one sheet in the set still standing on the doctrine
§ 2.1 inline licence (§ 2). A mustelid sub-plan is the fix; forcing the row into
carnivoran_digitigrade is not, because the swimming engine is dorsoventral trunk undulation and a
canid plan cannot express it.
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. The deferral is doubled here
by the missing sub-plan: § 10.2's declared-ROM table has no bucket to derive from either. Deferred
to the mesh landing and to the mustelid sub-plan, whichever lands second.