creatures/CR_0153_shell_softshell_turtle.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·T0_Familiar_Registry·docs/spine/CH_02.md·docs/spine/CH_03.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 the FAMILIAR REGISTER of
docs/proposals/bestiary/BESTIARY_ELEVATION_DOCTRINE.md § 3. It cites canon rows and writes none.
SEED_0004)
T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0153 · T0_Familiar_Registry @ FAM_01 · flores_island.md § 3 L306-309 · docs/spine/CH_02.md CH02_B04 · docs/spine/CH_03.md
WHAT THIS ROW IS STRUCTURALLY, AND WHY THE DESIGN CARRIES MORE WEIGHT THAN ITS TIER. This is the
arc's first CHOSEN bond and the first proof that the loss in the Ch-2 cave did not end the
possibility. The Child Familiar is lost mid-chapter; this animal is registered at the waterfall in the
same chapter and bonded in the next. A player meets it while grieving, and it is the design's job to
be worth choosing.
cartilaginous skirt; a very long, highly extensible neck on a cervical chain of 8 that retracts into
the shell; a small narrow head carried on it; a tubular fleshy proboscis at the snout; four limbs,
the forelimbs broad paddles with three claws (AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY)
roughly its own carapace length and retracts fully into it, with lateral sweep past 100 degrees and
a strike that is the fastest motion the creature owns; the forelimb rows through roughly 140 degrees
of arc; the shell itself does not articulate and the skirt flexes passively
BURIED — the animal lies under sand or silt with only the eyes and the proboscis clear
surface; nothing else
THE REAL ANIMAL IS ALREADY THE CHARACTER DESIGN. A leathery pancake with a snorkel, a striking neck
longer than its own body, and hands like oars is more distinctive than anything an elevation could
bolt on. The familiar register's narrow budget is therefore easy to hold here: the design work is
READ and BOND, not addition.
cultural_depiction_requiredis FALSE and the care register is ordinary. The species carries the arc's sustained-bond legacy
familiar and NOT a Manggarai cultural role.
water-source offering protocol, which is the healer's practice and belongs to HER entry, never a
claim about the animal [flores_island.md § 3 L306-309; CH_03.md]. The design must therefore stage
the bond as something a person teaches, and never as something the species does.
is a claim of ownership over the thing bonded, and a sacred being of a living tradition is not a
pet — so the arc's one sustained-bond slot sits on an animal that carries no living-tradition claim.
That is not an accident of the roster; it is the roster being correct, and this sheet records it.
ONE-LINE SILHOUETTE READ: a leathery grey-olive disc lying just under the water with a pale snorkel
and two forward eyes above the surface, and a neck that appears from nowhere.
PRIMARY — A5 AGE AND STATE, spent as THE BOND-EXPRESSION AXIS (doctrine § 3.3). The carapace is soft,
leathery and unscuted, which means it TAKES IMPRESSIONS — and that is the whole design. Shell wears
the journey:
a snorkel and two eyes and nothing else, and the animal submerges if approached straight on.
player's flank. The carapace carries its first mark — a pale ring where the spring's mineral load
dried on it while it basked at the water's edge, which is the same deposition mechanism the guardian
pair wear and ties the three Flores animals to one water.
and the carapace carries a pale bloom where the player's hand habitually rests when it does —
a contact print built by repetition, in mineral, over hours of play.
silt river darkens the seams; a cold water tightens the skirt's edge. The shell becomes a map of
where the two of them have been, and none of it is a costume — it is deposition and wear on a
material that takes both.
MECHANISM: a soft unscuted carapace is a recording surface, and water carries what it carries. Nothing
supernatural is required and none is claimed.
SUPPORTING — A9 THE MARK: the proboscis and the forward-set eyes. Ninety per cent of the time this is
the only part of the animal above water, and at sixty pixels of silhouette on a follow camera it reads
as two dots and a snorkel cutting a V. That IS the identity, it survives icon size, and it is the real
animal's real anatomy.
APPEAL, AS A SHIP REQUIREMENT (the beauty bar). The proportions do the work without cute-ification:
a small head on a huge round body, forward-facing eyes that read as a face, and oversized paddle
forelimbs that read as hands. The Pokemon lesson applied honestly — one strong idea, silhouette-first,
a face that carries expression where the anatomy allows one — and no flattening of what the animal
actually is.
EMISSION: none. It reads by wetting-darkening, by the sheen on a leathery back breaking the surface,
and by the V it cuts.
anatomy law binds identically: the neck's extension and retraction are the real animal's, the shell
does not articulate, and the skirt flexes passively with water load.
mesh changes. They are additive and they persist, which is what makes them feel earned.
player's hand naturally falls — so it is the same place every time and the player can recognise it.
combat_permission is NONE. This animal is not fought, and per doctrine § 3.1 the fight-grammar block
is replaced by ALLY LEGIBILITY: the same procedure inverted, so the player can read what their
familiar is about to do from a follow camera, at small size, without taking attention off the enemy.
| ability tell | body origin | what it announces |
|---|---|---|
| the rear | the front of the disc lifts clear of the water and the neck extends fully upward | a Water ability is coming — the ONLY vertical this creature ever makes, which is why it reads at any size |
| the set | the animal stops and settles low with the skirt spread | it is holding position and will not follow |
| the strike | the neck fires forward along the water line, faster than anything else it does | a contact ability, and the direction of the neck IS the target |
| the surface | it comes up beside the player and holds | the bond state is speaking — this is the idle that says the relationship is deep |
THE LEGIBILITY BUDGET IS THE HARD PART AND THE SHEET NAMES IT: sixty pixels of silhouette, most of it
underwater. The vertical rear is the answer, because a horizontal animal going vertical is readable at
any scale, in any water, against any background — and it costs no colour, no light and no HUD.
states it. The care that DOES apply is directed at the bond's teacher: Mama Klara's offering
protocol is a Manggarai healer's practice, it belongs to her entry, and no line of this sheet
presents it as a property of the species.
a prize, never caged.
endangered in life (extinction_threat T4), and the design carries that as scarcity of ENCOUNTER
rather than as a lecture: this is the only one the player ever meets, the bond is chosen and
reciprocal, and nothing in the game breeds it (husbandry_breedable N).
identity-bearing subject carries a plate as conditioning.
neck, rounding the head, widening the eyes — on the theory that a companion must be adorable.
REFUSED. The beauty bar says appeal is a ship requirement AND that appeal never means flattening
what a thing actually is; the real *Chitra* is stranger and more lovable than a rounded-off version,
and the strangeness is why a player will remember it twenty chapters later.
marks and the four ally tells are INVENTED BY THIS SHEET as the game's own design. The anatomy, the
burying habit and the neck strike are AUTHORIAL_ANATOMY. The slot, the element, the bond beat, the
offering protocol's ownership and the ordinary care register are CITED to the rows and the region
page.
the full leathery disc visible under the surface, snorkel and two forward eyes breaking it,
paddle forelimbs spread. Daylight through water.
the proboscis — the plate that proves the appeal read.
registration, the pale mineral ring at bond, the contact bloom at deep bond.
vertical rear, judged on whether the two read apart at that size.
T0_Familiar_Registry @ FAM_01 :: creature_ref is EMPTY while its pipeline_consumer already names
T0_Creature_Roster.familiar_cross_ref as a consumer. FAM_01.creature_ref should point at CR_0153
and CR_0153.familiar_cross_ref should point back at FAM_01. The creature-roster leg carries prose
("Shell W1 (FAM_01)") rather than a joinable id.
T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0153 :: integrity_visible_aesthetic_shift is EMPTY. The bond-state markladder in section 4 is its content, and it is the doctrine's declared data home for the
bond-expression axis.
T0_Familiar_Registry @ FAM_01 :: loyalty_condition — this sheet's ladder assumes bond DEPTH hasbands. Whether the bands are the loyalty condition's own or a separate axis is a registry call.
generation_status is pending and mesh_id_ref EMPTY on this row, like every folklore andfamiliar row in the chapter, while the six ordinary-fauna rows are complete.