creatures/CR_0164_pangulubalang.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_Boss_Encounter_Registry·T0_Antagonist_Network_Registry·docs/spine/CH_05.md·_source/02_Tier_2_Region_Pages/sumatra_java.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. It is the
creature-level sheet for the being BE_0005_datu_siahaan.md designs at encounter level, and it
inherits that sheet's armature rather than re-deciding it.
boss id of its own, which canon states twice (CH_05.md:116 "ambient threats (not a boss row)";
sumatra_java.md:3255-3257 "an instrument on an existing boss row, never a new boss id")
T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0164 (all 62 cells) · T0_Boss_Encounter_Registry @ BE_0005 (P2 layering only) · T0_Antagonist_Network_Registry @ NW_0003 · docs/spine/CH_05.md §§ boss
structure, protected-chapter combat framing · _source/02_Tier_2_Region_Pages/sumatra_java.md §§ 5, 6, 13
THE ONE THING THIS SHEET IS BUILT AROUND. The thing inside the carving is a captive person. Canon
states it in its own words and ships it whole — "the captive spirit of a human being ritually put to
death" (sumatra_java.md:982-983) — and canon also states the resolution: the player traces the
instruments, finds the jar, and frees what is in it with the healer's rite (sumatra_java.md:987-989).
So the encounter is a RELEASE wearing the shape of a fight, and the design's job is to make the
player feel both at once: a thing that will kill them, and a person who is being made to do it.
No animal base and no human base. The register is CONSTRUCT, and the body is the visible image the
being is made to wear — which canon names: gana-gana is the visible image, animated by the invisible
pangulubalang [SRC_00446, print p. 59; sumatra_java.md:950-952, 1263-1267]. So the skeleton this
sheet declares is a carving's skeleton, and the being itself has none.
BE_0005_datu_siahaan.md § 2 rather than re-decided: fiverigid carved members — a wide carved base-block, a torso, two arm members, a head — joined by FOUR
cord lashings: base-to-torso, torso-to-head, and one shoulder lashing per arm member. This is the
single declaration of the man-high compound body's joint roster, and CR_0167_gana_gana.md § 2
references it here rather than restating it.
not rotate. There is no spine chain, no cervical chain and no wrist: the head sits on the torso at
one lashing and turns by leaning.
timber, roughly the height of a standing man at the compound scale, and its resting silhouette is a
human outline with the proportions of furniture.
forward onto a planted member and hauling the base after it. Weight passes down the loaded member
into the base every time, which is why the lashings are the part economy and why the cut side is
always the loaded side.
THE ANATOMY REFERENCE TABLE, READ AND STATED AFFIRMATIVELY. build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/ is on
disk and supersedes the doctrine § 2.1 inline licence where a bucket covers a subject. NO BUCKET
COVERS THIS SUBJECT, and the table rules itself out by its own scope: it covers the eight bucketed
census archetypes plus HUMANOID, and holds the PROVISIONAL folklore rows explicitly OUT OF SCOPE
because "body plan is a canon decision, already boarded as a canon debt"
(build/3d/schema/anatomy_reference/index.json, scope and out_of_scope). HUMANOID is the wrong
ruler here too and the reason is exact: HUMANOID.json declares its ranges clinical goniometry on a
24-presacral-vertebra obligate erect biped, and this body has no vertebrae, no clavicle and no gait
cycle — it has four cord lashings and a base-block. The inline block above therefore stands as the
declared skeleton, and the table's arrival supersedes nothing on this row.
THE MECHANISM, stated because an elevation with no mechanism is decoration. Vril alters real physics
rather than suspending it, so the coupling is physical: the substance in the chest cavity ties a
person's own vital force to timber that cannot express it. The being moves with a human being's
INTENT through joints that give 25 degrees. That mismatch is the whole horror and the whole fight —
the intent arrives at human speed, the body answers at carpentry speed, and the gap between them is
where the player lives.
category by the tradition itself — "The Batak name and condemn this register themselves"
[sumatra_java.md:971-976].
against his enemies, the name from ulubalang, a champion in war, and it sits inside what the record
calls the art of destroying life alongside poisons and the dorma philtre [SRC_00226, print p. 68-72;
sumatra_java.md:978-981, 1248-1252].
binder can be unbound" [sumatra_java.md:1252-1253]. That single line is the encounter's whole shape.
the substance rendered from the remains animating a guardian figure or turned against an enemy
[SRC_00446, print p. 24, p. 47; sumatra_java.md:981-984, 1254-1258].
thing the earliest Batak converts burned — the tradition's own repudiation, from inside [SRC_00446,
print p. 47, p. 59; sumatra_java.md:984-987].
is visible-versus-invisible rather than benign-versus-malign [SRC_00446, print p. 59;
sumatra_java.md:950-952].
generalized to the Batak, to the datu-office, or to any community [sumatra_java.md:975-976].
ONE-LINE SILHOUETTE READ: a man-high carved figure held together by cord, with a dark stain across a
hollow in its chest, that arrives at you by falling forward.
PRIMARY — A8 MATERIAL SUBSTITUTION. The body is timber, cord and one stain, and the substitution is
constrained exactly as the doctrine constrains it: it still articulates, and wood never self-lights.
Every read the player gets is carpentry — grain against grain at the lashings, the dry knock of a
planted member on packed earth, the base-block's drag mark left in the compound dust behind it. It is
frightening because it is legible, not because it is obscure.
SUPPORTING — A9 THE MARK. One mark, and it is attested: the chest cavity that holds pupuk
[SRC_00446, print p. 59; sumatra_java.md:947-949], and the dark stain across it where the substance
was applied. It is the only surface on the whole body that is not carpentry, it is high-contrast
against pale worked wood at any distance, and it is the exact place the fight is decided. One is the
number.
SUPPORTING — A10 NEGATIVE SPACE. The being is NOT IN THE BODY the player is hitting. Every blow lands
on a carving; the champion itself is in a jar in another room of the same compound, and the design
states that as a felt absence rather than as a lore note — the figure takes damage the way furniture
takes damage, with no flinch, no guard, and no reaction that a body defending itself would give.
Nothing in the fight ever behaves as though it minds being hit. That is what tells the player, before
any dialogue, that they are fighting the wrong object.
EMISSION: none. The compound's own lamps and the duel-ground's fires light it, and the stain reads
dark against wood that is catching that light.
are the additions this sheet is accountable for and each names its attachment: base-to-torso,
torso-to-head, and one shoulder lashing per arm member.
the part economy's single most important region and it has to read as an opening in the silhouette,
which means the cover sits proud of the chest and casts.
visibly under strain at the lashing — the cord goes taut and the grain compresses — one beat before
it moves. That is the tell, and it is a real consequence of the real construction rather than an
animation flourish.
creature's rig. It is set dressing that is also the win condition.
ENCOUNTER: layered onto BE_0005.P2 at CH05_B11 as horn-telegraphed guard-interrupts alongside the
begu ganjang's neck-strike (CH_05.md:116; sumatra_java.md:2475-2478). Part economy home, declared:
BODY.
| tell shape | body origin | one answer | counter class worn on the body | live rail counter_class |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| the horn sounds and a member sets | the datu's horn signal; the loaded lashing goes taut | strike the loaded side before the pivot completes | part-break | trigger_interrupt |
| the fall-forward | the whole mass commits past its base-block and cannot be recalled | step the line — it cannot turn once committed | dodge on commit | dodge_only |
| the planted guard | a member is set across the approach and holds | meet it — carved timber is a contact surface and reads as one | parry | any |
| the chest cover is drawn open | the torso presents the cavity to work | drive at the cavity, which is the only place the binding is reachable | strike the mark | weak_point |
| it takes a hit and does not answer | nothing on the body reacts | leave it and find the jar | the puzzle lane | cover |
THE RAIL MAPPING IS DELIBERATE AND THIS SHEET OWNS IT, because these five shapes are the first rows
any BE_0005 encounter will put on T0_Boss_Attack_Rail and the mapping is what a gate will check. The
live enum measured on the rail's own 19 rows is exactly {dodge_only, trigger_interrupt,
weak_point, cover, any}, and the fifth row's cover reading is the one that needs its reasoning
stated: the no-answer shape is not a defence class but the encounter's instruction to break contact
and go for the jar, which is the nearest honest member and is the sheet's proposal rather than a
ruling. The prose tokens in the fourth column stay because they are what the doctrine's part four asks
for — the counter class worn on the BODY — and the fifth column is the schema's word for the same
thing. Where the registry lane disagrees, the registry wins.
BREAKABLE PARTS at gameplay distance, each with its silhouette fraction: the two shoulder lashings at
roughly 8 percent each, and cutting one drops that arm member permanently out of the live moveset and
takes the planted guard with it; the base-to-torso lashing at roughly 12 percent, and cutting it ends
the fall-forward and leaves the thing pivoting in place; the chest cover at roughly 10 percent, and
opening it is what makes the release reachable. Each break subtracts a move, each makes the remaining
tells easier to read, and the material the economy wants is the cord itself — the healer's rite uses
it.
ESCALATION on the four channels. POSTURE — it stops guarding and starts reaching, so the guard-plant
disappears from the set and the fall-forward becomes the opener. BREATH — there is none, and the
absence is the channel: the only breathing in the compound is the datu's and the player's, and the
mix says so. VOCALIZATION — the horn is the datu's, not the construct's, and the escalation is that
the horn STOPS and the thing keeps coming, which means the binder has run out of orders and the
captive is being driven rather than commanded. NEW OPENER — the fall-forward replaces the interrupt.
THE OPENER AND ITS VARIANTS: the guard-plant is the root — most legible, least punishing, teaches the
lashing read. The interrupt is the same body origin with a shorter wind. The fall-forward is the same
body origin with a longer wind, a wider arc and no recall. Teaching order is designed, not emergent.
THE NON-KILL PATH IS THE CANONICAL WIN. Canon authors the unbinding stroke as an ability of this
region — "a construct with a binder can be cut loose from its binder rather than merely destroyed.
This is the ability that answers the chapter's supernatural escalation and the one that frees rather
than kills" (sumatra_java.md:1324-1327) — and the roster's own collect_verb is FREE_ALLY. So the
chain the player is building is a chain toward the jar: open the cover, hold the figure off the
healer's ward, reach the jar, and free what is in it. Demolishing the carving is available and it is
the WORSE outcome: the timber stops and the captive is still bound, which the healer says plainly and
which the chapter's reward map reflects.
it by aim rather than by omission: the malevolence belongs to individuals who cross their own
tradition's line and is never generalized to the Batak, to the datu-office, or to any community
(sumatra_java.md:975-976); the legitimate village wards made by the same technique are allied set
dressing and are never targets (sumatra_java.md:1269-1270); the hostility is walled to one man's
compound (sumatra_java.md:997-999). Boru Simanjuntak, the pustaha-keepers and the legitimate datus
are allies and protected non-targets (CH_05.md:246), and the healer is named on the spine's own ally
roster as "a protected healer-practitioner, never a target" (CH_05.md:224).
"faced as the traditions condemn or hold them" (CH_05.md:265). It is rendered exactly as the
tradition condemns it: not softened into a generic golem, and not Hollywood-monstered into a demon
the tradition never described. The check runs in both directions on the same body.
are "a human being ritually put to death" (sumatra_java.md:982) and "a ritually executed human
being" (sumatra_java.md:1256). This sheet neither narrows that wording nor widens it, and no act is
depicted, enacted, restaged, replayed, or made a quest beat anywhere in the design. The origin
reaches the player exactly one way: as EVIDENCE — a sealed jar among a corrupt man's instruments,
and a healer who knows what is in it. The tradition's own horror at what was done to make the thing
is carried as the reason it is condemned, which is the reframe canon already performed and this
sheet only executes. No child appears anywhere in this design, in any role, and the floor is
untouched at every branch.
and the resolution canon authors is freeing rather than collecting (sumatra_java.md:987-989,
1259-1262). This sheet's design carries no farming loop, no jar in the inventory, and no drop from
this being, and it records rather than resolves the fact that the row's own drop cell and the row's
own notes disagree about exactly this — see § 9.
designed condemned construct of a living tradition and never routes through a photographic-wildlife
template or through raw generation with negative prompts as the control. No real devotional or
museum object is reproduced as an asset: the carving is the game's own, built to the documented FORM
and the structural logic, per the page's standing era discipline that the 1200 CE build inherits the
form and never a dated object (sumatra_java.md:1491-1494).
refused. (1) Dropping the captive-human origin and shipping an ordinary animated statue. Refused —
canon refuses it first in its own words, and a generic golem would leave the datu's crime
unreadable. (2) Making the construct slow, clumsy and safe because its victim-status invites pity.
Refused hard: a defanged pangulubalang fails the row. It is man-high, it is heavy, it commits, it
cannot be out-reached once it has fallen forward, and the player who treats it gently dies. Toward
over-boldness, three were considered and refused as well: depicting or flashing back to the killing;
making the jar lootable; and giving the construct a human scream. The last is the closest call and
the sheet takes the narrower option deliberately — the one human sound in the encounter is a single
indrawn breath from a body that has no lungs, heard once, at the moment the cover comes open.
BE_0005), the fall-forward gait and the base-block drag, the taut-lashing tell, the silhouette
fractions, the chest-cover part, THE DARK PUPUK STAIN ACROSS THE CAVITY AS A VISIBLE MARK, the
no-flinch damage read, the horn-stops escalation, the single indrawn breath and the live-rail
counter_class mapping are INVENTED BY THIS SHEET AND ITS PREDECESSOR as the game's own design and
are named as ours. The stain in particular is ours and the distinction is worth keeping sharp: the
record attests a chest cavity holding pupuk and attests that pupuk applied to sculpted figures
animates them, and it describes no mark on the outside of any figure — the visible stain is this
sheet's way of putting an attested fact on a silhouette. The pangulubalang's nature, its name from
ulubalang, its bound-and-commandable status, the chest cavity holding pupuk, the visible-image
relation to the gana-gana, the jar, the origin, and the converts' burning are CITED.
reveal state stays HELD (CH_05.md:117, 297). No player-facing line this sheet proposes carries a
House-of-Velheim name, a family, or a pattern token, and the binder's surface motive is purely local
and opportunistic. The display register is descriptive — the champion, the made thing, the carving
in the courtyard — and names no chain.
Written affirmatively. Every line names what IS in frame.
on a wide carved base-block in a compound courtyard at dusk, a dark stain across an open hollow in
its chest, the compound's own lamps the only light in frame.
arm member planted ahead of it, the cord at the loaded shoulder pulled taut and the grain
compressed under it.
cover drawn aside, the stain reading across the rim, worked pale timber around it.
and the bark books ranged behind it, the composition's subject the jar alone.
standing man.
T0_Creature_Roster @ CR_0164 carries height_m and length_axis EMPTY, and this sheet's designis scale-sensitive: man-high at the compound is the whole basis of the fall-forward's threat. The
scale belongs on the row.
@ CR_0164 :: kit_ref and mesh_id_ref EMPTY while mesh_pipeline_type reads image_to_3d. The route this sheet declares is ATTENDED_DESIGN with a concept plate as conditioning, and image_to_3d
is the vector rather than the route — the two do not contradict, but nothing on the row records the
route.
@ CR_0164 :: folklore_behavior_substrate is EMPTY while folklore_attribution_source is full. Thebehaviour this sheet designs — plant, pivot, fall forward, no flinch — has no data home.
@ CR_0164 :: vril_substrate_response and integrity_visible_aesthetic_shift EMPTY, which is wherethe intent-through-timber coupling mechanism would live.
T0_Boss_Attack_Rail carries 19 rows and every one of them is BE_0002 — the rail is populated butUNSPREAD. No BE_0005 row exists on it, so the five shapes above are this instrument's first and the
first for the whole Ch-5 encounter, and the counter_class column they map to is the enum measured
live on those 19 rows.
BE_0005_datu_siahaan.md § 9 boarded this and itremains open: "find the jar, free the captive with the healer's rite" is a complete quest beat with
a canon-authored resolution, no quest-seed id, and now a roster row that depends on it for its own
collect_verb (FREE_ALLY).
folklore to thepangulubalang and the jar-bound captive (sumatra_java.md:2956-2957) and the roster cannot carry it.
rng_drop_anchor is POPULATED with DROP_CH05_PANGULUBALANG_JAR_SHARD`, while the same row's own
notes cell declares "rng_drop_anchor blank BY DESIGN — a drop sourced from a jar-bound human
captive would invert the entire care register." One of the two is wrong and this lane may not
decide which. The design read this sheet is written to is the notes cell, because it is the one that
reasons from canon's freeing resolution; the shard token would make a fragment of the captive's
own jar farmable loot. Flagged for the registry lane, not resolved here, and no other Ch-5 drop
anchor carries this conflict.
notes cell says "this 58-column header"where the live header carries 62 columns — a count that has moved under the note since it was
written. Second, the source_ref and notes line numbers run behind the live region page: this row
cites Section 13 at L3227-3240 for the champion-made-to-order and captive-in-the-jar passages that
now sit at :3251-3266, and the sibling CR_0168 row cites L3219-3227 for a passage now at :3243-3251
— a drift of roughly 24 lines across the Section-13 and Section-15 anchors. This sheet cites the LIVE
page throughout and records the divergence rather than reconciling it. Registry lane, with its own
gate and baseline.