decisions/spine/stage2/CH_42_STAGE2.md
JOSH BATCH SIGN-OFF — 2026-07-10 (at the RR-52 closure). Josh signed off this Stage-2 canonical-question set ("Good to sign off on optional review batch. Pass"). The RESOLVED-within-vision dispositions are CONFIRMED as-built, and the OPEN-cardinal item was already ruled: Q1-Q6 (the Vodou depiction discipline + the reveal handling) ratified during the Ch 42 build. The Stage-2 gate for this hard-line node is CLEARED.
Hard-line HIGH-care node (CVD §17.1, HL_0009 — Ch 29 Sámi / Ch 42 Haiti / Ch 57 Australia). Per SSBL Step 8 + the CASCADE_RUNBOOK autonomy contract, a hard-line node pre-drafts the canonical-question set WITH a researched proposed resolution per question, so Josh's Stage-2 pass is a decision batch, not a research session. The entry is drafted (docs/spine/CH_42.md); these questions gate its lock. Source gate (HL_0009): Dubois, James, Desmangles, Davis; plus Brown, Métraux, Geggus, Bell, Wilcken, Hudson, Phillips, the NYT 2022 series.
Proposed resolution (APPLIED in the draft): Haitian Vodou is rendered as the community understands it (Rada-nation lwa — Damballa Wedo, Ayida Wedo, Erzulie Freda, Legba; the ethnographic depth of Desmangles/Métraux/Brown), and the protagonist is a VISITOR who WITNESSES and never performs the rite. The mambo is the gate-keeper of witness-depth (she decides what may be seen and what stays closed); veve ground-signs and ceremonial content are referenced, not reproduced (HL_0007); no Vodou-as-zombie-horror or temple-as-trap framing appears (HL_0005). Confirm the witness-not-performing discipline is the correct depth and that no original ceremony content is invented.
Proposed resolution (APPLIED): the real revolutionary figures are surfaced with dignity as documented history and NEVER villainized or fictionalized into a persona — Toussaint Louverture (CHAR_0118) as the Thread-6 dying-rising anchor and continuing inspirational presence (per James, Bell); Boukman Dutty and the mambo Cécile Fatiman as the Bois Caïman presiding figures (per Dubois, Geggus); Dessalines (the 1804 Declaration) and Christophe (the Citadelle) as builders of the sovereign state. The invented ally personas (the mambo Mambo Zetwal-Klere, the griot-cook Tonton Griyo) are ORIGINAL Kreyòl names screened clear of any real figure; the invented oppressor personas (Foudre-Sèche, Crédit-Sûr, Maître Ronge-Siècle) are constructed and screened. Confirm no real person carries an invented villain-persona (the Ch 21/49-class audit-only discipline).
Proposed resolution (APPLIED, per D-16 + §17.9): the FINANCIAL vessel (NW_0039) operates in Sector-1 Central Banking — Cassius Velheim's OWN coordinating sector — and the reveal is LIFTED (the House of Velheim is named player-facing, the hunt two-directional), BUT the proxy does not know the head and the chain up runs into the nameless Velheim ledger, so Cassius stays dark to Ch 76 and the full thesis to Ch 77. The player may learn the family runs the debt engine; the player may NOT learn that this is the patriarch's own sector or that a patriarch exists. Confirm that naming the family's FINANCIAL form without naming Cassius or his sector-headship holds the ceiling correctly at a chapter that touches his own sector.
Proposed resolution (APPLIED): the game DISARMS the zombie-horror superstition rather than dramatizing it — it surfaces Davis's academic ethnobotanical record (the peer-reviewed Passage of Darkness 1988, engaged with the CVD §17.1 peer-review-context discipline; the popular Serpent and the Rainbow held as secondary/contested), to show the tradition as the community understands it and correct the outsider trope. No zombi is fought, endorsed as a literal dinosaur-equivalent, or made a monster; the false-serpent parasite is a negative-consciousness construct, never a Vodou being. Confirm the Davis academic-route framing (not the horror route) is the intended handling.
Proposed resolution (APPLIED): the 1791 fluctuation at the sacred grove is witness-depth only — the protagonist stands at the ceremony's edge and the present-day clearing at once but does NOT perform or alter the ceremony (the substrate is thick enough that the night the revolution was lit is not entirely past, per the RCM canonical metaphysical core). The 1791 combat strand routes through the French colonial slaver-apparatus (S1 Foudre-Sèche), a liberation fight beside the insurgents, never against the community. Confirm the time-fluctuation is a real substrate event (L3, never a vision) and the witness-only depth at the ceremony itself.
Proposed resolution (APPLIED): the 122-year French indemnity (150M→90M francs, 1825-1947, through the Banque Nationale d'Haiti and Crédit Industriel et Commercial) is documented primary record (Hudson, Phillips, the NYT 2022 series) and the arc's most completely documented colonial-debt case; the main boss is the Debt Engine (a materialized-institutional-argument boss, the Ch 69 lineage, a real playable fight) defeated by EXPOSURE not force (win=pacify), the community protected throughout (the intrusion-enforcers the only strike targets). The healer's-child journal's FINANCIAL entry feeds the Ch 48 public-release decision. Confirm the debt-engine-as-materialized-argument and the pacify-by-exposure win.
Proposed resolution (APPLIED): Trade 7 Culinary Arts roots its ONE home base here (the ancient-and-modern-in-one-chapter home), the soup joumou independence tradition the anchor — the formerly-forbidden squash soup eaten on January 1 to mark freedom, both a mastery-gate and a narrative device (nourishment-consciousness, Pillar 9). Ch 43 Gullah carries no Trade-7 home (the NOLA-Haiti continuity is a cultural pathway, not a shared home). Confirm Trade 7's single-home placement at Ch 42 and the soup joumou as its anchor.