COMPANION_NTALA.md

npcs/COMPANION_NTALA.md

COMPANION DESIGN — Ntala (CHAR_0002), the Healer's Child

Verdict: FULL_COMPANION — and not merely one of the core: the spine's single true co-protagonist,

the for_life anchor the whole loyalty system is calibrated against. This is the one candidate in the

roster that does not need to argue for its meaning; the design job here is to *deepen and wire* an

already-ratified flagship character, resolve the tensions the foundation artifacts left open, and state

precisely what is canon vs what I am recommending.

Substrate state: GROUNDED (one MIXED flag — the Manggarai ethnobotany strand IF the Herbalism

recommendation is adopted; see §2.3).

Name status: RATIFIED, not open. "Ntala" (Manggarai *star*, gender-neutral so it serves the

player-chosen gender with no forking) was ruled by Josh 2026-07-12 via the naming method

[SRC: _source/03_Tier_3_Characters/T3_Core_Characters [ACTIVE v1.0].md # §3, L21]. The belief_axis token

(§4) is the one naming-canon item this design proposes.

---

0. What the foundations got right, and the two corrections this candidate forces

The three foundation artifacts are correct on the mechanics contract and the party funnel. Two of their

Ntala-specific reads are superseded by the flagship source they did not open (T3_Core_Characters §3),

and I correct them here with evidence, as the mandate invites:

• CORRECTION 1 — culture is NOT "soft/African-marsh." CAST_INVENTORY calls her origin "deliberately

soft… African-marsh origin" and flags a "Ch-3-vs-Ch-10/12 origin tension" as needing a ruling. The

flagship source settles it: Ntala is Manggarai (Western Flores, Indonesia), Mama Klara's child

(CHAR_0006, the Ch-3 Manggarai healer-elder), present in her home community from Ch 3, who then trails

the protagonist's route Ch 4-12 "arriving ahead or behind, leaving documentation"

[SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3, L183-185]. Her appearance is a pan-Indian-Ocean-corridor model

(South Asian + East African + Austronesian admixture, grounded in the documented monsoon-dhow trade

network) [SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3, L177]. The Ch-13 body-prose phrase "the marsh where they first

met" [SRC: docs/spine/CH_13.md # L27] is a genuine wording wrinkle, not a culture question — it

reads against "present in the Manggarai community… from Ch 03" [SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3, L183].

This is a small reconciliation flag (§9, item 5), not an open culture ruling.

• CORRECTION 2 — she DOES have a canonical integrity-departure, and it is at Ch 23, not only Ch 65.

CAST_INVENTORY reports "NO leave — at the Ch-65 lock she is 'sticky either way'." True at Ch 65 for the

*surviving* bands, but the flagship source canonizes an earlier departure: at **Ch 23 (Greece/Delphi)

the healer's child leaves if the protagonist's integrity is strongly negative** — "the only choice

available to someone of genuine integrity… the game does not moralize; it shows it happening"

[SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3.7, L279-285]. So Ntala carries two scripted integrity departures

(Ch 23 early, Ch 65 EVIL), reconciled with her for_life/never row in §4. This is the material the

mandate asks me to design ("the Evil-path departure… design what her leaving IS and what it costs").

---

1. WHO — culture, identity, the 13-field persona

1.1 Identity in one line

The unsigned watcher who becomes the witness who becomes the co-author: a Manggarai healer's child who

reads the world by counting, patience, and documented scholarship — no vril at all — and whose journal

becomes the record that outlives everything the antagonist tried to erase.

1.2 The 13 common persona-spine fields (ENTITY_PERSONA_SYSTEM §2.2)

• anchor_ref — CHAR_0002, T0_Character_Index. Flagship persona (ENTITY_PERSONA_SYSTEM §2.3 tier:

Flagship — full creative bible, Josh-in-loop). [SRC: docs/proposals/ENTITY_PERSONA_SYSTEM.md # §2.3, L50]

• identity — Ntala (Manggarai *star*), class = person, essence = "the recorder who makes the hidden

life seen." Name RATIFIED (§0). [SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3, L21]

• significance_lenses — PRIMARY 2A Writing, language & knowledge-institutions (the documented

distributional decode; the journal as a knowledge-institution of one). Secondary **2D Knowledge-

suppression & control** (she is the arc's structural counter to the central wound — the House erases,

she records) and 2C Philosophy & wisdom (Ch 16: reverence, "standing before what cannot be mastered

without lying about it, is itself a way of reading"). [SRC: docs/proposals/SIGNIFICANCE_LENSES.md #

2A L34, 2D L63, 2C L53]

• web_position — kin: Mama Klara (mother, CHAR_0006, Flores, stationary, never travels)

[SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §7, L661]. Peer-bond: the protagonist (primary). Age-peer edge: Ana

(CHAR_0017), the melee blade she travels beside Ch 41-77. Her journal is the plot-object hunted by the

House (Ch 17-18 targeting; answers Cassius Ch 76). [SRC: docs/spine/CH_38.md # L22; CH_58.md # L18]

• background_history — GROUNDED. Manggarai Flores (mbaru-niang, caci, semangat, naga tana) is a solid

Ch 2-3 build; her mother diagnoses the protagonist's semangat depletion and runs the waterfall

restoration ritual [SRC: docs/spine/CH_03.md # L26, L193]. In-world backstory: her mother recognized

what the protagonist *is* and never explained it — Ntala's stated Ch-13 join motivation is "to find out

what her mother recognized" [SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3, L169, L191]. THIN-SUBSTRATE CAVEAT: specific

Manggarai medicinal-plant knowledge (needed only if the §2.3 Herbalism strand is adopted) is a

book-processing dependency — do not fake specific ethnobotanical claims (§17.1).

• own_life — the journal is her daily rhythm: every cultural encounter generates a documented entry in

her own voice [SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3.6, L221]. Aboard the mothership (from Ch 13 onward she

travels; the ship arrives Ch 8) her crew station is the log / the chart-table (see §5). Her clothing

"evolves with each region… by late game a textile patchwork of every culture encountered"

[SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3, L177].

• motivations — to understand what her mother saw; to keep honest what the world would erase; to be a

full and equal mind, not an assistant ("You feel them; I count them. Between us we might get the whole of

it") [SRC: docs/spine/CH_16.md # L30]. FEAR: complicity in erasure — being made the recorder of a lie.

This is the raw material of her belief axis (§4).

• personality — 4-8 terse traits for the runtime persona card: *observant, patient, understated,

rigorous, quietly stubborn, loyal-by-integrity, dry-humored, watchful*. Temperament: still-water — she

says nothing until she has counted [SRC: docs/spine/CH_16.md # L30 "the habit of both of them is to say

nothing at all"].

• voice_register — Ch-13 baseline adolescent-curious register, literacy appropriate to Manggarai

cultural context, maturing across the arc into the co-authored dual-voice of Ch 59-77

[SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3.6, L225; §3.13, L333]. References T0_Voice_Registry

[POPULATE→T0_Voice_Registry] (10-row thin anchor — a known dependency, not Ntala-specific).

• relationships_to_player — THE hinge into the relationship engine. Holds a relationship ledger

(companions always do). Starting disposition at Ch-13 join: Known (§7 ladder). Her bond gates the

journal's growth and the Ch 56-58 shared-record beats — all non-progression-critical opportunities

(§9 no-dead-end). [SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3.7, L285 "the journal no longer grows… gated or

reshaped"]

• care_band — standard care for Ntala herself as an individual traveling companion; but her home

culture (Manggarai) is community-protected/§17.1 (Mama Klara is honored, never a target)

[SRC: docs/spine/CH_03.md # L213]. She personally is never a combat target beyond the Tier-3 bonded cost

(§9).

• layer_surfacing — L1: an ally in play (recon/support verb, §3). L2: the journal is the game's primary

investigatable documented-lore system across ~64 chapters [SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3.6, L221].

L3: she is the human-scholarship counterweight to the protagonist's vril-intuition — "your power is not

the only kind of knowing in the room" — never declared as thesis [SRC: docs/spine/CH_16.md # L30].

• runtime_binding — Class 4 (partner/companion), strategic-tick ~0.03 Hz, authored-fallback line bank

(high-presence companion → authored-heavy) [SRC: docs/RUNTIME_GENERATIVE_LAYER.md # §A; # L113].

1.3 The six person-extension fields (ENTITY_PERSONA_SYSTEM §2.4.1)

• age_stage_presence — all three protagonist age stages. She enters as a child (silent watcher Ch 3-12,

the Childhood→Adolescence boundary at the Ch 13/14 seam), an adolescent through the ancient arc, an adult

across the modern arc and endgame [SRC: docs/spine/CH_13.md # L288, L292; T3_Core_Characters # §3.6,

L225]. She ages ON-SCREEN — the growth arc is load-bearing (§8.4).

• faction_affiliations and awareness_tier — no House affiliation; UNAWARE of the House pattern

through the reveal window. Her journal documents *effects* (mines, erasures, a hunter on their trail)

without naming the family — she carries no who-frame, no agent-noun in the safe register, pre-Ch-38

[SRC: memory antagonist-pattern-reveal-timing]. The pattern she "cannot yet phrase" at Ch 16 is

reverence-as-reading, not the House [SRC: docs/spine/CH_16.md # L275].

• teaching_role — what she TEACHES the protagonist is documented human scholarship: distributional

analysis, structural reading, the discipline of counting without magic (she teaches the protagonist to

become the recorder herself at the Ch-38 handoff). What she LEARNS from the protagonist: the vril-weight

beneath the marks she can only count. RECOMMENDED trade wiring: Trade-4 Herbalism PEER (§2.3) —

flagged, not canon.

• six_option_register — her six dialogue colorings (Truly Good / Truly Bad / Sympathetic / Detached /

Curious / Defiant) run in a Manggarai-inflected, understated-scholar register: Curious is her home key

(the counter, the cataloguer); Defiant surfaces as quiet refusal, never heat; Truly Bad is the register

she cannot hold — it is precisely the corrosion that makes her leave (§4). [SRC: _source/01_Tier_1_

Foundation/T1_Integrity_Paths_Worldstates_Master [ACTIVE v2.1].md # §6]

• assimilation_stance — THE richest field on this character. As Mama Klara's child she **already

half-knows the secret** (her mother recognized it). She is the one place in the world where the

protagonist is known while hidden from everyone else — the witness who holds the secret and keeps it

in the journal. What the assimilation mechanic costs and buys through her eyes: with Ntala present the

protagonist is never wholly alone in the concealment (the bond's deepest gift); but if the protagonist

goes dark, the witness who recorded everything becomes the person whose integrity the corrosion violates

— and she leaves, taking the safety of being-known with her (§8.3). [SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3.7]

• companion_or_familiar_mechanics — for_life (§4); Tier-3 bonded (§9); crew station = the log (§5).

She is a COMPANION, not a familiar — she never touches the 22-slot familiar axis (WS_012), and the Child

Familiar reunion she *records from outside* at Ch 58 is a different axis entirely

[SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3.11, L323].

---

2. WHAT THEY DO — craft, trade, combat

2.1 Primary craft: the journal / parallel intelligence (CANON)

Her canonical system is the evidence-journal — the game's primary documented lore-delivery mechanism,

a human-scholarship perspective running parallel to the protagonist's vril-intuition

[SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3.6, L221]. It is an authored system, NOT one of the 10 trades. Her signature

capability is parallel intelligence: at Ch 16 Dholavira she decodes a constrained, sub-linguistic

structural portion of the Indus script by *documented distributional analysis* — counting which marks

recur, in what order, how often — explicitly not vril and within the hard canonical limit that the

Harappan script stays undeciphered [SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3.6, L255; docs/spine/CH_16.md # L143;

T1_Languages_and_Script_Master §7.4]. "She reads the structure while the protagonist reads the weight, and

neither of them reads the meaning" [SRC: docs/spine/CH_16.md # L30].

2.2 Combat role — the human-science counterweight (real-science grammar, NO vril)

Ntala "fights beside occasionally but her verb is record/witness, not blade" [SRC: CAST_INVENTORY]. In the

7-mode Composure grammar [SRC: docs/COMBAT_ENCOUNTER_SYSTEM.md # Part B §5], her ally contribution is a

non-direct, non-vril mode — she breaks the Composure node that raw DPS and even vril cannot:

• Verb: MARK / EXPOSE (puzzle_routed + analytical). She reads enemy *structure* the way she reads

script — patterns, tells, the repeated opening, the weak seam — and marks it, letting the protagonist's

vril-strike or an ally's blade land where it counts. This is the mechanical expression of "your power is

not the only kind of knowing in the room": pure human intelligence + real observation, breaking a node

vril alone cannot touch. It composes with, never duplicates, the protagonist's vril mode

[SRC: docs/proposals/COMPANION_MECHANICS_CONTRACT.md # Interface 7].

• Vril asymmetry honored. She cannot read vril-signatures — she is explicitly non-vril ("she cannot

feel the vril… no magic at all") [SRC: docs/spine/CH_16.md # L30]. Her contribution never violates the

tier-bound vril rule [SRC: memory early-chapter-perception-not-tier6-vril-sight].

2.3 RECOMMENDED trade wiring — Trade-4 Herbalism PEER (biology) [FLAG — characterization-adjacent]

The mandate asks: "her healer trade arc (Herbalism=biology?)". Here is the grounded recommendation, with

the alternative and the objection, per the decision-analysis protocol:

• **RECOMMENDATION: Ntala carries a secondary Herbalism (Trade-4) strand as her matrilineal inheritance

from Mama Klara** — the healer's child who learned her mother's plant-medicine. In the real-science

immersive-sim (Herbalism = biology [SRC: memory rewards-intelligence-real-science-immersive-sim]) this

gives her a field-medic / real-chemistry support combat facet (stabilize, identify a toxin, deploy a

remedy or a smoke) that fuses with her MARK/EXPOSE verb into a single coherent "she knows the body and

the pattern, not the magic" identity. Trade-4's ancient home base opens at Ch 07 (S. India, before she

joins), so she is a PEER who deepens alongside, never the trade-home-opener — fully non-gating

[SRC: registries/T0_Trade_Registry [DRAFT v0.1] # TRADE_04; COMPANION_MECHANICS_CONTRACT.md # Interface 6].

• STRONGEST OBJECTION: the flagship source frames her identity entirely as the *journal/scholar*, never

as a practicing herbalist — "the healer's child" is her LINEAGE (Mama Klara's child), and her stated

motivation is epistemic (understand what her mother saw), not vocational. Adding a trade risks diluting

the clean "she is the recorder" identity.

• ALTERNATIVE (status-quo): no trade — her craft is the journal alone, and her combat facet is

MARK/EXPOSE only.

• WHY THE RECOMMENDATION WINS (narrowly): it answers the mandate's "jobs/skills that make sense for

that culture," gives her a concrete real-science combat contribution beyond marking, and the matrilineal

healer inheritance is *thematically load-bearing* (she carries her mother's knowledge the way she carries

her mother's unexplained recognition). It is kept SECONDARY so the journal stays her spine. **This is

Josh's call** — trade assignment on a companion is characterization-adjacent; MIXED substrate flag

applies to the specific Manggarai ethnobotany.

---

3. WHEN — availability, join, leave/return, loyalty model

3.1 Availability window

Ch 3 → Epilogue, continuous (the widest of any companion; 191 actor-beats across 55 nodes)

[SRC: docs/spine/CARDINALS_RATE_AND_ROSTER.md # L229]. Silent unsigned watcher Ch 3-12 (no actor-beats);

active companion Ch 13-77 + Epilogue.

3.2 Join trigger (RECOMMENDATION within ratified enums)

loyalty_join_trigger: present_Ch03_silent_watch_active_join_Ch13 — unconditional canonical join at

Ch 13 Drakensberg (a story beat, NOT integrity-gated at join); she signs her first note "Ntala" and opens

the journal [SRC: docs/spine/CH_13.md # L27, L107].

3.3 Loyalty model + belief axis + departure threshold (RECOMMENDATIONS; belief_axis is naming-canon)

• loyalty_model: for_life — she IS the canonical for_life anchor [SRC: RELATIONSHIP_TIER_BANDS_

BRIEF.md # §3; CARDINALS_RATE_AND_ROSTER.md # L29].

• loyalty_departure_threshold: never — no ORDINARY opposition-magnitude trigger; maximal inertia

[SRC: COMPANION_MECHANICS_CONTRACT.md # Interface 2].

• loyalty_belief_axis: truth_witness_mercy [PROPOSED — NAMING-CANON → JOSH]. Her value pole: honest

record, the refusal to let truth be erased, and the healer-lineage mercy under it. Aligned to the L1

Truly-Good integrity band. Alternatives if Josh prefers a different token: honest_record_integrity or

witness_against_erasure. [SRC: COMPANION_MECHANICS_CONTRACT.md # Interface 2; WS7 L159]

• The for_life/never ↔ scripted-departure reconciliation (design A): never means *no ordinary

trigger fires* — investment is maximal inertia. But for_life "does not mean present every node to the

Epilogue; it means the model's departure trigger is never, which a scripted plot departure can still

override" [SRC: COMPANION_MECHANICS_CONTRACT.md # Interface 4]. Ntala carries two scripted overrides,

both integrity-driven, both canon:

1. Ch 23 (Greece) early departure if the protagonist's integrity is strongly negative by then

[SRC: T3_Core_Characters # §3.7, L279].

2. Ch 65 (path-lock) EVIL departure — "Ntala departs (companions who oppose the corrosion leave)"

[SRC: docs/spine/CH_65.md # L146], confirmed by D-23 (RETIRED, ruled Josh 2026-07-17), which offers

Departure/Continuation on TG/GE/Drifting and leaves EVIL pointedly non-enumerated

[SRC: CARDINALS_RATE_AND_ROSTER.md # L202-208].

The 90-cap invariant is untouched (complete opposition always forces departure); what these overrides

refute is only the "for_life is exempt" clause, which should be aligned at the §9 wiring commit

[SRC: CARDINALS_RATE_AND_ROSTER.md # L209-212]. RECONCILIATION FLAG (§9, item 3): confirm both

departures are live and how they relate.

---

4. PATHS — TG / GE / Drifting / Evil, and the BOND ladder mapped to beats

4.1 THE BOND ladder milestones (Scheme C; companion labels Enemy…Family; state not accumulator)

Calibration TARGET (design intent, not a per-beat rate — the rate is retired): **Ntala reaches Family

(+90) at roughly the Ch-65 path-lock; a merely-good run misses it** [SRC: CARDINALS_RATE_AND_ROSTER.md #

L87]. Mapped to staged beats:

4.2 WAVERING / departure moments (the integrity-reactive spine)

She is for_life, so she is never DRAWN (she joins by story, not by alignment). Her integrity-reactive

beats are all on the darkening road:

• Ch 16 corrosive fork — earliest warning: "the journal turning sparse and cold," her contribution

"diminished as lesser than the protagonist's own vril" [SRC: CH_16.md # L176]. WAVERING seed.

• Ch 23 (Greece) — the crucible: strongly-negative integrity → WAVERING → DEPARTED. Sustained

(two-node) corrosion, not a single dark choice [SRC: COMPANION_MECHANICS_CONTRACT.md # Interface 4;

T3_Core §3.7].

• Ch 65 (EVIL band) — the lock: she departs, opposing the corrosion [SRC: CH_65.md # L146].

4.3 Per-path outcomes

• TG (Truly Good): full arc. Family by Ch 65. Continues into the realm on the D-23 Continuation;

may accompany to Maatherion Ch 69 and remain at the threshold as the protagonist enters the fairy

realm; her final journal entry (carried by the protagonist) is offered to the father Ch 75 as evidence

"the human world is worth returning to save"; complete shared record; Epilogue complete

[SRC: T3_Core §3.14/§6.6.2, L335, L631].

• GE (Good Enough): present; the Ch-65 decision runs (continue or stay, record public either way); the

Ch-58 Child Familiar reunion she records is incomplete (footprints-before-arrival) [SRC: T3_Core §3.12,

L327].

• Drifting (Neutral): she stays, but the partnership texture is thinner — Ch 16 neutral: "contribution

unremarked" [SRC: CH_16.md # L175].

• Evil: either the Ch 23 early departure (journal stops growing; Ch 38/56/57/58 milestones

reshaped; integrity recovery Ch 24-65 possible but does NOT restore her) [SRC: T3_Core §3.7, L285], or —

if she survived Greece but the run locks EVIL — the Ch 65 departure. Journal incomplete; Epilogue

plays with the partial journal [SRC: T3_Core §3.14, L341].

4.4 No-dead-end honored

Every Ntala departure ships non-empty rerouted_paths[] [SRC: COMPANION_MECHANICS_CONTRACT.md # Interface

5, 9]. Her leaving reshapes the documented-lore lane, never walls the game: the protagonist already becomes

the recorder at the Ch-38 handoff, so on a post-38 departure the record survives (stops growing) in the

protagonist's hand; on the Ch-23 pre-handoff departure the journal is left behind, the record surviving as

what-she-recorded-until-she-left, and the Epilogue still plays with the partial journal. Progression-

critical milestones are never gated on her — only the *completeness/texture* of the lore layer varies

[SRC: T3_Core §3.7, L285 "still continues — but the journal no longer grows"].

---

5. Travel / crew station (mothership)

Companions live aboard VH_001 (acquired Ch 8; she joins Ch 13, after the ship) [SRC: COMPANION_MECHANICS_

CONTRACT.md # Interface 8]. Her crew station is the log / chart-table — the archival + navigation-record

seat (analytically adjacent to the helm/lookout stations without being the pilot). This binds her

own_life aboard to a concrete function: she keeps the ship's record the way she keeps the journal. Firewalls

honored: single mothership, walked-geography pre-Ch-55.

---

6. MEANING — why the game is richer with her (the bar Josh set)

Ntala is not a companion the game *has*; she is the lens through which the game's central emotional and

thematic fact is delivered. Five load-bearing meanings:

1. The emotional spine — being seen. The protagonist fell out of a realm, lost a child-familiar, and

spends the whole game hiding what she is. Ntala is the one person who *knows and stays*. "She becomes a

person who has been seen and named and, for one clean moment, not alone" [SRC: docs/spine/CH_57.md #

L32]. Every other relationship is mediated by concealment; hers is the exception that makes the

concealment survivable. Remove her and the game is a solitary; keep her and it is a shared road.

2. The thematic counterweight — "your power is not the only kind of knowing." She proves, mechanically

and narratively, that human scholarship (counting, patience, no magic) reaches walls the protagonist's

vril cannot open. This is the anti-chosen-one argument the whole design rests on

[SRC: docs/spine/CH_16.md # L30].

3. The House's antithesis — record vs erasure. The antagonist's central crime is knowledge-suppression;

Ntala's journal is the counter-force made physical. "Everything the mine would erase, the journal holds"

[SRC: docs/spine/CH_13.md # L27]. Her record is the plot-object the House hunts (Ch 17-18) and the

evidence that answers Cassius at Ch 76 [SRC: docs/spine/CH_38.md # L22]. The arc's wound and its healing

both route through her book.

4. The assimilation-witness — what concealment costs and buys. As the one who half-knows the secret

and holds it, she is the site where the assimilation mechanic pays its deepest dividend AND exacts its

deepest cost: her presence is the safety of being-known; her departure (on corrosion) is the loss of the

only person who ever saw the truth and stayed — the corrosion doesn't just lower a number, it strips the

witness (§1.3 assimilation_stance).

5. The growth arc + the best-friend echo. She grows child → adolescent → adult, and her arc is the

acquisition of *agency and voice*: unsigned notes → a signed name (Ch 13) → the recorder's charge

handed over (Ch 38) → her own unwitnessed decision to publish (Ch 56) → co-equal authorship (Ch 58+).

Beneath it runs the ratified design resonance: the Ch-1 fairy-realm best-friend's gender/skills/combat-

focus SEEDED hers — she is "the friend's living echo… the reason that companion always felt like home,"

completed at the Ch-75 homecoming reunion [SRC: docs/spine/CH_75.md # L211, L310]. (CF-2 — re-meeting the

grown friend as a realm-NPC — remains an OPEN cardinal; Ntala's echo itself is ratified.)

Verdict restated: FULL_COMPANION. She clears the "rich meaning / adds value" bar more completely than

any other candidate — she is the value the rest of the roster is measured against.

---

7. Cardinal & flag items for Josh (ranked)

1. [NAMING-CANON] belief_axis token — proposed truth_witness_mercy (alts: honest_record_integrity,

witness_against_erasure). The one genuinely-open naming item on this character. (§3.3)

2. [CHARACTERIZATION] Trade-4 Herbalism PEER strand — my recommendation vs the journal-only status

quo; kept secondary either way. Objection stated. (§2.3) MIXED substrate flag on Manggarai ethnobotany.

3. [RECONCILIATION] The two integrity departures (Ch 23 + Ch 65 EVIL) — confirm both are live and how

they relate; align the for_life/never registry cell + the "for_life exempt" clause to design A at the

wiring commit. (§0 CORRECTION 2, §3.3)

4. **[RECONCILIATION] Culture is Manggarai (flagship canon), superseding the CAST_INVENTORY "soft/African-

marsh" read; the Ch-13 "marsh where they first met" body-prose is a wording wrinkle to smooth.** (§0

CORRECTION 1)

5. [OPEN CARDINAL — pre-existing] CF-2 — the grown best-friend re-met as a realm-NPC at Ch 70/75.

Ntala's echo is ratified; the reunion-as-distinct-NPC is Josh's open call. (§6 item 5)

6. [RATIFIED — for the record, not open] The name Ntala (Josh 2026-07-12) and her for_life status.

---

8. Verification record

• Citations traced to STABLE docs: T3_Core_Characters (flagship persona, §3/§7), SIGNIFICANCE_LENSES,

ENTITY_PERSONA_SYSTEM, RELATIONSHIP_TIER_BANDS_BRIEF (via CARDINALS + the contract), COMBAT_ENCOUNTER_

SYSTEM, T0_Trade_Registry, and the three foundation artifacts. Per the concurrent-mutation notice I read

CH_17/28/39/56/57, T0_Character_Index, and DECISIONS_PENDING_JOSH for CONTENT only and cite them by

section/name, no line numbers.

• Line-cited and verified to resolve: CH_03 L26/L193/L213, CH_13 L27/L107/L288/L292, CH_16 L30/L143/L173-176/

L275, CH_38 L22/L34, CH_58 L18/L219, CH_65 L146, CH_75 L211/L310, CH_EPILOGUE L19/L27, T3_Core L21/L169/

L177/L183-191/L221/L255/L279-285/L299/L323-341/L631, CARDINALS L29/L87/L202-212/L229.

• Counts stated with filter: 191 actor-beats / 55 nodes (FILTER-1, MEASURED, from CARDINALS_RATE_AND_ROSTER).
• The two burned failure modes avoided: every count carries its filter; every proposal (belief_axis token,

Herbalism strand, join-trigger string, crew station, BOND-band mapping) is labelled RECOMMENDATION/PROPOSED,

and only Josh's rulings + the landed schema + the flagship canon are treated as fixed.

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