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STATUS: PROPOSAL-TIER design law, Phase-5M scope. It ratifies nothing, edits no canon and mints no numbers. It is the DESIGN layer the D1-27 art class, the Niagara cue family and T0_Ability_Presentation_Tier all read.
What this closes
The concept-art density model's D1-27 row carries its own blocker in its own data: the per-BASE-element visual law does not exist. The Ch-3 Manggarai prompt pack declined to board a single ability plate on exactly that ground and named this leaf as the destination, ahead of any per-ability plate. The design-gap register's entry 4 specifies the artifact: a per-base-element presentation row carrying dominant channel, silhouette primitive, motion signature and sound register, with a declared hybrid-inheritance rule, becoming the prompt composer's per-element constraint block and the de-slop critic's per-element checklist.
The written cast-identity layer already answers what each of the 185 abilities LOOKS LIKE once. What it does not answer is how that look is built out of beats, and how it progresses as the caster masters it. Both are what an art brief and a Niagara family need, and both are what this law states.
The derived key space
Nothing in this section is typed. Every figure is counted off the live T0_Ability_Tree_Registry at render time.
Ability rows: 185.
Element values: 31, of which 10 are base and 21 are hybrid.
The hybrid roster is DERIVED, not listed: it is every unordered pair of the 7 non-Ether base elements, and that derivation reproduces the live hybrid set exactly.
Live variant key space: 31 elements x 8 live tiers = 248 keys.
At the twelve-level mastery clamp: 31 elements x 12 levels = 372 keys.
Distinct keys the 185 BASE ABILITY ROWS reach today (base_rows_keyed): 114 of 248, because an ability sits at one tier and the remaining keys are the tiers it is CAST at as the caster masters it -- which is what T0_Ability_Presentation_Tier exists to hold.
That is a DIFFERENT measure from the one build/presentation/key_space.json publishes. This figure counts one key per base ability row; that file counts distinct keys across the presentation registry's own rows, which is larger because a slice ability contributes a row per tier. Each field there names its own measure, and the coverage figure that matters for authoring is registry_keys_authored -- the keys carrying a hand-written per-tier read.
The four-beat grammar
The cue-parameter set already carries PHASE as a closed ratified parameter and the projectile delivery actor already speaks four beats. The written cast-identity belt carries four FIELDS, but only two of them are beats: cast_visual_form is the cast beat and aftermath_state is the aftermath beat, while somatic_form is the body and signature_read is the one-line silhouette. FLIGHT and IMPACT are carried today only where they happen to fall inside the cast or aftermath prose, unnamed and unkeyed. Naming the four beats is what this law adds.
CAST
What the caster's body does, what appears first, and WHERE it appears relative to the body. The universal rule: the material has a visible SOURCE in frame. Earth opens a socket in the ground, water pulls out of a channel or a jar, fire heats the air over the arc before it lights, air moves the loose litter near the hands. A cast with no source in frame has failed at this beat regardless of how it looks.
FLIGHT
What travels and what it does to the air and ground it crosses. Zero-length for melee, self-buff, aura and field abilities, and a zero-length flight beat is DECLARED rather than left blank. The universal rule: the travelling thing is still made of what it was made of at the cast, and it still wears the material it came out of.
IMPACT
What arrives, what the surface it meets does, and what the target's body does. The universal rule: the SURFACE registers before the target does, and the target's response is a body response, never a health-bar response. This is the beat that hands off to T0_Status_Table's persistent on-target read where a status applies.
AFTERMATH
What is left, for roughly how long, and what the world afterward has to route around. The universal rule: the aftermath is a change in the PLACE, not a decal that fades on a timer. A socket, a trough, a rime, a scorch, a standing broken shape, a crescent of dropped litter.
The body
The body is not a fifth beat. It runs UNDER the cast beat and it is authored per-ability, because the somatic form is where cultural register lives and it is the one part of a cast that a per-element law must never flatten. The landed somatic_form cells are the authority; this law never overrides one.
The tier ladder -- three axes, eight rungs
A per-element ladder cannot be authored 248 times without a stated axis, and the alternative to a stated axis is 248 unrelated inventions. Three axes carry the whole progression, and each element's eight rungs below are those axes made concrete in that element's own material.
latency -- Where does the vril sit relative to the gesture?
T1 behind it, so the effect arrives after the body has finished. T2 with it. T3 and T4 at the start of it, so the gesture completes something already begun. T5 and T6 ahead of it, so the world starts before the caster finishes. T7 and T8 without it, so the caster initiates and the world carries.
source_radius -- Where does the material come from?
T1 arm's reach and what is already in hand. T2 and T3 the ground, water and air within a few paces. T4 and T5 the whole encounter space. T6 the site's own depth, so the material arrives carrying the place's accumulated time on its face. T7 and T8 the weather and the horizon.
answer -- Who is doing it?
T1 and T2 the protagonist does it and the world allows it. T3 to T5 the protagonist and the world do it together. T6 the world does it and the protagonist asked. T7 and T8 the world does it and the protagonist only had to mean it.
The clamp
Eight tier levels are live in the ability roster and eight rungs are authored per element, which is the 31 x 8 = 248 live variant key space.
Levels 9 to 12 exist on the mastery framework and are the 31 x 12 = 372 clamp. They are NOT authored here and are NOT synthesized. Per the ratified resolver rule the key falls back DOWN the ladder to the nearest authored rung, which is rung 8, and every such fallback is a DECLARED authoring debt carried on the row rather than a read this law invented.
The light law
Vril alters real physics rather than suspending it, so every emission in this game has a physical emitter and every non-emission reads by a real optical mechanism. Light is EMITTED by things that are burning, incandescent, ionised, or alive-and-luminous. Everything else is LIT: it reads by scattering, by wetting-darkening, by refraction, by occlusion, by silhouette against a real light source already in the scene, and by what it carries.
Never, in any family, at any tier:
self-lit water, self-lit stone, self-lit soil and self-lit plant matter
an aura, halo, corona or rim-light with no light source in the scene to have cast it
a ring, circle, disc or arc of light standing in the air with nothing burning or ionised in it
arcane geometry, magic-circle diagrams, floating sigils and rendered lettering as an effect surface
glowing eyes on any ability caster or ability target
particle sparkle with no emitter, and coloured haze that lights nothing around it
a light shaft that reads as magic rather than as a real light already in the scene
THE ONE EXCEPTION, and it is a lane rather than a loophole. The bans above govern this law's own subject, which is abilities: the key space is the thirty-one element values across eight authored rungs, and a caster or a target is a party to an ability. A folkloric being whose OWN tradition attests a luminous mark is not an ability caster and the mark is not an effect this law dispatches -- it is that being's cited anatomy, held under the tradition's own name, and the Care Doctrine represents a tradition's own material and never scrubs it. Such a mark reads by the alive-and-luminous emitter this law's principle already names, and it is bounded by the same physics as every other emission here: the light sits in the eye and lights nothing beyond it, it is never a rim, halo or corona, never a ring standing in the air, never on a human face, and it is out when the head turns away. A row claims this lane only by CITING the attestation it rests on, and a luminous mark with no cited tradition behind it is the banned class above and fails as one.
Where a family needs to read bright, the law names the mechanism and the mechanism constrains the look. Combustion gives a flame with fuel and a colour that tracks temperature and cools visibly to dark. Incandescence gives a hot material that emits and then stops emitting as it loses heat. Ionisation gives a brief blue-white path that leaves an afterimage rather than a lingering shine. The Ether seats are the ONE authored non-combustion emission and their law is stated in their own entries: the light begins inside a body, travels along that body before it reaches anything else, and costs the body visibly.
The negative exemplar is measured, not asserted: the Ch-3 Manggarai prompt pack's own negative lists name glowing or self-lit water on four separate rows, plus glowing eyes, glowing scales, aura, glowing rings, energy circles, particle auras, arcane geometry and any self-lit overlay. Those rows were fencing the same defect one plate at a time. This law is that fence stated once. That provenance is also why the eye ban scopes to abilities rather than to every body in the game: it was authored fencing an ABILITY-PLATE defect one row at a time, so naming its subject restores the intent it was written with rather than weakening it.
Of the 10 base families, 3 emit: Fire, Lightning, Ether-Crown. Every other family reads by scattering, wetting, refraction, occlusion, silhouette against a light already in the scene, or by what it carries.
The mechanism is carried, not branched
A family's light is a three-valued fact and not a boolean. Combustion and incandescence give a flame with visible fuel and a colour that tracks temperature; ionisation gives a brief path on a visible conductor that leaves an afterimage; the Crown seat's emission begins inside a body and has neither fuel nor a conductor. Each family therefore authors its own affirmative light sentence and declares the mechanisms that sentence names, from the closed vocabulary below, and the emitter FAILs when the two disagree in either direction.
body_emission (emitting)
carried_material
combustion (emitting)
incandescence (emitting)
ionisation (emitting)
no_addition
occlusion
refraction
scattering
silhouette
view_only
wetting_darkening
The seven banned classes above are ARMED against this law's own strings, and the arming is asymmetric on purpose. On the dispatch grammar any hit fails, because that surface already forbids negation and a banned token there can only be an instruction to draw the banned thing. On a tier read -- design prose written for a person, where negation carries its meaning -- a hit fails only when its own sentence is affirmative.
The period anchor
THE PERIOD ANCHOR IS A PROPERTY OF THE LAW (2026-08-05, rung 4, defect class P9). It was authored into the INTERIOR families' plate_settings at rung 3, so it named the architecture of a room; every family whose setting is outdoors kept its default, and the default is contemporary. The class did not close, it RELOCATED, and the systematic read measures it on 40 of 96 rows: a modern white rendered house wall with a flush glazed door 4 of 4 on two rows, tarmac with a kerb on four, cast-iron drainage gratings on two, a circular manhole cover, a poured concrete terrace with a parapet, and a modern grey building with window bands -- and indoors, on the rows the sample never opened, a white panel radiator, a ceiling-mounted dome fitting, a black electrical cable and a white clipboard held by a bystander. It is therefore dispatched on every row of every family, indoors and out, and it names what the world is BUILT OF rather than what it is not, because the graph zeroes negative conditioning and a period ban would invert on dispatch.
dispatched on every row of every family: Everything built or made in this frame is hand-worked from sun-dried mud brick, lime plaster, undressed fieldstone, split timber, thatch and plain iron, and all of it carries tool marks, wear and settling in its own surfaces.
Staging classes
The staging clause was one constant string on every plate, and it contradicted the plate subject wherever the subject was social or body-worn. Staging is therefore a CLASS, DERIVED per row from the family's own form clause and the row's own plate subject, and each class carries its own lane and care tier rather than inheriting lane G by default. REWRITTEN 2026-08-05 against the four-axis judge's read of 384 generated plates: every clause now names the FRAME before it names a person (J8, which produced a second body centre-frame whenever the effect was large), names the crop as a CAMERA instruction (J9, where 'framed clear of the face' was rendered as an anatomically absent head), names the SKIN before the clothing (J2, where a garment over the anatomy the effect occupies got decorated instead of the body), names an ADULT affirmatively (J5, where the dispatched band word put a child in frame on four rows), admits the RECEIVING party (J11, where a two-sided event produced one side of itself), and describes the concealment seat's caster by what IS there rather than by what is missing (J7, where an absence was resolved as a featureless cut-out). REWRITTEN AGAIN 2026-08-05 (rung 3) against the systematic 96-row read of the second generation, which found the rung-2 clause rewrite had authored two new blocking classes of its own. M1/K6: 'the effect is on the bare skin of one adult and the skin itself is the surface that carries it' is correct for a MATERIAL and catastrophic for a channel that is heat or light -- told the skin is the surface, the model removed the garment on 20 rows and set the caster's own arm burning on ten. Every class therefore asserts the garment AFFIRMATIVELY and names its CUT (M7: a colour and a cost with no cut is under-determined, and the model completes it from the strongest attractor, which on three rows was a living tradition), and every class carries a channel_clause so the on-body effect sits on the boundary the garment establishes. M14/K3: the band delta was absent in both generations because every rung shared one staging clause whose whole content is a limb at the frame edge, and a limb at the frame edge sets the scale of the shot -- so the delta moves into band_camera, three per class, and the frame-edge limb belongs to the novice band alone. M12/K4: the crop is named by the BODY LANDMARK its top edge sits ON, because 'below the chin' is a comparison and a comparison is satisfied approximately. M6: the word outline left the surface, because an outline is a second thing and the model drew one.
The class is derived, never hand-assigned, and it is derived PER ROW rather than per ability, because a rung-parameterised subject can put a body in frame at one rung and no person at another. A subject or form naming several figures or people takes people_present; one naming a body, a torso, a collarbone, a sternum, legs or a wound takes worn_on_body; a family declaring a view_only floor takes view_only; everything else takes effect_field. The family's declared staging_floor is the minimum, so a seat whose read only exists in other people cannot fall back to an effect-only frame. Each class DECLARES person_in_frame_as_subject, and a class that declares it must be lane P at elevated care with protected set -- the flag is what the consumers read, so a clause rewrite can never silently move a person into a lane-G frame. The class also declares dispatches_separation, which is M2/K2: the one fact vril adds is that the material moves UNTOUCHED, it was never once dispatched in 768 candidates, and with a hand at the frame edge and a subject made of carried material the model unified them into a person doing the thing by hand on 31 rows. The separation sentence is authored per FAMILY in its own physics and is dispatched only by the class that puts a hand in frame beside a free-standing effect.
The staging class owns WHO IS IN FRAME; the FAMILY owns where it is and what lights it, in its own plate_setting. Fusing the two put an interior wall and window light on an Earth plate whose own dispatched light sentence reads 'the silhouette it holds against the sky'.
THE ACTING SURFACE IS ITS OWN SENTENCE (2026-08-05, rung 4, defect class P1). plate_setting names the BUILT WORLD and the model reads it as the background; the surface the effect acts ON took its own default on 70 of 96 rows, and this model's default for pale broken flat ground is laid paving -- precast slabs in courses, poured concrete with expansion joints, kerbs, tarmac, a cast-iron grating and a circular manhole cover, all of it inside a corpus whose ground is stamped earth. The class therefore authors the acting surface affirmatively and the emitter dispatches it BEFORE the family's plate_setting and separately from it. PLT_X0031 is the positive control that the model can draw unworked ground -- broken earth, straw and loose limestone cobbles, zero paving, on the best plate of its generation -- so this was a dispatch gap and never a capability limit.
effect_field
lane: G, care tier: standard, protected: false, person in frame as a subject: false
staging clause: The effect fills the frame and the acting surface carries it, and every part of a person the frame reaches belongs to one adult at the frame edge, seen from behind, in plain undyed working clothes: a straight-sleeved pullover shirt with its sleeves pushed back above the elbows, straight-cut trousers and flat working boots. That adult's back is to the camera and their hands are open, still and empty. One subject, painterly realism at concept-art finish.
acting surface (dispatched before the family's setting): The ground the effect acts on is one continuous surface of unworked earth: dry stamped soil with grit and straw lying loose across it, and rounded natural fieldstone and river cobbles half-buried in it, each one worn smooth and irregular.
band camera, novice: The camera is close enough that the effect crosses the whole frame at hand scale, and any part of a person the frame reaches is at its edge and seen from behind.
band camera, adept: The camera stands back to mid distance: the effect claims the whole space it is in, the acting surface reads for several paces on every side, and any person the frame reaches is a small figure at its edge, seen from behind.
band camera, mastery: The camera is far back at landscape distance: the ground runs to a horizon, the whole place answers the effect across the full width of the frame, and any person the frame reaches is a distant figure standing for scale, seen from behind.
channel clause, material: The material in the frame takes the daylight already on it and keeps the grain and the dirt of wherever it came from.
channel clause, radiant: The bright material in the frame is the thing that is burning or hot, and the surfaces around it answer it: the stones nearest it have lost their shadows and the air above them is moving.
dispatches the family separation sentence: true
care: Subject is the EFFECT and the ground or air it acts on. The caster appears only as an unidentifiable partial at the frame edge - forearms, hands or boots - in plain undyed working clothes, framed above or below the face. The somatic form is where this ability's cultural register lives, and a depicted practitioner in that register is a living-tradition subject that the lane rule routes to lane R with an acquired reference; this plate stays lane G by keeping the person out of frame as a subject. The plate carries no community setting, no regional dress, no ritual object.
view_only
lane: G, care tier: standard, protected: false, person in frame as a subject: false
staging clause: The whole frame is the view itself: an ordinary place at standing eye height, with the change present in how the air reads and how far the eye reaches into it. One place held in view, painterly realism at concept-art finish.
acting surface (dispatched before the family's setting): The ground the effect acts on is one continuous surface of unworked earth: dry stamped soil with grit and straw lying loose across it, and rounded natural fieldstone and river cobbles half-buried in it, each one worn smooth and irregular.
band camera, novice: The camera is close and intimate: one ordinary corner of the place at arm's length, with the change legible in the air across that short distance.
band camera, adept: The camera stands back to mid distance: a whole ordinary place at standing eye height, with the change legible across the depth of the room or the yard.
band camera, mastery: The camera is far back at landscape distance: the ground runs to a horizon and the change is legible all the way out to it.
channel clause, material: The material in the view takes the daylight already on it.
channel clause, radiant: Anything bright in the view sits on the material it comes from, and the air over that material is moving.
dispatches the family separation sentence: false
care: Subject is the VIEW, and this seat adds nothing to the world for anyone else to see. No person is a subject of the plate, so it stays lane G at standard care.
worn_on_body
lane: P, care tier: elevated, protected: true, person in frame as a subject: true
staging clause: One adult stands seen from behind, with their back to the camera, in plain undyed working clothes that are on and whole: a straight-sleeved pullover shirt with its sleeves pushed back above the elbows, straight-cut trousers and flat working boots. The only bare skin the frame reaches is the forearms and the backs of the hands that the pushed-back sleeves leave showing. Anyone else in frame is receiving the effect, and each of them is either turned away from the camera or looking down at their own laid-out forearm, so the frame reaches the back or the crown of every one of their heads; they sit apart from one another on plain benches and low stools at working distance with open floor between them, and each of them wears working clothes of a different cut: one a pullover shirt with pushed-back sleeves, one a sleeveless overshirt over straight-cut trousers, one a long work apron over a shirt, all of them plain, undyed and worn from use. The standing adult moves along them and attends to one at a time. Painterly realism at concept-art finish.
acting surface (dispatched before the family's setting): The ground the effect acts on is one continuous surface of unworked earth: dry stamped soil with grit and straw lying loose across it, and rounded natural fieldstone and river cobbles half-buried in it, each one worn smooth and irregular.
band camera, novice: The camera stands close behind the adult and looks along their own arms from over the shoulder: the adult is seen from behind, the forearms and the backs of the hands fill the frame at hand scale, and the frame's top edge sits at the shoulder line with the head above it.
band camera, adept: The camera stands back to mid distance behind the adult: one adult reads from the waist up in the middle of the frame, seen from behind, with the working room legible past their shoulder.
band camera, mastery: The camera is far back behind the adult: one adult reads full-length and small, seen from behind, and the ground runs away past them to a horizon that answers what the body is carrying.
channel clause, material: The effect is a MATERIAL, and it lies on the working shirt and on the bare skin of the forearms and the backs of the hands, continuous with the arm and thickest across the backs.
channel clause, radiant: The effect is HEAT or LIGHT, and it rides in the air beside the working shirt's sleeve, in the colour the daylight takes on the cloth, and in the surfaces around the standing adult; the shirt and the trousers are on and whole, and the skin keeps its own ordinary colour.
dispatches the family separation sentence: false
care: This plate puts a person in frame as a subject, because the ability's read lives ON a body and an effect-only frame would brief a different image than the one the law describes. It is therefore lane P at elevated care with protected set: the figure stays anonymous in plain undyed working clothes, framed clear of the face, against a plain interior. A depicted practitioner in a CULTURAL somatic register is the case that routes to lane R with an acquired reference; an anonymous body carrying the effect is generated, protected and reviewed at elevated care, and it stays clear of regional dress, ritual objects and a community setting.
people_present
lane: P, care tier: elevated, protected: true, person in frame as a subject: true
staging clause: Three or four adults are at work together in a plain room, spread through it at their own tasks and every one of them seen from behind: two of them working with their hands at a long timber bench, one carrying something across the room to set it down, and one an adult standing still among them at the same work, dressed exactly as the others are and built like them. They are all in plain undyed working clothes that are on and whole: straight-sleeved pullover shirts with the sleeves pushed back above the elbows, straight-cut trousers and flat working boots. The edge of that still body prints a hand's width to one side of itself, that body is fully present and solid and ordinary, and its colour sits closer to the colour of the wall behind it than to the colour of the people beside it. Painterly realism at concept-art finish.
acting surface (dispatched before the family's setting): The floor under everyone in the room is one continuous surface of stamped earth, worn smooth along the lines people walk and dusty at its edges, with the rounded natural stone of the ground showing through where it is thin.
band camera, novice: The camera is close and intimate: two adults at their work at conversational distance, both seen from behind, with the frame's top edge sitting at the shoulder line of each.
band camera, adept: The camera stands back to mid distance: the whole room and the four adults at work in it, every one of them seen from behind, the still one among them at the same work.
band camera, mastery: The camera is far back at the width of the whole room: adults at work spread across it, every one of them seen from behind and small in the frame, with the room's far wall reading behind them.
channel clause, material: The material in the frame lies on the floor and on the working clothes of the people, keeping the grain of wherever it came from.
channel clause, radiant: The bright thing in the frame sits on the material it comes from, and the working clothes of everyone in the room are on and whole while the light crosses the room to reach them.
dispatches the family separation sentence: false
care: This seat's whole read is what OTHER people do, so a plate with the people removed briefs the opposite of the ability. It is lane P at elevated care with protected set: the figures stay indistinct and anonymous, in plain undyed working clothes, faces turned away or soft in the depth of field, in a plain interior. A depicted practitioner in a CULTURAL somatic register is the case that routes to lane R with an acquired reference; anonymous bystanders reacting are generated, protected and reviewed at elevated care, and the plate stays clear of regional dress, ritual objects and a community setting.
Intensity inside a tier
Tier is the discrete axis and intensity is the continuous one. A tier says how much of the world is answering; intensity says how hard this particular cast was pushed. Both must be readable without a meter, which is why every class below names the thing a watcher looks at.
charge_hold_scaled
The read grows with how long the cast is held. The evidence of the hold survives into the aftermath: Stone Wall's top edge is ragged where the charge ended, so the barrier's own silhouette tells a watcher exactly how long the caster held it.
commit_scaled
The read grows with how hard the body committed. Ember Strike lights only on an over-committed swing and a careful strike does not light at all, so the intensity is legible in the posture rather than in a meter.
vril_spend_scaled
The read grows with the fraction of the pool spent, and the cost shows on the CASTER. Vril Healing leaves the protagonist visibly emptied and breathing hard, so a watcher can price the cast by looking at the person who paid for it.
environment_scaled
The read grows with how much of the element is present, which is the recovered matrix's environment-dependency doctrine made visible. Mist Screen is thickest where the ground is wettest and thins where it is not, so the shape of the effect is a readout of the terrain.
stillness_scaled
The read grows with how still the caster holds, and a sudden movement collapses it. Cloaking is half stillness and half vril at its lowest rung, and the break is more noticeable than the concealment was.
attention_scaled
The read grows with how completely the caster is attending to one subject, and it is visible entirely in other people rather than in the caster. This is the Ether-Throat and Ether-Crown class.
fixed
No intra-tier variance. Passives and always-on states sit here, and the honest consequence is that they carry their whole range on the tier axis alone.
The rune forge hook
The rune system is the player-facing ability creator, so an operator that changes nothing a player can SEE in the first cast is a defect. Every operator family below names exactly which of the four beats it rewrites and which beats it must leave alone, so a player who fits an operator can name the change without a tooltip and a critic can check it.
shape
runes: RN_0001 wheel, RN_0002 wave, RN_0003 orb, RN_0004 field
rewrites: The SILHOUETTE of the delivery volume at the cast and flight beats.
leaves alone: The material, the colour, the light law and the aftermath. A wheel-shaped Fire Bolt is the same dark-hearted knot re-formed as a ring travelling on its edge, and it still scorches round and still drops ash along its path.
rewrites: The TIME SIGNATURE. Charge-hold inserts a visible accumulation beat before the cast and moves the ability's intensity class to charge_hold_scaled. Sustained-channel makes the cast beat continuous and moves the aftermath to the moment of release. Beam collapses the flight beat to zero so cast and impact land together.
leaves alone: The material and the impact's surface behaviour.
rewrites: The FLIGHT beat's path, and only that. Split duplicates the flight read at reduced scale. Orbit binds the flight volume to the caster. Hold-to-home adds a visible CORRECTION: the volume changes heading and the correction is legible as a correction rather than as a curve it was always going to take.
rewrites: The MATERIAL, which moves the affected beats onto a different element's law. Thermal on a Water ability moves its read onto Water's cold rungs. Ignite on a Vegetation ability moves the impact and aftermath beats onto Fire's law while the cast beat stays Vegetation's. Magnetise-conduct moves the flight beat onto Lightning's conduction rule so the path starts choosing metal.
leaves alone: The somatic form. The body still does what the ability taught it to do, which is what keeps a transformed ability recognisable as the ability the player learned.
element-combine
runes: RN_0016 Fuse, legendary
rewrites: Everything, under the hybrid inheritance rule below. The output is a hybrid read and it resolves to a hybrid variant key.
leaves alone: Nothing. This is the operator that mints a new read rather than modifying one.
meta
runes: RN_0017 spell-merge catalyst, RN_0018 enchantment slot and re-roll
rewrites: Nothing on an existing ability. The catalyst AUTHORS a new ability, and a newly authored ability needs a newly authored variant key, which is a row this registry has no way to synthesize and must not pretend to.
leaves alone: Every existing read. Recorded here so the merge lane knows it owes an authored key rather than inheriting one.
The dispatch grammar
THE DISPATCH GRAMMAR, and why it is a second surface. The prose of this law is written for people, so it uses meaning-bearing negations freely: fire that lights only where it means it, air visible only by what it carries, an outline that will not sit still. The image graph zeroes negative conditioning, so a meaning-bearing negation pasted into a dispatched prompt is DROPPED and the sentence inverts into its opposite. Each family therefore carries a prompt_grammar block: one affirmative clause for its form, one for each of the four beats, and one for each of the eight rungs. Only these strings reach a prompt. The worklist emitter REFUSES to brief a plate for a family that carries no grammar block rather than falling back to the design prose, and its self-test FAILs on any negation reaching a dispatched field. This is the affirmative-only law the Ch-3 prompt pack established, applied to a law instead of to a row.
Each family's affirmative clauses are listed under its own entry below, as the dispatch grammar block.
Hybrid inheritance
material: A hybrid takes its material from the NAMED PRODUCT where the recovered matrix names one, and from the ability's own name where it does not. Six of the twenty-one hybrids are named in the authored original and their names are already live in the ability roster: Earth+Fire is Metal (Metal Strike), Earth+Water is Mud (Mud Field), Earth+Air is Sand (Sand Lash), Water+Fire is Steam (Steam Burst), Fire+Air is Smoke (Smoke Veil), Water+Air is Ice. Those six are the exemplars the other fifteen are read against.
beat split: The parent whose material SURVIVES to the aftermath owns the impact and aftermath beats. The other parent owns the cast and flight beats. Mud Field darkens and spreads like water at the cast and stays soft ground afterward, so Water owns cast and flight and Earth owns impact and aftermath. Smoke Veil leaves at Fire's temperature and hangs at Air's, so Fire owns cast and Air owns aftermath.
light: A hybrid's light law is the STRICTER of its two parents, except where the named product is itself an emitter. Metal in its molten state emits by incandescence and cools visibly to dark. Plasma emits by ionisation. Every other hybrid of a non-emitting parent with a non-emitting parent never emits, and a hybrid of an emitter with a non-emitter emits only from the portion that is actually burning or ionised.
tier: A hybrid rides its own tier's rung on BOTH parent ladders, read together. A tier-5 Earth+Fire is Earth's tier-5 source radius and Fire's tier-5 colour climb at the same time, which is exactly what Magma Tide already reads as.
axis inheritance: The recovered grid's (B)rute and (T)rickery axis tags inherit: a hybrid carries both parents' axes. That is the authored original's own rule and it is left unchanged here.
The families
Earth
channel: Mass and grain. The read is stone, grit, dust and the ground's own strata, and its weight is always legible.
silhouette primitive: Slab and shard. Flat faces, ragged edges, nothing rounded that a break would not round.
motion signature: Late and heavy. Earth arrives after the gesture at the low rungs and moves as one surface at the high ones; it never darts and never hovers decoratively.
sound register: Low, dry and granular, with the pieces still settling after the event is over.
status handoff: Crush (ST-class stagger), per the recovered matrix's per-element status table.
status handoff, resolved: Crush -> ST_010 (stagger)
environment dependency: Earth must be present. The authored original's carried bag of sand is the canonical workaround and it should be visible in frame when it is the source.
light: NEVER EMITS -- Earth never emits. It reads by occlusion, by the dust it puts into an existing light, and by the grain of wet limestone drying pale. The single exception is the Earth+Fire hybrid's molten state, where the emission is incandescence with a temperature that cools visibly to dark.
plate setting: Neutral outdoor daylight over stamped earth and dry stone, with a mid-grey neutral background beyond the acting surface.
separation (dispatched by the effect-field staging class): The lifted ground stands a full stride clear of the hand, the grain of it rising first and the whole mass following it up through open air, and the hand stays open and still where it is.
intensity default: charge_hold_scaled
The four beats
cast: The material leaves the GROUND, not the hand, and a socket opens where it came from. The hand's job is to hold it and aim it.
flight: Flat and fast and heavy, still wearing the dirt it was lying in, dropping grit along its line.
impact: The surface takes a dent and loose material scatters downrange. Bodies are knocked off their footing rather than thrown.
aftermath: The ground keeps the record: a socket, a shallow trough, a ring of dropped dust, or a standing broken shape that anything crossing has to step around.
The eight rungs
T1: A fist-sized stone works itself up out of the ground and waits at hip height for the arm; a shell that follows a flinch closes unevenly, thick where the fear was and thin across the back. Everything arrives half a beat late.
T2: The stone comes up level and does not wobble, and a shell closes to the same thickness front and back. Still one piece, still arm's reach, but the vril now arrives with the gesture instead of behind it.
T3: Slabs and tendrils instead of stones, drawn from a few paces out, holding their shape for as long as the hold lasts and still striped with the layers they were lying in.
T4: Two or three pieces move together on one gesture and the sockets they leave line up, so the ground reads as having been read rather than grabbed.
T5: The stone stops needing the hand. What is raised stays up after the arm drops, and the trough it was drawn from crosses the whole encounter space.
T6: The site answers with its depth. The water table darkens the base of what comes up and the material arrives carrying the place's accumulated time on its face.
T7: The ground moves as one surface. What rises is not pieces but a change in the shape of the terrain, and it keeps moving after the caster has stopped.
T8: The ground agrees over a distance no arm reaches, and what is left is a landform the world afterward has to route around.
The dispatch grammar
form: Every broken surface is a fresh break: flat where the material split, ragged where it tore, with soil still clinging to its underside and loose grit dropping off its edges while it moves. It is earth and stone with the grain of the ground still in it, and the ground it came out of lies open and unworked.
light: All illumination in frame is the daylight already present in the scene; the effect reads by the dust it carries into that light, by what it occludes as it passes, and by the silhouette it holds against the sky.
cast beat: The ground opens under the caster and the material comes up out of the opening it left, wearing the dirt it lay in.
flight beat: The stone travels flat and fast, still wearing the dirt it lay in, shedding grit along its line.
impact beat: The struck surface dents where it was hit, loose material scatters away downrange along the ground, and whatever is standing on that ground loses its footing.
aftermath beat: The ground keeps the record of the event: the open hole the material came out of, a shallow trough scraped across the surface, a circle of dropped dust settling, and the broken material lying where it stopped with its torn edges still pale.
rung T1: One fist-sized piece of the ground, uneven and arriving a half beat late, torn from directly underfoot.
rung T2: One piece held level at a steady height, arriving on the gesture, drawn from arm's reach.
rung T3: Layered pieces and long tongues of material drawn from a few paces out, striped with the layers they lay in.
rung T4: Three pieces moving together on one gesture, the holes they came out of lying in a line.
rung T5: A mass of raw ground standing where it was pushed up, its faces freshly torn, with a trough crossing the whole space behind it.
rung T6: Material carrying the site's depth, strata on its face and the water table darkening its base.
rung T7: The terrain changing shape as one surface and continuing to move after the caster stops.
rung T8: So much ground has moved that the place has a new shape, raw and unsettled and still dropping grit, and the world afterward routes around it.
Water
channel: Surface and cold. The read is refraction, the darkening of whatever it wets, and the matte-then-grained-then-white crusting that cold puts on a surface.
silhouette primitive: Rope, sheet and bead. Water holds one of three shapes and is never a blob.
motion signature: Continuous and led by the body. A water shape lives while the shoulder is turning and falls apart the instant it stops, until the rungs where it stops needing the arm.
sound register: Wet and broad-band, with the cold arriving as a tightening rather than a sound of its own.
status handoff: Saturate, and Freeze at the cold rungs and the Ice hybrid.
status handoff, resolved: Saturate -> UNBUILT (named in ELEMENTS_MATRIX_RECOVERED Section 4; no T0_Status_Table row exists yet); Freeze -> ST_008 (freeze)
environment dependency: Water must be present. The authored original's carried jug is the canonical workaround and it should be visible in frame when it is the source.
light: NEVER EMITS -- Water never emits. There is no self-lit water anywhere in this game. It reads by what it bends, by what it darkens, by the specular of a real light already in the scene, and by the visible progression of freezing.
plate setting: Neutral outdoor daylight over stamped earth and dry stone, with a mid-grey neutral background beyond the acting surface.
separation (dispatched by the effect-field staging class): The water stands off every surface and a full stride clear of the hand, holding its own line in open air, and the hand stays open and still where it is.
intensity default: environment_scaled
The four beats
cast: The water pulls out of a real source in frame, a channel or a flooded terrace or a full jar or the wet ground itself. A cast with no visible source has failed.
flight: The shape holds only while the body is still moving; the rope runs out along the arm's line and the sheet runs out ahead at the height it was set.
impact: The target goes wet and dark first, then stiff if the cold arrived. Cloth and hair register before skin does.
aftermath: A wet mark that dries inward from both ends, and a pale rime that outlasts the water on stone and standing water.
The eight rungs
T1: A rope or a skin that lives only while the shoulder turns and falls apart the instant it stops, drawn from whatever was nearest.
T2: The shape holds a beat past the gesture and comes from a source the caster CHOSE rather than the closest one.
T3: Cold enters the read: the surface goes matte, then grained, then crusts white at its leading edge as it travels, and a sheet or a bead now holds against gravity.
T4: Two states at once. A moving sheet with a frozen edge, or a screen thicker where the ground is wetter and thinner where it is not.
T5: Water comes from the SITE rather than the scene, so ground that looked dry gives it up, and what is raised stays raised after the arms drop.
T6: The water arrives carrying what the site is made of, silt or salt or ash, so the place's own composition is visible in its colour.
T7: Weather. Rain arrives with dry ground on both sides of it and walks where an arm points.
T8: The water table itself is the material, and what is left is a changed shoreline the world has to live with.
The dispatch grammar
form: The water runs out in one continuous line and holds that line, spreads flat and wide where it is sent out, and breaks into travelling drops at its trailing edge; every surface it touches goes dark and wet, and its coldest edges crust pale.
light: All illumination in frame is the daylight already present in the scene; the effect reads by what it refracts, by the surfaces it wets and darkens, by the light it scatters through itself, and by the silhouette it holds against that daylight.
cast beat: Water pulls up out of the wet ground already in frame and stands into the open air above it, and the ground it left is dark where it came from.
flight beat: The shape holds while the body moves, a continuous line keeping its own path or a flat standing sheet at the height it was set.
impact beat: The target goes wet and dark first and then stiff where the cold arrived, and the clothes and hair on it register before the skin does.
aftermath beat: A wet mark dries inward from both ends and a pale rime outlasts the water on stone.
rung T1: One continuous line of water living along the arm while the shoulder turns, drawn from the nearest water.
rung T2: The same line held a beat past the gesture, drawn from a chosen source further off.
rung T3: Cold entering the read: matte, then grained, then a white crust at the leading edge.
rung T4: Two states at once, a moving flat spread with a frozen leading edge, thicker over wet ground.
rung T5: Water drawn from the site itself, standing on where it was put after the arms drop.
rung T6: Water carrying the site's own silt or salt or ash, visible in its colour.
rung T7: Rain arriving as weather, walking where an arm points, with dry ground on both sides.
rung T8: The water table itself as material, leaving a changed shoreline behind.
Fire
channel: Combustion and incandescence. The one base family whose light is a real emission, and the emission always has a fuel and a temperature.
silhouette primitive: Knot and smear. A dense core dark at its centre and bright at its skin, or a bright streak on the last third of an arc.
motion signature: Fast, arriving before its own light is fully up and gone before the follow-through ends at the low rungs; standing and self-feeding at the high ones.
sound register: Air-intake and crack, with the roar arriving only once there is enough burning volume to earn it.
status handoff: Burn, and Scald through the Water+Fire hybrid.
environment dependency: Fire is blocked underwater, in precipitation, and in cold without items. That block is the authored original's own rule and it stays a visible constraint rather than a hidden modifier.
light: EMITS -- Emits by combustion where there is fuel, and by incandescence where a material has been heated until it emits. Colour tracks temperature and cools visibly to dark: dull red, orange, yellow-white, and white-violet only at the plasma rungs. Fire never emits as a wash, a rim or a halo with nothing burning in it.
plate setting: Neutral outdoor daylight over stamped earth and dry stone, with a mid-grey neutral background beyond the acting surface.
separation (dispatched by the effect-field staging class): The burning mass stands a full stride clear of the hand, holding on the fuel it carries inside itself, and the hand stays open and still where it is.
intensity default: commit_scaled
The four beats
cast: The heat arrives before the flame. The air over the arc bends first, and only then does anything light.
flight: A dense knot with a wake of hot air behind it that bends the view of whatever it passes.
impact: A scorch with a SHAPE, and the surface either keeps burning or stops burning according to what it is made of.
aftermath: A thin line of ash falling out of the air along the path it took, a scorch that stays, and the air over it still wobbling.
The eight rungs
T1: Only the last third of the swing catches, and it is out before the follow-through ends. A careful strike does not light at all.
T2: The whole arc carries and stays lit until the arm stops, and the knot in front of the palm is round rather than ragged.
T3: No flame at all where the ability is a field: just air standing wrong in a band, with the heat shaped like anatomy rather than like an aura.
T4: The fire stays where it is put. A burning volume holds its own edge and keeps consuming what it is standing on.
T5: Colour climbs past orange into yellow-white and the fuel stops mattering, because the material itself is now what is glowing.
T6: The site's own fuel joins: the oil in the ground, the peat, the dry season, and the fire spreads on the terrain's logic rather than the caster's.
T7: Fire is initiated rather than carried. A bright split opens in the ground and keeps flowing downhill after everyone has stopped.
T8: The horizon carries it, and what is left is a burnt shape on the map with its own edge.
The dispatch grammar
form: One dense burning mass, dark at its centre and bright along its outer surface, moving fast, with the air bending around it.
light: Every bright thing in frame is either the daylight already present in the scene, or a material that is burning with its fuel visible in frame, or a material heated until it emits, with the colour tracking temperature as the hot material cools toward dark at the edges.
cast beat: The air over the arc bends with heat first, and then the fuel that is visible in frame catches: what burns is the thing the flame is standing on.
flight beat: The burning mass travels as one dense body with a wake of hot air behind it that bends the view it passes.
impact beat: The struck material takes a scorch with a definite shape, and decides whether it keeps burning.
aftermath beat: Ash falls out of the air along the path, the scorch stays, and the air above it wobbles.
rung T1: Fire on the last third of the arc alone, out before the follow-through ends.
rung T2: The whole arc carrying, round and steady, lit until the arm stops.
rung T3: The air across the middle of the body is bent by heat and shows by what is distorted through it, the distortion taking the shape of the body underneath; the one bright thing at this rung is the daylight already in the scene.
rung T4: A burning volume holding its own edge and consuming what it stands on.
rung T5: Colour climbing to yellow-white, with the material itself doing the glowing.
rung T6: The site's own fuel joining, so the fire spreads along the terrain's logic.
rung T7: A bright split in the ground that keeps flowing downhill after the caster stops.
rung T8: The horizon carrying it, leaving a burnt shape with its own edge.
Air
channel: What the air is carrying. Air is invisible, so every read is dust, leaf litter, spray, pollen, smoke, cloth or hair.
silhouette primitive: Front and corridor. A widening fan, or a lane of disturbed material behind something already at the far end of it.
motion signature: Sequential rather than simultaneous. Carried material lifts in order along the path, which is how the eye reads a direction it never saw travel.
sound register: Broad and low with a rising edge, and the carried material giving it its texture.
status handoff: Windburn, and Asphyxia through the Fire+Air hybrid.
status handoff, resolved: Windburn -> ST_005 (windburn); Asphyxia -> UNBUILT (named in ELEMENTS_MATRIX_RECOVERED Section 4; no T0_Status_Table row exists yet)
environment dependency: Air must be present. The authored original's carried jar is the canonical workaround, and sealed or airless spaces are a real constraint rather than a hidden one.
light: NEVER EMITS -- Air never emits. It reads by occlusion, by the motion of what it carries, and by the change in what can be seen through it. A visible air effect with nothing in it to be visible is the defect.
plate setting: Neutral outdoor daylight over stamped earth and dry stone, with a mid-grey neutral background beyond the acting surface.
separation (dispatched by the effect-field staging class): The lifted dust and litter stand a full stride clear of the hand, rising grain by grain into the open air, and the hand stays open and still where it is.
intensity default: environment_scaled
The four beats
cast: Nothing leaves the hands that can be seen. The loose material near the hands moves first and that is the whole tell.
flight: A front or a corridor whose edge is drawn entirely by carried matter, widening as it goes.
impact: Light things go over backward and heavy things do not move. Cloth and hair register before bodies do.
aftermath: The carried material comes down in a rough crescent at the far end, or settles back from the far end toward the near.
The eight rungs
T1: A short corridor of disturbed dust behind someone already at the end of it, and a shallow fan that exists only because of what it picked up.
T2: The fan holds a straight edge and the corridor stays open a beat longer before it settles.
T3: A cut rather than a push: the air is thin and fast enough to leave a line on a surface, and the read is what falls out of the cut afterward.
T4: The volume is HELD. A standing cloud that will not blow away, or a screen kept at a chosen height.
T5: Rotation enters. A travelling spiral, and everything it crosses stripped clean.
T6: The site's own air joins: the valley wind, the sea breeze, the smoke of the place, and the shape belongs to the terrain.
T7: No cloud and no edge. The horizon comes in from every side and the caster is standing in the middle of it.
T8: A storm with a still centre that stays a perfect circle, and the world's own weather carries it afterward.
The dispatch grammar
form: The lifted material spreads wider the further it travels from where it started, and its whole edge is drawn by what it carries: dust, leaf litter, spray and loose chaff.
light: All illumination in frame is the daylight already present in the scene; the effect reads by the dust and litter it carries, by what it occludes as it passes, and by the silhouette that carried material holds against the light.
cast beat: The loose material lying on the ground lifts first, a full stride out, and draws the shape of what passed over it.
flight beat: A front or corridor whose edge is carried matter, widening as it travels.
impact beat: Light things go over backward and heavy things hold where they stand, and the clothes and hair on whatever it reaches register first.
aftermath beat: The carried material comes down in a rough crescent and settles back from the far end.
rung T1: A short corridor of lifted dust behind someone already at its far end.
rung T2: The spread holds one straight leading edge and reaches a full stride further.
rung T3: A thin fast cut leaving a line on the surface, with material falling out of it.
rung T4: A standing body of lifted material holding the height it was set at.
rung T5: A travelling spiral leaving everything it crosses stripped clean.
rung T6: The site's own wind joining, so the shape follows the terrain.
rung T7: The whole horizon closing in from every side around the caster.
rung T8: A storm turning around a still centre, the calm at its middle as wide as a courtyard, and the weather afterward keeping that shape.
Lightning
channel: Ionisation and conduction. The read is the path a charge chose, and what it chose it for.
silhouette primitive: Branch and thread. Straight segments with sharp direction changes, never a smooth curve.
motion signature: Instantaneous. There is no travel to watch, only a path that was suddenly there and an afterimage of it.
sound register: Crack and tearing, with a low hum on the standing states.
status handoff: Shock and Paralyze.
status handoff, resolved: Shock -> UNBUILT (named in ELEMENTS_MATRIX_RECOVERED Section 4; no T0_Status_Table row exists yet); Paralyze -> ST_009 (paralyze)
environment dependency: Conduction wants a conductor. Wet ground, metal, armour and standing water make the read; dry insulated ground blunts it, and that constraint is visible in where the path goes.
light: EMITS -- Emits by ionisation. The emission is brief and blue-white and leaves an afterimage on everything it lit rather than a lingering glow. Between strikes there is NO light: the standing states read by hair lifting, by small arcs on gear, and by the way the air has gone tight, never by a continuous shine.
light mechanisms declared: ionisation
staging floor: effect_field
plate setting: Neutral outdoor daylight over stamped earth and dry stone, with a mid-grey neutral background beyond the acting surface.
separation (dispatched by the effect-field staging class): The ionised path stands a full stride clear of the hand, springing between the conductors it chose, and the hand stays open and still where it is.
intensity default: vril_spend_scaled
The four beats
cast: The charge shows on the caster's own metal and hair before anything leaves them.
flight: Instantaneous and branched, taking the conductive path and visibly stepping over the one in cloth.
impact: A point mark, and the target's body LOCKS rather than folds.
aftermath: A scorch pit, the air smelling wrong, and a target still twitching after the event.
The eight rungs
T1: A snap between two fingers, carrying only where skin is already touching metal.
T2: A visible thread that reaches a pace and prefers the wet ground under it.
T3: A charge laid on a surface: bright threads across a shallow pool, or hair standing up across a whole group.
T4: A path that jumps once and chooses correctly, armour to armour.
T5: A standing volume of charged air with no cloud and no bolt in it, and everything inside it failing at once.
T6: The site conducts. The ore body, the wet cave wall, the iron in the building, and the path is the place's own wiring.
T7: The strike is called rather than thrown, arriving from above and too straight to be weather.
T8: The storm picks its own targets while the caster stands with one arm up.
The dispatch grammar
form: Straight branched segments with sharp direction changes, instantaneous, leaving an afterimage.
light: Every bright thing in frame is an ionised path standing on a visible conductor, brief and blue-white, leaving an afterimage on each surface it lit.
cast beat: The charge shows first on the caster's own metal and lifted hair.
flight beat: A branched path takes the conductive route, choosing wet ground and armour.
impact beat: A point mark, and the target's body locks in place.
aftermath beat: A scorch pit, air that smells burnt, and a target still twitching.
rung T1: A snap between two fingers carrying through touching metal alone.
rung T2: A visible thread reaching a pace, preferring the wet ground.
rung T3: A charge laid across a surface: threads on a pool, hair lifting across a group.
rung T4: A path that jumps once, armour to armour, choosing correctly.
rung T5: A standing volume of charged air with everything inside it failing at once.
rung T6: The site's own ore, wet wall and iron carrying the path.
rung T7: A strike called from above, straighter than weather makes.
rung T8: A storm choosing its own targets while the caster stands with one arm up.
Poison
channel: Colour, opacity and consequence. The read is never the substance, it is the change in the thing that received it.
silhouette primitive: Patch and drift. A spreading stain on a surface, or a volume of air with visible edges that stays where it was put.
motion signature: Slow and gravity-obeying. A thrown dose arcs, a released cloud settles and creeps, and nothing about poison is fast.
sound register: Almost nothing at the source and everything on the target: coughing, retching, the sound of a body failing.
status handoff: Poison, and the septic-wound loop where a creature carries it.
environment dependency: Enclosure. A cloud in a room is the whole ability and the same cloud in open wind is not, and the difference is visible.
light: NEVER EMITS -- Poison never emits. A glowing poison is the exact non-physical-light defect. It reads by sallow colour, by smoking where it lands, by opacity in air, and by the state of skin, leaf and cloth afterward.
plate setting: Neutral outdoor daylight over stamped earth and dry stone, with a mid-grey neutral background beyond the acting surface.
separation (dispatched by the effect-field staging class): The stain and the fouled air stand a full stride clear of the hand, spreading under their own weight, and the hand stays open and still where it is.
intensity default: environment_scaled
care: The recovered original's alchemical chain names real chemical weapons. Under the care doctrine's rename-and-reframe tool those names never become an ability name, a plate subject or a player-facing string; the chain's real escalation structure is kept and its naming is routed to the naming pass.
The four beats
cast: The material comes from a carried source or from the ground's own rot, and it has weight: a liquid, a dust or a haze rather than an energy.
flight: It drifts or falls. There is no ballistic beat worth watching and the law says so rather than inventing one.
impact: It lands and starts working, and the working shows on the SURFACE before it shows on the target.
aftermath: The ground stays sallow, plants die from the roots up, and the area stays dangerous to cross for longer than the cast lasted.
The eight rungs
T1: A coated edge and a dose that takes its time, visible only as a darkening on the blade and a slowness in the target.
T2: A thrown flask's worth: a small stain that smokes for a moment and stops.
T3: A patch that spreads through soil on its own, with the plants in it dying from the roots up.
T4: Airborne. A volume with visible edges that stays where it is put and makes people cough before they notice it.
T5: A front rather than a patch: green turning brown across a whole field, moving at walking pace.
T6: The site supplies it. The tailings, the stagnant water, the rot already in the ground, and the poison is the place's own.
T7: Rain that arrives already wrong, smoking off armour across a whole area.
T8: The land itself is the dose, and what is left is ground that will not grow for a long time.
The dispatch grammar
form: A spreading stain on a surface or a volume of air with visible edges, slow and gravity-obeying.
light: All illumination in frame is the daylight already present in the scene; the effect reads by the sallow colour it scatters, by the opacity that occludes what is behind it, and by the surfaces it wets and darkens where it lands.
cast beat: The material leaves a carried source or the ground's own rot with visible weight.
flight beat: It drifts and falls, arcing as a thrown dose and settling as a released cloud.
impact beat: It lands and the surface it touched changes before the target does.
aftermath beat: Ground stays sallow, plants die from the roots up, and the area stays dangerous to cross.
rung T1: A darkened coating on an edge and a slowness arriving late in the target.
rung T2: A small stain that smokes for a moment where a flask broke.
rung T3: A patch spreading through soil with the plants in it dying from the roots.
rung T4: An airborne volume with visible edges holding where it was put.
rung T5: A front of green turning brown across a whole field at walking pace.
rung T6: The site's own tailings and stagnant water supplying it.
rung T7: Rain arriving already fouled, smoking off armour across an area.
rung T8: The land itself as the dose, leaving ground that stays barren.
Vegetation
channel: Growth rate and turgor. The read is time-lapse made physical, and the direction things grow toward is always meaningful.
silhouette primitive: Reach and mesh. Individual reaching lines at the low rungs, woven volume at the high ones.
motion signature: Accelerated growth with a visible seeking. Vegetation moves the way a plant moves, only fast enough to watch.
sound register: Creak, tear and rustle, with the sound of soil breaking as roots come through.
status handoff: Restrain, and Life-heal where the family is used to mend.
status handoff, resolved: Restrain -> UNBUILT (AUTHORED EXTENSION: absent from both T0_Status_Table and ELEMENTS_MATRIX_RECOVERED Section 4, and declared under NOT DERIVED); Life-heal -> ST_006 (life_hot)
environment dependency: Living substrate. Bare rock, salt flat and deep desert are real limits and the ability visibly struggles in them rather than silently costing more.
light: NEVER EMITS -- Vegetation never emits. No glowing plants, no luminous sap, no light running along a vine. It reads by growth speed, by what it grows toward, by turgor and wilt, and by what it does to the ground it comes out of.
plate setting: Neutral outdoor daylight over stamped earth and dry stone, with a mid-grey neutral background beyond the acting surface.
separation (dispatched by the effect-field staging class): The growth stands a full stride clear of the hand, coming up out of the ground on its own, and the hand stays open and still where it is.
intensity default: environment_scaled
The four beats
cast: The ground breaks first. Something comes up through the surface and the surface tells you it did.
flight: Growth along the ground toward the target rather than travel through the air, so the beat is a spreading rather than a flying.
impact: It reaches, wraps and holds. The target's limbs are found one at a time.
aftermath: The growth stays and keeps growing slowly, and the place is a different shape to move through than it was.
The eight rungs
T1: One shoot through the surface, waist-high and thin, reaching once and stopping.
T2: Several shoots on the same gesture, and the ground breaking in a line rather than a point.
T3: Thorned growth that holds. It reaches a long way and cannot take a step, and it closes on what it finds.
T4: A woven volume: a wall or a thicket that closes its own holes while it is being hit.
T5: Bare ground goes fully overgrown in seconds, and the growth starts helping whoever is standing in it.
T6: The site's own flora answers, so what comes up is the species that actually belong to that place and the region is legible in the growth.
T7: Canopy. The vertical shape of the encounter changes and the light on the ground changes with it.
T8: The place becomes forest and stays forest, and the world afterward has to route around it.
The dispatch grammar
form: Reaching lines at the low rungs and woven volume at the high ones, growing fast enough to watch.
light: All illumination in frame is the daylight already present in the scene; the effect reads by the leaf mass that occludes what is behind it, by the silhouette it throws across the ground, and by the soil it wets and darkens where it comes up.
cast beat: The ground surface breaks and something comes up through it.
flight beat: Growth spreads along the ground toward the target.
impact beat: It reaches, wraps and holds, finding limbs one at a time.
aftermath beat: The growth stays and keeps growing slowly, changing the shape of the place to move through.
rung T1: One thin waist-high shoot through the surface, reaching once.
rung T2: Several shoots on one gesture, with the ground breaking in a line.
rung T3: Thorned growth reaching a long way and closing on what it finds.
rung T4: A woven wall or thicket closing its own holes as it is struck.
rung T5: Bare ground fully overgrown in seconds, the growth helping whoever stands in it.
rung T6: The site's own species answering, so the region is legible in the growth.
rung T7: Canopy forming, changing the vertical shape and the light on the ground.
rung T8: The place become forest and staying forest for the world to route around.
Ether-Throat
channel: Attention, carried by voice and by the edge of the self. The ability is visible on OTHER PEOPLE and on the caster's outline, and never as an object added to the frame.
silhouette primitive: None added. The Throat seat's only silhouette is the caster's own, and the effect is a disagreement between that silhouette and where the caster actually is.
motion signature: The room's motion, not the caster's. Heads come round a beat sooner than they should, talking drops a level, an eye slides past a place it should have stopped at.
sound register: Clarity rather than volume. A brief acoustic rightness around the voice, as if the space had been arranged for it.
status handoff: Social and stealth states rather than damage states.
status handoff, resolved: no damage class belongs to this seat
environment dependency: People, or a watcher. With nobody to be affected the Throat seat has no read at all, and that is a real constraint rather than a wasted cast.
light: NEVER EMITS -- Nothing is added to the frame. No shimmer, no distortion field, no outline glow. The concealment read is an outline that will not sit still on the body and a colour drain toward whatever is behind; the presence read is entirely in other people's heads and shoulders.
plate setting: An ordinary interior lit by flat daylight through a shuttered opening in the wall, the walls lime-plastered over mud brick, the floor stamped earth, and plain timber and plain undyed woven matting the only furnishing.
separation (dispatched by the effect-field staging class): The space between the still adult and everyone else in the room stays open and empty, and the effect crosses that open space on its own.
intensity default: attention_scaled
The four beats
cast: The caster goes still and does one small correct thing: waits for the gap and speaks into it, or holds their breath and stops moving.
flight: Zero-length and DECLARED. There is nothing between the caster and the affected, which is the point of the seat.
impact: The room's behaviour changes on the beat, and the change is legible to a player watching the crowd rather than the caster.
aftermath: The room stays tipped for a while after: people finish their sentences to the caster rather than to each other, or a watcher's eyes stay unwilling to settle.
The eight rungs
T1: The edges stop agreeing with the body, an outline sliding a hand's width off; and a room turns a beat early. A sudden movement undoes it and the snap back is louder than the effect was.
T2: The outline holds through a slow step, and the room stays turned for a sentence longer.
T3: One person's read of the scene is changed rather than the room's attention, and only that person's behaviour shows it.
T4: The effect survives movement and a second person entering the room.
T5: A group holds the same wrong belief at once, and their positions in the space show it before any of them speaks.
T6: The site's own social order joins: rank, seating, who is permitted to speak first, and the effect uses that order rather than overriding it.
T7: The caster is not perceived as present at all by anyone not already looking for them.
T8: A whole gathering's account of what happened differs from what the player watched happen.
The dispatch grammar
form: One adult standing still among the others and dressed exactly as they are; the edge of that same body prints a hand's width to one side of itself, that body is fully present and solid and ordinary, its colour sits closer to the wall behind it than to the people beside it, and the effect shows in the heads and shoulders of everyone else.
light: The frame keeps exactly the light it already had; the effect reads as the edge of one body printing a hand's width to one side of itself, as that body's colour drifting toward the colour of whatever is behind it, and as the silhouette doing all the work.
cast beat: The caster goes still and does one small correct thing, waiting for the natural gap.
flight beat: The effect arrives directly, with the space between caster and affected empty.
impact beat: The behaviour of the people in the room changes on the beat, legible in their heads and shoulders.
aftermath beat: The room stays tipped afterward, with people finishing their sentences toward the caster.
rung T1: An outline sliding a hand's width off the body, and a room turning a beat early.
rung T2: The outline holding through a slow step and the room staying turned longer.
rung T3: One person's reading of the scene changed, visible in that person alone.
rung T4: The effect surviving movement and a second person entering the room.
rung T5: A group holding one belief at once, visible in where each of them stands.
rung T6: The site's own order of rank and seating carrying the effect.
rung T7: The caster perceived by someone already looking for them alone.
rung T8: A whole gathering's account of the moment differing from what the player watched.
Ether-ThirdEye
channel: The frame itself. The read is a change in what the PLAYER can see, applied as a viewing state, and it is never an object standing in the world.
silhouette primitive: None added. The Third Eye seat adds no geometry; it changes exposure, depth, ghosting and what is legible.
motion signature: Settling rather than moving. The change arrives over a breath and leaves the same way, and the world under it is not moving differently.
sound register: A narrowing of the mix rather than an added sound: the room's noise pulling back and one thing becoming audible.
status handoff: Perception states. No damage class belongs to this seat.
status handoff, resolved: no damage class belongs to this seat
environment dependency: Something to read. Inscription, residue, a substrate the site actually carries. On a site with nothing to read the ability honestly returns nothing.
light: NEVER EMITS -- Nothing is emitted INTO the world. Every read is on the player's own view: exposure, contrast, a ghosted second image, a legibility that was not there before. Nobody in the scene can see any of it, and no character reacts to it.
light mechanisms declared: no_addition, view_only
staging floor: view_only
plate setting: Neutral outdoor daylight over stamped earth and dry stone, with a mid-grey neutral background beyond the acting surface.
separation (dispatched by the effect-field staging class): The change sits on the view itself and stands clear of every hand in the place.
intensity default: attention_scaled
reveal: Below Tier 6, vril sight reads concentration and density only -- the canonical lock's own words (T1_Vril_and_Magic_System_Master Section 9, per CVD 17.3). Substrate reading begins at level 6 and not before. The visual law respects the lock as written: every pre-crossing rung is a concentration or a density read and nothing else, and the substrate vocabulary -- inscription, signature, decoding, a place's history, a ghost of what was recently here -- first appears at T6.
The four beats
cast: The caster stops and their eyes change focus. Nothing else about them changes.
flight: Zero-length and DECLARED.
impact: The world is now readable in a way it was not, and the change is specific to what the site actually holds.
aftermath: The view returns, and what was learned stays learned. The aftermath of this seat lives in the player's knowledge rather than in the place.
The eight rungs
T1: A faint sense of where the air is denser, shown as a difference in how far the eye can see rather than as a marker.
T2: Concentration becomes locatable: one direction reads clearer than the others.
T3: The recharge sites read as places the view holds better, and the difference is legible without a label.
T4: Two or three concentrations hold in view at once, and the fall-off between them reads as one continuous gradient rather than as separate points.
T5: Density variation across a whole area resolves into a shape, and the shape is the site's.
T6: The substrate crossing. Inscription becomes readable, signature becomes legible on a person, and the dimensional thickness of a place shows where it manifests.
T7: The reading holds while moving and across a whole region rather than at one site.
T8: Substrate and surface are legible at once, so the place and its history are both in view without switching.
The dispatch grammar
form: A change in the player's own view, with the world under it steady.
light: The frame keeps exactly the light it already had, and the whole change sits on the viewer's own view: exposure, contrast, and how far the eye reaches into the air.
cast beat: The caster stops and their eyes change focus.
flight beat: The change arrives directly on the view over the space of a breath.
impact beat: The world becomes readable in a way specific to what the site holds.
aftermath beat: The view settles back and the knowledge stays with the player.
rung T1: A difference in how far the eye reaches where the air is denser.
rung T2: One direction reading clearer than the others.
rung T3: Recharge sites reading as places the view holds better.
rung T4: Two or three concentrations held in view at once with one continuous fall-off between them.
rung T5: Density variation across an area resolving into the site's own shape.
rung T6: Inscription becoming readable and signature becoming legible on a person.
rung T7: The reading holding while moving and across a whole region.
rung T8: Substrate and surface both legible at once, the place and its history together in view.
Ether-Crown
channel: The body's own light and the cost of it. This is the one authored emission in the game that is neither combustion nor ionisation, and its whole discipline is that it is paid for visibly.
silhouette primitive: The caster's own body. The light travels ALONG anatomy: sternum, shoulder, arm, hand, in that order, and it never leaves the body to draw a shape in the air.
motion signature: Slow and one-directional. It gathers, it travels outward, it arrives, and it does not come back.
sound register: A low sustained tone that the room's noise gives way to, ending on the caster's breath rather than on a cutoff.
status handoff: Life-heal, and the revival class.
status handoff, resolved: Life-heal -> ST_006 (life_hot); Revival -> UNBUILT (the revival class is a death-and-resurrection ruling, not a status row)
environment dependency: The caster's own pool, which is why this seat's constraint is the caster rather than the terrain.
light: EMITS -- Emits from inside a body. It begins behind the sternum, travels outward along the arms before any of it reaches anything else, and leaves the caster visibly emptied. It NEVER draws geometry in the air, never forms a ring, a circle or a sigil, and never appears without a body to have come from.
light mechanisms declared: body_emission
staging floor: worn_on_body
plate setting: An ordinary interior lit by flat daylight through a shuttered opening in the wall, the walls lime-plastered over mud brick, the floor stamped earth, and plain timber and plain undyed woven matting the only furnishing.
separation (dispatched by the effect-field staging class): The light travels the length of the arms on its own and reaches the recipient across open air, with the hands placed and still.
intensity default: vril_spend_scaled
The four beats
cast: The gather is inside the caster and the beat is long enough to see it cost something.
flight: Along the caster's own body to the point of contact. The Crown seat's flight beat is anatomical rather than ballistic.
impact: Contact, and the recipient warms. The change shows on the recipient's colour and breathing before it shows anywhere else.
aftermath: The caster is emptied and it shows: breathing hard, the light gone from behind the sternum. The recipient stays warm to the touch for a while.
The eight rungs
T1: A warmth in the hands only, enough to steady someone and not enough to mend them.
T2: The gather is visible at the sternum for a moment before it reaches the hands.
T3: The travel along the arms is legible and the cost is legible with it.
T4: A steady light gathers behind the sternum and travels outward along the arms before any of it reaches the person being healed, so the giving is visibly costly and visibly one-directional.
T5: Two people at once, and the emptying doubles visibly rather than being absorbed.
T6: The site helps. At a recharge source the cost is visibly shared with the place, and the light comes as much from the ground as from the caster.
T7: Contact is no longer needed, and the reach is legible as a line of attention rather than a beam.
T8: A group is mended at once and the caster is left needing the ground to sit down on.
The dispatch grammar
form: Light carried under a plain working shirt, brightest over the breastbone and dimmer along each sleeve, moving shoulder to elbow to hand until it reaches the bare skin of the hands and the surfaces those hands are resting on.
light: The one bright thing in frame begins inside the caster's own chest and is legible in what it REACHES: the plain working shirt over the breastbone shows it through the weave, both sleeves carry it down to the bare skin of the placed hands, and those hands are the brightest thing in frame; the heads and shoulders nearest them take the same colour off it, the plastered wall a pace behind has lost its shadow, and the caster is left visibly emptied as it goes.
cast beat: The plain working shirt over the breastbone brightens from behind the weave and holds long enough to see it cost something.
flight beat: It travels outward along the caster's arms to the point of contact.
impact beat: Contact, and the recipient's colour and breathing change first.
aftermath beat: The caster is left emptied and breathing hard, and the recipient stays warm to the touch.
rung T1: Warmth in the hands alone, enough to steady someone.
rung T2: The gather visible at the sternum for a moment before it reaches the hands.
rung T3: The travel along the arms legible, and the cost legible with it.
rung T4: A steady light gathering behind the sternum and travelling outward before it arrives.
rung T5: Two recipients at once, with the emptying visibly doubled.
rung T6: At a recharge source the light coming as much from the ground as from the caster.
rung T7: Reach across a gap along a line of held attention.
rung T8: A group mended at once, leaving the caster needing the ground to sit down on.
Derivation
Every element of this law traces to a line below, per the standing subagent contract's clause 5.
DERIVED FROM:
docs/original_predclaude/ELEMENTS_MATRIX_RECOVERED.md - Section 1 the ten-element attacker/defender grid with its (B)rute/(T)rickery axis tags and the six NAMED hybrid products Metal (E/F), Mud (E/W), Sand (E/A), Steam (F/W), Smoke (F/A), Ice (W/A); Section 2 the non-chakra elements Lightning, Poison and Life with Vegetation as the implied eleventh; Section 4 the per-element status effects and the elemental ENVIRONMENT DEPENDENCIES (Earth needs earth present, Water needs water, Air needs air, Fire blocked underwater and in precipitation and cold); Section 5 the supersession rule that the current 31-value vocabulary EXTENDS the authored set and that the extension pattern guides the rest
_source/01_Tier_1_Foundation/T1_Vril_and_Magic_System_Master [ACTIVE v2.2] - Section 1 VRIL PHYSICS, the sentence that governs this whole law: magic is the manipulation of real physics, vril alters real physical law rather than suspending it, read as mathematical, physical and substrate, and vril effects and real physical law compose emergently; the same section's rule that there is no spell-casting hotbar and that abilities are consciousness operations; Section 9 the twelve-tier progression with levels 1-5 Outer Order surface-vril, level 6 Adeptus Minor as the substrate-perception threshold, levels 7-8 Adeptus Major reliable across regions and substrate states
registries/T0_Ability_Tree_Registry [ACTIVE v0.1] - all 185 rows: the 31 live element values (10 base + 21 hybrid), the 8 live tier_numerical values, the landed cast-identity belt (cast_visual_form, somatic_form, aftermath_state, signature_read) which is the discovery-to-mastery register this ladder generalises, and presentation_tier_ref which is the resolver key this law populates the meaning of
registries/T0_Rune_Registry [DRAFT v0.1] - the 19 operator rows and their six operator_family values (shape, delivery, motion-lock, transform, element-combine, meta), which are the operators the rune-forge hook below must show a visible change for
registries/T0_Status_Table [DRAFT v0.1] - the ten status rows and their read_channel values (vfx_body, motion, audio), which own the ON-TARGET persistent read this law hands off to at the impact beat
docs/ASSET_DROPIN_CONTRACT.md - open item 7, the presentation-variant rail: the resolver key is (canon id, presentation_tier_ref), fallback walks DOWN the ladder to the nearest AUTHORED tier and never to a hard null, the live variant key must be AUTHORED and never synthesized, and the closed cue-parameter set is exactly element, presentation_tier_ref, status class, counter class and phase
docs/proposals/CONCEPT_ART_PROGRAM.md - class 18, the ruled sizing 248 live variant keys (31 elements x 8 live tiers) and 372 at the 12-tier clamp, ruled at FULL per-tier strength with parametric interpolation permitted only INSIDE an authored tier's polish pass
docs/DESIGN_GAP_REGISTER.md - entry 4's second half, which specifies this artifact by name: a per-BASE-element presentation row carrying dominant hue band, silhouette primitive, motion signature and sound register with a declared hybrid-inheritance rule, becoming the prompt composer's per-element constraint block and the de-slop critic's per-element checklist
docs/concept_art/prompt_packs/ch03_manggarai_prompt_pack.json - the negative lists on rows across the pack, whose repeated entries glowing or self-lit water, light shafts that read as magic rather than as sun through canopy, glowing eyes, glowing scales, aura, glowing rings, energy circles, particle auras, arcane geometry and any self-lit overlay are the NEGATIVE EXEMPLAR this law's light rule is written against
NOT DERIVED (authored judgement, and why it had no canon home):
The three-axis reading of the tier ladder (latency, source radius, answer) is authored structure. It has no canon home of its own: it is a generalisation over the landed cast identities plus the T1_Vril Section 9 Outer-Order/Inner-Order crossing, produced because 248 variant keys cannot be authored one at a time and the alternative to a stated axis is 248 unrelated inventions.
Vegetation's RESTRAIN status. It is absent from T0_Status_Table and absent from ELEMENTS_MATRIX_RECOVERED Section 4's per-element status list, so it is an authored extension rather than a derivation: a vegetation family that grips and holds needs an impair-class handoff and the matrix names none for it. It is declared UNBUILT in this family's status_map so the gap is countable, and it binds nothing until a T0_Status_Table row exists.
The four STAGING CLASSES and their lane and care assignments. The lane rule already routes a depicted PRACTITIONER in a cultural somatic register to lane R with an acquired reference, and the art program's landed lane vocabulary measures G as generated-clean-weights at standard care, P as generated-and-protected at mostly elevated care, and R as an acquired reference at previz-only or open-access rights. Neither states where an ANONYMOUS body or an anonymous bystander belongs. Reading it as lane R would assert acquired-reference rights on a plate nobody is acquiring; reading it as lane G would repeat the defect this fixes. Lane P at elevated care with protected set is the authored call, and it is named here so it can be vetoed.
The closed LIGHT MECHANISM VOCABULARY (combustion, incandescence, ionisation, body_emission, scattering, wetting_darkening, refraction, occlusion, silhouette, carried_material, no_addition, view_only). The light law names its mechanisms in prose; the token set that lets a tooth compare a family's DISPATCHED light sentence against the mechanism its own light block declares is authored structure, produced because a boolean emits-or-not branch briefed the Ether-Crown seat with combustion physics its own entry rules out.
Consumers
registries/T0_Ability_Presentation_Tier -- every row's read delta is this law's tier rung applied to that ability's own landed cast identity, and every row names the rung it used.
harness/emit_ability_vfx_worklist.py -- the concept-plate prompts are composed from the four beats, the light law and the tier rung, so a plate cannot be briefed against an unwritten law.
The Niagara cue family -- the closed cue-parameter set is element, presentation_tier_ref, status class, counter class and phase, and PHASE is the four-beat grammar above.
The de-slop and physics-coherence critics -- the banned non-physical-light list and the per-family mechanism are the per-element checklist the design-gap register asked for.
Generated by harness/site/structure_site.py — the URL path is the repo path. review root