systems/KIT_MF_CONSTRICTOR.md
CANON SUBORDINATION — this document is PROPOSAL-TIER: it serves canon and never outranks it.
The canon: the CVD · the T1 foundation docs · the T0 registries (registries/) · the spine
(docs/spine/CH_*.md) · the region pages (_source/02_Tier_2_Region_Pages/). Authority order:docs/DOC_MAP.md§ 0.
Canon served (structural — the registries this kit's canon rows live in, plus its chapter's spine node):
T0_Creature_Roster·docs/spine/CH_02.md
READ THAT CANON FIRST — open it and derive from it before you build anything from this document.
If this document disagrees with canon, CANON WINS and this document is the defect — fix the
document, never the canon. Nothing here is applied until it is ratified into canon.
PROPOSAL-TIER. This kit serves canon and never outranks it. It writes no registry row.
The law it obeys: docs/proposals/combat/KIT_SCALING_TABLE.md. The intelligence scale:
docs/proposals/combat/INTELLIGENCE_TIERS.md. The body it fights with is the bestiarylane's: docs/proposals/bestiary/BESTIARY_ELEVATION_DOCTRINE.md and its sheets. This file
describes the FIGHT; it never restates the BODY. Authors no magnitude -- no damage, no
health, no timing, no coefficient. Those are Phase-5M's behind the tuning firewall.
| field | value |
|---|---|
| band | B1 (MUNDANE FAUNA) |
| kit class | MUNDANE |
| intelligence tier | cunning (evidence rule A6) |
| canon rows | CR_0002 |
| chapter | CH_02 |
| canon verbs | no boss row; collect_verb DOCUMENT;FIGHT |
| authored abilities | 9 physical + 0 non-ordinary = 9 (band floor 5, ceiling 9) |
| phases | 2 (fill (no boss row declares a count; B1's 1-2 fill range, taken at 2)) |
| counter classes | any, cover, dodge_only, parry_only, trigger_interrupt, weak_point |
Silhouette read. A length of the forest floor that turns out to have a front end.
Opener (MHM-G10, the cheap lesson first). LANE HOLD -- the body draws into an S and simply occupies the ground between you and where you were going. No damage, no commitment, and the whole fight's geometry taught in one move: this animal owns a LANE, and the lane is the fight.
| phase | name | what it PUSHES (nothing pops) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | coiled | it is a spring that has not been released. Everything is potential and the player is being invited to walk into it. |
| 2 | released | the spring has gone. Nothing from phase 1 is lost -- it re-coils and holds lanes exactly as before -- but the strike is now followed, the wrap is on the table, and the animal is spending a resource it cannot get back quickly. |
| # | ability | phase | body origin | tell shape | counter | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lane Hold | 1 | the whole body, drawn into a shallow S across the ground | the forebody lifts a hand's width and stops | any | The opener. It teaches the lane before the lane costs anything. |
| 2 | Coil Set | 1 | tail anchors on a root or a stone; the forebody loads back over it | the anchor point tightens by one turn and the head drops level | dodge_only | The tell that the strike is now paid for. One turn is a strike; two turns is a longer one. |
| 3 | Strike-and-Return | 1 | the neck alone, thrown from the set coil | the head levels and the throat inflates once | parry_only | The single most legible attack in the chapter and the reason the guardian encounter can assume the player knows this shape. |
| 4 | Feint Withdrawal | 1 | the forebody folding back without unloading the coil | the head retreats while the anchor stays tight | any | A pattern move, not a damage move: it buys the animal the range it wants and it punishes a player who reads retreat as a win. |
| 5 | Tail Anchor Shift | 1 | the anchored tail walking to a new purchase point | the tail leaves its hold before the head moves | cover | How the lane relocates. Reading the TAIL rather than the head is the whole skill of this animal, and it is taught here for free. |
| 6 | Bite-and-Hold | 2 | jaw with rear-facing teeth; the neck sets rather than saws | the strike does not return | trigger_interrupt | The strike that stays. The interrupt is the window before the wrap, and it is generous the first time. |
| 7 | Wrap | 2 | the whole trunk, arriving in loops from the anchored end | the body walks up your line in visible increments | weak_point | Every increment is a stage the player can still answer. The weak point is the jaw's set and the first loop's crossing point, and both are visible on the body. |
| 8 | Constriction Cycle | 2 | the trunk musculature, tightening only on your exhalation | the loops go still between tightenings | trigger_interrupt | The real mechanism, and it is genuinely how the animal works: it takes the slack you give it and never gives it back. The interrupt is timed to the stillness, not to the squeeze. |
| 9 | Drag to Water | 2 | the anchored end reversing, using the wrap as the handle | the anchor re-sets BEHIND the animal instead of beside it | dodge_only | The lose condition that is not a health bar. It is answerable, telegraphed by a tail that moves the wrong way, and it makes the plunge pool a place on the map rather than a texture. |
CLASS PURITY (tooth T5). Every move above is physical. No element family, no vril
mechanism, no non-ordinary affordance appears in this kit, because this being's own canon
row carries no hollow row, no lore home and nothing that elevates it. It is dangerous the
way the real animal or the real person is dangerous, engineered up until it reads at the
shipped combat camera. TIMID here would mean BORING-PHYSICAL, never insufficiently magical.
| part | moveset subtraction on break | legibility gain | material the economy wants |
|---|---|---|---|
| the tail anchor | Coil Set (2) can no longer be paid for from a fixed point, which removes Strike-and-Return (3) at full extension and Drag to Water (9) entirely | the animal has to hold its own body weight, so the S-shape visibly sags | patterned hide -- the chapter's first fine-leather source |
| the jaw set | Bite-and-Hold (6) becomes a bite that returns, and the Wrap (7) loses its start | the strike stops staying, which is the single read that tells the player the fight has gone back to phase 1's arithmetic | recurved tooth |
EG_0009 Waterfall Cavern Pocket -- ENEMY: a CONSTRICTION-class row, which is the affordance this animal was built to exploit; in the pocket every lane is its lane. PLAYER: D1_COLLAPSE is armed here and dropping the pocket's loose ceiling breaks an anchor mid-wrap.EG_0008 Waterfall Curtain and Plunge Pool -- ENEMY: the destination of Drag to Water (9). PLAYER: medium:conductive and a submersion hazard, so the pool cuts both ways and the player who chooses it has chosen a different fight rather than an easier one.EG_0005 Cave Pillar and Karst Column -- PLAYER: the COVER answer to Strike-and-Return, and the one piece of geometry a lane cannot be drawn through.| channel | what the player sees or hears |
|---|---|
| posture | the S flattens out; a coiled snake is a threatening one and an extended snake has already decided |
| breath | the slow flank-pumping stops and the body goes rigid |
| vocal | the low sustained hiss cuts out entirely -- silence is the escalation here, which is the inverse of the varanid and deliberately so |
| opener | Lane Hold is retired and Coil Set becomes the opener |
IT ENTERS from cover and at ground level, always along the line the player was walking. IT RELOCATES by Tail Anchor Shift (5) and never quickly -- the lane moves, the animal does not travel. IT LEAVES into water or into the pocket, and only from phase 1. WHAT IT DOES TO THE ARENA: it converts open ground into lanes, which is why the same animal staged in the waterfall pocket (BE_0002_S1) is a different encounter without a single new move.
ORDINARY FAUNA on this row. The reverence that attaches to this species is Thread-2's and it lives on the ENCOUNTERS -- BE_0002_S1 at the Kelimutu source and BE_0003_S1 as the naga tana of the wae, where SRC_00469 records the attested Manggarai tradition that the naga are GOOD guardians named for their charge, held to a ngoeng-de-tana contract, appeased and never slain. This kit is the animal in the trees; it carries none of that framing and must never be used to stage a reverenced guardian, which has its own kit.
This kit is authored ONCE, at Fading. The five modulators of KIT_SCALING_TABLE section 4
express it across the ladder: active_ability_set grows upward through reserved follow-ups
on roots the player already learned, window_class tightens, answer_tree_depth prunes
toward the single true answer, hazard_concurrency rises with the arena rows above, and
phase_overlap interleaves the phase cycles. No second kit exists and no number here changes
with the tier.