systems/KIT_MF_VARANID.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_0001, CR_0005 |
| chapter | CH_02 |
| canon verbs | no boss row; the roster's own collect_verb is 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, neutralize, parry_only, trigger_interrupt, weak_point |
Silhouette read. A long low body that is already looking at you, and has been for a while.
Opener (MHM-G10, the cheap lesson first). BASKING HOLD -- it does not move. The head turns to track and the body stays down on the warm stone. It costs the player nothing and teaches the one thing that matters: this animal has already seen you, and it is deciding.
| phase | name | what it PUSHES (nothing pops) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | reading you | the animal's opening state: it is deciding whether you are food, a threat, or nothing. Everything in this phase is reversible for both of you. |
| 2 | committed | it has decided. Nothing from phase 1 stops -- the track, the shear and the ambush all stay live -- and the grapple, the anchor twist and the septic follow are pushed on top. A varanid that has committed does not re-decide, which is what makes phase 1 the phase where the player still has choices. |
| # | ability | phase | body origin | tell shape | counter | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Basking Hold | 1 | no locomotion; the neck alone, body flat to warm rock | the head turns and the body does not | any | MHM-G10's cheap lesson. The opener is a non-attack, and every dangerous move in this kit is a variant of the stillness that precedes it. |
| 2 | Tongue-Flick Track | 1 | forked tongue, neck extending, weight shifting forward | three flicks, then the shoulders square onto your line | neutralize | The cross-zone scent-track. Neutralize means BREAK THE SCENT -- cross running water, walk the fumarole plume, or bleed a decoy. Outrunning it is not an answer; it does not need to see you and it is not in a hurry. |
| 3 | Ambush Break | 1 | hind limbs load under the pelvis, tail straightens as a counterweight | the tail goes rigid and stops sweeping | dodge_only | Stage one of the two-stage ambush: the launch. The rigid tail is the whole tell and it is the part the player can later break. |
| 4 | Serrated Shear | 1 | jaw and neck, the whole body pivoting into the pull | the head cocks a quarter-turn away before it comes in | parry_only | It is not a bite, it is a saw. The quarter-turn is the animal loading the pull, and it is the same shape as the head-turn in the opener -- MHM-G10's variant law. |
| 5 | Tail Sweep | 1 | tail base, the whole trunk rotating around the planted forelimbs | the forefeet plant and the hips wind up | cover | The move that punishes standing at its flank. Cover means put mass between you and the arc; a karst pillar eats it entirely. |
| 6 | Break-Off and Wait | 1 | the whole body reversing, low, without turning its head away | it gives ground while still facing you | any | Tier-2 behaviour made visible: it refuses a trade it is losing and goes back to phase 1. A player who reads this as a win and turns their back has misread it. |
| 7 | Grapple-and-Drag | 2 | jaws close and the four limbs anchor; the pull comes from the hips | it plants all four feet and drops its centre before the reach | trigger_interrupt | The grapple with a real escape input. Trigger_interrupt is a timed struggle, not a mash: hit the beat and you are free with a wound; miss and it walks you toward water or a drop. |
| 8 | Anchor Twist | 2 | the trunk rolling against a set jaw, hind claws raking for purchase | the shoulders roll while the head stays fixed | weak_point | The answer is the eye or the jaw hinge -- named parts, so weak_point is real here rather than decorative. Answering with anything else costs a limb's worth of use. |
| 9 | Septic Follow | 2 | no strike; the wound already given does the work | no new tell -- the player's own screen edge dims and their stamina ceiling drops | neutralize | The status that makes retreat a losing plan. Neutralize means treat it: the herbalist's preparation, a boiled dressing, or the chapter's own remedy. Running with it is the trap, and the animal knows how to wait. |
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 counterweight | Ambush Break (3) leaves the moveset -- it can still charge, but never from a standstill | the rigid-tail tell stops being available, so the animal has to telegraph the launch with its whole body instead | thick tail hide -- the chapter's first heavy-leather source |
| the jaw hinge | Serrated Shear (4) degrades to a bite: the pull-through is gone, and with it the Anchor Twist (8) follow-up | the gape visibly fails to open fully, which reads at the camera before any number moves | serrated tooth, the reagent the chapter's first crafted blade wants |
| the shoulder girdle | Grapple-and-Drag (7) loses the drag: it can hold, it cannot move you | the plant-and-drop tell becomes a plant with no drop | big-game hide (the row's own DROP_BIGGAME_HIDE_MEAT lane) |
EG_0003 Fumarolic Vent Field -- ENEMY DIRECTION: the animal is ectothermic and it holds the warm ground on purpose, where its recovery between commits is shortest. PLAYER DIRECTION: the plume breaks the scent lock (ability 2), so the hazard that hurts you is also the answer.EG_0004 Ash-and-Scree Volcanic Slope -- ENEMY: it drives you upslope onto loose footing where the dodge answer to Ambush Break stops being reliable. PLAYER: D9_HURL is armed here and loose stone is an interrupt on the launch.EG_0006 Unlit Karst Chamber -- ENEMY: it does not need light and you do. PLAYER: it is the one place the track (2) can be lost outright, because scent pools and stops leading anywhere.EG_0012 Forest Canopy Bough Network -- PLAYER ONLY (enemy_usable = FALSE): the vertical escape a heavy ground animal cannot follow. Naming a one-directional row is the point; the arena is not symmetrical and pretending it is would be a lie about the animal.| channel | what the player sees or hears |
|---|---|
| posture | the body comes up off the belly onto straightened legs -- the single clearest read in the kit, and it happens before anything else changes |
| breath | the open-mouth panting stops |
| vocal | the hiss drops into a low continuous exhalation that does not break for the strike |
| opener | Basking Hold is retired for the rest of the fight and Ambush Break becomes the opener |
IT ENTERS by already being there -- the encounter usually begins with the player realising the log they walked past has a head. IT RELOCATES along scent, not along sightlines, so it reappears on the side you did not watch and it does so slowly. IT LEAVES only in phase 1, and only backwards. WHAT IT DOES TO THE ARENA: it makes warm ground its own and cold ground yours, which turns the fumarole field and the karst chamber into two halves of one decision rather than two pieces of scenery.
ORDINARY FAUNA and nothing else. CR_0001's own cultural_care_register carries the rule forward verbatim -- hunting an ordinary animal touches nothing of the collective protection -- so no collective-protection framing is re-applied to a game animal here. The Thread-2 serpent reverence that attaches at BE_0002_S1 and BE_0003_S1 belongs to those ENCOUNTERS and to the reticulated python's naga role, not to a monitor lizard in a riverbed. Nothing in this kit is styled mythologically; that styling is the guardian encounter's, and mixing them would flatten both.
| canon row | delta |
|---|---|
| CR_0001 | the full kit as authored. APEX tier, the largest body in the chapter, and the only row that carries Septic Follow (9) at full weight -- the real animal's bite is the reason the ability exists. |
| CR_0005 | PREDATOR tier, mid-level, Varanus timorensis: a smaller cousin at roughly a third the mass. Drops Grapple-and-Drag (7) and Anchor Twist (8) -- it cannot move a person -- and Septic Follow (9) reads as a fouled scratch rather than a wound that ends the day. Keeps the track, the shear, the sweep and the break-off, and gains nothing: it is the same grammar at a scale where the player wins the trade. That is the point of a shared kit -- the delta is the design, not a second file. |
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.