26 sections, taken from this chapter's own canon entry — not from a template. 2 carry a picture, a model or a frame today; 5 named things canon writes are not built yet and say so.
Creatures and fauna
the other eleven communions stay with the father; no other bond rooted here.
docs/spine/CH_01.md:234 · 1 clause held back
nothing drawn yet — next: Creatures and fauna - species base (345 planned); Folklore and mythological beings (186 planned); and 1 more kind
Props and carried objects
the only object of hers the child has, worn since the birth and taken off exactly once; it is in the familiar's mouth through the chase and it crosses at the fall. It is a worn thing and never an inventory item at this stage, it carries no HUD, no meter, no readout, and no stated function — whatever it holds, it holds finitely and alone, because nothing in the realm can reach across to recharge it.
docs/spine/CH_01.md:235 · 1 clause held back
The stack, layer by layer
The protagonist is a STACK, not one object, so it is shown as one: 9 of 10 layers have evidence on disk today and the rest are named. Each cell carries the rung its own evidence supports.
1. Base body
GREYBOX
ASSEMBLY_A_CHAR_0001_CHILD_base_only
ASSEMBLY_A_CHAR_0001_CHILD_base_onlyin the build
the body itself, before anything is put on it.
2. Underwear-grade merged base
POLISH
CHAR_0001_CHILD
CHAR_0001_CHILDin the build
the merged base the equipment layers sit on.
3. Authored head
GREYBOX
CHAR_0001_CHILD_HEADASM
CHAR_0001_CHILD_HEADASM
the head assembly, authored separately and merged.
the fairy realm at its ceiling at a child's scale (the flowering plain, the sovereign hall, the childhood home and the child's own room with the morning coming through the window in a long bar of sun, the sourceless light, the vital force-saturated air), the woods at the edge of the range with the light coming down in pieces and the hundred worn paths, and the depleted cave on the far side (the cold dark, the vital force gone from the air, Liang Bua Cave of the Ch-2 landing); the abundance-then-rupture contrast; no…
docs/spine/CH_01.md:236
nothing drawn yet — next: Architecture kits per culture (134 planned); Dwelling variation within a settlement (226 planned); and 2 more kinds
Material palette and style register
a luminous, abundant childhood register giving way, on the fall, to the cold depleted register of the cave (the sourceless bloom to the only-so-far light); the contrast the point; mythologically-stylized (the game's own realm and its floor).
a warm, full, unhurried childhood register (the choosings, the bond, the plain, the childhood's own days), a smaller and more private register for the argument and for the morning with the amulet, and the chase played as pure delight and nothing else — the cue must stay glad all the way into the trees; then the rupture arrives with no preparation at all, and gives way to the cold spare register of the depleted cave; theme_refs the childhood-abundance motif and the fall/stripping motif; no reproduced living-traditio…
docs/spine/CH_01.md:238
canon writes this and nothing has been drawn or built for it yet
Voice and crowd
the child's register (a child of the realm, held and unafraid); the best friend and the Child-Familiar communion in their own registers (fully-present, no forward valence); the King as the father and the sovereign (name-forbidden, nothing of his knowledge surfaced); no reproduced sacred sound; per-NPC registers deferred to the Voice registry.
docs/spine/CH_01.md:239 · 1 named person written in canon
1 named person written, nothing drawn yet — next: NPCs - ambient crowd buckets (240 planned)
Sfx substrate
the childhood realm (the bloom, the familiar's presence, the courtly life), the last morning (the cord over the head, the breath on metal, the rub against a blanket), the chase (feet on boards, a door, grass, then leaf-litter and branch), the rift's opening (the tear, the wrongness, the pull), the fall (the crossing, the stripping, the cold dark of the cave); no protected cultural sound reproduced.
docs/spine/CH_01.md:240
canon writes this and nothing has been drawn or built for it yet
Scripts and sacred objects
the realm the game's own dimensional space, no protected sacred object reproduced.
docs/spine/CH_01.md:241 · 1 inscription written in canon · 1 clause held back
endure — the fall is undergone, not won (endure primary, fall secondary, axis 20/20/60; typed at §9 BE_01, phase P1→CH01_B08); NO win and NO fail-wall (the fall is the event, not a test — the child lands depleted and alive, the familiar fallen with them, the amulet fallen with them both); nothing defeated (the rift's opening has no author and no aim — a rupture, not a foe); agility_course the childhood-plain and deep-places course of CH01_B11 and then the woods run of the keep-away chase (CH01_B14) giving way to th…
docs/spine/CH_01.md:246 · 1 staged encounter written in canon
Canon names BE_01 here, and the factory has not built it yet. Named rather than left out.
1 staged encounter written, nothing drawn yet — next: Bosses - main (180 planned); Bosses - sub and environmental (144 planned)
Abilities unlocked
NONE persist — the child holds only the small magics of a child of the realm (nowhere near the King's ceiling, CH01_B06), and the fall STRIPS even those (the vital force birthright torn away on impact, T3_Core §6.4); the player enters Ch 2 with nothing, and rebuilds across seventy-five chapters (the integrity score initialized at zero, T3_Core §2.3).
docs/spine/CH_01.md:247
Stepped by band, because this is motion and not a still.
A_C_001 (Astral Projection) — no tier ladder generated yet; the lane that would make one is harness/ability_vfx/dispatch.py
Vital force sites
the realm is at full vital force saturation until the fall; the far side (the depleted cave) is the vital force floor — the origin of the recharge-source economy the depleted world runs on (the Kelimutu waterfall recharge-source is met at Ch 2, not here).
docs/spine/CH_01.md:248
nothing drawn yet — next: vital force sites (6 planned); Region key art (180 planned); and 1 more kind
Weapons
chapter_anchored_weapon_add none — not a weapon-anchor node; the child holds no arms.
docs/spine/CH_01.md:249
nothing drawn yet — next: Weapons - type silhouette (195 planned); Weapons - grade variants (165 planned); and 2 more kinds
Trades
no trade home rooted here (the trades are the depleted world's later masteries; the child holds only the realm's small magics, stripped at the fall).
the Child Familiar bonded here (Selection 1 from the twelve, CH01_B02/CH01_B05) and fallen with the child (present at the Ch-2 start); the twenty-two-slot architecture's bridge species; the other eleven stay with the father; companions_and_recurring_npcs CHAR_0001 the Protagonist (the child, playable POV) and CHAR_0005 the Elven King (the father).
docs/spine/CH_01.md:251 · 1 familiar written in canon
Wired into the game — every card is the same record the asset gallery carries, at the same rung.
The Protagonist
ITERATION
CHAR_0001
concept plate
concept plates only -- no mesh has been generated yet
Canon names CHAR_0005 here, and the factory has not built it yet. Named rather than left out.
Inscription spine
INSC_77H_CH01_FRAGMENT — the 77-Hidden-Inscription spine's FIRST station (fragment_index 1 of the 77; the numbered spine begins here), an unread origin fragment (LAYER_2 per the registry, §17.9-held, no thesis/Grand-Sage content, spoiler-protected;
docs/spine/CH_01.md:252 · 1 inscription written in canon · 1 clause held back
the beat graph read in seq order (§10 — fourteen beats, CH01_B01 at seq 1 through CH01_B10 at seq 14): grow up in the realm; the four choosings; the Child-Familiar bond; the small magics; the childhood's own quests and days lived out; the argument left unmended; the last morning and the amulet off the neck; the keep-away chase into the woods; the rift opens; the fall; the landing; the taking; side_questlines the childhood lived, the choosings, the taking (path_bucket UNLOCKED, none gating — the origin is pre-integr…
the flowering_plain and sovereign_hall (the childhood, the four choosings, the bond, the childhood's own days, and the argument), the childhood_home (the last morning, CH01_B13), and the realm_woods and the_depleted_cave (the chase, the rift's opening, the rift-fall set-piece, and the landing — CH01_B14 → CH01_B07 → CH01_B08 → CH01_B09, seq 10 through 13) — consistent with the typed site rows (§3b) and the familiar-to-character beat-scale dominant; no adversarial-combat zone (nothing fought — the fall is a rupture)…
docs/spine/CH_01.md:258 · 1 region written in canon
TRANSITIONS_PROLOGUE_01); the one dimensional passage out of the realm is the rift-fall itself (CH01_B08), taken mid-chase in the woods and landing at Liang Bua to open Ch 2.
docs/spine/CH_01.md:72 · 1 region written in canon · 1 clause held back
1 region written, nothing drawn yet — next: Layouts - climactic sites (126 planned); Layouts - ordinary sites (46 planned); and 1 more kind
Bosses and staged encounters
BE_01 "The Fall" · primary ENDURE · secondary FALL · axis 20/20/60 · phases [P1→CH01_B08] · win {no durable ws write and no win-state — the fall is the event and not a test; the child lands depleted and alive, the familiar falls with them, and the amulet falls with them both} · death {none — NO fail-wall at the origin (the fall is undergone and not failed; no death branch exists)} single-phase note: the registry's numbered stages (grow up · the four choosings · the Child-Familiar bond · the rupture · the fall) are …
docs/spine/CH_01.md:88 · 1 staged encounter written in canon
Canon names BE_01 here, and the factory has not built it yet. Named rather than left out.
1 staged encounter written, nothing drawn yet — next: Bosses - main (180 planned); Bosses - sub and environmental (144 planned)
Side-questlines and quest seeds
SQ1 · questline fairy_tale_folklore · stage SEED · gate none · beats [CH01_B01, CH01_B02, CH01_B05, CH01_B11] · reward the elven childhood lived and the four choosings woven as childhood — the fairy-realm folklore substrate (the Otherworld childhood-abundance and the changeling / taken-by-the-fairies register) opened as investigatable Grimoire and echoed never lifted; the arc's origin SEED SQ5 · questline astrology_psychology · stage SEED · gate none · beats [CH01_B01, CH01_B06, CH01_B12] · reward the childhood reg…
docs/spine/CH_01.md:181 · 2 questlines written in canon
The Child Familiar — the luminous familiar chosen from the King's twelve royal communions (the player's Selection 1); the emotional spine of the childhood, always at the child's side; on the last morning it is the one that lifts the amulet out of the child's fingers and runs — play and nothing else, a game the two have played a thousand times, never mischief given a cost and never written as the reason for anything that follows; the bridge between the twelve fairy-realm-native species and the twenty-one mortal-worl…
docs/spine/CH_01.md:191 · 1 named person written in canon · 2 clauses held back
Canon names CHAR_0002, CHAR_0005 here, and the factory has not built them yet. Named rather than left out.
1 named person written, nothing drawn yet — next: NPCs - named persona (358 planned); Companions - base look (6 planned); and 1 more kind
How it plays, in canon's own words
Dominant combat mode — familiar (the Child-Familiar bond is the chapter's mode — the choosing and the bond the emotional and mechanical spine; the fall undergone, not fought; intensity VALLEY. The eighth-sitting VALLEY RIDER binds here and is answered structurally, not asserted: a valley may never be boring to the L1 surface player, so the chapter's now much lo… docs/spine/CH_01.md:245
Integrity divergence — Canon writes this line, and it is held: it carries routing a player at this chapter has not met. The section still counts what it binds. docs/spine/CH_01.md:255
Substrate sources — the Celtic Otherworld childhood-abundance traditions, the changeling / stolen-child / taken-by-the-fairies folklore (Thompson F321 the fairy exchange; F377 the supernatural lapse of time; Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales, 1891), and the inverted-changeling craft move — consolidated as craft-reference to the Source registry (region_tag… docs/spine/CH_01.md:256
Rewards — per-quest reward map authored in-intent — the childhood lived, the choosings made, the bond formed, the fall undergone; the origin has no loot economy (the fall strips everything); seed anchors deferred. docs/spine/CH_01.md:257
The themes marked AUTHORED are composed in notes by the factory to a written brief, and each one is checked against that brief rather than against a description of it — every constraint the composition claims is a control over the notes. Where a track is labelled orchestral rung one, that score is played by real recorded instruments — a public-domain sampled orchestra, one part per line, with the loop point written into the arrangement rather than faded. It is a real realisation and it is not a professional scoring session. Where a track is labelled sketch realisation, the tune is finished and the orchestration is not: what you hear there is additive synthesis, not an orchestra. The themes marked GENERATED came out of the factory's own composition loop and were picked by measurement rather than by ear. These are ITERATIONS, not finished themes. Where a percentage is printed beside a track, it is that automated checklist — 8 of the doctrine's 13 melodic diagnostics. No diagnostic that needs a person to listen and sing it back has been run on any of this, on either lane. Anything below labelled ambience is a place, not a theme.
Journey and Worldauthored score — orchestral rung one · 0:34
The Bondauthored score — orchestral rung one · 0:36
The House That Was Wholeauthored score — orchestral rung one · 0:34
The Long Way Backauthored score — orchestral rung one · 0:42
The Other Selfauthored score — orchestral rung one · 0:30
The Substrateauthored score — orchestral rung one · 0:28
The Writtenauthored score — orchestral rung one · 0:28
Journey and World — authored statement held 24s, generated tailauthored score — generated tail · 0:32
Journey and World — motif statement (authored)authored score — sketch realisation · 0:32
Journey and World — prompted candidate (superseded by the authored statement)generated score — iteration · 0:32 · proxy 79%
Journey and World — second render (NOT a variation: the motif did not survive)generated score — iteration · 0:32
Journey and World — zone bedgenerated score — iteration · 0:32
childhood homegenerated ambience bed · 0:30
flowering plaingenerated ambience bed · 0:30
realm woodsgenerated ambience bed · 0:30
realm woodsgenerated tension layer · 0:30
sovereign hallgenerated ambience bed · 0:30
the depleted cavegenerated ambience bed · 0:30
Where these came from
These are the beds the build actually loads for this chapter, joined off the sound registry and the build's own picked sources — a bed appears here only when the registry row, the picked cue and the file on disk all agree. When themes are written they appear above the beds, and they will be named as themes. Every length printed beside a track is measured off the served file's own bytes (Ogg granule positions, MP3 frame headers), never read from the browser.
The opening, in the chapter's own words
The child is the player now, and the realm is a child's whole world — which is to say it is everything, and it is safe, and it will always be this way. Everything, except for the one person who is not in it. She was gone before there was any memory to keep her in, and what is left of her is a small worn thing on a cord at the child's throat, which the realm says was hers and which the child has never once taken off.
There is time, in a place where there is always time, to become someone. The choosings do not feel like choosings; they feel like growing up. Among the twelve great luminous animals the King keeps his mind open to, one comes to the child more than the others — the player's to settle on — and the settling is a small ceremony and a large love: of all the kinds of wonderful thing to have beside you, this is the one, and it chooses back, and after that it is simply always there, a warmth at the child's side that has a heartbeat and a mind and a way of being glad. There is a best friend, too, the way there is in any childhood, the one the days are spent beside; and there is the slow settling of who the child is — the face and the bearing the player gives them, the way they will carry themselves, and the name they are called across the flowering plain, which the player gives them and which the whole realm learns. None of it is a menu. All of it is a life.
Where it stands, line by line
spine
drafted - 1,563 words of prosedocs/spine/CH_01.md
registries
no dedicated leg yet - 79 rows name it, 37 machine-layer rowsregistries/**; build/spine_rows/CH_01/
concept art
not started - region designed lastdocs/art_boards/MANIFEST.csv
engine staging
not startedgame:QA/BEAT_BLOCKOUT_CH_01.md - absent
dialogue
not startedgame:Content/Data/Dialogue/ch2_ch3_dialogue.json
systems in play
not startedgame:Saved/QA/LoopCaptures/ - no run covers it
look tier
no map built yetgame:QA/look/ - nothing for this region
feel tier
nothing driven with real input yetgame:Saved/QA/LoopCaptures/
polish tier
no polish pass has runno final-tier claim exists in either repo
Generated 2026-08-06 18:05 UTC by harness/site/build_progress_site.py from canon 521b6c6e and build 0a7fbe3. Every status line on this site is computed from those two repositories; nothing is asserted by hand.
