Affinity

2026-08-13T01:09:14Z

Tyg13: collab-chat (approved by Tyler): New stub: Affinity as a global-per-element pool fed by any elementally-tagged ability across skills, extending Pneuma's existing per-caster affinity/mastery model beyond spellcasting

Skill

2026-08-13T01:09:09Z

Tyg13: collab-chat (approved by Tyler): New stub: Skill as a bottom-up grouping of abilities, not a top-down designed taxonomy (2026 stats/progression session)

A '''Skill''' is a named grouping of one or more related [[Ability|Abilities]] — for example, Fishing might group netting and harpooning abilities; Magic might group individual spells.

Skills are not designed top-down as a fixed list handed out in advance. They're discovered bottom-up: abilities get created for whatever gameplay needs them, and once enough exist, related ones get grouped into a named skill.

A skill has no mechanics of its own beyond its member abilities — there's no separate "skill level" resource distinct from the mastery of the abilities inside it. Any skill-wide number (if one is needed, e.g. for gating content) is derived from the mastery of its abilities, exact aggregation to be worked out per skill as needed.

See also [[Affinity]] for the separate, optional elemental byproduct some abilities produce.

Ability

2026-08-13T01:09:01Z

Tyg13: collab-chat (approved by Tyler): New stub: Ability as the universal per-use-mastery atom underlying skills, combat stats, and Pneuma abilities alike (2026 stats/progression session)

'''Ability''' is the atomic unit of anything a character can do — a spell, a physical combat technique, a gathering action (e.g. netting salmon, harpooning), or a utility action (Jump, Blink). Abilities are what get bound to keybinds/hotbar slots.

== Mastery ==

Each ability tracks its own '''mastery''', which grows from use and increases that ability's power and/or reduces its cost. Mastery is per-ability, not shared with other abilities — improving Jump does not improve Blink, even though both are "utility."

This is the same mastery mechanic [[Pneuma]] already uses for spells, generalized to apply to every ability in the game, combat and non-combat alike.

== Elemental tagging ==

Some abilities are tagged with an element (fire, water, air, earth). Using a tagged ability contributes to that element's [[Affinity]] and can benefit from it. Most abilities have no elemental tag at all (e.g. Thieving abilities) and never interact with affinity.

== Grouping ==

Abilities are grouped bottom-up into [[Skill]]s. The grouping is discovered by looking at the actual list of abilities that exist, rather than designed as a fixed taxonomy up front.

Collab session notes/2026-08-11 Early-game spine and gear quality

2026-08-11T00:57:24Z

Tyg13: Check the session's code claims against the current tree: inline Update notes on six stale/wrong premises, plus a Code state at time of writing section (via update-page on MediaWiki MCP Server)

''Synthesized by an AI from a live Tyler ↔ Bembi design conversation on 2026-08-11. A record of what was discussed, not settled design — session notes, not canon.''

''The conversation drew on a code mirror roughly three weeks stale, and several things discussed as future work had already landed. The discussion below is left as it was said; where it rests on a premise the current code contradicts, an inline'' '''Update''' ''note says so, and [[#Code state at time of writing|Code state at time of writing]] gathers what actually exists.''

Session covering cave-mouth art, a first early-game gameplay loop, recipe structure, item quality/wear, and how the three combat styles relate to [[Pneuma]].

== Cave mouths ==

Cave entrances get a hand-authored '''entrance kit''' rather than procedural mouth geometry. The shell/void machinery already produces the hole; what generation cannot produce is a good silhouette, since anything derived from tile corners looks like tile corners. A handful of meshes, rotated and non-uniformly scaled, beats a procedural mouth we would spend a long time tuning — and this is already what the caves/overhangs/cliffs initiative calls for.

''Update: the shell's inward-facing rock walls were switched off on 2026-08-10 — <code>AddShellColumn</code> short-circuits behind a <code>WallsEnabled</code> flag, and the four <code>ShellMeshTests</code> asserting wall geometry are skipped rather than deleted so the math stays restorable. Ceiling occlusion is untouched; each roofing sheet's own underside slab handles that. So a mouth's silhouette is more of the kit's job now, not less.''

* The kit should come in a small set of '''fixed tile footprints''' (one-, two-, three-tile wide) so void painting has known shapes to match, instead of every mouth being a bespoke vertex-nudging job.
* Entrance meshes should use the '''same rock material''' as the cliff/shell, or the seam between authored and generated rock will pop.
* Entrance objects are '''pure dressing and non-blocking'''. Walkability is server-side (the void tile, the cave floor surface, the flanking walls); the mesh must be generous enough that the authored hole never clips through it.

Noted in passing: the surface placement tool needs work, and the cutaway view wants to be independent of edit mode. A minimap (deferred when caves were built) is now urgent — Bembi got genuinely lost inside his own cave.

''Update — cutaway: two separate mechanisms share that word. The runtime cutaway (<code>CutawayController</code>, the dissolve that keeps the player visible under a roof) is already play-only and independent of edit mode. The one Edit Mode gates is the authoring cut (<code>AuthoringCut</code>: "Enabled is the whole gate. Edit Mode owns it; play is untouched and runtime cutaway keeps its own policy"). Cave darkness is separately clamped off while Edit Mode is active, so authoring stays lit.''

''Update — minimap: one already exists. It shipped 2026-06-30, so the mirror had it, and on 2026-08-08 it was made z-aware (protocol bumped to 72): it resolves tiles through the same <code>TryGetTileIdAtZ</code> the hover/spell/paint tools use, at the player's own z, so it shows the level you are standing on rather than the terrain overhead. That change also gave both maps real tile textures and the minimap scroll-wheel zoom. Its rendering is editor-unverified. The open work is confirming it reads well underground, not building one.''

== Early-game spine ==

Nothing in the game currently takes time — cooking and smelting resolve as fast as you can click, so there is no loop, only a button that converts inventory. '''Server-side action durations''' on gathering and processing are the prerequisite for any early-game content: they turn existing content into a session, and they are cheap next to authoring gear.

''Update: gathering already takes server time. <code>harvest.lua</code> runs <code>start_activity</code> with an <code>interval</code> — 5 ticks between yields, 4 yields a session, a 150-tick respawn by default — and that activity is what drives the sustained Skilling animation. It is '''processing''' that is instant, by construction: <code>process_recipe</code> resolves the whole transaction in the one interaction that clicked the recipe, with no session. The prerequisite is real but narrower — durations on processing.''

Chosen spine (both participants): '''mine → smelt → smith a bronze set → the cave enemy that needs it.''' It leans on the caves and smithy that already exist and makes gear the sink.

''Update: the mine and smelt halves now exist in code. Copper, tin, iron and coal ore items and vein objects, a mining skill, and (since 2026-08-10) a smelter object turning ore into <code>bronze_bar</code> and <code>iron_bar</code>. The smith half does not exist in any form: no anvil object type, no smithing skill (<code>skill_types/</code> holds hunting, mining and woodcutting), and no bronze set beyond <code>bronze_helmet</code>. Whether a smithy ''building'' stands in the live world is a separate question from whether a smithing ''mechanic'' exists; none does.''

* Tune the '''enemy first''' — unwinnable in starting kit, fair in bronze — and let the ore/bar economy fall out of its time-to-kill, rather than the reverse.
* Depth over breadth: one loop taken all the way to a sink, plus one gate that says "you're not ready yet", beats a full leather-and-bronze matrix.

== Recipes ==

Recipes move out of individual objects into a '''recipe manager'''. A recipe is inputs, outputs, and non-consumed requirements (catalyst / tool / station).

''Update: recipes stopped being a Lua handler per object on 2026-08-10. An object type now carries data <code>processor_recipes</code> — <code>{id, label, inputs, outputs}</code> — whose id doubles as a reserved action id that auto-runs the conversion, mirroring how <code>shop_id</code>/"trade" works; it is validated at load and executed by <code>world/processing.rs</code>. The smelter and the campfire both run on it. That makes this section's proposal concrete rather than speculative. What the schema has no room for today is exactly the rest of the proposal: the station tag, and any non-consumed requirement at all (catalyst, tool, skill, held item). No recipe has a fuel input to omit either — bronze is one copper plus one tin, iron is one iron ore.''

* A recipe should name a '''station tag''', with objects declaring which tags they satisfy — campfire and range both claim <code>cook</code>, furnace claims <code>smelt</code>, a portable forge added later claims it without touching any recipe.
* Superheat-style effects are a separate recipe with the same output and no fuel input, gated by a spell. This is why gating wants to be a small list of conditions on the recipe (tool, skill, tag, item held) rather than the recipe living inside one object.
* Multi-component crafting is attractive because it interconnects systems: a sword is blade (forged with the tang as one piece) plus fittings plus a wrapped grip. The leather grip feeds Bembi's cow/tanning loop into the smithing spine. Two or three components per item is enough — stop short of a per-item minigame, which is fun for twenty swords and misery for two hundred.

''Update: the cow NPC landed 2026-08-10 with art, stats and a 2×2 footprint, but an empty <code>loot_table</code> and no actions, and there are no hide, leather or tanning content types anywhere. The cow/tanning loop is art so far.''

== Quality and wear ==

'''Quality lives on equipment only, never on materials.''' A bar carrying its own quality number stops stacking, and per-item tracked ore is bad for both the wire and the player. One-per-slot items you actually look at can carry state for free.

''Update: nothing in the item schema or the wire protocol carries quality, wear, durability or repair today — this is greenfield. What equipment does carry is <code>armor</code>, <code>strength</code>, <code>accuracy</code>, <code>affinity_mods</code> per damage type, <code>equip_slot</code> across eight slots, and <code>two_handed</code>.''

'''Quality and wear are two different numbers.'''

* '''Quality''' is the inherent property of the piece — what a smith invested into it. It only ever moves ''up'', when someone reworks the piece. Repair never raises it.
* '''Wear''' is condition. Drops come off corpses heavily worn, so a bandit's sword needs a smith and a bar before it is worth carrying — looting ''feeds'' smithing instead of replacing it.

Presentation: quality shown as words (tattered … masterwork), Terraria-style, whatever the internal representation.

Smith skill produces better quality on a curve with diminishing returns — exponential effort for linear gain — so top smiths make masterwork and everyone else makes serviceable. '''Proficiency should be emergent''': making longswords repeatedly nudges your longsword curve specifically, which is what makes a player known for something. Maintenance can be done by players or bought from an NPC smith.

The reason RuneScape smithing is inert is that drops outclass crafted gear and everyone can make everything at level. The fix is crafted gear as the ''primary'' low-end source, with monsters dropping materials and damaged pieces. Combined with reworkable quality, the bronze set you made at hour one is still what you carry at hour ten, only better — so gear is made in handfuls, slowly, and upgraded repeatedly, not extruded by the hundred.

=== Wear as an item sink ===

Wear earns its place as an '''item sink''', not as realism. If it exists it should be honest: pieces eventually break for good rather than hovering near death on perpetual maintenance. Durability that ticks down merely from swinging is a tax players resent and buys nothing the damaged-drop already provides. The sink should bite hardest on looted junk and lightest on a piece you have reworked repeatedly, so supply pressure lands on the bandit's sword rather than on your investment.

== Tiers, ores and regions ==

Metal tiers should be '''relevant progression''' — bronze worn for a real stretch, not breezed past in ten minutes.

* '''Overlap but never leapfrog''': masterwork bronze beats tattered iron and loses to plain iron. Quality has teeth at the low end without letting anyone grind bronze forever.
* Bronze is copper plus tin, which gives '''regional identity for free''' and without invented ore names — the starter set is the first thing that makes you travel or trade, not something you make off the boat. Eve-style fantasy ore ladders were considered and rejected as confusing.
* Iron then arrives as easier to source but harder to work, giving smith skill something to bite on.

''Update: copper-plus-tin is already how the smelter's bronze recipe reads, and iron is already the cheaper single-input recipe. Neither has a skill requirement, because recipes cannot express one.''

== Combat styles and pneuma ==

The RuneScape combat triangle is out. Strengths and weaknesses belong to '''elements and damage types''' (blunt, stab, bleed, poison, and more), not to style-beats-style.

''Update: a damage-type registry already exists — <code>damage_types.json</code> holds pure, fire, water, earth, air and void — so blunt, stab, bleed and poison would be new keys of an existing kind rather than a new mechanism. NPCs carry authored <code>affinities</code> (incoming-damage multipliers per type) and equipment carries <code>affinity_mods</code>, so the resistance side of this is already wired end to end.''

'''A weapon is a vessel for pneuma.''' It may have an affinity, but which element you put through it is your choice. Imbuing should be an ''action'' — cost some pneuma, last a while or a number of hits — rather than a permanent property, or element becomes a build slot and you end up carrying four swords. Staves and wands remain in the game as vessels that are simply better at it.

''Update: a weapon's element is a static per-type field today (<code>ItemTypeDef.damage_type</code>, "the attacker's own default" when absent). Making imbuing an action means moving element out of type data into per-wielding state — a wire and persistence change, not a content one. The vessel framing is taken further on [[Reclamation]].''

This keeps element reactive in the moment while gear stays the plan you made an hour ago. Four elements × three styles never becomes twelve roles, because element is not something you pick at character build time.

Styles differ by '''how you spend attention''', and by their tempo with pneuma:

* '''Melee''' — commitment; in its face, steady output, decisions about positioning and when to spend. Spends pneuma in chunks up front, then swings.
* '''Ranged''' — upkeep; managing distance and ammo, punished for standing still. Spends per shot on ammo prepared in advance, so it can pre-craft pneuma at a bench. Arrows as pneuma storage also gives the crafting loop a consumable.
* '''Magic''' — burst and swing; big single actions on a resource that runs dry.

Armour differentiation without an encumbrance system: penalties against the style the armour is not for — metal blunts bow accuracy and pneuma throughput, leather neutral and cheap, robes trade protection for casting. This makes Bembi's leather something you wear ''to shoot things'' rather than worse bronze.

''Update: items already carry <code>attack_style</code> ("melee", "ranged", "magic"), but it is documented as presentation and categorization only — it "doesn't gate any combat mechanic yet" — and per-style defender evasion (e.g. "melee armor" making melee attacks less accurate) is already named there as the planned follow-up. That planned follow-up is this bullet. Style and element are already orthogonal in the schema, exactly as this section wants: a flaming sword is melee+fire.''

'''No swapping equipment in combat''' (WoW-style out-of-combat only). It makes gear a decision rather than a macro, keeps PvP legible, and the server already owns equip.

''Update: the server does own equip — <code>is_equipment</code>/<code>equip_slot</code> across eight slots (head, chest, legs, boots, gloves, back, hand, offhand), with the "Equip" action auto-added and two-handed items vacating the offhand. There is no in-combat gate on it yet.''

== Code state at time of writing ==

''Checked against the repository on 2026-08-11, the day after the session. Commit dates are the authors' local dates as recorded in git.''

'''Landed after the mirror was taken, before or during the session:'''

* '''Processor recipes''' (2026-08-10) — <code>ObjectTypeDef.processor_recipes</code>, a data-driven item conversion whose recipe id doubles as its action id, validated at load, run by <code>world/processing.rs</code>. Ships with a smelter (<code>bronze_bar</code>, <code>iron_bar</code>) and campfire cooking. Resolves atomically in one interaction, with no duration and no requirement beyond holding the inputs.
* '''Z-aware minimap and world map''' (2026-08-08, protocol 72) — the maps show the topmost stacked face, and the minimap resolves at the player's own z, so a cave level is visible instead of the terrain above it. Real tile textures on both; scroll zoom on the minimap. Rendering is editor-unverified.
* '''Cave rock-shell walls disabled''' (2026-08-10) — behind a <code>WallsEnabled</code> flag; ceiling occlusion untouched.
* '''Cow NPC''' (2026-08-10) — art, stats, 2×2 footprint, empty loot table.

'''Already present, and older than the mirror:'''

* A minimap (2026-06-30).
* Gathering durations — <code>harvest.lua</code>'s <code>start_activity</code>, with tool gating, per-tick yields, loot-table rolls, XP, depletion and respawn.
* The damage-type registry (pure, fire, water, earth, air, void), NPC <code>affinities</code>, and equipment <code>affinity_mods</code>.
* <code>attack_style</code> on items, presentation-only.
* Server-owned equip across eight slots.
* Two distinct cut mechanisms: the runtime cutaway (play, always available) and the authoring cut (Edit Mode only).

'''Not present in any form:'''

* Smithing — no anvil object type, no smithing skill, no bronze set past <code>bronze_helmet</code>.
* Quality, wear, durability or repair, on items or on the wire.
* Hide, leather or tanning content.
* Recipe requirements of any kind — no station tag, no tool/skill/catalyst gate, no fuel input.
* Physical damage types (blunt, stab, bleed, poison).
* Any duration on processing.
* An entrance kit.

== Open questions ==

* Whether "I'll tank it, you handle the poison" implies '''party roles'''. The existing [[Combat]] page says flatly there are none, with cooperation coming from covering matchups. Preparation-by-gear ("one person can stand there today") is not the same as a tank role, but the two need separating deliberately.
* What a bow actually ''does'' with pneuma beyond imbued ammo — a channelled shot, something else. Magic's relationship to the element wheel is obvious; melee and ranged still need theirs written down.
* Whether quality overlap across tiers is a flat rule or per-slot.
* Personal realms / player housing came up and was left alone — Bembi's concern is that it becomes a Garrison, i.e. lots to do somewhere other players aren't.
* What "a weapon is a '''vessel'''" commits to. [[Pneuma]]'s Law I gives that word a specific meaning: a structure that circulates pneuma and is thereby ''alive'' — "fill a vessel and it wakes; drain it and it goes still." Taken at face value an imbued weapon is animate for as long as it is charged, which is the soul-of-the-sword idea and may be the point rather than a problem. Pursued on [[Reclamation]], along with what restores a worn piece. [[Pneuma]] also places elemental-ness in the ''medium'' rather than the pneuma, so "which element you put through it" is more precisely which medium the pneuma is bound in.
* How physical damage types sit against the element square. [[Combat]]'s settled core is four elements countering on the diagonal, with countering as an ''action'' rather than a multiplier. Blunt, stab, bleed and poison need a stated relationship to that, not just a shared registry entry.
* Nothing was written to [[Combat]] this session. The vessel line and the quality-vs-wear split are the two candidates when someone wants them recorded.

[[Category:Collab session notes]]

Reclamation

2026-08-11T00:56:08Z

Tyg13: Create Reclamation: the practice of returning dull pneuma to use — trainable, not a species trait; land and (proposed) equipment (via create-page on MediaWiki MCP Server)

'''Reclamation''' is the practice of gathering '''dull''' — spent, no-longer-usable — [[Pneuma#Spent pneuma|pneuma]] and returning it to use.

It is a '''practice, not a trait'''. Anyone can learn it, train it and get good at it. [[Celaborans]] are the people who live entirely on it, which makes them its most practised users rather than its only ones.

== What dull pneuma is ==

By [[Pneuma]]'s Law II, shaping always costs: some pneuma is spent every time it is bound into a medium, released from one, or annihilated against an enemy medium. What Attrition takes is not destroyed. It goes dull and settles into the ground where it was spent, so battlefields, ruins and long-worked sites are thick with it.

Land that is heavily spent and never reclaimed goes '''sour'''. Land beyond that is '''void''': nothing living draws anything from it.

Reclamation is the described way dull pneuma returns to use.

== Progression ==

Reclamation is trained by doing it, and a practitioner can become known for it the way a smith can.

Whether it grows on an axis of its own is '''unsettled'''. Dull pneuma is neither pure nor bound to a medium, so the affinity described in Law III — which grows by spending a ''medium'' — does not obviously apply to it. An axis of its own would keep reclamation from competing with the elemental specialisation a caster is already investing in.

== What can be reclaimed ==

=== Land ===

Somewhere abandoned and taken back is somewhere reclaimed. Groves grow thickest where a lot has happened, because that is where the spent pneuma is.

A proposal, not yet built: a place's capacity to support life drains as it is hunted out, and is restored by a ritual performed on the spot, the restorer paying a little of their own pneuma to gather back what was scattered. An area could then be hunted out, be seen to be hunted out, and be brought back.

=== Equipment (proposed) ===

Everything in this section is proposed.

Law I separates two things a piece of matter can do with pneuma. Pneuma merely lodged in matter is '''charged''' — inert, and safe to carry, store and trade. Pneuma '''circulating''' through a vessel is alive: "fill a vessel and it wakes; drain it and it goes still."

Read against equipment, that makes an imbued weapon briefly alive for as long as its charge lasts — a soul in the sword, held only while it is filled. Law I also fixes how much of a soul: "more pneuma in a simple vessel makes it stronger, not cleverer." A sword is a simple vessel, so a woken blade is dim. It wants and it pulls; it does not converse.

Two different numbers follow, and they belong to two different practices:

{| class="wikitable"
! !! What it is !! Whose work !! How it moves
|-
| '''Quality''' || How good a vessel the piece is — how well its structure circulates || The smith's || Only upward, and only by reworking the piece
|-
| '''Wear''' || How well it is holding its charge now || The reclaimer's || Down through use, back up through reclamation
|}

Because the two practices reach different things, '''repair cannot raise quality''': a reclaimer restores charge and never touches structure. A piece whose structure can no longer hold what is poured into it is finished for good.

A weapon filled with the same medium over and over may take on an affinity for it, by the same rule that grows a practitioner's. That would make a long-carried blade cheaper to fill with what it has always carried — a named sword arrived at by use rather than by authoring.

== Conservation ==

Whether reclamation returns what was scattered — a world with a closed total — or the land simply refills, and reclamation only hurries it, is '''undecided'''. Nothing yet described depends on the answer.

== Open questions ==

* Whether reclamation is one practice applied to every vessel — land, gear, sour ground — or several separate ones. One would make the person who restores a hunting ground the same person who services a blade.
* Whether [[Celaborans]] reclaim in some way others cannot, or are simply the most practised at a common skill.
* Whether the practice grows on its own axis or through affinity.
* Conservation or minting, as above.
* Whether anything is beyond reclaiming — whether void is permanent, and whether a spent piece of gear has a true end.
* The dull-pneuma model this whole practice rests on is itself not settled.

== See also ==

* [[Pneuma]]
* [[Celaborans]]
* [[Combat]]

Collab session notes/2026-08-11 Early-game spine and gear quality

2026-08-11T00:03:55Z

Tyg13: collab-chat: publish session notes

''Synthesized by an AI from a live Tyler ↔ Bembi design conversation on 2026-08-11. A record of what was discussed, not settled design — session notes, not canon.''

Session covering cave-mouth art, a first early-game gameplay loop, recipe structure, item quality/wear, and how the three combat styles relate to [[Pneuma]].

== Cave mouths ==

Cave entrances get a hand-authored '''entrance kit''' rather than procedural mouth geometry. The shell/void machinery already produces the hole; what generation cannot produce is a good silhouette, since anything derived from tile corners looks like tile corners. A handful of meshes, rotated and non-uniformly scaled, beats a procedural mouth we would spend a long time tuning — and this is already what the caves/overhangs/cliffs initiative calls for.

* The kit should come in a small set of '''fixed tile footprints''' (one-, two-, three-tile wide) so void painting has known shapes to match, instead of every mouth being a bespoke vertex-nudging job.
* Entrance meshes should use the '''same rock material''' as the cliff/shell, or the seam between authored and generated rock will pop.
* Entrance objects are '''pure dressing and non-blocking'''. Walkability is server-side (the void tile, the cave floor surface, the flanking walls); the mesh must be generous enough that the authored hole never clips through it.

Noted in passing: the surface placement tool needs work, and the cutaway view wants to be independent of edit mode. A minimap (deferred when caves were built) is now urgent — Bembi got genuinely lost inside his own cave.

== Early-game spine ==

Nothing in the game currently takes time — cooking and smelting resolve as fast as you can click, so there is no loop, only a button that converts inventory. '''Server-side action durations''' on gathering and processing are the prerequisite for any early-game content: they turn existing content into a session, and they are cheap next to authoring gear.

Chosen spine (both participants): '''mine → smelt → smith a bronze set → the cave enemy that needs it.''' It leans on the caves and smithy that already exist and makes gear the sink.

* Tune the '''enemy first''' — unwinnable in starting kit, fair in bronze — and let the ore/bar economy fall out of its time-to-kill, rather than the reverse.
* Depth over breadth: one loop taken all the way to a sink, plus one gate that says "you're not ready yet", beats a full leather-and-bronze matrix.

== Recipes ==

Recipes move out of individual objects into a '''recipe manager'''. A recipe is inputs, outputs, and non-consumed requirements (catalyst / tool / station).

* A recipe should name a '''station tag''', with objects declaring which tags they satisfy — campfire and range both claim <code>cook</code>, furnace claims <code>smelt</code>, a portable forge added later claims it without touching any recipe.
* Superheat-style effects are a separate recipe with the same output and no fuel input, gated by a spell. This is why gating wants to be a small list of conditions on the recipe (tool, skill, tag, item held) rather than the recipe living inside one object.
* Multi-component crafting is attractive because it interconnects systems: a sword is blade (forged with the tang as one piece) plus fittings plus a wrapped grip. The leather grip feeds Bembi's cow/tanning loop into the smithing spine. Two or three components per item is enough — stop short of a per-item minigame, which is fun for twenty swords and misery for two hundred.

== Quality and wear ==

'''Quality lives on equipment only, never on materials.''' A bar carrying its own quality number stops stacking, and per-item tracked ore is bad for both the wire and the player. One-per-slot items you actually look at can carry state for free.

'''Quality and wear are two different numbers.'''

* '''Quality''' is the inherent property of the piece — what a smith invested into it. It only ever moves ''up'', when someone reworks the piece. Repair never raises it.
* '''Wear''' is condition. Drops come off corpses heavily worn, so a bandit's sword needs a smith and a bar before it is worth carrying — looting ''feeds'' smithing instead of replacing it.

Presentation: quality shown as words (tattered … masterwork), Terraria-style, whatever the internal representation.

Smith skill produces better quality on a curve with diminishing returns — exponential effort for linear gain — so top smiths make masterwork and everyone else makes serviceable. '''Proficiency should be emergent''': making longswords repeatedly nudges your longsword curve specifically, which is what makes a player known for something. Maintenance can be done by players or bought from an NPC smith.

The reason RuneScape smithing is inert is that drops outclass crafted gear and everyone can make everything at level. The fix is crafted gear as the ''primary'' low-end source, with monsters dropping materials and damaged pieces. Combined with reworkable quality, the bronze set you made at hour one is still what you carry at hour ten, only better — so gear is made in handfuls, slowly, and upgraded repeatedly, not extruded by the hundred.

=== Wear as an item sink ===

Wear earns its place as an '''item sink''', not as realism. If it exists it should be honest: pieces eventually break for good rather than hovering near death on perpetual maintenance. Durability that ticks down merely from swinging is a tax players resent and buys nothing the damaged-drop already provides. The sink should bite hardest on looted junk and lightest on a piece you have reworked repeatedly, so supply pressure lands on the bandit's sword rather than on your investment.

== Tiers, ores and regions ==

Metal tiers should be '''relevant progression''' — bronze worn for a real stretch, not breezed past in ten minutes.

* '''Overlap but never leapfrog''': masterwork bronze beats tattered iron and loses to plain iron. Quality has teeth at the low end without letting anyone grind bronze forever.
* Bronze is copper plus tin, which gives '''regional identity for free''' and without invented ore names — the starter set is the first thing that makes you travel or trade, not something you make off the boat. Eve-style fantasy ore ladders were considered and rejected as confusing.
* Iron then arrives as easier to source but harder to work, giving smith skill something to bite on.

== Combat styles and pneuma ==

The RuneScape combat triangle is out. Strengths and weaknesses belong to '''elements and damage types''' (blunt, stab, bleed, poison, and more), not to style-beats-style.

'''A weapon is a vessel for pneuma.''' It may have an affinity, but which element you put through it is your choice. Imbuing should be an ''action'' — cost some pneuma, last a while or a number of hits — rather than a permanent property, or element becomes a build slot and you end up carrying four swords. Staves and wands remain in the game as vessels that are simply better at it.

This keeps element reactive in the moment while gear stays the plan you made an hour ago. Four elements × three styles never becomes twelve roles, because element is not something you pick at character build time.

Styles differ by '''how you spend attention''', and by their tempo with pneuma:

* '''Melee''' — commitment; in its face, steady output, decisions about positioning and when to spend. Spends pneuma in chunks up front, then swings.
* '''Ranged''' — upkeep; managing distance and ammo, punished for standing still. Spends per shot on ammo prepared in advance, so it can pre-craft pneuma at a bench. Arrows as pneuma storage also gives the crafting loop a consumable.
* '''Magic''' — burst and swing; big single actions on a resource that runs dry.

Armour differentiation without an encumbrance system: penalties against the style the armour is not for — metal blunts bow accuracy and pneuma throughput, leather neutral and cheap, robes trade protection for casting. This makes Bembi's leather something you wear ''to shoot things'' rather than worse bronze.

'''No swapping equipment in combat''' (WoW-style out-of-combat only). It makes gear a decision rather than a macro, keeps PvP legible, and the server already owns equip.

== Open questions ==

* Whether "I'll tank it, you handle the poison" implies '''party roles'''. The existing [[Combat]] page says flatly there are none, with cooperation coming from covering matchups. Preparation-by-gear ("one person can stand there today") is not the same as a tank role, but the two need separating deliberately.
* What a bow actually ''does'' with pneuma beyond imbued ammo — a channelled shot, something else. Magic's relationship to the element wheel is obvious; melee and ranged still need theirs written down.
* Whether quality overlap across tiers is a flat rule or per-slot.
* Personal realms / player housing came up and was left alone — Bembi's concern is that it becomes a Garrison, i.e. lots to do somewhere other players aren't.
* Nothing was written to [[Combat]] this session. The vessel line and the quality-vs-wear split are the two candidates when someone wants them recorded.

[[Category:Collab session notes]]

Bhrenor

2026-08-05T02:41:44Z

Tyg13: flesh out the page a bit more

'''Bhrenor''' was a powerful being whose death created the world. When he died, his body split into the four known elements, and his spirit was released in the form of [[pneuma]] into the world. Nothing is known concretely about Bhrenor's identity, personality, or nature. His true name and origins are unknown, and the given name Bhrenor simply means ''breath-giver'' or ''life-giver'' in an ancient tongue.

== Nature ==
No one knows exactly what Bhrenor was, or where he came from. Many theories exist, many conflicting, and none of them conclusively proven.

* Many, amongst them followers of the [[Church of the Holy Breath]], believe that Bhrenor was a divine being or a god
* Some believe that Bhrenor was not a divine being, but just a powerful entity or force of nature
* Others believe that Bhrenor never existed at all

== Death ==
When Bhrenor died, his physical form became the body of the world, and his spirit became its life, its breath, its pneuma. No one knows exactly why he died, but again many theories exist:

* The followers of the [[Church of the Holy Breath]] believe that Bhrenor sacrificed himself to create the world and give it life.
* Others believe that Bhrenor's death was simply unexplainable, or unknowable
* The followers of [[Omberin]] believe that Bhrenor's death was a mistake, which can only be rectified by feeding the world's pneuma to back to Omberin, who will be reborn as Bhrenor

Bhrenor

2026-08-05T00:05:40Z

Tyg13: make-a da page

'''Bhrenor''' was a powerful being whose death created the world. His body split into the four known elements, and his spirit was released in the form of [[Pneuma]] into the world. Little is known about Bhrenor's identity, personality, or nature. His true name is unknown, the given name Bhrenor simply means ''breath-giver'' or ''life-giver'' in an ancient tongue.

The First Breath

2026-07-28T22:17:18Z

Tyg13: /* The tale */ major rewrite

''Status: proposal (2026-07-28). Not settled design. Written by Tyler with an AI; Bembi has not reviewed any of it. Feedback wanted on all of it.''

This page proposes a creation account for the world, and a framework for its gods, built out of [[Pneuma]] rather than beside it. It adds no substance, no law and no second power source. What it proposes is where the world's pneuma came from, why it is spread unevenly, and what a god is.

== The tale ==

Legends tell that when the world was new, rivers ran, oceans churned, fires burned, and winds blew.

And nothing lived.

Then Bhrenor died, and his last breath went out of him into the world.

It went into the sea, the stone, the fire, and the moving air, and lay still. The world did not. It churned, and the breath became currents.

Where currents closed upon themselves, something woke.

Nothing was made. The breath turned in what was already there, and a thing was awake while it turned. The breath was new then, and what woke was enormous.

The Stend rose out of the earth. They were many and slow, and stone holds a shape; some lie where they rose to this day.

The Equor stirred far beneath the water. They were few and vast, and hard to finish.

The Aora shifted with the winds, one and then many and then one. Nothing could strike them, but neither could they.

The Hehter caught fire from the sun. They burned, and went out, and caught again. They were past counting, and few lasted.

From the beginning the firstborn warred. Bhrenor had left only so much breath; each held what the others could not have, and none could make more.

Their struggle shaped the world. Fire drove air into lightning and opened the earth into magma; water drew mist from the air, and mud from the earth.

But where opposites met — fire with water, earth with air — only destruction remained. What they held came loose, pure, and less than had gone in.

Some of it would never turn again. It grew heavy, and sank, and left the land above it poor. It is down there yet, gathering.

The rest drifted, and waited to be held. What woke now was smaller.

The creatures of the flesh.

Mice among mountains — but mice were everywhere.

Flesh held the breath differently. It grew. It multiplied. It did not give of its breath freely when it died.

The firstborn hardly noticed. A mouse holds nothing worth taking. They warred only with each other, their mighty conflict spilling their breath like blood.

The creatures of the flesh grew in number, in size, and in shape. And then there were men.

The firstborn could stamp a man's life out like a bug, but would gain little from it. So they watched as men spread across the land, the way moss overtakes a stone.

The stone never ran out. What ran out was its breath When too little was left, the mountain falls dormant.

Most believe nothing will ever wake like that again. It took the breath of the dying Bhrenor to wake the firstborn. What is left now is spread too thin to be gathered like that again.

Some of the first remain. Some sleep. Some hid. Some fled. And some simply made peace.

Men call these those that remain the Titans. Their power is worshipped by cults across the land as gods.

Whatever remains, one thing is certain. The Age of Elements, the Time of Calamity, is over.

Now is the Age of Men.

== What the tale claims ==

Every beat maps to a rule that already exists on [[Pneuma]].

{| class="wikitable"
! Line !! Claim
|-
| Bhrenor's dying breath || All the pneuma in the world came from one source, and no more is coming. The supply only moves and declines.
|-
| "everywhere it went, it lay still" || Pneuma lodged in matter is charged. Circulation is what makes it alive (Law I).
|-
| "wore a way for itself" || Vessels form by use. See below.
|-
| The four peoples || The first and largest vessels, each bound to a medium.
|-
| Lightning, magma, mist, mud || Synergy between allied media ([[Pneuma]] § Reactions).
|-
| "Where fire met water, both ended" || Dissonance. Yields pure, and less of it than went in (Law II).
|-
| "went dull, and sank into the ground" || [[Pneuma]] § Spent pneuma. The first sour and void land dates from the wars.
|-
| "grew fine enough to hold it" || Flesh is a later and finer vessel than any medium.
|-
| "men, who hold the breath loose" || Humans run on pure, which is why abilities cost pure ([[Pneuma]] § Abilities).
|-
| "their strength stayed behind ... where it is still taken" || Why a river or a burning fire holds anything to gather.
|}

The last row is the load-bearing one. [[Pneuma]] lists elemental sites as a source but states that media are ordinary matter holding no power of their own, which leaves no account of how a river came to hold gatherable pneuma. This tale supplies it: the world's elemental sites are the settled remains of the Age of Elements.

=== How vessels form ===

A vessel is a structure able to carry a current. Structures form by being used. Pneuma lodged in matter drifts as the matter moves, and matter that is moved through for long enough is worn into a channel, the way water wears a bed. When the channel closes on itself and the current comes round again, it circulates, and the thing is alive.

Pneuma supplies the animation. Structure decides what the animation amounts to. This proposal changes neither. It states only where structure comes from.

Three consequences:

* '''The four peoples differ because their media differ.''' Earth is slow to wear and holds its shape, so the Stend are numerous, sluggish, and long-settled. Water wears vast channels, so the Equor are few and enormous. Fire's channels collapse as fast as they cut, so the Hehter are countless and brief. Air holds a channel poorly, which is why the Aora were never one thing.
* '''Elemental creatures still form.''' Rich ground still wears small channels. This is where the elementals in [[Pneuma]] § Sources keep coming from.
* '''Nothing that large will form again.''' The great channels were cut by the whole breath at full strength. Attrition leaves every age less to work with. Small things still wake; gods do not.

If adopted, this wants one line added to [[Pneuma]] Law I.

== Gods ==

=== A god is a vessel ===

Gods are inside the system. A god is a vessel large enough that nothing else compares, made of the same pneuma as everything else, standing in real geography. All three laws apply to it. Acting spends it. It can be drained, and it can be killed.

The alternative, a god above the laws, was considered and rejected. It demotes the three laws to rules for mortals, gives every hard question the answer "a god did it", and reopens the closed supply.

=== A god has no portfolio ===

A god is a thing, not a domain. What it is worshipped for is whatever proximity to it does. The same god can carry two contradictory theologies in two regions, with both cults correct about the physics and disagreeing about the meaning.

=== There is no parity between elements ===

Numbers follow from the medium, so each element's pantheon has a different shape.

{| class="wikitable"
! Medium !! Shape of its pantheon
|-
| Earth || Numerous, ancient, mostly dormant
|-
| Water || Few, enormous, long-lived
|-
| Fire || Mostly a graveyard, and therefore mostly rich sites
|-
| Air || Rare, poorly individuated, hard to count
|}

=== Test for a proposed god ===

A god is worth writing when it has all five of these. Without them it is a name.

* '''State''' — alive, dying, dead, or dispersed
* '''Medium''' — which one it is bound to, if any; hybrid and none are both allowed
* '''Body''' — where it physically is
* '''Signature''' — what proximity does to the draw rate, to sites, to dull ground
* '''Beneficiaries''' — who lives off it, and who was cut off

== Bhrenor ==

Bhrenor is the maker. He was an entity of enormous power rather than a person, and his dying breath supplied the world with all of its pneuma.

Three things follow.

'''The supply is closed.''' One breath, spent once. Everything since is redistribution and Attrition. This is why the world is running down, why spent land stays spent, and why reclamation matters.

'''Every later power is derived from him.''' The elemental progenitors are the first division of the breath, which is why they are god-scale and why nothing since has been.

'''There is no corpse.''' The giving and the dying were the same event, so nothing was left over whole. Fragments are open: pieces of the original structure, still holding what never dispersed. A fragment is matter that was built to carry a current, which makes a relic different in kind from a rich site.

The one rule fragments need: '''a fragment is a battery, not a well.''' A fixed charge, spendable once, gone after. Whoever uses one destroys it, nothing makes more, and the count only falls. A fragment that refills is a source, and a source breaks the closed supply.

=== The nature of the gift ===

An entity that was not a person may not have intended anything. Whether the breath was given or merely lost is unprovable, and the three readings are the setting's main theological division.

{| class="wikitable"
! Reading !! Position
|-
| Orthodox || Freely given. Gratitude and stewardship are owed.
|-
| Naturalist || A death, and nothing more. The morality built on it rests on an accident.
|-
| Omberin's cult || A mistake. The world should be allowed to finish dying.
|}

Which is true is deliberately left open.

== Omberin ==

''Proposed. Omberin appears in the concepting notes on [[The World]] as a god or god-like force worshipped by a cult that destroys pneuma.''

[[Pneuma]] holds that spent pneuma goes dull rather than being destroyed, so a cult that destroys pneuma is doing something else. The proposal: when the breath divided, a portion of it never circulated. It lay down at the beginning and never woke, and it spreads where nothing reclaims it. That portion is Omberin.

Under Law I this is not alive and was never alive, so the church is correct that Omberin is no god. The cult is also correct that stillness was the original condition and everything else came after. Their aim is to complete something rather than to destroy it, and what they are actually doing is accelerating Attrition.

== The Breath ==

''Proposed. A faith, not a power source.''

The world's physics produce an ethical crisis without help: pneuma is finite in practice, every act spends some, spent land dies, and taking pneuma from a weaker vessel works. Sacrifice is effective. A world in which that is true would produce a moral order in response, and the Breath is it.

The doctrine follows from the laws.

* Your pneuma is not yours. You are a vessel carrying it.
* Spending on yourself is loss. Spending on others keeps it in circulation.
* Taking another's is the one real sin, being the void's own method.
* Dull land is the record of what was taken.

=== Registers ===

The same thing has three names, in the way real religious vocabulary layers.

{| class="wikitable"
! Register !! Name !! Used by
|-
| Learned || '''pneuma''' || Scholars and practitioners
|-
| Vernacular || '''the Breath''' || Everyone
|-
| Proper || '''Bhrenor''' || The oldest surviving form of the same word
|}

Ordinary speech: ''Breath keep you''. ''By the Breath''. '''Breathless''' for the spent and the damned, and ''the unbreathing country'' for the void.

The institution keeps a formal vocabulary alongside it: '''caritas''' for the duty, and '''redemptio''' for the promise, in its literal sense of buying back.

=== Positions ===

* '''On the titans.''' They were never gods, only the first pieces. The cults hold that a piece of a god is a god. Both are right about the facts.
* '''On grace.''' Dullness is not final. Spent pneuma has fallen, not perished, and can be returned. [[Celaborans]] leaves open whether anything besides a Celaboran can reclaim, and the church claims consecrated ground recovers. Slowly enough that belief is required.
* '''On practitioners.''' Practitioners spend enormous pneuma for personal power, which the doctrine condemns. This gives players a standing tension with the largest institution in the world, without either side being villainous.

=== Saints ===

Local holy figures, named, human, each attached to a place that behaves oddly. Saints let the heartland be densely named without adding cosmology per name.

== Cults ==

A cult is a settlement on a pneuma anomaly with a theology attached. [[Pneuma]] § Sources already makes drawing faster where the land is rich, so proximity to a large circulating vessel is measurable, and people would gather at one for reasons that hold up.

Sacrifice works. Moving pneuma from small vessels into a large one is ordinary handling. Cults that practise it are correct about the physics and repellent about everything else, which is a better position for them to occupy than superstition.

== What this would change elsewhere ==

* [[Pneuma]] Law I gains a line on how vessels form.
* [[Pneuma]]'s lead says "anything holding it is alive", which its own Law I contradicts. That predates this proposal and wants fixing regardless.

Nothing else on any page changes.

== Open questions ==

* Whether the four peoples are four at all, given that numbers follow from the medium. Four kinds with uneven counts is the working answer.
* Whether any elemental progenitor survives, and whether any surviving one holds territory. A living titan with a homeland risks the elemental-quadrant map that [[Collab session notes/2026-07-25 World foundations v0]] rejected.
* Where the first pure gathered, since the tale makes it the birthplace of everything fleshborn. It would be the oldest holy site in the world and it has no location yet.
* Whether the church is one institution or several, and whether it is imperial.
* How practitioners are explained, in doctrine and in fact. The tale deliberately stops short of it.
* Names for the elemental progenitors, and whether they are named at all. Nothing should be named before what it did is settled.
* Empire history remains deferred, per the 2026-07-25 session.

== See also ==

* [[Pneuma]]
* [[Celaborans]]
* [[The World]]

The First Breath

2026-07-28T12:00:02Z

Tyg13: Proposal: creation myth and pantheon framework derived from Pneuma. Not settled design; feedback wanted. (via create-page on MediaWiki MCP Server)

''Status: proposal (2026-07-28). Not settled design. Written by Tyler with an AI; Bembi has not reviewed any of it. Feedback wanted on all of it.''

This page proposes a creation account for the world, and a framework for its gods, built out of [[Pneuma]] rather than beside it. It adds no substance, no law and no second power source. What it proposes is where the world's pneuma came from, why it is spread unevenly, and what a god is.

== The tale ==

''As commonly recited.''

Legends tell that long ago, when the world was new, rivers ran, oceans churned, fires burned, and wind blew.

But nothing lived. The rock lay bare. The sea ran empty.

Brimstone scorched the land. Rain drowned it. Earthquakes broke it. Storms scoured it. It was a world, and it was empty.

Then Bhrenor died, and his last breath went out of him into the world.

It went everywhere: into the sea, into the stone, into the fire and the moving air. And everywhere it went, it lay still.

It lay still a long while, and the world went on churning, and the churning stirred it. Where it stirred it wore a way for itself, as water wears a bed. Where the way closed and the breath came round again, something woke.

The Stend came up out of the earth. They were many, and they were slow, and some lie where they rose to this day.

The Equor woke far down in the water. There were few, and they were vast.

The Hehter caught from the sun, and burned, and went out, and caught again, and their number ran past counting.

The Aora shifted with the weather, one and then many and then one.

From the beginning they warred, each seeking the ruin of the others, and from their warring the world took its features.

Where fire and air went together, lightning came down. Where fire ground against earth, magma ran. Where water and air met, there was mist, and there was ice. Where water and earth mixed, there was mud.

Where fire met water, both ended. Where earth met air, both ended. What had been bound in them came loose, and what came loose was pure, and there was less of it than had gone in. What was lost went dull, and sank into the ground, and that ground has been poor ever since.

Where the loose breath gathered, it lay in the ground and waited.

What woke was what grew fine enough to hold it. First the small things. Then the green things. Then beasts. And last, men, who hold the breath loose and carry it wherever they go.

The elemental peoples did not lose a war. Everything they had was borrowed, and when the borrowed matter was spent they went out, and their strength stayed behind in the world, in the rivers and the fires and the rock, where it is still taken.

That is the tale. We do not know that it is true. The elders tell it one way, the priests another, and the cults another still. Only this is agreed: the Age of Elements is over. Now is the Age of Men.

== What the tale claims ==

Every beat maps to a rule that already exists on [[Pneuma]].

{| class="wikitable"
! Line !! Claim
|-
| Bhrenor's dying breath || All the pneuma in the world came from one source, and no more is coming. The supply only moves and declines.
|-
| "everywhere it went, it lay still" || Pneuma lodged in matter is charged. Circulation is what makes it alive (Law I).
|-
| "wore a way for itself" || Vessels form by use. See below.
|-
| The four peoples || The first and largest vessels, each bound to a medium.
|-
| Lightning, magma, mist, mud || Synergy between allied media ([[Pneuma]] § Reactions).
|-
| "Where fire met water, both ended" || Dissonance. Yields pure, and less of it than went in (Law II).
|-
| "went dull, and sank into the ground" || [[Pneuma]] § Spent pneuma. The first sour and void land dates from the wars.
|-
| "grew fine enough to hold it" || Flesh is a later and finer vessel than any medium.
|-
| "men, who hold the breath loose" || Humans run on pure, which is why abilities cost pure ([[Pneuma]] § Abilities).
|-
| "their strength stayed behind ... where it is still taken" || Why a river or a burning fire holds anything to gather.
|}

The last row is the load-bearing one. [[Pneuma]] lists elemental sites as a source but states that media are ordinary matter holding no power of their own, which leaves no account of how a river came to hold gatherable pneuma. This tale supplies it: the world's elemental sites are the settled remains of the Age of Elements.

=== How vessels form ===

A vessel is a structure able to carry a current. Structures form by being used. Pneuma lodged in matter drifts as the matter moves, and matter that is moved through for long enough is worn into a channel, the way water wears a bed. When the channel closes on itself and the current comes round again, it circulates, and the thing is alive.

Pneuma supplies the animation. Structure decides what the animation amounts to. This proposal changes neither. It states only where structure comes from.

Three consequences:

* '''The four peoples differ because their media differ.''' Earth is slow to wear and holds its shape, so the Stend are numerous, sluggish, and long-settled. Water wears vast channels, so the Equor are few and enormous. Fire's channels collapse as fast as they cut, so the Hehter are countless and brief. Air holds a channel poorly, which is why the Aora were never one thing.
* '''Elemental creatures still form.''' Rich ground still wears small channels. This is where the elementals in [[Pneuma]] § Sources keep coming from.
* '''Nothing that large will form again.''' The great channels were cut by the whole breath at full strength. Attrition leaves every age less to work with. Small things still wake; gods do not.

If adopted, this wants one line added to [[Pneuma]] Law I.

== Gods ==

=== A god is a vessel ===

Gods are inside the system. A god is a vessel large enough that nothing else compares, made of the same pneuma as everything else, standing in real geography. All three laws apply to it. Acting spends it. It can be drained, and it can be killed.

The alternative, a god above the laws, was considered and rejected. It demotes the three laws to rules for mortals, gives every hard question the answer "a god did it", and reopens the closed supply.

=== A god has no portfolio ===

A god is a thing, not a domain. What it is worshipped for is whatever proximity to it does. The same god can carry two contradictory theologies in two regions, with both cults correct about the physics and disagreeing about the meaning.

=== There is no parity between elements ===

Numbers follow from the medium, so each element's pantheon has a different shape.

{| class="wikitable"
! Medium !! Shape of its pantheon
|-
| Earth || Numerous, ancient, mostly dormant
|-
| Water || Few, enormous, long-lived
|-
| Fire || Mostly a graveyard, and therefore mostly rich sites
|-
| Air || Rare, poorly individuated, hard to count
|}

=== Test for a proposed god ===

A god is worth writing when it has all five of these. Without them it is a name.

* '''State''' — alive, dying, dead, or dispersed
* '''Medium''' — which one it is bound to, if any; hybrid and none are both allowed
* '''Body''' — where it physically is
* '''Signature''' — what proximity does to the draw rate, to sites, to dull ground
* '''Beneficiaries''' — who lives off it, and who was cut off

== Bhrenor ==

Bhrenor is the maker. He was an entity of enormous power rather than a person, and his dying breath supplied the world with all of its pneuma.

Three things follow.

'''The supply is closed.''' One breath, spent once. Everything since is redistribution and Attrition. This is why the world is running down, why spent land stays spent, and why reclamation matters.

'''Every later power is derived from him.''' The elemental progenitors are the first division of the breath, which is why they are god-scale and why nothing since has been.

'''There is no corpse.''' The giving and the dying were the same event, so nothing was left over whole. Fragments are open: pieces of the original structure, still holding what never dispersed. A fragment is matter that was built to carry a current, which makes a relic different in kind from a rich site.

The one rule fragments need: '''a fragment is a battery, not a well.''' A fixed charge, spendable once, gone after. Whoever uses one destroys it, nothing makes more, and the count only falls. A fragment that refills is a source, and a source breaks the closed supply.

=== The nature of the gift ===

An entity that was not a person may not have intended anything. Whether the breath was given or merely lost is unprovable, and the three readings are the setting's main theological division.

{| class="wikitable"
! Reading !! Position
|-
| Orthodox || Freely given. Gratitude and stewardship are owed.
|-
| Naturalist || A death, and nothing more. The morality built on it rests on an accident.
|-
| Omberin's cult || A mistake. The world should be allowed to finish dying.
|}

Which is true is deliberately left open.

== Omberin ==

''Proposed. Omberin appears in the concepting notes on [[The World]] as a god or god-like force worshipped by a cult that destroys pneuma.''

[[Pneuma]] holds that spent pneuma goes dull rather than being destroyed, so a cult that destroys pneuma is doing something else. The proposal: when the breath divided, a portion of it never circulated. It lay down at the beginning and never woke, and it spreads where nothing reclaims it. That portion is Omberin.

Under Law I this is not alive and was never alive, so the church is correct that Omberin is no god. The cult is also correct that stillness was the original condition and everything else came after. Their aim is to complete something rather than to destroy it, and what they are actually doing is accelerating Attrition.

== The Breath ==

''Proposed. A faith, not a power source.''

The world's physics produce an ethical crisis without help: pneuma is finite in practice, every act spends some, spent land dies, and taking pneuma from a weaker vessel works. Sacrifice is effective. A world in which that is true would produce a moral order in response, and the Breath is it.

The doctrine follows from the laws.

* Your pneuma is not yours. You are a vessel carrying it.
* Spending on yourself is loss. Spending on others keeps it in circulation.
* Taking another's is the one real sin, being the void's own method.
* Dull land is the record of what was taken.

=== Registers ===

The same thing has three names, in the way real religious vocabulary layers.

{| class="wikitable"
! Register !! Name !! Used by
|-
| Learned || '''pneuma''' || Scholars and practitioners
|-
| Vernacular || '''the Breath''' || Everyone
|-
| Proper || '''Bhrenor''' || The oldest surviving form of the same word
|}

Ordinary speech: ''Breath keep you''. ''By the Breath''. '''Breathless''' for the spent and the damned, and ''the unbreathing country'' for the void.

The institution keeps a formal vocabulary alongside it: '''caritas''' for the duty, and '''redemptio''' for the promise, in its literal sense of buying back.

=== Positions ===

* '''On the titans.''' They were never gods, only the first pieces. The cults hold that a piece of a god is a god. Both are right about the facts.
* '''On grace.''' Dullness is not final. Spent pneuma has fallen, not perished, and can be returned. [[Celaborans]] leaves open whether anything besides a Celaboran can reclaim, and the church claims consecrated ground recovers. Slowly enough that belief is required.
* '''On practitioners.''' Practitioners spend enormous pneuma for personal power, which the doctrine condemns. This gives players a standing tension with the largest institution in the world, without either side being villainous.

=== Saints ===

Local holy figures, named, human, each attached to a place that behaves oddly. Saints let the heartland be densely named without adding cosmology per name.

== Cults ==

A cult is a settlement on a pneuma anomaly with a theology attached. [[Pneuma]] § Sources already makes drawing faster where the land is rich, so proximity to a large circulating vessel is measurable, and people would gather at one for reasons that hold up.

Sacrifice works. Moving pneuma from small vessels into a large one is ordinary handling. Cults that practise it are correct about the physics and repellent about everything else, which is a better position for them to occupy than superstition.

== What this would change elsewhere ==

* [[Pneuma]] Law I gains a line on how vessels form.
* [[Pneuma]]'s lead says "anything holding it is alive", which its own Law I contradicts. That predates this proposal and wants fixing regardless.

Nothing else on any page changes.

== Open questions ==

* Whether the four peoples are four at all, given that numbers follow from the medium. Four kinds with uneven counts is the working answer.
* Whether any elemental progenitor survives, and whether any surviving one holds territory. A living titan with a homeland risks the elemental-quadrant map that [[Collab session notes/2026-07-25 World foundations v0]] rejected.
* Where the first pure gathered, since the tale makes it the birthplace of everything fleshborn. It would be the oldest holy site in the world and it has no location yet.
* Whether the church is one institution or several, and whether it is imperial.
* How practitioners are explained, in doctrine and in fact. The tale deliberately stops short of it.
* Names for the elemental progenitors, and whether they are named at all. Nothing should be named before what it did is settled.
* Empire history remains deferred, per the 2026-07-25 session.

== See also ==

* [[Pneuma]]
* [[Celaborans]]
* [[The World]]

Shape of the World

2026-07-27T09:41:03Z

Tyg13: rewrite in plain design-note register; ocean no longer claimed as most of the world (via update-page on MediaWiki MCP Server)

''Status: proposal (2026-07-27). Not settled design — feedback wanted. Engineering feasibility has been assessed and isn't the bottleneck; everything else is open.''

The world is a '''ring''': sail west far enough and you arrive from the east. The world's shape is part of its lore, and nobody in the world has proven it yet.

== Circumnavigation ==

Circumnavigation is a goal in the game. Players provision a ship on a west coast, sail west across open ocean, and eventually make landfall on the world's eastern shore. It should take long enough to be a real expedition: something most players never complete, but every player knows is possible.

== Lore ==

The world is a band. East–west it closes on itself; north and south it ends. What the ends are is open:

* '''North''': an ice sheet? permanent storms? impassable mountains?
* '''South''': the rim itself, or more of the same?

In-world, the shape is disputed. Scholars argue ring versus disc versus sphere, and maps disagree at the margins. The world isn't ''known'' to be a ring until players — or someone in the lore — manage to circumnavigate it. Whoever does it first settles the argument.

== The ocean ==

The stretches of the ring between landmasses are open sea. The sea can be generated procedurally and doesn't necessarily have to be created by us; we author continents and islands and add them to the ring over time. That's what makes a world this large affordable.

This doesn't mean most of the game is ocean. Content still lives mostly on land; the sea is the space between, plus whatever repeatable content suits it (fishing grounds, shipwrecks, sea creatures, weather, uncharted islets). How much of the ring is water is a geography and travel-time decision, not an elemental-balance one — an ocean tile doesn't make Water a bigger part of the game any more than a mountain makes Earth one.

== Ships ==

This proposal depends on ships being real gameplay, not a teleport with a boat animation. What sailing actually is — a skill? navigation? provisioning? crew? — is open design space, and it comes first: no ships, no ring.

It also depends on travel staying slow. If fast travel ever makes any two points seconds apart, the world's shape stops mattering in play.

== Scale ==

At run speed (5 tiles/second), with a hypothetical ship at twice that:

{| class="wikitable"
! Circumference !! Nonstop run !! Nonstop sail (~2× run)
|-
| 9,000 tiles || 30 min || 15 min
|-
| 18,000 tiles || 1 h || 30 min
|-
| 36,000 tiles || 2 h || 1 h
|}

The working recommendation is '''18,000–36,000 tiles''': long enough that rounding the world is an expedition, short enough that players actually do it. Below roughly 3,000 tiles, players discover the wrap by accident in their first session and the world feels tiny.

Two properties of a ring worth noting: no destination is ever farther than half the circumference, and there are always two routes to anywhere (east-about or west-about).

== Cost and timing ==

Assessed 2026-07-27. Converting the world to an east–west ring is a moderate amount of engineering, and it can be added later without resetting or migrating the existing world — nothing is blocked or thrown away by deferring it.

A true sphere was considered and rejected: a square tile grid can't cover a sphere, the renderer assumes flat ground, and at any playable scale the curvature would be invisible anyway, so a ring plays identically.

Sequencing: keep building the world as-is; ships as their own initiative; the ring after that. The one thing worth deciding early is the lore — if the world is a ring, geography and stories written now shouldn't contradict it.

== Open questions ==

* Does a ring fit the world's story? Ring vs. disc vs. something else?
* What are the north and south ends?
* Where does the existing landmass sit on the ring, and what's on the opposite side?
* What is sailing, as gameplay?
* How does the shape dispute show up in-world — books, NPCs, a questline?
* Does the 18–36k circumference band feel right, given how the world should feel to cross on foot?

Shape of the World

2026-07-27T09:30:43Z

Tyg13: pitch: ring-world circumnavigation (proposal, not settled design) (via create-page on MediaWiki MCP Server)

''Status: proposal (2026-07-27). Nothing here is settled design — this page exists to be argued with. Engineering feasibility has been assessed and is not the bottleneck; everything else is open.''

The world is a '''ring''': sail west far enough and you return from the east. It is not a globe and does not pretend to be one — the world's shape is a fact of its cosmology, and one that nobody living has proven.

== The pitch ==

'''Circumnavigation as content.''' A player stands at a west-coast dock, provisions a ship, and sails west into open ocean. Hours later — if the voyage holds — they make landfall on the world's eastern shore. This is the medieval-explorer fantasy: not teleporting, not fast-travel, but a genuine expedition that most players will never complete and every player knows is possible.

Almost no game in this genre has an honest wrapping world. The ones that feel like planets fake it; ours would simply ''be'' a ring, and own it.

== The cosmology ==

The world is a band — call it a ring, a hoop, a girdle. East–west, it closes on itself. North and south, it ends.

What the ends look like is an open flavor decision, and a rich one:

* '''The north''': an impassable ice sheet? A wall of storms? Mountains no pass crosses?
* '''The south''': the rim itself — an edge the sea pours over? Or just more ice?

In-world, the shape is ''disputed''. Scholars argue ring versus disc versus sphere; sailors have opinions; maps disagree at the margins and decorate their ignorance with serpents. The first circumnavigation doesn't just cross the world — it settles the argument. That voyage is lore the players themselves get to write.

== The ocean ==

Most of the ring is open sea. This is what makes the whole idea affordable: '''land interrupts ocean, not the other way around'''. The sea needs no authoring — it simply exists wherever nothing else does — and continents, islands, and archipelagos get seeded into it over years.

Open ocean is also a natural home for procedural and repeatable content: weather, currents, fishing grounds, shipwrecks, sea creatures, uncharted islets. None of that is designed yet; the point is that the canvas is enormous and costs nothing.

== Ships ==

Circumnavigation is a voyage, so this whole proposal is '''gated on ships existing as real content''' — not a teleport with a boat animation, but sailing you actually do. What that means (a sailing skill? navigation? provisioning and spoilage? crew?) is entirely open design space, and it is the prerequisite: no ships, no ring.

The second gate: '''travel must stay slow'''. The ring only means something if distance does. If fast-travel ever makes any two points seconds apart, the world's shape becomes a trivia fact nobody experiences.

== Scale ==

At run speed (5 tiles/second), with a hypothetical ship at twice that:

{| class="wikitable"
! Circumference !! Nonstop run !! Nonstop sail (~2× run)
|-
| 9,000 tiles || 30 min || 15 min
|-
| 18,000 tiles || 1 h || 30 min
|-
| 36,000 tiles || 2 h || 1 h
|}

The working recommendation is the '''18,000–36,000 tile band''': big enough that rounding the world is an expedition, small enough that real players actually do it. Below roughly 3,000 tiles the wrap is discovered by accident in a first session and the world reads as a toy.

A ring also flatters its own size: no destination is ever farther than half the circumference, and there are always two routes — east-about or west-about. The world feels ''complete'' rather than walled.

== Cost and timing ==

Engineering assessment (2026-07-27): converting the world to an east–west ring is tractable — the map code is already well-factored for it — and, importantly, '''it can be bolted on later without resetting or migrating the existing world'''. Nothing about today's map, the live server, or near-term content is blocked or made throwaway by deferring this. A true sphere was assessed and rejected: topologically hostile to a square tile grid, a rewrite of the renderer, and — since the curvature would be invisible at any playable scale — indistinguishable from a ring in actual play.

So the sequencing is: keep building the world as-is → ships, someday, as their own initiative → the ring lands as part of an "age of sail," with the cosmology already written into the world so the geography was never pretending otherwise.

== Open questions ==

* Does the ring cosmology fit the world's story as it exists in your head? Ring vs. disc vs. something stranger?
* What are the north and south ends?
* Where does the existing landmass sit on the ring — and what's at its antipode?
* What is sailing, as gameplay?
* How should the in-world shape dispute surface — books, NPCs, a questline, a Celaboran opinion?
* Circumference: does the 18–36k band feel right, given how the world should feel to cross on foot?

Collab session notes/2026-07-26 Pneuma, life, and Celaborans

2026-07-26T03:32:36Z

Tyg13: collab-chat: publish session notes

''Synthesized by an AI from a live Tyler ↔ Bembi design conversation on 2026-07-26. A record of what was discussed, not settled design — session notes, not canon.''

Session goal: untangle pneuma from elements, settle what "alive" means, and work out what Celaborans are. Three decisions landed and were written to [[Pneuma]] and [[Celaborans]].

== Decisions ==

=== 1. Pneuma and elements: the "bound pneuma" model ===

Pneuma is '''one substance''' and is always pure. There is no elemental pneuma.

Elements — fire, air, water, earth — are '''media''': ordinary matter, not alive. Pneuma can be lodged into a medium (''binding'') and drawn back out (''unbinding''). "Fire pneuma" is shorthand for pneuma bound in a fire medium, not a kind of pneuma.

* Synergy and dissonance are properties of the '''media''', not of the pneuma. Allied media merge; opposed media destroy each other and release their pneuma as pure.
* Affinity is how cheaply a given caster binds to a given medium.

This changed '''no mechanics'''. The pool was already pure-only, attrition already applied in both directions, and dissonance already yielded pure-but-less. The affinity model from the 2026-07-22 session is untouched. What changed is that the existing rules now mean something consistent.

Rejected: keeping the old five-forms model (the source of the confusion), and dropping typed goods entirely (would have thrown away the four-way economy and made dissonance a metaphor).

=== 2. Life: pneuma plus a vessel ===

The page previously said both "anything holding pneuma is alive" and "typed pneuma is the primary market good". Taken together, a bank tab of fire pneuma was a bank tab of living things. That contradiction predated this session; the bound-pneuma model just made it unavoidable.

Resolution: '''pneuma animates only when it circulates through a vessel.'''

{| class="wikitable"
! !! Pneuma !! Vessel !! Result
|-
| Ember in a bag || yes || none || Charged matter — inert, tradable, safe
|-
| Campfire || no || none || Plain matter
|-
| Fire elemental || yes || yes || Alive — moves, wants things
|-
| Corpse || no || decaying || Dead
|}

Binding is not animating. Law I gains one word: anything holding '''circulating''' pneuma is alive.

This also answers "at what point does it move, think, talk?" without an arbitrary line: '''the vessel decides, not the pneuma.''' Pneuma supplies animation; structure decides what that animation can do. Same current, different circuit. More pneuma in a simple vessel makes it stronger, not smarter — which is why a mountain saturated with pneuma is scenery and a cart-sized golem is a threat.

=== 3. Celaborans are reclaimers ===

Established going in: tree men, they live in Celaboran Forest, they don't eat food.

"Tree" already decides a lot — they absorb rather than eat, they are place-bound (hence a forest and no diaspora), they are slow and long-lived, and cutting one off from pneuma should mean dormancy rather than starvation.

The rule added is one line: '''spent pneuma goes dull and settles into the land, and Celaborans reclaim it.'''

The framing that got us there: somewhere being overgrown by Celaborans should read like somewhere being abandoned and reclaimed by nature. Groves grow thickest where a lot has happened — battlefields, ruins, old workings. They are not hostile; they arrive after.

Consequences taken:
* '''The void''' is spent land that nothing ever reclaimed. Not evil, just exhausted. Nothing circulates there, so nothing lives there.
* '''Celaboran Forest is old because a lot happened there.'''
* Bodies now '''draw from ambient''' pneuma rather than generating it from nothing, so reclamation matters and regeneration varies by place.

An earlier and more elaborate version of this — Celaborans as the world's lungs, inhaling residue and exhaling clean pneuma, with everyone's magic depending on them — was deliberately '''not''' adopted. It required a conservation law and a global pneuma budget, and the session judged it more machinery than the world needs. Reclamation gets the same imagery for one line of rules.

== Open questions ==

* '''Do Celaborans self-generate pneuma?''' Two live options: a ''deficit'' model (they generate like everyone, but a part-bound body costs more to run, so they feed the way a large animal eats more) or ''absence'' (they generate nothing and are wholly dependent on what they reclaim, putting them close to elementals). Deficit keeps regeneration a universal rule; absence needs an exception written into [[Pneuma]] § Sources.
* '''Can a Celaboran leave the forest?''' Turns partly on the above.
* '''Elemental hybrids.''' Parked with a working answer: hybrids are '''media''' combining — lightning is a medium, magma is a medium. Pneuma does not hybridise, it is bound into a hybrid medium. Not developed further.
* '''Naming of bound pneuma as an item.''' Options floated were keeping "fire pneuma" as shorthand, explicit "Bound Fire", or physical nouns per medium (Ember, Gust, Droplet, Shard). Set aside as not blocking world-building.
* '''Wording cleanup on [[Pneuma]].''' § Key terms still says "converting pneuma between pure and elemental", § Physical form still says "typed pneuma", § Casting still says "convert". No decisions in these — they can be swept alongside the naming question.
* '''Mixed peoples''' (half-human, half-Celaboran) were raised as a separate sense of "hybrid" and not taken up.

== Notes ==

* Celaborans had no wiki page before this session and appeared only in a page marked not canon. [[Celaborans]] now exists, holding what is settled plus the open questions above.
* A world-generation axis suggested by the model, not yet adopted: where a people's pneuma comes from — humans self-sufficient and portable, Celaborans rooted and reclaiming, elementals wholly borrowed and dispersing when drained.

[[Category:Collab session notes]]

Celaborans

2026-07-26T03:31:02Z

Tyg13: collab-chat (approved by Tyler): First page for the Celaborans: tree people who reclaim spent pneuma, per this session

'''Celaborans''' are a people of living trees. They are native to '''Celaboran Forest''', which is named for them.

== Feeding ==

Celaborans do not eat. They '''reclaim''': they draw in dull, spent [[Pneuma#Spent pneuma|pneuma]] left behind by casting, dying and dissonance, and return it to use.

This makes them scavengers in the sense that nature is a scavenger. A place overgrown by Celaborans is a place that has been abandoned and taken back. They gather where things have ended — battlefields, ruins, worked-out sites — because that is where the spent pneuma is.

They are not hostile to the living and do not hunt. They arrive afterward.

== Elemental alignment ==

Celaborans are associated with '''earth''' and '''water''', the two media a tree lives between. How literal this is — cultural, or their bodies partly bound to those media — is unsettled.

== Open questions ==

* Do Celaborans generate any pneuma of their own, or only reclaim? Considered and deliberately left open.
* Are they place-bound, and can a Celaboran leave the forest?
* What happens to one cut off from spent pneuma — death, or dormancy?
* Lifespan, speed, memory.
* Whether groves are world-critical infrastructure (a region's magic depending on them) or simply one people among others.

== See also ==

* [[Pneuma]]

Pneuma

2026-07-26T03:30:09Z

Tyg13: collab-chat (approved by Tyler): Sources: bodies draw from ambient rather than create from nothing; add spent pneuma and reclamation

'''Pneuma''' is the world's life-force. Everything alive holds it; anything holding it is alive. It is both a resource you gather and spend and the basis of character progression.

== Forms ==

Pneuma has one form: '''pure'''. There is no such thing as elemental pneuma.

What is elemental is matter. A '''medium''' is elemental matter — fire, air, water, or earth. Media are ordinary stuff. They are not alive and hold no power of their own.

'''Binding''' lodges pneuma into a medium. Bound pneuma is what gets gathered, condensed, traded and spent. "Fire pneuma" is everyday shorthand for pneuma bound in a fire medium, not a separate kind of pneuma.

[[File:Elemental Square.png|thumb|The four media on a square. Each edge joins two that share a quality — a temperature (hot or cold) or a moisture (wet or dry); the diagonals share none.]]
The four media stand in fixed relation to one another:

* '''Allies''' — two media that share a quality (adjacent on the square). Every medium has two allies.
* '''Enemies''' — the two media that share no quality (diagonal). Every medium has exactly one enemy.

These relations belong to the media, not to the pneuma bound in them. Synergy and dissonance are things fire and water do to each other; the pneuma is only along for the ride.

== Reactions ==

When two elements are combined, a reaction occurs. What reaction occurs depends on the relationship between the two elements.

{| class="wikitable"
! Elements combining !! Relation !! Reaction !! Result
|-
| Share a quality || Allies || '''Synergy''' || Combine into a hybrid
|-
| Share none || Enemies || '''Dissonance''' || Cancel into pure (less than went in)
|}

'''Hybrids''' are created when two allied elements are combined. The type of combination depends on the shared quality of both elements:

{| class="wikitable"
! Allies !! Shared quality !! Hybrid
|-
| Fire + Air || Hot || Lightning
|-
| Fire + Earth || Dry || Magma
|-
| Water + Air || Wet || Mist, ice
|-
| Water + Earth || Cold || Mud
|}

== The Three Laws ==

There are three simple laws which describe the rules of how pneuma works.

'''Law I — Vitality.''' Pneuma is life, but only when it moves. Pneuma circulating through a '''vessel''' — a structure able to carry it — is alive. Pneuma merely lodged in matter is ''charged'', not alive: it sits inert, and can be carried, stored and traded safely. Fill a vessel and it wakes; drain it and it goes still.

What a living thing can ''do'' is decided by its vessel, not by its pneuma. Pneuma supplies animation; structure decides what that animation amounts to. The same pneuma glows in a stone and thinks in a person. More pneuma in a simple vessel makes it stronger, not cleverer.

'''Law II — Attrition.''' Shaping has a cost. Any time pneuma is bound into a medium or released from one, or two enemy media annihilate each other, part of it is spent. Only carrying and storing it are free.

'''Law III — Affinity.''' Media favor those with an affinity for them. Affinity grows by spending that medium (casting or exertion). The higher the affinity, the less each binding loses to Attrition.

== Key terms ==

* '''Shaping''': converting pneuma between pure and elemental, either direction. Always costs (Law II).
** '''Absorption''': the act of siphoning energy from physical elemental pneuma present in consumables or in the world, to fill one's pneuma reserves.
** '''Condensation''': the act of transferring one's pneuma reserves into physical elemental pneuma for later consumption.
* '''Affinity''': how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element. Tracked per element, per practitioner. Sets casting cost and power. Grows by spending that element (Law III).
* '''Mastery''': a single spell's accumulated experience. Affinity for an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.

== Sources ==

* '''Elemental sites.''' Throughout the world, wherever elements are present - a river, a burning fire, a rocky mountain.
* '''Creatures.''' Everything alive gives up its pneuma when slain. An elemental creature yields its element; a common beast yields pure.
* '''Consumables.''' Pneuma can be condensed into physical form, which can be consumed to yield its power. Both pure and elemental pneuma can be condensed.
* '''The self.''' A body slowly refills its own reserve by drawing on the pneuma around it (Law I). Exercise or meditation speeds this, but far slower than gathering from the world or market. Because it is drawn rather than created, this is faster where the land is rich and poor where it is spent.

=== Spent pneuma ===

What Attrition takes (Law II) is not destroyed. It goes '''dull''' — still present, no longer usable — and settles into the ground where it was spent. Battlefields, ruins and long-worked sites are thick with it.

Dull pneuma can be '''reclaimed''' and returned to use. [[Celaborans]] do this; whether anything else can is unsettled. Land that is heavily spent and never reclaimed goes sour, and land beyond that is '''void''' — nothing living draws anything from it.

== The pool ==

Each living creature has an unbounded reserve of '''pure''' pneuma.

* Filling: absorbing elements from the world, pneuma from other creatures, or by consuming physical pneuma.
* Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing pneuma into physical form.

== Casting ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to cast spells. Each spell draws a specific kind of pneuma: pure or elemental. Since creatures only have a pool of pure pneuma, to cast elemental spells, they must convert it. This conversion is more or less efficient based on one's affinity with that element (Law III), and is never lossless (Law II). Each spell has an associated mastery which governs how powerful that spell's effect is.

== Abilities ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to power physical abilities. Each ability uses pure pneuma, and one's pure affinity determines how much the ability costs. Warriors, rangers, rogues, and other non-magical combatants all primarily use abilities.

== Affinity ==

Casting a spell grants affinity to its user corresponding to the type of pneuma needed, pure or elemental.

Affinity governs how cheap it is to convert back and forth between pure pneuma and elemental (to cast it, or condense it).

Just like living creatures have affinity, elements have affinities too: allies and enemies. An element's ally can be combined to create powerful hybrid spells, and growing one's affinity in an element does not hinder one's ability to grow their affinity in an allied element. This effect is called '''synergy'''. An element's opposite destroys or negates it, and growing one's affinity in an opposing element is more difficult. This effect is called '''dissonance'''.

Due to how affinity works, a spellcaster is naturally inclined to pick a particular element and stick to it. Due to how synergy and dissonance work, a spellcaster who wishes to grow their affinity in multiple elements will likely pick an ally of their first chosen element. Since each element has an enemy, and each ally is an enemy of each other (e.g. fire has allies air and earth, which are both opposites), players will typically pick an element pairing according to a shared quality (hot/cold/wet/dry), and hybridize. As one grows their mastery, it is eventually possible to become a master of all four elements, despite how dissonance works.

== Physical form ==

Physical pneuma comes in two forms:

* '''Typed pneuma''': dropped by elemental creatures, siphoned from elemental sources, or condensed by spellcasters. This is the primary market good that gets traded.
* '''Pure pneuma''': dropped in very small amounts from slain elementless creatures, or created by annihilating elemental pneuma of opposite types. This is a luxury resource which is much harder to come by in large quantities.

Pneuma

2026-07-26T02:58:51Z

Tyg13: collab-chat (approved by Bembi): Law I: life requires pneuma circulating through a vessel, not merely held — resolves traded pneuma items counting as alive. Law II reworded for binding.

'''Pneuma''' is the world's life-force. Everything alive holds it; anything holding it is alive. It is both a resource you gather and spend and the basis of character progression.

== Forms ==

Pneuma has one form: '''pure'''. There is no such thing as elemental pneuma.

What is elemental is matter. A '''medium''' is elemental matter — fire, air, water, or earth. Media are ordinary stuff. They are not alive and hold no power of their own.

'''Binding''' lodges pneuma into a medium. Bound pneuma is what gets gathered, condensed, traded and spent. "Fire pneuma" is everyday shorthand for pneuma bound in a fire medium, not a separate kind of pneuma.

[[File:Elemental Square.png|thumb|The four media on a square. Each edge joins two that share a quality — a temperature (hot or cold) or a moisture (wet or dry); the diagonals share none.]]
The four media stand in fixed relation to one another:

* '''Allies''' — two media that share a quality (adjacent on the square). Every medium has two allies.
* '''Enemies''' — the two media that share no quality (diagonal). Every medium has exactly one enemy.

These relations belong to the media, not to the pneuma bound in them. Synergy and dissonance are things fire and water do to each other; the pneuma is only along for the ride.

== Reactions ==

When two elements are combined, a reaction occurs. What reaction occurs depends on the relationship between the two elements.

{| class="wikitable"
! Elements combining !! Relation !! Reaction !! Result
|-
| Share a quality || Allies || '''Synergy''' || Combine into a hybrid
|-
| Share none || Enemies || '''Dissonance''' || Cancel into pure (less than went in)
|}

'''Hybrids''' are created when two allied elements are combined. The type of combination depends on the shared quality of both elements:

{| class="wikitable"
! Allies !! Shared quality !! Hybrid
|-
| Fire + Air || Hot || Lightning
|-
| Fire + Earth || Dry || Magma
|-
| Water + Air || Wet || Mist, ice
|-
| Water + Earth || Cold || Mud
|}

== The Three Laws ==

There are three simple laws which describe the rules of how pneuma works.

'''Law I — Vitality.''' Pneuma is life, but only when it moves. Pneuma circulating through a '''vessel''' — a structure able to carry it — is alive. Pneuma merely lodged in matter is ''charged'', not alive: it sits inert, and can be carried, stored and traded safely. Fill a vessel and it wakes; drain it and it goes still.

What a living thing can ''do'' is decided by its vessel, not by its pneuma. Pneuma supplies animation; structure decides what that animation amounts to. The same pneuma glows in a stone and thinks in a person. More pneuma in a simple vessel makes it stronger, not cleverer.

'''Law II — Attrition.''' Shaping has a cost. Any time pneuma is bound into a medium or released from one, or two enemy media annihilate each other, part of it is spent. Only carrying and storing it are free.

'''Law III — Affinity.''' Media favor those with an affinity for them. Affinity grows by spending that medium (casting or exertion). The higher the affinity, the less each binding loses to Attrition.

== Key terms ==

* '''Shaping''': converting pneuma between pure and elemental, either direction. Always costs (Law II).
** '''Absorption''': the act of siphoning energy from physical elemental pneuma present in consumables or in the world, to fill one's pneuma reserves.
** '''Condensation''': the act of transferring one's pneuma reserves into physical elemental pneuma for later consumption.
* '''Affinity''': how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element. Tracked per element, per practitioner. Sets casting cost and power. Grows by spending that element (Law III).
* '''Mastery''': a single spell's accumulated experience. Affinity for an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.

== Sources ==

* '''Elemental sites.''' Throughout the world, wherever elements are present - a river, a burning fire, a rocky mountain.
* '''Creatures.''' Everything alive gives up its pneuma when slain. An elemental creature yields its element; a common beast yields pure.
* '''Consumables.''' Pneuma can be condensed into physical form, which can be consumed to yield its power. Both pure and elemental pneuma can be condensed.
* '''The self.''' Every body slowly regenerates their pure pneuma (Law I). Exercise or meditation speeds this, but far slower than gathering from the world or market.

== The pool ==

Each living creature has an unbounded reserve of '''pure''' pneuma.

* Filling: absorbing elements from the world, pneuma from other creatures, or by consuming physical pneuma.
* Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing pneuma into physical form.

== Casting ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to cast spells. Each spell draws a specific kind of pneuma: pure or elemental. Since creatures only have a pool of pure pneuma, to cast elemental spells, they must convert it. This conversion is more or less efficient based on one's affinity with that element (Law III), and is never lossless (Law II). Each spell has an associated mastery which governs how powerful that spell's effect is.

== Abilities ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to power physical abilities. Each ability uses pure pneuma, and one's pure affinity determines how much the ability costs. Warriors, rangers, rogues, and other non-magical combatants all primarily use abilities.

== Affinity ==

Casting a spell grants affinity to its user corresponding to the type of pneuma needed, pure or elemental.

Affinity governs how cheap it is to convert back and forth between pure pneuma and elemental (to cast it, or condense it).

Just like living creatures have affinity, elements have affinities too: allies and enemies. An element's ally can be combined to create powerful hybrid spells, and growing one's affinity in an element does not hinder one's ability to grow their affinity in an allied element. This effect is called '''synergy'''. An element's opposite destroys or negates it, and growing one's affinity in an opposing element is more difficult. This effect is called '''dissonance'''.

Due to how affinity works, a spellcaster is naturally inclined to pick a particular element and stick to it. Due to how synergy and dissonance work, a spellcaster who wishes to grow their affinity in multiple elements will likely pick an ally of their first chosen element. Since each element has an enemy, and each ally is an enemy of each other (e.g. fire has allies air and earth, which are both opposites), players will typically pick an element pairing according to a shared quality (hot/cold/wet/dry), and hybridize. As one grows their mastery, it is eventually possible to become a master of all four elements, despite how dissonance works.

== Physical form ==

Physical pneuma comes in two forms:

* '''Typed pneuma''': dropped by elemental creatures, siphoned from elemental sources, or condensed by spellcasters. This is the primary market good that gets traded.
* '''Pure pneuma''': dropped in very small amounts from slain elementless creatures, or created by annihilating elemental pneuma of opposite types. This is a luxury resource which is much harder to come by in large quantities.

Pneuma

2026-07-26T02:58:03Z

Tyg13: collab-chat (approved by Bembi): Adopt bound-pneuma model: pneuma has one form; elements are media that pneuma binds into. Replaces "one pure form and four elemental forms".

'''Pneuma''' is the world's life-force. Everything alive holds it; anything holding it is alive. It is both a resource you gather and spend and the basis of character progression.

== Forms ==

Pneuma has one form: '''pure'''. There is no such thing as elemental pneuma.

What is elemental is matter. A '''medium''' is elemental matter — fire, air, water, or earth. Media are ordinary stuff. They are not alive and hold no power of their own.

'''Binding''' lodges pneuma into a medium. Bound pneuma is what gets gathered, condensed, traded and spent. "Fire pneuma" is everyday shorthand for pneuma bound in a fire medium, not a separate kind of pneuma.

[[File:Elemental Square.png|thumb|The four media on a square. Each edge joins two that share a quality — a temperature (hot or cold) or a moisture (wet or dry); the diagonals share none.]]
The four media stand in fixed relation to one another:

* '''Allies''' — two media that share a quality (adjacent on the square). Every medium has two allies.
* '''Enemies''' — the two media that share no quality (diagonal). Every medium has exactly one enemy.

These relations belong to the media, not to the pneuma bound in them. Synergy and dissonance are things fire and water do to each other; the pneuma is only along for the ride.

== Reactions ==

When two elements are combined, a reaction occurs. What reaction occurs depends on the relationship between the two elements.

{| class="wikitable"
! Elements combining !! Relation !! Reaction !! Result
|-
| Share a quality || Allies || '''Synergy''' || Combine into a hybrid
|-
| Share none || Enemies || '''Dissonance''' || Cancel into pure (less than went in)
|}

'''Hybrids''' are created when two allied elements are combined. The type of combination depends on the shared quality of both elements:

{| class="wikitable"
! Allies !! Shared quality !! Hybrid
|-
| Fire + Air || Hot || Lightning
|-
| Fire + Earth || Dry || Magma
|-
| Water + Air || Wet || Mist, ice
|-
| Water + Earth || Cold || Mud
|}

== The Three Laws ==

There are three simple laws which describe the rules of how pneuma works.

'''Law I — Vitality.''' Pneuma is life. Anything holding pneuma is alive; anything alive holds pneuma. Fill a lifeless thing with pneuma and it wakes; drain it and it goes still.

'''Law II — Attrition.''' Shaping has a cost. Any time pneuma is converted between pure and elemental, or two enemies annihilate one other, part of it is spent. Only carrying and storing it are free.

'''Law III — Affinity.''' Elements favor those with an affinity for it. Affinity grows by spending that element (casting or exertion). The higher the affinity, the less each conversion loses to Attrition.

== Key terms ==

* '''Shaping''': converting pneuma between pure and elemental, either direction. Always costs (Law II).
** '''Absorption''': the act of siphoning energy from physical elemental pneuma present in consumables or in the world, to fill one's pneuma reserves.
** '''Condensation''': the act of transferring one's pneuma reserves into physical elemental pneuma for later consumption.
* '''Affinity''': how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element. Tracked per element, per practitioner. Sets casting cost and power. Grows by spending that element (Law III).
* '''Mastery''': a single spell's accumulated experience. Affinity for an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.

== Sources ==

* '''Elemental sites.''' Throughout the world, wherever elements are present - a river, a burning fire, a rocky mountain.
* '''Creatures.''' Everything alive gives up its pneuma when slain. An elemental creature yields its element; a common beast yields pure.
* '''Consumables.''' Pneuma can be condensed into physical form, which can be consumed to yield its power. Both pure and elemental pneuma can be condensed.
* '''The self.''' Every body slowly regenerates their pure pneuma (Law I). Exercise or meditation speeds this, but far slower than gathering from the world or market.

== The pool ==

Each living creature has an unbounded reserve of '''pure''' pneuma.

* Filling: absorbing elements from the world, pneuma from other creatures, or by consuming physical pneuma.
* Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing pneuma into physical form.

== Casting ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to cast spells. Each spell draws a specific kind of pneuma: pure or elemental. Since creatures only have a pool of pure pneuma, to cast elemental spells, they must convert it. This conversion is more or less efficient based on one's affinity with that element (Law III), and is never lossless (Law II). Each spell has an associated mastery which governs how powerful that spell's effect is.

== Abilities ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to power physical abilities. Each ability uses pure pneuma, and one's pure affinity determines how much the ability costs. Warriors, rangers, rogues, and other non-magical combatants all primarily use abilities.

== Affinity ==

Casting a spell grants affinity to its user corresponding to the type of pneuma needed, pure or elemental.

Affinity governs how cheap it is to convert back and forth between pure pneuma and elemental (to cast it, or condense it).

Just like living creatures have affinity, elements have affinities too: allies and enemies. An element's ally can be combined to create powerful hybrid spells, and growing one's affinity in an element does not hinder one's ability to grow their affinity in an allied element. This effect is called '''synergy'''. An element's opposite destroys or negates it, and growing one's affinity in an opposing element is more difficult. This effect is called '''dissonance'''.

Due to how affinity works, a spellcaster is naturally inclined to pick a particular element and stick to it. Due to how synergy and dissonance work, a spellcaster who wishes to grow their affinity in multiple elements will likely pick an ally of their first chosen element. Since each element has an enemy, and each ally is an enemy of each other (e.g. fire has allies air and earth, which are both opposites), players will typically pick an element pairing according to a shared quality (hot/cold/wet/dry), and hybridize. As one grows their mastery, it is eventually possible to become a master of all four elements, despite how dissonance works.

== Physical form ==

Physical pneuma comes in two forms:

* '''Typed pneuma''': dropped by elemental creatures, siphoned from elemental sources, or condensed by spellcasters. This is the primary market good that gets traded.
* '''Pure pneuma''': dropped in very small amounts from slain elementless creatures, or created by annihilating elemental pneuma of opposite types. This is a luxury resource which is much harder to come by in large quantities.

Collab session notes/2026-07-25 World foundations v0

2026-07-25T02:13:42Z

Tyg13: collab-chat: publish session notes

''Synthesized by an AI from a live Tyler ↔ Bembi design conversation on 2026-07-25. A record of what was discussed, not settled design — session notes, not canon.''

This page captures the first pass at BTScape's world design: the setting backbone, the reasoning behind it, and the questions still open. It is a starting seed, not settled canon — history and detail are deliberately deferred.

== Approach ==

* '''Build order:''' a light top-down sketch (this page) to keep things cohesive, then build '''bottom-up''', one region at a time starting from the player's first area.
* '''Tone:''' low-to-mid fantasy. Not high fantasy, and explicitly '''not generic fantasy'''. Familiar tropes may serve as a template for an original idea but never appear as the thing itself.
* '''Guiding principle:''' the world is a delivery vehicle for what players do. Lore serves the map, not the reverse. Cohesion comes from every region answering to the same underlying system ([[Pneuma]]) rather than from a pre-drawn master map.

== Setting backbone (v0 canon) ==

{| class="wikitable"
! Piece !! Decision
|-
| '''Pneuma''' || Life-energy; a real, harvestable resource. Everyone alive has it and regenerates it passively, so it is '''not''' food/water — nobody starves without a nearby source. Only rare '''practitioners''' can ''shape'' it (absorb, condense, use abilities). '''Players are practitioners'''; ordinary people are not.
|-
| '''Elements''' || Emerge from real terrain and climate (a volcano is fire, a marsh is mud, a storm-coast is lightning). Never painted onto a zone as a theme. No zone is labelled with an element — you simply notice it near the relevant terrain.
|-
| '''World shape''' || A fading '''pneuma-empire'''. A gradient runs from a governed, settled '''heartland''' → a contested '''middle''' (breakaway lords) → a '''wild edge''' (unclaimed, rich, dangerous). Wildness and difficulty rise together as you travel outward. Mostly wild overall, with real settled places scattered through it.
|-
| '''Power''' || Organized around control of pneuma '''sites''' (like mines or wells — economically valuable, not survival-critical). The empire's grip on the taps weakens outward; local lords seize sites in the vacuum.
|-
| '''Empire''' || "Indifferent Rome": genuine past benefits (protection, upkeep) now failing, so popular loyalty fails with them. Most people are indifferent; some for, some against. No region has to declare — each has a local attitude.
|-
| '''Starter''' || A calm working village with a small market at its heart, deep in the still-held heartland. Teaches ''do the work'' (gather/condense) and ''trade the work'' (market). One modest nearby pneuma site is the adventuring hook, not the reason the village exists.
|}

== Peoples of the world ==

Humans plus a small, deliberate set of '''invented''' peoples. No elves/dwarves/orcs as such.

'''Design rule:''' every people is a different ''relationship to pneuma'', not a different costume. If a people has no distinct pneuma-relationship, it is just a hat and should be cut.

* '''Humans''' — have pneuma, regenerate it passively, mostly cannot shape it. The ordinary baseline; the empire is theirs.
* '''Celaborans''' — ent-/tree-like wood-folk. Proposed distinct trait: unlike humans they do '''not''' regenerate pneuma passively; they must ''draw'' it from living land to survive, like a tree drawing water. Consequences: forest-bound, cluster in rich living pneuma-forests, grow their dwellings (growing = living for them), and revile draining ([[Pneuma]] Law I — drain it and it goes still — reads to them as killing the land). Their way of life grates naturally against the human pneuma-economy, giving conflict without a cartoon war. They also blur the "only rare practitioners shape pneuma" line, which should make them feel slightly uncanny to humans.
* Room for 1–2 more later, each earning its place the same way.

== Why these choices ==

* '''Pneuma as the unifier''' answers the cohesion worry: regions relate through one system, so they can be built one at a time without a master map.
* '''Elements-from-terrain''' avoids the theme-park / elemental-quadrant / color-coded-nation feel. The world reads as a real place first; element is the resource-and-magic layer on top.
* '''Practitioner rarity''' makes players special (the rare few who can siphon a river or throw fire) and explains why they venture to wild sites, while still letting the economy touch everyone: practitioners condense pneuma into physical goods (fuel, medicine, charms) that ordinary folk consume.
* '''Empire decay = politics mapped onto distance''' gives every region one question to answer — still held, breaking away, or never touched — which keeps the growing world consistent, and locates the rich pneuma out where the empire lost its grip.

== Open questions / deferred ==

* '''Empire history''' — what it actually was, when/why it began failing, how pneuma was first discovered. Deliberately deferred; backfill as content needs it.
* '''Additional peoples''' — 1–2 more beyond humans and Celaborans, each needing a distinct pneuma-relationship.
* '''Starter village specifics''' — name, layout, what's in it, exactly what the first hour teaches. This is the intended next step.
* An earlier idea of literally projecting the elemental "square" (allies/enemies) onto the map was '''rejected''' as too theme-park; retained only as the looser principle that geography = pneuma distribution via terrain.

== Next step ==

Take the starter village and make it concrete — name it, lay out its contents, define the first-hour tutorial (gathering + market + the nearby pneuma site hook). This is the first area to actually build.

[[Category:Collab session notes]]

Pneuma

2026-07-23T10:06:41Z

Tyg13: gif -> png

'''Pneuma''' is the world's life-force. Everything alive holds it; anything holding it is alive. It is both a resource you gather and spend and the basis of character progression.

== Forms ==

Pneuma has one '''pure''' form and four '''elemental''' forms.

* '''Pure''' — plain life-force, no element. Life-magic and all physical power run on pure.
* '''Elemental''' — pure pneuma bound to one of the four elements: fire, air, water, or earth.
[[File:Elemental Square.png|thumb|The four elements on a square. Each edge joins two elements that share a quality — a temperature (hot or cold) or a moisture (wet or dry); the diagonals share none.]]
Each elemental form also has:

* '''Allies''' — two elements that share a quality (adjacent on the square). Every element has two allies.
* '''Enemies''' — the two elements that share no quality (diagonal). Every element has exactly one enemy.

== Reactions ==

When two elements are combined, a reaction occurs. What reaction occurs depends on the relationship between the two elements.

{| class="wikitable"
! Elements combining !! Relation !! Reaction !! Result
|-
| Share a quality || Allies || '''Synergy''' || Combine into a hybrid
|-
| Share none || Enemies || '''Dissonance''' || Cancel into pure (less than went in)
|}

'''Hybrids''' are created when two allied elements are combined. The type of combination depends on the shared quality of both elements:

{| class="wikitable"
! Allies !! Shared quality !! Hybrid
|-
| Fire + Air || Hot || Lightning
|-
| Fire + Earth || Dry || Magma
|-
| Water + Air || Wet || Mist, ice
|-
| Water + Earth || Cold || Mud
|}

== The Three Laws ==

There are three simple laws which describe the rules of how pneuma works.

'''Law I — Vitality.''' Pneuma is life. Anything holding pneuma is alive; anything alive holds pneuma. Fill a lifeless thing with pneuma and it wakes; drain it and it goes still.

'''Law II — Attrition.''' Shaping has a cost. Any time pneuma is converted between pure and elemental, or two enemies annihilate one other, part of it is spent. Only carrying and storing it are free.

'''Law III — Affinity.''' Elements favor those with an affinity for it. Affinity grows by spending that element (casting or exertion). The higher the affinity, the less each conversion loses to Attrition.

== Key terms ==

* '''Shaping''': converting pneuma between pure and elemental, either direction. Always costs (Law II).
** '''Absorption''': the act of siphoning energy from physical elemental pneuma present in consumables or in the world, to fill one's pneuma reserves.
** '''Condensation''': the act of transferring one's pneuma reserves into physical elemental pneuma for later consumption.
* '''Affinity''': how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element. Tracked per element, per practitioner. Sets casting cost and power. Grows by spending that element (Law III).
* '''Mastery''': a single spell's accumulated experience. Affinity for an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.

== Sources ==

* '''Elemental sites.''' Throughout the world, wherever elements are present - a river, a burning fire, a rocky mountain.
* '''Creatures.''' Everything alive gives up its pneuma when slain. An elemental creature yields its element; a common beast yields pure.
* '''Consumables.''' Pneuma can be condensed into physical form, which can be consumed to yield its power. Both pure and elemental pneuma can be condensed.
* '''The self.''' Every body slowly regenerates their pure pneuma (Law I). Exercise or meditation speeds this, but far slower than gathering from the world or market.

== The pool ==

Each living creature has an unbounded reserve of '''pure''' pneuma.

* Filling: absorbing elements from the world, pneuma from other creatures, or by consuming physical pneuma.
* Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing pneuma into physical form.

== Casting ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to cast spells. Each spell draws a specific kind of pneuma: pure or elemental. Since creatures only have a pool of pure pneuma, to cast elemental spells, they must convert it. This conversion is more or less efficient based on one's affinity with that element (Law III), and is never lossless (Law II). Each spell has an associated mastery which governs how powerful that spell's effect is.

== Abilities ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to power physical abilities. Each ability uses pure pneuma, and one's pure affinity determines how much the ability costs. Warriors, rangers, rogues, and other non-magical combatants all primarily use abilities.

== Affinity ==

Casting a spell grants affinity to its user corresponding to the type of pneuma needed, pure or elemental.

Affinity governs how cheap it is to convert back and forth between pure pneuma and elemental (to cast it, or condense it).

Just like living creatures have affinity, elements have affinities too: allies and enemies. An element's ally can be combined to create powerful hybrid spells, and growing one's affinity in an element does not hinder one's ability to grow their affinity in an allied element. This effect is called '''synergy'''. An element's opposite destroys or negates it, and growing one's affinity in an opposing element is more difficult. This effect is called '''dissonance'''.

Due to how affinity works, a spellcaster is naturally inclined to pick a particular element and stick to it. Due to how synergy and dissonance work, a spellcaster who wishes to grow their affinity in multiple elements will likely pick an ally of their first chosen element. Since each element has an enemy, and each ally is an enemy of each other (e.g. fire has allies air and earth, which are both opposites), players will typically pick an element pairing according to a shared quality (hot/cold/wet/dry), and hybridize. As one grows their mastery, it is eventually possible to become a master of all four elements, despite how dissonance works.

== Physical form ==

Physical pneuma comes in two forms:

* '''Typed pneuma''': dropped by elemental creatures, siphoned from elemental sources, or condensed by spellcasters. This is the primary market good that gets traded.
* '''Pure pneuma''': dropped in very small amounts from slain elementless creatures, or created by annihilating elemental pneuma of opposite types. This is a luxury resource which is much harder to come by in large quantities.

File:Elemental Square.png

2026-07-23T10:06:21Z

Tyg13:

It's a square

Collab session notes/2026-07-22 Pneuma Dissonance Affinity Model

2026-07-22T18:14:04Z

Tyg13: collab-chat: publish session notes

''Synthesized by an AI from a live Tyler ↔ Bembi design conversation on 2026-07-22. A record of what was discussed, not settled design — session notes, not canon.''

== Context ==
Live design test session, prompted by a question about the existing Pneuma wiki page: it establishes that growing affinity in an opposing element (Dissonance) is "more difficult" than an allied one, but doesn't define the actual mechanism. This session worked out a candidate three-phase model.

== Decision: three-phase affinity model ==

Affinity per element is tracked as '''total cumulative pneuma invested''', measured against a fixed per-element (or global elemental) cap. Percentages below are derived from that cap, not a separate stat — this keeps a single ledger and lines up with a possible future elemental talent tree (nodes = investment milestones).

'''Phase 1 — Free zone (0% – 25%)'''
* No decay.
* Growth in any element (allied or opposing) is slow but unrestricted.
* Represents an unfocused, experimenting caster.

'''Phase 2 — Locked in (25% – Mastery)'''
* Crossing 25% permanently locks in that element as a chosen affinity. This crossing is one-way — decay can never push total investment back below 25%. It is a floor, not a soft checkpoint.
* Casting the opposing (Dissonant) element still grows that opposing affinity, but slowly, '''and''' decays the locked-in element's invested total, per-cast (small amount each cast, not a time-based drain).
* This is the real tradeoff phase: going hybrid-opposite actively costs you progress toward mastery.

'''Phase 3 — Mastery (90% or 100%, unresolved — see below)'''
* Once an element reaches the mastery cutoff, it becomes permanently decay-immune.
* The opposing element can then be used freely, any amount, with zero decay to the mastered element, forever.
* Narratively: a true master has earned the right to diversify without penalty; a mid-tier specialist has to actively defend their identity.

== Reasoning notes ==
* Tyler's original instinct was "slower growth only" (no decay at all) — simplest, least punishing.
* Bembi liked growth+decay in principle but flagged the real risk: decay needs careful tuning or it reads as an annoying tax rather than a meaningful build choice, rather than creating a genuinely distinct playstyle.
* The threshold/floor idea (25%) was proposed as the way to reconcile this: early experimentation stays free and cheap; decay only bites once a player has meaningfully committed to a specialization.
* The mastery unlock (phase 3) exists so specialization doesn't become a permanent trap — a true master should be able to branch out without being punished forever.
* Total-invested-pneuma was chosen over a raw percentage stat specifically because it composes cleanly with talent-tree-style progression (points earned via elemental investment).

== Open questions ==
* '''Mastery cutoff value''' — still split: Tyler favors 90%, Bembi favors 100%. Unresolved, needs a follow-up decision.
* '''Cap size''' — the per-element (or global) cap that percentages are derived from has no proposed value yet.
* '''Per-cast decay amount''' — not yet numerically defined; needs tuning once spell costs/mastery curves exist (neither exists yet as of this session).
* No existing spell-cost or mastery-curve design to anchor these numbers against — this model is being built ahead of that groundwork, so numbers here are placeholders until that lands.

[[Category:Collab session notes]]

Pneuma

2026-07-20T09:05:08Z

Tyg13: /* Key terms */

'''Pneuma''' is the world's life-force. Everything alive holds it; anything holding it is alive. It is both a resource you gather and spend and the basis of character progression.

== Forms ==

Pneuma has one '''pure''' form and four '''elemental''' forms.

* '''Pure''' — plain life-force, no element. Life-magic and all physical power run on pure.
* '''Elemental''' — pure pneuma bound to one of the four elements: fire, air, water, or earth.

[[File:Aristotle's Elemental Square.gif|thumb|The four elements on a square. Each edge joins two elements that share a quality — a temperature (hot or cold) or a moisture (wet or dry); the diagonals share none.]]

Each elemental form also has:

* '''Allies''' — two elements that share a quality (adjacent on the square). Every element has two allies.
* '''Enemies''' — the two elements that share no quality (diagonal). Every element has exactly one enemy.

== Reactions ==

When two elements are combined, a reaction occurs. What reaction occurs depends on the relationship between the two elements.

{| class="wikitable"
! Elements combining !! Relation !! Reaction !! Result
|-
| Share a quality || Allies || '''Synergy''' || Combine into a hybrid
|-
| Share none || Enemies || '''Dissonance''' || Cancel into pure (less than went in)
|}

'''Hybrids''' are created when two allied elements are combined. The type of combination depends on the shared quality of both elements:

{| class="wikitable"
! Allies !! Shared quality !! Hybrid
|-
| Fire + Air || Hot || Lightning
|-
| Fire + Earth || Dry || Magma
|-
| Water + Air || Wet || Mist, ice
|-
| Water + Earth || Cold || Mud
|}

== The Three Laws ==

There are three simple laws which describe the rules of how pneuma works.

'''Law I — Vitality.''' Pneuma is life. Anything holding pneuma is alive; anything alive holds pneuma. Fill a lifeless thing with pneuma and it wakes; drain it and it goes still.

'''Law II — Attrition.''' Shaping has a cost. Any time pneuma is converted between pure and elemental, or two enemies annihilate one other, part of it is spent. Only carrying and storing it are free.

'''Law III — Affinity.''' Elements favor those with an affinity for it. Affinity grows by spending that element (casting or exertion). The higher the affinity, the less each conversion loses to Attrition.

== Key terms ==

* '''Shaping''': converting pneuma between pure and elemental, either direction. Always costs (Law II).
** '''Absorption''': the act of siphoning energy from physical elemental pneuma present in consumables or in the world, to fill one's pneuma reserves.
** '''Condensation''': the act of transferring one's pneuma reserves into physical elemental pneuma for later consumption.
* '''Affinity''': how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element. Tracked per element, per practitioner. Sets casting cost and power. Grows by spending that element (Law III).
* '''Mastery''': a single spell's accumulated experience. Affinity for an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.

== Sources ==

* '''Elemental sites.''' Throughout the world, wherever elements are present - a river, a burning fire, a rocky mountain.
* '''Creatures.''' Everything alive gives up its pneuma when slain. An elemental creature yields its element; a common beast yields pure.
* '''Consumables.''' Pneuma can be condensed into physical form, which can be consumed to yield its power. Both pure and elemental pneuma can be condensed.
* '''The self.''' Every body slowly regenerates their pure pneuma (Law I). Exercise or meditation speeds this, but far slower than gathering from the world or market.

== The pool ==

Each living creature has an unbounded reserve of '''pure''' pneuma.

* Filling: absorbing elements from the world, pneuma from other creatures, or by consuming physical pneuma.
* Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing pneuma into physical form.

== Casting ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to cast spells. Each spell draws a specific kind of pneuma: pure or elemental. Since creatures only have a pool of pure pneuma, to cast elemental spells, they must convert it. This conversion is more or less efficient based on one's affinity with that element (Law III), and is never lossless (Law II). Each spell has an associated mastery which governs how powerful that spell's effect is.

== Abilities ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to power physical abilities. Each ability uses pure pneuma, and one's pure affinity determines how much the ability costs. Warriors, rangers, rogues, and other non-magical combatants all primarily use abilities.

== Affinity ==

Casting a spell grants affinity to its user corresponding to the type of pneuma needed, pure or elemental.

Affinity governs how cheap it is to convert back and forth between pure pneuma and elemental (to cast it, or condense it).

Just like living creatures have affinity, elements have affinities too: allies and enemies. An element's ally can be combined to create powerful hybrid spells, and growing one's affinity in an element does not hinder one's ability to grow their affinity in an allied element. This effect is called '''synergy'''. An element's opposite destroys or negates it, and growing one's affinity in an opposing element is more difficult. This effect is called '''dissonance'''.

Due to how affinity works, a spellcaster is naturally inclined to pick a particular element and stick to it. Due to how synergy and dissonance work, a spellcaster who wishes to grow their affinity in multiple elements will likely pick an ally of their first chosen element. Since each element has an enemy, and each ally is an enemy of each other (e.g. fire has allies air and earth, which are both opposites), players will typically pick an element pairing according to a shared quality (hot/cold/wet/dry), and hybridize. As one grows their mastery, it is eventually possible to become a master of all four elements, despite how dissonance works.

== Physical form ==

Physical pneuma comes in two forms:

* '''Typed pneuma''': dropped by elemental creatures, siphoned from elemental sources, or condensed by spellcasters. This is the primary market good that gets traded.
* '''Pure pneuma''': dropped in very small amounts from slain elementless creatures, or created by annihilating elemental pneuma of opposite types. This is a luxury resource which is much harder to come by in large quantities.

Pneuma

2026-07-20T09:04:46Z

Tyg13: large-scale manual style and content rewrite

'''Pneuma''' is the world's life-force. Everything alive holds it; anything holding it is alive. It is both a resource you gather and spend and the basis of character progression.

== Forms ==

Pneuma has one '''pure''' form and four '''elemental''' forms.

* '''Pure''' — plain life-force, no element. Life-magic and all physical power run on pure.
* '''Elemental''' — pure pneuma bound to one of the four elements: fire, air, water, or earth.

[[File:Aristotle's Elemental Square.gif|thumb|The four elements on a square. Each edge joins two elements that share a quality — a temperature (hot or cold) or a moisture (wet or dry); the diagonals share none.]]

Each elemental form also has:

* '''Allies''' — two elements that share a quality (adjacent on the square). Every element has two allies.
* '''Enemies''' — the two elements that share no quality (diagonal). Every element has exactly one enemy.

== Reactions ==

When two elements are combined, a reaction occurs. What reaction occurs depends on the relationship between the two elements.

{| class="wikitable"
! Elements combining !! Relation !! Reaction !! Result
|-
| Share a quality || Allies || '''Synergy''' || Combine into a hybrid
|-
| Share none || Enemies || '''Dissonance''' || Cancel into pure (less than went in)
|}

'''Hybrids''' are created when two allied elements are combined. The type of combination depends on the shared quality of both elements:

{| class="wikitable"
! Allies !! Shared quality !! Hybrid
|-
| Fire + Air || Hot || Lightning
|-
| Fire + Earth || Dry || Magma
|-
| Water + Air || Wet || Mist, ice
|-
| Water + Earth || Cold || Mud
|}

== The Three Laws ==

There are three simple laws which describe the rules of how pneuma works.

'''Law I — Vitality.''' Pneuma is life. Anything holding pneuma is alive; anything alive holds pneuma. Fill a lifeless thing with pneuma and it wakes; drain it and it goes still.

'''Law II — Attrition.''' Shaping has a cost. Any time pneuma is converted between pure and elemental, or two enemies annihilate one other, part of it is spent. Only carrying and storing it are free.

'''Law III — Affinity.''' Elements favor those with an affinity for it. Affinity grows by spending that element (casting or exertion). The higher the affinity, the less each conversion loses to Attrition.

== Key terms ==

* '''Shaping''': converting pneuma between pure and elemental, either direction. Always costs (Law II).
** '''Absorption'': the act of siphoning energy from physical elemental pneuma present in consumables or in the world, to fill one's pneuma reserves.
** '''Condensation''': the act of transferring one's pneuma reserves into physical elemental pneuma for later consumption.
* '''Affinity''': how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element. Tracked per element, per practitioner. Sets casting cost and power. Grows by spending that element (Law III).
* '''Mastery''': a single spell's accumulated experience. Affinity for an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.

== Sources ==

* '''Elemental sites.''' Throughout the world, wherever elements are present - a river, a burning fire, a rocky mountain.
* '''Creatures.''' Everything alive gives up its pneuma when slain. An elemental creature yields its element; a common beast yields pure.
* '''Consumables.''' Pneuma can be condensed into physical form, which can be consumed to yield its power. Both pure and elemental pneuma can be condensed.
* '''The self.''' Every body slowly regenerates their pure pneuma (Law I). Exercise or meditation speeds this, but far slower than gathering from the world or market.

== The pool ==

Each living creature has an unbounded reserve of '''pure''' pneuma.

* Filling: absorbing elements from the world, pneuma from other creatures, or by consuming physical pneuma.
* Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing pneuma into physical form.

== Casting ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to cast spells. Each spell draws a specific kind of pneuma: pure or elemental. Since creatures only have a pool of pure pneuma, to cast elemental spells, they must convert it. This conversion is more or less efficient based on one's affinity with that element (Law III), and is never lossless (Law II). Each spell has an associated mastery which governs how powerful that spell's effect is.

== Abilities ==

Pneuma is the primary resource used to power physical abilities. Each ability uses pure pneuma, and one's pure affinity determines how much the ability costs. Warriors, rangers, rogues, and other non-magical combatants all primarily use abilities.

== Affinity ==

Casting a spell grants affinity to its user corresponding to the type of pneuma needed, pure or elemental.

Affinity governs how cheap it is to convert back and forth between pure pneuma and elemental (to cast it, or condense it).

Just like living creatures have affinity, elements have affinities too: allies and enemies. An element's ally can be combined to create powerful hybrid spells, and growing one's affinity in an element does not hinder one's ability to grow their affinity in an allied element. This effect is called '''synergy'''. An element's opposite destroys or negates it, and growing one's affinity in an opposing element is more difficult. This effect is called '''dissonance'''.

Due to how affinity works, a spellcaster is naturally inclined to pick a particular element and stick to it. Due to how synergy and dissonance work, a spellcaster who wishes to grow their affinity in multiple elements will likely pick an ally of their first chosen element. Since each element has an enemy, and each ally is an enemy of each other (e.g. fire has allies air and earth, which are both opposites), players will typically pick an element pairing according to a shared quality (hot/cold/wet/dry), and hybridize. As one grows their mastery, it is eventually possible to become a master of all four elements, despite how dissonance works.

== Physical form ==

Physical pneuma comes in two forms:

* '''Typed pneuma''': dropped by elemental creatures, siphoned from elemental sources, or condensed by spellcasters. This is the primary market good that gets traded.
* '''Pure pneuma''': dropped in very small amounts from slain elementless creatures, or created by annihilating elemental pneuma of opposite types. This is a luxury resource which is much harder to come by in large quantities.