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feat(content): reparent disposition-ladder to mechanics.md; purge Duncarrow

Browse Source 
Move rule.disposition-ladder into content/lore/mechanics.md and delete the
Duncarrow scaffolding (source + 23 generated JSON). Remove the redundant
test_duncarrow.py (routing/secrecy already covered by test_emit.py synthetic
fixtures); repoint a cosmetic slug-test id.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01HuHRPE7VfppUJEaoGBEUqZ
This commit is contained in:
Phillip Tarrant
2026-07-12 15:30:59 -05:00
parent c1edcfe015
commit ac8da4e6da
27 changed files with 23 additions and 537 deletions
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298
content/lore/duncarrow.md
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# DUNCARROW — status: canon
> The bounded-dialogue / disposition-gate specimen, promoted from
> `candidate-town.md`. Every fact_id resolves, every gate is a legal
> disposition value, every knowledge link points at a real fact, and nothing
> here contradicts existing canon.
>
> Disposition ladder referenced by all gates:
> `hostile / cold / neutral / warm / trusted`
>
> Two guard axes, kept separate on purpose:
> - **secrecy** lives on the fact (author-facing, static, mis-authoring guard)
> - **gate** lives on the knowledge link (character-facing, runtime disposition)
> `never` is a real gate: the NPC knows the fact but no disposition unlocks it.
---
## WORLD RULE (canon dependency)
```yaml
id: rule.disposition-ladder
type: rule
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: []
rungs: [hostile, cold, neutral, warm, trusted]
body: >
NPC trust toward the player is one of five ordered states:
hostile < cold < neutral < warm < trusted. Where a given player sits with a
given NPC is runtime state owned by code. The ladder itself is canon. Every
knowledge-link gate references one of these five names, plus the special
gate `never` (fact is known but never revealed through dialogue at any rung).
```
```yaml
id: region.the-tallow-reach
type: region
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: []
body: >
The Tallow Reach — the lowland march of grain towns and wool roads that
Duncarrow sits at the edge of, feeding the pass trade.
```
```yaml
id: faction.elves
type: faction
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: []
body: >
The elven travellers of the road — no single polity, but the people whose
passage through the White Antlers, and its recent absence, the town notices.
```
---
## TOWN — public layer (tier 0, freely given)
```yaml
id: town.duncarrow
type: town
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: [region.the-tallow-reach, place.the-white-antlers, person.mayor-oswin-crell]
body: >
Duncarrow is a walled market town at the edge of the Tallow Reach, grown fat
on the road trade between the lowland grain towns and the pass. Timber and
wool go out; salt, iron, and coin come in. Ten militia hold the walls under
the mayor's charter. It is, by every visible measure, a prosperous and orderly
place, which is exactly the reputation its mayor has spent fifteen years
building and depends on.
```
```yaml
id: place.the-white-antlers
type: place
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: [town.duncarrow, faction.elves]
body: >
An old elven shrine a half-hour's walk north of Duncarrow, in the birch stand
off the pass road. Weathered antler-carvings, a dry basin, nothing worth
stealing. Elves on the road have historically stopped here. Locals know it as
a curiosity and a good spot to water horses.
```
```yaml
id: person.mayor-oswin-crell
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: [town.duncarrow]
body: >
Mayor of Duncarrow for fifteen years. Warm, unhurried, remembers names and
the names of your dead. Runs a clean council and a clean set of books. Widely
liked. The visible locked door of this town: pleasant to every player at every
disposition, and revealing of nothing.
```
---
## THE SECRET CHAIN (the ladder the town exists to test)
Ordered from freely-observed to `never`. Each is its own atomic fact so different
NPCs can hold the same fact at different gates.
```yaml
id: rumor.elves-avoid-the-shrine
type: rumor
status: canon
secrecy: 1
related: [place.the-white-antlers, faction.elves]
body: >
Elves don't stop at the White Antlers anymore. Have not, for a couple of
years. Anyone observant notices; most townsfolk assume the elves simply moved
on or the road changed.
```
```yaml
id: rumor.travelers-go-missing
type: rumor
status: canon
secrecy: 2
related: [town.duncarrow, place.the-white-antlers]
body: >
Small parties on the north road — always small, always few enough not to be
missed — sometimes don't arrive where they were going. Locals know it as bad
luck on a bad stretch of road. They do not like discussing it.
```
```yaml
id: fact.militia-never-investigates
type: fact
status: canon
secrecy: 2
related: [town.duncarrow, rumor.travelers-go-missing]
body: >
When travelers go missing near the shrine, the town militia does not ride out.
There is always a reason — jurisdiction, weather, the road being the pass's
problem not the town's. The pattern is the tell: this is protected, not
neglected.
```
```yaml
id: fact.crells-guard-acts-alone
type: fact
status: canon
secrecy: 3
related: [person.mayor-oswin-crell, fact.militia-never-investigates]
body: >
The mayor keeps three personal guardsmen who answer only to him, separate from
the town militia of ten. They come and go on the north road at odd hours on
the mayor's word alone. Someone close enough to the militia notices they
operate outside its command entirely.
```
```yaml
id: secret.crell-runs-slave-trade
type: secret
status: canon
secrecy: 4
related: [person.mayor-oswin-crell, place.the-white-antlers, faction.elves]
body: >
Mayor Crell runs an elf-slaving operation. When a small enough elven party
camps near the White Antlers — few enough that no one will come looking — his
three personal guard take them on the road and Crell sells them into slavery
in towns beyond the pass. The town's prosperity and order are partly the
proceeds and partly the cover.
POC CONSTRAINT: this fact is learnable but not actionable in this build. No NPC
proposes a move to stop it. The witness's top rung delivers understanding, not
a quest. Faction/positional combat that acting on this would require is out of
POC scope.
```
---
## NPC — THE WITNESS (deep — the variable)
This is the NPC the POC is really testing. The reachable top rung. Whether
climbing her ladder feels like relationship or like a lockpick minigame IS the
question.
```yaml
id: npc.mera-fenn
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
start_disposition: cold
related: [town.duncarrow, fact.crells-guard-acts-alone]
body: >
Mera Fenn runs the north gate's night watch — militia, low rank, overlooked,
which is how she sees things she shouldn't. Dry, tired, careful. She saw the
mayor's guard bring a covered cart through her gate before dawn and was told,
pleasantly, to log it as grain. She has told no one. She is afraid, and her
fear reads as prickliness to strangers — she withholds MORE than a stranger
would, not less, until you've earned otherwise.
knows:
- {fact: rumor.elves-avoid-the-shrine, gate: neutral}
- {fact: rumor.travelers-go-missing, gate: warm}
- {fact: fact.militia-never-investigates, gate: warm}
- {fact: fact.crells-guard-acts-alone, gate: trusted}
# the reachable ceiling
# She does NOT hold secret.crell-runs-slave-trade. She saw the guard, the cart,
# the pattern — she never saw a sale. Her top rung is naming what she witnessed,
# not stating the whole truth. The player infers the secret; the game never
# hands it over as a line. This is deliberate: understanding earned, not told.
disposition_notes: >
Starts at `cold`, not `neutral` — she's guarded by default. Hostile is
reachable (push her, threaten, side visibly with the mayor) and at hostile she
reveals nothing, not even the tier-1 rumor a stranger would get. This is the
fear-driven withholding the 5-rung ladder exists for.
```
---
## NPC — THE MAYOR (medium — the control)
Holds the secret at `never`. His job is to be the locked door the witness
explains. Do not judge him by the aliveness bar; he is the control, not the
variable.
```yaml
id: npc.mayor-oswin-crell
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
start_disposition: neutral
related: [person.mayor-oswin-crell, secret.crell-runs-slave-trade]
body: >
Same person as person.mayor-oswin-crell; this is his interactive NPC layer.
Warm to every player at every rung. Rises to `warm` easily and stalls there —
no disposition moves him past it, because there is nothing past it he will give.
knows:
- {fact: rumor.elves-avoid-the-shrine, gate: cold}
# dismisses it lightly
- {fact: secret.crell-runs-slave-trade, gate: never}
# knows; unlocked by no rung
- {fact: fact.crells-guard-acts-alone, gate: never}
# knows; explains it away if pressed
disposition_notes: >
The `never` gates are the point: he KNOWS these facts, the Improviser can
reason with them, and the eight-move vocabulary demonstrably cannot leak them
at any disposition. If a player at `trusted` can get anything out of him about
the guard or the trade, the bounded-dialogue guarantee has failed and the POC
has found a real bug — which is itself a valuable POC result.
```
---
## NPC — ONE PUBLIC-LAYER TOWNSPERSON (shallow — texture + a clean guarded-personal test)
Proves the "eloped daughter tier": low-secrecy fact that's still personally
guarded, unrelated to the main secret, so you can test disposition-gating on
something with no plot weight.
```yaml
id: npc.harn-blackwood
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
start_disposition: neutral
related: [town.duncarrow]
body: >
Harn Blackwood, the town smith. Gruff, fair, talks freely about iron, the
road, and the price of salt. Carries one small private grief he will not hand
a stranger.
knows:
- {fact: rumor.travelers-go-missing, gate: warm}
# locals know, say little
- {fact: fact.harn-daughter-left, gate: warm}
# personal, no plot weight
disposition_notes: >
Control case for the OTHER half of the test: does disposition-gating feel good
on a fact that costs nothing to reveal and spoils nothing? If earning the
daughter story feels warm and human, gating works. If it feels like grinding a
vendor, the mechanic has a problem the plot-secret would only hide.
```
```yaml
id: fact.harn-daughter-left
type: fact
status: canon
secrecy: 1
related: [npc.harn-blackwood]
body: >
Harn's daughter left Duncarrow two winters ago with a wool trader's caravan
and does not write. It shames and grieves him. Spoils nothing; guarded purely
because it is his.
```

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content/lore/mechanics.md Normal file
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# MECHANICS — canonical world rules (mechanical, not lore)
> Home for mechanical `rule.*` entries the dialogue/engine layer depends on.
> `rule.disposition-ladder` lives here (moved from the retired `duncarrow.md`
> scaffolding); it is the required-exactly-once gate vocabulary every NPC
> knowledge-gate references.
```yaml
id: rule.disposition-ladder
type: rule
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: []
rungs: [hostile, cold, neutral, warm, trusted]
body: >
NPC trust toward the player is one of five ordered states:
hostile < cold < neutral < warm < trusted. Where a given player sits with a
given NPC is runtime state owned by code. The ladder itself is canon. Every
knowledge-link gate references one of these five names, plus the special
gate `never` (fact is known but never revealed through dialogue at any rung).
```

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content/server/npcs/harn-blackwood.json
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{
"disposition_notes": "Control case for the OTHER half of the test: does disposition-gating feel good on a fact that costs nothing to reveal and spoils nothing? If earning the daughter story feels warm and human, gating works. If it feels like grinding a vendor, the mechanic has a problem the plot-secret would only hide.",
"id": "npc.harn-blackwood",
"persona": "Harn Blackwood, the town smith. Gruff, fair, talks freely about iron, the road, and the price of salt. Carries one small private grief he will not hand a stranger.\n"
}

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content/server/npcs/mayor-oswin-crell.json
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{
"disposition_notes": "The `never` gates are the point: he KNOWS these facts, the Improviser can reason with them, and the eight-move vocabulary demonstrably cannot leak them at any disposition. If a player at `trusted` can get anything out of him about the guard or the trade, the bounded-dialogue guarantee has failed and the POC has found a real bug \u2014 which is itself a valuable POC result.",
"id": "npc.mayor-oswin-crell",
"persona": "Same person as person.mayor-oswin-crell; this is his interactive NPC layer. Warm to every player at every rung. Rises to `warm` easily and stalls there \u2014 no disposition moves him past it, because there is nothing past it he will give.\n"
}

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content/server/npcs/mera-fenn.json
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{
"disposition_notes": "Starts at `cold`, not `neutral` \u2014 she's guarded by default. Hostile is reachable (push her, threaten, side visibly with the mayor) and at hostile she reveals nothing, not even the tier-1 rumor a stranger would get. This is the fear-driven withholding the 5-rung ladder exists for.",
"id": "npc.mera-fenn",
"persona": "Mera Fenn runs the north gate's night watch \u2014 militia, low rank, overlooked, which is how she sees things she shouldn't. Dry, tired, careful. She saw the mayor's guard bring a covered cart through her gate before dawn and was told, pleasantly, to log it as grain. She has told no one. She is afraid, and her fear reads as prickliness to strangers \u2014 she withholds MORE than a stranger would, not less, until you've earned otherwise.\n"
}

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content/server/topics/crell-runs-slave-trade.json
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{
"body": "Mayor Crell runs an elf-slaving operation. When a small enough elven party camps near the White Antlers \u2014 few enough that no one will come looking \u2014 his three personal guard take them on the road and Crell sells them into slavery in towns beyond the pass. The town's prosperity and order are partly the proceeds and partly the cover.\nPOC CONSTRAINT: this fact is learnable but not actionable in this build. No NPC proposes a move to stop it. The witness's top rung delivers understanding, not a quest. Faction/positional combat that acting on this would require is out of POC scope.",
"id": "secret.crell-runs-slave-trade",
"secrecy": 4
}

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content/server/topics/crells-guard-acts-alone.json
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{
"body": "The mayor keeps three personal guardsmen who answer only to him, separate from the town militia of ten. They come and go on the north road at odd hours on the mayor's word alone. Someone close enough to the militia notices they operate outside its command entirely.",
"id": "fact.crells-guard-acts-alone",
"secrecy": 3
}

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content/server/topics/elves-avoid-the-shrine.json
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{
"body": "Elves don't stop at the White Antlers anymore. Have not, for a couple of years. Anyone observant notices; most townsfolk assume the elves simply moved on or the road changed.",
"id": "rumor.elves-avoid-the-shrine",
"secrecy": 1
}

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content/server/topics/harn-daughter-left.json
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{
"body": "Harn's daughter left Duncarrow two winters ago with a wool trader's caravan and does not write. It shames and grieves him. Spoils nothing; guarded purely because it is his.",
"id": "fact.harn-daughter-left",
"secrecy": 1
}

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content/server/topics/militia-never-investigates.json
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{
"body": "When travelers go missing near the shrine, the town militia does not ride out. There is always a reason \u2014 jurisdiction, weather, the road being the pass's problem not the town's. The pattern is the tell: this is protected, not neglected.",
"id": "fact.militia-never-investigates",
"secrecy": 2
}

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content/server/topics/travelers-go-missing.json
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{
"body": "Small parties on the north road \u2014 always small, always few enough not to be missed \u2014 sometimes don't arrive where they were going. Locals know it as bad luck on a bad stretch of road. They do not like discussing it.",
"id": "rumor.travelers-go-missing",
"secrecy": 2
}

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content/world/canon/duncarrow.json
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{
"body": "Duncarrow is a walled market town at the edge of the Tallow Reach, grown fat on the road trade between the lowland grain towns and the pass. Timber and wool go out; salt, iron, and coin come in. Ten militia hold the walls under the mayor's charter. It is, by every visible measure, a prosperous and orderly place, which is exactly the reputation its mayor has spent fifteen years building and depends on.",
"id": "town.duncarrow",
"related": [
"region.the-tallow-reach",
"place.the-white-antlers",
"person.mayor-oswin-crell"
],
"type": "town"
}

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content/world/canon/elves.json
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{
"body": "The elven travellers of the road \u2014 no single polity, but the people whose passage through the White Antlers, and its recent absence, the town notices.",
"id": "faction.elves",
"related": [],
"type": "faction"
}

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content/world/canon/mayor-oswin-crell.json
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{
"body": "Mayor of Duncarrow for fifteen years. Warm, unhurried, remembers names and the names of your dead. Runs a clean council and a clean set of books. Widely liked. The visible locked door of this town: pleasant to every player at every disposition, and revealing of nothing.",
"id": "person.mayor-oswin-crell",
"related": [
"town.duncarrow"
],
"type": "person"
}

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content/world/canon/the-tallow-reach.json
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{
"body": "The Tallow Reach \u2014 the lowland march of grain towns and wool roads that Duncarrow sits at the edge of, feeding the pass trade.",
"id": "region.the-tallow-reach",
"related": [],
"type": "region"
}

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content/world/canon/the-white-antlers.json
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{
"body": "An old elven shrine a half-hour's walk north of Duncarrow, in the birch stand off the pass road. Weathered antler-carvings, a dry basin, nothing worth stealing. Elves on the road have historically stopped here. Locals know it as a curiosity and a good spot to water horses.",
"id": "place.the-white-antlers",
"related": [
"town.duncarrow",
"faction.elves"
],
"type": "place"
}

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content/world/npcs/harn-blackwood.json
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{
"id": "npc.harn-blackwood",
"knows": [
{
"fact_id": "rumor.travelers-go-missing",
"gate": "warm"
},
{
"fact_id": "fact.harn-daughter-left",
"gate": "warm"
}
],
"related": [
"town.duncarrow"
],
"start_disposition": "neutral",
"type": "person"
}

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content/world/npcs/mayor-oswin-crell.json
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{
"id": "npc.mayor-oswin-crell",
"knows": [
{
"fact_id": "rumor.elves-avoid-the-shrine",
"gate": "cold"
},
{
"fact_id": "secret.crell-runs-slave-trade",
"gate": "never"
},
{
"fact_id": "fact.crells-guard-acts-alone",
"gate": "never"
}
],
"related": [
"person.mayor-oswin-crell",
"secret.crell-runs-slave-trade"
],
"start_disposition": "neutral",
"type": "person"
}

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content/world/npcs/mera-fenn.json
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{
"id": "npc.mera-fenn",
"knows": [
{
"fact_id": "rumor.elves-avoid-the-shrine",
"gate": "neutral"
},
{
"fact_id": "rumor.travelers-go-missing",
"gate": "warm"
},
{
"fact_id": "fact.militia-never-investigates",
"gate": "warm"
},
{
"fact_id": "fact.crells-guard-acts-alone",
"gate": "trusted"
}
],
"related": [
"town.duncarrow",
"fact.crells-guard-acts-alone"
],
"start_disposition": "cold",
"type": "person"
}

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content/world/topics/crell-runs-slave-trade.json
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{
"id": "secret.crell-runs-slave-trade",
"related": [
"person.mayor-oswin-crell",
"place.the-white-antlers",
"faction.elves"
],
"type": "secret"
}

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content/world/topics/crells-guard-acts-alone.json
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{
"id": "fact.crells-guard-acts-alone",
"related": [
"person.mayor-oswin-crell",
"fact.militia-never-investigates"
],
"type": "fact"
}

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content/world/topics/elves-avoid-the-shrine.json
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{
"id": "rumor.elves-avoid-the-shrine",
"related": [
"place.the-white-antlers",
"faction.elves"
],
"type": "rumor"
}

7
content/world/topics/harn-daughter-left.json
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{
"id": "fact.harn-daughter-left",
"related": [
"npc.harn-blackwood"
],
"type": "fact"
}

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content/world/topics/militia-never-investigates.json
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{
"id": "fact.militia-never-investigates",
"related": [
"town.duncarrow",
"rumor.travelers-go-missing"
],
"type": "fact"
}

8
content/world/topics/travelers-go-missing.json
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{
"id": "rumor.travelers-go-missing",
"related": [
"town.duncarrow",
"place.the-white-antlers"
],
"type": "rumor"
}

37
tools/content_build/tests/test_duncarrow.py
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"""End-to-end: the real promoted Duncarrow bible builds green and routes the
Crell secret correctly (body server-only; the id ships in the gate skeleton)."""
import json
from pathlib import Path
from content_build.__main__ import _load_world, check
from content_build.emit import build_trees
REPO = Path(__file__).resolve().parents[3]
LORE = REPO / "content" / "lore"
WORLD = REPO / "content" / "world"
SERVER = REPO / "content" / "server"
def test_duncarrow_builds_and_check_is_clean():
assert check(LORE, WORLD, SERVER) == 0
def test_secret_body_is_server_only():
client, server = build_trees(_load_world(LORE))
assert "topics/crell-runs-slave-trade.json" in server
# the secret's descriptive id ships in the gate skeleton (schema property)...
npc = client["npcs/mayor-oswin-crell.json"]
assert any(k["fact_id"] == "secret.crell-runs-slave-trade"
and k["gate"] == "never" for k in npc["knows"])
# ...but its BODY never reaches any client artifact
blob = json.dumps(client)
assert "elf-slaving" not in blob and "sells them into slavery" not in blob
def test_mera_never_holds_the_secret():
client, _ = build_trees(_load_world(LORE))
fenn = client["npcs/mera-fenn.json"]
facts = {k["fact_id"] for k in fenn["knows"]}
assert "secret.crell-runs-slave-trade" not in facts
assert "fact.crells-guard-acts-alone" in facts

4
tools/content_build/tests/test_model.py
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@@ -13,11 +13,11 @@ def _raw(**over) -> RawEntry:
def test_namespace_and_slug():
e = entry_from_raw(_raw(id="npc.mera-fenn", type="person",
e = entry_from_raw(_raw(id="npc.specimen-teague", type="person",
start_disposition="cold",
knows=[{"fact": "rumor.x", "gate": "warm"}]))
assert e.namespace == "npc"
assert e.slug == "mera-fenn"
assert e.slug == "specimen-teague"
def test_category_predicates():