# Cosmology — the Warden and the Seven

**Status:** approved design, ready for implementation plan
**Date:** 2026-07-12
**Scope:** Establish the game's overarching content/playthrough theme as canon, and
bake it into the world-building skill so all future authoring reconciles against it.

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## 1. The idea

The Margreave sits inside a hidden cosmic war, and every future storyline hangs off it:

- **The Warden** — a genuinely good god who loves the races of the world. He is
  **distant**: he answers worship with blessing and otherwise does not intervene.
  His true name is unknown/unspoken — nameless **by design**, not a TBD to fill.
- **The Sent** — his angels. His hand reaches mortals only *indirectly*: a Sent one
  asks a mortal to do a deed "in his name," and the doing earns blessing. This is
  the cosmic-flavored quest-giver engine. Rare — most people never see one.
- **The Seven** — seven demon kings, each commanding an army, each craving a
  **distinct kind of blood**. They work against the Warden: they want every race
  dead or enslaved, and they want **blood as sacrifice** to fuel their power.
- **Possession & influence** — the Seven reach mortals by *influence* first and, more
  rarely, by *seizing the body*. This is the primary way the war touches the world.

## 2. Tone reconciliation (load-bearing — the design lives or dies here)

The charter tone is **gritty, not grim; the world does not care about you** (§3), with a
**dry narrator who never winks**. A straight cosmic good-vs-evil epic would break that.
The reconciliation, chosen during brainstorming, is **"distant & contested":**

- The god is real but **silent/absent to most.** Blessings are rare; the Sent are
  seldom seen.
- Demons are felt as **wreckage and bad people**, not manifesting monsters in the
  square. They work *through* mortals. Possession is rare and quiet, not spectacle.
- Ordinary folk **argue whether any of it is true.** Whether the Warden is good,
  absent, or dead is a thing mortals dispute — a future `rumor`/`secret` layer, never
  confirmed by the narrator.
- Day-to-day the world stays indifferent (taxes, mud, bad men). **The cosmic war is
  the hidden engine under the local grime**, not the surface text.
- The narrator **never preaches, never confirms the god, never goes epic.**

## 3. The Luck hook (grounds the theology in the existing signature system)

The war is already legible through **§7 Luck** without touching numbers:

- A Warden's blessing reads as **fortune**; demonic taint reads as **the trap door
  opening under you.**
- A cursed item (**+STR / −LCK**, the charter's "most interesting item") is a small
  bargain with the Seven.
- Luck stays **visible in prose, never in numbers** (§7). It becomes the *fingerprint*
  of which side has hold of you. No new mechanic — a reinterpretation of Luck's flavor.

## 4. How it maps onto the content schema

The cosmology is **public, believed world-furniture**, so it authors as **canon
entities** (secrecy 0, bodies ship to client) — same machinery as everything else. The
*hidden specifics* (who is possessed, which cult bleeds which road) are authored later
as gated `rumor`/`fact`/`secret` knowledge, per-town. The frame never names victims; it
gives future authors the hooks.

### New file: `content/lore/cosmology.md`

| id | type | secrecy | notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| `person.the-warden` | person | 0 | The good god. Titled only; name unspoken by design. |
| `faction.the-sent` | faction | 0 | The angels; his indirect hand; the deed-for-blessing engine. |
| `faction.the-seven` | faction | 0 | The demonic host as a whole; the seven armies. |
| `rule.the-pact` | rule | 0 | Worship → the Warden's blessing. The good economy. |
| `rule.blood-price` | rule | 0 | Blood sacrifice → the Seven's power. The dark economy. |
| `rule.possession` | rule | 0 | How the Seven reach mortals: influence, then rarely seizing the body. |

### New file: `content/lore/the-seven.md` — the roster

Each is a `person.*`, secrecy 0, `related: [faction.the-seven]`. Each body is a tight
sketch (a paragraph, not a questline): **king/title · the blood it craves · its army ·
how it corrupts mortals.** Gritty, not cartoonish — each is a *way mortals actually bleed.*

| id | King / title | Blood it craves | Corrupts through |
|---|---|---|---|
| `person.kareth-the-red-king` | Kareth, the Red King | slaughter, the battlefield | rage, feud, the promise of victory |
| `person.vael-the-quiet-knife` | Vael, the Quiet Knife | the trusted killed by the trusted | grudge, the easy solution |
| `person.morren-the-grey-mother` | Morren, the Grey Mother | the fevered, the dying | despair, the mercy-kill |
| `person.ghaul-the-yoke` | Ghaul, the Yoke | chattel worked to death | profit, the slaver's ledger |
| `person.ishri-the-open-mouth` | Ishri, the Open Mouth | ruin by appetite | wanting — flesh, drink, more |
| `person.nuun-the-hollow-choir` | Nuun, the Hollow Choir | the self-slain | madness, whispers — **the chief possessor** |
| `person.draeth-the-crowned-worm` | Draeth, the Crowned Worm | a ruler's own people, spent for power | ambition, tyranny |

`faction.the-seven` relates to all seven; each lord relates back. `rule.possession`
names Nuun as the chief possessor (all seven can, Nuun is the specialist).

## 5. World-building skill changes (the explicit ask: "the skill should include this")

Every future author must reconcile new content against this backdrop, so:

- **New `references/cosmology.md`** in the skill — the canonical backdrop authors read
  before writing: the Warden/Sent/Seven, the two economies, possession, and the
  **authoring rules** that keep it in tone:
  - Keep it **distant** — cosmology is the hidden engine, not the surface text.
  - Demons work **through people**; possession is rare and quiet, never spectacle.
  - **Don't go epic** — no manifesting monsters, no preaching narrator, god unconfirmed.
  - **Blessing/curse ↔ Luck** — express the war through Luck's flavor, never numbers.
  - Victims/cults are authored as **gated secrets** per-town, not stated in the open.
- **`SKILL.md`** — add cosmology to **step 2 (reconcile against existing canon)**: new
  content must slot against the Warden/Seven backdrop; and a one-line pointer in the
  reference list to `references/cosmology.md`.
- **`references/tone.md`** — add a short "**The cosmic backdrop**" section: how the
  good/evil war colors tone *without* breaking the world's indifference (the three
  rules above, in tone language).

## 6. Old Duncarrow canon — decoupled now, purged later

The user confirmed the Duncarrow/Crell/White-Antlers content was scaffolding to build
the schema + skill, not tied to the story, and **may be removed.**

**This pass does NOT remove it.** Duncarrow currently:
- is the world-building skill's **format/disposition-gate specimen** (SKILL.md and
  schema.md point authors at `duncarrow.md`),
- **hosts `rule.disposition-ladder`**, which the build requires **exactly once**, and
- backs the `content_build` **tests/fixtures**.

Ripping it out in the same pass as the new theme risks breaking the build alongside new
work. **Plan:** this pass is **additive** (cosmology + skill). A **follow-up spec**
purges Duncarrow, reparents `rule.disposition-ladder` into `cosmology.md`, and stands up
a **cosmology-native town** as the new specimen. The build stays green throughout.

Roadmap note: `content/lore/canon-roadmap.md` gets an entry recording that Duncarrow is
non-canonical scaffolding slated for removal, and that the Warden/Seven cosmology is the
new spine.

## 7. Acceptance criteria

- `content/lore/cosmology.md` and `content/lore/the-seven.md` author the entries in §4,
  in tone (dry, distant, gritty; §2/§3 respected), every `related` id resolving.
- `PYTHONPATH=tools python -m content_build` regenerates cleanly; `--check` exits 0
  (fresh, valid, no orphans, no secrecy leaks); `pytest tools/content_build/tests -q`
  green.
- The world-building skill carries `references/cosmology.md`, and `SKILL.md` +
  `references/tone.md` reference/enforce the backdrop.
- `content/lore/canon-roadmap.md` updated (Warden/Seven authored; Duncarrow flagged
  scaffolding).
- Existing Duncarrow content and the build remain intact (no removal this pass).

## 8. Out of scope (explicitly deferred)

- Removing Duncarrow / reparenting the ladder / new specimen town — **follow-up spec.**
- Naming victims, cults, possessed NPCs, or blood-harvest sites — **per-town knowledge
  layers**, authored as the world grows.
- Any engine/UI/prompt/combat change — this is content + skill only.
- A true name for the Warden — nameless by design; not a deferred TBD.