code_of_conquest_dnd/content/lore/duncarrow.md

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)

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).

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.