code_of_conquest_dnd/docs/superpowers/specs/2026-07-12-cosmology-and-worldbuilding-theme-design.md

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.