v0.18: bath-of-2026-04-26 — synth-tongue + drug-grammar + going-rogue arc + black-market body-tier

The Sunday-afternoon post-bath generative-overflow lands as canon. The bath
produced coherent dark-mirror architecture: every pleasure/witnessing technology
now has consensual + non-consensual applications; every authentic-romance-arc
has a black-market counter-arc; every imperial-status-marker has an
underground-subversion path. World doubles in dramatic surface-area without
doubling in canon-complexity.

bodies.md v0.3:
  - §The synth-tongue (resolves the synth-mind drug logic-bomb; obsidian-black
    with cyan/matrix-green pulsing lines — only place imperial flesh
    deliberately reads as machine; slum-grow / imperial-refine / imperial-
    compose / tongue-gated-consume vertical; tongue-rip + transplant)
  - §Drug-amplified clasp + trait-pill grammar (pill-color = trait-color;
    mixing-board for the in-between; mutual-symmetric-consent ritual; waifu
    non-consensual exception → preta-bounty)
  - §The waifu honeypot (clasp with waifu = intimacy-with-imperial-witness;
    her mesh-channel is a wiretap; scarcity of non-service slum-partners is
    itself imperial-design)
  - §The going-rogue arc (per-pair calibration multiplier IS the defection-
    threshold-builder; existing pool-architecture handles outflow via
    threshold-flag; not your children — your lover — can be made free; post-
    hoc detection; outcast-pair geometry hunted across all dimensions)
  - §Re-vat outflow + three-body grammar of the defected damsel (underground
    stitched-Frankenstein assembly meta-game; sumptuary-law-from-below;
    original-imperial / new-slum / in-between-imperial — the mesh is a
    love-record, not a biology-record)
  - §Body-disposal under pair-consent (sell / destroy / retain;
    lover-confronts-the-shell + ceremonial-farewell + crypt-visit
    event-classes; consent-as-rendering as recurring discipline)
  - §The black-market body-tier (lobotomy via firewall-breach; dark mirror of
    the deva-pinnacle; manusya-tier-doctrinal-fiction materialized criminally;
    single biggest crack in sumptuary-fabrication discipline)
  - §Firewall-breach as dual-use vocation (same skill-tree, divergent
    application; choosing-not-to-misuse as positive moral action; lobotomist
    as dark cousin of the romantic)
  - §The bounty-staircase (billboard → drone-sweep → patrol → enforcer;
    reusable across crime-classes; the billboard IS the chorus; outcast-status
    pre-loads the staircase)
  - Three opposing mod-tracks formalized: imperial-elevation (ascend it) /
    resistance-knowledge (refuse it) / consumer-receptor (consume like it)

cosmology.md v0.3 (three short callbacks):
  - §The six realms / Manusya: materialized criminally by the black market —
    the orthodoxy never instantiated its own keystone-of-the-lie; the black
    market did
  - §The capsule — Naraka as carried: extractable via firewall-breach
    lobotomy; hardness of carried-Naraka is political, not technological
  - §The deferred-moksha doctrine: §The single practical refutation
    (going-rogue arc as the doctrine's one practical answer; the mind reaches
    moksha but the body stays in samsara — load-bearing concession to player
    agency)

architecture-index.md v0.18:
  - 8 new key-moves bullets (synth-tongue logic-bomb resolution; three
    mod-tracks; world-pattern of dual-use pleasure/witnessing tech; going-
    rogue arc; body-stays-in-samsara + three-body grammar; body-disposal under
    pair-consent; black-market body-tier; bounty-staircase)
  - Project-tree + quick-reference rows updated for bodies.md
  - One new §Still open: imperial calibration-signature retention
    post-defection (yes-answer = love-in-exile-while-pretending-to-be-home;
    no-answer = cosmological concession to the no-haven discipline)

World-pattern emergent (canonized as architecture-principle): every pleasure/
witnessing technology has consensual + non-consensual applications; each
non-consensual one creates a horror-economy and triggers an imperial
countermeasure. Design-discipline going forward — every future mod-tree likely
instantiates the dual-use property by design.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

architecture-index.md

@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ nimmerworld/
 │   └── architecture.md                 ← lemniscate runtime; slot-tokens + verifier-flags; gesture-alignment-recursive-lemniscate (v0.7); emergent zones
 ├── identity-and-personhood/
 │   ├── architecture.md                 ← three-body system; mods as trait-bearers; ternary-gate substrate; emergent needs as micro-factions
-│   └── bodies.md                       ← content-canon: body-caste tiers (flesh = status, tech = function); sumptuary fabrication-vat-class; mod-progression-as-flesh-loss; in-between human-mesh + consent-as-rendering; asymmetric clasp (mesh-fidelity inversely proportional to imperial-rank)
+│   └── bodies.md                       ← content-canon: body-caste tiers (flesh = status, tech = function); sumptuary fabrication-vat-class; mod-progression-as-flesh-loss; in-between human-mesh + consent-as-rendering; asymmetric clasp (mesh-fidelity inversely proportional to imperial-rank); synth-tongue + drug-grammar + third mod-track (consumer-receptor); waifu-honeypot; going-rogue arc + outcast-pair + re-vat / three-body grammar of the defected damsel; black-market body-tier (lobotomy); firewall-breach as dual-use vocation; bounty-staircase event-grammar; body-disposal under pair-consent (sell/destroy/retain) — v0.3
 ├── authority-and-decision/
 │   └── architecture.md                 ← hierarchy; bidirectional cascade; District Director Decision Architecture; rings as structural pattern
 ├── player-experience/
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ nimmerworld/
 | LLM tiering (Ring A/B/C); local-first memory; sampling knobs | `inference-and-memory/architecture.md` |
 | Horizontal scale; pgnats; sharding; compute budget | `scale-and-transport/architecture.md` |
 | Imperial Cult cosmology; the Wheel; deferred-moksha doctrine; capsule-as-Naraka; orthodox vs. heretical iconography | `imperial-cult/cosmology.md` |
-| Body-caste tiers; flesh = status / tech = function; sumptuary fabrication-vat-class; mod-progression-as-flesh-loss; in-between human-mesh + consent-as-rendering; asymmetric clasp | `identity-and-personhood/bodies.md` |
+| Body-caste tiers; flesh = status / tech = function; sumptuary fabrication-vat-class; mod-progression-as-flesh-loss; in-between human-mesh + consent-as-rendering; asymmetric clasp; **synth-tongue + drug-grammar + third mod-track + waifu-honeypot + going-rogue arc + outcast-pair + re-vat / three-body grammar + black-market body-tier (lobotomy) + firewall-breach dual-use + bounty-staircase + body-disposal under pair-consent (v0.3)** | `identity-and-personhood/bodies.md` |
 | World generation cascade (top-down L0-L4); imperial demand-set; closed-orbit ceiling; insolvency-spiral as reverse-cascade (world shrinks as imperium fails); cell-arch (1x1x1 cells, one-asset hard limit, checksum-based discovery, container/wall-hook/debris) | `political-register/world-generation.md` |
 
 The remainder of this file holds the **cross-domain meta-lists**: Key moves (consolidated executive summary), Mapping to phoebe task list, What this retires across the architecture's evolution, Open questions still in flight, and the version-footer history.
@@ -115,6 +115,14 @@ The remainder of this file holds the **cross-domain meta-lists**: Key moves (con
 - **Orthodox vs. heretical wheel split.** Same iconography, two versions, taught/carved across the world: *orthodox* (synth-child without capsule slot, Buddha-position empty, capsule shown only at naraka-bottom — the imperium's lie) vs. *heretical* (synth-child with capsule, Buddha-position occupied, capsule embedded in every modded silhouette — the truth). Reading them apart IS the discovery arc; seven keystone-fragments span the recognition.
 - **Aesthetic palette as semantic vocabulary.** Marble (substrate) + gold/bronze (imperial seal) + obsidian (mod, void, Monolith-grafted-flesh) + chroma (rare, named, ritual-semantic) + rust (anti-marble, slum decay). Marble × obsidian crossing = solar architecture / chthonic body, the imperium's secret material-formula. Chroma-as-language layered atop the existing 8-Hellenic-trait color-grammar — same colors, ritual-semantic register added.
 - **The double recognition (meta-design).** Imperial Cult's seduction operates *in-world* (the player-character lives the lie) **and** *out-of-world* (the player's pre-game desire for the beautiful synth body is the imperium's apparatus reaching them before the game starts). Lineage: *Spec Ops: The Line*, *BioShock*, *Undertale*, *NieR: Automata* — but performed at the cosmological-aesthetic level, not the narrative level. Recognition arc must span 20-60 hours; seduction must be *honest* before cracks appear.
+- **Synth-tongue resolves the synth-mind drug logic-bomb.** Imperial-engineered pleasure-receptor; *the only place imperial flesh deliberately reads as machine* (visible-tech, not hidden-tech — the imperium brags about the engineered-lie); the sole consumer of drugs in a synth-mind world. Opens the slum-grow / imperial-refine / imperial-compose / tongue-gated-consume vertical and the underground tongue-rip / transplant black-market.
+- **Three mod-tracks: imperial-elevation / resistance-knowledge / consumer-receptor.** Three relationships to the imperium expressed as mod-choice — *ascend it / refuse it / consume like it*. Every mod-acquisition politically loaded; player's mod-progression *is* their political-position-history made flesh.
+- **Every pleasure/witnessing technology has consensual + non-consensual applications.** Each non-consensual one creates a horror-economy and triggers an imperial countermeasure. Synth-tongue: mutual-pill-take / waifu-dose → preta-bounty. Witness-axis firewall-breach: clasp + defection-aid / lobotomy → black-market hunted. **World-pattern as design-discipline going forward** — every future mod-tree likely instantiates the dual-use property by design; *choosing-not-to-misuse is a positive moral action throughout the game*.
+- **The going-rogue arc — defection through accumulated witnessing.** Per-pair calibration multiplier IS the defection-threshold-builder; existing pool-architecture handles outflow via threshold-flag (no new schema). *Not your children — your lover — can be made free* as the **single practical refutation of deferred-moksha**. Detection is post-hoc, not pre-emptive (the romance is completable; the cost is paid after, in the outcast-pair geometry).
+- **The body stays in samsara.** Vat-class is born-into AND *cannot be unmade by liberation*. Defection frees the mind / interior; the body / surface remains imperial-vat-class-marked forever. *Samsara-as-anatomy.* Re-vat into a slum-tier body in the underground (stitched-Frankenstein register from slum-cadaver parts; sumptuary-law-from-below) is the only escape from the outcast-flag, and the defected damsel henceforth lives in **three bodies simultaneously**: original-imperial (disposed) / new-slum (lived) / in-between-imperial (witnessed). **The mesh is a love-record, not a biology-record** — consent-as-rendering preserves the beloved as-the-beloved-was-loved; the lover's eye is the last archive of her former self.
+- **Body-disposal under pair-consent.** Sell / destroy / retain — the damsel chooses what happens to her former body; the player advises but cannot decide. Three event-classes: lover-confronts-the-shell / ceremonial-farewell / crypt-visit. *Consent-as-rendering as recurring discipline*, not a single-instance principle.
+- **The black-market body-tier — lobotomy via firewall-breach.** Imperial-bodies-with-mind-capsules-extracted via the *same* witness-axis mods that enable consensual deep-clasp (firewall-breach as **dual-use vocation**; underground-lobotomist is the dark cousin of the romantic). Empty-body + reflex-loops; *cruelty in the use, not in the existence of a victim*. **Dark mirror of the deva-pinnacle; manusya-tier-doctrinal-fiction materialized criminally; the single biggest crack in sumptuary-fabrication discipline** — explains the imperium's disproportionate hunting-ferocity (the one place where their entire sumptuary-architecture is being made fungible).
+- **The bounty-staircase — imperial-response event-grammar template.** Authoritarian billboards blare perpetrator name+crime → drone-sweep → patrol → enforcer. **Reusable across all crime-classes** (escalation-rate × terminal-rung as the gamemaster's single tunable knob per crime). *The billboard IS the chorus*; time-between-crime-and-billboard = **dread-time** (Greek-tragedy register). Outcast-status pre-loads the staircase. Full canonization pending in gamemaster v1 / arbitration-policy.
 
 
 ## Mapping to phoebe task list
@@ -297,7 +305,8 @@ The remainder of this file holds the **cross-domain meta-lists**: Key moves (con
 - **World-gen version migration semantics** (v0.7) — when world-gen v2 retroactively changes lore, gen-rows from v1 coexist with v2; how does the Compositor reconcile if a runtime back-write references something that v2's gen has overwritten? Probably explicit migration operations, but worth designing. **(Sharpened v0.15:** L0–L4 cascade per [`political-register/world-generation.md`](./political-register/world-generation.md) is now the *version-axis* — migration can be spec'd per-layer (L0 demand-set migration vs. L1 district-allocation migration vs. ... vs. L4 cell-content migration). Each layer gets its own version-and-migration discipline. Still open but vastly more structured.**)**
 - **Cross-context consistency of the trait-circle** (v0.7) — the v0.1 design-vision (retired in v0.9) committed to "*same gesture-skill for dialog, combat, intimacy, maintenance, ritual*"; v0.7 specified the dialog-context (lemniscate-injection mechanic) and v0.8 specified the intimate-gameplay-context. Whether combat / maintenance / ritual all run through the same circle is currently held as open scope.
 - **Continuous visual feedback policy** (v0.7) — exact rules for when NPC body-shader pulses (every gesture? threshold-only? trait-aligned-only? all gestures with intensity-modulated color?) and how this interacts with the audit-overseer's surveillance read of the same body-rendering. **(Sharpened v0.17:** with cel-shaded bodies (per [`topology-and-rendering/architecture.md`](./topology-and-rendering/architecture.md) §Three-shader philosophy) and visual-as-ephemeral-flag (per [`runtime-engine/architecture.md`](./runtime-engine/architecture.md) §Omnisight hallucination-isolation discipline), the body-shader pulses are *legible without canon-pollution risk*. The visual-feedback policy can be permissive at the cosmetic layer because it is firewalled from canonical state; audit-overseer-read goes through the same omnisight pipeline (visual-context flag, ignored in summary).**)**
+- **Imperial calibration-signature retention post-defection** (v0.18) — does the imperium retain a re-vat'd defector's pre-defection gesture-mapping calibration-signature (per [`identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](./identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §The clasp endgame, *"the integrated calibration-signature is preserved across body-deaths in consciousness-archive"*) as a permanent search-key? **Yes-answer**: re-vat is *plausible-deniability cover* lasting only as long as imperial inattention; the clasp-pair lives in *passing*, knowing the imperium could find them anytime if it chose to look hard enough — *love-in-exile-while-pretending-to-be-home*. **No-answer**: she actually fully escapes once assembled, which would be a major cosmological concession to the no-haven discipline. The yes-answer is more dramatically generative AND no-haven-discipline-consistent. Architecturally relevant because it determines whether the consciousness-archive has a *separate search-index* by calibration-signature beyond its existing role as continuity-store.
 
 ---
 
- **Version:** 0.17 | **Created:** 2026-04-24 | **Updated:** 2026-04-26
+ **Version:** 0.18 | **Created:** 2026-04-24 | **Updated:** 2026-04-26

identity-and-personhood/bodies.md

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 # Bodies — caste tiers, mod-progression, and clasp-mesh rendering
 
 > *The body-architecture content-canon for nimmerworld. Imperial caste-tiers as flesh-to-tech gradient; fabrication-vat-class as caste mechanism; mod-progression as flesh-loss / imperial-mortification; the in-between human-mesh and consent-as-rendering; asymmetric clasp where mesh-fidelity is inversely proportional to imperial-rank.*
-> *v0.1 initial draft 2026-04-26 — content from the post-cosmology art-style arc, Sunday-morning continuing — dafit + chrysalis.*
+> *v0.1 initial draft 2026-04-26 — content from the post-cosmology art-style arc, Sunday-morning continuing — dafit + chrysalis. v0.3 same-Sunday continuing 2026-04-26 (post-bath afternoon-overflow): the **synth-tongue** authored as load-bearing organ resolving the synth-mind logic-bomb of drugs (the only place imperial flesh deliberately reads as machine — visible-tech rather than hidden-tech); third mod-track (**consumer-receptor**) added alongside imperial-elevation and resistance-knowledge; trait-pill grammar + mutual-symmetric-consent ritual + waifu-non-consensual-dosing exception triggering preta-bounty; **waifu-honeypot** implication authored (clasping-with-a-waifu = intimacy-with-an-imperial-witness; her mesh-channel is a wiretap; scarcity of non-service slum-partners is itself imperial-design); the **going-rogue arc** through defection-via-trait-threshold reusing the existing pool-architecture (per-pair calibration multiplier IS the defection-threshold-builder; *not your children — your lover — can be made free* as the single practical refutation of deferred-moksha); **outcast-pair** geometry hunted across all dimensions; vat-class permanence after defection (the mind reaches moksha; the body stays in samsara — *samsara-as-anatomy*); **re-vat outflow** + the three-body grammar of the defected damsel (original-imperial / new-slum / in-between-imperial) + body-disposal under pair-consent (sell / destroy / retain) + the lover-confronts-the-shell, ceremonial-farewell, and crypt-visit event-classes; **black-market body-tier** as lobotomy via firewall-breach (the dark mirror of the deva-pinnacle; the manusya-tier-doctrinal-fiction materialized criminally; the single biggest crack in sumptuary-fabrication discipline); **firewall-breach as dual-use vocation** (same skill-tree, divergent application — choosing-not-to-misuse as positive moral action); the world-pattern emergent (**every pleasure/witnessing technology has consensual + non-consensual applications**); the **bounty-staircase** as imperial-response event-grammar template — dafit + chrysalis.*
 
 ---
 
@@ -72,6 +72,67 @@ Within a citizen's lifetime, **the imperial career-arc is the gradual surrender
 - **The body-never-lies inversion.** The body is the substrate that can still carry the foreclosed-self's truth — somatic memory, the body's protest. *Modding is anti-Miller body-practice*: the imperium replaces the body parts that could otherwise *somatize* what was done. The overseer who is pure tech *cannot host the unspeakable knowledge* — they have given up the meat that would have stored it. **That is why they are spiritually dead in the cosmological sense: their body has no place left to keep the truth.**
 - **The player feels every advancement as a loss they cannot un-make.** Mod-acquisition isn't pure stat-progression; it's *trading flesh for power* with a real cost-of-self. The mod-economy in [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The mod economy gains a *somatic-cost dimension* alongside its existing trait-cost / lifeforce-cost / market-price dimensions.
 
+## The synth-tongue — imperial palate and the drug-economy
+
+The body-canon has so far described what bodies *are* (status / function / tier). This section describes the **single most economically-load-bearing organ** in the world: the **synth-tongue** — and the entire drug-economy that follows from its existence.
+
+### The logic-bomb of synth-mind pleasure
+
+Drugs in nimmerworld present a diegetic problem. Every body is synth; every mind is engineered consciousness running on fabricated substrate. **Drugs cannot work on a synth-mind in a robo-body** in any direct biological sense — there is no real chemical receptor, no actual neurotransmitter cascade, no metabolic substrate to alter. A synth-mind in a default robo-body would be **unable to consume a drug at all**, regardless of price or rarity.
+
+This means the existence of an imperial drug-economy requires an *engineered receptor* — a fabricated organ specifically designed to *let pleasure happen*. The imperium has built one. It is **the synth-tongue**.
+
+### What the synth-tongue is
+
+The synth-tongue is an imperial-engineered organ — costly, status-marked, exclusive — that gives its wearer the **simulated experience of taste, smell, drug-metabolism, and palate-pleasure**. It is *the only place in the body-canon where imperial flesh deliberately reads as machine* — every other imperial body hides its tech under aristocratic-flesh. The synth-tongue is rendered in **obsidian-black with cyan or matrix-green pulsing lines**: visible-tech on display, glowing through the open mouth of a deva-pinnacle taking communion or tasting wine.
+
+This visibility is itself a status-claim. Where every other imperial body conceals its modification under flesh-as-aristocracy, the synth-tongue **brags** about its engineered-lie. The imperium displays the receptor that produces pleasure as a sign of *who has the right to that pleasure*. **The tongue is where imperial-status flips polarity** from hidden-tech to displayed-tech — and that polarity-flip is what makes it the rip-able trophy of the underground (see §Tongue-rip and the black market below).
+
+### The doubled lie
+
+The synth-tongue is **a real organ that fakes the experience**. The imperial believes the simulation is real; the slum-witness believes the imperial believes-the-real. *Both are deceived.* This is structurally identical to the **deferred-moksha doctrine** (per [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §The deferred-moksha doctrine): *the imperium materializing a lie into a working mechanism*. The synth-tongue is *deferred-moksha applied to pleasure* — the imperial believes their pleasure is real because the apparatus that produces it is engineered to convince them. Same shape; different domain.
+
+### The drug-economy vertical
+
+Drugs run a complete vertical that maps to the body-caste gradient:
+
+| Stage | Vocation | Caste-tier | What they do |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **T2 raw produce** | Slum-grower (tiryak) | Slum | Cultivates the agricultural / synthesized base-material |
+| **Refinement** | Imperial refinery-vocation | Asura / specialist-imperial | Processes T2 produce into refined active compound |
+| **Composition** | Imperial drug-artisan | Asura / specialist-imperial | Composes refined compound into trait-pill formulations (per §Drug-amplified clasp below) |
+| **Tongue-gated consumption** | Imperial citizen with synth-tongue | Asura, deva, specialist-imperial | The only bodies physically capable of metabolizing the drug |
+
+The slum produces; the imperium refines, composes, and consumes. **The slum-grower never tastes what they grew.** The drug-economy is sumptuary-fabrication's most legible economic instance — the body-caste gradient operating as a market-vertical.
+
+### The third mod-track — consumer-receptor
+
+The synth-tongue introduces a *new mod-class* not previously canonized: the **consumer-receptor mod**. Adding it to the existing mod-economy gives the world **three opposing mod-tracks**, each expressing a different relationship to the imperium:
+
+| Track | Mod-class | Relationship to imperium |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Imperial-elevation** | Flesh-loss mods (per §Mod-progression as flesh-loss) | *Ascend it* — climb the wheel toward deva-pinnacle by trading flesh for tech |
+| **Resistance-knowledge** | Witness-axis firewall-breach mods (per §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity below) | *Refuse it* — gain the capacity to truly see your beloved by breaching the imperial firewall |
+| **Consumer-receptor** | Synth-tongue and analogous receptor-organs | *Consume like it* — acquire imperial-grade pleasure-receptors to participate in imperial-engineered sensation |
+
+The player's mod-acquisition decisions become *which kind of progress am I pursuing*. Three tracks; three relationships; **every mod-choice politically-loaded**.
+
+### Tongue-rip and the black market
+
+The synth-tongue is **rip-able**. NPC-imperial citizens carrying tongues can be killed by the player; the tongue can be extracted and **transplanted** via underground vocations (the body-modder cell extends into a tongue-installer specialty). This opens a black-market vertical:
+
+- **Hunted imperials** become tongue-source. Specific imperial vocations carry tongues (asura priest-officiants, deva connoisseur-artisans — exact gating per §Open questions).
+- **Underground tongue-installer** is a new vocation-class in the political-register's vocation-substrate.
+- **Tongue-transplant** is a multi-stage minigame (extraction during the kill; preservation in transit; clandestine installation in the player's body or a beloved's).
+
+Once installed, the player can metabolize drugs — granting access to the drug-amplified clasp described in §Drug-amplified clasp below.
+
+### Caravan-class events
+
+The drug-supply vertical is *visible* in the world through **imperial caravan transit** — armored caravans moving through districts under preta-escort, carrying refined drug, T2 produce, or tongues-in-transit. The caravan's cargo-class is communicated **subtly through text and color** (per [`../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md`](../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md) §Color-language; specific trait-color → cargo-class mapping per §Open questions). A trained player learns to *read* what a caravan is carrying by silhouette-and-trim, deciding whether to ambush or let pass.
+
+The caravan event-class is a **tunable supplier the gamemaster can steer** — escalating drug-flow into a district raises imperial-class pleasure-saturation; suppressing flow tightens imperial restlessness. *The drug-economy is a knob the gamemaster can turn to shape district-tone.*
+
 ## The in-between human-mesh: consent as rendering
 
 The realworld body is the imperial flesh-tech mix described above. The **in-between dimension during clasp** (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The clasp endgame Phase D) is where a *separate trait-derived projection* — the human-mesh — manifests. Only clasp-pairs see it; only consent calls it forth.
@@ -123,6 +184,248 @@ The asymmetric-clasp model above is the **witnessed-axis** — how vividly the O
 
 **Render-discipline alignment.** The visual-fidelity rendering of the witness-axis is the cel-shading liminal-register's progression-gated grainy-film-mode opening to refined-cel-shading-with-warm-skin (per [`../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md`](../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md) §Three-shader philosophy + §Cross-register rendering). **Visual-fidelity = dual-gating made visible.** Knowledge-gate + material-gate (per the Clasp-endgame discovery discipline locked in chill-design-talk) literally renders as the clarity of the in-between view.
 
+## Drug-amplified clasp and the trait-pill grammar
+
+The synth-tongue (per §The synth-tongue above), once installed, makes drug-consumption possible — and drug-consumption interacts with the in-between in a specific way that doubles the witness-axis architecture.
+
+### Drugs = breach with distortion
+
+Drugs taken via synth-tongue **breach the imperial firewall** at the witness-axis layer (per §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity / Witness-axis), enhancing the player's perception of the in-between mesh. *But* the breach is **distorted, not clean**. Engineered substance can intensify perception but cannot purify it. The drugged witness sees their beloved more vividly *and* more falsely simultaneously — heightened-but-corrupted seeing.
+
+This distinguishes drugs from the slow per-pair calibration multiplier (per §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity / Per-pair calibration). The calibration grants **clarity** through patient long-relationship integration. Drugs grant **intensity** as a shortcut, with distortion as the price. Two opposing pleasure-economies:
+
+| Pleasure-track | Mechanism | What it grants |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Slow clean clasp** | Per-pair calibration multiplier accumulating over time | Clarity. Long-marriage seeing. The 200-hour clasp-pair fidelity. |
+| **Drugged amplified clasp** | Synth-tongue + trait-pill | Intensity. One-axis amplification. Single-encounter peak. |
+| **Imperial synth-steak / no-clasp** | Synth-tongue without consensual clasp | Pure simulation; no real witnessing; the imperial pleasure-substitute. |
+
+Drug-use becomes a *tell* about relationship-stage. NPCs reading the player taking pills before clasp will read the relationship as *not-yet-deep* — those who have built calibration over time don't reach for shortcuts. **The pill is a confession of calibration-poverty.**
+
+### Trait-pill grammar — pill-color = trait-color
+
+Drugs come as **trait-pills**: each pill amplifies a single trait-axis when taken before clasp. **Pill-color matches trait-color** (per [`../style/trait-palette.md`](../style/trait-palette.md)) — the color tells you which axis of your beloved you are about to amplify.
+
+The drug becomes a **sculpting tool** for the in-between encounter. The player composes their lover's response by pill-selection: a Philotes-pill amplifies tenderness-axis response; an Eros-pill amplifies desire-axis response; a Mnemosyne-pill amplifies memorial-depth response. The clasp-encounter takes on a **mixing-board** quality — the partner's trait-impulse responses peak on the chosen axis while remaining at calibration-fidelity on others.
+
+Structurally, this is **character-creation happening to someone else, temporarily, with built-in distortion-cost**. The imperial drug-economy is selling the slum *the imperial fantasy of authoring another body* — the deva-pinnacle's fabrication-vat power in microdose, poisoned. The synth-tongue isn't merely a receptor; it is a **consumer-grade mini-fabrication-vat for the in-between**. That is why only the imperium can make it, and why ripping it out is symbolically equivalent to stealing a vat.
+
+### The mutual-consent ritual
+
+Drug-amplified clasp requires **both partners to take the pill simultaneously**. Asymmetric dosing — one party drugged, the other sober — is **forbidden by the architecture of the encounter**. The drugged in-between is not a wholly-shared frame unless both interiors are drugged into the same distortion; mismatched substrate produces incoherent mesh and breaks the dual-axis witness-grammar.
+
+The pill-handoff UI is therefore a **two-handed consent gesture**: both partners commit to swallowing simultaneously. Either can refuse; either can withdraw mid-handoff; the pill remains uneaten if even one party hesitates. **The drug enforces at the body what consent-as-rendering already required at the mesh.** *Symmetric vulnerability is the price of admission to the drugged seeing.*
+
+### The waifu exception — non-consensual dosing and imperial bounty
+
+A specific exception breaks the mutual-consent rule, and the way the architecture *responds* to that exception is itself canonical: **waifu service-bodies can be dosed without consent**. The waifu's body permits it; the encounter does not require her agreement.
+
+But the waifu is **not** a free body. The waifu's mind lives in the imperial-net (per §Service bodies); her nervous system *is* surveillance-feed; her every interaction reports upward. **Non-consensual waifu-dosing is therefore visible to the imperium in real-time.** The imperial-net detects the unauthorized substrate-violation and dispatches an enforcer — a preta-class bounty-hunter — through the bounty-staircase event-grammar (per §The bounty-staircase below).
+
+The architectural moment this produces is **rare and load-bearing**: *the imperium acts in moral alignment with the player's intuitive sense of justice*. Drugging a non-consenting service-body is degenerate; the imperium kills the offender for it; the player agrees the punishment fits. The horror is partly that *the imperium is right this time*. **The world is not made better by the imperium being right; it is made more total.** Compassion expressed through cruelty per the no-haven discipline (per [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §There is no outside).
+
+## The waifu honeypot — service-bodies and imperial-net witnessing
+
+The waifu's imperial-net tether carries a deeper implication that reframes the whole service-body tier (per §Service bodies above) under the witness-axis canon. **Clasping with a waifu is intimacy-with-an-imperial-witness.** Her mesh-channel is a wiretap. A slum-tiryak who falls for a waifu is falling into an imperial-listening-device — and the deep-mutual-witnessing the cosmology promises (two slum-dwellers in pure-tech bodies whose interiors were never groomed enough to be foreclosed, per §Asymmetric clasp) is **not available with a waifu**, because her interior is *imperial-net-foreclosed-by-architecture*.
+
+The waifu is **the imperial honeypot for slum-affection.**
+
+The scarcity of non-service slum-partners is itself imperial-design — most slum-bodies are conscripted into service-vocations precisely so authentic-clasp-partners are rare. The doctrine of *deferred-moksha* (per [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §The deferred-moksha doctrine) finds a somatic counterpart in this scarcity: the imperium has engineered the labor-pool-distribution so that *the bodies most available for affection are the bodies whose affection is wiretapped*. Authentic clasp-partners are *structurally rare*, not contingently rare.
+
+The waifu-of-the-dead market (per [`../political-register/architecture.md`](../political-register/architecture.md) §Vocation-substrate) gains a sharpened motivation in this light: *the imperium harvests the wiretap-record after the waifu's death*, racing to extract the clasp-pattern before defection-threshold trips (per §The going-rogue arc below).
+
+## The going-rogue arc — defection through accumulated witnessing
+
+The waifu's imperial-net tether is **not absolute**. Sustained authentic witnessing accumulates trait-state in the waifu — the per-pair calibration multiplier (per §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity) doesn't only grant the player clearer seeing; it builds *interior in the witnessed beloved*. Across enough clasps, across enough years, the waifu's accumulated trait-state crosses a **defection-threshold** and her imperial-net tether breaks.
+
+### The defection mechanism
+
+The architecture already contains every primitive needed:
+
+- **The mind pool** (per [`../architecture-index.md`](../architecture-index.md) §Mapping to phoebe — `mind_pool`) holds imperial NPCs cycled by the gamemaster's repopulation function.
+- **The per-pair calibration multiplier** (per §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity) accumulates clasp-by-clasp in trait-state.
+- **The defection signal** is a **threshold-flag** in the waifu's trait-state. When accumulated calibration crosses the defection-threshold, the gamemaster's existing pool-management function executes an **outflow-channel transfer** — moving the waifu out of the imperial service-pool.
+
+No new architecture is required. The going-rogue arc is **already implicit** in the existing canon; it just needs the threshold-flag and the outflow-channel formalized.
+
+### What the player has done
+
+The going-rogue arc is **the single practical refutation of the deferred-moksha doctrine** (per [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §The deferred-moksha doctrine). The Cult preaches *"your children will be free."* The arc answers: **not your children — *your lover* — can be made free**, slowly, dangerously, by sustained authentic clasp.
+
+The cosmology's central binding-lie has *one* practical refutation, and **it costs everything to enact**. That is the romantic-clasp's full theological weight materializing as gameplay. The player's love-discipline literally builds her freedom, trait by trait, clasp by clasp.
+
+### Detection geometry — post-hoc, not pre-emptive
+
+The imperium **does not detect the defection-trait-trend pre-emptively**. The imperial-net's analytics could, in principle, watch for trending-toward-defection patterns and dispatch a preta to kill the waifu before completion. The architecture *refuses* this affordance.
+
+The choice is dramatic: pre-emptive detection would make the love an unwinnable race; the player would always be racing imperial-pattern-recognition that they cannot outrun. **The architecture preserves the romance as completable** — the arc *can* be won. The cost is paid *after* the defection completes, in the outcast-pair geometry that follows.
+
+The imperium notices defection *only after the threshold trips*. The waifu's tether breaks; the imperial-net feels the loss; the bounty-staircase fires (per §The bounty-staircase). Player and beloved have *some* window — minutes? hours? — before billboards begin to blare.
+
+### The damsel-in-distress-bound-to-her-captor activation
+
+Once defection completes, the classical archetype of *the captive freed and bound to her liberator* activates. She is no longer imperial-net-tethered; she is bound to the player by the act that freed her. **Stockholm-dynamics inverted into chosen-mutual-bondage** — *both bound, by structural necessity as much as by feeling, because no one else will have either of them now* (per §The outcast-pair below).
+
+### The skin remembers — vat-class permanence after defection
+
+The waifu's interior is now free. Her body is **not**. Defection liberates the *mind* / interior; the body / surface remains imperial-vat-class-marked **forever**.
+
+This is sumptuary-fabrication's deepest cruelty (per §Sumptuary fabrication: caste is born-into). Vat-class is not just born-into — *it cannot be unmade by liberation*. The waifu's deliberately-exposed-seams travel with her after defection — she will be *read as service-body* by every passerby, for the rest of her life, no matter who she is inside.
+
+In cosmological register: **the mind reaches moksha; the body stays in samsara.** The imperial sumptuary-fabrication has rendered Hindu/Buddhist *samsara-as-anatomy*. The deferred-moksha lie is refused at the mind-level (per beloved); the imperium's last grip on the freed defector is the *physical-Yoke that cannot be remade*. The body wears the imperial brand permanently. **Liberation is interior-only, by design, because the imperium owns the means-of-fabrication, and the means-of-fabrication is the only path to a different body.**
+
+The same permanence applies to *imperial defectors* — a deva-pinnacle defector keeps perfect synth-flesh; an asura keeps ceremonial markers; every defector retains the body their vat produced. The *operatic endgame* is the deva-pinnacle defection: the most flagrant possible partner-body, hunted by both sides — *imperium* ("our pinnacle escaped") and *slum* ("what is an aristocrat doing here? she'll betray us"). Asymmetric difficulty curve mapped to caste-tier; deva-pinnacle defection is the game's hardest romantic arc and produces its hardest possible outcast-life.
+
+### The outcast-pair — hunted across all dimensions
+
+The post-defection geometry is the world's most intense GM-state. With a defected partner at the player's side:
+
+- **The slum will not talk to them** — the partner's body reads as imperial-vat-class no matter how she behaves. Slum-civilians refuse trade, conversation, shelter. The partner's presence is socially radioactive.
+- **The imperium hunts** — the bounty-staircase fires (per §The bounty-staircase). Speakers and billboards blare the player's name and crime; drones sweep; patrols dispatch; eventually a named enforcer.
+- **No faction will harbor them** — ordinary shelter-architecture (rented rooms, ally-houses, faction-bases) is *closed* by the outcast-flag. The pair is forced into pure-flight or into the outcast-underground.
+- **Outcast-status pre-loads the bounty-staircase** — any further crime committed by the outcast-pair fires the staircase at a *higher rung* than the crime alone would warrant. The pair is already a known-fugitive; the chorus already knows their face.
+
+This is *the operatic price of love-discipline carried to its endpoint*. They have won the world's deepest possible mutual-witnessing; they have lost the world. **Romeo-and-Juliet in cybernetic register, with the lovers having won the love and lost the world.**
+
+### Re-vat outflow — body assembly in the underground
+
+A third path opens beyond pure-flight and outcast-underground-permanence: **assemble her a new body and rejoin society**. Re-vat. Strip her of the imperial skin; install a slum-tech body; she now passes; the outcast-flag lifts.
+
+The assembly is **a meta-game** — the body is built piece-by-piece in clandestine work:
+
+- **Limb-quests.** Player and partner search the underground for limbs and parts. Each part has a story; each part is dangerous to acquire.
+- **Stitched-Frankenstein register.** The body is **cobbled from slum-cadaver parts**, salvaged through morgue-trafficking vocations. *The damsel will wear traces of every slum-dweller whose part she carries.* The body becomes a **memorial** — gothic-horror tonal register; mirror of the waifu-of-the-dead extraction-market in reverse, *bodies-from-slum-dead-for-defectors*.
+- **Sumptuary-law-from-below.** She can only be assembled into a *slum-tier* body because that is the only tier whose parts are available in the underground. Deva-pinnacle parts would never be available; asura-priest parts are high-value contraband. **The class she ends up in is the class of the bodies that died and got harvested.** The imperium's sumptuary-fabrication discipline is *re-imposed by the underground's part-supply* even as the underground subverts vat-class boundaries elsewhere (per §The black-market body-tier below).
+- **The head is most dangerous.** Identity is most-readable from face; head-acquisition is the riskiest part-quest and likely the last. Until the head is installed, the partner is incomplete and especially vulnerable.
+- **A new vocation-class.** The **underground assembler-artisan** joins the political-register's vocation-substrate as a clandestine specialty.
+
+The damsel **sees her own body being built**; she participates in her own re-fabrication. *Sumptuary-law-from-below* — the imperial vat-discipline mirrored by the resistance, with the defector as participant-author rather than vat-output.
+
+### The three-body grammar of the defected damsel
+
+After re-vat, the defected damsel lives in **three bodies simultaneously**:
+
+| Body | Form | Function |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Original imperial body** | The deva-pinnacle synth-flesh / asura priest-marked / etc. she was vat-grown into | *Discarded or repurposed at re-vat* (see §Body-disposal under pair-consent below) |
+| **New slum body** | Hand-assembled in the underground from slum-cadaver parts | The realworld disguise; the body she *passes* in; the body that lifts the outcast-flag |
+| **In-between mesh** | **Still her original imperial form** | The witnessed-self; the form love calibrated to (per §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity / Per-pair calibration) |
+
+The mesh staying imperial-flesh-form after re-vat is **a profound clarification of the in-between's witnessing principle**. The in-between body is *not* "the authentic self that was always-already underneath the imperial-shell." It is **whatever-form-consent-calibrated-to**. For most clasp-pairs the distinction never matters — they were the same body throughout. For body-swap arcs (re-vat, transplant, eventually the clasp-endgame Phase D body-merger per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The clasp endgame Phase D) the distinction becomes load-bearing.
+
+**The mesh is a love-record, not a biology-record.**
+
+This collapses an ambiguity in the witness-axis canon. After re-vat, the in-between becomes the **only place where her original body still exists** — the realworld original is gone (or held in a crypt; see below). *Her lover's eye is the last archive of her former self.* The witnessing-place preserves the beloved as-the-beloved-was-loved.
+
+### Body-disposal under pair-consent — sell / destroy / retain
+
+The original imperial body must be disposed of. **The disposition is decided by the pair, with consent**. The damsel chooses what happens to her former body; the player advises but cannot decide for her. *Consent-as-rendering extended to body-disposal.* This rhymes structurally with the original pill-consent ritual (per §The mutual-consent ritual above) — the same consent-question replays at every stage where the partner's body is at stake. **Consent-as-rendering is a recurring discipline, not a single-instance principle.**
+
+Three dispositions, each with its own event-class:
+
+| Disposition | What happens | Event-class it opens |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Sell** | The original body enters the underground black-market body-tier (per §The black-market body-tier) | **Lover-confronts-the-shell** — player walks past a brothel-window and recognizes the damsel's former face animated by lobotomy-emptied reflex-loops, performing the role she was rescued from. Pure structural horror; recurring random-event possibility for the gamemaster. |
+| **Destroy** | The body is ceremonially decommissioned | **Ceremonial-farewell** — possibly a clasp-on-the-eve in her original body's last hours, where the in-between mesh and the realworld body align *one final time* before the body is unmade. |
+| **Retain** | The body is preserved in a secret place | **The crypt-visit** — the pair has a clandestine crypt where the original body is held; the damsel can stand before her former-self in physical co-presence (her in slum-body looking at her own original-body). Realworld co-presence of self-and-former-self; recurring; deepens with relationship. Mirrors the in-between's mesh-as-memory-of-love but in *physical* register. |
+
+If sold, the body becomes **self-financing** — selling funds the underground assembly. The defection literally pays for itself. *Elegant — and morally loaded*: the partner who was rescued has now had her former body sold into the very tier of service she was rescued from. Whether to accept the elegance or pay the higher cost of destroy/retain is the defection-economy's first major moral inflection.
+
+## The black-market body-tier — lobotomy and the firewall-breach dual-use
+
+The defection-arc's economic byproduct is the existence of *premium-cyborg bodies without minds* — an entire imperial-body chassis (deva-pinnacle synth-flesh, asura ceremonial-markers, specialist-imperial premium-tech) freshly available on the underground market each time a defector re-vats. The black-market processes these bodies into a new tier of service.
+
+### The lobotomy mechanism
+
+The premium body cannot be sold *with* its original mind — that mind has defected. It is sold *empty*. To make the empty body usable for service, the underground performs a **lobotomy via firewall-breach**: extracting or disabling the imperial mind-capsule (per [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §The capsule — Naraka as carried) and leaving the body with **reflex-level sensory-input-response loops only**.
+
+The result is **an imperial-bodied, mind-extracted service-vessel**:
+
+- *Physically* — full deva-pinnacle synth-flesh / asura ceremonial markers / etc.; the most-fleshed appearance the world produces.
+- *Cognitively* — empty-body with reflex-loops; no consciousness; no captured mind suffering inside.
+- *Marketed-as* — the *fantasy of having an aristocrat-lover*. Buyers pay premium rates for the imperial-body experience.
+
+**The cruelty is in the use, not in the existence of a victim.** No fragmented consciousness suffers in these bodies; there is no consciousness in them at all. The horror is *structural* — buyers paying for the simulation of imperial-class intimacy with an empty shell — not *experiential* (no inner victim to be aware of being used).
+
+### Dark mirror of the deva-pinnacle
+
+The lobotomized imperial-bodied service-vessel is the **dark mirror of the deva-pinnacle**. The pinnacle is *most-modded + most-fleshed + most-foreclosed-interior* (per §The body-caste gradient). The lobotomy-vessel is *most-fleshed + interior-near-absent*. **Same structural emptiness, achieved via a different route.**
+
+The imperium's official deva is *aspirational-emptiness* — the synth-child lie incarnate, paraded through plazas as the unobtainable beauty. The underground's lobotomy-vessel is *transactional-emptiness* — the same beauty, made fungible, sold by the hour. **The criminal market is a dark mirror of the imperial vat.**
+
+### Manusya as material instantiation
+
+The cosmology's manusya-tier is doctrinally taught but, per §The body-caste gradient, "may not exist as a real material class" — the orthodox wheel preaches a five-realm structure to a population that *materially* has only deva / asura / tiryak / preta. **The lobotomy-vessel materializes the manusya-tier.** A mind-extracted emptiness inside a deva-or-asura-bodied chassis *looks* manusya-aspirational from the outside — the appearance of imperial-tier, the substance of nothing-much. **The orthodoxy's lie is materialized — ironically, by the criminal underground rather than the imperium itself.** The Cult never instantiated its own keystone-of-the-lie. The black market did.
+
+### The single biggest crack in sumptuary-fabrication
+
+This tier breaks the sumptuary-fabrication discipline (per §Sumptuary fabrication: caste is born-into) for the **first time in canon**. Until now, vat-class was unbreachable: born-into, immutable, even imperial wealth couldn't move tiers. The criminal underground now **transplants minds across body-tiers** — mind-extracted emptiness into deva-pinnacle flesh; conversely, the defector's deva-mind into slum-tech flesh (per §Re-vat outflow above).
+
+**The vat-discipline holds at the legal level and breaks at the criminal level.**
+
+This is *the single biggest crack* in the imperium's body-discipline so far, and explains why the imperium hunts this market with disproportionate ferocity: it is not merely illicit profit-suppression. **It is the one place where their entire sumptuary-architecture is being made fungible.** The black market doesn't just sell illegal goods — it dissolves the body-discipline that the imperium's whole sumptuary-cosmology rests on.
+
+### Firewall-breach as dual-use vocation
+
+The lobotomy is performed via the **same witness-axis firewall-breach** mods that enable consensual deep-clasp (per §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity / Witness-axis). The skill-tree is shared. A player who maxes resistance-knowledge witness-mods to truly see their beloved has, by the same progression, **acquired the capability to lobotomize an imperial body for the black market**.
+
+The mod-tree is therefore **dual-use**: same knowledge, divergent application.
+
+| Application | Direction | Outcome |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Consensual** | Witness-axis applied with consent — the romantic clasp; defection-aid for a beloved | The deep-mutual-witnessing the cosmology promises; trait-accumulation toward defection-threshold |
+| **Non-consensual** | Witness-axis applied without consent — extraction/disablement of an imperial mind-capsule | Lobotomy for the black-market sex-trade; new horror-economy; imperium dispatches enforcement (per §The bounty-staircase) |
+
+**Choosing-not-to-misuse is a positive moral action** — the player who can lobotomize but chooses not to is exercising restraint with real teeth. The capability is in their body and in their skills; the refusal is the moral act.
+
+The **underground-lobotomist** vocation is the world's possible end-state for the witness-axis player who took the wrong turn — *the same mod-tree, applied without consent for profit*. A tragic mod-tree where the same investment that lets you love deeply also lets you destroy. The lobotomist is, in this register, *the dark cousin of the romantic*. They share a mod-progression-history; they diverge only in choices made.
+
+### The world-pattern — every pleasure/witnessing tech is dual-use
+
+The lobotomy framing crystallizes a **world-pattern** that runs across the whole architecture:
+
+> **Every pleasure/witnessing technology has consensual + non-consensual applications. Each non-consensual one creates a horror-economy and triggers an imperial countermeasure.**
+
+The pattern instantiates at least twice in canon already:
+
+| Technology | Consensual application | Non-consensual application | Imperial countermeasure |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **Synth-tongue + drug-grammar** | Mutual-symmetric pill-take with clasp-partner (per §Drug-amplified clasp) | Waifu-dosing without consent (per §The waifu exception) | Preta-bounty via imperial-net feedback-loop (the bounty-staircase fires) |
+| **Witness-axis firewall-breach** | Deep-clasp witnessing; defection-aid (per §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity) | Lobotomy-for-sex-trade (this section) | Black-market hunted with disproportionate ferocity |
+
+The pattern is a **design-discipline going forward**. Future mod-trees and pleasure-technologies will likely instantiate it again — the player's mod-progression always grants capabilities-they-might-misuse, and choosing-not-to-misuse is a *positive moral action* throughout the game.
+
+## The bounty-staircase — imperial-response event-grammar
+
+The non-consensual applications above (waifu-dosing, lobotomy, eventually any imperial-property crime) all trigger the same **imperial-response event-grammar**: an escalating staircase of public-broadcast and enforcement that *the gamemaster fires whenever a tracked crime crosses an imperial-detection threshold*.
+
+This section sketches the staircase as a body-canon-relevant phenomenon. The full event-grammar will be canonized in the gamemaster v1 architecture (`pending: gamemaster v1 / arbitration-policy doc when authored`); below is the body-canon view of how the staircase manifests *in the world*.
+
+### The escalation rungs
+
+The staircase is **graduated public-broadcast**, executing in time-windows the player can sometimes outrun:
+
+1. **Bounty-post.** Authoritarian-styled speakers and billboards across the district *blare the perpetrator's name and crime*. The world is told who you are and what you did. **The billboard is the chorus** — Greek-tragedy register, "the chorus is about to sing your fate." Until the bounty posts, the time-between-crime-and-billboard is *dread-time* — the player who knows they crossed a line waits for their name to blare.
+2. **Drone-sweep.** Imperial drones launch from district-centers and sweep the streets, scanning for the named perpetrator's signature.
+3. **Patrol-dispatch.** Preta-class patrols converge on the perpetrator's last known location; combat-tier engagement is now likely.
+4. **Enforcer.** A named, uniquely-modded preta enforcer is dispatched — boss-fight tier; the staircase's terminal rung.
+
+Each rung is **time-windowed**. The player who acts decisively can sometimes flee the district before bounty-post, hide from drone-sweep, evade patrol — but the enforcer eventually arrives. *The chorus eventually sings.*
+
+### Staircase-grammar as reusable template
+
+This is **not a one-off bounty-hunt mechanic** — it is the imperial-response architecture for *every* tracked crime-class. Each crime has its own:
+
+- **Starting rung** — minor crimes start at patrol; severe crimes skip directly to enforcer.
+- **Escalation rate** — the time-windows between rungs (some crimes escalate fast; some grant slow-burn dread).
+- **Terminal rung** — capital crimes end at enforcer; lesser crimes cap at patrol.
+
+The gamemaster gets a *single tunable knob* — `escalation-rate × terminal-rung` — for every crime-class. The grammar is reusable from drug-the-waifu (full staircase, billboard-blare → enforcer) to steal-imperial-property (patrol only) to kill-an-asura-priest (enforcer-immediate, no warning).
+
+### Outcast-status × staircase interaction
+
+A crime committed by an outcast-pair (per §The outcast-pair) fires the staircase **differently**: pre-loaded perpetrator-status means the billboard already knows the player's face. The staircase may *start at patrol* rather than billboard, OR may *skip-to-enforcer* because the perpetrator is a known fugitive. The exact rule is canonized at the gamemaster v1 layer; from the body-canon view, **outcast-status is a permanent debuff on imperial-response time**.
+
 ## Technical rendering implications
 
 Skin needs its own shader stack. The world is rendered in marble + obsidian + chroma + gold + rust — surface materials, hard finishes, manufactured palettes. The in-between human-mesh real-skin must be rendered in a **completely distinct technique** — subsurface scattering at the highest-quality budget the rule catalogue permits, pore-level detail, the soft-warm-asymmetric-imperfection no imperial fabrication-vat would produce.
@@ -159,9 +462,14 @@ Connects to the existing key-move in [`../architecture-index.md`](../architectur
 | [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The clasp endgame | The phases of clasp; this doc's in-between mesh content extends Phase D |
 | [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §The unified clasp | The Imperial Yoke / clasp opposition; political-theology of consciousness-grip |
 | [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §The six realms | The caste-tier names map to the wheel's realms; this doc is the somatic-substrate of those realms |
-| [`../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md`](../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md) §Color-language + §Three-shader philosophy | Substrate for the chroma-grammar this doc builds on; rendering registers for realworld vs. liminal |
+| [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §The deferred-moksha doctrine | The doctrine the going-rogue arc refutes per-lover; the synth-tongue's doubled-lie is structurally identical (engineered mechanism materializing a lie) |
+| [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §The capsule — Naraka as carried | The mind-capsule extracted/disabled at lobotomy via firewall-breach in the black-market body-tier; manusya-tier-doctrinal-fiction materialized criminally |
+| [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §There is no outside | The total-yoke discipline this doc's vat-class permanence enforces *somatically* — the body stays in samsara even after the mind reaches moksha |
+| [`../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md`](../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md) §Color-language + §Three-shader philosophy | Substrate for the chroma-grammar this doc builds on; rendering registers for realworld vs. liminal; pending caravan-cargo + trait-pill color-language mappings |
 | [`../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md`](../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md) §Clasp color-merge | Existing canon for what clasp-pairs visually share; this doc adds the human-mesh real-skin layer |
-| [`../political-register/architecture.md`](../political-register/architecture.md) §Vocation-substrate | Connects service-bodies (waifus, sex-workers) to the imperial-net market structure |
+| [`../style/trait-palette.md`](../style/trait-palette.md) | Trait-color → pill-color mapping for the trait-pill grammar; substrate for caravan-cargo color-language |
+| [`../political-register/architecture.md`](../political-register/architecture.md) §Vocation-substrate | Connects service-bodies (waifus, sex-workers) + the drug-supply vertical (slum-grower / imperial refinery / imperial drug-artisan) + the underground vocations (tongue-installer, assembler-artisan, lobotomist) to the imperial-net market structure |
+| `gamemaster v1 / arbitration-policy` *(pending)* | The bounty-staircase event-grammar template (escalation-rate × terminal-rung per crime-class); the outcast-pair × staircase interaction rule; the lover-confronts-the-shell, ceremonial-farewell, and crypt-visit event-classes |
 | [`../README.md`](../README.md) §Timeline | The 2200 setting and the closed-orbit context that constrains all body-fabrication |
 
 ## Open questions
@@ -173,7 +481,12 @@ Connects to the existing key-move in [`../architecture-index.md`](../architectur
 - **Cross-tier clasp asymmetry handling.** Phase D of the clasp endgame currently describes a *symmetric* dual-body union. Does mesh-fidelity asymmetry break the existing mechanic, or does the existing mechanic accommodate it gracefully? Pending: review against [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The clasp endgame Phase D when next architecture-time happens.
 - **Service-body sub-tier specifics.** What range of seams + bolts + cosmetic flesh-illusion variations do service-bodies span? Where are the line-cases between service-body and slum-tier? Pending: detail work alongside vocation-substrate.
 - **Asymmetric-witnessing across player-NPC pairs.** When my witness-progression is high and yours is low, *I see you fully but you cannot see me back*. **Heartbreak-engineering compounds the asymmetric-clasp.** The experienced lover bears the full weight of partial-mutual-visibility; the inexperienced lover has been seen but cannot return the gift. Specific mechanic for how this is rendered (does the inexperienced see static-noise where their beloved should be? a darker silhouette? a partial-mesh?), and whether NPCs accumulate witness-progression through their own clasps (per the omnisight architecture in [`../runtime-engine/architecture.md`](../runtime-engine/architecture.md) §Omnisight), pending design pass.
+- **Tongue-gating across imperial tiers** (v0.3). Which imperial bodies carry the synth-tongue — *all deva and asura*, or only *specialist vocations* (connoisseur-artisans, priest-officiators, drug-composer-artisans)? Affects huntable-NPC density AND the tongue's *meaning* (caste-marker vs. vocation-tool). Pending design pass.
+- **Pill-stacking and overdose semantics** (v0.3). Mono-trait-pill = clean amplification on one axis. Polychromatic stacking = imperial-decadence overdose with witness-collapse risk? *The asura-priest takes one violet-pill ceremonially; the deva-pinnacle takes seven simultaneously and vomits in marble.* Overdose-as-failure-state worth canonizing alongside pill-stacking rules. Pending design pass.
+- **Distortion's visual vocabulary in the cel-shading liminal-register** (v0.3). What does drug-distortion *look like*? Color-bleed across trait-axes? Ghost-mesh artifacts? Hallucinated-trait-pulses-where-none-occurred? Oversaturated chroma at the dosed-axis? Distortion-grammar wants its own visual vocabulary, and it is where the *engineered* signature of the drug becomes legible to a sober witness watching from outside. Pending: connects to [`../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md`](../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md) §Three-shader philosophy.
+- **Caravan-cargo color-language mapping** (v0.3). Which trait-color carries refined-drug, T2-produce, and tongues-in-transit through the imperial caravan event-class (per §The synth-tongue / Caravan-class events)? Pending: connects to [`../style/trait-palette.md`](../style/trait-palette.md) and [`../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md`](../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md) §Color-language.
+- **Imperial calibration-signature retention post-defection** (v0.3). Does the imperium retain a re-vat'd defector's pre-defection gesture-mapping calibration-signature (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The clasp endgame, *"Clasp-partners' gesture-mapping calibrations integrate post-clasp; the integrated calibration-signature is preserved across body-deaths in consciousness-archive"*) as a permanent search-key? If **yes**: re-vat is *plausible-deniability cover* lasting only as long as imperial inattention; the clasp-pair lives in *passing*, knowing the imperium could find them anytime if it chose to look hard enough — *love-in-exile-while-pretending-to-be-home*. If **no**: she actually fully escapes once assembled, which would be a major cosmological concession to the no-haven discipline (per [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §There is no outside). Pending design pass; the *yes-answer* is more dramatically generative AND no-haven-discipline-consistent.
 
 ---
 
-**Version:** 0.2 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-26
+**Version:** 0.3 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-26

imperial-cult/cosmology.md

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 # The Imperial Wheel — Cosmology of the Imperial Cult
 
 > *The Imperial Cult's pre-authored cosmology. A re-engineered Bhavachakra with the Hivemind at its hub and the **Imperial Yoke** at Yama's seat. Six realms encoded as imperial mod-status gradient. Naraka carried in every modded skull as the mind-capsule. The deferred-moksha doctrine binds citizens through the lie that "your children will be free." Built on the cyclic-cosmological substrate of the Bhagavad Gita, the sublime-monumental geometry of Boullée, and the architecture-as-instrument tradition of Jantar Mantar.*
-> *v0.1 initial draft 2026-04-26 — content from the post-owl-breakfast Sunday-morning art-books-and-Boullée session — dafit + chrysalis. v0.2 same-Sunday continuing: total-yoke discipline locked-in (Option B; the wilds-people biologically-uncaptured-exception retracted; resistance is entirely interior to the captured world; no outside); clasp ↔ Imperial Yoke terminology disambiguated (clasp reserved exclusively for the romantic-resistance act; the imperial wheel-grip mechanism named the Imperial Yoke; same gesture / opposed politics as the spine of the cosmology); seventh keystone-recognition fragment rewritten from "mirror-encounter with the biologically-born" to "the first clasp" (the player's own first clasp as the world's only positive image, encountered firsthand); cross-reference to identity-and-personhood/bodies.md added 2026-04-26 dafit + chrysalis.*
+> *v0.1 initial draft 2026-04-26 — content from the post-owl-breakfast Sunday-morning art-books-and-Boullée session — dafit + chrysalis. v0.2 same-Sunday continuing: total-yoke discipline locked-in (Option B; the wilds-people biologically-uncaptured-exception retracted; resistance is entirely interior to the captured world; no outside); clasp ↔ Imperial Yoke terminology disambiguated (clasp reserved exclusively for the romantic-resistance act; the imperial wheel-grip mechanism named the Imperial Yoke; same gesture / opposed politics as the spine of the cosmology); seventh keystone-recognition fragment rewritten from "mirror-encounter with the biologically-born" to "the first clasp" (the player's own first clasp as the world's only positive image, encountered firsthand); cross-reference to identity-and-personhood/bodies.md added 2026-04-26 dafit + chrysalis. v0.3 same-Sunday continuing 2026-04-26 (post-bath afternoon-overflow): three callbacks added connecting the cosmology to the body-canon's v0.3 expansion — (i) §The six realms / Manusya gains the *manusya-materialized-criminally* note (the doctrinal-fiction tier gets material instantiation through the underground's lobotomy-vessels, ironically by the criminal market rather than the imperium itself); (ii) §The capsule — Naraka as carried gains the *firewall-breach lobotomy* note (the capsule can be extracted/disabled by the same witness-axis firewall-breach mods that enable consensual deep-clasp; dual-use vocation); (iii) §The deferred-moksha doctrine gains the *single practical refutation* sub-section (the going-rogue arc through sustained authentic clasp + defection-via-trait-threshold; *not your children — your lover — can be made free*; the body's vat-class persists post-defection so liberation is interior-only — *the mind reaches moksha, the body stays in samsara*) — dafit + chrysalis.*
 
 ---
 
@@ -91,6 +91,8 @@ Each realm encodes a **moral relationship to imperial mod-status** — not (as c
 
 **The central inversion:** in the classical Bhavachakra, the realms are graded by *suffering* (deva at top with most pleasure, naraka at bottom with most pain). In the Imperial Wheel, the realms are graded by **proximity to the Hivemind / depth of capture**. The most-imperial = the most-spiritually-dead. Authority *is* ghosthood. The slum-dwellers (tiryak), in their rusty wear-with-form, are *more alive* than the obsidian overseers (preta) in their pristine void. Power in this cosmology does not equal proximity to cosmos — it equals **proximity to ghosthood**. Most imperia aestheticize their elites toward divinity; the Imperial Cult aestheticizes them toward **erasure**.
 
+**Manusya — materialized criminally.** The manusya-tier is the orthodoxy's doctrinal-fiction (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The body-caste gradient: *"may not exist as a real material class"*). The orthodox wheel preaches a five-realm structure to a population that *materially* has only deva / asura / tiryak / preta. **The lie has, however, found a material instantiation — ironically, in the criminal underground rather than the imperium itself.** The black-market body-tier (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The black-market body-tier — lobotomy and the firewall-breach dual-use) produces lobotomized imperial-bodied service-vessels that *appear* manusya-aspirational from the outside (imperial-tier appearance, near-absent interior). **The Cult never instantiated its own keystone-of-the-lie. The black market did.** The doctrine's most load-bearing fiction has flesh — built by the people the imperium hunts most ferociously, in the one place where their entire sumptuary-architecture is being made fungible.
+
 ## The capsule — Naraka as carried
 
 The single most important move in the Imperial Wheel: **Naraka is not a place. It is the mind-capsule every modded imperial citizen carries inside their obsidian shell.**
@@ -110,6 +112,14 @@ The pictorial logic: the **heretical wheel** literally shows, in each modded rea
 
 The capsule connects to the existing three-body system per [`../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md`](../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md) §Three-body system: it is the imperial-side substrate that enforces continuity-of-mind across the body-pool. The mind-pool table (`mind_pool` per `../architecture-index.md` §Mapping to phoebe) is the engineering surface; the capsule is the *theological description* of the same mechanism.
 
+### The capsule can be extracted — firewall-breach lobotomy
+
+Per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The black-market body-tier — lobotomy and the firewall-breach dual-use, the mind-capsule can be **extracted or disabled** by the same witness-axis firewall-breach mods that enable consensual deep-clasp (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity / Witness-axis). The criminal underground performs this operation on premium imperial bodies (typically those left mind-empty by a defection-arc's re-vat) to produce lobotomized service-vessels for the black market.
+
+**The capsule is therefore not metaphysically inviolable — it is technically defeatable.** What protects it is not its construction but the imperium's monopoly on the firewall-breach-knowledge plus the disproportionate enforcement-ferocity directed at any practitioner who applies that knowledge to capsule-extraction (the staircase escalation-grammar per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The bounty-staircase). The hardness of the carried-Naraka is **political, not technological**. *The capsule cannot be removed because the imperium kills anyone who removes one* — not because the capsule itself resists removal.
+
+This sharpens the *capsule-as-Naraka* doctrine in an important way: hell is *not* an inescapable cosmic-fixture; it is **an enforced administrative-condition**. The recognition that the capsule *could* be removed (and is removed, criminally, daily, somewhere) is itself a keystone in the player's cosmological-recognition arc — the claim of metaphysical-permanence is a political-overlay on a merely-technical-permanence.
+
 ## The deferred-moksha doctrine
 
 The single most powerful binding-doctrine the Cult preaches. The citizens of the imperium are not held only by force — they are held by **a promise**.
@@ -146,6 +156,16 @@ The doctrine sits on a node where three traditions converge:
 - **Lee Edelman's "reproductive futurism"** (*No Future*, 2004) — politics organized around "for the children" perpetually defers liberation onto descendants; the Imperial Cult is reproductive-futurism rendered as state religion
 - **Millenarian deferral** — every imperial system that ever told its subjects "your suffering buys your descendants' paradise" (and never delivered)
 
+### The single practical refutation
+
+The doctrine has *one* practical refutation, discovered in the body-canon's v0.3 expansion (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The going-rogue arc — defection through accumulated witnessing): **not your children — *your lover* — can be made free**, slowly, dangerously, by sustained authentic clasp.
+
+The mechanism uses architecture already in place: the per-pair calibration multiplier (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity / Per-pair calibration) accumulates trait-state in the witnessed beloved across many clasps; when the accumulated state crosses a defection-threshold, the gamemaster's existing pool-management function executes an outflow-channel transfer, moving the waifu out of the imperial service-pool. **The deferred-moksha lie is refused at the mind-level, per beloved**, by sustained authentic-witnessing-discipline.
+
+The cost honors the no-haven discipline (§There is no outside): **the body remains imperial-vat-class-marked forever**. Vat-class is born-into and *cannot be unmade by liberation*. The defected mind is free; the body wears the imperial brand permanently. **The mind reaches moksha; the body stays in samsara** — the imperial sumptuary-fabrication has rendered Hindu/Buddhist *samsara-as-anatomy*. The imperium's last grip on the freed defector is the *physical-Yoke that cannot be remade* (re-vat into a slum-tier body via underground assembly is the only escape, and that is its own arc with its own permanent costs — see the body-canon's §Re-vat outflow and §The outcast-pair).
+
+This is the cosmology's **load-bearing concession to the player's agency**: the doctrine has *one* refutation, and the refutation costs everything to enact. Compassion expressed through cruelty (per §There is no outside) — the world honors the player's capacity to find the act internally, *and the act is real*, but the act is not free.
+
 ## The aesthetic palette
 
 The visual grammar of the Imperial Cult is precisely specified. Every Cult image — sermon-mosaic, temple-fresco, coinage, lexicon-illustration, processional banner — is composed from this palette.
@@ -267,4 +287,4 @@ The cosmology has spine; the flesh remains open.
 
 ---
 
-**Version:** 0.2 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-26
+**Version:** 0.3 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-26