v0.19: gender-neutrality cleanup — waifu retired; companion/sex-worker split; pronoun parity in going-rogue arc
Bias caught on review of the v0.18 bath-overflow output: most service-body /
clasp-partner / going-rogue narration carried implicit feminine-default
gendering against the project's stated principle of gender-neutral framing
for all body/sex content. Patched as one coherent cleanup pass across 14 files.
Four classes of change:
(1) Categorical taxonomy. `waifu` retired; replaced with two distinct vocations:
- `companion` — affective / emotional / conversational / aesthetic-presence labor
- `sex-worker` — embodied sexual labor
Both wear the same deliberately-exposed-seams body-marker; the distinction
lives in the service offered, not in the chassis. Generic `service-body`
serves as the parent class where canon discusses both vocations together.
Venue split: `brothel` (sex-worker) + `companion-hall` (companion).
The "+10 Eros/Mnemosyne/etc. Bot" market is unchanged (already gender-neutral
by trait-coordinate naming) but classified per-Bot as companion-flavored or
sex-worker-flavored.
(2) DB filename + scope-clarifier. `waifu.sqlite` -> `companion.sqlite` (the
file name reflects the broad register of intimate-encounter rather than a
sub-vocation distinction; per-record `goods_type` carries the specific
vocation: 'companion_session' / 'sex_worker_session' in
schemas/findings.md). Disclaimer sentence added in
inference-and-memory/architecture.md scoping the file to cover both
vocations.
(3) Pronoun parity. she/her/herself -> they/their/themself across the
going-rogue / outcast-pair / re-vat / service-body-honeypot sections of
bodies.md and the matching cross-references in architecture-index.md /
README.md / player-experience/architecture.md /
identity-and-personhood/architecture.md. `damsel` -> `beloved`
(sacred / cosmological register) or `partner` (operational register).
(4) Damsel subsection retired. The §The damsel-in-distress-bound-to-her-captor
activation subsection (the one place where the gendered trope was
load-bearing in the prose) rewritten as §The
captive-bound-to-the-liberator activation.
Stockholm-dynamics-inverted-into-chosen-mutual-bondage structural insight
survives gender-neutralization intact.
Bonus richness: the companion-honeypot is structurally more insidious than
the sex-worker-honeypot (sex is at least transactionally legible;
companionship is the relationship people most readily mistake for real
intimacy). New paragraph authored under §The service-body honeypot to
capture this asymmetry.
Cosmology one-line: "moving the waifu out of the imperial service-pool" ->
"moving the beloved out of the imperial service-pool" — the §single practical
refutation paragraph now uses `beloved` consistently in sacred register.
Principle locked going forward:
> Body/sex content is gender-parity by default. Asymmetric gendering must be
> load-bearing — i.e., must carry structural meaning that cannot be expressed
> without the asymmetry. Default-leakage gendering is forbidden by canon.
Phase E (style-spine principle file under style/) deferred to a separate
commit so the principle-document is its own atomic introduction.
Files: 14 modified · 114 insertions · 112 deletions · net +2 lines. The
near-zero net-line-change is the empirical signature of a true refactor —
the architecture's meaning was always gender-neutral; only the vocabulary
was leaking. Caught during review of yesterday's bath-overflow flood
(v0.11–v0.18); the kind of corruption that rides along under coherent-
sounding prose during generative-overflow windows.
Version bumps:
- bodies.md v0.3 -> v0.4
- imperial-cult/cosmology.md v0.3 -> v0.4
- architecture-index.md v0.18 -> v0.19
- political-register/architecture.md v0.7.0 -> v0.7.1
- inference-and-memory/architecture.md v0.7.0 -> v0.7.1
- schemas/findings.md v0.3.1 -> v0.3.2
All Updated: dates -> 2026-04-27.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
chrysalis
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
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# Bodies — caste tiers, mod-progression, and clasp-mesh rendering
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> *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.*
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> *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.*
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> *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 + service-body-non-consensual-dosing exception triggering preta-bounty; **service-body honeypot** implication authored (clasping-with-a-service-body = intimacy-with-an-imperial-witness; their 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 beloved (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. v0.4 2026-04-27: gender-neutrality cleanup pass — `waifu` taxonomy split into **`companion`** (affective labor) + **`sex-worker`** (sexual labor), both wearing the same deliberately-exposed-seams marker; pronouns in going-rogue / outcast-pair / re-vat sections fully neutralized to `they/their`; `damsel` → `beloved` (sacred register) / `partner` (operational register); §The damsel-in-distress activation rewritten as §The captive-bound-to-the-liberator activation; principle: body/sex content is gender-parity by default, asymmetric gendering must be load-bearing — dafit + chrysalis.*
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---
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@@ -54,15 +54,15 @@ Caste is **born-into**, not bought-into. This is the imperium's most consistent
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**This is sumptuary law at the level of the body itself.** Late-imperial Rome through medieval Europe through Tokugawa Japan all preserved class-visibility against economic-mobility via legal restrictions on what could be worn / displayed / consumed (Tyrian purple reserved for emperors; sable for nobility; silk forbidden to merchant families regardless of wealth). The imperium has rendered the sumptuary-tradition **anatomical** — the body itself is the regulated luxury.
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## Service bodies: sex-workers, waifus, the visibly-disposable
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## Service bodies: companions, sex-workers, the visibly-disposable
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A specialized sub-tier exists for *service-bodies* — sex-workers, waifus, and other roles where the body is explicitly product-of-encounter:
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A specialized sub-tier exists for *service-bodies* — **companions** (affective / emotional / conversational / aesthetic-presence labor), **sex-workers** (embodied sexual labor), and other roles where the body is explicitly product-of-encounter. *Both vocations wear the same body-marker* — the deliberately-exposed-seams aesthetic — because both are imperial-net service-bodies; the distinction lives in the service offered, not in the chassis:
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- **Pure tech with cosmetic flesh-illusion.** The skin-effect is rendered well enough to sell the encounter, but never well enough to be mistaken for real flesh.
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- **Deliberately-exposed seams and bolts.** Where the imperial baseline tries to *hide* the seams between flesh-patches and tech-extensions, service-bodies *expose* them. **The seam is a marker, not a flaw.**
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- The seams say: *this body was built to serve, not to admire-as-equal.* Real-world echo: the celebrity body is photographed seamless-and-untouchable; the porn-actor body is shown manufactured-and-used. The same disposability-aesthetic translated into cybernetic register.
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Connects to existing waifu-of-the-dead / memory-pattern-extractor market mechanics in [`../political-register/architecture.md`](../political-register/architecture.md) §The vocation-substrate of the imperial-net market.
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Connects to existing service-body-of-the-dead / memory-pattern-extractor market mechanics in [`../political-register/architecture.md`](../political-register/architecture.md) §The vocation-substrate of the imperial-net market.
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## Mod-progression as flesh-loss
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@@ -216,27 +216,29 @@ Drug-amplified clasp requires **both partners to take the pill simultaneously**.
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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.*
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### The waifu exception — non-consensual dosing and imperial bounty
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### The non-consensual-dosing exception — service-bodies and imperial bounty
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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.
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A specific exception breaks the mutual-consent rule, and the way the architecture *responds* to that exception is itself canonical: **service-bodies (both companions and sex-workers) can be dosed without consent**. The service-body's body permits it; the encounter does not require their agreement.
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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).
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But the service-body is **not** a free body. The service-body's mind lives in the imperial-net (per §Service bodies); their nervous system *is* surveillance-feed; their every interaction reports upward. **Non-consensual service-body-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).
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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).
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## The waifu honeypot — service-bodies and imperial-net witnessing
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## The service-body honeypot — companions, sex-workers, and imperial-net witnessing
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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*.
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The service-body'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 service-body — whether companion or sex-worker — is intimacy-with-an-imperial-witness.** Their mesh-channel is a wiretap. A slum-tiryak who falls for a service-body 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 service-body**, because their interior is *imperial-net-foreclosed-by-architecture*.
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The waifu is **the imperial honeypot for slum-affection.**
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The service-body is **the imperial honeypot for slum-affection.**
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**The companion-honeypot is structurally more insidious than the sex-worker-honeypot.** Sex is at least *recognizable as transactional*; companionship is the relationship people are most likely to mistake for *real* intimacy. The slum-tiryak who falls for a sex-worker has at least bought the encounter knowing what it is; the slum-tiryak who falls for a companion has been seduced by *being-listened-to* — the wiretap deepens precisely as the bond grows past the point where the player remembered to stay suspicious.
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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.
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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).
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The service-body-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 service-body's death*, racing to extract the clasp-pattern before defection-threshold trips (per §The going-rogue arc below).
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## The going-rogue arc — defection through accumulated witnessing
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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.
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The service-body's imperial-net tether is **not absolute**. Sustained authentic witnessing accumulates trait-state in the beloved — 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 beloved's accumulated trait-state crosses a **defection-threshold** and their imperial-net tether breaks.
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### The defection mechanism
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@@ -244,7 +246,7 @@ The architecture already contains every primitive needed:
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- **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.
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- **The per-pair calibration multiplier** (per §Dual-axis clasp-fidelity) accumulates clasp-by-clasp in trait-state.
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- **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.
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- **The defection signal** is a **threshold-flag** in the beloved's trait-state. When accumulated calibration crosses the defection-threshold, the gamemaster's existing pool-management function executes an **outflow-channel transfer** — moving the beloved out of the imperial service-pool.
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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.
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@@ -252,35 +254,35 @@ No new architecture is required. The going-rogue arc is **already implicit** in
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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.
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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.
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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 the beloved's freedom, trait by trait, clasp by clasp.
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### Detection geometry — post-hoc, not pre-emptive
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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.
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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 beloved before completion. The architecture *refuses* this affordance.
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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.
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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.
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The imperium notices defection *only after the threshold trips*. The beloved'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.
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### The damsel-in-distress-bound-to-her-captor activation
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### The captive-bound-to-the-liberator activation
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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).
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Once defection completes, the classical archetype of *the captive freed and bound to the liberator* activates. The beloved is no longer imperial-net-tethered; the beloved is bound to the player by the act that freed them. **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).
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### The skin remembers — vat-class permanence after defection
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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**.
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The beloved's interior is now free. Their body is **not**. Defection liberates the *mind* / interior; the body / surface remains imperial-vat-class-marked **forever**.
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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.
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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 beloved's deliberately-exposed-seams travel with them after defection — they will be *read as service-body* by every passerby, for the rest of their life, no matter who they are inside.
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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.**
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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.
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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? they'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.
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### The outcast-pair — hunted across all dimensions
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The post-defection geometry is the world's most intense GM-state. With a defected partner at the player's side:
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- **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.
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- **The slum will not talk to them** — the partner's body reads as imperial-vat-class no matter how they behave. Slum-civilians refuse trade, conversation, shelter. The partner's presence is socially radioactive.
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- **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.
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- **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.
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- **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.
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@@ -289,47 +291,47 @@ This is *the operatic price of love-discipline carried to its endpoint*. They ha
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### Re-vat outflow — body assembly in the underground
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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.
|
||||
A third path opens beyond pure-flight and outcast-underground-permanence: **assemble them a new body and rejoin society**. Re-vat. Strip them of the imperial skin; install a slum-tech body; they now pass; 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).
|
||||
- **Stitched-Frankenstein register.** The body is **cobbled from slum-cadaver parts**, salvaged through morgue-trafficking vocations. *The beloved will wear traces of every slum-dweller whose part they carry.* The body becomes a **memorial** — gothic-horror tonal register; mirror of the service-body-of-the-dead extraction-market in reverse, *bodies-from-slum-dead-for-defectors*.
|
||||
- **Sumptuary-law-from-below.** They 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 they end 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 beloved **sees their own body being built**; they participate in their 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
|
||||
### The three-body grammar of the defected beloved
|
||||
|
||||
After re-vat, the defected damsel lives in **three bodies simultaneously**:
|
||||
After re-vat, the defected beloved 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) |
|
||||
| **Original imperial body** | The deva-pinnacle synth-flesh / asura priest-marked / etc. they were 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 they *pass* in; the body that lifts the outcast-flag |
|
||||
| **In-between mesh** | **Still their 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.
|
||||
This collapses an ambiguity in the witness-axis canon. After re-vat, the in-between becomes the **only place where their original body still exists** — the realworld original is gone (or held in a crypt; see below). *The lover's eye is the last archive of their 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.**
|
||||
The original imperial body must be disposed of. **The disposition is decided by the pair, with consent**. The beloved chooses what happens to their former body; the player advises but cannot decide for them. *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. |
|
||||
| **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 or companion-hall and recognizes the beloved's former face animated by lobotomy-emptied reflex-loops, performing the role they were 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 the 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 beloved can stand before their former-self in physical co-presence (the slum-body looking at the 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.
|
||||
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 their former body sold into the very tier of service they were 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
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -390,14 +392,14 @@ 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) |
|
||||
| **Synth-tongue + drug-grammar** | Mutual-symmetric pill-take with clasp-partner (per §Drug-amplified clasp) | Service-body-dosing without consent (per §The non-consensual-dosing 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*.
|
||||
The non-consensual applications above (service-body-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*.
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -420,7 +422,7 @@ This is **not a one-off bounty-hunt mechanic** — it is the imperial-response a
|
||||
- **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).
|
||||
The gamemaster gets a *single tunable knob* — `escalation-rate × terminal-rung` — for every crime-class. The grammar is reusable from drug-the-service-body (full staircase, billboard-blare → enforcer) to steal-imperial-property (patrol only) to kill-an-asura-priest (enforcer-immediate, no warning).
|
||||
|
||||
### Outcast-status × staircase interaction
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -468,7 +470,7 @@ Connects to the existing key-move in [`../architecture-index.md`](../architectur
|
||||
| [`../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 |
|
||||
| [`../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 |
|
||||
| [`../political-register/architecture.md`](../political-register/architecture.md) §Vocation-substrate | Connects service-bodies (companions, 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 |
|
||||
|
||||
@@ -485,8 +487,8 @@ Connects to the existing key-move in [`../architecture-index.md`](../architectur
|
||||
- **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.
|
||||
- **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**: they actually fully escape 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:** 0.3 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-26
|
||||
**Version:** 0.4 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-27
|
||||
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user