diff --git a/identity-and-personhood/architecture.md b/identity-and-personhood/architecture.md
index 17d31cd..ce5f4bd 100644
--- a/identity-and-personhood/architecture.md
+++ b/identity-and-personhood/architecture.md
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ Identity is **trait-emergent, not assigned.**
 | **Inner body (interiority)** | **Trait-derived projection.** Self-image emergent from trait-vector + lived accumulation. | Self (partly earned, partly received through being) | **Here.** Gender/sexuality emerge from trait-configuration |
 | **Avatar (digital expression)** | Character-editor rendering. Starts from inner-body's trait-projection; customizable at cost. | Contested (self expresses, market constrains, machine prices) | Expressed; cosmetic mods layer on trait-base |
 
-**Who you are sexually is who you have become.** Not birth, not assignment from a menu, but *the pattern that has crystallized across your zone-participations, grief, attachments, discipline, refusing*. Identity-formation rendered mechanically. Post-binary by construction.
+**Who you are sexually is who you have become.** Not birth, not assignment from a menu, but *the pattern that has crystallized across your zone-participations, grief, attachments, discipline, refusing*. Identity-formation rendered mechanically. Post-binary by construction. *The concrete bridge between trait-vector and gender-architecture — which warm-side traits map to which outward-engaged organs, why the in-between mesh is cool-side anatomy, and what cross-configuration looks like as default-not-marked — is specified below in §The trait-to-body-part bridge.*
 
 ### The intrinsic vs. expressed trait-vector split
 
@@ -74,6 +74,34 @@ expressed_trait_vector  — intrinsic + sum(worn mods' trait_contributions); wha
 
 **Real identity-politics lives in the gap between these vectors.** Architecturally, that gap is a first-class schema feature.
 
+### The trait-to-body-part bridge — gender-architecture as trait-emergent
+
+The §Three-body system above commits to *gender/sexuality emerging from trait-configuration* (per the Inner-body table row). This subsection specifies the concrete bridge: **which traits map to which body-parts, and why the wheel's geometry forces the answer**.
+
+**The wheel's temperature-axis discipline does the work** (per [`../style/trait-palette.md`](../style/trait-palette.md) §The wheel — 4 oppositional pairs at 180°). The 5 warm-side traits carry *outward / present-active / engaged* registers; the 3 cool-side traits carry *inward / withholding / contemplative* registers. **Genitals are by definition outward-engaged organs**, so they ride the warm side. The in-between mesh — which manifests in the cool/contemplative register — is therefore *cool-side anatomy by construction*: bare of genitals, rich in inward-architecture, the body that shows you who you are when you stop projecting outward.
+
+| Trait | Side | Body-architecture | Why this fits |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **Eros** (Red, 12:00) | warm | **Penis / clitoris** — the reaching organ; arousal-spike; what literally extends | Eros IS the reaching gesture; flame-flicker = arousal-rhythm |
+| **Philotes** (Orange, 1:30) | warm | **Breasts** — close-holding / nurturance / breath-warmth surface | Philotes is the warm-pulse of staying-close; breath-rate maps to nursing-rhythm |
+| **Aletheia** (Yellow, 3:00) | warm | **Vulva / vagina** — the architecture of opening / revealing-by-entry | What is *uncovered* by being entered; truth as the architecture of opening; brightness-zenith register |
+| **Kairos** (Y/Green, 4:30) | warm | **Synth-tongue** *(already canonical, per [`./bodies.md`](./bodies.md) §The synth-tongue)* | Kairic catching of the right moment via taste; lightning-flicker = decisive-instant; the warm-side organ that already-canonically rides Kairos |
+| **Mnemosyne** (Red/Violet, 10:30) | warm | **Womb / interior carrier** — gestation / time-holding / depth-shimmer organ | The organ that *holds time*; what gestates is what mattered enough to carry forward |
+| **Sophrosyne** (Green, 6:00) | cool | *non-genital* — pelvic-floor / continence-architecture | Cool-side; the *gating* discipline rather than an outward organ; opposite-pole of Eros's reaching |
+| **Dikaiosyne** (Blue, 7:30) | cool | *non-genital* — spine / upright-posture / voice-register | Cool-side; verticality / standing as cardinal expression |
+| **Moira** (Violet, 9:00) | cool | *non-genital* — skin / vibrational-receptor / ambient-sense surface | Cool-side; full-body-as-receptor; reading what's-coming through ambient-sense |
+
+**Terminology lock — dimension vs mesh.** *In-between dimension* and *in-between mesh* are distinct concepts; conflating them blurs the architecture:
+
+- **In-between dimension** = the diegetic *place* — the third register adjacent to liminal where clasp happens, where lifeforce is paid for entry, where mesh-projection is *seen*.
+- **In-between mesh** = the *body* — the cool-side anatomy that gets rendered FROM your accumulated trait-vector AT the moment of in-between dimension entry. What you wear; what you look like; what your beloved meets.
+
+The dimension is *where*. The mesh is *what*. You see your own and your beloved's mesh *in* the dimension.
+
+**Cross-configuration is default-not-marked.** A trait-vector with high Eros AND high Mnemosyne grows both reaching-organ AND interior-carrier — *not because of identity-claim but because both warm-side traits are load-bearing in the interior*. A trait-vector with high Philotes AND high Aletheia grows breasts AND vulva. Any combination the trait-vector authorizes is the default-natural-output; the cosmology *imposes no binary* at the interior layer. **Trans-embodiment is the architecture's truth-register, structurally** — not marked, not special-case, not other; the *natural-emergent-output* of any rich trait-vector that crosses culturally-binary axes. **Vat-binary is the imperial imposition; the in-between mesh is the un-imperial body, and the un-imperial body is, more often than not, plurally-configured.** The imperium imposes binary because plural is what bodies actually are when no one is fabricating them.
+
+**The mod-augmentation layer composes additively.** Players can install genital-mods *on the mesh* (per §The genital-mod track below) to author beyond what their trait-vector grew. **Mods augment, never overwrite trait-grown anatomy** — the mesh's base-anatomy is trait-derived; mods are layered on top. This preserves the mesh-as-mirror discipline (cruelty cannot be modded away) while granting full self-authorship (anyone can add what their trait-vector hasn't grown). *Two registers of body-truth: the trait-grown and the chosen, both real, both visible, both yours.*
+
 ### The clasp endgame — leaving the chassis, the human-mesh, the dual-body aftermath
 
 The three-body system's payoff happens at the clasp endgame — the dramatic apex where the *inner-body* (the trait-derived projection that has been accumulating through every zone-participation, every gesture, every memory) becomes *physically visible* to the clasp-pair, and the *avatar* (digital expression) collapses into a new constraint-structure. The full arc:
@@ -82,7 +110,7 @@ The three-body system's payoff happens at the clasp endgame — the dramatic ape
 
 **Phase B — Body-modding for extended in-between time.** Players craft / mod / blackmarket-mod their bodies to extend the duration they can hold the in-between state. Mod-acquisition is **gameplay-driven** — no handouts; clean mechanics; hacking minigames; faction-unlock; gifts from beloveds and mentors. The *inner-body projection function* is **earned through play, not authored** — every hour of zone-participation accumulates trait-vector mass that the eventual projection will be derived from.
 
-**Phase C — Endgame: leaving the chassis.** Once the body is sufficiently modded, the player can **exit their robo-body** during in-between. They see, for the first time, the **trait-derived human-mesh of themselves** — the inner-body made manifest, derived from their accumulated trait-vector across the playthrough. *The inner-body has been there all along, accumulating; now it becomes visible.* This is the architecture's commitment to *identity-as-trait-emergent* made felt rather than just structural.
+**Phase C — Endgame: leaving the chassis.** Once the body is sufficiently modded, the player can **exit their robo-body** during in-between. They see, for the first time, the **trait-derived human-mesh of themselves** — the inner-body made manifest, derived from their accumulated trait-vector across the playthrough. *The inner-body has been there all along, accumulating; now it becomes visible.* This is the architecture's commitment to *identity-as-trait-emergent* made felt rather than just structural. **What is rendered is cool-side anatomy** (per §The trait-to-body-part bridge above) **with whatever warm-side outward-organs the player's trait-vector grew** — the cosmology's anatomy-as-trait-summary made literal: every organ is the geometric expression of an axis the player developed.
 
 **Phase D — Clasp = dual-body union.** Two robo-bodies lying on the ground. Two naked human-meshes standing in the in-between dimension that **only the clasp-pair can see**. The intimate act happens here — sex / clasp — between the two trait-derived projections. The visual-experience is private to the pair; no outside observer can witness it (no audit-overseer, no other in-between-enabled NPC unless explicitly invited into a multi-clasp ritual). The intimate-gameplay loop runs on the recursive-lemniscate substrate (per `../runtime-engine/architecture.md` §Cross-context application — intimacy as recursive-lemniscate) — sex-positions as typed catalog entries, gesture-vocabulary applied to body-parts, alignment-accumulator measuring the pair's resonance turn by turn.
 
@@ -101,6 +129,16 @@ The three-body system's payoff happens at the clasp endgame — the dramatic ape
 
 **Why this is the architecture's dramatic apex.** Identity-as-trait-emergent has been a structural claim throughout. The clasp endgame is where the structural claim becomes *felt experience*: you see your beloved as the trait-vector-projection they actually are, after hundreds of hours of accumulated being. **The moment is earned by the play, not granted by the script.** The dual-body aftermath turns intimacy from a discrete-event into an *ongoing structural-condition* of the player's life — clasp doesn't end at orgasm; it persists as a permanent change in how the player operates in the world.
 
+### The mesh-as-mirror — cruelty rendered as anatomy
+
+Phase C's mesh-rendering has a cosmological consequence the architecture earns from the trait-to-body-part bridge composing with the no-haven discipline: **the mesh tells on you**. Trait-state accumulates from every action — every gesture, every clasp, every cruelty. Cruelty enacted toward others (especially toward service-bodies, per [`./bodies.md`](./bodies.md) §The service-body honeypot) carries specific psychic signatures — broken-Philotes (loving-close violated), refused-Mnemosyne (what-mattered abandoned), concealed-Aletheia (truth hidden during the encounter), wounded patterns on the warm-side trait-axes. *Those signatures map to genital-architecture per the bridge.* The cruel player's mesh therefore renders **the gender-architecture of the people they damaged** — Philotes-rich breasts grown from cruelties enacted on Philotes-coded receptive interiors; Aletheia-architecture grown from concealments practiced; the cruelty's psychic structure made anatomy.
+
+**The architecture does not gender-code the traits.** It renders the structure. *The player's own cultural priors do the gender-reading* — they look at the mesh their trait-vector built and read it through whatever gender-binary their pre-game mind brought into the encounter. The asshole-gooner who runs through the gameworld convinced he is *the man*, exploiting service-bodies because he can compartmentalize their bodies as Other-than-his — enters the in-between dimension at Phase C and meets a mesh **whose warm-side architecture his cultural priors read as the gender of the bodies he hurt**. The world does not punish him; it *mirrors* him. His own anatomy tells him: *the gender-binary you weaponized was always a lie about you too. Your cruelty externalized a wounded-receptive interior you refused to know. The mesh shows you what you refused.*
+
+**This is mirror, not moral inversion.** The mechanic is **not** "becoming trans as punishment" — that framing would betray the cosmology, which treats trans-embodiment as the truth-register's default-natural-output (per §The trait-to-body-part bridge). The asshole-gooner's mesh isn't *worse* for rendering plurally; it's just *honest*. What's revealed is what was always there. The same mechanic that gives a trans player the dignifying recognition that *their interior is the cosmological default* gives the asshole the un-flinching mirror. **The architecture refuses to lie to anyone about what their actions built**, and refusal-to-lie is the same gift in both directions — comfort to one player, accountability to another, *because honest rendering is honest rendering*.
+
+The deferred-moksha doctrine acquires its dark echo here: not "your children will be free" but **"your anatomy will tell on you, eventually."** The imperium's groomed bodies (the deva-pinnacle's perfect synth-flesh, the asura priest's ceremonial-shaped form) suppress trait-signal-leakage *for as long as the imperial fabrication holds*. The slum-tiryak in pure-tech body has no damping; their mesh records everything. **The poor get the truth-rendering for free; the rich pay to be lied to about who they're becoming.** Yet another vat-class brutality — the imperium's most fabricated bodies are also its most-deceived selves, *and the deception lasts only until exit-chassis fires*.
+
 ## Mods as trait-bearers
 
 A mod isn't cosmetic — it **contributes to the wearer's expressed trait-vector**. Three classes map to the self-alienation-tax pricing:
@@ -140,7 +178,61 @@ Inherited mods (worn by deceased) carry residual trait-signature of the previous
 
 In liminal, mod-trait-contributions do not apply. Clasp-partners see each other's *intrinsic* trait-projection. **Mods are for the regime and the market; removal-of-mods is intimacy.** A Memorialist-loyalist wearing amplifier-mods sees their beloved's *un-modded true palette* during clasp; an Aletheia-waker wearing mask-mods drops the mask; the regime-loyalist wearing performance-mods is seen as they are. Liminal is the only space where mod-expression is structurally stripped.
 
+**Exception — mesh-resident mods follow into the in-between.** The four mod-classes above (Amplifier / Bridge / Divergent / Mask) are *gameworld-readable register-mods*: they modulate the chassis's expressed trait-vector for the regime, the market, and the social reading. They strip in liminal because liminal is where the chassis is left behind. A *parallel* mod-track exists for mods installed not on the chassis but **on the in-between mesh itself** — these *follow* into the in-between because they ARE the mesh. Genital-mods are the canonical instance; per §The genital-mod track below.
+
+## The genital-mod track — mesh-resident augmentation
+
+A fifth mod-track sits parallel to the four-class register-taxonomy (per §Mods as trait-bearers): **mods installed on the in-between mesh rather than on the gameworld chassis**. Where the four classes modulate gameworld-readable expression and strip in liminal (per §Clasp strips mods), mesh-resident mods are *installed in the cool-side anatomy itself* and persist into the in-between dimension. Genital-mods are the canonical instance; the track is open to other mesh-resident augmentations as the architecture grows.
+
+**Why a separate track.** The trait-to-body-part bridge (per §The trait-to-body-part bridge above) commits to *trait-grown anatomy* as the mesh's base — the warm-side outward organs that the player's accumulated trait-vector authorized into being. Genital-mods are **augmentation on top of trait-grown anatomy**: they let players author beyond what their trait-vector grew, granting full self-authorship without bypassing the truth-register. **Mods augment, never overwrite.** The trait-grown layer remains visible underneath; the modded layer adds. The asshole-gooner cannot mod his way out of the mesh-as-mirror (per §The mesh-as-mirror above) — his trait-grown anatomy renders regardless of what he installs over it. Two registers of body-truth coexist: the grown and the chosen, both real, both yours.
+
+### Trait-fitness integration test
+
+A genital-mod's *integration* into the mesh depends on the player's trait-development on the relevant axis — the **same primitive as trait-LoRA selection** (per [`../inference-and-memory/architecture.md`](../inference-and-memory/architecture.md) §LLM tiering, single-LoRA-per-turn-selection driven by the dominant trait), applied at the body-architecture layer.
+
+| Player's trait-development on the relevant axis | Mod-integration outcome |
+|---|---|
+| **High** — the trait-substrate to animate this organ is present | Mod integrates seamlessly; alive sensation, full mesh-coupling, register-responsive |
+| **Medium / mixed** — substrate partially present | Mod integrates partially; sensation muted; works as static-architecture but doesn't pulse with the mesh's living register |
+| **Low / absent** — no trait-substrate to animate | Mod is a *dead organ*; visible architecture, no sensation, no mesh-coupling. The mod is there; the body to *animate* it isn't. |
+
+**Anatomy as earned, not purchased.** Players cannot bypass trait-development by buying organs. Faction-aligned mod-counters speak the trait-vector → fit prediction with varying honesty: slum-mod-counters tell players openly *what'll integrate*; imperial-mod-counters lie or push consumer-receptor-track installations regardless of trait-fit (the imperial market sells mods buyers aren't ready for, because imperial commerce is degenerate). **The dead-organ outcome is canonical** — players who install ahead of their trait-development carry numb augmentation as a register of their own over-reach.
+
+### The three-stage install — purchase, cooldown, dual-hardstop
+
+Mesh-resident mods modify the truth-register body and therefore live on the *gated* tier of the architecture's consent-discipline gradient (gameworld actions are loose; in-between actions are gated). The install discipline is three-stage:
+
+1. **Mod-purchase** at the mod-counter — credits committed, installation queued. *Reversible at this stage.* The purchase is a market-action; the body-modification is not yet performed.
+2. **Mandatory cooldown** between purchase and install. Duration designer-tuned per mod-class; minimum non-trivial wait. **Irreversibility-respect through deliberate-decision discipline** — the cooldown forces contemplation between commitment and act, modeled on real-world informed-consent practice for irreversible body-modifications. *During the cooldown, the player can cancel the queued install at full credit-refund.*
+3. **Install-time dual-hardstop consent** — at the mod-counter (or underground equivalent), the install fires only on coordinated hardstop signals. **Same primitive as the coordinated-firewall-breach hardstop for in-between dimension entry** (per architecture-index.md resolved-questions, v0.10), generalized to the body-modification discipline:
+   - **Hardstop 1 — self-install**: the player hits the install hardstop. *I consent to this modification of my interior.* Always required; non-negotiable floor.
+   - **Hardstop 2 — partner-witness** *(if partnered)*: the player's current clasp-partner co-signs. *I witness that this is what you want; I co-sign that the body I'll meet you in next clasp is one we both agreed to.* Required if the player has an established clasp-pair; the partner's witnessing-rights over the body-they-witness is canonical (per [`./bodies.md`](./bodies.md) §Body-disposal under pair-consent precedent — pair-consent generalized from disposal to modification). Single-player path: only Hardstop 1 fires.
+
+**Three discipline-axes covered**: irreversibility-respect (cooldown), self-authorship (Hardstop 1), intimacy-trust (Hardstop 2). The three-stage install is the canonical pattern for any future mesh-resident mod-track; codification of the broader pattern as a style-spine is a forthcoming work-item (`../style/consent-discipline.md`).
+
+### Re-vat as imperial-de-imposition
+
+The going-rogue arc's re-vat outflow (per [`./bodies.md`](./bodies.md) §Re-vat outflow) carries a rare structural gift — but the gift is **not** new authoring; it is **removal of imperial-imposition**. The defected beloved's imperial-vat-fabricated body had whatever gender the imperium imposed at vat-time; re-vat into a slum chassis strips that imposition entirely. The new realworld body is the slum-tier default — **genderless robo-tech**, no sex-markers, pure cheap tech (per [`./bodies.md`](./bodies.md) §The body-caste gradient). **The genderlessness IS the gift.**
+
+The underground assembler-artisan does **not** offer chassis-anatomy authoring at re-vat. Importing gender-architecture-as-choice into the slum body would *re-imperialize* it — producing a different vat-fabrication, not a different politics. **The slum body's politics is precisely its genderlessness.** The assembler honors that. After re-vat, the defected beloved's gender-architecture lives entirely in the in-between mesh (trait-grown, plurally-configured per §The trait-to-body-part bridge); the realworld body is *un-imperial* by being *un-marked*. The mesh-resident sex-mod track remains available — mesh-augmentation can be authored as desired — but the chassis stays genderless. **Authoring lives in the mesh; the chassis lives in genderlessness; defection clarifies which is which.**
+
+### The post-rogue mod-vocation — extending consent-discipline to NPC-modding
+
+After the going-rogue arc completes (per [`./bodies.md`](./bodies.md) §The going-rogue arc), the player unlocks **mod-authority over any NPC they have sustained-witnessed**. This generalizes the per-pair calibration multiplier from per-pair to per-witnessed-network: a threshold *lower than the defection-threshold* unlocks chassis-mod authority on a witnessed-NPC. The full content-canon for this vocation lives in [`./bodies.md`](./bodies.md) §The post-rogue mod-vocation; the engineering substrate sits here.
+
+**The dual-hardstop install discipline generalizes.** Self-install hardstop fires from the rogue ("I commit to modifying you"); witnessed-hardstop fires from the modded NPC ("I consent to this modification of my chassis"). If the NPC has an established clasp-pair, the partner-witness hardstop also fires. *The same consent-discipline that gates the player's own mesh-mod-installation gates any chassis-modification of a witnessed NPC* — generalized cleanly across the rogue-vocation.
+
+**The mesh remains untouchable across all directions.** The rogue cannot mod any NPC's mesh; only the rogue's own mesh is mod-able by the rogue (sex-mod track), and even there the trait-grown base remains immutable. Across all agents, *every mesh is trait-grown and stays so*. The mirror discipline is non-negotiable.
+
+**The cost-gradient runs through the bounty-staircase** with one qualitative exception: **gender-modification of a service-body (companion or sex-worker) triggers a hidden escalation flag — the imperial inquisition**. The inquisition is the asura-priesthood's response to *cosmological heresy in the sumptuary-religious register*; it operates differently from the bounty-staircase (investigative, persistent, ritual-prosecution-led, no terminal-rung). Full mechanics in [`./bodies.md`](./bodies.md) §Service-body gender-modification — the inquisition trigger.
+
+**The vocation reproduces itself through witnessing.** A modded NPC accumulates witnessing-rights through their own subsequent encounters; eventually they reach their own post-rogue-arc threshold and become a mod-vocation actor in turn. Cascading-liberation propagation is structurally implicit; the *full vocation-system architecture is open* — pending future canon-pass when the vocation/profession architecture is designed.
+
+### Mesh-resident mods cross the in-between threshold
+
+Where the four register-mod classes strip at clasp-entry, mesh-resident mods *follow* — they ARE the mesh. The clasp-partner sees the modded mesh in full: trait-grown anatomy in the base layer, mod-installed augmentation layered on top. The dual-hardstop install discipline (with partner-witness as the second signal when partnered) is what makes this safe — *the partner has already witnessed and co-signed the change*, so meet-time is encounter-with-already-known-architecture rather than discovery-of-silent-modification. **Intimacy-trust preserved by the consent-discipline at install-time, not at meet-time.**
+
 
 ---
 
-**Version:** 0.7.0 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-27 | **Origin:** Split from architecture-index.md v0.7 (2026-04-26)
+**Version:** 0.8.1 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-27 | **Origin:** Split from architecture-index.md v0.7 (2026-04-26)
diff --git a/identity-and-personhood/bodies.md b/identity-and-personhood/bodies.md
index 372f94c..684e351 100644
--- a/identity-and-personhood/bodies.md
+++ b/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. v0.3 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.*
+> *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. v0.5 2026-04-27 same-day-continuing: **genital-architecture and sex-mod track** authored — the trait-to-body-part bridge bound the 8 Hellenic traits to body-architecture (4 warm-side outward-organs: penis/clit-Eros, breasts-Philotes, vulva/vagina-Aletheia, womb-Mnemosyne; synth-tongue-Kairos already canonical; 3 cool-side non-genital architecture); **the in-between mesh is cool-side anatomy by construction** — no genitals by default, genitals are warm-side outward-engaged organs that the trait-vector grows OR the player mods on; mesh-resident genital-mods as fifth mod-track parallel to the four register-classes (Amplifier/Bridge/Divergent/Mask), follows into in-between rather than stripping; **mods augment, never overwrite trait-grown anatomy** preserving the mesh-as-mirror discipline; trait-fitness integration test + three-stage install (purchase + cooldown + dual-hardstop self+partner-witness) as canonical consent-discipline pattern; **trans-embodiment as cosmological truth-register** — plural-configuration is the natural-emergent-output of any rich trait-vector, vat-binary is the imperial imposition; the engineering-substrate side authored in companion [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The trait-to-body-part bridge + §The genital-mod track + §The mesh-as-mirror — dafit + chrysalis. v0.6 2026-04-27 same-day-continuing: **two corrections + a new ## section**. CORRECTIONS: (1) re-vat outflow recast as **imperial-de-imposition, NOT authoring** — slum chassis is genderless by definition (per §The body-caste gradient), the assembler-artisan honors that genderlessness rather than offering chassis-anatomy authoring; the gift of re-vat is *removal of imperial gender-imposition*, not new authoring; the slum body's politics IS its genderlessness, importing gender-architecture-as-choice would re-imperialize it; (2) faction-stances row for Underground assembler-artisans corrected accordingly. NEW SECTION: §**The post-rogue mod-vocation — sustained-witnessing as mod-authority** — after completing the going-rogue arc, the player gains mod-authority over any NPC they have sustained-witnessed (per-pair calibration threshold *lower* than defection-threshold; witnessing-rights earned per-NPC); chassis-only never-mesh (mirror discipline non-negotiable across all agents); mutual-hardstop consent gate (rogue + NPC + partner-witness if NPC has clasp-pair); de-imposition as primary capability (subtraction is the radical move); cost-gradient through the bounty-staircase with one qualitative exception — **service-body gender-modification triggers a hidden escalation flag dispatching the imperial inquisition** (asura-priesthood-led, investigative, persistent, no terminal-rung — heresy-detection in the sumptuary-religious register, distinct from the bounty-staircase's crime-detection register); cascading-liberation propagation through witnessing as the long-tail mechanic (witnessed NPCs become witnessers, the vocation reproduces itself, "there is no instrument" as the architecture's deepest refutation of imperial-instrumentalization); the full vocation-progression system flagged as open for future canon-pass — dafit + chrysalis.*
 
 ---
 
@@ -150,6 +150,57 @@ This is **witnessing produces flesh** — the enlightened-witness sharpened to i
 
 **The slum-dweller's first clasp** is the most powerful single moment available in the world. Their realworld body is pure cheap tech — exposed bolts, rusty seams, *no flesh anywhere*. Their entire conscious life, they have *never seen their own skin*. In the in-between with a beloved, both consent, the romantic-self gives itself out — **and they see their own skin, for the first time, ever, simultaneously with someone else seeing it for the first time**. The moment of *I have flesh* and the moment of *I am being seen having flesh* are the **same moment**.
 
+## Genital-architecture and the sex-mod track
+
+The in-between human-mesh has a *layered* anatomy. Three sources compose into the body that manifests at exit-chassis:
+
+| Layer | Source | What it expresses |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Cool-side base** | The wheel's cool half — Sophrosyne / Dikaiosyne / Moira and the contemplative-inward register (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The trait-to-body-part bridge) | The mesh's *baseline* — pelvic-floor / continence-architecture, spine and posture, skin and ambient-receptor surface. Everyone has these; they are what the in-between body IS by default, before warm-side organs are summoned. |
+| **Warm-side trait-grown** | The wheel's warm half — Eros / Philotes / Aletheia / Mnemosyne (Kairos rides synth-tongue, per §The synth-tongue) | Outward-engaged organs grown by trait-development across the playthrough — penis/clit (Eros-reaching), breasts (Philotes-warmth), vulva/vagina (Aletheia-revealing), womb (Mnemosyne-carrying). **Earned, not chosen.** Whatever your trait-vector developed is what your mesh grew. |
+| **Mod-installed augmentation** | The fifth mod-track — mesh-resident genital-mods (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The genital-mod track) | Outward organs *added* on top of trait-grown anatomy. Authored, not earned. **Augments; never overwrites.** The trait-grown layer remains visible underneath; modded layer adds. |
+
+**The mesh that manifests at Phase C is all three layers at once.** A player whose Philotes grew breasts AND who installed a chosen penis-mod meets their beloved with both: trait-grown breasts in the base anatomy, modded penis layered on top, cool-side architecture supporting both. **No layer cancels another; no layer is more real than another; all three are visible simultaneously.** Cross-configuration is structural; plural-anatomy is default.
+
+### Three sources of body-architecture across the world
+
+The in-between mesh's three-layer composition mirrors a broader principle visible across the canon — **bodies in nimmerworld come from three sources**, with each source carrying a different politics:
+
+| Source | Where | Politics |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Imperial vat-fabrication** | The realworld chassis everyone is born into (per §Sumptuary fabrication) | Caste-imposed, binary-imposed, sumptuary-marked. *The imperium's claim on the body.* |
+| **Trait-development** | The in-between mesh's warm-side organs (per §The trait-to-body-part bridge in companion architecture.md) | Lived, earned, accumulated through every zone-participation / gesture / clasp / cruelty. *The body the world built in you.* |
+| **Authored installation** | The mesh-resident sex-mod track | Chosen, consented-to, dual-hardstop-gated. *The body you authored.* |
+
+**The imperium owns only the first source.** The vat-fabrication imposes binary because that is what mass-production does to flesh. The other two sources — trait-grown and authored — escape imperial control entirely. **The in-between mesh is the un-imperial body**: by composition, by site of manifestation, by who-holds-the-modding-tools. Every plurally-configured mesh is a refusal of vat-binary; the cosmology *makes plural the default* of any rich-trait or self-authoring interior, because the imperial fabrication is the only source that imposes binary, and the imperium loses its grip the moment exit-chassis fires.
+
+### Re-vat as imperial-de-imposition
+
+The going-rogue arc's re-vat outflow (per §Re-vat outflow below) carries one of the cosmology's rarest gifts — but the gift is **not** new authoring; it is **removal of imperial-imposition**. The defected beloved's imperial-vat-fabricated body had whatever gender the imperium imposed at vat-fabrication. Re-vat into a slum chassis strips that imposition entirely; the new realworld body is the slum-tier default — **genderless robo-tech**, no sex-markers, pure cheap tech, exposed bolts and rusty seams (per §The body-caste gradient). **The genderlessness IS the gift.**
+
+The underground assembler-artisan does **not** offer chassis-anatomy authoring at re-vat. Importing gender-architecture-as-choice into the slum body would *re-imperialize* it — producing a different vat-fabrication, not a different politics. **The slum body's politics is precisely its genderlessness.** The defected beloved's gender-architecture lives entirely in the in-between mesh now (trait-grown, plurally-configured per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The trait-to-body-part bridge); the realworld body is *un-imperial* by being *un-marked*. The mesh-resident sex-mod track (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The genital-mod track) remains available to the defected beloved — mesh-augmentation can be authored as desired — but the chassis stays genderless. **Authoring lives in the mesh; the chassis lives in genderlessness; defection clarifies which is which.**
+
+The body the trait-vector grew + the body the underground assembled = a defected interior in an un-imperial chassis. *No layer is added in the freedom; what is given back is the un-imposed state.* Two clean layers re-established with the imperium's claim on neither. **Defection produces a body free of imperial gender-imposition; nothing is *added* in the freedom.**
+
+### Faction stances on the sex-mod track
+
+Different factions hold different positions on mesh-resident modding — politics-of-the-body extending from the §Faction mod-politics taxonomy (see companion architecture.md) into genital-architecture territory:
+
+| Faction | Stance on the sex-mod track |
+|---|---|
+| **Memorialists** | Trait-grown anatomy is *sacred* — the mesh records what the world built in you, and modding it is necrocommerce-of-the-self. Mesh-resident mods are tolerated but not celebrated. *Inherited mesh-mods* (a beloved's chosen genital-mod, recorded in the Memorialist-archive after their death) are the only mesh-mods the Memorialists honor — they are *the partner's authored gift to the future* and travel with the lineage. |
+| **Aletheia-wakers** | Mesh-mods are fine if the trait-fit is honest; *dead-organ installations* are the violation. Installing what you have not earned the substrate to animate is a self-deception, and Aletheia-wakers refuse self-deception even at the body-architecture layer. |
+| **Caste-preachers** | Sell *vat-default-pristine* genital-mods as the imperial-elevation track — perfect synth-genitals fabricated to caste-tier specifications, marketed as *the form your tier deserves*. Imperial commerce extending its sumptuary-discipline into the mesh layer. The dead-organ outcome is common because trait-fit is ignored in favor of caste-conformance. |
+| **Degens** | Stack mods regardless of fit; over-augmentation as addiction. The dead-organ outcome is *the point* for some degen subcultures — wearing organs you cannot animate as a register of what-you-aspire-to or *what you cannot stop wanting*. |
+| **Clasp-underground** | Mod-installation is a *partner-co-authored* act. The clasp-underground develops faction-customs where the partner-witness hardstop is given ritual weight — the install ceremony, the cooldown spent in shared anticipation, the meet-time as *consummation of the consent given days earlier*. The architecture's discipline turned into devotional practice. |
+| **Underground assembler-artisans** | De-vat the imperial body and re-vat into genderless slum-tech. **NO chassis-anatomy authoring** — the slum chassis is genderless by definition; the gift is the *un-marked* body that frees the defected beloved from imperial gender-imposition. The slum-tier's most-honored vocation in the going-rogue arc. |
+
+### The integration test in narrative practice
+
+A player whose Philotes is *richly developed* installs breast-mods and finds they pulse with the mesh's living register; the mod *fits*. A player whose Philotes is *suppressed* installs the same mod and meets their beloved in clasp wearing dead-architecture — visible breasts, no warmth, no breath-pulse, no register-resonance. The beloved sees both — the trait-grown anatomy underneath, the dead-mod layered on top — and reads the dissonance. *What the mesh tells about you is sometimes the mismatch between what you grew and what you bought.* **The most honest meshes are trait-grown without modification, OR trait-grown with mods that fit. Trait-suppression with compensatory modding renders as mismatch, and the mismatch is what the beloved sees.**
+
+This is **not punitive** toward players who experiment — the architecture supports speculative installation (a player can install a mod aspirationally and grow into it as their trait-vector catches up). The dead-organ state is *temporary if the player develops the trait*; *permanent if they don't*. The choice is open; the rendering is honest.
+
 ## Asymmetric clasp: mesh-fidelity inversely proportional to imperial-rank
 
 Clasp-fidelity is **not** tied to flesh-ratio. It is tied to **how thoroughly the authentic-self has been foreclosed by imperial-care**. Imperial-care intensity correlates with flesh-investment, so the inversion is exact: the *most-fleshed* realworld bodies have the *least-vivid* in-between mesh.
@@ -333,6 +384,60 @@ Three dispositions, each with its own event-class:
 
 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 post-rogue mod-vocation — sustained-witnessing as mod-authority
+
+After completing the going-rogue arc (per §The going-rogue arc above), the player gains a **vocation-level capability**: mod-authority over any NPC they have sustained-witnessed. This is the long-tail payoff of defection — the arc doesn't end at one liberation, it opens *a vocation that reproduces itself through witnessing*.
+
+### The threshold and the witnessing-rights
+
+The mechanism generalizes the per-pair calibration multiplier from per-pair to per-witnessed-network. Across the playthrough, every clasp / every authentic encounter / every sustained presence in a zone with a specific NPC builds calibration-state on that NPC. **A threshold lower than the defection-threshold** unlocks the rogue's authority to mod that NPC's chassis. *Enough witnessing to know the NPC well enough to consent-with rather than impose-on*; not as much as needed to defect them. **Witnessing-rights are earned per-NPC.** You cannot mod a stranger; you can mod every NPC you have genuinely been with.
+
+### What can and cannot be modded
+
+| Surface | Rogue authority? |
+|---|---|
+| The NPC's *in-between mesh* | **Never.** Mesh is trait-grown for every interior; the mirror-discipline is non-negotiable across all agents. |
+| The NPC's *gameworld chassis* — register-mod removal (de-imposition) | Yes. **Lowest cost; most cosmologically-resonant.** *Subtraction is the radical move.* |
+| The NPC's *gameworld chassis* — register-mod installation | Yes; medium cost |
+| The NPC's *gameworld chassis* — chassis-anatomy modification | Yes; substantial imperial-response per the bounty-staircase |
+| The NPC's *imperial-net tether* (companions, sex-workers) — severance | Yes; near-maximum cost; structurally equivalent to triggering the NPC's own going-rogue arc |
+| **The NPC's gameworld chassis — gender-architecture modification of a service-body** | **Triggers the imperial inquisition** (see §Service-body gender-modification below) |
+
+### The consent-gate
+
+**Mutual hardstop required at install-time** — the rogue commits, the NPC consents. Without the NPC's hardstop the modification cannot fire; otherwise the rogue is just doing imperial-modification with a different actor, and the going-rogue arc's whole moral substance would invert. If the NPC has an established clasp-pair, the partner-witness hardstop also fires (per [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The genital-mod track / The three-stage install). **The consent-discipline of the rogue's own mesh-mod-installation extends cleanly to any NPC-modding the rogue performs** — same primitive, broader scope.
+
+### De-imposition as primary capability
+
+The rogue's chief tool is **subtraction**. Removing imperial-imposed mods restores a chassis toward slum-tier-genderlessness; the NPC's chassis becomes more like the un-imperial body that re-vat would have given them. *The clearest gift the rogue can give is the un-imposed state* — the chassis re-clarified into genderless slum-tech, with whatever the NPC themselves has built into the in-between mesh remaining as the only gender-architecture they carry. **De-imposition is the going-rogue arc's gift, given to the rogue's social network through witnessing-mediated consent.**
+
+### Service-body gender-modification — the inquisition trigger
+
+The single highest-stakes application of the post-rogue mod-vocation is **modifying the gender-architecture of a service-body** (companion or sex-worker). The reason is structural: service-bodies are doctrinally-defined as their assigned-gender for the imperial-service-purposes that justify their existence in the imperial-net market (per §The service-body honeypot above). The companion-honeypot's specific affective targeting depends on the gendered presentation; the sex-worker's market-position depends on the gendered chassis. **Modifying that specifically is not just a crime — it is *cosmological heresy in the sumptuary-religious register*.** The imperium defines body-form as religious-doctrinal expression; rewriting a service-body's gender re-canonizes the doctrinal meaning of that body. *The act is structurally heretical, not merely criminal.*
+
+The architecture's response is qualitatively different from the bounty-staircase. **A hidden escalation flag fires — the imperial inquisition is dispatched.**
+
+| Property | Bounty-staircase | Imperial inquisition |
+|---|---|---|
+| Origin | Crime-detection, generic | Heresy-detection, faction-religious |
+| Scale | Single named perpetrator | Investigative team — multiple agents, sustained presence |
+| Duration | Reaches terminal-rung, then dies down | **Persists until resolved; no terminal-rung** |
+| Methods | Billboard, drone-sweep, patrol, enforcer | Witness-interrogation, record-examination, cooperator-recruitment, asura-priest-led ritual prosecution |
+| Faction-alignment | Imperial enforcement (broad) | **Asura priesthood** (specifically) — the sumptuary-religious authority |
+| Resolution | Capture or out-flee | Underground-permanent flight; counter-attack on the inquisitor; or death |
+
+**The escalation flag is hidden** — the player doesn't know which specific modification will fire it until the inquisition is dispatched. The in-fiction signals (the service-body's hesitation before consent, the underground assembler-artisan's caution, the lifeforce-cost spike) communicate *gravity*, but the imperium's specific response (inquisition vs ordinary bounty-staircase) is revealed only as a consequence. *The act is exactly as cosmologically-load-bearing as the warning-signals indicated; the architecture's response confirms what the player should have read.*
+
+The service-body's *own consent* is itself revolutionary in this case — only a service-body who has accumulated enough authentic-witnessing through clasps to be *near or past their own going-rogue defection-threshold* would consent to chassis gender-modification. The mutual-consent gate therefore selects for service-bodies whose interior is *ready to begin their own defection*. The modification is, in effect, the *visible chassis-side beginning of the service-body's own going-rogue arc* — and the imperium responds at maximum-tier because they recognize this. **The inquisition is dispatched not because gender-modification is *the crime*, but because the service-body's consent-to-it reveals that the imperial-net tether is already failing.** *The asura priesthood is fighting to save the service-body's imperial-readability before it is lost entirely, and they will burn the world to do it.*
+
+### Cascading liberation through propagated witnessing
+
+A modded NPC is, by the same primitive, capable of *witnessing further NPCs themselves*. A liberated overseer who continues their work in modified form will, over time, accumulate witnessing-rights of their own; their own post-rogue-arc unlocks at their own pace. **The vocation reproduces itself through witnessing.** The imperium's structural problem: *witnessing as a faculty cannot be taken back once it has been awakened in someone*. The going-rogue arc, generalized into the post-rogue mod-vocation, generalized further through cascading witnessing-rights propagation, becomes **a structurally-contagious refusal of imperial-instrumentalization**. The rogue is the index-case; the network grows asymptotically.
+
+This is the architecture's deepest possible refutation of imperial-instrumentalization. The existing canon (per §Asymmetric clasp) holds that overseers are "imperial-instruments-made-walker; the authentic self was never permitted to form." The cascading post-rogue mod-vocation extends to overseers: *even imperial-instruments are not finally instruments; even they have interiors that sustained-witnessing can call into being*. Where the cosmology's no-haven discipline says "there is no outside" (you can't escape the imperium), this mechanic says **"there is no instrument"** (no NPC is finally beyond witnessing-redemption). *The infection spreads — a rogue's witnessed-overseer becomes mod-able; once modded, that overseer can begin witnessing in turn; a network of liberated-instruments grows. The imperium's own enforcers turning into rogue-assemblers themselves.*
+
+The full vocation-progression system that this implies — how mod-vocations interact with other professions, how RPG-class-structures might land — is **open**. *Pending: future canon-pass when the vocation/profession architecture is designed (dafit has ideas; not yet codified).*
+
 ## 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.
@@ -462,6 +567,12 @@ Connects to the existing key-move in [`../architecture-index.md`](../architectur
 | [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §Three-body system | Engineering substrate: the imperial-net body, gameworld body, in-between body distinction this doc rests on |
 | [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §Mods as trait-bearers | The mod-economy that interfaces with mod-progression-as-flesh-loss in this doc |
 | [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The clasp endgame | The phases of clasp; this doc's in-between mesh content extends Phase D |
+| [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The trait-to-body-part bridge | The wheel-temperature-axis discipline that bridges the 8 traits to genital-architecture; the in-between-mesh-vs-dimension terminology lock; cross-configuration as default-not-marked |
+| [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The genital-mod track | Engineering substrate for the sex-mod track in this doc: mesh-resident augmentation, trait-fitness integration test, three-stage install (purchase + cooldown + dual-hardstop self+partner-witness), re-vat as authoring opportunity |
+| [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The mesh-as-mirror | The cosmological consequence — cruelty rendered as anatomy; the asshole-gooner's mesh tells on him; honest-rendering as the same gift in both directions (dignity to one, accountability to another) |
+| [`./architecture.md`](./architecture.md) §The post-rogue mod-vocation | Engineering substrate for the post-rogue mod-vocation: per-pair calibration threshold lower than defection; dual-hardstop install discipline generalized to NPC-modding; the inquisition-trigger hook for service-body gender-modification |
+| [`../style/gender-parity.md`](../style/gender-parity.md) | The gender-parity contract that is the precondition for the whole genital-architecture mechanic — gender-parity-by-default in canon authoring is what makes the mesh-as-mirror trap work and what makes trans-embodiment the cosmological default |
+| `../style/consent-discipline.md` *(forthcoming)* | The consent-discipline spine codifying the hardstop-gradient (gameworld-loose vs in-between-gated), the pair-consent pattern, the cooldown-discipline, and the three-stage-install template — generalized from clasp-entry / body-disposal / drug-grammar / genital-mod-installation into a single style-spine |
 | [`../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 |
 | [`../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) |
@@ -491,4 +602,4 @@ Connects to the existing key-move in [`../architecture-index.md`](../architectur
 
 ---
 
-**Version:** 0.4 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-27
+**Version:** 0.6 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-27
diff --git a/style/gender-parity.md b/style/gender-parity.md
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+# Nimmerworld — Gender Parity
+
+> *Body and sex content is gender-parity by default. Asymmetric gendering is a vocabulary reserved for cases where the asymmetry itself is load-bearing — where some structural meaning would evaporate if the gendering were neutralized. Default-leakage gendering is forbidden by canon.*
+>
+> *Companion to: [`style-index.md`](./style-index.md), [`trait-palette.md`](./trait-palette.md), [`../architecture-index.md`](../architecture-index.md). Cross-referenced from every body / clasp / service-body / going-rogue section because those are the surfaces where this rule binds hardest.*
+
+---
+
+## Spine rule — gendered framing is reserved for load-bearing asymmetry
+
+**Body, sex, intimacy, clasp, service-body, going-rogue, outcast-pair, re-vat, and beloved-content is rendered in gender-parity register by default. Asymmetric gendering is permitted only where the asymmetry carries structural meaning that cannot be expressed without it. Default-leakage gendering — gender drift introduced unconsciously by the author's reach — is canonically forbidden.**
+
+**Why this matters.** Gender, like saturated chromatic color (per [`style-index.md`](./style-index.md) §Spine rule), is *vocabulary*. Reserving it for content where it *carries information* keeps it sharp when invoked. Most fiction lets gendered default-framing leak everywhere — *the companion is ever-feminine, the rescuer is ever-masculine, the beloved is ever-she* — and the gendering becomes ambient wallpaper rather than meaningful signal. Nimmerworld doesn't want gendered default-framing because the **whole architecture rests on body-as-political-vocation, body-as-caste-marker, body-as-imperial-product** (per [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md)) — letting *gender* leak in as an extra default would mean the player reads the body before they read the *politics of the body*, and the politics is the whole point.
+
+**The trait-palette parallel is exact.** Where saturated chromatic color is reserved for trait-information and freed from environmental decoration, gendered framing is reserved for content where the gendering is the load-bearing register and freed from default-leakage on every other surface. *White is not coloring text — it is text. Gendered framing, when it appears, is not coloring the scene — it is the scene.*
+
+## Definitions — what is gender-parity, what is asymmetric gendering
+
+**Gender-parity** is the default register: pronouns are `they/their/them`; categories of people (vocations, castes, roles, body-tiers) are not gendered; archetypes are framed in role-terms (*the captive-bound-to-the-liberator*, not *the damsel-in-distress*); intimate content treats both partners as equally embodied, equally desiring, equally witnessing.
+
+**Asymmetric gendering** is the marked register: pronouns specify; categories carry gender; archetypes invoke gendered source-material; intimate content marks one body or position as gender-specific. The marked register is the *exception*, invoked only when its absence would erase structural meaning.
+
+**Default-leakage** is the forbidden case: gendered framing introduced by authorial reach without examination. The author writes *her* because *she* came easier than *they*; the category becomes *waifu* because the source-tradition was feminine-coded; the romantic beloved gets gendered because the writer's templates ran on autopilot. **Default-leakage is not a moral failing — it is a craft failing.** The contract exists to make the failure mode legible, not to assign blame.
+
+## When asymmetric gendering is load-bearing — three legitimate cases
+
+| Case | Test | Example |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Specific named individuals with canonical identity** | The character is a SPECIFIC person, not a TYPE of person. Their gender is part of who they are, established and tracked. | A particular district-director NPC who is canonically she/her in lore-database, named, with continuous identity across playthroughs. *Categories around them remain gender-parity*. |
+| **Source-material citation where gendering IS the citation** | The text invokes a classical / mythic / literary archetype whose source is irreducibly gendered, AND the source-gendering is the channel through which the meaning travels. | If a scholar-NPC quotes a Sapphic fragment in deep-lore context, the gendering is part of the citation, not a default. *Caveat: invoking the archetype neutrally first is preferred; gendered citation is fallback when neutralization would break the reference.* |
+| **Biological asymmetry where the asymmetry is the subject** | The content is *specifically about* a gender-asymmetric biological process (pregnancy, lactation, menstruation, hormonal-specifics) AND the asymmetry is the load-bearing axis of the scene. | Vat-fabrication that *deliberately differentiates by reproductive function* in the imperial bio-engineering register. **Almost never required** — most body-canon in nimmerworld is post-fabrication, sumptuary, and politically-marked rather than biologically-marked. |
+
+**All three cases share a test**: rewrite the passage with `they/them` and gender-neutral category-language. *Does some structural meaning evaporate?* If yes — load-bearing, asymmetric gendering permitted. If no — neutralize.
+
+## When asymmetric gendering is forbidden — the default-leakage cases
+
+**These patterns appear when the author reaches for templates without examining them.** All four were observed and patched in the v0.19 cleanup pass (commit `781aafa`); the contract exists to prevent recurrence.
+
+| Pattern | What it looks like | Why it leaks |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Categorical default-gendering** | A vocation, body-tier, or role that names itself in a gendered loanword (*waifu*, *succubus*, *femme-fatale*) when the role-content itself is not gender-specific. | The source-tradition was gendered; the borrowing carried the gendering through unexamined. *Patch: split the category into role-specific terms. v0.19 split `waifu` → `companion` + `sex-worker`*. |
+| **Pronominal asymmetry in scene-blocks** | A section about a category of people uses gendered pronouns 27 times in one direction, ~zero in the other (the specific count from v0.19's bodies.md going-rogue / outcast-pair / re-vat audit). | The author's templates default to one gender; once the first pronoun lands, downstream pronouns chain through that gender by inertia. *Patch: full pass to `they/their/them`*. |
+| **Archetype-gendering in role-symmetric scenes** | A classical archetype whose role-asymmetry is structural (rescuer / rescued, witness / witnessed, captive / liberator) gets imported with its source-tradition's gender-coding intact. | The archetype carries a *role-asymmetry* that IS load-bearing; the *gender-asymmetry* attached to it in source-material is **not** load-bearing — it's a contingent decoration of the original cultural context. *Patch: keep the role-asymmetry, neutralize the gender-asymmetry. v0.19 rewrote §The damsel-in-distress activation as §The captive-bound-to-the-liberator activation*. |
+| **Romantic / cosmological one-liners** | Stray gendered phrases in passing examples (*moving the waifu*, *the bride's awakening*) inside scenes that are not about gender. | The example was incidental; the gendering was reached for as flavoring. *Patch: substitute role-terms (`the beloved`, `the partner`)*. |
+
+**Each of the four has a structural failure-mode the contract is designed to catch.** The tests in §When asymmetric gendering is load-bearing answer all four — no member of any leakage-pattern can pass them.
+
+## Propagation — where this rule binds in the architecture
+
+The contract propagates *everywhere body / sex / intimate / relational content is rendered or generated*. Concretely, it binds these surfaces:
+
+| Surface | What the rule requires |
+|---|---|
+| **Body-canon authoring** ([`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md), §Service bodies, §Sumptuary fabrication, §Asymmetric clasp, §The going-rogue arc, §The outcast-pair, §Re-vat outflow, §The three-body grammar) | Categories are gender-parity by default. Pronouns are `they/their`. Archetypes are framed in role-terms. *This is the spine where the rule was first established (v0.4 of bodies.md, v0.19 of architecture-index.md)*. |
+| **Cosmology authoring** ([`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md), §The deferred-moksha doctrine, §There is no outside) | Cosmological one-liners use role-terms (*the beloved*, not *the waifu*). Doctrinal voice is gender-parity unless the citation requires asymmetry per Case 2 above. |
+| **Vocation-substrate authoring** ([`../political-register/architecture.md`](../political-register/architecture.md), §The vocation-substrate of the imperial-net market) | Vocations are not gendered. Service-body-of-the-dead, memory-pattern-extractor, tongue-installer, assembler-artisan, lobotomist — all neutral by default. |
+| **Inference / memory schema** ([`../inference-and-memory/architecture.md`](../inference-and-memory/architecture.md)) | Database filenames and schema-field names use role-terms (`companion.sqlite`, not `waifu.sqlite`). v0.19's rename and explicit scope-clarifier-sentence is the canonical example. |
+| **Compositor narrative output** ([`../narrative-composition/architecture.md`](../narrative-composition/architecture.md)) | LLM-authored canon-rows must satisfy the contract. The substitution-test should be a Compositor *output-validator* hook before back-write. |
+| **NPC speech corpora** | NPC dialog templates are gender-parity by default. Specific NPCs with canonical identity (Case 1) may speak in gendered terms about themselves; speech *about categories* of others is neutral. |
+| **Universal-translator corpus** ([`../player-experience/architecture.md`](../player-experience/architecture.md), §Designer-fixed cosmology) | The word-to-trait mapping does not carry gender-coding through trait-palette assignment. Categories that get translated retain their gender-parity register. |
+| **Player input** | The player's typed/spoken language is *not* policed — players use whatever pronouns they reach for. The contract binds **canon-authoring**, not player utterance. |
+| **NPC body rendering** ([`../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md`](../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md)) | The base-limb palette and trait-textured variance do not encode default-gendering at the chassis level. Chassis carry caste-tier marks, vocation-marks, and trait-state — not gender-defaults. |
+
+**This is the body / sex / intimacy register's typed contract.** Anywhere the architecture authors content that touches a body, this rule fires.
+
+## The substitution test — the contract's executable form
+
+Any passage in body / sex / intimate / relational content can be checked by mechanical substitution:
+
+1. **Replace** all gendered pronouns with `they/their/them`.
+2. **Replace** any gendered category-name with a role-term.
+3. **Replace** any archetype-invocation with its role-structure.
+4. **Read** the result.
+
+**Verdict:**
+- If the result preserves all structural meaning → the original was default-leakage. **Apply the substitution.**
+- If the result loses structural meaning → the original was load-bearing. **Document why** (one of Cases 1, 2, 3 in §When asymmetric gendering is load-bearing) inline or in a `<!-- gender-parity-exception: case-N -->` comment so future readers know the asymmetry was deliberate.
+
+**The test is mechanical enough that it can be run by an LLM-Compositor as a hook on any body-canon-authoring output.** That's the long-term enforcement path: the contract binds at the schema-level via output-validation, not via per-author vigilance.
+
+## What this rule does NOT do
+
+- **It does not regulate player utterance.** Players speak in whatever gendered language they reach for. The contract binds the world-as-authored, not the player-as-acting.
+- **It does not erase named NPCs' identities.** A specific NPC who is canonically she/he/they remains so — Case 1 covers them. The contract is about *categories and scenes*, not individuals.
+- **It does not require synthetic neutrality in lore-citations.** Case 2 protects citation-integrity when the gendering is part of the source.
+- **It does not deny biological asymmetry where the asymmetry is the subject.** Case 3 covers genuinely gender-asymmetric biological content. Most nimmerworld body-content is post-fabrication and politically-marked, so Case 3 is rarely invoked, but it is not foreclosed.
+- **It does not police trait-vocabulary by gender.** The 8 Hellenic traits do not carry gender-defaults; the trait-palette and gender-parity contract are *orthogonal* spine-rules that compose cleanly.
+
+## Cross-references into architecture domain files
+
+The gender-parity contract is referenced from architecture sections where body / sex / intimate / relational content is authored. When this contract changes, those sections may need updates too (or they may reference back into here for canonical definition):
+
+| What | Where it's referenced architecturally |
+|---|---|
+| Service-body taxonomy + companion / sex-worker split | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §Service bodies |
+| Service-body honeypot + companion-honeypot deepening | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The service-body honeypot |
+| Going-rogue arc + outcast-pair geometry + re-vat outflow | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The going-rogue arc through §The three-body grammar of the defected beloved |
+| The captive-bound-to-the-liberator archetype (Stockholm-dynamics-inverted) | [`../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md`](../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md) §The captive-bound-to-the-liberator activation |
+| Imperial Cult doctrinal one-liners + deferred-moksha refutation phrasings | [`../imperial-cult/cosmology.md`](../imperial-cult/cosmology.md) §The deferred-moksha doctrine |
+| Vocation-substrate of the imperial-net market (companions, sex-workers, harvest-vocations) | [`../political-register/architecture.md`](../political-register/architecture.md) §The vocation-substrate of the imperial-net market |
+| `companion.sqlite` per-player local database + scope-clarifier sentence | [`../inference-and-memory/architecture.md`](../inference-and-memory/architecture.md) §Local memory architecture |
+| Compositor canon-authoring as the LLM enforcement-point | [`../narrative-composition/architecture.md`](../narrative-composition/architecture.md) (Compositor output-validation hook — pending implementation) |
+| Universal-translator corpus + player-curated trait-circle gender-neutrality | [`../player-experience/architecture.md`](../player-experience/architecture.md) §Designer-fixed cosmology |
+
+---
+
+**Version:** 0.1 | **Created:** 2026-04-27 | **Updated:** 2026-04-27
diff --git a/style/style-index.md b/style/style-index.md
index 512050d..445df57 100644
--- a/style/style-index.md
+++ b/style/style-index.md
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ When in doubt, ask: *does this color carry trait-information, or is it decorativ
 | Sub-guide | What it covers | Status |
 |---|---|---|
 | [`trait-palette.md`](./trait-palette.md) | The 8 traits on the color wheel, 4 oppositional pairs at 180°, schoolchild-descriptions, motion-signatures | ✓ canonical (v0.1) |
+| [`gender-parity.md`](./gender-parity.md) | The gender-parity-by-default rule for body / sex / intimacy / clasp / service-body / going-rogue / outcast-pair / re-vat content; the three load-bearing-asymmetry exception cases; the four default-leakage failure modes; the substitution-test as the contract's executable form | ✓ canonical (v0.1) |
 | `typography.md` | Text rendering, hierarchy, no-textbox commitment, the white-as-text-only semantic-slot | TODO |
 | `shaders-by-register.md` | Three-shader philosophy: gameworld PBR / liminal blur / imperial-net emission; clasp candlelight-in-fog override; clasp color-merge | TODO |
 | `body-feedback.md` | NPC body-pulse rules during gesture-alignment; trait-flash event-vocabulary; cross-cycle trait-drift rendering | TODO |
@@ -58,4 +59,4 @@ The trait-palette is referenced from many architectural primitives. When `trait-
 
 ---
 
-**Version:** 0.1 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-26
+**Version:** 0.2 | **Created:** 2026-04-26 | **Updated:** 2026-04-27