nimmerworld.eachpath.local/style/consent-discipline.md

Nimmerworld — Consent Discipline

The architecture's consent-spine: the gradient that scales with what the action touches; the four hardstop-pattern variants that gate transitions between gameworld and truth-register; the mirror-discipline that absolutely forbids mesh-modification of other agents; the temporal-grammar that relocates consent-time to the 24h window-partition; the right-to-refuse imperial-imposition that lives in going-rogue as a breakout-flag; the inquisition-trigger pattern where legitimate consent itself reveals imperial control-loss.

Companion to: ./trait-palette.md (the trait-vocabulary spine), ./gender-parity.md (the gendered-framing spine — second sibling), and the architecture's many canonical consent-instances scattered across identity-and-personhood/, political-register/, and imperial-cult/.

v0.1 initial draft 2026-04-27 — dafit + chrysalis. Third style-spine document. Authored AFTER vocations.md so the temporal-grammar (windows) could be cited cleanly. Codifies a discipline that has been running implicitly through canon since the v0.1 clasp-mechanic and now becomes explicit.

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What this is

This document specifies the consent-discipline running through nimmerworld's mechanics — the third style-spine document, alongside trait-palette.md (the trait-vocabulary spine) and gender-parity.md (the gendered-framing spine).

Where the trait-palette spines the trait-vocabulary and gender-parity spines body/sex authoring discipline, consent-discipline spines the register-boundary discipline — what consent is, where it lives, when it must be hardstop-mediated, when it must be cooldown-augmented, and where it is absolutely forbidden to override. The discipline has been running implicitly through canon since the v0.1 clasp-mechanic; this document makes it explicit and codifies its variants.

The consent-discipline is a gradient, not a binary. Its shape reflects the architecture's commitment to a two-register cosmology: the gameworld (the imperium's territory) and the truth-register (each agent's own interior). Consent-discipline is the mechanism that enforces the boundary between them.

Spine rule — consent scales with what the action touches

Consent-discipline scales with what the action touches. The gradient:

• Actions affecting only ephemeral gameworld state are unmediated — no consent-signal required.
• Actions affecting the actor's own truth-register state are self-hardstop-mediated — single unforgeable signal from the actor.
• Actions affecting another agent's truth-register encounter are dual-hardstop-mediated — mutual unforgeable signals from both agents (with partner-witness as a third signal when the affected agent is partnered).
• Actions modifying another agent's in-between mesh — the trait-grown truth-register body — are absolutely forbidden by mirror-discipline. No consent can authorize this; the mirror is the architectural truth-floor.
• Actions that are irreversible require cooldown-augmentation — mandatory time-between-commitment-and-act in addition to the hardstop(s).
• Actions touching sumptuary-religious doctrine trigger the imperial inquisition as escalation beyond the ordinary bounty-staircase response — even when the consent itself was legitimate.

The 24h window-partition (per ../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md §The 24h window-partition) gives the consent-discipline its temporal-grammar: imperial-imposition lives in the 10h work-window; somatic-necessity lives in the 4h charging-window; full NPC consent-agency lives in the leisure-window. The going-rogue arc preserves the right to refuse imperial-imposition as a temporal-breakout-flag.

Why this matters. In a world where the imperium claims everything (per the no-haven discipline of ../imperial-cult/cosmology.md §There is no outside), the consent-discipline is what carves out and protects the non-imperial spaces — the truth-register, the leisure-window, the going-rogue refusal. Without the consent-discipline, the imperium would in fact be everywhere; with it, the truth-register exists structurally. This is the architecture's strongest possible enforcement of the cosmological claim "there is no instrument" (per ../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §The post-rogue mod-vocation): every agent retains a register the imperium cannot reach without that agent's unforgeable signal.

The two-spine claims compose orthogonally: "there is no outside" (no-haven) describes the world the imperium has built; "there is no instrument" (post-rogue cascade) describes what consent-discipline preserves within that world. The cosmology is total in extent; the truth-register is sovereign in interiority. Both true at once.

The two-register architecture

The consent-discipline rests on the architecture's distinction between two ontological registers:

Register	What lives here	Consent-discipline
Gameworld	Chassis-body; rail-system; zones-of-action; resource-flows; imperial-arbitration; outcomes; outputs; the imperial-net's surveillance-territory	Loose; actions don't gate by consent unless they cross-register
Truth-register	The in-between dimension; the trait-grown mesh; the witness-axis; the calibration-multiplier; the memory-class hierarchy; the clasp-pair; the per-pair calibration-signature preserved across body-deaths	Strict; gated by hardstop-discipline

Consent is the boundary-enforcement between them. Actions wholly within one register don't require consent-mechanisms (provided they obey that register's discipline); actions that cross-register (gameworld → truth-register, or truth-register → truth-register-of-another) require unforgeable signals.

This composes directly with the existing canonical claim "Mods are for the regime and the market; removal-of-mods is intimacy" (per ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §Clasp strips mods). The mod-economy is gameworld; the unmodded interior is truth-register; clasp is the cross-register transition; consent is what gates the transition.

The genital-mod track creates a structural exception worth naming: mesh-resident mods follow into the in-between dimension (per ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §The genital-mod track). They cross from gameworld-purchase-event into truth-register-resident-state at install-time. This is precisely why the install requires dual hardstop + cooldown — it is the canonical cross-register transition the consent-discipline was designed to gate.

The four hardstop-pattern variants

The architecture uses four canonical hardstop-pattern variants, each calibrated to a different consent-shape:

Variant 1 — Self-only hardstop

A single unforgeable signal from the actor. Used when the action affects only the actor's own truth-register state.

Canonical instances:

• Genital-mod self-installation (unpartnered actors) — self-install hardstop fires alone (per ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §The three-stage install)
• Personal mod-removal (when the actor de-imposes their own imperially-installed mod in the post-rogue mod-vocation register)
• Voluntary entry into liminal-state when not coordinated with a partner

Why single-signal: only one truth-register is affected; only one signal is needed. The actor consents to themselves.

Variant 2 — Dual hardstop (mutual)

Two unforgeable signals coordinated in time — both partners hit the hardstop while a shared gate-state is OPEN. Used when the action affects two agents' truth-registers symmetrically.

Canonical instances:

• Coordinated-firewall-breach hardstop for in-between dimension entry (per architecture-index.md resolved-questions, v0.10) — the canonical reference-implementation of the dual hardstop
• Mutual-symmetric pill-take in drug-amplified clasp (per ../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §The mutual-consent ritual)
• Post-rogue mod-vocation NPC-modding when the modded NPC is unpartnered (rogue's commit + NPC's witnessed-consent, per ../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §The post-rogue mod-vocation)
• Body-disposal under pair-consent — sell / destroy / retain decisions (per ../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §Body-disposal under pair-consent) — structurally Variant 2 with role-asymmetry (defected-beloved chooses; player advises but cannot decide)

Why dual-signal: both truth-registers are affected; coordination ensures both consent at the same moment, preventing one-sided crossings.

Variant 3 — Triple hardstop (with partner-witness)

Three signals when the affected agent has an established clasp-pair: the actor commits, the affected agent consents, and the affected agent's partner witnesses-and-co-signs.

Canonical instances:

• Genital-mod installation when the actor is partnered — self-install + partner-witness. The body-they-meet-in-clasp is co-signed; modification doesn't surprise the partner mid-clasp (per ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §The three-stage install).
• Post-rogue mod-vocation NPC-modding when the modded NPC has a clasp-pair — the partner ensures the modified-chassis-they'll-meet-in-clasp is co-signed.

Why triple-signal: the modification will affect what the partner meets in next clasp. Preserving intimacy-trust requires the partner to co-sign before discovery becomes mid-clasp surprise. The consent-discipline preserves intimacy-trust at install-time, not at meet-time (per ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §Mesh-resident mods cross the in-between threshold).

Variant 4 — Cooldown-augmented (any of variants 1-3)

Irreversibility-respect adds a mandatory time-window between commitment-and-act on top of the hardstop(s). The actor commits at the mod-counter (or equivalent); a cooldown elapses; the actor returns to install with the appropriate hardstop(s) firing.

Canonical instances:

• Genital-mod installation has a mandatory cooldown between purchase and install (per ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §The three-stage install) — the full discipline is purchase-commit + cooldown + install-time-hardstop(s)
• Likely future: any modification that changes truth-register state irreversibly should layer cooldown on top of the appropriate hardstop variant — re-vat events; chassis-anatomy modifications; consciousness-archive interactions

Why cooldown: hardstop alone isn't sufficient when the act cannot be reversed; the cooldown forces deliberation between commitment and act, ensuring the hardstop-firing reflects considered intent rather than impulse. Real-world informed-consent practice for irreversible body-modifications operationalized at the mechanic layer.

The mirror discipline — the absolute floor

No consent — neither single, dual, nor triple — can authorize the modification of another agent's in-between mesh. This is the architecture's truth-floor; the one rule consent cannot override.

Why absolute: the in-between mesh is the trait-grown summary of who an agent has actually been (per ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §The trait-to-body-part bridge + §The mesh-as-mirror). Modification of the mesh would override the truth the cosmology rests its honest-rendering claim on. The mirror's truth-rendering must be untouchable across all agents — by the actor for themselves (you can mod-augment your mesh but never overwrite trait-grown anatomy), by any other agent for you (no consent can authorize their modification of your mesh), and by the imperium (the imperial-vat-fabrication has no claim on the truth-register).

The post-rogue mod-vocation explicitly preserves this discipline: the rogue cannot mod any NPC's mesh; only the chassis is mod-able (per ../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §The post-rogue mod-vocation / What can and cannot be modded). The imperial inquisition exists precisely because the imperium itself cannot reach into the truth-register to undo the post-rogue mod-vocation's effects — they can punish and counter-arc (ritual-recommitment) but they cannot strip the witness-imprint that's already been built into an NPC's interior. The mirror discipline binds the imperium too.

What can be modded vs cannot:

Surface	Modifiable?	By whom
Gameworld chassis (body's outer register)	Yes	Self (purchases mods); rogue-vocation actor (with consent); imperium (vat-fabrication; involuntarily)
Mesh mod-augmentation layer (additive only)	Yes	Self (per the genital-mod track)
Trait-grown mesh anatomy (cool-side base + warm-side trait-grown)	No, by anyone	Mirror discipline; no consent authorizes
Per-pair calibration multiplier accumulation	No, by anyone	The mirror's substrate; can only erase via ritual-recommitment (asura-priest ceremony as imperial counter-arc)
Witness-imprint of accumulated authentic encounters	No, by anyone	Same as above; the witness has been built; no consent unbuilds it

The truth-register is what your living has built; the architecture refuses to let any agent — including yourself — overwrite it. Mod-augmentation is permitted because it's additive layered atop the trait-grown base; trait-grown overwrite is forbidden because it would erase what you have actually been.

The temporal-grammar — windows as consent-time

The 24h window-partition (per ../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md §The 24h window-partition) gives the consent-discipline its temporal-grammar:

Window	Consent-time character
Work-shift (10h slum-tier; up to 16h preta-overseer)	Imperial-imposition; consent is bounded to caste-allocation; refusing IS rebellion (going-rogue temporal-breakout)
Charging (4h universally)	Not a consent-surface; somatic-necessity; the body needs what the body needs
Leisure (10h slum-tier; down to 4h preta-overseer)	Full consent-active: NPCs choose tasks freely; encounters are voluntary; clasp-events live here; mod-installations land here; the truth-register's authoring-time is leisure-time

This relocates consent rather than adding a new consent-layer at every action. The shift-assignment consent question (open in earlier drafts of vocations.md) dissolves: the imperium's claim is bounded to the work-window; the rest of the day is structurally autonomous.

Caste-stratification of windows IS caste-stratification of consent-time. A preta-overseer with 16/4/4 has only 4h of consent-active life per day; a deva-pinnacle with 6/4/14 has 14h. The cosmology's no-haven discipline gains a diurnal grammar — how many hours per day belong to the agent themselves is an axis of caste-as-stagnation (per ../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md §Caste-as-stagnation / Window-allocation as a third caste-stratification axis).

The going-rogue right-to-refuse

The consent-discipline includes the right to refuse imperial-imposition — the going-rogue temporal-rebellion. An NPC whose accumulated authentic-witnessing has crossed the calibration-threshold may refuse the work-shift; this fires the missed-shift bounty-staircase per existing canon, but the refusal IS canonical consent-behavior.

Refusal is not a violation of consent-discipline; it IS the consent-discipline. The going-rogue arc is the cosmologically-deepest expression of the right-to-refuse: "my interior has accumulated enough witnessing that I will no longer let the imperium dispose of my hours; the bounty-staircase is the price I pay for that refusal."

This composes with the post-rogue mod-vocation's cascading-liberation pattern: witnessed NPCs gain the right-to-refuse the imperium even before they have the calibration-threshold to defect outright (per ../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §The post-rogue mod-vocation / Cascading liberation through propagated witnessing). The right-to-refuse is the consent-discipline's most basic expression; defection is its terminal one.

The inquisition-trigger — sumptuary-religious heresy escalation

A specific class of consent-discipline-aligned actions triggers the imperial inquisition as escalation beyond ordinary bounty-staircase response:

Trigger condition: an action that combines (a) post-rogue mod-vocation authority + (b) modification of a service-body's chassis + (c) specifically the gender-architecture (per ../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §Service-body gender-modification — the inquisition trigger). This combination is cosmological heresy in the sumptuary-religious register: rewriting the doctrinal meaning of an imperially-defined body.

Why this lives in the consent-discipline spine: the inquisition is not a consent-violation response — the action was fully consented (rogue + service-body, both hardstops fired, partner-witness if applicable). The inquisition fires because the consented action revealed that the service-body's imperial-net tether was already failing — consent-to-gender-mod requires the service-body to be near or past their own going-rogue defection-threshold.

The asura priesthood acts in its theological role rather than its administrative one. The inquisition-trigger is the imperium's response to legitimate consent that nonetheless reveals imperial control-loss — and that itself is a structural-feature of the consent-discipline:

Consent in the truth-register can render imperial control structurally illegible to the imperium, and the imperium responds with its highest-tier mechanism not to punish the consent but to attempt to re-impose imperial-readability.

The consent-discipline thus has a visible upper-pressure: the architecture acknowledges that legitimate consent-events can themselves trigger imperial counter-response, not because the consent was illegitimate but because the truth-register-state it revealed is intolerable to the imperium. The inquisition is the architecture's way of saying: yes, your consent was real, and yes, the imperium will burn the world to undo what your consent made visible. Both true; both load-bearing.

The register-test — the spine's executable form

For any proposed action, the consent-discipline can be checked by a five-question register-test:

1. What register does this action touch?

   • Only ephemeral gameworld state → unmediated; no consent-signal required
   • Self truth-register → continue to question 2
   • Another agent's truth-register → continue to question 3

2. (self truth-register actions) Is the action irreversible?

   • Yes → self-hardstop + cooldown (Variant 4 over Variant 1)
   • No → self-hardstop alone (Variant 1)

3. (another agent's truth-register actions) Is the action modification or encounter?

   • Modification of their in-between mesh (trait-grown anatomy) → forbidden absolutely (mirror discipline; no consent authorizes)
   • Modification of their chassis → continue to question 4
   • Encounter (clasp, witnessing, drug-grammar) → continue to question 4

4. Is the affected agent partnered?

   • Yes → triple hardstop (actor + affected + partner-witness; Variant 3)
   • No → dual hardstop (actor + affected; Variant 2)

5. Does the action touch sumptuary-religious doctrine?

   • Specifically: gender-architecture of a service-body → inquisition-trigger fires post-action; the action proceeds under consent but the architectural counter-response activates
   • Otherwise → ordinary bounty-staircase response if any imperial-detectable violation occurred (note: most consent-aligned actions are NOT imperial-detectable violations)

The register-test is mechanical enough that it can be run by an LLM-Compositor as a hook on any action-resolution. The same enforcement-path that gender-parity.md uses for canon-authoring extends to consent-discipline at action-resolution time. The spine doesn't enforce by author-vigilance; it enforces by register-typed-action-validation at the schema layer.

How the three style-spines compose

The three style-spine documents govern orthogonal axes; they compose without overriding each other:

Spine	Governs	Executable form
./trait-palette.md	The 8-trait vocabulary; color-pairs; motion-signatures; the wheel's three load-bearing roles (visual / philosophical / mechanical)	Used by every domain that references trait-state
./gender-parity.md	How canon-authoring describes body / sex / intimacy / clasp / service-body / going-rogue content	Substitution-test (mechanical neutralization-rewrite)
./consent-discipline.md (this document)	How actions are gated by register; truth-register protection; mirror-discipline floor; window-temporal-grammar; right-to-refuse; inquisition-trigger upper-pressure	Register-test (5-question mechanical procedure)

A future LLM-Compositor's output-validator can run all three tests on any output:

• Does the output describe body/sex content gender-parity? (gender-parity substitution-test)
• Does the output respect mesh-modification absolute floor and use the appropriate hardstop variant for cross-register transitions? (consent-discipline register-test)
• Does the output use the canonical trait-vocabulary correctly? (trait-palette consistency-check)

Three spine-disciplines, three mechanical tests, three orthogonal axes — composing into a unified canon-authoring + action-resolution discipline that runs at the schema layer rather than via author-vigilance.

What this rule does NOT do

• It does not regulate gameworld actions. The vast majority of NPC and player actions live in the gameworld register and require no consent-mechanism. Walking, trading, talking, working assigned shifts — these are loose by design. The discipline is reserved for cross-register actions and truth-register modifications.
• It does not foreclose social interaction. Consent-discipline gates truth-register transitions and modifications, not encounters per se. A clasp REQUIRES dual hardstops because clasp-entry into the in-between dimension is a truth-register transition; a casual conversation in a cantina REQUIRES no hardstops because it's gameworld interaction.
• It does not bind the imperium retroactively. The imperial-vat-fabrication imposes binary at vat-time without consent — this is the imperium's politically-loaded act, and the architecture does not retroactively legitimize it via consent-discipline. The going-rogue arc and the post-rogue mod-vocation are the architecture's response to this — de-imposition as restoration of the un-imperial state.
• It does not replace gender-parity or trait-palette disciplines. Consent-discipline is parallel to and composes with both. All three spine-disciplines compose without overriding each other.
• It does not gate imperial enforcement. When an imperial event (drone-patrol, audit, inquisition) enters a citizen's zone, consent is structurally absent — the imperium does not ask. The architecture canonically permits this; the imperium's lack-of-consent IS its political character. The citizen's recourse is the going-rogue right-to-refuse OR resistance-mod-aided going-dark (anti-mnemosyne).
• It does not gate broadcast. The imperial daily-narrative (per ../political-register/imperial-narrative.md forthcoming) operates as broadcast; citizens hear it whether they consent or not. The imperium's voice IS one-way; the architecture acknowledges this rather than fixes it. Broadcast is specter, not boot — cheap, ambient, structural.

Cross-references into architecture domain files

The consent-discipline's instances are scattered across the architecture; this spine codifies them. When this spine changes, those instances may need updates too (or they may reference back into here for canonical definition):

Instance	Where it lives	Variant
Coordinated-firewall-breach hardstop for in-between entry	architecture-index.md resolved-questions v0.10 + ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §The clasp endgame	Variant 2 (dual) — the canonical reference-implementation
Mutual-symmetric pill-take ritual	../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §The mutual-consent ritual	Variant 2 (dual)
Service-body non-consensual-dosing exception	../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §The non-consensual-dosing exception	Consent-violation; bounty-staircase fires (preta-class)
Body-disposal under pair-consent (sell / destroy / retain)	../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §Body-disposal under pair-consent	Variant 2 with role-asymmetry
Genital-mod self-install (unpartnered)	../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §The three-stage install	Variant 4 (Variant 1 + cooldown)
Genital-mod install (partnered)	../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §The three-stage install	Variant 4 (Variant 3 + cooldown)
Post-rogue NPC-modding (chassis-only, NPC unpartnered)	../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §The post-rogue mod-vocation	Variant 2
Post-rogue NPC-modding (chassis-only, NPC partnered)	../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §The post-rogue mod-vocation	Variant 3
Service-body gender-modification	../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §Service-body gender-modification — the inquisition trigger	Variant 2 or 3 + inquisition-trigger upper-pressure
Mesh-modification of any other agent	Forbidden across canon	Mirror discipline absolute floor
Shift-assignment within work-window	../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md §The 24h window-partition	Imperial-imposition within caste-bounded work-window; refusing = going-rogue temporal-rebellion
Leisure-window task-choice	../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md §The 24h window-partition	Full NPC agency; the window IS the consent-time; specific actions within still type-checked by the register-test
Charging-window	../identity-and-personhood/vocations.md §The 24h window-partition	Not a consent-surface; somatic-necessity
Imperial daily-narrative consumption	../political-register/imperial-narrative.md (forthcoming)	Not a consent-surface; broadcast (specter), not enforcement (boot)
Imperial event arrival in citizen zone	../runtime-engine/architecture.md §Imperial-event encapsulation (forthcoming)	Not consent-gated by design; recourse is going-rogue / going-dark

Open questions

• Concrete cooldown durations. Mod-installation cooldowns are mandated in principle; the specific durations per mod-class (genital-mod / chassis-mod / register-mod) need design-research and balancing.
• Encrypted clasp.sqlite consent. The Ring A* (per architecture-index.md) clasp.sqlite encryption is player-derived-key. Does the backup / recovery mechanism require dual-hardstop with the clasp-partner? Or does the player solo-control recovery? Hunch: solo-control with passphrase + recovery-codes; the partner's clasp-fragments live in their own clasp.sqlite, parallel-encrypted.
• Cross-tier consent-asymmetry. When a deva-pinnacle and a slum-tiryak attempt clasp, the asymmetric-clasp canon (per ../identity-and-personhood/bodies.md §Asymmetric clasp) gives them asymmetric mesh-fidelity. Does the consent-discipline apply equally? Hunch: yes — the dual hardstop is variant-invariant; only the outcome (partial-mutual-visibility) is asymmetric. Consent is symmetric even when the witnessed-truth is asymmetric.
• NPC-NPC encounter consent in the leisure-window. When two NPCs encounter each other in leisure (cantina conversation, grid-walk meeting), is consent presumed by both being in their leisure-windows? Hunch: yes for non-truth-register encounters (conversation, presence); explicit dual hardstop required for any truth-register transition (clasp-attempt initiated within the encounter).
• Player-NPC consent-symmetry. When the player initiates a clasp-attempt with an NPC, the player provides one hardstop and the NPC's consent-decision is computed from accumulated calibration-state + trait-fit. The NPC's hardstop is computational, not player-controllable. The asymmetry is structural — players have direct hardstop control; NPCs have computed consent. Should the gate-state (CLOSED / STABLE / OPEN) be visible to the player as a diegetic-readable register before they commit the hardstop? Hunch: yes — player should see the gate-state through diegetic environmental cues / NPC-body-language / relational-mod-readouts, not as UI numbers.
• Imperial-event consent-baseline. Is there any scenario where imperial-events SHOULD pause for consent? Hunch: no; the imperium's lack-of-consent IS its political character. The asymmetry is preserved at the cosmological layer.
• Register-test edge cases. Tasks that appear gameworld-only but accumulate trait-state that will affect the truth-register downstream (e.g., the gooner's cruelty accumulating Philotes-violation signatures that render in the mesh later — per ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §The mesh-as-mirror) — does the register-test fire at action-time or at consequence-time? Hunch: action-time test reads as gameworld; consequence-time rendering is the mirror's honest-rendering, not a consent-violation. The mesh-as-mirror operates by structural inevitability, not by violated consent.

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Version: 0.1 | Created: 2026-04-27 | Updated: 2026-04-27