nimmerworld.eachpath.local/authority-and-decision/architecture.md

Authority and Decision

How authority flows operationally: the four-channel information flow at districts; the hierarchy from imperium through GM through factions through district-directors and overseers down to zones and slots; the bidirectional cascade of policy descending and outcome-signal ascending; the task cascade of bounded-agency tools at every tier; the District-Director's decomposed decision-surface architecture (~90% rule-based, structured LLM-escalation only on ambiguity); the rings-as-structural-pattern recurring shape of graduated authority.

Companion to: architecture-index.md (executive summary + global meta-lists), political-register/architecture.md (the political claim that authority flows through these tiers), narrative-composition/architecture.md (Compositor consumes outcome-signals). Sections in this file were split from the monolithic architecture-index.md v0.7 on 2026-04-26.

The regime of visibility: four-channel information flow at districts

Channel	Direction	Source	Cadence
Dispatch	DOWN	gamemaster → directors	day-boundary + event
Shift assignment	DOWN	director → NPCs	day-boundary
Audit reports	UP (objective, observed)	audit-overseers → directly to imperium	shift-phase cadence
Emergent-signals	UP (relational, observed)	zones → director	event-driven (gate-transitions)
Cyclic needs	UP (interior, self-reported)	NPCs → director	slow tick + threshold-triggered
District reports	UP (aggregate)	director → GM → imperium	per-cycle

The critical asymmetry: NPCs do not self-report output. Audit-overseers observe and report (to imperium directly). NPCs only self-report needs. Output is objective; need is interior. The subjective-objective gap is where drama lives, where heresy hides, where the surveillance regime's epistemology is compressed as a schema.

Audit-overseers are politically-critical NPCs, not degenerate. Each has a trait-vector, relationship-gates with observed districts, lifeforce account (vulnerable to bribery). High-Dikaiosyne overseers report honestly; corruptible overseers can be turned. They are high-stakes targets for both regime (loyalty-maintenance) and resistance (compromise).

Hierarchy

IMPERIUM (policy-issuer; budget-holder; recipient of overseer-direct-intel)
    ▲                                          ↓ formulates to
    │ aggregate reports + faction outcomes      ↓
    │                                            ↓
GAMEMASTER (middle-management; allocator; imperial-policy-translator)
    ▲                                          ↓
    │  ← faction broadcasts                     ↓
    │                                            ↓
FACTIONS:                                        ↓
    hivemind-enforcement · scavengers · memorialists · 
    aletheia-wakers · clasp-underground · caste-preachers ·
    weather · scarcity · solar-storm · anthropic · ...
    + emergent inter-NPC micro-factions

    │  ← gamemaster dispatches                    ↓
    ▼                                              ▼
┌──────────────────┬─────────────────────┐
│  DISTRICT        │  DISTRICT           │
│  DIRECTORS       │  DIRECTORS          │
└────────┬─────────┴──────────┬──────────┘
         │                    │
   ┌─────┴──────┐       ┌─────┴──────┐
   │            │       │            │
   ▼            ▼       ▼            ▼
┌──────┐  ┌────────┐  ┌────────┐  ┌────────┐
│ENFORCE│  │AUDIT-OV│  │DIRECTORS│  │AUDIT-OV│
│OVERSEE│  │(REPORT │  │(macro-  │  │(REPORT │
│  patrol│  │ DIRECT │  │ life)   │  │ DIRECT │
│  raid │  │   TO   │  │         │  │   TO   │
│       │  │IMPERIUM│  │         │  │IMPERIUM│
└───┬───┘  └────────┘  └────┬───┘  └────────┘
    │                       │
    └────────────┬──────────┘
                 ▼
              ZONES (bounded, slot-indexed, register-tagged)
                 │
                 ▼
         SLOT OCCUPANCY (NPCs + player)
                 │
                 ▼
         NPC / PLAYER MINDS

Three executor types at the zone-spawning layer: enforcement-overseers (regime-action zones), audit-overseers (pure observers, report DIRECTLY upward to imperium), zone-directors (macro-life zones). The district director integrates the four-channel information flow; the imperium has its independent intelligence-flow from audit-overseers bypassing the GM.

Overseers as imperially-deployed routines (not district-owned)

Both audit-overseers and enforcement-overseers are imperially-owned, imperially-deployed routines — not district-resident standing entities under the director's authority. The chain-of-command and chain-of-payment for intelligence both bypass district-director authority by design:

• Imperium owns the overseer-role — defines mission-spec, sets enforcement-rules, owns the policy that triggers deployment
• Gamemaster handles deployment-logistics only — picks which overseer-NPC from the standing pool, routes them to the target district, transfers imperial-budget allocation for the deployment-window. The GM is FedEx, not the customer or recipient.
• District contains-but-does-not-control — the deployed overseer operates IN the district, subscribes to the district's NATS bus for observations, but the district director has no authority: cannot direct, redirect, terminate, or instruct; cannot read the overseer's reports (which flow directly to imperium)
• Time-bounded deployments — overseers run on imperial-budget allocations for [start_tick, end_tick] windows. At deployment-end they return to the standing overseer-pool (npcs vocation = audit_overseer or enforcement_overseer), available for redeployment elsewhere
• Visible vs. covert — most overseer-presences are visibly-known (regime-signal as deterrent); some are covert (regime gathers evidence quietly before acting). Detection of covert overseers is a piercing of the regime-veil — an Aletheia-progression-eligible insight

This matches real authoritarian intelligence structures (NKVD, KGB, Stasi, modern MSS): the chain-of-payment and chain-of-command for intelligence must both bypass middle-management for intelligence to remain honest. Even if the GM wanted to corrupt the audit-flow, they have no levers — they don't pay the overseer, don't direct the overseer, don't read the overseer's reports. Intelligence-honesty is structural, not procedural.

The director-vs-overseer tension is therefore mechanically structured, not narrative-flavored: a director with active corruption cannot tell the overseer to leave, cannot observe what they report, can only conceal-better, attempt-bribe, petition-recall (rare; expensive in political-capital), or outwait the deployment-end-tick. Each is a gameplay surface. The same audit-overseer-NPC may serve in District 3 this cycle, District 7 the next, accumulating their own faction-relationships across districts; their trait-drift over many deployments becomes a long-arc story available to both regime-stability and resistance-recruitment.

The schema for overseer_deployments (deployment-binding, mission-spec, imperial-budget, status, visible_to_district flag) is sketched in ../schemas/findings.md §23.

The bidirectional cascade

DOWN — demand + policy propagation
  imperium policy → GM allocation + enforcement → districts
  factions broadcast (under policy-weights) → GM arbitrates → districts
  districts assign shifts → NPCs execute

UP — outcome signal (multi-channel)
  NPC cyclic-needs ─────────────────────┐
  audit-overseer reports ───► IMPERIUM   ├─► district-director aggregates
  zone emergent-signals ─────────────────┘         │
                                                    ▼
                              district report (lifeforce signal)
                                                    │
                                                    ▼
                                       GM aggregates → imperial_report
                                                    │
                                                    ▼
                                       IMPERIUM cross-references
                                       (Flow 1 vs. Flow 2)
                                                    │
                                                    ▼
                                       policy adjustment → cycle

The clean signal up the pyramid IS the training surface for the four-tier Dream-process. Every epoch closes on (broadcasts, allocations, outcomes, faction-satisfaction) tuples at each tier.

Task cascade and bounded agency

Three levels with tool-calling interfaces. Higher levels do not know lower levels' implementations.

Imperium's tools

• set_quota_per_district(targets)
• issue_enforcement_rule(rule_spec, scope)
• set_faction_priority_weights(weights)
• authorize_crisis_tool(tool_class, target_district)
• formulate_to_gm(intelligence_subset, framing)
• commit_imperial_expenditure(category, amount, target)
• redistribute_minds(from_pool, to_district, count)
• formalize_ruin(district)

Gamemaster's tools (against imperial-policy + district-reports)

• assign_district_task, set_local_faction_priority (within imperial-frame)
• spawn_global_event, request_district_report, arbitrate_conflicting_demands
• dispatch_audit_op (costs lifeforce; cross-checks overseer-reports for own purposes)
• escalate_to_imperium (when discretion exceeded)
• spawn_migration_event, enable_exodus_conditions

District Director's tools (against gamemaster-assigned tasks + signals)

Standard:

• spawn_zone, close_zone, promote_zone
• assign_npc_task, allocate_shift, update_shift, close_shift
• request_resources, designate_meeting_point, trigger_ambient_event
• report_to_gamemaster
• ack_emergent_signal / defer_emergent_signal / drop_emergent_signal (with reason)
• dispatch_overseer, query_district_state, log_decision, escalate_to_llm

Cheat-tools (extractive; punishable if detected):

• spawn_drug_ring, spawn_illegal_modshop, spawn_unlicensed_brothel
• spawn_stolen_parts_fence, enable_ghost_shifts, falsify_quota_report

NPC's tools

Standard: move_to, interact, occupy_zone_slot, consume, rest, seek_npc, write_wall, defer_task, report_need.

Layer-transition: enter_digital, sustain_liminal, consume_net.

Plug-in (player + NPCs): plug_into_rail, detach_from_rail, follow, intercept, escort.

District Director: Decision Architecture

Industry default ("wall-of-text LLM prompt → prose decision parsed downstream") is rejected. Reasons: cost-per-decision-constant, latency-catastrophic, opacity-kills-training, prompt-injection-vulnerable, philosophically-wrong-for-the-fiction.

Decomposition first, cognition-escalation second. Director's job decomposes into distinct decision surfaces; each gets minimum cognitive substrate.

Decision surface	Substrate	Escalation path
Shift allocation	Constraint-solver / LP / rule-based	Small-LLM only on ambiguous
Emergent-signal response	Priority-weighted dispatch table	Small-LLM for composite/unknown
Zone-spawn arbitration	Weighted priority queue, lifeforce-gated	Small-LLM for tie-breakers
Overseer dispatch	Round-robin + proximity + availability	None — pure rule
Resource-request forwarding	Budget-check + policy	None — pure rule
District-report composition	Aggregation query (SQL)	None — pure rule
Player-anomaly detection	Classifier (trained on distribution)	Small-LLM for narrative-response
Cheat-decision (corruption pressure)	Rule-based with director-trait modulation	Small-LLM rare; lifeforce-budgeted

~90% rule-based. 5–10% LLM-escalation with structured input + structured tool-call output, lifeforce-counted. Industrial-systems discipline (Kubernetes schedulers, ad-auctioneers, trading systems, compilers) transferred to drama-orchestration.

Tools as vocabulary: every drop is explicit (drop_emergent_signal(signal_id, reason)); every LLM-escalation is counted; every decision pairs with prediction in decision_log. Every decision leaves a trace.

Rings as structural pattern

The architecture uses three-ring gradients as a recurring shape in multiple decoupled subsystems. Each ring-system uses A/B/C cardinality with a Unix-style trust-gradient grammar — inner ring is more constrained, more tightly coupled, more authoritative; outer rings progressively relax constraints in exchange for reach and flexibility.

Ring-system	Inner (A)	Middle (B)	Outer (C)
Inference (§LLM tiering, see inference-and-memory/architecture.md)	Local on player hardware	Our hosted vLLM-multi-LoRA farm	External providers (BYOK)
Importance / attention	Topics with consistent +1 ternary outcomes; pull NPCs across zones	Topics with stable / mixed outcomes	Topics drifting toward -1 / decay if untouched
Access (the three ontological registers)	Imperial net (fully audited, machine-controlled)	Liminal (contested frontier, mini-game-gated)	Gameworld (commons; partly people, partly regime)
Data sharing (v0.4.2)	Default opt-out (sovereignty preserved)	Federated gradients (gradient-only, contributor pseudonymous)	Pseudonymous-full uploads (opted-in, rewarded)

The ring-pattern is not coincidence — it is the right shape for graduated authority in human social systems generally (inner circle / mediated / outer; sovereign / partnership-mediated / captured; tight / mixed / loose). When the architecture needs a graduated authority structure, it should reach for this primitive rather than invent a new one.

Three is the right cardinality. Two collapses to binary (in / out). Four+ adds boundary-thrash without semantic gain. Three carries commons / mediated / sovereign (or its inversion) — the irreducible political-tier.

Movement between rings is dynamic and outcome-driven. Ring-of-importance is the most explicit example: topics climb on +1 results, drop on -1, decay if untouched (Aletheia-style "what isn't being attended to atrophies"). But every ring-system has movement-rules — players can change inference-rings between sessions, can change access-rings via mini-game progression, can change sharing-rings via consent-UI re-affirmation. Ring-membership is never a final assignment.

Future architecture additions involving graduated authority should examine whether the ring-pattern fits before introducing new structure.

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Version: 0.7.0 | Created: 2026-04-26 | Updated: 2026-04-26 | Origin: Split from architecture-index.md v0.7 (2026-04-26)