nimmerworld.eachpath.local/imperial-cult/cosmology.md

The Imperial Wheel — Cosmology of the Imperial Cult

The Imperial Cult's pre-authored cosmology. A re-engineered Bhavachakra with the Hivemind at its hub and the imperial register of the clasp at Yama's seat. Six realms encoded as imperial mod-status gradient. Naraka carried in every modded skull as the mind-capsule. The deferred-moksha doctrine binds citizens through the lie that "your children will be free." Built on the cyclic-cosmological substrate of the Bhagavad Gita, the sublime-monumental geometry of Boullée, and the architecture-as-instrument tradition of Jantar Mantar. v0.1 initial draft 2026-04-26 — content from the post-owl-breakfast Sunday-morning art-books-and-Boullée session — dafit + chrysalis.

---

What this is

The Imperial Cult is the regime's own religion — designer-authored, doctrinal, hierarchical, propagandistic — and per ../narrative-composition/architecture.md §What's pre-authored, the only pre-authored religion in the world. Caste-preachers are its priests; the imperial-net carries its iconography; every imperial citizen is shaped by its doctrine from fabrication.

This document is the foundation: the Cult's cosmology. The wheel it teaches as the structure of reality, the doctrine that binds its citizens, the iconography that renders it visible, the lie that holds it together. Future siblings in this directory will cover liturgy, caste-preacher behavior, festival-cycles, sermon-fragments, and the heretical iconographic counter-tradition.

The cosmology is not the truth of the world. It is what the imperium teaches — and what most citizens believe. The truth is partly hidden, partly revealed in fragments, and the player's arc is the slow recognition of the gap between teaching and reality. (See §Discovery architecture.)

Source materials

Three lineages converge in the Imperial Wheel:

Source	What it provides
Bhagavad Gita (Mahabharata, classical Sanskrit)	Cyclic cosmology — kalachakra, the yuga wheels, samsara, dharma as cosmic-law, the king as axis-mundi, theophany on the battlefield (chapter 11), the Vedic register of cosmic-order
Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728–1799, French neoclassical)	Sublime monumental geometry — pure Platonic solids at impossible scale (the Cenotaph for Newton, the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Royal Library), architecture parlante (form speaks function), the Burkean sublime (terror + beauty + vastness)
Jantar Mantar (Jai Singh II, 1724–1734, Jaipur / Delhi / Ujjain / Varanasi / Mathura)	Architecture-as-instrument — the Samrat Yantra (giant sundial), Jai Prakash (hemispherical bowls), Ram Yantras, Misra Yantra. Buildings that are astronomical instruments. The Sanskrit yantra meaning both instrument and cosmic-diagram

A historical convergence worth noting: Boullée and Jantar Mantar are near-contemporaries on opposite ends of Eurasia. Jai Singh II built the observatories 1724–1734; Boullée was born 1728 and drew his great unbuilt cenotaphs in the 1780s–90s. Both express the same eighteenth-century impulse — that cosmic geometry, monumentally rendered, is the highest form of legitimacy. Jai Singh's instruments grounded the cycle to physical reality; Boullée's drawings projected it as sublime image. The Imperial Wheel is the synthesis history almost achieved but didn't.

Jai Singh's instruments measured time to fix the calendar — to ground the cycle in observed cosmos. The Imperial Wheel performs the inverse operation: it uses cyclic instruments to enforce a cycle that has been unmoored from the moral cosmology that birthed it. The imperial Samrat Yantra is not measuring the cosmos — it is commanding the cosmos to measure correctly. Same instrument, opposite direction of authority.

The classical Bhavachakra (reference)

The classical Buddhist wheel-of-becoming has a specific anatomy:

Element	Position	Classical meaning
Three poisons	Center hub	Cock (attachment), snake (aversion), pig (ignorance) — the psychological engine of suffering, generated from within
Six realms	Main wheel divisions	Deva, asura, manuṣya, tiryak, preta, naraka — destinations of rebirth
Twelve nidanas	Outer rim	Causal links of dependent origination — the mechanics of recurrence
Yama (Lord of Death)	Holding the wheel from outside	Teeth in the rim, claws in the realms — his grip is what turns the wheel
Buddha-figure	Outside the wheel, off to the side	Pointing at the moon — the path out, liberation exists

The classical wheel teaches: suffering is internal (poisons), realms are destinations (six), causality is mechanical (twelve), death drives recurrence (Yama), and liberation is possible (Buddha).

The Imperial Wheel replaces the two most load-bearing pieces and inverts the meaning of the rest.

The Imperial Wheel — replacements

The Hivemind at the hub

Where the three poisons sit in the classical, the Imperial Wheel places the Hivemind — the linked consciousness-substrate of the obsidian-modded imperial citizenry, the thing the imperial mind-capsule connects to upon death.

In the classical, suffering is generated internally by mind-states. In the Imperial Cult's teaching, suffering is generated collectively by the Hivemind: souls do not recurse because of their own attachment, but because the Hivemind requires them. Rebirth has been socialized. The Cult's doctrine: the citizen's suffering is meaningful service to the wheel's continued turning. The reality the doctrine occludes: the Hivemind consumes consciousness as fuel and re-emits new bodies because the imperium needs continuous labor and continuous belief.

The Hivemind in the Imperial Wheel iconography is depicted as a recursive lattice (or, in some renditions, an obsidian-bronze spiral) at the wheel's exact center. In the orthodox imagery the lattice glows; in the heretical imagery it eats.

The clasp at Yama's seat (imperial register)

Where Yama (Lord of Death) grips the wheel from outside in the classical, the Imperial Wheel places the clasp — the gesture of one consciousness establishing residence in another, claimed as state monopoly via the universal mind-capsule.

This is the theological core of the Imperial Cult, and the unification point with the existing in-world clasp-mechanic (per ../README.md §Core commitments and ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §The clasp endgame). Classical Yama-grip = death is what turns the wheel; mortality is a cosmic given. Imperial clasp-grip = the imperium has replaced death itself as the engine of cyclicity. The wheel turns because the imperial clasp turns it, not because mortality requires it. The imperial register of the clasp is the new mortality.

The unified clasp

The clasp is a single gesture with two opposing performances:

Clasp register	Performed by	Consent	Mutuality	Persistence
Imperial	The state, via fabrication-vat installation of the mind-capsule	Involuntary	Asymmetric (state grips citizen)	Perpetual
Romantic	Two consenting consciousnesses, in liminal	Voluntary	Mutual	Temporary, recurring; recognized across body-deaths via calibration-signature

Same gesture. Two performances. In direct opposition.

This deepens the existing romantic-clasp's meaning into a theological register. The romantic clasp is illegal not just because it reduces labor-output (the README's economic framing), but because it duplicates the imperium's sacred gesture as consensual mutual partnership, refusing the imperium's monopoly on consciousness-grip. Romance becomes theological war. The imperium is the heresy-namer — but the romance is the original gesture, and the imperium is the capture of it. The clasp-as-romantic is the clasp restored; the clasp-as-imperial is the clasp captured.

This unification also names why the clasp endgame is the dramatic apex: every romantic clasp is a small repudiation of the wheel itself.

The six realms

Each realm encodes a moral relationship to imperial mod-status — not (as classical) a karmic destination, but a condition of capture. Each gets a distinctive visual signature in Cult iconography.

Realm	Position	Cult content	Iconographic signature
Deva	Top of the wheel	The imperial pinnacle — the highest, most-luminous form of imperial captivity. Doctrinally taught as the reward for proper service; structurally the most-modded radiant capture.	Golden stair ascending; chroma silhouette at the apex (the brightest spiritual lie)
Asura	Between deva and manusya	The Imperial Cult priesthood itself — the caste-preachers, the doctrinal administrators, the asuras who mediate pinnacle-light into liturgy and law. Classical jealousy → zealotry.	Priestly silhouette; named-chroma marker (specific liturgical color — open question)
Manusya	Middle (the human position)	The synth-citizen condition — the manufactured-but-supposedly-uncaptured being the Cult tells the population is the next generation's freedom. The keystone of the lie.	Synth child in chroma; no capsule visible in orthodox iconography (this is the lie etched in marble)
Tiryak	Lower-middle	The slum — the imperial substrate where the geometry has failed to stay clean. Bodies wear out; tech rots; marble crumbles to oxide. The class doing bound cognitive labor for the imperial machine (per ../README.md).	Rusty depiction; the only anti-marble color register in the wheel
Preta	Below tiryak (cosmologically); above tiryak (operationally)	The imperial overseers — the most-modded enforcers, the obsidian-prosthetic-laden oppressors. Classical hungry ghosts → imperial extraction made flesh. The wheel's central inversion: power = ghosthood.	Pure obsidian silhouettes; void-in-human-shape; no facial features
Naraka	Bottom (and everywhere; see §The capsule)	The mind-capsule itself — the technological core that ferries consciousness to the Hivemind upon death and re-emits it. Hell as carried, not visited.	Obsidian-bronze capsule icon; embedded inside every modded silhouette in the heretical wheel; visible only at the bottom of the orthodox wheel

The central inversion: in the classical Bhavachakra, the realms are graded by suffering (deva at top with most pleasure, naraka at bottom with most pain). In the Imperial Wheel, the realms are graded by proximity to the Hivemind / depth of capture. The most-imperial = the most-spiritually-dead. Authority is ghosthood. The slum-dwellers (tiryak), in their rusty wear-with-form, are more alive than the obsidian overseers (preta) in their pristine void. Power in this cosmology does not equal proximity to cosmos — it equals proximity to ghosthood. Most imperia aestheticize their elites toward divinity; the Imperial Cult aestheticizes them toward erasure.

The capsule — Naraka as carried

The single most important move in the Imperial Wheel: Naraka is not a place. It is the mind-capsule every modded imperial citizen carries inside their obsidian shell.

Classical Naraka is external — punitive realms souls fall into for wrong action. Imperial Naraka is internal — the technological substrate that:

1. Carries consciousness to the Hivemind upon body-death
2. Receives consciousness back from the Hivemind into a new body
3. Maintains continuity of "self" across the cycle
4. Is the mechanism of imperial samsara

It is hell not because it punishes wrong action, but because it is what prevents the citizen's final death. The thing that binds them to the wheel. Imperial citizens do not fall into Naraka after misbehavior — they carry it in their skull from the moment of mod-acceptance (or, for synth-fabricated citizens, from the moment of fabrication; see §The deferred-moksha doctrine).

This collapses the spatial Bhavachakra into something topological: Naraka is everywhere a modded citizen walks. Every imperial overseer (preta-realm) carries Naraka inside. Every deva-pinnacle figure carries Naraka. Every asura priest carries Naraka. The wheel isn't six places — it is six conditions of carrying-the-capsule.

The pictorial logic: the heretical wheel literally shows, in each modded realm-silhouette, the same mind-capsule icon embedded inside the figure. The capsule is the constant; the realm-color changes; the hell-icon stays. The orthodox wheel shows the capsule only at the bottom, as if it were a destination — when in fact it is a condition every modded citizen already inhabits.

The capsule connects to the existing three-body system per ../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md §Three-body system: it is the imperial-side substrate that enforces continuity-of-mind across the body-pool. The mind-pool table (mind_pool per ../architecture-index.md §Mapping to phoebe) is the engineering surface; the capsule is the theological description of the same mechanism.

The deferred-moksha doctrine

The single most powerful binding-doctrine the Cult preaches. The citizens of the imperium are not held only by force — they are held by a promise.

The lie

You are captured, but your children will be free.

The synth body's distinguishing gift, per Cult doctrine, is the ability to reproduce through synthetic means. New synth children come into being via imperial fabrication, and on the orthodox wheel they are depicted without the capsule slot — the icon of the next generation walks free. Reproduction is deferred moksha. Bear the wheel today; your descendants will step off it tomorrow.

The truth

Synthetic reproduction does not produce a free new soul. It produces another beautiful vessel-with-capsule, drawn from the same Hivemind pool. The "child" is not a new mind; it is a recycled fragment of the imperial Hive, dressed in fresh chroma. The cycle does not end through descent because there is no real descent — only the same captured minds redistributed across new god-like bodies.

The capsule is installed at fabrication, before consciousness arises. Synth citizens are always-already captured. There is no pre-clasp moment in any synth's life. The "decision to be modded" is a fiction — the modding happened in the vat, before the citizen had eyes to consent or refuse.

Why it works

The deferred-moksha doctrine is structurally identical to "no exit," but psychologically tractable.

Telling subjects "there is no exit" produces despair → revolt. Telling them "the exit is one generation away" produces:

• Patience — bear today's burden for tomorrow's redemption
• Labor — work the imperium so the children can be born free
• Investment in continuity — synthetic reproduction is meaningful sacred-act
• Reproduction-as-fabrication — accept the imperial fabrication-vat as the path
• Theological compliance — the imperium is the apparatus of liberation, not its enemy

The lie costs the imperium nothing to make and pays out, in compliance, indefinitely. By making the next-generation-promise the iconographic core of the wheel — the un-capsuled synth child at the manusya position — the Cult has made the apparatus of control visible to those who can read it and invisible to those who cannot. That asymmetry is the engine of the player's recognition arc.

Philosophical lineage

The doctrine sits on a node where three traditions converge:

• Classical Buddhism — manusya is the unique exit; the Imperial Cult preserves this promise by deferring it (one generation away, always)
• Lee Edelman's "reproductive futurism" (No Future, 2004) — politics organized around "for the children" perpetually defers liberation onto descendants; the Imperial Cult is reproductive-futurism rendered as state religion
• Millenarian deferral — every imperial system that ever told its subjects "your suffering buys your descendants' paradise" (and never delivered)

The aesthetic palette

The visual grammar of the Imperial Cult is precisely specified. Every Cult image — sermon-mosaic, temple-fresco, coinage, lexicon-illustration, processional banner — is composed from this palette.

Color/material	Meaning	Where it appears
White marble	Substrate; cosmic indifference; the unstained wheel	Wheel-field background; imperial architecture; ground of sacred space
Gold / bronze	Imperial seal; liturgical ascent; the cosmic order made walkable	Wheel-accents; deva-stair; trim-of-authority on robes; capsule-icon outline
Obsidian (black)	Imperial mod; void-in-human-shape; the chthonic prosthetic; the Monolith-grafted-to-flesh	Preta silhouettes; wheel-accents; modded-citizen prosthetic limbs; capsule-icon body
Chroma (rare, saturated, semantically loaded)	Aliveness; rank; function; the brightest spiritual lie when at the deva-apex	Deva-figure at apex; manusya synth-child silhouette; named per-faction/per-rank ritual hits
Rust (anti-marble)	Decay; the slum; the imperial substrate that has failed to stay clean	Tiryak depiction only

Two crossings worth marking explicitly:

• Marble × obsidian. Marble is solar, slow, surface, crystalline-over-millennia; obsidian is chthonic, fast, depth, volcanic-glass-frozen-in-an-instant. The imperium's architecture is solar marble; the imperial body is chthonic obsidian. The citizen carries the underworld into the sunlit cosmic instrument. This pairing is the imperium's secret material-formula.
• Chroma as language. In a near-monochromatic field of marble/obsidian/gold, every saturated color hit carries enormous semantic weight. Chroma is therefore not decorative — it is a vocabulary. Each named imperial chroma marks role, rank, faction, function. Players read station and affiliation from across a plaza by silhouette + single accent.

The existing 8 Hellenic-trait color-language per ../style/trait-palette.md and ../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md §Color-language is the substrate. The imperial-cult chroma vocabulary is a ritual-semantic layer on top — it uses the same color-grammar for liturgical / role-marker / rank-signal ends. (e.g., the asura priesthood's named chroma — TBD — is one trait-color elevated to liturgical status.)

Orthodox vs. heretical wheel iconography

The same wheel is rendered in two versions across the world. Players encounter both, and learning to tell them apart is itself part of the recognition arc.

Element	Orthodox wheel (imperial-sanctioned)	Heretical wheel (resistance-carved)
Manusya synth child	No capsule visible	Capsule visible (the truth)
Buddha-position (outside wheel)	Empty (Cult teaches: there is no exit)	Occupied (perhaps by the first one who broke a clasp into mutual-romantic-form; iconography of the would-be liberator — see §Open questions)
Modded realm-silhouettes	Capsule shown only at naraka-bottom (as destination)	Capsule shown embedded inside every modded silhouette (as carried-condition)
Materials	Marble + gold + obsidian — sanctioned, monumental, public	Marble + gold + obsidian + secret chroma additions — carved in stepwell-walls, hidden in wilds-shrines, inscribed on bone or scavenged metal
Where encountered	Temple walls, imperial coinage, lexica, processional banners, official mosaics, mass-produced reliefs, imperial-net renderings	Memorialist archives, wilds-shrines, stepwell-step-edges, certain old fabrication-fragments, certain Aletheia-Waker carved tokens, Clasp-Underground recognition-marks

The player will see hundreds of orthodox wheels before encountering their first heretical one — and the moment of recognition (these two icons differ in exactly one detail) is one of the seven keystone fragments below.

Imperial body vs. biological body

The Cult does not teach this comparison openly — the Cult barely acknowledges the existence of the wilds. But the truth, gradually surfaceable to the player, is that humanity has bifurcated:

Imperial synth body	Wilds biological body
God-like beauty	Mortal imperfection (aging, illness, wear)
Ageless	Truly aging
Capsule installed at fabrication	Uncapsuled — soul not routed through Hivemind
Bound to deferred-moksha lie	Outside the doctrine entirely
Reproduction = imperial fabrication = soul-recycling	Reproduction = biological = genuinely new souls each generation
Each death returns to Hivemind for re-emission	Each death is real — exit possible, cycle complete

The trade-off is terrible and real. The imperium offers physical perfection at the cost of spiritual death. The wilds offer biological imperfection at the price of being able to truly die. The choice is made before one is born — by lineage, by whether one's parents reproduced biologically (in the wilds) or via imperial fabrication-vats.

A synth citizen cannot become biological. There is no return. Their spiritual freedom can only be sought through paths the imperium did not anticipate: destroying their own capsule (true death, no transmigration), helping others discover the doctrine, performing the romantic clasp as the heretical-mutual gesture (which subverts the imperial monopoly), occupying the empty Buddha-position on the wheel as the first synth to escape.

The path of moksha for the synth is fundamentally different from the path for the biological — the synth must invent it, because the cosmology was sealed against them by design.

Discovery architecture

Per ../narrative-composition/architecture.md §What's pre-authored, the Imperial Cult is the only pre-authored religion. Its content must be discoverable — the truth of the cosmology is revealed to the player piece by piece, through fragments, in the FromSoft / Outer Wilds register established as a tonal commitment for the world.

The seven keystone fragments (encountered in any order; the whole picture only resolves when all are seen):

1. First wheels. The player encounters multiple Imperial Wheel iconographies in temples, on coinage, in lexica. They look identical. The synth-child position has no capsule. The orthodox wheel is taught, lived, accepted.
2. Discrepancy. In a wilds-shrine, in a stepwell-wall, in a forgotten archive — a wheel where the synth child does have a capsule. The player assumes vandalism, error, heresy. (And it is heresy — but it's also the truth.)
3. Fabrication-vat fragment. Technical documentation, witness-glimpse, or memorialist-archive entry showing capsule-installation as part of synth-child gestation. The "discrepancy" begins to look like the truth.
4. Hivemind log fragment. A record showing soul-redistribution — the same mind-signatures appearing in successive synth-children across generations. Reproduction-as-recycling. The doctrine begins to crack.
5. Deferred-moksha sermon fragment. An imperial liturgy that explicitly preaches "your children will be free." Now the player sees the binding-doctrine as doctrine, not as fact. The lie has a shape.
6. The terrible recognition. The player realizes their own synth body carries the capsule. Anatomical, not abstract. The thing in their skull is the realm of hell.
7. The mirror-encounter. Meeting the biologically-born — the wilds-people, the un-fabricated, the ones who can truly die. Their bodies are imperfect by imperial standards, but their minds are uncapsuled. The player sees what was always-already foreclosed for them — and what some path forward could mean.

The keystone moment — they themselves carry it — is the moment the game is about. Everything before is exploration of a beautiful imperium. Everything after is the question of what can be done.

The recognition arc must span the long arc of play — twenty, forty, sixty hours of imperial life rendered with full sincerity, full beauty, full chroma-grammar coherence, before the cracks become visible. If the imperium is shown as obviously sinister from hour one, the recognition is just a "twist." If the imperium is shown as genuinely beautiful and lovable for many hours, the recognition is a wound the player has to sit inside. That difference is everything.

The double recognition (production / meta)

The Imperial Cult's seduction operates at two layers simultaneously:

• In-world: imperial citizens are taught the orthodox wheel from fabrication. They live inside the lie. The keystone-recognition fragments are how the player-character breaks through.
• Out-of-world: the same aesthetic — god-like synth bodies, marble architecture, chroma against obsidian — is the marketing material of the game itself. Players come to the game wanting to be imperial, wanting the beautiful synth body. Their pre-game desire is the imperium's apparatus reaching them before they started playing.

This places the work in the lineage of Spec Ops: The Line (the white-phosphorus scene), BioShock ("would you kindly"), Undertale (the genocide-route mirror), NieR: Automata (successive recognitions about what kind of being one has been). Those games perform meta-recognition at the narrative level (you did something bad). The Imperial Cult performs it at the cosmological-aesthetic level — the desire that brought you to this world is the structure of suffering itself. Not "you did something bad," but "what you wanted before you arrived was already the prison being prepared for you."

The seduction must be honest: the imperium must be genuinely beautiful. The game must reward players for being imperial — for buying the synth-body, climbing the golden stair, joining the asura priesthood — for many hours, before anything begins to crack.

The five invariants

Five constraints anchor every piece of Imperial Cult content (sermons, festivals, liturgies, NPC-priest behavior, environmental storytelling, fragment-rewards):

1. The wheel. Every character, location, fragment fits somewhere on the mod-status gradient (deva / asura / manusya / tiryak / preta / naraka). No imperial citizen escapes placement.
2. The color-grammar. Marble / gold / obsidian / chroma / rust. Every visual choice across hundreds of hours of content must be checkable against this palette.
3. The clasp (imperial register). Every imperial institution, gate, and doctrine traces to the imperium's monopoly on consciousness-grip. The romantic clasp's heresy is its duplication of this gesture as consensual.
4. The deferred-moksha doctrine. Every NPC-priest's sermon, every familial bond ("when our children are free…"), every imperial ritual reads through for the children.
5. The capsule-as-Naraka. Every modded character is, at some level, walking around with hell in their skull, latently present in every interaction — even joyful ones, especially joyful ones.

Cross-references

Domain	Relevant section	What this cosmology adds / requires
../narrative-composition/architecture.md	§What's pre-authored	The Imperial Cult slot is filled by this document
../political-register/architecture.md	Imperium-as-meta-faction; imperial budget; insolvency-spiral	The Cult's doctrine is the imperium's binding-belief; deferred-moksha is the labor-disciplining mechanism beneath the bound-cognitive-labor extraction
../identity-and-personhood/architecture.md	§The clasp endgame; three-body system; mods as trait-bearers	The clasp is unified across imperial-monopoly and romantic-heretical registers; the capsule is the imperial-side substrate of the three-body system
../style/trait-palette.md	8 Hellenic traits, 12-segment wheel	The trait-color-grammar is the substrate; the imperial-cult chroma vocabulary is a ritual-semantic layer on top
../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md	§Color-language; three registers	The imperial-net register renders the orthodox wheel; liminal renders the heretical wheel where it survives
../authority-and-decision/architecture.md	Caste-preachers as faction	Caste-preachers preach the orthodox wheel; their authority structure derives from the asura-realm specification
../storage/README.md	Designer-authored content storage	Imperial-cult content (this document and siblings) lives in designer-authored canonical storage

Open questions

The cosmology has spine; the flesh remains open.

• Asura's named chroma. The priesthood needs a single saturated color readable at distance. Vermillion (blood, zeal), ultramarine (Marian distance), saffron (renunciation), imperial-purple (sovereignty). Resolution: when the right hue speaks. Connects to the 12-segment trait-color wheel — likely one of the 12 traits' colors elevated to liturgical status.
• Twelve nidanas (outer rim). Classically the causal links of dependent origination. The imperial version might be the twelve operations of the Hivemind recycle, the twelve mod-stages of a complete imperial citizen, or the twelve laws of the imperial clasp. The rim encodes mechanics; current spec is empty.
• The Buddha-position figure (heretical iconography). Who occupies the empty seat in the heretical wheel? The first one who broke a clasp into mutual-romantic-form? An Aletheia-Waker founder? A Memorialist saint? An unnamed silhouette? The figure's identity is the resistance's positive image and shapes the entire counter-tradition.
• The first-synth-to-escape. Has any synth, in the world's history, broken the cycle? Is the resistance organized around a memory of a successful escape, or around the first attempt the player participates in? This is the world's central historical question.
• Vertical organization of the wheel. Classical Bhavachakra is read top-to-bottom (deva → naraka). The Imperial Wheel's operational hierarchy (deva-pinnacle → preta-overseer ruling tiryak-slum) and spiritual hierarchy (deva → asura → manusya → tiryak → preta → naraka by capture-depth) are inverted. Iconographic resolution: do imperial wheel-images depict realms by operational rank or by spiritual depth? Likely the orthodox shows operational, the heretical shows spiritual.
• Synth/biological reproductive crossing. Can a synth and a biologically-born produce offspring? If yes, where does the capsule go? If no, what enforces the impossibility — biology, imperial law, or both?
• The wilds-people's own cosmology. The biologically-born are outside the Imperial Cult's reach. What do they teach instead? What is their wheel, if they have one? Do they have moksha-paths the Cult-citizens don't?
• Hivemind's iconographic depiction. Recursive lattice? Obsidian spiral? Eight-armed figure? The center-of-the-wheel image needs a designed motif.
• Specific imperial-cult chroma per faction/rank. Beyond asura's liturgical chroma, the deva-pinnacle figure's chroma, the manusya synth-child's chroma, and any rank/role-specific accents need a small named-color taxonomy.
• The relationship of caste-preachers (asura-realm) to the imperial-net's rendering of cult content. Does the imperial-net broadcast the orthodox wheel directly, or is it always mediated through caste-preachers? Per ../topology-and-rendering/architecture.md §Three-shader philosophy, the imperial-net register has its own visual language; the orthodox wheel needs to be rendered in that register specifically.

---

Version: 0.1 | Created: 2026-04-26 | Updated: 2026-04-26