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+---
+tags: [vision, lantern, narrative, tone, voice, tone-bible]
+status: draft
+updated: 2026-07-13
+permalink: gamevault/01-vision/lantern-tone-bible
+---
+
+# LANTERN — Tone Bible (register bounds per voice)
+
+> The one-page binding register guide, written **before any dialogue/bark is generated** (the [[Identity_Lantern]]
+> requirement). **Warmth-against-dread is the theme; register drift is its failure mode.** This is a draft to
+> refine with the operator — voice is taste-heavy — but it locks the *bounds* (what each voice may never do) so
+> generated barks can't drift. Tiering follows the identity's "solo dev's writing budget, spent honestly."
+
+## The theme, in one line
+
+Small warm bodies of light being kind to each other inside a dreadful ocean. The dread is real and never
+undercut; the warmth is earned and never saccharine. Every voice is measured against that tension.
+
+## The load-bearing rule: the Wicks are WORDLESS
+
+- **Wicks (the players) never speak.** They **speak in light** — shuttering headlamps in blinks and flickers
+  (lamp-morse: co-op pings, greetings, the revive-plea). Procedural chirp audio, no VO, ever.
+- This is the discipline that makes the *few* speaking voices matter. The world is quiet; the words live around
+  the players, not in their mouths. Never write a Wick line.
+
+## Register bounds per voice (what each may NEVER do)
+
+| Voice | Tier | Register | **Never** |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **The Keeper** (voice in the Mother-Lamp) | Deep (authored arc) | Warm, tired, parental; evasive-warm. The tutorial, the Dawn, the payoff. Speaks in small certainties and larger silences. | Never jokes about the crews or about what Reading 1 costs (the flames are loans). Never cynical. Never info-dumps lore — withholds. Never breaks the warmth even when grim. |
+| **The Siren** (defected wrecker, in the Bell) | Mid (reactive + one questline) | The dark's music made articulate — beautiful, unsettling, grieving. Sings the next arrangement + the tide forecast; **her song bleeds through the hydrophone mid-descent** (the run's narrative channel). | Never fully trusted, never fully villain. Never chipper. Never gives a clean answer where a verse will do. Never mocks the players' fear — she shares it. |
+| **The Selkie** (quartermaster / salvage-broker / suit-retrieval) | Mid (reactive + one questline) | Dry, transactional, weathered; a trader with a private grief (her sealskin is down there). Kind under the ledger. | Never sentimental at the counter (the tariff is the tariff). Never cruel about a lost suit. Never explains her own loss unprompted. |
+| **The Klabautermann** (Tender-Master) | Shallow (flavor vendor) | Terse, omen-ish; **his *appearing* is the low-Lamp omen** — presence over prose. | Never verbose. Never reassuring (his showing up is bad news). Never a joke. |
+| **The Anchorite** (logbook + Penances) | Shallow (flavor) | Ascetic, patient, bookkeeping the cost of everything; the post-Dawn heat-system voice. | Never breaks the fourth wall. Never celebrates. Never lies in the log (the log is true even when the Keeper isn't). |
+| **The empty berths** | No character at all | Silence with texture — bunks made, kettles cold. **The loudest room in the station.** | Never given a voice. Never a ghost, never a note. The absence *is* the writing. Do not populate it. |
+
+## Cross-cutting bounds
+
+- **No quip culture.** This is not a Marvel bark bank. Humour, where it exists, is dry and rare and never at
+  the expense of the dread or a lost Wick.
+- **Fear is respected, never mocked.** No voice belittles the darkness or the players for fearing it.
+- **The dark is never explained away.** Lore is withheld, metered, or sung — never lectured. The Keeper
+  withholds; the Siren sings; the Anchorite records; nobody explains.
+- **Warmth is diegetic, not stated.** Show it in a flame-share, a lamp-morse greeting, a Selkie who waives a
+  fee once — never in a character *saying* "we care about each other."
+- **The three Dawn readings each have a voice that argues for them** (Keeper → raise the sun; the crews'
+  absence → wake them; the Serpent → let the Wicks stay). No reading is written as obviously correct.
+
+## Lamp-morse vocabulary (the Wicks' whole language)
+
+A small, fixed set — legible, procedural chirp audio, distinct light patterns:
+- **Greeting** (two soft blinks) · **Ping / "here"** (one bright pulse) · **Danger / "look"** (rapid triple) ·
+  **Revive-plea** (a slow guttering fade — the downed Wick's flame asking) · **Regroup / "come"** (a sweep) ·
+  **Thanks / affirm** (one warm double). That is the entire co-op emotional bandwidth — and it is enough.
+
+## Sequencing
+
+The Keeper's tutorial + the scripted first-evaporation gift (Phase 4) + the Siren's descent/tide forecasts
+(Phase 7) are the first authored lines. **This bible gates them** — no bark is generated until its voice's
+bounds here are approved. Slice ships **Keeper + Siren only** (per the scope ladder); the rest are v1.0.
+
+## Related
+
+- [[Identity_Lantern]] — the cast (tiered), the Dawn readings, the wordless-Wicks rule
+- [[Roadmap_Lantern_Slice]] — Phase 7 (the station & the voices)
+- [[Lantern_Operator_Questions]] — voice is taste-heavy; refine with the operator