Docs: LANTERN Phase 0 — full pivot adoption + all-doc sweep

Adopt LANTERN as the operative direction (co-op action-RPG, light-as-territory),
superseding the Awakening Engine fiction + the Co-op Hades iteration. Existing
code becomes salvage quarry; the mechanical pillars hold.

Phase 0 deliverables (doc portions):
- DR-048 adoption decision record (0.1)
- Lantern_Strip_Mothball_Inventory — system-by-system keep/rework/mothball (0.2)
- Lantern_World_Model_Spike — pocket-graph + seed-pinning BRIEF, review-first (0.3)
- Art_Direction_Lantern — style bible + material decision + A0 gate (0.4)

Docs/skills sweep: Pillars pointers + LANTERN locked decisions; superseded
banners on Identity, Iteration_CoopHades, Path_to_Fun, Milestones, Backlog,
End_Of_Month (all redirect to the LANTERN roadmap); Home MoC + current-direction
callout (and stale serena line fixed); Systems_Index era note; CLAUDE.md
core-loop line -> LANTERN direction pointer (verbose co-op-Hades invariants
archived to the gotchas archive, net-neutral under the 40 KB budget); dots-dev
validation-harness expedition-run recipe flagged era-specific.

Two Phase-0 gate items remain OPEN (not doc work): the 0.3 world-model design
review and the 0.4 in-engine style-proof scene.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Docs/Vault/01_Vision/Art_Direction_Lantern.md

@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
+---
+tags: [vision, art-direction, lantern, style-bible, workstream-a]
+status: draft-binding
+updated: 2026-07-13
+permalink: gamevault/01-vision/art-direction-lantern
+---
+
+# LANTERN — Art Direction Lock (Workstream A0)
+
+> The binding one-page style bible for [[Roadmap_Lantern_Slice]]'s art track (Workstream A0, runs inside
+> Phase 0). Adopted under [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]]. This is the **written** half of A0; the
+> gate is the **in-engine style-proof scene** (below), which is **not yet built** — Phase 0 does not exit
+> until it is approved. The readability law is lifted verbatim from [[Identity_Lantern#Art, audio & the
+> readability law|the identity]] and applies to every asset from day one.
+>
+> **Why this matters more than usual:** one developer, learning Blender, shipping custom creatures. This
+> direction lives or dies on a **repeatable factory**, not on any single beautiful asset. Every rule here is
+> chosen so that creature N+1 is a routine sitting, not a research project.
+
+## Style bible (binding)
+
+- **Stylized low-poly, RoR2-lineage.** Silhouette-first; faceted geometry; flat / near-flat shading. Mood is
+  carried by **dynamic light in murk**, never by texture detail. A readable blob with a great light beats a
+  detailed model nobody can see in the dark.
+- **Poly budgets (hard):** props **≤ ~800 tris** · creatures **≤ ~3k** · hero / boss / suit-frames **≤ ~6k**.
+- **The palette is the ontology** (the fiction rule made visible): **warm gold/amber = light (ours, true) ·
+  cold corpse-green/blue = gloam (the deep's counterfeit) · lure-red = bait · white-hot = conversion.**
+- **The readability law (binding, from the three reviews):**
+  1. **Value first, hue second.** Every warm/cold distinction is *also* carried by luminance value, shape
+     language, and **flicker-cadence** (steady = true, flicker = false — the load-bearing channel; hue is the
+     garnish). This is the colorblind answer (gold-vs-green is a worst-case red-green pair).
+  2. **Design the dark floor for the video encoder, not the OLED.** Bioluminescent ground-clutter density is
+     the streamability dial; dark scenes must survive 6–8 Mbps without macroblocking. A separate **capture /
+     photo grade** (lifted, saturated profile) ships for clips and screenshots.
+  3. **Screenshot discipline.** Every promotional frame reads at **200 px** with a warm focal light AND a
+     legible silhouette.
+
+## The material decision (the solo-dev keystone)
+
+**No per-asset texturing, ever.** This is the single most important production rule in the project.
+
+- **One shared palette / gradient atlas** — Imphenzia-style: a single small texture of colour bands. UVs are
+  *placed onto bands*, not unwrapped. Zero texture-painting skill required; perfect style coherence; batches
+  hard.
+- **Vertex-colour accents** for per-asset variation on top of the atlas.
+- **Three master shaders — the whole rendering surface of the game:**
+  1. **`Lit-Palette`** — statics (props, dressing, environment, station).
+  2. **`Emissive-Gloam`** — parameterized warm/cold/lure emissive. **One shader is the entire palette rule:**
+     its parameters (hue, **flicker-cadence**, intensity) are *both* the look *and* gameplay information
+     (true-vs-false light). Every glow in the game is this shader.
+  3. **`Skinned-Palette`** — deformation-aware (the Rukhanka-skinned creatures/suits). Replaces the current
+     `AnimatedLitShader` role as the palette-atlas creature material.
+
+**Every asset in the game shares ~3 materials.** Coherence, batching, and no per-asset UV/texture work — that
+is the amortization that makes a one-person creature factory possible.
+
+> ⚠ **Carry-over gotcha ([[material-property-body-flash-rukhanka]]):** a per-instance `URPMaterialPropertyBaseColor`
+> tint only renders if the shader declares `_BaseColor` **Hybrid-Per-Instance** (ShaderGraph
+> `overrideHLSLDeclaration:true` + `hlslDeclarationOverride:2`). The three master shaders must be authored
+> Hybrid-Per-Instance if we want per-instance gloam-tint variants (a free variant axis — see A2 variant policy).
+
+## Reference board
+
+- **RoR2** — shape language, faceted low-poly, dynamic-light-first in dark ambient.
+- **Dredge** — water mood, dread, the sea-as-atmosphere.
+- **Hollow Knight** — value control in darkness (how to stay legible with almost no light).
+- **Below** — the **cautionary** case: solo dread + screenshot-illegible darkness killed it. The readability
+  law exists specifically against this failure.
+
+## The style-proof scene — THE GATE (not yet built)
+
+**One prop + one creature + one suit**, in-engine, under murk + dynamic lights, on the capture grade. Judged
+three ways, all of which must pass:
+
+1. **Full-size** — reads as *this game and no other*.
+2. **At 200 px** — silhouette + warm focal light legible (screenshot-discipline rule).
+3. **In grayscale** — value-first / flicker-cadence carries the true-vs-false read with hue removed.
+
+**Locked before any mass production.** This gate + [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]] + the world-model
+review ([[Lantern_World_Model_Spike]]) together are Phase 0's exit. Until this scene is approved, Workstream A
+stays in A0 (no A1 pipeline proof, no A2 factory).
+
+## Handoff to the deeper pass (A1 recipes)
+
+The concrete recipe documents are **A1 work** (Phase 1), not A0: the **statics recipe** (Blender → export
+units/scale → collider policy → entity baking → palette material) and the **skinned recipe** (rig → per-action
+clips, Key All Bones, bake-to-pose → FBX → Rukhanka ingest → `Skinned-Palette` → prefab). Both build on the
+project's proven animation pipeline ([[DR-022_Animation_Pipeline_Rukhanka_Synty]] / [[DR-023_Enemy_Animation_MonsterMash]]
++ the machine-local Blender recipe) and the **three rig families** (Drifter / Crawler / Strider). This doc is
+the constitution; the recipes are the operating manuals.
+
+## Related
+
+- [[Identity_Lantern]] — the fiction the palette encodes (the readability law lives there too)
+- [[Roadmap_Lantern_Slice]] — Workstream A (A0 → A1 → A2 → A3) gates
+- [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]] — the adoption
+- [[Synty_Asset_Inventory]] — placeholder quarry until custom assets land
+- [[DR-022_Animation_Pipeline_Rukhanka_Synty]] — the skinned-material lineage `Skinned-Palette` inherits

Docs/Vault/01_Vision/Identity.md

@@ -9,6 +9,11 @@ permalink: gamevault/01-vision/identity
 
 # Game Identity — The Awakening Engine (Aether-colony sci-fi)
 
+> [!warning] SUPERSEDED as the operative fiction (2026-07-13, [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]]).
+> The game pivoted to **LANTERN** — see [[Identity_Lantern]]. This Awakening-Engine fiction is **kept as
+> history and as salvage quarry** (the code it skins is now inventoried in [[Lantern_Strip_Mothball_Inventory]]).
+> Nothing here is deleted; it is no longer the target.
+
 > The fiction that turns the [[Pillars|mechanical pillars]] into a *place*. Originally the "frontier colony" skin (2026-06-02, [[DR-009_GameFeel_Identity_FirstBlood]]); **evolved 2026-06-03** to absorb the magic + sci-fi premise (amnesiac Sleeper, a guiding voice, a goal called THEM) into one coherent world — recorded in [[DR-014_M6_Build_Structures_Automation_Foundation|the M6 build slice]] and the fiction-adoption decision. It remains a **skin over the locked pillars — no mechanical rework**: every M1–M6 system keeps its code and gains a fictional role. The frontier colony is *recontextualised, not replaced*.
 
 ## One-sentence pitch

Docs/Vault/01_Vision/Pillars.md

@@ -11,6 +11,14 @@ permalink: gamevault/01-vision/pillars
 
 > The few non-negotiables every system must serve. Keep this short; promote only decisions that are truly locked.
 
+> [!info] Direction: **LANTERN** (locked 2026-07-13, [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]]).
+> The **mechanical pillars below still hold** (Unity DOTS + Netcode, server-authoritative, 2–4 co-op,
+> skill-expression combat, persistent base, automation-as-progression). What changed is the **fiction + three
+> subsystems**: the fiction is now [[Identity_Lantern]] (not the Awakening Engine); combat sharpens to
+> **SoD-grade manual-aim skillshots** (the soft auto-target era ends); the world becomes a seed-pinned
+> **pocket-graph** where **light is territory**; the build layer becomes suit-frames + cultured Sparks + wild
+> mutations. See the LANTERN locked decisions at the bottom.
+
 ## Pillars
 
 > **Combat is the primary verb; base + automation braid around it** (locked 2026-06-08, [[DR-028_Combat_Primary_Verb_Depth_First]]). The fusion of all three is the identity — but as ONE braided loop with a single primary verb, never three co-equal, independently-deep modes. Roadmap: [[Path_to_Fun]].
@@ -30,7 +38,27 @@ permalink: gamevault/01-vision/pillars
 - **Combat-primary + depth-before-breadth (locked 2026-06-08):** combat is the primary braided verb; **no new system until one braided loop is genuinely fun**, and every milestone ends with a play/fun-gate (not just green tests). [[DR-028_Combat_Primary_Verb_Depth_First]] · roadmap [[Path_to_Fun]].
 - **Classes + persistent meta (locked 2026-06-17, [[DR-037_Procedural_Expedition_Spine_Two_Classes_Persistent_Meta]]):** **two classes** — **Warrior** (melee anchor) + **Ranger** (ranged, manually aimed — *not* auto-fire, which would break skill-expression). Class identity = the **primary-attack archetype**; run-acquired **meta-buffs ride the existing `StatModifier`/`TimedModifier` pipeline**. A **persistent meta-progression layer** (SaveData v6) funds permanent growth at the hub; run combat-buffs are run-scoped. **Reverses [[DR-031_Base_Mining_Loop_Cohesion]]'s expedition pause** (a real playtest — [[Scratch Notes 6152026]] — showed the single arena goes stale).
 
+## LANTERN direction — locked decisions (2026-07-13, [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]])
+
+These sit *on top of* the mechanical pillars above (which are unchanged). Full design: [[Identity_Lantern]];
+roadmap: [[Roadmap_Lantern_Slice]].
+
+- **The one rule:** *what the light holds, stays; what the dark holds, changes.* Applied to the world =
+  persistence; to the body = death; to the kit = builds; to the story = stakes.
+- **World = seed-pinned pocket-graph** (light is territory). Permanence is spendable: lit pockets persist,
+  dark pockets re-knot. The hardest netcode problem — [[Lantern_World_Model_Spike]] (★review-first).
+- **Combat feel = SoD-grade manual-aim skillshots** (telegraphs, dashes, cooldown kits; **soft auto-target
+  cut**). Suit-frames = chassis/class; **Sparks** (abilities-as-organs, cultured) graft into sockets; **wild
+  mutations** are the augment layer (paced thresholds, evaporate at homecoming, Tallow fix-slots).
+- **Death = the split:** flame returns cheap (kit works within minutes); cargo + fixed mutations + raw organs
+  strand with the suit — recovery runs are optional value-runs, never mandatory kit-repair.
+- **Session-only burn** (the Lamp burns only while a session runs — no offline punishment). **Hosting = Wicks
+  travel; worlds are saves** (Valheim contract). **Loss ceiling = pockets, never a shelf.**
+- **The slice's falsifiable test:** *does pinning a pocket feel like winning, and does a stranded suit feel
+  worth a second descent?* — the only gate that matters.
+
 ## Related
 
-- [[Identity]] — the **fiction** that skins these pillars: **The Awakening Engine** (Aether-colony sci-fi), evolved 2026-06-03 ([[DR-015_The_Awakening_Engine_Fiction_Adoption]]) from the original frontier-colony skin ([[DR-009_GameFeel_Identity_FirstBlood]], 2026-06-02). Skin-only — no mechanical rework; **Aether** is the one substance unifying magic + tech (cyan = ordered / orange = wild Blight), with an amnesiac-**Sleeper** / **Echo** (the guiding voice) / **THEM** spine.
+- [[Identity_Lantern]] — the **operative fiction** these pillars now skin (co-op action-RPG; light-as-territory).
+- [[Identity]] — the **prior** fiction (The Awakening Engine, Aether-colony sci-fi) — **superseded** as operative by [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]], kept as history/quarry. Skinned via [[DR-015_The_Awakening_Engine_Fiction_Adoption]] / [[DR-009_GameFeel_Identity_FirstBlood]] (amnesiac Sleeper / Echo / THEM · Aether cyan=ordered / orange=wild Blight).
 - Decision records: `07_Sessions/_Decisions/`