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kronic 0e2d51146d Docs: LANTERN tone bible (Phase 7 register bounds) — commit the file linked by prior commits

The tone bible was authored during the autonomous run but slipped between commit batches;
several already-pushed docs (Phase 7 design, operator questions, session log B) link to it.
Wordless Wicks + lamp-morse; per-voice register bounds (Keeper/Siren/Selkie/Klabautermann/
Anchorite/berths); warmth-against-dread; gates all bark generation.

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

2026-07-14 00:01:51 -07:00

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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.

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

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