Rename L'appel du Vide to Call of the Void

Aetheria/Game Design/Call of the Void.md

@@ -1,12 +1,14 @@
-# L'appel du Vide
+# Call of the Void
 
-`L'appel du Vide` is the story-first scope cut below [[End of the Line|Aetheria: Terminus]]: a curated action-RPG adventure about Catastrophe "Cat" Marrigan, an out-of-work private investigator making ends meet with a failure-prone space taxi while the displaced exploratory force slowly realizes it has become a permanent society.
+`Aetheria: Call of the Void` is the story-first scope cut below [[End of the Line|Aetheria: Terminus]]: a curated action-RPG adventure about Catastrophe "Cat" Marrigan, an out-of-work private investigator making ends meet with a failure-prone space taxi while the displaced exploratory force slowly realizes it has become a permanent society.
+
+The title translates `l'appel du vide`, the French phrase for the irrational urge to step over the edge when looking down from a height. It fits because the game is noir Aetheria in miniature: one person staring into the social, literal, and economic void while every bad option develops a voice.
 
 It is not the full procedural galaxy wearing a cheaper coat, and it is not Terminus with fewer enemies. It is a deliberate retreat to authored density: cases, fares, station districts, recurring characters, faction contacts, and a more controlled slice of the same social catastrophe. Sensible, therefore suspicious.
 
 ## Design Role
 
-`L'appel du Vide` exists to test what Aetheria feels like when the player is close enough to smell the paperwork. Instead of asking the first release to simulate a whole galaxy, it can focus on a few places where the setting's pressures become personal:
+`Call of the Void` exists to test what Aetheria feels like when the player is close enough to smell the paperwork. Instead of asking the first release to simulate a whole galaxy, it can focus on a few places where the setting's pressures become personal:
 
 - passengers who still talk as if they are going home
 - investigators, operators, and officials trying to monetize the new permanence
@@ -36,8 +38,8 @@ Useful case families include:
 
 ## Why It Still Matters
 
-Terminus proves route pressure, combat, ship builds, loot, and procedural survival. `L'appel du Vide` cuts below that to prove authored continuity, character voice, mission density, and the lived social impact of Elysium becoming permanent.
+Terminus proves route pressure, combat, ship builds, loot, and procedural survival. `Call of the Void` cuts below that to prove authored continuity, character voice, mission density, and the lived social impact of Elysium becoming permanent.
 
-They solve the same production problem at different depths. Terminus asks how little authored structure is needed for a generated run to feel alive. `L'appel du Vide` asks how much Aetheria can be expressed through a bounded cast, bounded locations, and a ship that probably should have failed inspection twice already.
+They solve the same production problem at different depths. Terminus asks how little authored structure is needed for a generated run to feel alive. `Call of the Void` asks how much Aetheria can be expressed through a bounded cast, bounded locations, and a ship that probably should have failed inspection twice already.
 
 If the next scope cut needs to be sharper than Terminus, this is the obvious blade.

Aetheria/Game Design/Narrative and Missions.md

@@ -35,8 +35,8 @@ Narrative consequence does not always need a branching cinematic. Sometimes cons
 
 Subspace dungeons from the older GDD are especially useful for Terminus-scale structure: dangerous wormholes leading into chaotic maze-like space, with escalating enemies, exits, bosses, and rewards. They should be adapted carefully into current cosmology rather than copied as a loose arcade appendage.
 
-## L'appel du Vide
+## Call of the Void
 
-[[L'appel du Vide]] is the emergency scope cut below Terminus. Instead of proving a hostile procedural crossing, it can prove authored mission density: PI cases, taxi fares, station districts, recurring passengers, faction contacts, a malfunction-prone ship, and the slow discovery that the exploratory force has become a resident population whether it likes the term or not.
+[[Call of the Void]] is the emergency scope cut below Terminus. Instead of proving a hostile procedural crossing, it can prove authored mission density: PI cases, taxi fares, station districts, recurring passengers, faction contacts, a malfunction-prone ship, and the slow discovery that the exploratory force has become a resident population whether it likes the term or not.
 
 That makes it valuable even if it never becomes the first release. It preserves a human-scale path into Aetheria, where the player meets the setting through clients, passengers, debts, scams, disappearances, homecoming fantasies, return cults, rogue AIs, compromised officials, and all the little humiliations that arrive before history admits it is history.

Aetheria/Game Design/Playable Layers.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ Aetheria's oldest design ambition is not just "big MMO, but in space." It is two
 
 The ARPG layer is the player's embodied experience of the galaxy. It covers ship control, combat, missions, trade, travel, exploration, salvage, docking, crew-facing narrative, and the constant practical question of whether the next jump is worth the damage it may cost.
 
-This layer is where [[End of the Line|Aetheria: Terminus]] made the first major retreat from the full persistent galaxy: route-first, rogue-lite, still system-heavy enough to make a producer start quietly reviewing their life choices. [[L'appel du Vide]] is the deeper cut below that: fewer generated systems, more curated cases, stronger character continuity, and less temptation to rebuild the entire galaxy because the coffee tasted optimistic.
+This layer is where [[End of the Line|Aetheria: Terminus]] made the first major retreat from the full persistent galaxy: route-first, rogue-lite, still system-heavy enough to make a producer start quietly reviewing their life choices. [[Call of the Void]] is the deeper cut below that: fewer generated systems, more curated cases, stronger character continuity, and less temptation to rebuild the entire galaxy because the coffee tasted optimistic.
 
 ## Corporate Strategy Layer
 
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ The design problem is to decide which interactions must be live and which can be
 The release path should keep the layers honest without requiring them all to ship at once:
 
 1. Treat [[End of the Line|Terminus]] as the first reduced ARPG slice: route pressure, combat, ship builds, and procedural survival.
-2. Treat [[L'appel du Vide]] as the further step down if Terminus remains too large: PI cases, taxi fares, station districts, faction pressure, and the early Elysium revelation.
+2. Treat [[Call of the Void]] as the further step down if Terminus remains too large: PI cases, taxi fares, station districts, faction pressure, and the early Elysium revelation.
 3. Preserve the design language of corporate pressure even when the first playable build is single-player or limited-scope.
 4. Keep data models and content categories compatible with later economy simulation.
 5. Introduce strategy-scale systems only when their outputs create better field play.

Aetheria/Game Design/index.md

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 
 Aetheria's design begins from an old, unreasonable ambition and then tries to make it survivable: two different games sharing the same doomed universe. One layer is a tactical action RPG about ships, crews, missions, routes, and violence up close. The other is a corporate strategy game about production, infrastructure, population roles, research, and economic dominance. Both are meant to feed the same persistent galaxy, where field players collide with shortages and opportunities created by the people running the machinery.
 
-That is the full beast. The first major scope cut was [[End of the Line|Aetheria: Terminus]], a rogue-lite ARPG slice designed to prove combat, traversal, ship customization, narrative pressure, and the setting's corporate logic before the project tried to swallow the whole sun and ask politely for seconds. When even that looked too large, [[L'appel du Vide]] became the last-ditch smaller target: curated cases, taxi work, station life, and one exhausted private investigator discovering that nobody is going home.
+That is the full beast. The first major scope cut was [[End of the Line|Aetheria: Terminus]], a rogue-lite ARPG slice designed to prove combat, traversal, ship customization, narrative pressure, and the setting's corporate logic before the project tried to swallow the whole sun and ask politely for seconds. When even that looked too large, [[Call of the Void]] became the last-ditch smaller target: curated cases, taxi work, station life, and one exhausted private investigator discovering that nobody is going home.
 
 ## Design Stack
 
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ That is the full beast. The first major scope cut was [[End of the Line|Aetheria
 ## Release Path
 
 - [[End of the Line]]
-- [[L'appel du Vide]]
+- [[Call of the Void]]
 - [[../Lore/Welcome to Elysium|Welcome to Elysium]]
 - [[A Different Sort of Space]]
 - [[Ship-shape and Up to Specs]]
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ The active `Aetheria-Economy` repository points to three planning-time documents
 - [Aetheria GDD](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iULu1WsbuQoUM3c87XkGseb1P-8R5xlruoiyg03TsSE/edit?usp=sharing) - the action RPG design document.
 - [Profits Rising](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U3uGFqQboAiFJ_Y-nUOGpyixbXUHRbc5DiCuB59GM4w/edit?usp=sharing) - the corporate strategy / RTS design document.
 - [Aetheria Shader Implementation](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AFycvCtW6hA1jkKq1ZmYd3k6_uEWaaCqcZ4fYj4vU6A/edit?usp=sharing) - shader and rendering notes.
-- [L'appel du Vide brainstorm](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YWn5RWsciBxuaQ4l5TN2lAEz4okaQes-aiyx1E9NAxA/edit?usp=sharing) - the last-ditch post-Terminus scope cut built around Cat Marrigan, PI cases, taxi fares, and the point-of-no-return revelation.
+- [Call of the Void / L'appel du Vide brainstorm](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YWn5RWsciBxuaQ4l5TN2lAEz4okaQes-aiyx1E9NAxA/edit?usp=sharing) - the last-ditch post-Terminus scope cut built around Cat Marrigan, PI cases, taxi fares, and the point-of-no-return revelation.
 
 These documents and the repository README are dated planning maps, not current marching orders. They are useful because they preserve mechanic intent: the time loop, tactical ship combat, heat and stealth, licenses, contracts, dungeons, drones, station management, production, population attributes, demand profiles, market arbitrage, research patents, independent traders, police protocol, AI corporations, and shader-driven gravitational terrain. They are also very much the sort of documents a person writes before reality, money, health, and the calendar arrive with tools.