Clarify lore articles: accessibility wave 2

Delvehold/Lore/Industry/Dwarven Industry.md

@@ -3,38 +3,46 @@ title: Dwarven industry
 description: The institutions, material benefits, and political dependencies of the runic economy.
 ---
 
-Dwarven civilization is unusually prepared for industrial magic. Mining, metallurgy, precision, infrastructure, recordkeeping, and rune craft already carry cultural prestige. Spell engines connect those traditions into a new economy.
+Millions of people now depend on cheap magical power to keep their mines drained, freight moving, food preserved, and districts warm. Spell engines have made ventilation, drainage, heating, light, and food preservation reliable public services. Rune locomotives replace mine carts, and lifts built for adventurers carry industrial freight. Continuous access to the depths lets dwarven settlements grow, while engineering removes dangers once accepted as part of living underground.
 
-Its decisive advantage is [[The Greathold]]. Centuries of dungeon clearing had left deep routes, expedition archives, liftworks, depots, processing districts, contract law, and a global market for dungeon returns. Industry found the road already open and automated the traffic.
+Dwarven industry grew from crafts and institutions that already commanded respect: mining, metallurgy, precision work, infrastructure, recordkeeping, and rune craft. Spell engines brought these traditions together into a new economy.
 
-Mine carts become rune locomotives. Adventurer lifts become freight arteries. Ventilation, drainage, heating, light, and food preservation become reliable public systems. Deep access becomes continuous, the Greathold grows, and dangers once accepted as the price of life below are engineered away.
+The decisive advantage was [[The Greathold]], the connected dwarven Holds along the mountain spine. Centuries of dungeon clearing had supplied deep routes, expedition archives, liftworks, depots, processing districts, contract law, and a global market for goods brought out of dungeons. Industry inherited both the means to reach the depths and an established trade in what came back. It automated that traffic.
 
-## Major interests
+## Who owns, builds, and works it
 
 ### Great Houses
 
-Old clans own land, mineral rights, archives, and ancient infrastructure. Some convert inherited authority into industrial capital; others fear that factories are dissolving the traditions that made their authority meaningful.
+The old clans enter the industrial economy with land, mineral rights, archives, and ancient infrastructure already in their possession. Some use those holdings and their inherited authority to become industrial investors. Others fear that factories are dissolving the traditions on which their authority rests.
 
 ### Forge Consortiums
 
-Manufacturers of spell engines, standardized rune arrays, and civic systems. Their wealth gives them influence over colleges, regulation, and foreign policy.
+Forge Consortiums manufacture spell engines, standardized rune arrays, and the systems used by towns and districts. Their wealth gives them influence over colleges, regulation, and foreign policy.
 
 ### Deep Companies
 
-Mining and core-farming concerns operating frontier sites. They carry the greatest physical risk and advocate the most aggressive expansion.
+Deep Companies run mining and core-farming operations at frontier sites. They face the greatest physical risk among these interests and push hardest for further expansion.
 
 ### Rune Colleges
 
-Theoretical and technical institutions that make industrial progress possible. Their instruments produce the strongest internal evidence for core cognition, and their engineers conduct the argument over publishing it.
-
-### Hold institutions
-
-A winter shortage reaches the institutions of the affected Hold before it reaches the whole Greathold. Lift offices ration freight. Reserve houses release crystal or keep it sealed. Public kitchens change what they serve while delver halls rewrite the contracts offered at the deep gates. Their mandates and stores were assembled through earlier moots, and a new gathering of seals can redirect, starve, privatize, or dismantle them.
+Rune Colleges provide the theory and technical expertise that make industrial progress possible. Their instruments also produce the strongest evidence within the industry for core cognition—the possibility that dungeon cores can think. Their engineers argue over whether to publish that evidence. The question remains disputed.
 
 ### Guilds and labour
 
-Traditional smiths lose status to mechanized production. Factory and mine workers organize around safety, hours, crystal exposure, industrial disease, automation, and core-farm hazards. Core-farm safety brings some unions into ecological campaigns; others defend expansion as the source of wages and public power.
+Mechanized production reduces the standing of traditional smiths. Factory and mine workers organize over safety, working hours, crystal exposure, industrial disease, automation, and the hazards of core farms.
 
-## Dependency
+Those hazards divide labour's response to expansion. Core-farm safety draws some unions into ecological campaigns. Others defend expansion because it provides wages and power for public systems.
 
-Millions now rely on cheap magical power. The same crystal contracts supply mine drainage, freight rail, food stores, and district heat. A core-farm closure reaches all four schedules before the consortium loses a quarter's profit.
+## How a Hold handles a shortage
+
+A winter shortage first becomes a problem for the institutions of the affected Hold, before it becomes a matter for the whole Greathold. Residents encounter it through decisions about freight, reserves, meals, and work.
+
+Lift offices ration freight. Reserve houses decide whether to release crystal or keep it sealed. Public kitchens change what they serve. At the deep gates, delver halls rewrite the contracts they offer.
+
+These institutions received their mandates and stores through earlier moots: gatherings where the Hold's commitments were decided. Those arrangements can be changed. A new gathering of seals can redirect an institution, deprive it of resources, privatize it, or dismantle it. The offices managing a shortage therefore depend on decisions that can also change who controls the response and what resources remain available.
+
+## Dependence on core farms
+
+The same crystal contracts supply mine drainage, freight rail, food stores, and district heat. These services depend on a shared supply even though people encounter them as separate parts of daily life.
+
+Closing a core farm disrupts all four schedules before the consortium loses a quarter's profit. By then, the people relying on drainage, deliveries, preserved food, and warmth are already dealing with the closure.

Delvehold/Lore/Industry/Runic Engineering.md

@@ -3,40 +3,48 @@ title: Runic engineering
 description: How iterative runes turned spellcraft into programmable machinery.
 ---
 
-Traditional dwarven runecraft was conservative, durable, and inseparable from architecture, metallurgy, warding, and sacred craft. Its industrial break came when engineers learned that runes could be **iterative**.
+Runic engineering builds machines that perform magic repeatedly: a pump moves water without a wizard casting at every stroke; a furnace holds its temperature through an interconnected set of runes. The breakthrough was learning to make runes **iterative**. One rune could trigger another, the next could test a condition, and another could redirect mana. Engineers could arrange the sequence to repeat.
 
-A rune could trigger another rune. A second could test a condition. A third could redirect mana. A sequence could repeat. Magic became programmable.
+This grew out of traditional dwarven runecraft, a conservative craft built for durability and inseparable from architecture, metallurgy, warding, and sacred work. Iteration gave that craft a new industrial use: magical operations could be programmed into machinery.
 
 ## Spell engines
 
-A spell engine is an interconnected runic system that repeatedly executes magical operations. Primitive engines pump water or hold a furnace at temperature. Mature systems separate ore, maintain mine pressure, propel locomotives, illuminate districts, coordinate wards, fabricate simple objects, and sustain agricultural enchantments.
+A **spell engine** is an interconnected runic system that repeatedly carries out magical operations. Primitive engines pump water or keep furnaces at temperature. Mature systems separate ore, maintain mine pressure, propel locomotives, illuminate districts, coordinate wards, fabricate simple objects, and sustain agricultural enchantments.
 
-Fuel, machinery, logistics, maintenance, capital, and access to [[Mana and Pattern|mana crystals]] replace trained attention as the limits on scale.
+These machines change what limits the scale of magical work. Expansion no longer depends on having enough trained practitioners to attend to each operation. It depends on fuel, machinery, logistics, maintenance, capital, and access to [[Mana and Pattern|mana crystals]].
 
-## The manual origin
+The practitioner's knowledge remains necessary, but its use changes. Every reliable engine begins with a magical gesture that somebody knows how to perform. A mage gathers mana, shapes a transformation, watches how it fails, and tries again. Engineers encode those operations into runes and connect them into a working system.
 
-Every reliable engine begins as a gesture somebody knows how to perform. A mage gathers mana, shapes a transformation, observes failure, and repeats. Engineers encode those operations into runes, then compose the runes into systems.
+Once the engine can repeat the operation, practitioners need not perform the gesture at every furnace or pump. Their work becomes defining what a successful result looks like, diagnosing failures, and revising the runes when a machine meets a case its original instruction did not cover.
 
-Encoding moves the practitioner's work. Instead of repeating the gesture at every furnace or pump, they define its successful result, diagnose failures, and revise the runes when the machine encounters a case the original lesson missed.
+## Learning to stop
 
-## The first rune
+An apprentice learns to end an active magical pattern before learning to produce heat, light, levitation, or any other useful effect. Early practice produces plenty of broken sequences. The first lesson is how to close them.
 
-An apprentice learns null termination before heat, light, levitation, or any other useful effect. Practice produces broken sequences long before it produces reliable spells. The null rune, a right-to-left stroke, closes the active pattern without the larger mana draw used by effect-producing terminators.
+This is **null termination**. The null rune is a right-to-left stroke that closes the active pattern without the larger mana draw required by terminators that produce an effect.
 
-Qualified mages carry null in the same learned repertoire as every other rune. Drawing it badly earns no special mercy. Beginners first learn the movement without releasing mana, then practice live termination under supervision.
+Null is a learned rune like any other. Qualified mages carry it in their repertoire, but its purpose gives a badly drawn version no special protection against failure. Beginners learn the movement without releasing mana, then practise live termination under supervision.
 
-## Wands and bindings
+## Building wands and bindings
 
-A wand stores a rune graph and casts it when activated. The graph is only the beginning of the object. Channels must be cut, filled, joined, and carried through a substrate that changes how neighbouring flows interfere. A clean copy of a famous spell can still make a poor wand.
+A wand stores a connected arrangement of runes—a **rune graph**—and casts it when activated. Copying the graph is only part of making the wand. Its channels must be cut, filled, and joined, and the material carrying them changes how neighbouring mana flows interfere with one another. A faithful copy of a famous spell can still be a poor wand.
 
-Directly inscribing a spell onto a sword can work and drink mana. An enchanter can instead bind runes to the blade and hilt, use the edge to concentrate an effect, route flow across their joint, and recover waste through smaller branches. Replacing the blade takes its inscriptions with it.
+A sword presents similar choices. Inscribing a spell directly onto it can work, and can consume a great deal of mana. An enchanter can instead bind runes to the blade and hilt, concentrate the effect at the edge, route flow across the joint, and recover waste through smaller branches. Those inscriptions belong to the parts that carry them: replacing the blade removes its inscriptions too.
 
-Large gold-filled channels remain the dependable answer when price and bulk do not matter. Finer work changes material from rune to rune as the mana acquires fire, containment, motion, or some less familiar history. The colours and precious seams became a mark of mastery quickly enough that apprentices began copying them onto unrelated graphs. Some of those pieces are dangerous. Others are expensive ways to warm a handle.
+Large, gold-filled channels are dependable when price and bulk do not matter. As mana moves through the runes, it acquires a history of fire, containment, motion, or something less familiar. Finer work changes materials along that path.
 
-## Displacement
+The resulting colours and precious seams quickly became marks of mastery. Apprentices began copying their appearance onto unrelated rune graphs. Some of those pieces are dangerous. Others are expensive ways to warm a handle.
 
-A municipality that replaces utility wizards with one pumping engine still needs rune technicians, but trains them to service that model instead of mastering the wider craft. The old workshop loses its contract; the engine's owner gains a workforce whose knowledge travels poorly. Sales catalogues list continuous operation beside output and fuel cost. Wages, refusal, and guild membership disappear from the calculation.
+## What happens to the workers
+
+When a municipality replaces its utility wizards with a pumping engine, magical maintenance does not disappear. The engine still needs rune technicians. But they are trained to service that particular model rather than to master the wider craft.
+
+The old workshop loses its contract. The engine's owner gains workers whose knowledge is difficult to use elsewhere. This is part of the industrial change alongside the machinery itself: expertise becomes tied to an owner's equipment.
+
+Sales catalogues present continuous operation as a specification beside output and fuel cost. Wages, workers' ability to refuse, and guild membership disappear from that calculation.
 
 ## The awakening risk
 
-An engine is a persistent magical pattern. Networks of them sense demand, route power, remember failures, and schedule their own maintenance. A [[Dungeon Cores|dungeon core]] reaches agency through ecology; the industrial network may reach it along rails and copper runes.
+A spell engine maintains a magical pattern over time. Connect engines into a network, and they can sense demand, route power, remember failures, and schedule their own maintenance.
+
+Those capacities raise a possibility beyond automation. A [[Dungeon Cores|dungeon core]] reaches agency through its ecology. An industrial network may reach agency through machinery spread along rails and copper runes. Whether it can make that passage remains uncertain.

Delvehold/Lore/Ontology/Mana and Pattern.md

@@ -5,41 +5,45 @@ description: Mana is the medium through which a sufficiently stable pattern beco
 
 ## Mana
 
-Mana is not merely fuel. It is the medium through which **pattern becomes physical**.
+Mana allows a sufficiently stable pattern to produce a physical effect. That pattern might be a spell's symbols, the organization of a living thing, the arrangement of a building, or a social pattern.
 
-Matter tends toward persistence. Mana tends toward organization. Where mana is sparse, ordinary physical behavior dominates. Where it accumulates, a stable symbolic, biological, architectural, or social pattern can impress itself upon reality.
+Matter tends to persist; mana tends to organize. Where mana is sparse, ordinary physical behavior dominates. Where it accumulates, these patterns can begin to shape reality. Mana therefore does more than supply the energy for magic: it is the medium through which a pattern becomes physical.
 
-A traditional spellcaster performs four operations consciously:
+A traditional spellcaster consciously carries out four steps:
 
-1. gathers mana;
-2. establishes a symbolic structure;
-3. stabilizes the intended transformation;
-4. releases the effect.
+1. Gathers mana.
+2. Establishes a symbolic structure.
+3. Stabilizes the transformation they intend to produce.
+4. Releases the effect.
 
-A rune holds the structure without a conscious mind maintaining it. An arrangement of runes can test conditions, trigger other runes, redirect mana, and repeat. This is the bridge from spellcraft to [[Runic Engineering|machinery]].
+A rune holds that structure without needing a conscious mind to maintain it. Connected runes can test conditions, trigger other runes, redirect mana, and repeat operations. Those capabilities make [[Runic Engineering|machinery]] possible.
 
-## Memory in flow
+## How mana carries a spell
 
-Passage through a rune leaves a consequential pattern in the mana that continues onward. Later runes receive that history along with the flow itself. A branch shares everything that happened before the split, then carries its own changes toward the next junction or terminator.
+Mana changes as it passes through a rune. It carries the resulting pattern onward, so each later rune receives mana shaped by what has already happened to it.
 
-A terminator reads the accumulated pattern as a specification and pulls the mana needed to make that effect physical. Clean construction can still spend itself on something useless. Corrupt construction is more dangerous: a terminator may draw a working quantity of mana for a pattern its caster never intended.
+When the flow branches, both branches inherit the history before the split. Each then carries its own further changes toward the next junction or terminator.
 
-Conduits and their materials participate in the history. Gold carries many patterns with little interference; a more selective material may preserve, alter, contain, or waste a particular flow. The same metal can meet different mana at two places in one working.
+A terminator is the part of the working that reads the accumulated pattern and draws enough mana to make the specified effect physical. A correctly constructed sequence can still produce something useless and consume mana doing it. A corrupted sequence poses a greater danger: its terminator may draw enough mana to carry out an effect the caster never intended.
+
+The conduits carrying mana also affect its pattern. Gold carries many patterns with little interference. More selective materials may preserve, alter, contain, or waste a particular flow. Material choice therefore depends on what has already happened to the mana. The same metal at two points in one working can encounter mana with different histories.
 
 ## Mana crystals
 
-Under sustained magical pressure, mana precipitates into stable crystalline form. Mana crystals serve as:
+Sustained magical pressure causes mana to precipitate into stable crystals. Those crystals have several uses:
 
-- fuel and battery;
-- magical reagent;
-- industrial commodity;
-- strategic reserve;
-- ecological nutrient.
+- They supply magical fuel and act as batteries.
+- They serve as magical reagents.
+- Industry trades them as commodities.
+- They can be stockpiled as strategic reserves.
+- They provide nutrients within magical ecologies.
 
-Industrial ledgers value a crystal as fuel, reagent, commodity, and reserve. In a dungeon it may also feed dormant organisms, hold mana through a lean cycle, or seed growth after damage. Traditional delving removes part of that store. Deep machinery can empty in weeks what the surrounding ecology accumulated over centuries.
+Industrial ledgers account for the first four roles. Inside a dungeon, a crystal may also feed dormant organisms, store mana through a lean cycle, or seed new growth after damage.
+
+Traditional delving removes some of this stored mana. Deep machinery can empty the store in weeks, taking what the surrounding ecology accumulated over centuries.
 
 ## The threshold of life
 
-No measured quantity of mana guarantees awakening. The known cases combine durable organization with memory, feedback from their surroundings, and enough complexity to distinguish self from other.
+A lasting magical pattern is not necessarily alive. No measured quantity of mana guarantees awakening. Known cases combine durable organization, memory, feedback from the surroundings, and enough complexity to distinguish self from other. These features describe the known cases; they do not provide a guaranteed recipe.
 
-A spell usually expires when its caster ceases to maintain the completed pattern. A rune continues it; feedback lets a spell engine alter its response; retained encounters may eventually let a [[Dungeon Cores|mature core]] distinguish itself from an intruder.
+The distinction becomes clearer when comparing what different patterns can sustain. A spell usually expires when its caster stops maintaining the completed pattern. A rune can keep the pattern going without that attention. A spell engine that receives feedback can change its response to its surroundings. A [[Dungeon Cores|mature core]] that retains past encounters may eventually distinguish itself from an intruder.