Retarget Ghostlight toward Call of the Void authoring

README.md

@@ -17,6 +17,8 @@ beautiful little superstition.
   distilled evidence.
 - Architecture notes for agent state, signal classification, culture-shaped
   distributions, and prompt projection.
+- Aetheria authoring targets for Call of the Void content generation,
+  dialogue scaffolding, and procedural drama across narrated timeline stories.
 - A bounded working discipline that keeps maps, scratch, evidence, and plans
   from dissolving into one confident soup.
 
@@ -32,6 +34,8 @@ beautiful little superstition.
 - `notes/ghostlight-implementation-plan.md`: current larger-organ sequence
 - `notes/architecture-rationale.md`: why the state split exists at all
 - `docs/research/`: research backlog and modeling notes
+- `docs/aetheria/`: imported or local Aetheria source material used by
+  Ghostlight
 - `docs/architecture/`: world, state, and prompt-system architecture notes
 - `tools/ghostlight_state.py`: compact state helper
 - `tools/ghostlight_prepare_compaction.py`: pre-compaction audit helper
@@ -52,7 +56,8 @@ operating manual. The README is just the sign on the door.
 - `docs/research/things-to-steal.md`
 - `docs/research/personality-model-roadmap.md`
 - `docs/research/personality-signal-classifier.md`
+- `docs/aetheria/call-of-the-void-brainstorm.md`
 - `docs/architecture/agent-state-distributions-and-prompt-projection.md`
 - `docs/architecture/aetheria-persistent-agent-architecture.md`
-- `docs/architecture/aetheria-cold-wake-mvp-scenario.md`
+- `docs/architecture/aetheria-content-generation-targets.md`
 - `docs/architecture/aetheria-agent-population-model.md`

docs/aetheria/call-of-the-void-brainstorm.md

@@ -0,0 +1,137 @@
+# Call Of The Void Brainstorm
+
+Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YWn5RWsciBxuaQ4l5TN2lAEz4okaQes-aiyx1E9NAxA/edit?tab=t.0
+
+This is a local plaintext import of the scattered Call of the Void brainstorming doc. Treat it as raw source material, not canon. The current compact design note remains E:\Projects\AetheriaLore\Aetheria\Game Design\Call of the Void.md.
+
+---
+
+Potential ideas here, feel free to discuss/deplore/detour in comments. 
+
+
+Protagonist: Catastrophe “Cat” Marrigan, an out of work private investigator, driving a particularly failure-prone space taxi to make ends meet
+
+
+Overarching plot: Episodic PI cases/random space taxi fares which lead, somewhat circuitously, towards the discovery/revelation that the “exploratory force” had better get used to being “locals”, because the universe is not offering return tickets, and all that follows from that. 
+
+
+What’s Cat’s role in this? And are we going to have alternate endings based on choices made? Ideas, in no particular order:
+*  She's the original founder/inspiration for the frontier renegades who reject corporate rule and live low-tech and tiny to avoid being crushed.
+*  The more noir-esque ending, where the disillusioned protagonist sees the way things are going and kills themselves/goes out in a blaze of explosive glory in a futile attempt to change the course of society. 
+* The out-for-what-you-can-get ending, where she allies with an up and coming power to become a behind the scenes force in future aetheria.
+* The really unsatisfying but realistic ending, where the corps take over and life just goes on. 
+* I sort of like the idea of heading towards a “you can’t win against the capitalist machine, but it’s worth fighting anyway” theme. Thoughts?
+
+
+ case/fares/conversations that exemplify the different ways people react to the point of no return, so to speak, ie: denial, determination to find a way to get back, culty doomsdays types, the “we’re all doomed so let’s party” people, the ones who see great opportunity without old earth holding them back, the people who are determined to do things better this time around (in the ‘we royally screwed up earth, let’s not do it again” sense), etc.
+
+
+Accidental AI ship whose buggy programming makes them the worst autopilot ever orrrrr…the inciting incident is that in one of her cases/fares gone wrong Cat gets mind-melded with said slightly buggy AI, and that’s how she finds out all those juicy government secrets. Some of them may be inaccurate (see: bad code/failsafes/sabotage), but there’s no way of knowing which without going digging. Plus AI is a one of a kind experimental prototype, which sets all kinds of interesting people on their tail. Also could give us some fun things to do with ship control and actual gameplay quests.
+Over the course of the story, one way to show people’s reactions to events could be to have some dialogued characters talking about what they plan to do when they get back home, then use it as a major stress point once the truth is revealed. 
+
+
+Maybe Cat works for a small, kind of terrible PI company, in which case we could get some of our quests from a dispatcher/boss/whatever. I think it’d be a little funny if in true noir fashion, boss was a hard-drinking dude in a trenchcoat, only he’s a really giggly drunk/can’t hold his liquor.
+First quest for PI company: find where the boss left a random object after drinking himself to the floor. Find out he left a whole-ass ship somewhere in his drunken stupor.
+Another PI quest: investigate the disappearing foodstuffs of a concerned homeowner and find out that a whole nother person was living in the crawlspace above their home and stealing their food. Decide how to deal with Mr Crawlspace.
+PI quest: Investigate “ghost” sightings in an old part of a station that’s been shut down. Find out a whole town’s worth of people are living there out of the station’s control slowly siphoning off resources so as not to be noticed. Get some slightly culty vibes from them. 
+A short quest from an old lady who just wants to have someone over for tea. Turns out if you tolerate her long enough she’ll come in handy during a critical time. Could be she’s either rich or well-connected.
+A botanist looking for his daughter. Turns out instead of some sorta protomolecule conspiracy, she’s just wandered off and is being looked after by a kind lady who’s found her.
+Get a quest from a mysterious person who is only contacting Cat online, find out eventually the quest giver is some sort of AI who’s either seeking the sweet release of deletion, is looking to find another AI, or is trying to steal some sort of drone so it can go around freely.
+Possibly a character who we only see as a remote-controlled drone who helps out at times but we never see the person behind the drone because they use the drone as their public avatar or something. Could be someone who might not otherwise get the chance to go out and about in public because of reasons. This does give them a limited sphere of helpfulness since the drone has to be close enough to the controller to work effectively. Could have Cat mistake the drone for the character, believing it’s some sort of self-sufficient AI driven drone and be sad when it “dies” only to meet it again once it’s re-built and realise there’s a person behind it. Bit like the “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” bit, could call the drone “Oz”.
+
+
+Cat is tasked with investigating a mysterious and aggressive band of pirates. Upon finding them it is revealed that they are actually a community of rogue AIs who have no option but to loot technology transports in order to keep themselves alive.
+
+
+Cat stumbles into a friendship with a shady character, earning the attention of the even shadier Space CIA, which recruits her as a potential double agent with instructions to infiltrate the organization.
+
+
+Cat is sent to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances of ships sent to mine a gas giant’s belt. Locals consider the place haunted. Turns out it is, by a sentient particle system which considers itself the embodied spirit of the planet.
+
+
+DLC Area: Cat falls afoul of some sort of anomaly which sends her into a parallel universe with an alternative history. Somehow despite a very different timeline and political situation, everyone she meets is a bizarro mirror of the people she knows from her dimension, and somehow the exact same cast of characters are present despite having very different roles (listen, we can’t afford any extra actors so we’re just gonna use the cast we already have)
+
+
+Finch is destructively scanning recently deceased human brains and then performing extensive virtual surgery on emulated instances of them in order to create and sell packaged “AI” servitors for specific tasks to compete on the market against AGI products from competitors. The Crew manages to rescue one of the program’s victims while still mostly human, before the process is complete, who [joins the party / is installed on Cat’s ship].
+
+
+Character: Reginald Moneybags III, inheritor of a massive family fortune, is looking to become a patron of the arts in order to impress his old-money friends. Perhaps they’re the one giving the player their ship?
+
+
+Might could explore some of Cat’s motivations for taking the ship to Elysium in the first place. Was it by choice? Who has she left behind, if anyone? It would put her in a more conflicted position regarding her role as a double-agent.
+* Seems natural that she would be escaping a maze of debt and obligation, only to end up terrifyingly close to falling into the same trap again. I kinda like this idea of completely dumping her whole life and trying to start over somewhere completely different.
+* She was caught committing some felony/is railroaded/scapegoated for same/investigated someone way too powerful and was given a choice between prison and joining the colonists.
+* Or combine both and bring back the idea of debtor’s prisons/workhouses and have the ship to Elysium be offered as a way out
+   * So, was she indentured when she arrived only to recently gain the freedom to make her own way, or has she been doing what she’s currently doing since arrival?
+
+
+The faceless man: a guy? maybe. Wearing a spacesuit or some other obscuring disguise that pops up a little too often for random chance. Is he a red herring? Or is he 10 red herrings in a spacesuit pretending to be a guy? If he has any dialogue let it just be *splashing noises*.
+
+
+Cat is sent to investigate an urban legend on one other stations--the simply and slightly erroneously historically named “Ripper Lee” who lives in the air vents and steals children. It actually turns out that the missing kids are just exploring the vents as children will and getting macheted by fans or getting stuck or getting pulled into the inertial compensator. [an act II continuation of this quest sees Cat investigating her suspicions that the kids didn’t necessarily go into the dangerous areas of their own impetus, but were lured there. The third act reveals an alien intelligence--though an animal one--a being of energy or something stranger who finds the particular pitch of childrens’ laughter unbearable. Maybe it destructively interferes with its phase, who knows]
+
+
+The one perpetual drunk who always needs a lift to a different space bar. Cat can go on 
+a bender with him as a quest, and then have to figure out exactly what the hell happened and why there’s a crash test dummy in the front seat of her taxi.
+
+
+The person who jumps into Cat’s cab and yells “follow that ship!”. A high octane space chase follows, at the end of which it is revealed they’ve been following the wrong ship, and the Minister of such and such is *very* displeased that he missed his Very Important Meeting for what turns out to be not even an actual assassination attempt.
+
+
+A carjacking with several different options for resolution
+
+
+Something strange is going on in the mining operation on PXR 6937, and Cat is sent to find out what: suggestions: the drilling released a substance from the rock that causes hallucinations and paranoia in human brains. Someone is deliberately sabotaging the operation as an environmental protest/act of general rebellion/the mining operation killed someone they cared about and now everyone must feel the same misery
+
+
+Cat is forced to navigate the pointless bureaucracy of space offices to uncover an embezzlement scheme that conceals something much bigger. What is it? Fuck if I know.
+* A furniture selling operation that appears to cover some financial wizardry but turns out to be a human trafficking operation where the names of the items are actually those of missing children OW MY HEART
+* A fiendish plan to utilize the combined computing power of thousands of office servers to...mine future bitcoin? Solve something the megas don’t want solved?  
+
+
+Cat’s taxi breaks down somewhere off the beaten path, so to speak, and she finds herself drawn into an ongoing and very brutal feud between two families. 
+
+
+Have a random cab passenger speak in Nemsk and never explain it. 
+
+
+An entire district of a certain station orbiting a strange ocean planet begin to complain of seeing people who could logically never be there. Cat is asked to do a cursory look into it and remains sceptical until one day she starts seeing a person shaped figure always walking just barely out of her line of sight. We could either go full Lem, or subvert this reference by having the reveal be that the air or water are contaminated with a hallucinogenic compound.
+
+
+A Captain Nemo like figure who flies his rather unusual ship on the far edges of the system. His purpose is unclear, and his identity more so.
+
+
+Silica storage ruptured, spilling into common area. Now we’re doing the obligatory beach episode! Sand got into the gears of the docking bay so now everyone has to sit back for an afternoon and do anime tropes while it's getting repaired.
+
+
+What organization is Cat infiltrating?
+* People who are trying to go home, even if it costs them the ship or other people’s lives
+* Believe the Megas are withholding research on the return trip, trapping everyone in Elysium for profit
+* Name ideas
+   * Home (nice and simple; is it an acronym: H.O.M.E.?)
+      * A nickname could be the “homies” lmao love it “wassup homie?”
+   * Terra
+   * The Terra-rists or Terrists (like a hick would say) Get out no.
+      * Could be a media nickname (and everyone is really tired of explaining that “no, no, we’re the Alliance for Returning Swiftly Earthward, really” really? Butt jokes? I have never pretended to be above them. Neither have I.
+   * The Earth-Bound
+   * The Regressionists
+   * The Returners (sounds like a ya novel title) true
+   * The Retrograde Alliance
+   * Earthers
+   * The Genesis Project (Project Genesis? Sounds better.) Genesis Faction?
+   * Alliance for Returning Swiftly Earthward
+   * Gaia-ists possibly too many vowels
+   * The Followers of Gaia? Get that good greek mythology I kind of like this one. The Gaia Cult lmao
+      * Cult of Gaiains, but also yeah, the GaiaCult
+   * Hades (if we’re going Greek mythology, normal people go to Hades while demigods go to Elysium) Erebus
+      * Has the bonus “evil” connotation
+      * Hadesians Perhaps? Like people from there...Hadesites?
+      * Fits into the sentence “The CIA needs you to infiltrate Hades”
+      * Though if we’re going for the greek theme, Odysseans might be more apropos with the whole ‘returning home’ I like this for greek references 
+
+
+
+
+How do we handle double agent shenanigans?
+* Cat grows to sympathise with their goals and philosophy, ends up rejecting the CIA
+   * Cat comes clean with her new friends, who begin reciting the typical cliche, only to have someone start to read a page that semi-describes events later in the story, like it's a script.

docs/architecture/aetheria-agent-population-model.md

@@ -52,16 +52,16 @@ These are the characters who accumulate history and can plausibly remember what
 happened last week, who lied to them, who saved them, and which institution
 just humiliated them.
 
-Examples in the Cold Wake slice:
+Examples in an Aetheria content-generation slice:
 
-- a navigator council delegate
-- a Lightsail dispatcher
-- a dock labor organizer
-- an insurer adjudicator
-- an Aya sanctuary coordinator
-- a pirate broker
-- a cutout cognition vendor
-- a Cryonix or Rossum technical rep
+- a faction liaison
+- a ship officer
+- a labor organizer
+- a corporate handler
+- a sanctuary coordinator
+- a black-market broker
+- a cutout vendor
+- a technical specialist with inconvenient loyalties
 
 These are not the population. They are the pressure points where
 population-scale systems become legible.
@@ -173,14 +173,14 @@ affected.
 Because the simulation is not trying to create a census. It is trying to create
 a socially legible machine.
 
-In a corridor like Ganymede, one persistent agent can sit at the hinge point
-for a great many people:
+In a dense Aetheria slice, one persistent agent can sit at the hinge point for
+a great many people:
 
 - one dispatcher affects dozens of ships and hundreds of crew
 - one sanctuary coordinator gates a network under pressure from thousands of vulnerable lives
-- one insurer official can reprice route access across the corridor
-- one navigator delegate can legitimize or delegitimize rescue, inspection, and route closure
-- one pirate broker can redirect shadow traffic across many dependent cells
+- one corporate official can reshape access, risk, and reputation
+- one faction delegate can legitimize or delegitimize a compromise
+- one broker can redirect shadow traffic across many dependent cells
 
 The persistent cast is therefore best understood as:
 
@@ -212,13 +212,13 @@ Each cohort record should include:
 - `mobilizationPotential`
 - `recentIncidents`
 
-Useful cohort types for Cold Wake:
+Useful cohort types for Aetheria story and content generation:
 
 - dock labor
-- convoy crews
+- ship crews
 - sanctuary residents
-- insurer workforce
-- pirate crews
+- corporate workforce
+- shadow-market crews
 - repair-yard workers
 - shadow clinic clients
 - private security detachments
@@ -289,39 +289,41 @@ That means scenes, dashboards, and local UI should be fed with things like:
 The player does not need to meet everyone. They need to feel surrounded by
 consequences.
 
-## Cold Wake-Specific Population Recipe
+## Content-Generation Population Recipe
 
-For the first slice, a sensible starting mix is:
+For the first authoring slice, a sensible starting mix is:
 
 - **20-40 persistent agents**
 - **10-25 cohorts**
 - **0-20 ephemerals per active scene**, generated on demand
 
-Persistent clusters:
+Persistent clusters should be chosen from the story context, but the useful
+categories are:
 
-- Navigators
-- Lightsail
-- PSC / insurers
-- Aya
-- pirates
-- cutout vendors
-- local technical reps
+- primary faction representatives
+- ship or station operators
+- labor and logistics figures
+- care, sanctuary, or rights workers
+- criminal or deniable-economy brokers
+- corporate cutouts
+- technical specialists
+- witnesses with leverage
 
 Cohorts:
 
 - dock labor
-- convoy crews
-- sanctuary overflow
+- crews
+- sanctuary or civilian overflow
 - clinic queues
-- inspector pool
+- administrative or inspection staff
 - security contractors
-- pirate cells
+- shadow-market cells
 - repair techs
 - cargo handlers
 - passengers / transients
 
-That is enough to make the world feel socially populated without turning the
-runtime into a screaming furnace.
+That is enough to make generated scenes feel socially populated without turning
+the authoring runtime into a screaming furnace.
 
 ## Simulation Tier Mapping
 

docs/architecture/aetheria-cold-wake-mvp-scenario.md

@@ -1,451 +0,0 @@
-# Aetheria Cold Wake MVP Scenario
-
-This is the first buildable scenario brief for the persistent-world agent work.
-
-The broader machine lives in
-[Aetheria Persistent Agent Architecture](./aetheria-persistent-agent-architecture.md).
-The population scaling answer lives in
-[Aetheria Agent Population Model](./aetheria-agent-population-model.md). This
-document is the narrower, dirtier thing: one bounded slice of the setting that
-is small enough to simulate and rich enough to misbehave.
-
-## Premise
-
-The MVP should center on **Ganymede orbital docks and one outward Jovian convoy
-corridor during the Cold Wake Panic**.
-
-That gives us:
-
-- a physically bounded region
-- a politically meaningful choke point
-- factions with incompatible incentives
-- local social density
-- enough offstage Sol to make every local event matter
-
-The corridor is not just transit. In Aetheria, it is law, trust, debt, rescue,
-smuggling, insurance, and quiet warfare wearing the same pressure suit.
-
-## Why This Slice
-
-This slice works because the lore already piles several important systems on top
-of one another:
-
-- **Ganymede** sits at the overlap of route law, dock labor, shipbuilding support, and outer-system logistics.
-- the **Ganymede Route Compact** is a foundational moment in the rise of the Cetacean Navigators and in corridor governance itself
-- **Jovian space** already contains both high-legibility convoy culture and murkier gray-market cognition and pirate traffic
-- **Cold Wake Panic** turns thermal stealth, quiet-running, and vessel classification into a live political crisis
-
-That means we do not have to invent tension from scratch like desperate little
-frauds. The world already wants to fight.
-
-## Flashpoint
-
-The live scenario should be built around **Cold Wake Panic** rather than the
-older Ganymede Route Compact.
-
-The Compact is excellent historical texture and local civic mythology. It tells
-us what people in this region think corridor legitimacy is supposed to mean.
-
-Cold Wake Panic is the better active crisis.
-
-During the panic:
-
-- insurers realize thermal posture has become a strategic problem
-- permit categories no longer describe the real battlespace
-- quiet-running ships can stay cold long enough to make first detection politically explosive
-- Rossum & Douglas and Cryonix become important to certified quiet-running envelopes and heat-debt tolerances
-- privateers, security buyers, and corridor authorities all start circling each other
-
-That is ideal proof-of-concept material because it creates immediate uncertainty
-with economic and moral consequences.
-
-## Bounded World Slice
-
-The MVP world should include four linked spaces:
-
-1. **Ganymede Orbital Docks**
-   - main social hub
-   - cargo handling
-   - navigator councils
-   - insurer desks
-   - PSC corridor administration
-   - labor syndicate politics
-2. **Convoy Corridor Segment**
-   - one actively monitored route
-   - route hazards
-   - rescue obligations
-   - stealth / heat-debt / interdiction pressure
-3. **Callisto Spillover Zone**
-   - shadow logistics
-   - cutout research
-   - pirate brokerage
-   - gray-market cognition work
-4. **Relay Dark / Tribunal Layer**
-   - distributed insurer rulings
-   - permits
-   - sanctions
-   - misclassification disputes
-   - offscreen political leverage made locally visible
-
-This gives us one city-like social knot, one moving logistics lane, one
-shadow-edge, and one bureaucratic abstraction layer that can still hurt people.
-
-## Historical Texture
-
-The old wound under the scenario is the **Ganymede Route Compact**.
-
-Locally, people should treat it the way cities treat founding strikes,
-rebellions, or constitutional bargains:
-
-- navigators remember it as the point where corridor labor stopped being property and became politics
-- Lightsail and dock operators remember it as the point where reliability got institutional teeth
-- insurers remember it as the moment rescue and hazard governance became unavoidable
-- hard-sovereignty actors remember it as the moment routes stopped behaving like obedient assets
-
-The scenario should not reenact the Compact. It should let people invoke it.
-
-That gives local conversation and factional self-justification a spine.
-
-## Local Factions
-
-The MVP does not need every solar faction embodied at full fidelity, but they
-should all still exist as economic and political pressure.
-
-### Fully Embodied In The Slice
-
-- **Cetacean Navigators**
-  - route stewardship
-  - rescue legitimacy
-  - corridor governance
-- **Lightsail Express**
-  - fleet operations
-  - convoy reliability
-  - practical logistics power
-- **Pan-Solar Consortium / PSCC / insurer apparatus**
-  - corridor legality
-  - clearing
-  - sanctions
-  - classification and risk pricing
-- **Aya Collective**
-  - sanctuary intake
-  - clinics
-  - food and repair capacity
-  - moral pressure against procedural cruelty
-- **Pirate Coalition**
-  - shadow circulation
-  - escape routes
-  - black cargo
-  - opportunism, rescue, and predation in unstable proportions
-
-### Present Through Cutouts, Contracts, Or Local Representatives
-
-- **Cognitum**
-  - gray-market cognition work
-  - routing firmware
-  - clinic/bounty harvesting
-  - deniable strategic minds
-- **Rossum & Douglas**
-  - quiet-running certification
-  - thermal-envelope expertise
-- **Cryonix**
-  - signature-managed skins
-  - heat-debt infrastructure
-- **AstroDyne**
-  - rough frontier repair culture
-  - cargo and salvage spillover
-- **GeneSys**
-  - old uplift lineage hanging over Navigator politics
-
-### Offstage But Causally Present
-
-- Sol Dominion
-- Zhestokost
-- Lucent Media
-- Framgang
-- Baseline League
-- other major powers and movements
-
-These do not need local populations in the MVP. They need to arrive as policy,
-money, media shocks, security contracts, doctrine, and cargo priority.
-
-## Why Cognitum Fits
-
-Cognitum is not explicitly written as the overt local ruler of Ganymede. Good.
-That would be a little too neat and a lot less rancid.
-
-What the lore gives us instead is better:
-
-- Ganymede and Callisto host shadow economies, cutout research, and gray-market cognition work tied back to the Cognitum and pirate logistics
-- Cognitum specializes in deniable cognition products, routing tools, and firmware derived from uploaded minds
-- it hunts for minds with traits including navigational instinct
-- after public scandal it hardens its cutout structure and pushes more work through shell firms, clinics, and nominally separate vendors
-
-So the local Cognitum footprint should look like:
-
-- bounty clinics
-- shell routing consultants
-- firmware brokers
-- black-budget procurement intermediaries
-- suspiciously capable quiet-running optimization suites
-- trafficked or coerced cognition hidden inside legal cargo categories
-
-That means the players can discover Cognitum through traces, testimony,
-invoices, wreckage, and people breaking under pressure instead of through a
-villain sign hanging over a lobby.
-
-## Core Tensions
-
-The slice works if every faction is defending something real and mutually
-incompatible.
-
-### Navigators
-
-Need routes to remain governable through trust, rescue obligation, and
-stewardship.
-
-They fear:
-
-- routes becoming pure battlespace
-- security actors replacing reciprocity with force
-- cognition exploitation hiding inside logistics systems
-
-### Lightsail
-
-Needs ships to keep moving and reputation to remain intact.
-
-They fear:
-
-- insurer panic
-- corridor shutdowns
-- being forced to choose between lawful compliance and actual reliability
-
-### PSC / insurers
-
-Need categories, permits, and thermal classifications to mean something again.
-
-They fear:
-
-- political scandal caused by misclassification
-- uncontrollable stealth escalation
-- loss of leverage if corridor law looks absurd
-
-### Aya
-
-Needs sanctuary and care systems to survive without being flooded past
-capacity.
-
-They fear:
-
-- rescue obligations collapsing into selective abandonment
-- every crisis being solved by securitization
-- becoming a moral fig leaf for systems they cannot actually stop
-
-### Pirates
-
-Need borders to remain permeable and hard closures to fail.
-
-They fear:
-
-- route legibility becoming total
-- sanction and thermal law eliminating the shadow economy
-- rival pirate or privateer factions destroying the social trust they still need to operate
-
-### Cognitum And Friends
-
-Need deniable cognition work to remain profitable and plausibly untraceable.
-
-They fear:
-
-- personhood claims attaching to firmware
-- exposure of coercive routing or quiet-running products
-- corridor governance deciding some kinds of optimization are too morally radioactive to permit
-
-## Starting Crisis
-
-The scenario should open with a single destabilizing incident:
-
-- a quiet-running vessel appears in or near the corridor under classifications that do not line up
-- thermal telemetry is contradictory
-- insurer desks freeze
-- some local actors think the ship is pirate
-- some think it is a security black project
-- some think it is a refugee or sanctuary run
-- some think its routing behavior implies firmware or overclocked cognition that should not legally exist
-
-The point is not to start with the answer. The point is to start with a problem
-that every faction is forced to interpret through its own incentives.
-
-## Persistent Agent Cast
-
-The MVP does not need thousands of agents. It needs a small cast with enough
-institutional reach and private mess to create chain reactions.
-
-Target range:
-
-- **20-40 persistent agents**
-
-Suggested clusters:
-
-- navigator council delegates
-- convoy captains
-- Lightsail dispatchers
-- dock labor organizers
-- insurer adjudicators
-- PSC sanctions and permit clerks
-- Aya sanctuary coordinators
-- Aya medics / rights advocates
-- pirate brokers
-- pirate rescue crews
-- repair-yard operators
-- shell-company cognition vendors
-- one or two Rossum / Cryonix technical reps
-- investigators, rumor traders, or media intermediaries
-
-Every one of these agents should have:
-
-- obligations
-- debts
-- loyalties
-- private fears
-- a view of the Compact myth
-- an opinion on whether rescue overrides classification
-
-## Resources And State Variables
-
-The simulation should track a few things explicitly instead of trying to
-simulate the whole economy like an idiot.
-
-### Material
-
-- cargo throughput
-- fuel / heat debt
-- med capacity
-- sanctuary bed capacity
-- repair queue
-- available escort / security coverage
-
-### Social / Political
-
-- corridor trust
-- insurer confidence
-- sanction pressure
-- pirate route permeability
-- public scandal temperature
-- evidence of cognition abuse
-- legitimacy of navigator stewardship
-
-### Agent-Level
-
-- trust
-- resentment
-- obligation
-- leverage
-- fear
-- secrecy burden
-
-These are enough to make choices matter without drowning the system in
-decorative bookkeeping.
-
-## Event Escalation Ladder
-
-The world should have a simple ladder that can climb if humans and agents keep
-making bad decisions.
-
-1. **Misclassification**
-   - one vessel cannot be cleanly categorized
-2. **Risk Repricing**
-   - insurers tighten rules and drive panic behavior
-3. **Route Friction**
-   - delays, refusals, inspections, and rescue disputes spread
-4. **Exposure**
-   - evidence of gray-market cognition or cutout procurement emerges
-5. **Faction Split**
-   - Navigators, PSC, Aya, and Lightsail stop agreeing on minimum procedure
-6. **Security Turn**
-   - interdiction, seizures, or retaliatory piracy escalate
-7. **Legitimacy Crisis**
-   - the corridor stops believing in its own rules
-
-The simulation does not need a single golden path. It needs enough pressure
-that different policies lead to different failures.
-
-## Human Participation
-
-Humans should not be the sole drivers of history here. They should be able to
-disturb an already-running machine.
-
-Possible player roles:
-
-- dock worker
-- independent courier
-- sanctuary volunteer
-- pirate-adjacent fixer
-- insurer clerk
-- navigator aide
-- repair tech
-- contract investigator
-
-The important thing is that players should affect:
-
-- who gets trusted
-- what evidence circulates
-- who gets rescued
-- whether secrets stay secret
-- which institutions lose face
-
-They should not be treated like prophesied little suns for whom society
-politely pauses.
-
-## MVP Build Order
-
-If we build this, the order should be:
-
-1. **Static scenario bible**
-   - locations
-   - factions
-   - route rules
-   - historical context
-2. **Persistent state model**
-   - agents
-   - relationships
-   - route and resource variables
-3. **Strategic tick simulation**
-   - movement
-   - cargo
-   - permits
-   - rescue and inspection pressure
-4. **Scene simulation**
-   - disputes
-   - negotiations
-   - rumors
-   - sanctuary triage
-5. **Live human interaction**
-   - dialogue
-   - persuasion
-   - betrayal
-   - evidence exchange
-6. **Escalation events**
-   - panic waves
-   - seizures
-   - leaks
-   - route failures
-
-The point is to make the corridor feel alive before trying to make it huge.
-
-## Why This Is A Good First Swing
-
-This slice is large enough to feel like civilization and small enough to reason
-about.
-
-It lets us prove:
-
-- persistent agents with memories and goals
-- factional friction that comes from incentives instead of plot rails
-- human participation without player centrality
-- offstage macro-factions influencing a local world
-- morally ugly technology showing up as lived social pressure instead of wiki trivia
-
-Most importantly, it gives us a world where the interesting question is not
-"what quest does this NPC have for me?" but "what kind of order survives when
-trust, law, care, and profit all want different things from the same
-corridor?"

docs/architecture/aetheria-content-generation-targets.md

@@ -0,0 +1,129 @@
+# Aetheria Content Generation Targets
+
+This is the first concrete target note for applying Ghostlight to Aetheria.
+
+The build target is not a standalone corridor simulation or local crisis game
+slice. That older shape was fertile story terrain, but it is not the current
+product direction. Do not let it shape the runtime unless the user explicitly
+revives it.
+
+Ghostlight should first serve two Aetheria uses:
+
+1. content generation inside the **Call of the Void** slice described in the
+   `AetheriaLore` repository
+2. dialogue scaffolding and procedural drama for narrated stories across the
+   Aetheria timeline
+
+The goal is a story and content-generation organ: a machine that can hold
+characters, factions, pressures, memories, masks, and conflict arcs in explicit
+state, then project that state into usable scenes, dialogue beats, outlines,
+and dramatic complications.
+
+## Primary Use: Call Of The Void Content
+
+Call of the Void should be treated as the first consumer context for Ghostlight,
+not as an excuse to build a full social MMO simulation immediately.
+
+The local source of truth is:
+
+- `E:\Projects\AetheriaLore\Aetheria\Game Design\Call of the Void.md`
+- `docs/aetheria/call-of-the-void-brainstorm.md` for raw imported brainstorm
+  material
+
+The slice is a story-first Aetheria scope cut about Catastrophe "Cat" Marrigan:
+an out-of-work private investigator making ends meet with a failure-prone space
+taxi while people trapped inside Elysium slowly realize the old world is not
+coming back intact.
+
+Its useful shape is authored density:
+
+- episodic investigations
+- taxi fares as social x-rays
+- station districts
+- recurring characters
+- faction contacts
+- campaign consequence
+- the social aftermath of return becoming fantasy
+
+Ghostlight should help generate and manage:
+
+- character dossiers
+- faction stances
+- relationship tensions
+- scene premises
+- dialogue scaffolds
+- procedural complications
+- continuity-aware reactions
+- memory-shaped follow-up scenes
+- local cultural and institutional pressure
+- case premises and clue chains
+- passenger encounters that reveal denial, opportunism, homesickness, fear, or reckless celebration
+- continuity pressure from the sealed-domain premise
+
+The important thing is that generated content should emerge from structured
+state instead of a prompt asking for "dramatic dialogue" and hoping the machine
+does not start juggling knives in the pantry.
+
+## Secondary Use: Narrated Timeline Stories
+
+Ghostlight should also support story generation across Aetheria's broader
+timeline.
+
+That means it should be able to produce:
+
+- scene outlines
+- relationship escalation chains
+- factional pressure maps
+- alternate dialogue passes
+- conflict beats
+- character-specific reactions to historical events
+- continuity summaries for later story work
+
+This does not require every story to run as a live simulation. Some outputs can
+be generated as authoring scaffolds: structured suggestions, scene cards,
+argument maps, motive webs, and dialogue skeletons for a human author to shape.
+
+## What Ghostlight Should Build For This
+
+The first useful organs are:
+
+1. canonical agent state schema
+2. perceived-state overlay schema
+3. relationship and faction stance records
+4. event and scene records
+5. prompt projection renderer for content generation
+6. drama beat generator driven by goals, values, pressure, and memory
+7. dialogue scaffold renderer that preserves stance, mask, and relationship
+   asymmetry
+
+The output should be inspectable. The author should be able to see why the
+machine thinks a character would deflect, confess, threaten, soften, bargain,
+or lie.
+
+## What This Is Not
+
+This is not yet:
+
+- a standalone corridor crisis game
+- a persistent corridor simulator
+- a full MMO social runtime
+- a requirement to simulate every offscreen person
+- a replacement for authorial judgment
+
+Ghostlight is an authoring and social-state engine first. The live game-shaped
+organs can come later if they earn the trouble.
+
+## Success Criteria
+
+The first implementation is useful if it can:
+
+- keep character state distinct from prompt prose
+- generate dialogue scaffolds that reflect relationship history
+- create procedural drama from incompatible goals instead of random hostility
+- preserve cultural and factional pressure without making clones
+- produce story beats a human author can actually use
+- explain its choices in state terms rather than vibes in a rented coat
+
+The real test is not whether the system can improvise a cool scene once. The
+real test is whether it can help generate the tenth scene without forgetting
+what the first nine did to everyone involved.

docs/architecture/aetheria-persistent-agent-architecture.md

@@ -3,8 +3,8 @@
 This is the companion document to
 [Things To Steal](../research/things-to-steal.md).
 
-For the first concrete slice, see
-[Aetheria Cold Wake MVP Scenario](./aetheria-cold-wake-mvp-scenario.md).
+For the first concrete target, see
+[Aetheria Content Generation Targets](./aetheria-content-generation-targets.md).
 
 For the scaling model that explains how a crowded region can be simulated with
 a relatively small persistent cast, see
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ perceived state should project into prompts, see
 That document is the theft list. This one is the machine we are trying to build
 out of the stolen parts.
 
-The target is a persistent world full of in-universe agents who:
+The long-horizon target is a persistent world full of in-universe agents who:
 
 - remember what happened
 - want different things
@@ -30,6 +30,11 @@ little bastard must orbit.
 
 ## Design Goals
 
+The near-term target is content generation and story scaffolding, not a
+standalone game slice. Ghostlight should first help Aetheria authors generate
+dialogue, scene pressure, procedural drama, and character reactions from
+explicit social state.
+
 We want a world where:
 
 - agents persist across sessions
@@ -526,34 +531,41 @@ Countermeasure:
 
 ## Build Order
 
-### Phase 1: Cast Spine
+### Phase 1: Authoring Cast Spine
 
 - explicit agent identity dossiers
 - explicit goal objects
 - explicit relationship objects
 - episodic + semantic memory split
 
-### Phase 2: Social Simulation
+### Phase 2: Dialogue And Drama Scaffolding
+
+- prompt projection for scene and dialogue drafts
+- relationship-aware dialogue skeletons
+- conflict beat generation from incompatible goals
+- author-visible rationale for generated moves
+
+### Phase 3: Social Simulation
 
 - scene objects
 - scene scheduler
 - relationship updates from scenes
 - goal revision from scenes
 
-### Phase 3: Persistent World
+### Phase 4: Persistent World
 
 - region state
 - off-screen strategic ticking
 - rumor/news propagation
 - faction and economy hooks
 
-### Phase 4: Human Integration
+### Phase 5: Human Integration
 
 - live player-facing interactions
 - persistent human reputation
 - access, trust, and consequence systems
 
-### Phase 5: Rich Narrative Surface
+### Phase 6: Rich Narrative Surface
 
 - chronicles
 - regional reports

notes/fresh-workspace-handoff.md

@@ -28,18 +28,35 @@ Ghostlight now has the persistence spine plus the first architecture payload:
   - personality structure
   - signal classification
   - state distributions and prompt projection
-  - Aetheria persistent-world slice design
+  - Aetheria content generation targets
+  - population scaling for socially dense authored slices
 
 There is still no runtime yet. The live machine is design, state discipline,
 and a cleaner repo boundary.
 
+## Current Direction
+
+Use Ghostlight first for:
+
+- content generation inside the Call of the Void slice described in
+  `AetheriaLore`
+- dialogue scaffolding and procedural drama for narrated Aetheria timeline
+  stories
+
+An older corridor-crisis game slice is not the current build target. It can
+remain fertile story ground, but it should not steer Ghostlight's implementation
+state unless explicitly revived.
+
 ## Current Next Action
 
 Pick the first implementation seam to cut:
 
 - state schema
+- perceived-state overlay
 - classifier/event data model
-- prompt projection renderer
+- prompt projection renderer for authoring outputs
+
+The clean first move is still the canonical agent-state schema.
 
 ## Warnings
 
@@ -49,3 +66,5 @@ Pick the first implementation seam to cut:
   cut it back.
 - Keep the prompt-projection doctrine intact: prompt text is projection, not
   truth storage.
+- Do not accidentally re-promote the older corridor-crisis idea into a game MVP
+  because an old doc had a strong chin and good lighting.

notes/ghostlight-implementation-plan.md

@@ -7,6 +7,8 @@
    - Define first-class dimensions, including volatility, attachment-seeking,
      and distance-seeking.
    - Define canonical state versus perceived state.
+   - Keep authoring outputs explainable from the state, not just generated from
+     stylish prompt fog.
 
 2. Freeze the first event and classifier schema.
    - Define event labels.
@@ -15,22 +17,28 @@
    - Define mask or presentation labels.
    - Define confidence, uncertainty, and evidence accumulation rules.
 
-3. Build the prompt projection layer.
-   - Render prompts from structured state, relevant memories, scene pressure,
-     cultural defaults, and perceived state.
+3. Build the prompt projection layer for authoring.
+   - Render scene and dialogue scaffolds from structured state, relevant
+     memories, scene pressure, cultural defaults, and perceived state.
    - Keep the prompt renderer a projection surface instead of a second brain.
+   - Make generated moves inspectable: why this character deflects, confesses,
+     threatens, softens, bargains, or lies.
 
-4. Build the simulation update loop.
+4. Build the first drama-scaffolding loop.
    - memory updates
    - relationship updates
    - goal pressure
    - situational activation
    - cultural and institutional pressure
+   - conflict beats derived from incompatible goals and values
 
-5. Build the first Aetheria slice.
-   - use the bounded corridor scenario already outlined elsewhere
-   - prove that a small cast, cohort states, and ambient pressure can make a
-     place feel inhabited
+5. Build the first Aetheria authoring consumer.
+   - use the Call of the Void slice described in `AetheriaLore` as the first
+     concrete content-generation context
+   - support dialogue scaffolding and procedural drama for narrated stories
+     across the Aetheria timeline
+   - do not treat an older corridor-crisis game slice as the implementation
+     target unless explicitly revived later
 
 ## Discipline
 
@@ -39,3 +47,5 @@
   the trouble.
 - Do not let prompt-writing outrun the structured state model.
 - Do not let elegant theory notes multiply faster than implementation seams.
+- Do not accidentally rebuild a game slice when the requested consumer is an
+  authoring and story-generation organ.

state/evidence.jsonl

@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
 
 {"ts": "2026-05-01T17:06:46+00:00", "type": "scaffold", "status": "ok", "note": "Initialized Ghostlight with a stripped-down Epiphany-style persistence spine: canonical map, scratch, evidence, handoff, implementation plan, and Python state or compaction helpers."}
 {"ts": "2026-05-01T17:24:54+00:00", "type": "migration", "status": "ok", "note": "Migrated Ghostlight-owned research and architecture notes out of VoidBot and into this repo; Ghostlight is now the canonical home for personality, culture, state-projection, and Aetheria persistent-world design notes."}
+{"ts": "2026-05-01T17:35:16+00:00", "type": "decision", "status": "rejected", "note": "Rejected the prior corridor-crisis game slice as Ghostlight active direction; current Aetheria consumer target is Call of the Void content generation plus narrated timeline dialogue and procedural drama scaffolding."}
+{"ts": "2026-05-01T17:35:57+00:00", "type": "source", "status": "ok", "note": "Imported the scattered Call of the Void Google Doc brainstorm into docs/aetheria/call-of-the-void-brainstorm.md as raw source material; compact canon remains the AetheriaLore Call of the Void design note."}

state/map.yaml

@@ -10,12 +10,14 @@ experiment:
 objective:
   primary: >
     Turn Ghostlight into a legible machine for persistent autonomous social
-    agents that can inhabit Aetheria and other worlds without collapsing into
-    prompt soup.
+    agents that can support Aetheria content generation, dialogue scaffolding,
+    procedural drama, and eventual live-world simulation without collapsing
+    into prompt soup.
   current: >
     Stand up the repo spine, consolidate the architecture we already know, and
     prepare the first implementation slices around state modeling, cultural
-    priors, signal classification, and prompt projection.
+    priors, signal classification, prompt projection, and authoring-oriented
+    drama generation.
 
 constraints:
   - Prefer explicit latent state over persona theater.
@@ -23,6 +25,7 @@ constraints:
   - Prompt text is a projection surface, not the canonical store of truth.
   - Keep persistent state small enough to rehydrate without drowning the next session.
   - Reuse proven machinery where it fits before inventing ornate nonsense.
+  - Do not treat an older corridor-crisis game slice as the active Ghostlight implementation target.
 
 invariants:
   - The map is canonical and slow-changing.
@@ -31,6 +34,7 @@ invariants:
   - Canonical agent state and per-agent perceived state must remain distinct.
   - Listener misread is part of the model, not an error to flatten away.
   - Personality must be modeled as layered organization, presentation, and situational activation, not just one bag of labels.
+  - Authoring outputs must remain explainable in terms of state, relationship, pressure, memory, and goals.
 
 data_flow:
   observe:
@@ -38,6 +42,7 @@ data_flow:
     - implementation artifacts
     - simulation requirements
     - setting constraints
+    - AetheriaLore source context
   process:
     - rehydrate from canonical state
     - work one bounded organ
@@ -47,12 +52,14 @@ data_flow:
   cut:
     - kill machinery that does not visibly serve the core model
     - move volatile proof to git history or artifacts, not durable notes
+    - remove active scenario assumptions when the user redirects the product target
 
 active_subgoals:
   - Keep Ghostlight as the canonical home for its architecture notes so consumer projects do not quietly regrow duplicate brains.
   - Define the canonical agent state model, including first-class volatility, attachment-seeking, and distance-seeking.
   - Define how culture shapes priors, incentives, masks, and economic behavior without turning populations into clones.
   - Define the boundary between canonical signal, perceived signal, and prompt projection.
+  - Support content generation for the Call of the Void slice in AetheriaLore and dialogue scaffolding or procedural drama for narrated Aetheria timeline stories.
 
 accepted_design:
   - Ghostlight owns the deeper agent-state, personality, culture, relationship, and prompt-projection architecture; other projects can remain consumers instead of shrines.
@@ -62,7 +69,8 @@ accepted_design:
   - Culture acts as a prior-shaping and incentive field with distributions, covariance, scripts, reward gradients, taboo maps, and prestige structure.
   - Synthetic dialogue from known hidden state is a valid bootstrap source for training signal classifiers, but utterances themselves are not ground truth.
   - Performance, concealment, and mask maintenance are signal, not just obstruction.
+  - The near-term Aetheria consumer is authoring support: Call of the Void content generation plus narrated timeline dialogue and procedural drama scaffolding.
 
 current_status:
-  summary: Ghostlight now has both the Epiphany-style persistence spine and the first real architecture payload: research notes for personality structure, signal classification, prompt projection, and the Aetheria corridor simulation slice. It still has no runtime organs, but it finally owns the design body it was spun up to carry.
-  next_action: Freeze the first implementation organ. The clean contenders are the canonical agent-state schema, the event or classifier data model, and the prompt-projection renderer.
+  summary: Ghostlight has the Epiphany-style persistence spine and the first architecture payload for personality structure, signal classification, prompt projection, population scale, and Aetheria authoring support. It still has no runtime organs. The first Aetheria consumer target is Call of the Void content generation plus narrated timeline dialogue and procedural drama scaffolding.
+  next_action: Freeze the first implementation organ. The clean first move remains the canonical agent-state schema, followed by perceived-state overlays, event/classifier records, and prompt projection for authoring outputs.