Clarify Rust to Dust warrior honor

settings/rust-to-dust/aliens.md

@@ -8,6 +8,10 @@ or conquest. Honor is devotion to aesthetic perfection in a chosen field. A
 warrior is prized for fighting beautifully. A speaker, host, artist, trader, or
 politician is judged by the elegance and discipline of their performance.
 
+Mastery requires chosen constraint. Stepping on an ant is not mastery. Bringing
+a tank to a gunfight is not mastery. Overwhelming force can win, but it cannot
+prove aesthetic virtue.
+
 Surface is not superficial to them. Decoration, posture, voice, movement, and
 presentation are evidence of inner order.
 
@@ -32,7 +36,19 @@ Scale decoration can signal:
 The more elaborate the decoration, the more visible the claim of cultivated
 virtue.
 
-## Unpainted
+## Warriors and Tourists
+
+Aliens who arrive at human battle royales in mechs or heavy battle armor are
+tourists. They may be rich, excited, and dangerous to humans, but their own
+culture would shame them for daring to fight in such an inelegant fashion.
+
+They are not participating in warrior culture. They are buying a safe spectacle.
+
+The fearsome alien is the one who brings a knife to a tank fight because the
+asymmetry gives them a chance to demonstrate mastery. Dying in pursuit of beauty
+is not a tragedy. It may be the point.
+
+## Unpainted and Bare
 
 Going out unpainted is an idiom of profound shamelessness and lack of aesthetic
 virtue.
@@ -40,14 +56,12 @@ virtue.
 This is not mere nudity. It can signal refusal, collapse, contempt, rawness, or
 terrifying unconcern with being socially seen.
 
-The setting distinction:
+The lightly equipped warrior is not necessarily unpainted. Most serious warriors
+still bear decoration that frames their performance, lineage, discipline, or
+vow. A rare few may go unpainted as a controversial artistic claim: their
+performance itself is sufficient art.
 
-- an alien in battle armor may be a famous warrior tourist
-- an alien with a knife and no paint is the dangerous one
-
-The unpainted warrior has abandoned the social theater that normally turns
-violence into beautiful performance. That absence can read as obscene,
-disturbing, or frighteningly pure.
+That gesture is not the baseline. It is a provocation.
 
 ## Cultural Lens
 
@@ -64,4 +78,3 @@ The aliens tend to interpret action through aesthetic status:
 
 This lens should shape their language project. It should not become generic
 Weksa doctrine.
-

settings/rust-to-dust/battle-royale.md

@@ -7,6 +7,12 @@ human combat prowess. The aliens do not treat it as the real war for humanity's
 future. They treat it as spectacle, talent development, cultural tourism, and
 market research.
 
+Aliens who enter these events in mechs or heavy armor are tourists buying an
+experience, not respected warrior exemplars. Their culture reads that kind of
+overmatch as inelegant. The alien who arrives lightly equipped, even against
+human firepower, is more dangerous because they are actually pursuing honor
+through visible mastery.
+
 ## Broadcast
 
 An in-universe alien TV channel commentates on what players are doing. The
@@ -63,7 +69,8 @@ The broadcast surface should care about:
 - sincerity
 - marketability
 - tourist appeal
+- inelegant overmatch
+- chosen constraint
 - human authenticity
 - imperial amusement
 - whether resistance reads as threat, folk art, or breakout talent
-

settings/rust-to-dust/language-design.md

@@ -22,6 +22,8 @@ aesthetic virtue is central.
 - surface as evidence of inner order
 - decorated versus unpainted social status
 - violence as beautiful craft
+- chosen constraint as proof of mastery
+- overmatch as vulgar or tourist-coded
 - vulgar violence as failed form
 - commerce as curation
 - conquest as access and integration
@@ -72,6 +74,7 @@ Example:
 - Which human distinctions does it collapse?
 - How does scale decoration appear in metaphor, grammar, address, and insult?
 - How does unpaintedness split across shame, danger, contempt, and purity?
+- How does the language distinguish victory, mastery, spectacle, and vulgar
+  overmatch?
 - What alien terms leak into human English first?
 - How do subtitles balance player comprehension with imperial contamination?
-