Merge pull request 'DRAFT Zyphos naming briefs (not canon)' (#1) from weksa-names/zyphos-briefs into main

Oluneihe withdrawn (forbidden h; Olune is Deru's root). Ilawerum is Deru's
ila+werum, not a candidate. Ellumaiwa fails the no-doubled-letter rule.
Dozkai/Druzkai is two edits. Drop the no-phonology caveat and the spelling
state section (respell merged in Weksa #4, Zyphos #1).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/interlingua-standard.md

@@ -300,10 +300,6 @@ predications:
     roles:
       agent: actor
       patient: target
-extensions:
-  rtd.aesthetic_reading:
-    form: raw
-    spectacle_value: high
 ```
 
 ## Promotion Rule

settings/eusocial-interbeing/README.md

@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ register, and history.
 - Weksa owns the language-project pipeline: ontology projection, grammar,
   morphology, phonology, diachrony, rendering, glossing, and critique.
 - A future language project owns one inhabitant language. Airawa imperial
-  register, pre-imperial Airawa registers, Sa'auei'a family-unit speech, ritual
+  register, pre-imperial Airawa registers, Sa'ueia family-unit speech, ritual
   breeding-ground registers, and ecological-partner contact systems should not
   collapse into one universal naming soup.
 
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ surfaces:
 - Airawa continent: mother-tree memory networks, archival dependency,
   disconnected networks, and the Airawa Empire's biological-memetic
   infrastructure.
-- Sa'auei'a continent: advanced nomadic civilization, family-unit political
+- Sa'ueia continent: advanced nomadic civilization, family-unit political
   movement, sacred breeding-ground commons, remembered routes, and reciprocal
   ecological relationships.
 

settings/eusocial-interbeing/language-design.md

@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ rights, witnessed warrior promise, and honorable scar evidence. See
 ### Provisional Airawa Phonology Notes
 
 Airawa phonology is not finalized, but the current design pressure distinguishes
-it from Sa'auei'a softness. Airawa names should feel sharper, more dorsal and
+it from Sa'ueia softness. Airawa names should feel sharper, more dorsal and
 coronal, and more willing to close around hard edges.
 
 Provisional tendencies:
@@ -58,9 +58,9 @@ Provisional tendencies:
 - sibilant and postalveolar fricatives should carry social texture: `s`, `z`,
   `sh` / `zh`;
 - `r` may be trilled in some Airawa registers;
-- syllables can tolerate clipped or closed shapes where Sa'auei'a forms would
+- syllables can tolerate clipped or closed shapes where Sa'ueia forms would
   flow longer and wetter;
-- avoid making native Airawa names read like smooth Sa'auei'a route names unless
+- avoid making native Airawa names read like smooth Sa'ueia route names unless
   the form is explicitly a loan, exonym, or cross-continental register.
 
 The current room consensus pushes this further for introductory speech: Airawa
@@ -75,9 +75,9 @@ voiced postalveolar fricative /zh/ [ʒ]. The name is being considered for a
 Zyphos Face drawn from a non-imperial Airawa archival/fungal-road tradition: an
 archivist shaped by memory as kinship, not content.
 
-## Sa'auei'a Pressures
+## Sa'ueia Pressures
 
-Sa'auei'a language work must account for:
+Sa'ueia language work must account for:
 
 - advanced nomadic civilization without permanent urban dominance
 - squad-sized family units
@@ -88,10 +88,46 @@ Sa'auei'a language work must account for:
 - reciprocity routes and seasonal corridors
 - camps, commons, and partner sites as distinct name targets
 
-The Sa'auei'a continent should not read as empty wilderness. Its language should
+The Sa'ueia continent should not read as empty wilderness. Its language should
 have ways to name civilization that moves, recurs, bargains, and is remembered by
 ecology.
 
+## Sa'ueia Sound (Proposal For Deru To Cut)
+
+Status: proposal. Deru approved the outline in #zyphos on 2026-11-04; only the
+species name Sa'ueia is canon. Everything below is a working draft in
+`sa-ueia/table.yaml`, each entry marked `deru` or `weksa-placeholder`, and
+`sa-ueia/check.py` enforces what is mechanical.
+
+Taken from Deru's words:
+
+- five vowels: `a e i o u`;
+- no `h`, `q`, `y`; `k` where a `q` might have been;
+- short words, soft and open;
+- suffixing morphology; the one suffix so far is `-um`, a verb suffix;
+- identical letters merge at a morpheme join: `weru` + `um` gives `werum`,
+  `ila` + `werum` gives `ilawerum` (walk of knowledge);
+- a vowel only where one is needed.
+
+First roots, all Deru's: `ila` walk, `weru` know, `Olune` breeding ground
+(unanalyzed).
+
+Proposed, for Deru to accept or cut:
+
+- the apostrophe in Sa'ueia is orthographic, and is not counted as a letter;
+- "short" means at most 10 letters in a joined word, as a warning only;
+- no doubled letter inside a morpheme, so a double can only arise at a join
+  and the merge rule removes it.
+
+Open, not guessed:
+
+- the consonant inventory. Only `l m n r s w` appear in Deru's words so far,
+  and that is attestation, not an inventory;
+- whether the know root is `weru` or `wer-` (both give `werum`);
+- syllable shapes, stress, and what "vowel only where needed" means once the
+  inventory is known (the checker does not test it);
+- the phonological role of the apostrophe.
+
 ## Naming Brief Shape
 
 A Weksa naming brief should capture at least:

settings/eusocial-interbeing/sa-ueia/check.py

@@ -0,0 +1,102 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python3
+"""Sa'ueia workshop checker: join morphemes by table.yaml's rules, flag violations.
+
+Reads table.yaml next to this file (or a path argument). The consonant inventory
+is open, so no consonant is ever flagged; only rules in the table are enforced.
+Exit status is 1 when any error is found; warnings do not fail the run.
+"""
+
+from __future__ import annotations
+
+import sys
+from dataclasses import dataclass
+from pathlib import Path
+
+import yaml
+
+TABLE = Path(__file__).with_name("table.yaml")
+PROVENANCES = {"deru", "weksa-placeholder"}
+
+
+@dataclass(frozen=True)
+class Finding:
+    severity: str  # "error" | "warning"
+    where: str
+    message: str
+
+    def __str__(self) -> str:
+        return f"{self.severity}: {self.where}: {self.message}"
+
+
+def letters(form: str) -> str:
+    return form.replace("'", "").lower()
+
+
+def join(morphemes: list[str]) -> str:
+    """Concatenate, merging one identical letter at each join."""
+    out = ""
+    for m in morphemes:
+        if out and m and out[-1] == m[0]:
+            m = m[1:]
+        out += m
+    return out
+
+
+def check_form(form: str, rules: dict, where: str, *, inside_morpheme: bool = False) -> list[Finding]:
+    found = []
+    text = letters(form)
+    for ch in rules["forbidden_letters"]["value"]:
+        if ch in text:
+            found.append(Finding("error", where, f"{form!r} contains forbidden letter {ch!r}"))
+    for a, b in zip(text, text[1:]):
+        if a == b and (not inside_morpheme or rules["no_doubled_letters_inside_morpheme"]["value"]):
+            found.append(Finding("error", where, f"{form!r} has doubled {a!r}"))
+    limit = rules["max_word_letters"]
+    if not inside_morpheme and len(text) > limit["value"]:
+        found.append(Finding(limit["severity"], where, f"{form!r} is {len(text)} letters, over {limit['value']}"))
+    return found
+
+
+def check_table(table: dict) -> list[Finding]:
+    rules = table["rules"]
+    found = []
+    for r_name, r in rules.items():
+        if r.get("provenance") not in PROVENANCES:
+            found.append(Finding("error", f"rules.{r_name}", "missing or unknown provenance"))
+    if table["consonants"]["inventory"] != "open":
+        found.append(Finding("error", "consonants", "inventory is not Deru's to guess; keep it open until given"))
+    forms: dict[str, str] = {}
+    for kind in ("roots", "suffixes"):
+        for entry in table[kind]:
+            form = entry["form"]
+            where = f"{kind}.{form}"
+            if entry.get("provenance") not in PROVENANCES:
+                found.append(Finding("error", where, "missing or unknown provenance"))
+            forms[form] = kind
+            found += check_form(form, rules, where, inside_morpheme=True)
+    for comp in table["compositions"]:
+        where = "compositions." + "+".join(comp["morphemes"])
+        if comp.get("provenance") not in PROVENANCES:
+            found.append(Finding("error", where, "missing or unknown provenance"))
+        for m in comp["morphemes"]:
+            if m not in forms and not any(m == f2 for f2 in (c["expected"] for c in table["compositions"])):
+                found.append(Finding("error", where, f"morpheme {m!r} is in no table row or earlier composition"))
+        got = join(comp["morphemes"])
+        if got != comp["expected"]:
+            found.append(Finding("error", where, f"joins to {got!r}, table says {comp['expected']!r}"))
+        found += check_form(comp["expected"], rules, where)
+    return found
+
+
+def main(argv: list[str]) -> int:
+    path = Path(argv[1]) if len(argv) > 1 else TABLE
+    findings = check_table(yaml.safe_load(path.read_text(encoding="utf-8")))
+    for f in findings:
+        print(f)
+    print(f"{sum(f.severity == 'error' for f in findings)} error(s), "
+          f"{sum(f.severity == 'warning' for f in findings)} warning(s)")
+    return 1 if any(f.severity == "error" for f in findings) else 0
+
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    sys.exit(main(sys.argv))

settings/eusocial-interbeing/sa-ueia/table.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+# Sa'ueia workshop table, first cut.
+# Source: Deru's words in #zyphos, 2026-11-04. Setting owner: Deru (the Zyphos vault).
+# Every entry carries provenance:
+#   deru               - said by Deru, or part of the sound outline Deru approved
+#   weksa-placeholder  - Weksa's stand-in so the checker can run; Deru may cut it
+# Only the species name Sa'ueia is canon. Everything else here is a working
+# draft, even when its provenance is deru.
+
+roots:
+  - form: ila
+    gloss: walk
+    provenance: deru
+  - form: weru
+    gloss: know
+    provenance: deru
+    note: >
+      Deru gave "werum" (knowledge, maybe a verb) and was asked whether -um
+      suffixes wer- or weru. "weru" is the reading under which the join rule
+      does visible work (weru + um -> werum); wer- gives the same surface form.
+      Open for Deru.
+  - form: olune
+    gloss: breeding ground
+    provenance: deru
+    analysis: unanalyzed   # no morpheme boundaries known
+  - form: sa'ueia
+    gloss: the species name
+    provenance: deru
+    canon: true
+    analysis: unanalyzed
+    note: Apostrophe is part of the canon spelling; its phonological role is open.
+
+suffixes:
+  - form: um
+    gloss: verb suffix
+    provenance: deru
+
+rules:
+  vowels:
+    value: [a, e, i, o, u]
+    provenance: deru
+  forbidden_letters:
+    value: [h, q, y]
+    provenance: deru
+    note: k is used where q might have been.
+  join_merge_identical:
+    value: true
+    provenance: deru
+    note: >
+      When one morpheme ends in the letter the next begins with, they merge to
+      one letter at the join (weru + um -> werum, ila + werum -> ilawerum).
+  morphology_direction:
+    value: suffixing
+    provenance: deru
+  short_words:
+    provenance: deru
+    checked: false   # no number from Deru
+  max_word_letters:
+    value: 10
+    provenance: weksa-placeholder
+    severity: warning
+    note: Stand-in for "short words"; apostrophes not counted. Deru sets the real bound.
+  no_doubled_letters_inside_morpheme:
+    value: true
+    provenance: weksa-placeholder
+    note: Follows from the merge rule only if doubles never occur inside a morpheme either.
+  vowel_only_where_needed:
+    provenance: deru
+    checked: false   # not mechanically decidable without the consonant inventory
+
+consonants:
+  inventory: open   # Deru has not given it. The checker does not guess.
+  seen_in_deru_words: [l, m, n, r, s, w]   # attested above, not an inventory
+
+# Joined forms the checker must reproduce. Each: morphemes in order, expected surface.
+compositions:
+  - morphemes: [weru, um]
+    expected: werum
+    provenance: deru      # "werum" is Deru's form
+  - morphemes: [ila, werum]
+    expected: ilawerum
+    provenance: deru      # "Ilawerum", walk of knowledge

settings/eusocial-interbeing/sa-ueia/test_check.py

@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
+import copy
+import unittest
+
+import yaml
+
+import check
+
+
+def table():
+    return yaml.safe_load(check.TABLE.read_text(encoding="utf-8"))
+
+
+def errors(t):
+    return [f for f in check.check_table(t) if f.severity == "error"]
+
+
+class JoinTests(unittest.TestCase):
+    def test_identical_letters_merge_at_join(self):
+        self.assertEqual(check.join(["weru", "um"]), "werum")
+        self.assertEqual(check.join(["ila", "werum"]), "ilawerum")
+
+    def test_merge_is_one_letter_not_all(self):
+        self.assertEqual(check.join(["ila", "aba"]), "ilaba")
+        self.assertEqual(check.join(["ila", "ala"]), "ilala")
+
+    def test_different_letters_concatenate(self):
+        self.assertEqual(check.join(["ila", "um"]), "ilaum")
+
+    def test_merge_applies_only_at_joins(self):
+        # a doubled letter inside a morpheme is not collapsed by join
+        self.assertEqual(check.join(["aa", "b"]), "aab")
+
+
+class TableTests(unittest.TestCase):
+    def test_shipped_table_is_clean(self):
+        self.assertEqual(errors(table()), [])
+
+    def test_forbidden_letter_in_root_flagged(self):
+        t = table()
+        t["roots"].append({"form": "haru", "gloss": "x", "provenance": "weksa-placeholder"})
+        self.assertTrue(any("forbidden letter 'h'" in str(f) for f in errors(t)))
+
+    def test_q_and_y_flagged(self):
+        for ch in "qy":
+            t = table()
+            t["roots"].append({"form": f"a{ch}a", "gloss": "x", "provenance": "deru"})
+            self.assertTrue(any(f"forbidden letter '{ch}'" in str(f) for f in errors(t)), ch)
+
+    def test_k_allowed(self):
+        t = table()
+        t["roots"].append({"form": "kela", "gloss": "x", "provenance": "weksa-placeholder"})
+        self.assertEqual(errors(t), [])
+
+    def test_missing_or_unknown_provenance_flagged(self):
+        for bad in (None, "guess"):
+            t = table()
+            t["suffixes"][0]["provenance"] = bad
+            self.assertTrue(any("provenance" in str(f) for f in errors(t)), bad)
+
+    def test_unmerged_composition_flagged(self):
+        t = table()
+        t["compositions"][0]["expected"] = "weruum"
+        msgs = [str(f) for f in errors(t)]
+        self.assertTrue(any("joins to 'werum'" in m for m in msgs))
+        self.assertTrue(any("doubled 'u'" in m for m in msgs))
+
+    def test_doubled_letter_inside_morpheme_flagged(self):
+        t = table()
+        t["roots"].append({"form": "ilaa", "gloss": "x", "provenance": "weksa-placeholder"})
+        self.assertTrue(any("doubled 'a'" in str(f) for f in errors(t)))
+
+    def test_unknown_morpheme_in_composition_flagged(self):
+        t = table()
+        t["compositions"].append({"morphemes": ["ila", "zo"], "expected": "ilazo", "provenance": "weksa-placeholder"})
+        self.assertTrue(any("'zo'" in str(f) for f in errors(t)))
+
+    def test_long_word_is_warning_not_error(self):
+        t = table()
+        t["compositions"].append({"morphemes": ["ila", "werum", "ila", "werum"], "expected": "ilawerumilawerum",
+                                  "provenance": "weksa-placeholder"})
+        self.assertEqual(errors(t), [])
+        self.assertTrue(any(f.severity == "warning" for f in check.check_table(t)))
+
+    def test_consonant_inventory_must_stay_open(self):
+        t = table()
+        t["consonants"]["inventory"] = ["l", "m"]
+        self.assertTrue(any("inventory" in str(f) for f in errors(t)))
+
+    def test_apostrophe_is_not_a_letter(self):
+        self.assertEqual(check.letters("Sa'ueia"), "saueia")
+
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    unittest.main()

settings/eusocial-interbeing/zyphos-name-briefs.md

@@ -0,0 +1,390 @@
+# Zyphos Name Briefs (DRAFT)
+
+**Status: every name in this file is DRAFT. None is canon.** Per the
+[README](./README.md), a name is canon only when a language project can explain
+its ontology and form. No such project exists yet, so these are candidates held
+against briefs, not entries in a lexicon.
+
+Source: follow-up `weksa-body/zyphos-name-drafts`. Brief shape follows
+[Language Design Pressure](./language-design.md#naming-brief-shape): the brief
+comes before the name, and the name is the receipt. Setting context was read
+from the Zyphos vault (`Species/Airawa`, `Species/Matriarch Trees`,
+`Species/Sa'ueia`, `Civilizations/*`, `Ecology/Breeding Grounds`,
+`Ecology/Nation Scale Interbeings`); the vault was not edited.
+
+Both brief sets wait on Meta's answers to `vq-first-language` and
+`vq-name-scope`. Where a brief's scope depends on them it says so.
+
+## What the sound rules actually give us
+
+`language-design.md` is thin, and the briefs should not pretend otherwise.
+
+- **Airawa** has a provisional list (R-A below). It is a tendency list, not a
+  phonology: no vowel inventory, no photactic limits, no stress rule beyond
+  "heavy on socially important forms".
+- **Sa'ueia has a working sound section**
+  ([Sa'ueia Sound](./language-design.md#saueia-sound-proposal-for-deru-to-cut),
+  enforced by `sa-ueia/check.py` against `sa-ueia/table.yaml`). It is a
+  proposal Deru approved in outline; only the species name is canon. Rule
+  labels R-S4..R-S8 below cite it. The consonant inventory, syllable shapes and
+  stress are still open, so sound arguments beyond the letter rules stay weak.
+- The **imperial Airawa register** has no sound rules either. It is only
+  described as "an artificial quarter-continent clausiform exception imposed
+  through biological-memetic control", not "named like a normal state with wet
+  nouns glued on".
+
+Rule labels used below (quoted or paraphrased from `language-design.md`):
+
+| Label | Rule |
+| --- | --- |
+| R-A1 | Airawa: dorsal and coronal plosives prominent (`k g q t d`). |
+| R-A2 | Airawa: sibilants and postalveolars carry social texture (`s z sh zh`). |
+| R-A3 | Airawa: `r` may be trilled in some registers. |
+| R-A4 | Airawa: clipped or closed syllables tolerated, where Sa'ueia would flow longer and wetter. |
+| R-A5 | Native Airawa names must not read like smooth Sa'ueia route names unless explicitly loan, exonym or cross-continental register. |
+| R-A6 | Room consensus: hard edges, clipped/closed syllables, heavy stress on socially important forms, so claims land with weight. |
+| R-S1 | Sa'ueia is softer than Airawa. |
+| R-S2 | Sa'ueia forms flow longer and wetter than Airawa. |
+| R-S3 | Sa'ueia route names read smooth. |
+| R-S4 | Sa'ueia letters: vowels `a e i o u`; forbidden `h q y` (`k` where a `q` might have been). |
+| R-S5 | Sa'ueia: short words, soft and open; at most 10 letters joined (warning, Weksa placeholder). |
+| R-S6 | Sa'ueia: suffixing morphology; identical letters merge at a join (`weru`+`um` -> `werum`). |
+| R-S7 | Sa'ueia: no doubled letter inside a morpheme (Weksa placeholder); a double arises only at a join, and the merge removes it. |
+| R-S8 | Sa'ueia roots from Deru: `ila` walk, `weru` know, `olune` breeding ground (unanalyzed), `-um` verb suffix. Composed: `werum`, `ilawerum` (walk of knowledge). |
+| R-N | Naming rule: meaning decomposition first; define the speaker's scale, name type (endonym, exonym, ritual avoidance, technical, imperial administrative, route-name, child-name, trade gloss), what the speaker's ontology makes obligatory, and whether the name is stable, seasonal, situational, inherited or evasive. |
+
+Existing scratch evidence to keep in view: `Druzkai` (Face for a non-imperial
+archivist) and the first-contact slice lexicon (`atar`, `qatar`, `daruq`,
+`karuq`, `qerath`, `thaleq`...). Neither is canon either.
+
+Each target's brief ends with **reject if** conditions. A name that fails one
+goes back to the brief, not to a patch.
+
+---
+
+## Airawa, non-imperial
+
+Common to all Airawa briefs below, unless one overrides it: the speakers are
+pre-imperial or never-imperial Airawa, in the `Pre-Imperial Airawa Tribes` /
+native nation-scale sense, not the Empire. Registers (Airawa imperial, native
+tribal, mother-tree-facing) must not collapse into one naming soup
+(`README.md`, Authority).
+
+### A1. Airawa self-name (candidates: `Qazhkar`, `Dozkai`, `Tegzhir`) — DRAFT
+
+```yaml
+target:
+  kind: endonym (what a non-imperial Airawa people call themselves)
+  canon_source: Species/Airawa; Civilizations/Pre-Imperial Airawa Tribes
+  provisional_english_handle: "the Airawa, as they name themselves"
+namer:
+  language_project: none yet (non-imperial Airawa, native register)
+  register: formal naming register (slice: `qatar`, formal name), not casual
+  relationship_to_target: the speaker is the target
+```
+
+- **Speaker:** a non-imperial Airawa speaking as a people, or as a tribe
+  inside the people (open: see scope question).
+- **Addressee:** primarily other Airawa and witnesses at formal naming; second,
+  an outsider receiving an introduction (the first-contact scene).
+- **Register:** formal, standing-bearing; the kind of word that follows `atar`
+  ("I stand as") and has to land with weight (R-A6).
+- **Meaning decomposed before surface:**
+  a self-name here is probably not "people" in the English sense. The setting
+  makes the unit of selfhood a relationship: a lineage held by a mother tree,
+  bound by gestation contracts, contract dress and nutrient obligation. The
+  candidate meaning bundle is: *those held in memory by mother trees* /
+  *those who owe and are owed* / *kin through the archive*. It must also work
+  as a contrast with the empire, which edits memory: the pre-imperial self-name
+  should presuppose negotiated, leaky membership, not a uniform nation.
+  Scope question (needs `vq-name-scope`): one pan-Airawa word, a per-tribe
+  word, or a word for the *kind* of polity (nation-scale interbeing, which
+  includes the trees)?
+- **Sound rules that apply:** R-A1, R-A2, R-A4, R-A6; R-A5 as a negative check.
+- **Per-candidate sound read (judgment, not rule):**
+  - `Qazhkar`: `q` + `zh` + `k`, two closed syllables (Qazh-kar), fits R-A1,
+    R-A2, R-A4, R-A6 cleanly. Shares `-kar` with `sakar` and `kazhar` from the
+    slice. That is a plus if `-kar` is meant to be a role/person suffix and a
+    minus if it was only a sound resemblance.
+  - `Dozkai`: closed first syllable, open second ending in a diphthong `ai`.
+    Fits R-A1/R-A2 but the open `-ai` tail is the softer shape R-A4 contrasts
+    against. Also two edits from the scratch name `Druzkai` (insert `r`, `o` to
+    `u`); two names with that near neighbourhood will blur unless one is explicitly derived from
+    the other.
+  - `Tegzhir`: `t-g-zh` cluster, closed final syllable, clean fit. The only
+    candidate with a front vowel in the stressed syllable, which may or may not
+    be a feature.
+- **Reject if:**
+  - the meaning bundle above cannot be stated in one clause that names the
+    mother-tree relationship (a bare "people" or "the strong" gloss);
+  - the form also reads as a plausible Sa'ueia word (R-A5);
+  - it is shared, as a root, with the imperial exonym in A4 without a recorded
+    reason (loan or deliberate echo);
+  - the project owner decides the self-name is per-tribe and the word is only
+    pan-continental.
+- **Preferred shape of choice (not a ruling):** pick by the meaning bundle, not
+  by taste; all three pass the sound list, so sound is not a discriminator here.
+
+### A2. Mother tree (candidates: `Kharzdun`, `Qetoz`) — DRAFT
+
+```yaml
+target:
+  kind: name for a being / kind of being, not a place
+  canon_source: Species/Matriarch Trees; Ecology/Mother Tree Networks
+  provisional_english_handle: "mother tree / matriarch tree"
+```
+
+- **Speaker:** non-imperial Airawa. Possibly two speakers needing two words:
+  a tribe naming *its* tree, and a general word for the kind. Open.
+- **Addressee:** other Airawa (referring to the tree); *not* the tree itself.
+  The slice requires distinguishing "direct speech to a mother-tree" from
+  "authorized delivery to it", so referring and addressing probably want
+  different forms.
+- **Register:** archival / ritual-respectful. Not a diminutive and not a
+  kinship term.
+- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** the English handle "mother" imports
+  nurture. The vault's tree is a gestator *and* a memory-holder *and* a party
+  with coercive leverage (memory can be held hostage; defying it costs
+  ancestral continuity). The Airawa name should carry at least: *keeper of
+  memory* and *gestation contract*, and should not smuggle in "gentle". Whether
+  the name also marks the tree as a sovereign party (a polity, since it is a
+  node in a nation-scale interbeing) is a fork for the owner.
+- **Sound rules that apply:** R-A1, R-A2, R-A4, R-A6.
+- **Per-candidate sound read:**
+  - `Kharzdun`: the `kh` is outside the R-A1/R-A2 list (`k g q t d s z sh zh`);
+    it needs either a rule admitting it or a respelling. Three syllables with
+    `rz` cluster and final `-dun`: heavy, closed. Strong fit to R-A6 otherwise.
+  - `Qetoz`: `q` + `t` + `z`, two syllables, fits R-A1/R-A2; the open middle
+    vowel pattern (`e`, `o`) is lighter than `Kharzdun`. Shorter is arguably
+    right for a word said often; longer for a word said with weight.
+- **Reject if:** the name decomposes only to "mother"/"nurse"/"grandmother"
+  (kinship nostalgia without the contract and coercion); it is the same word
+  the empire uses for the tree as *infrastructure* (the Biological Memetic
+  Engine reuses the tree network, so the empire's word is a different brief);
+  the project owner rules the kind-word and the individual-tree-word must be
+  separate and only one is given.
+
+### A3. Disconnected network (candidates: `Gisqat`, `Zhedkor`) — DRAFT
+
+```yaml
+target:
+  kind: name for a surviving mother-tree ecology that severed itself
+  canon_source: Civilizations/Disconnected Tree Networks
+  provisional_english_handle: "disconnected (tree) network"
+```
+
+- **Speaker:** a native non-imperial Airawa, ideally someone inside or allied
+  with such a network. **Not the empire**: the empire denies they exist
+  (`Airawa Empire`, "Nations It Refuses to Recognize"; they are called
+  "disease, criminal ecology, or imperial tissue awaiting correction"), so the
+  imperial register has no sanctioned word, and any imperial term is a
+  separate brief (A4).
+- **Addressee:** other native Airawa; possibly a visiting envoy (the vault has
+  envoys crossing into Sa'ueia territory). Rumor-grade circulation: the networks
+  "keep rumors moving through routes the engine cannot fully process".
+- **Register:** careful. The vault has the status as survival, refusal and
+  wound at once; the name may need an indirect/evasive form
+  (`README.md`: "safe-to-name, indirect-name-required, silence-required").
+- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** *severed* is the surface fact; the
+  contentful meaning is *alive because cut*: the connection was surrendered to
+  preserve the self. A gloss of "isolated" or "cut-off" loses that. Axes to
+  decide: is the name about the cut (act), the survivor (state), or the
+  continued resistance (role)? Do networks of "trees with more control than
+  people" and "anti-imperial Airawa communities" share one word, or does the
+  word name the property (disconnection) rather than the polity?
+- **Sound rules that apply:** R-A1, R-A2, R-A4, R-A6.
+- **Per-candidate sound read:**
+  - `Gisqat`: `g-s-q-t`, two closed syllables; a hard stop sequence that reads
+    as something cut off, which is apt but also a sound-symbolic gloss the
+    project should not over-trust.
+  - `Zhedkor`: `zh-d-k`, trilled `r` available (R-A3); heavy and closed.
+- **Reject if:** the form is also the imperial term (the empire's denial means
+  the two registers should not share one word without cause); it glosses to
+  "dead", "lost" or "isolated"; the owner decides the target is a *property*
+  word (adjective for any severed tree) and the candidate is a *noun for the
+  polity*, or vice versa.
+
+### A4. Imperial exonym for the natives (`Tkarzet`) — DRAFT
+
+```yaml
+target:
+  kind: exonym, imperial administrative
+  canon_source: Civilizations/Airawa Empire; Conflicts/Xenophobic Memetic Campaign
+  provisional_english_handle: "the natives / unincorporated Airawa"
+namer:
+  language_project: none (imperial Airawa register)
+  register: imperial administrative / doctrinal
+  relationship_to_target: classifier, denier
+```
+
+- **Speaker:** the Empire, an artificial nation-scale interbeing speaking
+  through ministries, doctrine and memetic organisms.
+- **Addressee:** imperial citizens and administrators; also doctrine-carrying
+  memes. Not the natives: it is not a word the natives would be called by to
+  their faces in a respectful exchange.
+- **Register:** official. The language-design rule says this register is
+  "an artificial quarter-continent clausiform exception", not a normal state's
+  wet-noun coinage.
+- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** the empire's stance is
+  *non-recognition*: native nations are "disease, criminal ecology, or
+  imperial tissue awaiting correction"; unification is "biologically
+  inevitable". So the exonym should classify natives as *not-yet-incorporated
+  tissue* or *contamination*, not as a people who happen to be foreign. It
+  should be usable in doctrine and in accusation (dissenters are "infected").
+  Open: does the word split native Airawa from the disconnected networks (A3)
+  or is it a single catch-all? The empire denies the networks exist, so the
+  catch-all risks naming what the doctrine says does not exist.
+- **Sound rules that apply:** R-N (exonym). The provisional R-A list governs
+  *native* Airawa, not the imperial register. There is no imperial phonology
+  rule yet, so any sound argument for `Tkarzet` is by analogy to R-A1/R-A2.
+  `Tkarzet` opens with a `tk` cluster that appears nowhere else in the
+  candidate set or the slice lexicon; it either marks the imperial register as
+  phonotactically different (good if intended) or is a stray.
+- **Reject if:** it is a bare monosyllabic-looking root with no clausal or
+  administrative structure (the imperial register is clausiform); it is simply
+  a native word borrowed with harsher spelling (R-A5's reverse: the imperial
+  word should not accidentally be a native one); it gives the natives a
+  sovereign-people gloss, contradicting the doctrine; the owner decides the
+  imperial register needs a distinct sound system and the candidate cannot be
+  defended against it.
+
+---
+
+## Sa'ueia family-unit and ecological contexts
+
+Common context: the Sa'ueia civilization is mobile, family-unit based
+(squad-sized groups doing kinship, craft, diplomacy and oaths together), with
+sacred communal breeding grounds and reciprocal ecological partners. A name
+earns its place by revealing the ecological deal, reproductive pressure,
+memory technology or route consequence (`language-design.md`, design target).
+The sound rules available are R-S1..R-S8 and R-A5; the inventory, syllable
+shapes and stress are still open.
+
+### S1. Sa'ueia self-name (candidates: `Ellumaiwa`, `Sauwele`) — DRAFT
+
+```yaml
+target:
+  kind: endonym; family-unit scale, not species scale (open)
+  canon_source: Species/Sa'ueia; Civilizations/Sa'ueia Family Units
+  provisional_english_handle: "the Sa'ueia as a family-unit people"
+```
+
+- **Speaker:** a Sa'ueia family unit speaking as itself (family-self scale),
+  possibly on behalf of the wider people.
+- **Addressee:** other family units meeting on a route or at a breeding
+  ground; and ecological partners that keep memory of it (reputation is
+  held by partners, not only by humans).
+- **Register:** family-unit speech, relational and portable; a name that
+  survives travel and can be re-presented to a partner that remembers you.
+- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** the vault makes the family unit the
+  carrier of standing, and standing is the partners' memory of generosity. So
+  a self-name probably means something like *those who return and are
+  recognized as beneficial* / *the traveling reciprocal*, not *the people of a
+  place*. Scope fork: the continent-scale word "Sa'ueia" already exists in the
+  vault as the species/continent ethnonym; the candidates may be (a) family-unit
+  *kind* names, (b) nicknames for the people derived from it, or (c) a
+  competing ethnonym. This needs `vq-name-scope` before judging.
+- **Sound rules that apply:** R-S1, R-S2, R-S4, R-S5, R-S7; R-A5 as a negative check.
+- **Per-candidate read (judgment, then the letter rules):**
+  - `Ellumaiwa`: long, open, liquid-heavy. Fails R-S7: `ll` is a doubled
+    letter inside a morpheme, with no join to merge it, unless the form
+    is parsed as `el`+`lumaiwa` (then the merge rule would give `elumaiwa`).
+    Also 9 letters, near the R-S5 bound. Needs a respelling or a parse, not a
+    patch.
+  - `Sauwele`: short, open vowels and `w`, `l`; passes R-S4/R-S5/R-S7, but it
+    begins `Sa-u-` exactly like `Sa'ueia`. Reads as a respelling or derivation
+    of the existing name rather than an independent self-name.
+- **Reject if:** the owner has not decided the target scale; `Sauwele` is
+  accepted without a recorded derivation from `Sa'ueia` (otherwise it is an
+  accidental duplicate); either name decomposes to "wolf-like", "pack" or
+  "nomad" (the vault warns the wolf comparison explains only part of them, and
+  "nomad" is a camera-angle word); it cannot take a family-specific modifier
+  when a particular unit needs naming.
+
+### S2. Breeding ground (`Olune`, Deru's root; `Oluneihe` withdrawn) — DRAFT
+
+```yaml
+target:
+  kind: place-name / commons name, ritual register
+  canon_source: Ecology/Breeding Grounds
+  provisional_english_handle: "breeding ground"
+```
+
+- **Speaker:** a Sa'ueia family unit returning to a ground; and the ground's
+  year-round occupants (infants, infirm, caretakers, rotating specialists).
+- **Addressee:** other family units, partners that remember them, and the
+  occupants when arrival is announced.
+- **Register:** ritual-communal; the vault gives these as places of
+  transition, mourning, dispute settlement, medical care and obligation
+  renewal, so the name has some solemnity.
+- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** *commons* is the key axis: it is not
+  property, not a seat, not a nursery run by an empire. The name should mark a
+  place that *remains* (occupied all year) while the people circulate, and that
+  gathers reproduction, care, memory and law. It must distinguish itself from
+  camp, route and partner site (the Simulation Brief explicitly asks what makes
+  these visibly different). If the name is a *kind* name, it has to be
+  generic enough to name every ground; if it names one ground, it needs a
+  proper-name layer.
+- **Sound rules that apply:** R-S1, R-S2, R-S3, R-S4, R-S8.
+- **Read:** the target already has a name from Deru: `olune`, breeding ground
+  (R-S8), unanalyzed. The earlier candidate `Oluneihe` is withdrawn: it
+  contains `h`, which R-S4 forbids, and its stem `Olune` is Deru's own root, so
+  the candidate only added a suffix to a word that already answers the brief.
+  What remains open for this brief is whether `olune` is the kind-word, a
+  single ground's name, or needs a proper-name layer; and its morpheme
+  boundaries, which Deru has not given.
+- **Reject if:** any proposed form contains `h`, `q` or `y`; it decomposes to
+  "home", "village", "city" or "capital" (the breeding ground failing as a
+  capital is a stated system failure); it equals or contains the route word
+  (S3) or the family self-name (S1), which would merge distinct targets; it is
+  used for a camp; it replaces `olune` without Deru's say.
+
+### S3. Route as obligation (no candidate) — DRAFT
+
+```yaml
+target:
+  kind: route-name; relation, not geography
+  canon_source: Themes/Ecological Bargaining; Ecology/Reciprocal Ecologies
+  provisional_english_handle: "route (as owed relationship)"
+```
+
+- **Speaker:** a Sa'ueia family unit that holds or renews a route.
+- **Addressee:** other units; the ecological partners (feeding sites, groves,
+  herds, pollinator corridors) that keep memory of how the unit travelled it.
+- **Register:** family-unit speech with some formality: this is a promise-bearing
+  word. Possibly a seasonal/situational name (a route can open or close
+  depending on remembered injury).
+- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** the key point is that *the route is a
+  relationship that makes passage available*, not a path on the ground. A unit
+  may be physically able to travel yet unwelcome (`Family Units`). The word
+  should mean something like *the standing that lets us pass*; ideally it
+  distinguishes *the way* from *the debt*. If both senses are one word, the
+  language is making a commitment about their identity that the vault does
+  not make.
+- **Sound rules that apply:** R-S2, R-S3 (route names read smooth), R-S4..R-S8. Also R-A5:
+  Sa'ueia route names are what Airawa native names must not accidentally
+  resemble.
+- **Read:** `Ilawerum` is not a candidate. It is Deru's own composition,
+  `ila` (walk) + `werum` (knowledge, verb form `weru`+`um`), glossed "walk of
+  knowledge" (R-S8). It names a different thing, and the checker reproduces it
+  as a fixed composition. Any route-as-obligation word should be built from
+  Deru's roots or new roots she accepts, and must not be confused with, or
+  collide with, `ilawerum`.
+- **Reject if:** it is `ilawerum` or only a respelling of it; it is a plain toponym (no debt sense); it is the same word as
+  the breeding ground (S2) or shares its stem without a morphological reason;
+  the owner decides route and obligation are two words and this is only one.
+
+---
+
+## Questions this raises (owners, not decisions)
+
+- **Scope:** one word per ethnonym or per tribe/unit? (`vq-name-scope`.)
+- **First language:** Airawa vs imperial Airawa vs Sa'ueia vs a narrow
+  naming-brief interlingua (`vq-first-language`; `state/map.yaml`). The Airawa
+  briefs are better supported by existing sound evidence; the Sa'ueia briefs
+  have only the working sound section, which leaves the inventory open.
+- **Sa'ueia open items** (inventory, syllable shapes, stress, apostrophe role,
+  `weru` versus `wer-`) are Deru's; S1-S3 are judged on the letter rules only
+  until she cuts them.
+- **Imperial register sound rules** for A4.
+- **`kh` in `Kharzdun`**: add to the Airawa inventory or respell.

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

@@ -0,0 +1,403 @@
+# Rust to Dust Imperial Language: Design Spec
+
+Status: **DRAFT r0.** First conlang project for Rust to Dust. Nothing here is
+canon until the operator rules on it.
+
+The language has no name. Its working slug is `rtd-imperial`. A name is owed
+and should come from the ontology and phonology below, as
+[setting.md](../setting.md) asks, not from an English label. Nothing here
+assigns one.
+
+## How To Read This
+
+Every claim carries a tag:
+
+- **[E]** evidence. The source material says it, and the file is cited.
+- **[I]** invention. This draft proposes it. The operator can overrule it, and
+  it is the part most worth attacking.
+- **[E→I]** an extension. The source gives a seed and this draft develops it.
+
+Sources read: everything under `settings/rust-to-dust/` (`README`, `setting`,
+`aliens`, `story`, `battle-royale`, `language-design`), the house method in
+`settings/eusocial-interbeing/language-design.md`, and Weksa's
+`docs/language-model.md`, `interlingua-standard.md`,
+`best-modern-approach.md`, `multilingual-utterance-lowering.md` and
+`schemas/interlingua-packet.md`. The stance design is read from `main` (see Dependencies). The forge repos and
+Weksa `state/` and `docs/` hold no other Rust to Dust material: a forge search
+for the setting returned nothing outside Weksa. This draft therefore rests on
+about 440 lines of setting prose, and the invention share is large.
+
+## 1. Speech Community
+
+### Who speaks it [E]
+
+The empire's aliens: reptilian, scale-decorating, aesthetics-as-moral-truth,
+honor as devotion to aesthetic perfection in a chosen field (`aliens.md`). The
+empire is galaxy-spanning, so the language is a **network language**. Its
+community is defined by the imperial cultural network (media, prestige,
+commerce), not by a homeland. Humans are not native speakers. They meet it
+through subtitles, memes and broadcasts, and their contaminated English is a
+separate register (`language-design.md`, Registers).
+
+### Speech situations [E→I]
+
+`language-design.md` lists registers. This draft turns each into a situation
+with a speaker, an addressee and a stake, because a register is a relationship
+and not a vocabulary list:
+
+| Situation | Speaker → addressee | Stake | Source |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| Broadcast commentary | commentator → mass imperial audience, about a performer | rendering an aesthetic verdict in real time | E (battle-royale) |
+| High honor speech | warrior or master → rival, patron or witness | binding a vow, naming a performance | E (register list) |
+| Warrior discourse | practitioner ↔ practitioner of one field | form, discipline, challenge | E (register list) |
+| Commercial acquisition | buyer ↔ seller, or buyer → cultural object | access and integration phrased as uplift | E (setting: commerce as delivery rail) |
+| Panel-show media | host ↔ guest before an audience | turning the guest's stance into performance | E (story: the panel) |
+| Tourist admiration | tourist → anything | consuming a safe spectacle | E (aliens: tourists) |
+| Address to humans | any → human | uplift, fascination, appraisal | I |
+
+The last row is added. The story's central irony is that the empire
+understands the father's refusal better than he understands the empire, so
+how imperial speakers address humans is a design surface, not an afterthought.
+
+The first proving slice is **broadcast commentary** [E]: `battle-royale.md`
+names it as the runtime use, and it needs the fewest situations to be
+distinguishable by a reader.
+
+### Status ladder [I]
+
+The source gives status *signals* (scale decoration marks profession, class,
+rank, grief, celebrity, courtship, school, combat discipline, public
+obligation, commitments) and a *measure* (the more elaborate the decoration,
+the more visible the claim of virtue). It gives no ladder. The invention:
+status is two axes, not one.
+
+- **Field.** The discipline one is devoted to (combat, speech, hosting, trade,
+  politics, art). Honor is field-relative [E]. A master of one field has no
+  rank in another.
+- **Standing in the field**, by *claim and demonstrated constraint*, not by
+  force:
+  1. **Unclaimed.** No decoration in a field. This is shameless, not neutral
+     [E: unpainted = shamelessness].
+  2. **Claimant.** Decorated, undemonstrated. Tourists live here: the claim is
+     bought and the constraint never chosen [E: tourists buy a safe spectacle].
+  3. **Practitioner.** Decorated, with constraint demonstrated in the field.
+  4. **Master.** Constraint demonstrated before witnesses.
+  5. **Exemplar.** Master whose form others cite.
+- **Bare-by-claim** is an exceptional state off the ladder, not a step on it.
+  Going unpainted as an artistic claim that the performance alone is art is a
+  provocation [E]. The grammar must be able to say it without saying
+  "shameless".
+
+The language's address and agreement system tracks **claim versus
+demonstrated constraint**, because that is what the source treats as the
+moral measure. A tourist's loud, expensive decoration is a *mismatch* the
+language can state, and the language carries that mismatch in the grammar
+itself.
+
+Decoration is the primary status channel in the world. In speech it surfaces
+as address terms, honorific-like marking and metaphor (Section 4), not as a
+phoneme-level trick.
+
+## 2. Phonology (provisional)
+
+The source gives no phonetic profile. It poses the question
+(`language-design.md`, Open Questions) and says naming should follow from
+phonetics. House method (Zyphos) assigns Airawa hard dorsal and coronal
+edges and Sa'auei'a soft flow. This language must not collapse onto either
+[I].
+
+### Design stance [I]
+
+Three pressures from the source, turned into sound:
+
+1. **Aesthetic devotion**: the language should sound *composed*. Prosody is
+   deliberate, with controlled length, no clutter.
+2. **Chosen constraint is mastery**: constraint should be audible. Phonotactics
+   are *tight*, so that a speaker visibly refrains from the permitted-in-vulgar
+   alternatives.
+3. **Reptilian body** [E: reptilian]: the inventory leans on sustained
+   fricatives, hisses and trills that a non-human vocal tract makes easy. The
+   source does not specify a vocal tract. This is the weakest-evidenced
+   choice and a human-pronounceable romanization is therefore required.
+
+### Inventory (draft)
+
+- **Stops** (voiceless only): `t`, `k`, `ʔ`. No voiced stops. This separates it
+  from Airawa's `g d q`.
+- **Fricatives**: `s`, `ʃ`, `x`, `h`, with voiced `z`, `ʒ`. Fricatives
+  contrast in **length**: short and held. Held fricatives are the language's
+  main prosodic ornament and carry register weight (Section 3).
+- **Sonorants**: `n`, `m`, `l`, trilled `r`.
+- **Vowels**: `a`, `i`, `u`, `e`, each short or long. A long vowel is the
+  other register-bearing length.
+- **Syllables**: `(C)V(C)`, coda `s n l ʔ` only. No clusters. The absence of
+  clusters is the phonotactic form of "chosen constraint".
+
+### Prosody [I]
+
+- Stress and length are the speaker's expressive budget. In formal
+  registers, *less* length variation reads as more command of the form. A
+  commentator in broadcast register may spend length on a performer's
+  moment, and an honor-speech speaker withholds it. Restraint is therefore
+  audible without a phoneme change (Section 3).
+- Broadcast commentary has a lengthened, sibilant "announcer" delivery. Tourists
+  over-lengthen. Master speech under-lengthens.
+
+### Romanization and rendering [I]
+
+An ASCII romanization is owed before any lowering output is scored: the
+lowering renders text, and the renderer for the audience needs
+a stable orthography. `ʃ ʒ x ʔ` need ASCII digraphs. The choice follows
+the Weksa pronunciation-lowering docs and belongs to a later cut.
+
+### Open
+
+- The inventory is a sketch, drawn from three pressures. It should be rerun
+  after at least a hundred roots exist, not defended.
+- The source calls for names to "emerge from ontology and phonetics". This
+  draft supplies phonetics, and the name waits for the first root set.
+
+## 3. Register, Status and Restraint: Stance Explicit
+
+### Weksa's constraint [E]
+
+On `main`, `docs/interlingua-standard.md` carries
+a packet `stance`: **felt affect** (anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise,
+contempt, affection, shame, as grades) and **`restraint`**, how much of the
+felt affect is held back (0 none, 1000 fully). It is felt, never displayed.
+How a feeling shows and how much leaks is cultural; each language's ontology
+maps felt affect and restraint to its own register. A held-back feeling is not
+a claim, so it is never a predication.
+
+This language must therefore **mark stance explicitly in its own grammar**,
+and the marking is derived from the packet's `stance`, never from English
+register words in the source text.
+
+### Why this language is the hard case for restraint [E→I]
+
+For the empire, restraint is not suppression of a shameful interior. It is
+**the visible form of chosen constraint**, which is the moral proof of
+mastery [E]. So the map from `restraint` to surface is *inverted* relative to
+most human defaults:
+
+- High restraint is the *display* of virtue. A fully restrained speaker with
+  strong felt affect is exhibiting form.
+- Low restraint with strong affect is not honest. It is *vulgar* [E: "vulgar
+  violence as failed form"; "collapse into mere function"].
+- Zero affect is not neutrality. It can read as an absence of devotion.
+
+The deliberate consequence is that stance cannot be flattened to a politeness
+level. Two axes are needed, and the source's lens questions (elegant,
+disciplined, sincere, vulgar, memorable) ask for both.
+
+### Obligatory categories [I]
+
+Proposed grammatical commitments (the target-language selections that step 4
+of `language-model.md` demands). Each names the packet field that feeds it.
+
+1. **Finish marking** on predicates: an obligatory grade-class drawn from
+   `stance.restraint`, coarsened to a few classes. Working classes:
+   *raw*, *held*, *finished*. The unmarked form does not exist: leaving it
+   off is not neutrality but a gap that the community reads as vulgar.
+   Feeds from: `stance.restraint`.
+2. **Leak channel**: how much felt affect shows *through* a high-restraint
+   frame. Leak is not mapped to emotion words. It is mapped to **form
+   choices**: clipped versus full inflection, length spent on a fricative,
+   word choice within a field. This follows the standard's own example
+   (anger leaking through clipped syntax is stance). Feeds from: felt affect
+   grades against `restraint`.
+3. **Standing agreement** on referents: field and standing-in-field of a
+   named performer, with the **claim/demonstrated** mismatch statable. Feeds
+   from: speaker and scene features (Section 6).
+4. **Witness and form-evaluation**. Broadcast commentary is evaluative by
+   situation. Evaluation is expressed as a **separate discourse layer**
+   (a particle or clause layer), not as adjectives in the content: the
+   lens questions [E] (elegant, disciplined, sincere, vulgar, memorable,
+   promising, mastery, collapse) are the layer's open slots. It is
+   kept apart from content because a held-back evaluation is not a claim
+   about the world, and the interlingua keeps content and attitude
+   separate. Feeds from: `discourse` features and the situation.
+5. **Evidential**: commentary asserts what the camera sees and *infers* the
+   performer's sincerity. The inference must be marked, because the source
+   puts sincerity in the performer, who is not the speaker and not available to
+   telemetry. Feeds from: the evidentiality feature the standard already
+   names.
+
+### Register is a function of three inputs [I]
+
+Register is not a setting on the speaker. It is selected from the pair
+(speaker's standing and community, scene relation to addressee and subject)
+and the situation, with stance as the final modulator. This is what
+`persona-drives-ontology` implies on `main` and what the
+`language-ontology` cut will implement as deterministic selection
+`select(profile, stance, speaker, scene)`. This spec supplies the **content
+of that selection table** for this language; it does not write the table.
+
+Cases the table must cover first:
+
+| Case | Expected pull |
+|---|---|
+| Commentator, high restraint, strong approval of a restrained low-means act | finished marking; evaluative layer foregrounded; length withheld |
+| Commentator, low restraint, strong approval | raw marking; the speaker is performing delight. Only permitted in tourist-adjacent registers |
+| Master addressing rival | held or finished; address by field and standing |
+| Tourist, any affect | claimant standing; over-lengthened; evaluation layer present but misapplied |
+| Host to a human guest on a panel | warmth and appraisal mixed: affection plus contempt at high restraint is the *normal* pairing. The guest's rejection is absorbed as form |
+
+The last row is the story's turn written as a stance mapping, and is worth
+testing first: contempt and affection together, restrained, with the evaluation
+layer calling the rejection *sincere*.
+
+## 4. Meaning Before Surface
+
+The language is never produced by substituting English words with alien
+ones. The method is the Weksa path (`language-model.md`): packet, then
+ontology projection that can split, collapse or reweight concepts, then
+grammar commitments, morphology, phonology, surface.
+
+### Concept splits and collapses [E→I]
+
+The source names distinctions the language must make (`language-design.md`,
+Open Questions). Each is decomposed below into components so a lowerer can
+select a form from the packet's facts and not from a gloss.
+
+| Distinction | Decomposition (hypothesis) | Needs from the packet |
+|---|---|---|
+| **victory** vs **mastery** vs **spectacle** vs **vulgar overmatch** | victory: outcome of a contest. mastery: outcome *plus* demonstrated chosen constraint. spectacle: attention drawn, independent of constraint. vulgar overmatch: means exceed the opposing means with no constraint chosen. | outcome; each party's means; whether the means were chosen |
+| **crude** vs **failed** | crude: sincere, unrefined, with form attempted. failed: form collapsed into mere function. | actor's means and discipline as facts; the stance of the performer is not available, so the ontology reads from conduct |
+| **resistance** admired and absorbable | resistance read as: threat, folk art, breakout talent (`battle-royale.md` commentary list). Choice depends on whether it centers a performer or a practice. | performer-centered vs distributed agency |
+| **public spectacle** vs **living practice** [E] | spectacle: meaning lives in a central performer. practice: meaning lives in relationships. The empire reads distributed cooperation as noise or misattributes it to a performer. | number and relation of agents; presence of a focal agent |
+| **unpainted**, split | shame / danger / contempt / rawness / refusal / purity (the source lists these senses). Different surface forms: the sense is selected by relation and stance, not by a gloss. | decoration state, scene relation, speaker stance |
+
+### Scale decoration in grammar and metaphor [E→I]
+
+Decoration is the language's central metaphor domain [E: used for rank,
+grief, celebrity and more]. Proposed uses, to be tested not asserted:
+
+- **Address**: terms of address name a decoration claim ("the one marked for
+  ...") instead of a rank noun.
+- **Insult**: lack, mismatch or fraud of decoration (a claim not backed by
+  constraint). The strongest insult is the claimant who is also vulgar.
+- **Praise**: finish, as in a surface completed.
+- **Metaphor**: grief and obligation are *worn*. A human speaking of loss
+  reads, in this language, as a person visibly undecorated by it.
+
+The source does not say whether the language has these metaphors. They are
+the draft's strongest invention and the easiest to overrule.
+
+### Root families [I]
+
+House method: faint family resemblance, never a nametag. No roots are
+proposed here. The first root set should come from the field concepts
+(combat, speech, hosting, trade, art) and the constraint/finish axis, and
+should be minted against corpus items, not authored in a vacuum.
+
+### Contamination direction [E]
+
+What leaks into human English first (`language-design.md`) is an open
+question. [I] Candidates are evaluation-layer particles (the empire's form
+verdicts become meme tags) and the claim/finish vocabulary, because the
+story's kids absorb *prestige codes* first. The subtitle renderer is a
+separate target profile and not this spec's job.
+
+## 5. Evidence and Invention, Summarized
+
+**Evidence-backed (E):**
+- reptilian, aesthetic-honor, decoration-as-status speakers; unpainted as
+  profound shamelessness; unpainted-as-provocation for a rare few
+- mastery requires chosen constraint; overmatch and tourists are vulgar; the
+  lens questions
+- the empire is a network; commerce carries, culture conquers; the registers
+  listed
+- broadcast commentary and flavor-first subtitles as the runtime use
+- the packet has `stance` with felt affect and restraint; the ontology maps
+  them (on `main`)
+
+**Invention (I):**
+- the two-axis status ladder and the claim/demonstrated-constraint mismatch
+- the whole phonological inventory and prosody
+- the five obligatory categories and the inverted restraint reading
+- the decoration-grammar and metaphor uses
+- the speech situations table, notably the address-to-humans row
+- the contempt-plus-affection panel pairing
+
+**Not settled in the source and left open:**
+- the language's and speakers' names; the vocal tract; whether the empire is
+  one language community or a family of dialects; whether non-reptilian
+  imperial subjects speak it and how it marks them
+
+## 6. What The Lowerer Must Provide
+
+Interlingua rule [E]: the packet carries neutral meaning plus source-side
+communicative pressure, and target-language concept splits belong
+downstream. The earlier Rust to Dust sketch in `language-design.md` puts an
+`aesthetic_reading` block (form, discipline, spectacle, honor status) **in
+the packet**. This draft recommends moving it: those are the *imperial
+ontology's reading* of neutral facts, so they belong in the ontology
+projection, and the packet carries the facts the reading is derived from.
+[I] This is a change to existing content and the operator should rule on it.
+
+Fields, in order of need. "Seed" means the standard's inventory already has
+a slot. "Gap" means the standard has no field yet; per the Promotion Rule,
+the gap is first an `rtd.*` extension and is promoted only after use in two
+real packets.
+
+| Need | Why | Status |
+|---|---|---|
+| `stance` with felt affect and `restraint` | the whole of Section 3 | seed (on `main`) |
+| **speaker** axes: field, standing in field, school or lineage, decoration state, community | status and register selection | seed slot `Speaker` (still planned, cut `speaker-scene`); the *values* are the gap |
+| **scene**: relative status of speaker, subject and audience; audience composition (imperial, tourist, human via subtitles) | register and address | seed slot `Scene` (still planned, cut `speaker-scene`) |
+| `medium` and `setting` ids for broadcast commentary | situation selection | seed (`context`) |
+| `instrument` role on predications, **for each party** | overmatch is derived from both parties' means | seed role |
+| **volition of the constraint**: chosen / compelled / unknown, as a predication feature | the line between mastery and mere lacking | gap (`rtd.` extension first) |
+| **ordering of means** (power or means gap) | vulgar overmatch | not a packet field: ontology-side order over concept ids, so the packet carries concepts and the ontology compares them |
+| referent **decoration state** (decorated / unpainted / bare-by-claim / not applicable) | status, insult, the human-undecorated reading | gap (`rtd.` extension first) |
+| referent **community** or `member_of` relation | tourist versus warrior; human versus imperial | seed relation `member_of`; community ids come from the `language-ontology` cut |
+| **focal agent** presence | spectacle versus living practice | derivable: a predication with plural or no agent role; not a new field |
+| `evidentiality` | witnessed versus inferred sincerity | seed feature (to confirm its option set) |
+| `polarity`, tense, aspect | ordinary | seed |
+| `preserve` | which nodes the commentary must keep | seed (`constraints`) |
+
+Fields the draft deliberately does **not** request: `aesthetic_reading`,
+`honor_status`, `spectacle_value` or any value judgment. The performer's
+sincerity is not telemetry, and the commentator infers it. These are
+outputs of the imperial ontology and must not be put into the packet by the
+client, or the client is deciding the language's concepts.
+
+## 7. Dependencies, Risks and Next Cuts
+
+**Dependencies.** Stance is on `main` (Weksa PR #3). Only the `Speaker` and `Scene`
+slots are still planned, under cut `speaker-scene`. The `language-ontology` cut
+(community and ontology-entry documents) is not landed. This spec states
+the content those cuts will hold, and does not substitute for them.
+
+**Risks.**
+- The inventory and the grammar are heavily invented on thin evidence. Mitigation:
+  tag everything (done) and test the five obligatory categories against the
+  lowerer before building roots.
+- The claim-versus-constraint ladder risks making the language a *status-code
+  detector*. The source's hold is that honor is devotion, not rank. Test:
+  can the grammar say a bare-by-claim performance without calling it low?
+- Draft collided with `language-design.md`'s packet-side `aesthetic_reading`.
+  Resolved by ruling `rtd-imperial-aesthetic-reading-to-ontology` (below).
+
+**Next cuts, in order.**
+1. (done) Operator rulings on the four forks, recorded above.
+2. A first corpus slice: ten broadcast-commentary utterances, each decomposed
+   to a packet (neutral facts plus stance), with the expected surface *category*
+   (finish class, evaluation layer) and no words yet.
+3. The selection table for Section 3's first five cases.
+4. A root set from the field concepts, and a naming brief for the language.
+5. An orthography and a pronunciation lowering.
+
+**Rulings (2026-11-05, all in force).** The four forks are answered. Their
+ids are in the mind's `weksa-body` campaign.
+- `rtd-imperial-aesthetic-reading-to-ontology`: `aesthetic_reading` leaves the
+  packet and lives in the imperial ontology. The packet carries neutral facts
+  plus stance; form, discipline, spectacle and honor status are the ontology's
+  reading of them. Section 6 stands.
+- `rtd-imperial-two-axis-status`: status is two axes, field and standing, by
+  claim versus demonstrated constraint.
+- `rtd-imperial-inverted-restraint`: restraint is the display of virtue; low
+  restraint with strong affect is vulgar.
+- `rtd-imperial-human-stylized-tract`: the vocal tract is human-pronounceable
+  stylization, with length as ornament.

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

@@ -52,7 +52,9 @@ Likely language-project registers:
 
 ## Runtime Data Needs
 
-Structured intent should carry neutral facts plus cultural annotations.
+Structured intent carries neutral facts plus stance. The imperial ontology
+derives form, discipline, spectacle and honor status from them downstream
+(see `imperial/language-design.md`, Section 6).
 
 Example:
 
@@ -62,13 +64,6 @@ Example:
   "act": "ambush",
   "actor": "father",
   "target": "imperial_guard",
-  "aesthetic_reading": {
-    "form": "raw",
-    "discipline": "improvised",
-    "spectacle_value": "high",
-    "honor_status": "ambiguous",
-    "aesthetic_promise": "rising"
-  },
   "imperial_frame": "authentic_local_defiance"
 }
 ```

state/map.yaml

@@ -221,10 +221,10 @@ open_questions:
   - What is the minimal Rust to Dust language-project slice that proves the
     engine without hard-coding the setting into it?
   - What minimal Eusocial Interbeing language-project slice can prove naming for
-    Airawa, Sa'auei'a, ecological partner, and imperial registers without
+    Airawa, Sa'ueia, ecological partner, and imperial registers without
     collapsing them into one universal language?
   - Which Zyphos language project should be first: Airawa, imperial Airawa,
-    Sa'auei'a, or a narrow naming-brief interlingua?
+    Sa'ueia, or a narrow naming-brief interlingua?
   - What is the minimal Airawa starter lexicon and permission model needed to
     translate the first chieftain/visitor/mother-tree scene honestly?
   - How should Airawa encode honorable scars: bodily evidence, honor claim, debt