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

Battle Royale

The battle royale is one public view into Rust to Dust, not the whole setting.

It is a controlled imperial event designed to discover, display, and promote 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 proof that humans may be crude but are not empty.

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 player hears or sees the alien-language broadcast with English subtitles.

The correct runtime model is not English-to-alien translation. The game should emit a Weksa interlingua packet for commentary intent. Weksa should render alien broadcast output, and a subtitle renderer should render English from the same packet or from the alien-projected meaning.

game telemetry
  -> commentary intent
  -> imperial cultural projection
  -> alien broadcast render
  -> flavor-first English subtitle

Flavor-First Subtitles

Subtitles should usually reflect the imperial reading of events, not a neutral sports-stat description.

Neutral fact:

{
  "type": "elimination",
  "actor": "human_player_17",
  "target": "human_player_04",
  "method": "knife",
  "context": "ambush"
}

Possible imperial subtitle:

Local contender 17 performs a charming low-tool eviction. The crowd appreciates
the sincerity.

The subtitle remains legible, but it teaches the player that the empire's frame has already touched the facts.

Commentary Ontology

The broadcast surface should care about:

• spectacle value
• aesthetic form
• combat elegance
• vulgarity
• sincerity
• aesthetic promise
• tourist appeal
• inelegant overmatch
• chosen constraint
• human authenticity
• imperial amusement
• whether resistance reads as threat, folk art, or breakout talent