World Reference

Overview

Earth-sized fantasy world with one dominant continent divided by a major mountain range. West: monsters, demons, corruption, refugees, instability, and successor factions after the Demon King's death ten years ago. East: major human kingdoms, city states, trade routes, and most organised civilisation. Day/year/solar cycle are Earth-like; the story begins in the northern hemisphere, so seasons track familiar spring/summer/autumn/winter instincts despite local calendars.

World Authoring Traps

• Do not turn the setting into generic chosen-one progression. The Hero System is an administrative/ancient/possibly divine mechanism with errors, permissions, offices, continuity exceptions, and dangerous recognition.
• Do not make Thomas's Rank A public, celebrated, or administratively tidy. His true scale is private; public stories are understatement, missing/dead records, or local apprentice cover.
• Do not make ancient facilities loot dungeons or quest-givers. They should feel procedural, preserved, polite, unsettling, and morally indifferent in the way offices and protocols can be dangerous.
• Do not make Homegate ordinary teleportation. Known doctrine has no practical teleportation, so one reliable passage spell would change armies, borders, prisons, guilds, temples, trade, and politics.
• Do not inflate Pocket Island into a generic paradise/base, public refuge, inventory room, pocket kingdom, or consequence-free escape. Visually it is a tiny natural held island with fixed landmarks, no buildings, no inhabitants, and an unseen sea boundary.
• Do not make the Northern Kingdom demon-equivalent evil. Its danger is lawful coercion, hierarchy, procedure, state necessity, and turning unusual people into resources.
• Do not make Eastern Island a safe haven or exotic monolith. It is distance from the North plus older jurisdictions, local communities, deep-dwarf witness/craft, dark-elf politics, and possible sealed-work knowledge.
• Do not make deep dwarves generic grim tunnel folk. Their stone-rooted culture has religion, craft, statecraft, humour, variation, outer-facing thresholds, and ordinary practical concerns.
• Do not make the Magnog a demon, evil spirit, or ordinary monster. It is a weak elemental scout and an apocalyptic lower-sign problem; the lesser creatures near it were ordinary deep-heat fauna/monsters, not elementals.
• Do not let deep dwarves learn Homegate, Pocket Island, Magic Pocket, or the specific private escape route from Thomas's refusal/implied readiness. They know witnessed power, restraint, holy force, shaping, and his refusal of imprisonment, not his private pocket/passage methods.
• Do not make dark elves evil, demonic, or sadistic by default. Their danger is courtly games, oaths, debts, role pressure, age, intelligence, and theatrical politics, not moral alignment.
• Do not let Thomas's practical magic erase law, labour, witness, ownership, or trade. Water, stone, food, repairs, roads, healing, and shelter all sit inside social systems.

Hero System

Every century a Hero is normally summoned. The latest summoning was believed to fail; in truth, a system error incorrectly targeted Thomas at the moment of his death on Earth and rerouted into reincarnation because it could not summon a corpse.

Ancient infrastructure beneath Ironvein Hill implies the Hero System is artificial or semi-artificial, not simple divine miracle. Recent events suggest the system or related continuity infrastructure may be over-correcting around Thomas: Rank C advancement, disproportionate mana expansion, Revive, Homegate, sealed B-rank confirmation in Chapters 118-119, and later private Rank A pressure all suggest the world is trying to fit him into a Hero-shaped vacancy he refuses. The sealed B-rank confirmation is private/contained, not public Guild reclassification. The kingdoms intend another summoning in about ten years.

Geography

Pocket Island / Magic Island

Use spells.md for Pocket Island mechanics: entry/exit, cost, time relation, mana recovery, passenger rules, and secrecy. In world.md, treat it as a private pocket place with consistent visual geography. It is known only inside Green Road and should not be described in public-world terms unless the secret is deliberately exposed.

Core visual:

• Scale and outline: very small, about fifty paces/metres across at its widest; a little more from rock edge to outer beach curve. It is large enough to walk, camp, gather a little food, and imagine one small hut, but not large enough to become a settlement, estate, training ground, warehouse, or hidden kingdom.
• Beach side: one side is a pale, clean sandy shore forming a gentle crescent, about a fifth of the island, with clear shallow sea that deepens gradually. Footprints remain until small edge-waves soften them.
• Rock side: the opposite side is a low dark rock lip/edge, roughly knee-to-thigh or half-pace height depending on where one stands, worn smooth by tiny waves. The sea touches it in clear slaps.
• Interior: scrub grass, low flowering plants, edible greens, vines, and close-set unfamiliar trees fill most of the space between beach and rock. It should feel natural and private, like a garden that never learned formality, not manicured, landscaped, tropical-resort, or obviously designed.
• Central rise: a small rock-backed rise/mound sits near the centre, no taller than a modest house. Three wind-shaped white-barked trees with broad blue-green leaves crown it.
• Fresh water: water emerges from beneath the central tree roots, gathers in a shallow stone cup, spills as a tiny fall/waterfall into a clear freshwater pool about five paces by five, then runs as a narrow stream across grass and over the rock edge into the sea.
• Sea and sky: blue sea and calm sky feel real and spacious. The horizon looks distant and convincing; there is no visible wall, mist, dome, or painted edge. The hidden sea boundary is only discovered by trying to go too far.
• Boundary behaviour: swimming outward meets increasing resistance until the sea gently but irresistibly turns the swimmer back. The boundary feels like patient refusal, not a hard wall, trap, wave attack, or hostile force.

Things present:

• Small unfamiliar colourful fish in the shallows.
• Tiny pale crabs near the rock holes.
• Unnamed edible island food: green-gold tart/watery fruit, red honey-pepper berries, yellow pod-like fruit/vegetable, small brown tubers, sour blue-marble fruits, low greens, and fish. Identify/Appraise may mark them as safe/edible but should not provide mainland names unless later canon deliberately links them to a known ecosystem.
• Deadwood enough for a small ordinary fire.
• A plausible sheltered hut site above the beach near the tree line, close enough to the pool but not crowding the stream.

Things absent unless later canon deliberately changes them:

• No buildings, furniture, roads, docks, boats, fences, ruins, shrines, writing, tool caches, inhabitants, servants, spirits, obvious caretakers, large animals, birds, nests, feathers, droppings, biting insects, rot smell, or hidden facility markers.
• The island does not automatically clean up after visitors. Imported items, sand, thread, pebbles, leftover food, cooking gear, and camp mess persist normally unless someone deals with them.
• It should not silently add comforts, rooms, furniture, cultivated crops, livestock, or extra land because a scene would be easier with them.

Tone and use:

• The island is beautiful, peaceful, and almost too kind, but also uncanny because it is an answer to Thomas's need rather than an ordinary location. It is held, not fully wild and not truly tame.
• Thomas should not comfortably think of it as owned property. A better framing is a place that answers him.
• For now it is a place to breathe, rest, test carefully, and occasionally shelter Green Road by consent. It is not where they hide forever, not a way to avoid difficult conversations, and not a substitute for roads, witnesses, obligations, or consequences.

Eastern Island

Large island many days off the eastern coast, internally varied rather than exotic monolith: human-facing west port, sparse central highlands, severe northern mountains, deep-dwarf interior civilisation, southern lowland/tundra, demi-human mixed authority, dark-elf court territory. Chosen because the North cannot easily reach it, Wood Elf shelter would make Thomas a local political problem, and deep dwarves/dark elves may know sealed works beneath old stone. Aelira's sealed message requests quiet audience with dark-elf nobility, not sanctuary, employment, custody, patronage, or general passport.

Named/known items: Westhook main west port; Larchmeet highland village/base; Kethrun large demi-human highland/common city; Granitethroat deep-dwarf border settlement/outer witness house; Seventh Understep deep-dwarf great house, not clan; Stonecutters' Court Kethrun contact point; Ashbrace Hold road hold under Irondeep's southern root; Irondeep first lesser great peak reached; Great Peak deep-dwarf capital and receiving threshold; Court of Stone deep-dwarf high governing court; King Beneath monarch title. Still unnamed: dark-elf capital/monarch names, King Beneath personal name, six major clans, most inter-settlement roads.

Named Lesser Great Peaks

The six lesser great peaks below the Great Peak are major deep-dwarf clan anchors. These are common-language or trade-facing names; deeper interior names may differ by clan, house, priesthood, or local tongue.

These names do not yet define the six major clan names. A clan may be named after its peak, but this is not automatic. Avoid fixing clan names until prose needs house/clan politics directly.

Political Situation

• Human kingdoms: three major eastern kingdoms. Hero possession can shift military/political power. Northern restricted records of failed summoning preserve possibility that something answered/displaced the ritual, making Green Road a crown matter after Rimeholt.
• Wood Elves: ruled by king/royal family. Human relations strained by human-elven war ~century ago; humans largely moved on, elves have not.
• Deep dwarves: six major clans, each tied to one lesser great peak below the Great Peak; each clan contains multiple great houses. Great-house heads govern clan affairs; representation to Court of Stone rotates among them. Court includes at minimum six clan representatives, High Priests of Magma/Mineral/Metal, and King Beneath; may include non-voting witnesses, record-keepers, clerics, factors, stewards, craft arbiters, invited specialists. King Beneath is sacred arbiter/continuity figure/final seal-holder/embodiment of mountain compact, not simple surface absolute monarch. Seventh Understep is a great house, not clan; normally aligned to one major clan, house identity matters, not aligned to one sacred aspect as a house. Members may be priests of Magma/Mineral/Metal or practical clerics. A High Keeper of the Lower Signs is a legitimate warning office over restricted lower-fire texts; lower-sign fear has standing but does not grant unilateral custody/separation authority.
• Lower Signs / Elementals: the deep-dwarf inner hierarchy preserves restricted lower-fire doctrine. Elementals are not demons or evil by default; they are forces of world substance/heat/pressure with will enough to move. Magnog are the weakest known elemental form and function as scouts. They normally belong far below deep-dwarf crustal activity, in mantle/outer-fire regions. A Magnog rising to an Irondeep-accessible gallery is an apocalyptic omen in some texts; it is not confirmed whether Thomas caused, attracted, revealed, answered, or merely survived the event. Public language should remain deep-heat entity/old heat/deep-heat thing unless inner-circle naming is deliberate.
• Dark elves: chaotic compared with High Elf lawfulness and Wood Elf balance, but not evil/demonic/corrupt. Culture is self-directed, courtly, game-aware, oath/debt sensitive, playful, volatile, resistant to imposed structure. Monarchs are sibling king/queen; uncommon but not shocking. Games are amusement/statecraft: tests, arrangements, provocations, exposed contradictions, misdirection, bargains, traps. Danger lies in role imposition and noticing a person before accepting claimed role. State-level mutual respect with deep dwarves; broadly neutral with Wood Elves, strained with High Elves.
• Post Demon King era: Demon King died ten years ago; result was not peace but fragmented demon factions, less coordinated monsters, border instability, more banditry, more refugees.

Magic

Ranks and Schools

Ranks: E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS. E is weak/useful; D reliable low-risk field magic; C serious professional capability, valuable/respected/uncommon but not automatically political. B-rank mages are rare strategic assets; a confirmed unaffiliated public B-rank mage is a jurisdictional problem for guilds, nobles, military, temples, senior mages. A-rank users are extremely rare and political. Thomas privately reaches Rank A in Crownholt after forced Crown Deep work/separation; North notices usefulness/endurance/growth but not true rank. After false death he is publicly dead/missing, not an A-rank asset. S+ are Hero-class/anomaly territory.

Thomas's saved state from Ch 118-119: sealed private B-rank confirmation under Wood Elf authority; after Crownholt, outdated but politically relevant paperwork. True private state: Rank A, abnormal breadth, Holy magic, Homegate, Known Presence message-pushing. None should become ordinary Guild registration.

Spell breadth usually follows training, school, profession, rank. Thomas's abnormality is pattern: too many channels from E-rank, unrelated domains, need-responsive emergence, fast advancement, and cooperation across healing/logistics/detection/purification/protection/perception/food/water/infrastructure.

Spell levels normally advance Lv.1-Lv.5 slowly. Thomas's Rank C raised some ceilings toward Lv.6; restricted B-rank confirmed abnormal ceiling pressure; Crownholt Rank A appears to raise private ceiling toward Lv.8. Abnormal and not broadly understood.

Common schools: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind. Rare: Light, Dark. Unique: Holy.

Ordinary schools interact through counteraction: magic answers magic by matching, opposing, redirecting, or suppressing its effect. The known examples are a basis, not an exhaustive fixed-pair system; suitability, rank, control, and how well the counter matches still matter (Ch.5-6).

Do not infer a complete elemental wheel from these examples. In particular, canon currently supports Water, Earth, and Wind as different counters to Fire, not a fixed Fire-Water / Earth-Wind pairing. Holy's lack of an ordinary counter does not make every Holy cast automatic or unbeatable: rank, mana, structure, intent, coherence, attention, and the spell's own limits still apply.

Key Magic Mechanics

• Holy magic: known user Thomas. Known spells: Holy Shield, Holy Lance, Holy Nova, Bless, Revive. Fundamentally different from ordinary interactions; requires emotional/intentional coherence. After toll-house trauma, hatred/panic could prevent Holy spells from answering. Revive restored Isha once after true death from corrupted passage-working; it nearly emptied Thomas and appears bounded by short post-death window plus profound personal/intentional conditions. No culture has safe doctrine. Against the Magnog, Holy force mattered because the fire/magma elemental nature had no ordinary counter-answer to Holy, not because the Magnog was evil.
• Mana and elves: humans treat significant formal magic as mage profession. Elves use "mage" narrowly; many Wood Elves have mana reserves/awareness without being mages. Children learn mana sense; age/training/use deepen capacity among scouts, wardens, attendants, archers. Dedicated elven mages remain distinct; elves are generally more mana-aware than humans.
• Ambient/Channel Mana: mana permeates world; living things produce/exchange more, water carries it, stone holds traces, forests are rich, death/corruption can make places thin/twisted/dangerous. Thomas's Channel Mana draws loose ambient mana, not people/living sources. Lv.2 improves efficiency/flow alignment and small passive recovery if barely open. Risky if forced, used in dead/corrupt places, or confused with ally-draining. Isha's presence/emotional safety steadies casting without making her fuel.
• Purification/restoration boundary: Cleanse removes filth/residue; Purify separates foreign magical contamination from what belongs; Minor Heal repairs ordinary damage; Greater Heal restores deeper but is dangerous if spellwork cannot distinguish person from imposition. Isha's Ch 98 restoration was exceptional and emotionally shaped: idealised own body, not new/enhanced super-elf; removes accumulated injury, scar tissue, compensations, hidden strain, inefficiencies; gives cleaner movement/recovery, less fatigue drag, better balance, unnervingly whole skin; no new skills, supernatural cognition, permanent magical perception, or career-veteran experience.
• Perception support: Farsight extends Isha's elven sight; Quickened Sight accelerates perception so world seems slower, improving timing/reaction without speeding body. With Bless, makes skilled allies terrifying; ally-centred, not puppeting.
• Enhancement: Lv.1 appeared near Hearthmere for support in cold uneven old-road work. Enhances existing physical capacity, not skill. On Kelda: raw strength ~half again, smaller balance/reaction gain. On Isha: agility, balance, recovery, reaction, fine movement; smaller real strength. Dangerous because mistakes grow. Rules: no casual/public/town use, no Bless stacking until safe testing, no Isha combat use unless she asks or agreed support pattern leaves no time.
• Old-road bell/guide-stone magic: Hearthmere local passage-working, distinct from Homegate/ancient Hero infrastructure but thematically related. Guide stones and road-metal bells remember/mark routes; open marks guide; closed marks keep/bind/trap response. Misused bell resonance can call guide lights or animate dead peat/roots/road stone around control tone. Damaged local roadwright craft, not Thomas-controlled generic school.
• Dark/black fire: uncontrolled manifestation during toll-house escape under extreme fear/rage. Not classified normal spell, not deliberately reproducible, may be dangerous expression of Thomas's anomaly rather than conventional Fire/Dark technique.
• Homegate: Thomas-only passage spell acquired Ch 116, first deliberate Ch 117. Not known teleportation; practical teleportation absent from doctrine. Later used from sealed Crownholt survival pocket after staged death to fairy-circle wood near family farm without North exposure. Isha's reaction is worldbuilding measure: armies, borders, temples, kings, guilds, prisons, trade would differ if reliable teleportation existed. Behaviour: 10-minute cast; ~3/4 mana at Lv.1; tiring not damaging; seeks true home/love/belonging rather than coordinate; uses hidden ley-like paths and aligned arrival points (mushroom rings, springs, living-line hollows, old thresholds, subtle places); usually arrives 1-3 miles from desired home unless destination is on key line like Wood Elf settlement; carries small touching group, inferred 4-5; secret, not casual fast travel. Mercy, threat, civilisation-scale problem.
• Status: unusual assessment spell. Shows health capacity/current condition, mana capacity/reserves, magical rank when present; does not show mundane professions. Detects some lingering abnormalities/corruption residue. Higher interpretation can show proportional mana, spell-channel strain, continuity/passage abnormalities. Long-term potential unknown.
• Known Presence: began as watcher/attention sense in High Elf confinement; grew during Crownholt separation while Thomas sought Isha. Thomas's spell, not Isha's. After false death: direction, recognised-person pressure, emotional impression, one costly pushed message to Isha after she left northern control. Not stable telepathy, cannot be opened by Isha, ethically fraught because touching mind/attention without warning is not neutral.
• Form: material-shaping utility after total spell failure in Saint Veir's chapel; arrangement, not creation/transmutation. Through Lv.6: reshapes existing inanimate material; works ~200-250 kg at Lv.4 and ~2,000 kg at Lv.5 with connected mass/load paths/seating/bracing; compacts soil/clay/sand/stone fragments; forms crude bricks, walls, floors, drainage lips, well rims, shelter supports, ledges, rooflines, braces; breaks stone into pebbles/grit/coarse sand; mixes existing compounds if ingredients present; cooperates with Create Water/Warm Area for clay/drying/construction; Lv.6 adjusts grain, stress, tension, seams, pins, bow repair, mechanism misalignment. Limits: no matter creation, no absent compounds, no deep molecular/chemical bond breaking, no state change alone, needs water/heat/cold/force/other spells outside shaping, does not replace craft/architecture/engineering judgement. Practical danger: legal/economic/infrastructural effects on foundations, roads, masonry, seals, graves, evidence, wells, guild monopolies.
• Spell combination: Create Food+Create Water accidentally made honey mead; Bless+Create Water+Cleanse made temporary cleansing water; Form cooperates with Create Water, Warm Area, Chill Area, Cleanse, Holy Shield for road/shelter/drainage/structure. Private use suggests no simple hard spell-count limit; attention, intent, emotional coherence, practice, and consequence matter. Major Hero-not-Hero danger: harmless utilities can act like one broad working when a practical system presents as one problem.

Races

• Humans: most numerous civilisation, politically divided.
• Wood Elves: long-lived forest dwellers with strong traditions/historical memory, more distrustful of humans than humans are of elves. Relationship custom includes witnessed intention before a living bough: serious public step toward shared life, not full binding/marriage; may be followed by season of waiting/family scrutiny. Internal continuity note: Wood Elf reproductive biology has ordinary cycles plus a much longer fertility/drive cycle roughly every decade. Isha approaches one during dry-road arc. Keep subtext until in-scene; it increases urgency/directness but never overrides consent, judgement, agency.
• Dwarves/half-dwarves: substantially stronger/denser than humans/elves of comparable height; reputation for endurance, craft, blunt debt-language, stubborn bodily discipline, stonework opinions. Half-dwarves vary but can retain enough density/strength for formidable close fighting even when short.
• Deep dwarves: stone-rooted Eastern Island mountain dwarves who see themselves as real dwarves by closeness to stone, depth, ore, interior ways, sacred substances. Not demons/monsters/corrupted/lesser persons; have culture, religion, statecraft, craft traditions, flaws, virtues, variation. Religion centres on Magma (destruction/transformation/controlled ending/purging/dangerous renewal), Mineral (creation/formation/hidden structure/growth under pressure/world becoming shape), Metal (protection/refinement/tools/armour/gates/bonds/defended duty). Pressure, depth, burial, ancestry, endurance, craft extend the triad. Priests align to Magma/Mineral/Metal; clerics are practical religious workers for healing, mine accidents, tool blessings, funerals, travel wards, household rites, oath-witnessing, mediation, worksite prayers. Society distinguishes birth inside recognised structures from being witnessed into them. A true deep dwarf normally begins proven/defined by clan, house, hall, ancestry, mountain witness, obligation; status can complicate/lapse. A half-dwarf is not automatically rejected but is unproven and undefined until proven and defined through witness, work, oath, craft, service, house judgement, adoption, marriage tie, debt settlement, or recognised process. Kelda's arc is discovering witness/work/chosen belonging without erasing Green Road.
• Demi-humans: present among bandits, Merrowford Southbank, Karrick Gate, Kethrun. Karrick Gate shows integrated urban presence: traders, carters, clerks, inn workers, haulers, riverfolk, beastkin families, Guild-adjacent professionals. Kethrun is practical compact among distinct peoples, not unified demi-human crown.

Kelda as C-rank half-dwarf fighter anchors a front line Thomas/Isha could not alone. Bless on her clarifies stance/grip/leverage/path of existing strength rather than generic strength.

Adventurers

Guild profession. Rank correlates with danger, capability, permissions, expected success, and trust. Adventurer and magical rank overlap but differ: magical rank measures mana/spells/control/threat; non-mage rank measures contracts, threat history, field judgement, physical ability, equipment, party reliability, survival. C-rank mage vs C-rank fighter may both handle C-rank work, but fighter usually earns it through longer experience/conditioning/tools/tactics/survival. B-rank non-mages are elite veterans; A-rank non-mages legendary master-tier combatants/scouts/commanders; S+ not normal mundane categories without supernatural support, monster-blood physiology, artefacts, Hero anomaly, or equivalent.

As of Ch 158, Kelda is Green Road's only confirmed normal-path C-rank non-mage adventurer. "Normal-path" does not mean ordinary: she is half-dwarf, dense, tested, recognised by multiple guilds. Isha starts as D-equivalent trained royal attendant/scout and reaches high-D/borderline-C by Ch 120 in favourable scout/archer conditions, especially after Greater Heal restoration and road experience. Thomas's Farsight/Bless/Quickened Sight can make her perform above standalone category as party synergy, not formal rank.

Green Road began as Thomas/Isha. After Tareth's Gate they travel near caravans/carriers without accepting ownership, then west beyond Lower Harl Step. From Ch 158 onward, Green Road is three people using Thomas's official northern death as cover; by Ch 183 they are on Eastern Island at the Great Peak under sealed deep-dwarf witness, still hiding Rank A, Homegate, Pocket Island, Magic Pocket, dark fire, Revive, Known Presence message-pushing, Crown Deep bottom knowledge, and Black Lock details. Sealed deep-dwarf witnesses now know some Holy force, healing, support, Form, endurance, Magnog, and refusal-of-detention evidence, but not Thomas's private/northern secrets.

Religion and Ancient Systems

• Human religion: exists across kingdoms. Confirmed faith: Church of the Sun Father; priests/temples claim anti-corruption expertise. Father Renald asked about demonic token near Merrowford; Wood Elf warnings specifically said refuse anyone claiming temple authority. Meaning unknown: caution, temple politics, infiltration, or legitimate but dangerous investigation.
• Deep-dwarf religion: not human temple worship; "priest/cleric" are translations. Magma/Mineral/Metal triad frames destruction, creation, protection as sacred substances/processes. Craft is devotional and practical; mining, metallurgy, stonework, and metalwork teach creation, danger, responsibility, honest work vs false shaping.
• Ancient facilities: Ironvein Hill has ancient administrative facility; High Elf river preserve contains or sits over sealed continuity-anchor facility. Constructs/processes, records, infrastructure, credentials, offices, individuals can remain active/recognised. Unknown: facility count, builders, original network purpose, exact links among administrative nodes, continuity anchors, Hero summoning, archive systems, and whether artificial/divine/semi-divine/lost synthesis.
• High Elves: distinct from Wood Elves; scholarly, centralised, archive-keeping, ancient-infrastructure records, take Hero-system anomalies seriously.
• High Elf River Preserve: restricted territory entered accidentally in storm; ancient protected waterways, High Elf outposts, archival facilities, magical monitoring; temporary Thomas/Isha location during preserve arc.

Ancient-System Terms

• Interface: High Elf archival term for an individual potentially linked to ancient-system functions/permissions.
• Opening: possible pathway for ancient systems to influence modern world.
• Preservation Ring: ancient maintenance artefact, likely permission/authority/recognised maintenance status rather than equipment. After preserve incident, known to carry/expose Ironvein Hill maintenance issuance record; preserve system recognised it as caretaker credential.
• Caretaker Credential: authority marker for maintenance functions. Ring appears to act as Thomas's current credential, scope unknown. It does not make him owner/ruler; it lets some systems recognise/request maintenance interaction.
• Provisional Caretaker: preserve-system designation for Thomas; likely recognised maintenance-capable individual with partial/irregular/conditional authority. Thomas has not accepted broad role.
• Continuity Exception: recognised deviation from intended process allowed to persist because correction would cause greater disruption, is impossible, or exceeds remaining authority. Thematically linked to Thomas: summoning event was an error, but Thomas is recognised.
• Continuity Anchor: sealed ancient structure beneath High Elf preserve. Known functions: river integrity, archive containment, lower access seal maintenance, dormant contamination buffers, restricted continuity-record preservation. Not meant to be entered now.
• Diagnostic Reconciliation: limited diagnostic comparing modern High Elf ward overlays with older preservation systems. Thomas authorised one report-only diagnostic under strict limits: no repairs, structural alteration, ward changes, or self-alteration.