settled-reach/docs/design/systems-framework.md

# The Settled Reach — Star Systems Framework
**Status:** Canonical reference — v1.0
**Created:** 2026-03-13
**Replaces:** systems-framework-final-miri.md, systems-framework-final-paula.md,
systems-framework-revision-miri.md, systems-framework-revision-paula.md,
systems-framework-synthesis-miri.md, systems-framework-synthesis-paula.md,
systems-framework-review-gestalt.md, systems-framework-review-gestalt-addendum.md

---

## Preamble

This document is the definitive specification for the star systems framework of the Settled Reach. It supersedes all prior framework documents listed above. When this document conflicts with any of them, this document is correct.

This framework defines two things simultaneously: the CSV column specification that drives procedural generation of 300 star systems, and the wiki template structure that turns each generated system into a navigable reference. The CSV columns are the wiki sections. A content author reading a generated system profile moves through the same categories in the same order as a player reading about an unfamiliar system.

The one deliverable that follows this document is a star map: a hand-authored gate topology defining which systems connect to which. The CSV encodes everything except gate connections; the star map completes the transit graph. Both are required before generation begins.

---

## Part I — Setting Context

### The 600-Year Timeline

Human settlement of the Settled Reach spans approximately 600 years. The first horizon stations were activated — by an unknown builder species — before human arrival. Early settlers found a partially-constructed transit network and used it. The Veil Institute was formed to study the gate infrastructure. Five hundred years later, the Institute still has no confirmed answers about the builders. This is background. It is not a narrative arc in the game. What the Institute knows and does not know about the gates is among the Reach's most sensitive institutional silences.

Settlement proceeded in five waves, described in Part IV.

### The Earth-Reach Secession

The Reach declared independence from Earth approximately 300 years ago. The secession was the conclusion of a decades-long deterioration in the Earth-Reach relationship with specific causes on both sides.

**The root dynamic:** The Reach outgrew Earth. For two to three centuries, the Reach was productive periphery and Earth was the institutional center. Somewhere in the Wave 2 expansion, that relationship inverted. The Reach's internal market became self-sustaining. Reach Syndic combines competed with Earth's industrial base rather than supplementing it. The Commission lattice, initially designed to extend Earth's regulatory authority, was increasingly administered by Reach-resident personnel. Earth noticed, and tried to reassert control.

**What Earth did:** Earth imposed transit fee restructuring on Sol-aperture traffic, targeting Reach commercial routes. Earth pushed Assembly representation amendments that reduced the vote weight of newer Wave 3-4 systems relative to established Core systems aligned with Earth. Earth attempted to bring the Veil Institute under direct Earth governance oversight, seeking approval authority over aperture access classifications. Each intervention was individually defensible. Together they communicated a single message: Earth was trying to lock in the colonial relationship before the Reach became strong enough to refuse it.

**The declaration:** The Veil Institute refused the oversight mandate. The Assembly backed the refusal. Earth issued an ultimatum. The Assembly declared independence within eight months.

**Earth's response:** Earth closed its end of the Sol-facing horizon aperture. Not formally destroyed — closed. The Reach's end is technically open, administered by the Veil Institute and the Assembly via a permit system that functions as a de facto restriction without formal announcement. Both sides maintain they have not "closed" anything. Both sides know transit is functionally impossible without navigating a slow, expensive, opaque process. The rhetorical value of this distinction is considerable to both parties.

**Who had legitimate grievances:** Both sides. Earth built the gate network, funded the early colonization waves, underwritten the infrastructure the Reach's prosperity was built on. Watching that project achieve economic supremacy and then declare independence was a genuine injury. The Reach, by contrast, was built by people who left Earth voluntarily and built something new under conditions Earth did not share. The governance structures Earth was trying to impose were designed for colonial extraction, not for a civilization that had been running itself for three centuries. Neither side was wrong about its own position. Both were catastrophically wrong about the other's.

**What the Reach tells itself:** "We grew into our independence. Earth tried to contain us. We refused. Earth's response confirmed that independence was right." This is mostly true. It leaves out that the institutions which survived the secession were built and run by people who had accumulated advantage over four centuries and had every reason to ensure the post-secession political settlement preserved their position. Not because they planned it that way. Because that is what four centuries of institutional incumbency produces when the external check is removed.

### Perpetuals as Structural Power

Perpetuals — individuals who have achieved biological indefinite lifespan through medical technology — are not a class, a faction, or a coordinating bloc. They are individuals who happen to have been alive for a very long time and who, by compound advantage, tend to occupy the senior positions in almost every power structure in the Reach.

Perpetuals are in the Assembly because they have more political experience than everyone around them. They are in Syndic leadership because they have more commercial relationships and institutional memory. They are in the Veil Institute because they remember what was classified and why. They are in the Commission because they built the regulatory frameworks the Commission now enforces.

**Perpetual power is structural, not conspiratorial.** It requires no malice to maintain. It requires only that longer-lived individuals accumulate advantage faster than shorter-lived ones, and that institutions reproduce the conditions that gave their founders influence. Some Perpetuals are decent people who built real things and are uncomfortable with what the structure became. Some are entirely comfortable with it, because they built it and believe it is right. Most have not thought carefully about it, because the structure benefits them and humans are not good at critically examining structures that benefit them.

**The exception:** Some factions were specifically constituted as a response to Perpetual dominance. The Separatist movements — particularly the principled-independence variety — emerged partly from the observation that every major institution in the Reach is run by people who have been running things since before most residents were born. Some Separatist charters explicitly exclude Perpetuals from leadership positions or impose maximum tenure limits. These communities have their own problems: they age, lose institutional memory, and are periodically vulnerable to exactly the kind of external pressure that long-lived institutions are not.

**For gameplay:** The most interesting Perpetuals are not those who hold institutional power generically, but those who hold specific historical knowledge. A 400-year-old Syndic chair was present during the secession negotiations. They knew the founding families. They remember what the early Commission debates actually looked like from inside them. Accessing what they actually know — as opposed to what they choose to present — is among the hardest information-gathering problems in the Reach.

### The One Big Mystery

The gate builders are unknown. Who built the horizon stations, why, when, and where they went are questions the Veil Institute has been researching for 500 years without confirmed answers. This mystery is ambient background, not a narrative arc the game authors have resolved. The Institute's secrecy around gate research reads as conspiracy to the player because the authors have not authored what the Institute knows. That ambiguity is intentional and should be preserved.

---

## Part II — Wave Definitions

| Wave | Years Before Present | Name | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wave 1 | 500–600 years ago | Core Founding | The earliest settled systems. These are the institutional core of the Reach — they have the most established governance, the highest Perpetual presence, and the most normalized distribution of power. Their founding narrative is the Reach's founding narrative. |
| Wave 2 | 300–500 years ago | Trade Expansion | Systems settled during the period of rapid commercial expansion. These are the working backbone of the Reach economy — Syndic-heavy, pragmatically governed, economically diverse. The secession happened during this wave's later period. |
| Wave 3 | 100–300 years ago | Working Reach | Systems settled in the post-secession period. These communities arrived in a Reach that already had a defined political structure they had no hand in designing. They range from well-integrated to quietly resentful of institutions built before they existed. |
| Wave 4 | 40–100 years ago | Frontier Push | Recent frontier settlements. These systems are still finding their relationship to Reach institutions. Governance is often contested or provisional. Syndic and separatist dynamics are more fluid. |
| Wave 5 | 0–40 years ago | Activation Edge | Systems settled within living memory of baseline humans. Often centered around recently activated horizon stations. Political identity is not yet consolidated. These are the Reach's most volatile systems by default. |
| Unsettled | — | — | Horizon station present, no permanent population. The station exists; no one lives there. |

---

## Part III — CSV Column Specification

Columns are organized into eleven sections. Section order matches the wiki page template — content authors read a generated system profile in this sequence. Consumer tags appear after each column name:

- **(G)** — Game system direct input: runtime systems consume this at execution time
- **(S)** — Storyteller runtime: the D-023 storyteller reads this for event selection and weighting
- **(C)** — Content-author reference: used during content creation, not at runtime
- **(D)** — Derived: computed from other columns or generated in a consistency pass; not hand-authored

---

### Section I — Identity and Location

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `system_id` | string | S-NNN | (G) | Unique identifier. Sequential by settlement wave within geographic sector. |
| `system_name` | string | free text | (C)(G) | Name derived from founding culture naming conventions. |
| `star_type` | enum | G / K / M / F / binary / unusual | (C) | Drives map visual and environmental flavor. |
| `geographic_sector` | enum | core / north_reach / west_reach / south_reach / east_reach / deep_frontier | (C)(G) | Six sectors. "Core" is the founding cluster; cardinal directions indicate expansion direction. |
| `geographic_band` | enum | inner / outer / core | (C) | Inner/outer within a sector; core systems use "core." |
| `political_zone` | enum | institutional_core / commercial_mid_reach / research_periphery / contested_frontier / deep_reach_isolate / diplomatic_periphery | (G)(S) | The Diplomatic Periphery is a sixth zone for systems near the Earth gate and other politically loaded nexus points. |

*Note: `compound_zone` (the derived concatenation of sector + band + zone) is generated as a wiki display field, not stored in the CSV.*

---

### Section II — Physical Character

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `habitable_planet_count` | int | 0–4+ | (C)(G) | |
| `inhabited_planet_count` | int | ≤ habitable count | (G) | |
| `asteroid_belt` | bool | true / false | (C) | |
| `gas_giant` | bool | true / false | (C) | |
| `habitability_profile` | enum | garden_multiple / garden_single / marginal / station_only / hostile | (G)(S) | Summary classification. Affects environmental hazard systems and equipment requirements. |

---

### Section III — Gate Infrastructure

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `horizon_station` | bool | true / false | (G) | ~75% of systems have one. |
| `aperture_count` | int | 0–8 (0 if no station) | (G) | 1–8 where station present. Single-aperture stations are valid (one way in, one way out). |
| `gate_connections` | int | 0–8 | (G) | Effective interstellar connections via active apertures. Primary pathfinding input. |
| `gate_topology` | enum | dead_end / spur_end / through_route / junction / hub / loop_member | (G)(S) | Determines travel options, chokepoint leverage, and whether a system can be isolated. |
| `span_gate_network` | enum | none / minimal / functional / extensive | (G) | Intra-system gate network. none = no span gates; minimal = 1–2 nodes; functional = 3–5; extensive = 6+. |

*Note: `adjacent_systems` (the list of connected system IDs) is transit graph infrastructure. It is computed during the star map generation phase and stored in the transit graph database, not in the system CSV.*

---

### Section IV — Settlement History

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `settlement_wave` | enum | wave_1 / wave_2 / wave_3 / wave_4 / wave_5 / unsettled | (G)(S)(C) | Canonical settlement epoch. `settlement_age_years` is a derived display field in the wiki, not a stored CSV column. |
| `founding_motivation` | enum | idealist / pragmatist / desperate / opportunist / institutional / mixed | (S)(C) | Why the founders came. |
| `founding_culture_primary` | enum | administrative_charter / syndic_company / nordic_diaspora / east_asian_diaspora / south_asian_diaspora / iberian_diaspora / west_african_diaspora / religious_refugee / separatist_charter / academic_scientific / military_frontier / asteroid_mining / agricultural_breadbasket / penal_exile / refugee_wave / speculative_venture / other | (G)(S)(C) | Primary founding cultural origin. Drives naming conventions, cultural contact networks, and some dialogue variation. |
| `founding_culture_secondary` | enum or null | Same values as primary | (C) | Second culture if mixed founding. Null if single-culture. |
| `cultural_persistence` | enum | standard / high / trauma_origin | (S)(G) | How strongly the founding culture persists across generations. standard: accent-level after ~3 generations. high: identity-primary for 6+ generations. trauma_origin: displacement identity persists 4–5 generations as organizing social force. |
| `historical_events` | list | See below | (S)(G) | Ordered list of significant historical events, most recent first. Each entry has `type` (enum) and `age_years` (int or null). Most systems have 0–1 entries; older or more complex systems may have several. The most recent event drives `stability_index` calculation. Valid types: `purge` / `company_abandonment` / `gate_silence` / `religious_schism` / `gyre_event` / `military_conflict` / `reformation` / `second_gate_activation` / `earth_adjacent_crisis` / `institutional_consolidation` / `terraforming` / `civilizational_origin` / `colonial_charter` / `none`. `institutional_consolidation` is the post-secession power reorganization that concentrated authority in existing institutional actors — not a conspiracy, a documented historical process. |
| `religious_status` | enum | none / early_covenant / mid_crisis / theocratic_consolidation / secular_cultural / radical_reformation / post_schism_accommodation / genuine_revival | (S)(C) | Compound field encoding religious community trajectory. `none` for non-religious-refugee founding. |
| `religious_generation_count` | int or null | integer | (C) | Optional. Approximate generation count for religious communities where the generational arc matters for NPC dialogue. Nullable for non-religious founding and for systems where this level of detail is not authored. |

---

### Section V — Economic Life

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `economic_tier` | int | 1–5 | (G)(S) | 1 = subsistence; 2 = developing; 3 = functional regional; 4 = prosperous; 5 = core/hub. |
| `population` | int | approximate | (G)(S) | Total system population. |
| `economic_base_primary` | enum | resource_extraction / agriculture / manufacturing / transit_logistics / research_institutional / military_defense / service_mixed / penal_extractive | (G)(S) | Primary economic specialization. |
| `economic_base_secondary` | enum or null | Same values as primary | (C) | Secondary specialization. Null if single-base. |
| `distribution_index` | enum | equitable / stratified / captured / extractive | (G)(S) | How economic output maps to resident wellbeing. The human face of political tension — directly modifies NPC risk tolerance and bribe thresholds. |
| `imprint_access` | enum | full / good / limited / poor / none | (G)(S) | Access to rejuvenation and neural backup services. Correlates with economic_tier and distribution_index but exceptions exist. Primary input to NPC death-risk calculation (D-008). |
| `supply_dependency` | string or null | short text | (S)(C) | What this system depends on that could be disrupted. The storyteller's economic pressure event hook. Required for systems with manufacturing or transit_logistics primary economic base, and for all narrative_notable = true systems. Optional otherwise. Example: "Inbound processed metals from the primary Syndic freight route." |

---

### Section VI — Governance

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `governance_type` | enum | fully_corporate / corporate_dominant / mixed_contested / democratic_dominant / fully_democratic / fractured / council / theocratic / transitional | (G)(S) | Nine types. `transitional` = governance type is genuinely unstable; different gameplay from any stable configuration. |
| `dominant_faction` | enum | concord_assembly / syndic / separatist / veil_institute / lattice_commission / contested / transitional | (G)(S) | Who effectively runs things day-to-day. `transitional` when effective control is shifting. |
| `primary_fault_line` | enum | gate_dependence / perpetual_power / lattice_surveillance / resource_extraction / cultural_preservation / knowledge_access | (G)(S) | The primary internal tension in this system. Six values, all internal to the Reach's political structure. Earth-related tension is captured in the dedicated earth_* columns, not here. |
| `secondary_fault_line` | enum or null | Same values + null | (G)(S) | Secondary tension, if present. |

*Note: `perpetual_influence` as a separate column is excluded from this spec. Perpetual presence in governance is implicit in `dominant_faction`, `governance_type`, `primary_fault_line = perpetual_power`, and `settlement_wave`. Adding a separate column would duplicate what these fields already express.*

---

### Section VII — Faction Presence

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `assembly_presence` | enum | none / nominal / active / dominant | (G)(S) | Concord Assembly. |
| `commission_presence` | enum | none / nominal / active / dominant | (G)(S) | Lattice Commission. Surveillance level and what the player can get away with. |
| `syndic_presence` | enum | none / nominal / active / dominant | (G)(S) | Syndic combines. |
| `syndic_type` | enum | none / reach_internal / earth_trading / earth_originating / mixed | (G)(S) | Character of the Syndic presence. `earth_trading` = Reach Syndic with active Earth commercial relationships. `earth_originating` = Syndic that originated on Earth or has Earth institutional backing. |
| `separatist_presence` | enum | none / nominal / active / dominant | (G)(S) | Separatist movements. |
| `separatist_type` | enum | none / anti_institutional / earth_alignment_opportunist / principled_independence / mixed | (G)(S) | Character of the separatist presence. |
| `institute_presence` | enum | none / nominal / active / dominant | (G)(S) | Veil Institute. |
| `guardians_presence` | enum | none / nominal / active / dominant | (G)(S) | Guardians of Autonomy. The primary counter-Perpetual faction. |
| `faction_notes` | string or null | free text | (C) | Significant local factions not covered by standard columns. |

---

### Section VIII — Cultural Voice

*These columns are the content generation interface. They translate system parameters into NPC dialogue registers and behavioral defaults.*

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `cultural_register` | enum | survival / profit / faith / discovery / honor / freedom / obligation / diplomatic | (G)(S) | The primary value frame through which people in this system discuss everything. NPC dialogue filter. |
| `cultural_register_secondary` | enum or null | Same values + null | (S) | Secondary register, if present. When in tension with primary, produces different NPC texture than when complementary. |
| `ambient_anxiety` | enum | equipment_failure / contract_renewal / institutional_threat / isolation / gate_stability / classified_knowledge / historical_hatred / earth_question / perpetual_grip / other | (S)(G) | What people here are quietly worried about. Should drive event frequency weights for the storyteller — a `gate_stability` anxiety system should have gate-related events fire more often. |
| `local_pride` | enum | fleet / harvests / independence / knowledge / faith / trade / grit / neutrality / founding_myth / earth_heritage / other | (S)(C) | What this community considers its defining achievement or character. Reputation mechanic hook — threatening what a system is proud of should accelerate faction hostility. |
| `atmospheric_tone` | enum | cosmopolitan_bustle / corporate_sterility / working_grit / frontier_grit / agrarian_rootedness / religious_solemnity / academic_curiosity / military_discipline / separatist_edge / institutional_exhaustion / eerie_quiet / provisional_normalcy | (G)(S) | The felt texture of daily life. Atmospheric moods only — factual situation states belong in `active_situation`. |
| `atmospheric_tone_secondary` | enum or null | Same values + null | (S) | |
| `active_situation` | enum or null | institute_presence / gate_dispute / contested_transition / syndic_dominance / reform_in_progress / independence_movement / earth_contact_active / gyre_aftermath / second_activation / contract_expiry | (S)(G) | The specific situation currently shaping events in this system, if any. This is what the storyteller uses to weight active event templates. Null for systems without a current shaping situation. |
| `silence_topic` | string or null | short text | (G)(S) | What this community systematically does not discuss. Required for all narrative_notable = true systems and all Institutional Core / Diplomatic Periphery political zone systems. Optional otherwise. Example: "the cargo corridor arrangement." |
| `silence_threshold` | enum or null | faction_trust / personal_trust / investigation_depth / time_based / unreachable | (G)(S) | When the silence breaks. Required when silence_topic is present. faction_trust = requires relationship with dominant faction. personal_trust = requires relationship with specific NPCs who are party to the silence. investigation_depth = requires documented facts about related topic in knowledge graph before anyone will engage. time_based = becomes discussable only after the player has spent significant time in the system. unreachable = background lore only, never player-accessible. |

---

### Section IX — Political Character

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `earth_alignment` | enum | reach_loyalist / earth_sympathetic / earth_instrumental / earth_indifferent / earth_hostile | (G)(S) | How the system's population relates to the Earth-Reach divide. The five positions carry distinct emotional textures — see distribution guidance in Part VI. |
| `earth_proximity` | enum | immediate / proximate / distant / irrelevant | (G)(S) | Gate-hop distance from the Gateway system (the system containing the Sol-facing aperture). immediate = 0–2 hops. proximate = 3–10 hops. distant = 11–30 hops. irrelevant = 30+ hops. |
| `earth_tension` | enum | daily_politics / trade_context / background_mythology / irrelevant | (G)(S) | How present the Earth-Reach relationship is in daily life. |

*Note: `earth_access` (border status column) is excluded from this spec. The border status is structurally fixed and is better expressed through the star map gate topology than as a per-system column. Systems near the Gateway have `earth_proximity: immediate` and `earth_tension: daily_politics`; that triple captures what an earth_access column would add.*

---

### Section X — Narrative Profile

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `primary_archetype` | enum | breadbasket / chokepoint / dead_end / extraction_scar / religious_haven / cosmopolitan_hub / research_enclave_active / research_enclave_historical / contested_activation / military_scar / quiet_secret / split_system / reformation / anchor_system / diplomatic_periphery / earth_gate_adjacent | (G)(S)(C) | The system's primary narrative and gameplay template. |
| `secondary_archetype` | enum or null | Same values + null | (C) | |
| `narrative_notable` | bool | true / false | (G)(S)(C) | true = this system is marked for elevated narrative treatment. |
| `narrative_hook` | string or null | one sentence | (C) | Required if narrative_notable = true. Null otherwise. |
| `generation_priority` | enum | background / regional / narrative_notable / campaign_anchor | (G)(S)(C) | Intended depth of treatment in content generation. background = generated parameters only. regional = some authored texture. narrative_notable = full authored treatment. campaign_anchor = hand-crafted (Van Maanen's Star, Gateway, etc.). |

---

### Section XI — Content Notes

| Column | Type | Valid Values | Consumer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `stability_index` | int | 1–5 | (S)(G)(D) | Derived synthesized pressure signal for the storyteller. 1–2 = hot system, crisis events elevated, instability-precondition Tier 1 modules available. 3 = moderate, normal distribution. 4–5 = cold, background-life events dominate. Calculated from governance_type + primary_fault_line + most recent historical_events entry recency + distribution_index + dominant_faction / governance_type alignment mismatch. Stored for storyteller performance; recomputable from source columns. |
| `system_volatility` | enum | static / responsive / player_affected | (G)(S) | Which systems can have mutable state. static = core parameters are constants for the playthrough. responsive = dominant_faction, faction presence levels, and stability_index can shift in response to story arc events (player need not be the cause). player_affected = the player's actions directly affect core parameters. The implementation of change conditions is a separate design document; this column marks which systems the simulation is permitted to treat as mutable. |
| `cultural_corridor` | string or null | corridor identifier | (C) | Identifier for the cultural corridor this system belongs to, if any. |
| `calibration_note` | string or null | free text | (C) | Notes on any unusual column combination that required explicit justification during generation. |

---

### Column Count Summary

```
I.    Identity and Location         6 columns
II.   Physical Character            5 columns
III.  Gate Infrastructure           5 columns
IV.   Settlement History            9 columns
V.    Economic Life                 7 columns
VI.   Governance                    4 columns
VII.  Faction Presence              9 columns
VIII. Cultural Voice                9 columns
IX.   Political Character           3 columns
X.    Narrative Profile             5 columns
XI.   Content Notes                 4 columns

Total: 66 columns
```

**Required (non-null for every system):** system_id, system_name, star_type, geographic_sector, geographic_band, political_zone, habitable_planet_count, inhabited_planet_count, asteroid_belt, gas_giant, habitability_profile, horizon_station, aperture_count, gate_connections, gate_topology, span_gate_network, settlement_wave, founding_motivation, founding_culture_primary, cultural_persistence, economic_tier, population, economic_base_primary, distribution_index, imprint_access, governance_type, dominant_faction, primary_fault_line, assembly_presence, commission_presence, syndic_presence, syndic_type, separatist_presence, separatist_type, institute_presence, guardians_presence, cultural_register, ambient_anxiety, local_pride, atmospheric_tone, earth_alignment, earth_proximity, earth_tension, primary_archetype, narrative_notable, generation_priority, stability_index, system_volatility.

**Optional / nullable:** founding_culture_secondary, historical_event, historical_event_age_years, religious_status (none for non-religious founding), religious_generation_count, economic_base_secondary, supply_dependency (required for manufacturing/transit_logistics base and narrative_notable = true; optional otherwise), secondary_fault_line, faction_notes, cultural_register_secondary, atmospheric_tone_secondary, active_situation, silence_topic (required for narrative_notable = true and Institutional Core / Diplomatic Periphery zones; optional otherwise), silence_threshold (required when silence_topic is present), secondary_archetype, narrative_hook (required when narrative_notable = true), cultural_corridor, calibration_note.

**Excluded / derived (not stored in CSV):** compound_zone (wiki display), settlement_age_years (wiki display), cultural_continuity (superseded by cultural_persistence), adjacent_systems (transit graph infrastructure), perpetual_influence (implicit in dominant_faction + primary_fault_line + settlement_wave), earth_access (expressed through star map topology), conspiracy_layer / institutional_anomaly / institutional_legacy / institutional_memory_access (all conspiracy-framing artifacts, not canonical).

---

## Part IV — System Archetypes

Each system carries a `primary_archetype` that acts as a quick generation tag. Archetypes tell the content system which encounter templates, NPC types, and event patterns apply.

| Archetype | Description |
|---|---|
| **breadbasket** | Agricultural surplus producer. Feeds other systems. Its power is quiet and fundamental — whoever controls its output controls food security for a region. Often overlooked in political analysis, never in Syndic ledgers. |
| **chokepoint** | A system that all or most transit through a region must pass through. Gate topology makes it unavoidable. Those who run it know it. Those who pass through it pay in some form. |
| **dead_end** | One way in, one way out. No through-traffic. Either very forgotten or very deliberately isolated. The people who live here chose this or had no other option. |
| **extraction_scar** | A system that was resource-stripped. The company that did the stripping may be gone; the damage is not. Population that remains is either too poor or too stubborn to leave. |
| **religious_haven** | Founded by, or subsequently dominated by, a religious community. Governance and social structure intertwined with doctrine. Commission presence is often contested here on cultural grounds. |
| **cosmopolitan_hub** | High transit, high population diversity, high commerce. The most "city-like" systems. Everyone passes through; not many are from here. |
| **research_enclave_active** | Active Veil Institute or academic research presence around a live scientific question — usually gate-related, occasionally geological or biological. The work is ongoing. |
| **research_enclave_historical** | The research happened here and is now complete, abandoned, or classified. The infrastructure remains. The people who built it may still be present. |
| **contested_activation** | A recently activated horizon station has created a political situation: who registered first, what the activation means for existing transit patterns, and who will effectively govern the new connection. |
| **military_scar** | A system that was the site of significant armed conflict. The conflict is over; the damage — physical, demographic, political — persists. |
| **quiet_secret** | A system that appears unremarkable and is not. Something about it does not fit its parameters. The silence is the most interesting thing here. |
| **split_system** | Multiple inhabited bodies in serious political conflict with each other. The system is not a unified political entity. Travel within the system requires navigating the split. |
| **reformation** | A system that underwent a significant political or cultural restructuring within the last 100 years. The reformation may have been successful, incomplete, or violently suppressed. What it left behind defines current politics. |
| **anchor_system** | A system that serves as the practical and cultural center of a region without being politically dominant. Where people go when they need things. Where the regional economy organizes around. Van Maanen's Star is this. |
| **diplomatic_periphery** | A system at a political intersection that hosts multiple major factions in structural negotiation with each other. Not a hub of commerce — a hub of institutional attention. |
| **earth_gate_adjacent** | A system in the political shadow of the Sol-facing aperture. The Earth-Reach relationship is not background here — it is the daily operating context. The Institute, the Assembly, and Earth's diplomatic presence are all physically present. |

---

## Part V — Tone and Cultural Voice Framework

Three axes define each system's cultural character. Taken together they produce a behavioral signature that distinguishes one system from another in NPC dialogue and ambient events.

### Axis 1: Talk Register (cultural_register)

The primary value frame through which people discuss everything — work, relationships, institutions, strangers.

| Value | What It Sounds Like | Typical System Profile |
|---|---|---|
| survival | Direct, threat-aware, no patience for abstraction. Everything is evaluated by whether it helps people make it through. | Hostile environment, marginal habitability, economic_tier 1–2, frontier push |
| profit | Transactional, quantified, relationship-as-instrument. Not necessarily cold — often warm, but warmth is a commercial tool. | Syndic-dominant, transit hub, extraction economy |
| faith | Everything filtered through doctrine. Moral evaluation precedes practical evaluation. Strangers are assessed for alignment. | Religious-refugee founding, theocratic or council governance |
| discovery | Curious, comparative, interested in how things work. Treat unknown things as interesting problems, not threats. | Research enclave, Veil Institute presence, academic founding |
| honor | Reputation and obligation primary. Deals are kept not because of enforcement but because breaking them is shameful. | Military frontier founding, council governance, long-established community |
| freedom | Suspicious of institutional attention. Self-reliance as virtue. Help offered without strings expected; help with strings refused. | Separatist presence, deep frontier, principled-independence character |
| obligation | Community-first. Individual needs subordinated to collective stability. Outsiders are fine if they do not disrupt. | Agricultural, wave 3–4 working community, stable mixed governance |
| diplomatic | Register-aware, cautious, skilled at non-commitment. Saying the right thing matters more than saying the true thing. | Diplomatic periphery, high earth_tension, institutional_core |

### Axis 2: Ambient Anxiety (ambient_anxiety)

What people are quietly worried about. Not discussed openly. But present in behavior, in what people check first, in what they protect.

| Value | What It Produces in Behavior |
|---|---|
| equipment_failure | People maintain, double-check, never quite trust the systems they depend on. |
| contract_renewal | Near-term economic uncertainty. Short planning horizons. Reluctance to commit to long-term relationships with strangers. |
| institutional_threat | Someone powerful is watching and may move against them. Caution around institutional contact. |
| isolation | The transit connection could be severed. Stockpiling. Over-investment in local self-sufficiency. |
| gate_stability | Not just will the gate work, but will it remain politically available. More diffuse and harder to act on than equipment failure. |
| classified_knowledge | Someone here knows something that is not supposed to be known or shared. The community protects the carrier of that knowledge or lives in its shadow. |
| historical_hatred | Something happened here and the wound has not healed. Old alignments persist in behavioral form even when the history is not discussed. |
| earth_question | The community is divided about its relationship to Earth and the secession. The question is live and people avoid it to maintain surface peace. |
| perpetual_grip | The community knows that the people in charge will still be in charge after everyone currently alive is gone. The frustration is structural: diffuse, chronic, no obvious target. |

### Axis 3: Local Pride (local_pride)

What this community considers its defining achievement or character. Threatening it activates fast hostility. Honoring it builds trust fast.

| Value | What the Community Celebrates |
|---|---|
| fleet | The ships, the pilots, the people who move things. Transit and capability as identity. |
| harvests | Agricultural output. Feeding others as dignity. |
| independence | Self-governance, absence of institutional control, history of resisting interference. |
| knowledge | Research output, educational institutions, the reputation for intellectual seriousness. |
| faith | Religious identity and practice. The community's relationship to its doctrinal tradition. |
| trade | Commercial position, deal-making reputation, the ability to connect buyers and sellers. |
| grit | Endurance, the ability to keep working under bad conditions, community toughness as virtue. |
| neutrality | The community's ability to remain outside factional conflict. Valued as a place where deals can be made across lines. |
| founding_myth | The story of how this community came here and what they came to build. Often partly mythologized. |
| earth_heritage | Cultural connection to Earth. The practices, language, or traditions maintained from before the secession. |

---

## Part VI — Distribution Guidance

The Settled Reach has approximately 300 systems. Distribution across archetypes, zones, and waves should produce a plausible civilization — not a random scatter.

### Settlement Wave Distribution (approximate)

| Wave | System Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Wave 1 | 20–30 | The founding cluster. Small, concentrated, politically dominant. |
| Wave 2 | 50–70 | Commercial expansion backbone. Diverse, established, economically varied. |
| Wave 3 | 80–100 | Working Reach majority. The largest wave by system count. |
| Wave 4 | 60–80 | Frontier push. More contested governance, more separatist presence. |
| Wave 5 | 20–40 | Activation Edge. Politically unsettled. |
| Unsettled | 10–20 | Horizon stations with no permanent population. |

### Political Zone Distribution (approximate)

| Zone | System Count | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Institutional Core | 15–25 | Wave 1 dominant. High Perpetual presence. High Assembly and Commission presence. |
| Commercial Mid-Reach | 80–100 | Wave 2–3 dominant. Syndic-heavy. The economic engine. |
| Research Periphery | 20–30 | Institute presence. Often Wave 2–3 with unusual gate topology or environmental features. |
| Contested Frontier | 50–70 | Wave 4–5 dominant. Governance contested or provisional. |
| Deep Reach Isolate | 30–50 | Any wave. Distant from main transit routes. Self-reliant by necessity. |
| Diplomatic Periphery | 5–10 | Politically loaded nexus points. The Gateway system is the clearest example. |

### Earth Alignment Distribution (approximate)

The secession happened 300 years ago. Most people in the Reach have never thought about Earth seriously.

| Alignment | Approximate Population % | Distribution Notes |
|---|---|---|
| earth_indifferent | 55–65% | Dominant position across most of the Reach. Especially strong in Wave 3–5 systems far from the Gateway. |
| reach_loyalist | 15–20% | Strongest in Institutional Core and Wave 1 systems where the founding narrative is primary identity. |
| earth_instrumental | 10–15% | Commercial mid-Reach. Earth is a market and a set of interests. Not emotional. |
| earth_sympathetic | 5–10% | Concentrated in Earth-heritage founding communities and systems with high earth_proximity. Often private. |
| earth_hostile | 5–10% | Two subtypes: loss-driven (Earth closed the gate and it hurt something they valued) and principle-driven (Earth's attempt to reassert control revealed something disgusting). |

---

## Part VII — Validation: The Van Maanen's Star Test

Every framework change is validated against Van Maanen's Star (D-036, S-TBD). Van Maanen's Star is the campaign anchor system — the v0.1 vertical slice location. It should read as unremarkable: one of many. The framework is working if Van Maanen's Star's values make it specific without making it special.

### Van Maanen's Star Profile

| Column | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `settlement_wave` | wave_3 | |
| `founding_motivation` | pragmatist | |
| `founding_culture_primary` | nordic_diaspora | |
| `cultural_persistence` | standard | Accent-level after three generations. |
| `historical_events` | [] | No significant historical events. |
| `religious_status` | none | |
| `economic_tier` | 3 | Functional regional. |
| `governance_type` | mixed_contested | |
| `dominant_faction` | contested | |
| `primary_fault_line` | resource_extraction | |
| `secondary_fault_line` | lattice_surveillance | |
| `assembly_presence` | nominal | |
| `commission_presence` | active | |
| `syndic_presence` | active | |
| `syndic_type` | reach_internal | |
| `separatist_presence` | nominal | |
| `institute_presence` | none | |
| `guardians_presence` | none | |
| `cultural_register` | obligation | |
| `cultural_register_secondary` | profit | |
| `ambient_anxiety` | contract_renewal | |
| `local_pride` | grit | |
| `atmospheric_tone` | working_grit | |
| `active_situation` | null | No current shaping situation. |
| `silence_topic` | "the cargo corridor arrangement" | |
| `silence_threshold` | personal_trust | You need to know the right locals. |
| `earth_alignment` | earth_indifferent | |
| `earth_proximity` | irrelevant | |
| `earth_tension` | irrelevant | |
| `primary_archetype` | anchor_system | |
| `narrative_notable` | false | |
| `generation_priority` | campaign_anchor | |
| `stability_index` | 3 | |
| `system_volatility` | responsive | Player actions and story arc events can shift faction presence and dominant_faction. |
| `supply_dependency` | null | Van Maanen's Star produces; it does not depend. |

**Assessment:** Van Maanen's Star reads as one of many. Every column is plausible for a working mid-Reach system. Nothing flags it as special. The framework is working.

---

## Part VIII — Next Steps

**The star map is the immediate successor to this document.**

The CSV column spec defines everything about each system except which systems connect to which. Gate topology (dead_end, hub, junction, etc.) is specified per system. Actual gate connections — which system's aperture connects to which other system's — are defined in the star map.

The star map deliverable is:
1. A hand-authored graph of all ~300 system nodes with labeled gate edges
2. Gate edges must be consistent with each endpoint's `aperture_count` and `gate_topology`
3. The Gateway system (containing the Sol-facing aperture) must be identified and placed
4. The graph must produce a connected Reach — no stranded systems without some transit access
5. Dead-end systems are valid; disconnected subgraphs are not

Once the star map exists, the `adjacent_systems` data can be populated in the transit graph database, `stability_index` calculations can be finalized across the full system set, and generation of the 300-system CSV can begin.

**The galactic history wiki is a parallel deliverable** — approximately 2,000–3,000 words in in-universe encyclopedic register. It covers the 600-year timeline, the secession, and the current political landscape in the voice of a Reach reference work. It is not dependent on the star map.

---

*Systems Framework v1.0 — Definitive canonical reference*
*Lead decisions locked: 2026-03-13*
*Authored by: Miri (worldbuilding) in consolidation of Miri, Paula, and Gestalt position documents*
*Replaces all prior systems-framework-*.md documents*