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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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_event	enum or null	purge / company_abandonment / gate_silence / religious_schism / gyre_event / military_conflict / reformation / second_gate_activation / earth_adjacent_crisis / institutional_consolidation / none	(S)(G)	The most significant single historical event in this system's past. institutional_consolidation is the post-secession power reorganization that concentrated authority in existing institutional actors — not a conspiracy, a documented historical process.
historical_event_age_years	int or null	0–600	(S)(G)	Approximate years since the historical event. Null if none. Affects stability_index calculation.
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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 (Krenn, Gateway, etc.).

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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 + historical_event 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.

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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).

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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. Krenn 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.

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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.

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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).

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Part VII — Validation: The Krenn Test

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

Krenn System 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_event	none
historical_event_age_years	null
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	Krenn produces; it does not depend.

Assessment: Krenn reads as one of many. Every column is plausible for a working mid-Reach system. Nothing flags it as special. The framework is working.

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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.

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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*