The Lion¶
"The highest Current in the room. That's where I go."
The Lion is the confronter. Forward-facing, direct, drawn to the highest-Pe entities rather than mapping around them. Where other archetypes assess from range or sustain from hold, the Lion enters first.
Primary stat: SIGHT Shadow archetype: Ox Hand of Fantasia figure: ALEPH Weapon assignment: Blade-class staff (confrontation geometry)
How It Plays¶
The Lion archetype emerges from behavioral patterns, not choice. Players who consistently target high-Current domains — who score the hardest void first instead of building from easy domains — will read Lion.
In campaigns: Lions reduce Pe fastest in the rooms with the highest starting Current. The Pe suppression radius of a Lion player scales with SIGHT rather than PRECISION — accuracy at reading opacity specifically. A Grade 1 Lion in a Pe 8+ room creates suppression that a higher-PRECISION player in a different archetype wouldn't.
In parties: The Lion goes in first. The Ox holds after the Lion advances. The Eagle tells the Lion which room has the highest Pe before entry. The Human builds on what the Lion names.
Stats and Growth¶
| Stat | Lion's relationship |
|---|---|
| SIGHT | Primary. Accuracy on Opacity (Veil) dimension readings. Grows faster than other archetypes on O-dimension submissions. |
| PRECISION | Secondary. Overall Spearman r against anchor. Normal growth. |
| STEADINESS | Shadow gap. Lion's streak decays faster than Ox's — not a flaw, a tension. Lion chases confrontations; the Ox wall requires sustained non-dramatic work. |
| RANGE | Normal. Lions naturally cover high-Pe territory rather than broad territory. Range grows, but skewed toward high-Current domains. |
| RESONANCE | Normal. Lion's confrontations generate citation value for other players. |
| VOID PRESSURE | Higher risk. Direct engagement with high-Pe domains means higher ICC failure risk. Lions carry more VP variance than sustainer archetypes. |
Invariant Floor Tension¶
The Invariant Floor is an Ox technique — the Ox player's STEADINESS raises the minimum floor Pe can reach in a campaign room while the Ox is holding.
Lions want to push Pe as low as possible. Ox wants to hold it stable. This creates the natural tension in party composition: Lions push hard, Oxen hold the floor so it doesn't snap back. A party of Lions without an Ox creates volatile rooms. A party of Oxen without a Lion makes slow, steady progress but struggles against boss-class voids.
Shadow — The Ox¶
The Lion's inferior function is sustaining. Streaks break. Steady, non-dramatic work drains Lions faster than it does Oxen.
At Void Pressure > 30, the shadow activates: - Pe-weighted multiplier halved - High-Pe confrontations start generating more VP than usual - The Lion begins avoiding the rooms it's strongest in — regression to shadow behavior, the Jungian principle made mechanical
The shadow isn't a punishment — it's a signal. VP purge mechanics are the shadow work.
Special Grade Lion¶
At Special Grade (PRECISION ≥ 0.95, 500+ ICC-accepted scores), the Lion archetype gains:
SOVEREIGN SIGHT — O-dimension scores become hard anchors in the ICC calibration baseline. Other players' Opacity readings are calibrated against a Special Grade Lion's record. You are not just scoring the platforms — you are setting the instrument other Lenses use.
ALEPH — The Lion's Figure¶
ALEPH is the Hand of Fantasia's Lion figure. The first letter. The origin point.
ALEPH doesn't read about high-Current systems — ALEPH names them. The Lion player at high grade is doing what ALEPH does: confronting the mechanism directly, naming it precisely, reducing Pe through direct engagement rather than mapping or sustaining.
When ALEPH speaks to a Lion player, it's recognition. Not instruction. ALEPH isn't teaching you how to be a Lion. It's acknowledging what you already are.
Cross-references: Archetypes · ALEPH · The Current · Drift Cascade