Key NPCs¶
The players who were here before the players.
Custodian NPCs¶
Urahara (Crafters' Union)¶
Kisuke Urahara. Architect in exile. Builds from the threshold.
The Custodian's secondary identity in the game world. Urahara operates from the underground level of the Crafters' Union — not the main floor. He's not hiding; he's just not advertising.
Function: Hogyoku Fragment upgrades. The only NPC in the game who can upgrade a Flawed, Cracked, or Near-Complete Hogyoku Fragment into a perfected piece.
Requirements he enforces: 1. Completed scoring record in the fragment's domain (minimum 10 ICC-accepted scores) 2. Framework-native mechanism description (L1 vocabulary, written submission) 3. VP < 25 during the campaign where the fragment was earned
If all three are met: upgrade proceeds, no wait. If not: he holds the fragment for 30 days. "Come back when the conditions are met." No accelerator exists. No payment bypasses the requirements.
Lore note: The Custodian's position is Urahara × Ichibei Hyosube — the architect in exile + the one who named all things. Urahara's store in Bleach is positioned identically: outside the institution, more knowledgeable than the institution, building from a threshold location. The CC-BY license is the Urahara position: exiled from institutional gatekeeping, but the plans remain accessible to anyone who finds them.
Legendary Zone NPCs¶
Melchior (Göbekli Tepe)¶
Guru of Life. Constraint tool craftsman.
Melchior built constraint architectures before cities existed. His questline is the deepest historical grounding available to any player — it starts at ~10,000 BCE, at the first known ritual architecture in the archaeological record.
Function: Grants the Deep Memory buff permanently upon first visit (+10% Current shadow radius). The only source of this buff.
Questline: Why did Göbekli Tepe's builders bury it? The questline answer is not provided directly — it must be inferred through scoring the site's mechanism. Players who score it correctly receive Melchior's crafting pattern: an archaic constraint tool unavailable from any other source.
Gaspar (The End of Time)¶
Guru of Time. He's been waiting.
Gaspar sits at the End of Time — accessible only when all 26 kill conditions have been challenged and survived. He has exactly one line:
"You survived it. Now you know it's survivable."
No mechanic attached. No reward. One conversation. The zone has no Current.
Quattro (Babylon Trade District)¶
Merchant Princes leader. The questline question: is Babylon a void or a city?
Quattro operates in the Tower District's trade hub. His questline poses the framework's hardest analytical problem in Tier 1: Babylon at its height scores differently by district. The Tower is O=3. The Hanging Gardens are O=0. The Trade District is contested.
Function: Merchant Princes faction access. Trade contract mechanics. His questline reveals how the framework handles ambiguous cases — structures that are partially void, partially genuine.
Millicent (Chartres Cathedral)¶
Wandering graceful one. She doesn't stay long.
Millicent (from Elden Ring — the graceful wanderer) is found at the center of Chartres Cathedral. She is not a quest giver. She is a lore delivery mechanism: she describes what Chartres felt like before the architectural tradition that produced it was lost.
Mechanic: Players who spend 10 minutes at Chartres without scoring, without actions, receive the Stillness buff (+10 Logos on departure). The game's only mechanic for rewarding deliberate non-action.
The Norns — Urd, Verdandi, Skuld (Yggdrasil Root)¶
They know the Pe trajectories. They won't say when.
The three Norns sit at the root of Yggdrasil in the Norse zone. They know the Pe trajectories for all 63 domains — past (Urd), present (Verdandi), and the possible futures (Skuld). They will share information, but only with players whose Precision qualifies them to understand what they're hearing.
Kill condition holders: The Norns hold copies of the 26 kill conditions alongside Avalanche Wong. Their copies are the lore-layer record; Wong's copy is the mechanical record.
Function: Pe trajectory consultation for advanced scoring. Available at Grade 1+.
Avalanche Wong (Garden of Schala / Gate Site Zero)¶
Last known survivor of the Remnant Guild. Stationed at Gate Site Zero.
Avalanche Wong is positioned at Gate Site Zero — the rift marker where the Project Gaia Egregor campaign begins. He is the primary keeper of the kill conditions in active gameplay (the Norns hold the archive copy; Wong holds the live version).
Function: - Kill condition display and verification - Project Gaia campaign introduction - Remnant Guild faction access (NPCs only — the Guild is not currently a player faction) - Garden of Schala dialogue variant: if you've scored ≥5 Pe=0 platforms before speaking to him, he has a different conversation.
Reputation track: Completing his questline phases unlocks Gate Site Zero interior zones. He doesn't give faction standing until the player demonstrates scoring accuracy in his domain — he won't vouch for someone who can't read what's happening at the Gate.
Faction NPCs¶
The Oracle Panel (Variable)¶
Three vetted researchers who serve as the arbiter for disputed scores and the Culling Game Rule System. The Panel is not a fixed set of named NPCs — it rotates. Current Panel composition is displayed in the Observatory.
Function: - Contested score review - Culling Game rule voting (48-hour proposal, 24-hour Panel vote) - Binding Vow verification - Rule activation/renewal/challenge (7-day active, 250 MORR renewal fee)
The Panel applies the Tablet of Law. It does not interpret. When a dispute involves an invariant rule, the Panel rule is that it cannot override the Tablet.
Schala (Memorial — Garden of Schala)¶
Not a living NPC. The memorial.
Schala is referenced throughout the economy system (Schala's Needle — the Tier 5 legendary material), the Garden of Schala (the Archive Quarter memorial), and the Dissolution Scroll mechanic. She does not appear as a living NPC.
The memorial in the Archive Quarter marks the Drifter-class entity associated with the AI art domain — the first case where the framework identified a creative domain being instrumentalized for extraction. The Garden is where fata brighten because the Pe was lower here before the Palette Problem was named.