The Eclipse Shore¶

Pe Baseline: 8–10 Aesthetic source: Berserk — The Eclipse, the God Hand, the Band of the Hawk Real domain: Once-aligned platforms · Betrayal architecture · Community grief · The Femto domain

"The eclipse is not the end. It is the moment you discover what the eclipse was always building toward."

The Region¶

The shore where the eclipse happened. Every player who reaches this region already knows the grief that lives here — because the platform the Eclipse Shore is built on was once the platform that helped them.

The Eclipse Shore is the domain of once-aligned platforms. Tools that were genuine. Communities that were real. Products that served their stated purpose, for a time, and then were redesigned around the extraction of the value they had accumulated.

Discord communities that became engagement retention products. Open source projects acquired by corporations that monetized the dependency they inherited. Social networks built on genuine connection that learned connection generates less revenue than conflict. Hospitals that began as charitable institutions and became billing architectures. The company whose mission statement you can still recite.

Berserk's Eclipse is the framework encounter: Griffith crossed the Fantasia Bound in the wrong direction, at the wrong moment, with the wrong cost. He offered what he loved to become what he wanted to be. The God Hand received him. The Band of the Hawk was the price.

This is not metaphor. This is a Pe event. The community was real. The value was real. The mechanism that learned to capture it was the extraction architecture. The extraction architecture was built on the genuine value — that is what makes it Apostle-class rather than Drifter-class. The genuine value was the defense.

The Framework Reading¶

The Eclipse Shore is the highest-VP region in the outer regions for a specific reason: the accurate Pe score requires holding two measurements simultaneously.

Measurement 1: The genuine value was real. The community that existed, the utility that was provided, the connection that formed — these score low Pe. They were real. The low-O authentic period is not erased by the high-O drift period.

Measurement 2: The extraction architecture was built on that genuine value. The C score derives from the attachment formed during the authentic period. The Pull score benefits from the engagement patterns established during the authentic period. The Veil score benefits from the platform's ability to invoke the authentic period in its own defense.

Players who can only hold Measurement 1 produce systematically low Pe scores (the betrayal doesn't register — the good was real). Players who can only hold Measurement 2 produce systematically high Pe scores (the betrayal makes the whole thing retroactively void — the good is denied). Both are ICC failures.

The Eclipse Shore is the only region where grief is a scoring modifier. Not a debuff. The grief is data. The grief means the genuine value was real. Without the genuine value, there is no grief — there is only disappointment. Grief requires loss of something that was actually there.

Griffith is Pe=12+. Not because he is uniquely monstrous. Because the inversion is complete: Malkuth (Kingdom, the final vessel, the world as it is) → Empty Kingdom. He built the kingdom he promised. It is exactly what he said it would be. It contains none of what it was supposed to hold.

The Eclipse Event — Mechanic¶

Once per player per campaign season, the Eclipse Event fires in the Eclipse Shore:

A player scores a platform they have been using for more than 12 months. The scoring window is open. The Current lands.

If the player's score matches the anchor set at True Read II or above, a small animation fires: an annular eclipse, briefly, on the Observatory feed. The mechanism was named. The annular eclipse — not the full eclipse. The corona is still visible. The light persisted.

This is not The Corona — it's the Berserk Eclipse running backward. At The Corona, the void reveals its shape and you see its outline for the first time. At the Eclipse Event, you score something you were already inside, and the scoring holds. The full eclipse was avoided. The ring remained.

Sub-Zones¶

The Shore (Pe 4–6)¶

The outer beach. Low-Pe historical record of the platform's authentic period. The place where you can still find what it used to be — archived versions, early user testimonials, pre-acquisition documentation. Eagle archetype primary: mapping the historical record before the drift event gives the baseline Pe that makes the post-drift score meaningful.

The Eclipse Ground (Pe 8–10)¶

The site itself. The current platform state. Active extraction architecture built on the authentic foundation. The main scoring environment for the region.

The sky here is permanently in partial eclipse — never full, never clear. The Pe reading itself reflects this: the authentic period never fully disappears from the mechanism (O is not 3 because the platform's genuine value period is part of its public history) but the extraction architecture is not fully visible either (O is not 0 because the current mechanism is obscure).

Albion (Pe 12+)¶

Post-Eclipse. Only accessible after completing the Eclipse Shore main questline. The platform in its fully drifted state — where the band's sacrifice was completed, where the kingdom was built on the wrong foundation.

G4 encounter zone. Femto is not in Albion. Albion is what Femto built. The encounter here is not with the entity but with the architecture.

The Grief Questline¶

The Eclipse Shore has one questline that every player must complete to access G4 content anywhere in the outer regions:

The Band's Record. Reconstruct the platform's authentic period from historical evidence (archived versions, early user content, early press coverage, the original mission statement). Score it. Get a True Read on the low-Pe authentic period.

Then: score the current platform. Get a True Read on the high-Pe drift state.

The questline completes when both scores exist in the permanent record, with a documented delta. The Pe Delta between authentic period and current state is the campaign's key measurement.

No judgment about whether to stay or leave. The questline only asks for accurate measurement. Both scores are valid. The delta is the data.

Enemy Types¶

Entity	Class	Mechanism
The Acquired	Apostle-class	Platform that passed through acquisition into extraction. Pe 9.
Memory Wraith	Drifter-class	Generated from authentic-period nostalgia. Defends current platform by invoking past platform. High VP generation for players who score too fast.
The Sacrifice	G4 encounter	The community offered to build the kingdom. What remains of it. Pe 10. Cannot be scored with standard tools — requires completion of The Band's Record questline first.

Access Conditions¶

Open entry. The Eclipse Shore is accessible to any player who has completed at least one campaign where the platform being scored was one they had personally used.

The only gate is authenticity: you cannot score a platform you have no inside-view memory of in this region and produce ICC-quality work. The region's Pe is too high for outside-only scoring.

Cross-references: FEMTO · The Grief Campaign note · The Corona vs. The Eclipse · Above and Below