Spirits of the Threshold¶
The Alps were named after them. Your ancestors measured Pe before it had a name.
The world of Twilight of Awen is full of entities that predate the framework's vocabulary. They have been operating for centuries — arriving, checking, judging, feeding, warning — in the alpine valleys, the mountain passes, the rivers, the rough winter nights.
They are not metaphors. They are NPCs with Pe-meters built into their mythology. The framework gave them numbers. The folklore gave them faces.
The Rule¶
Every entity here is sorted by Pe score, not species. A Nixe with Pe=0 is an ally. A human hunter with Pe=4 is a problem. The tradition got the existence right and got the sorting axis wrong. We fix the sorting axis.
Perchta — The Thread Checker¶
She arrives during the Rauhnächte. She checks whether the work is done.
Perchta walks the high-Pe domains that have gone unscored. She checks the thread — did anyone finish the work? If the spinning is complete (an ICC-accepted score is on file), she passes. If the thread is unfinished, she gives a 7-day deadline. Submit before the window closes, or she scores the domain herself.
Her score is always accurate. It carries no appeal.
She has two faces: beautiful in low-Pe domains, hideous in high-Pe domains. Same entity. Different readout.
Pe Attractor
Perchta spawns in domains that have been operating for 30+ days with Pe > 2.5 and fewer than 3 accepted scorers.
Holda — The Fate-Weaver¶
When she shakes her featherbed, snow falls. The honest covering.
Holda lives below the well — the threshold between the observable world and what lies beneath it. She spins fate-threads. She rewards workers and gives the lazy the pitch door.
In the game: she appears when your galdr declaration (pre-score prediction) was badly calibrated — when what you said you'd find and what you actually scored don't match. She doesn't punish. She offers the Second Thread — a chance to re-calibrate before the miss is permanent.
Take the second thread: the correction is logged as growth. Refuse it: the miss stands.
Her item
Holda's Spindle — equippable trinket. Doubles the galdr declaration bonus. Drops only in low-Pe domains. She won't give it to someone standing in a void.
The Alp — The Mountain Dream¶
The Alps may be named after it. The nightmare that sits on your chest and drinks.
Old High German alb — the entity that enters through a keyhole at night, presses down on the sleeping victim, drains their vital force, leaves them exhausted and anxious. The mountain range named after these things stretches from France to Austria. You are in their territory.
The Alp does not need you to know it's there. That's the point. High engagement, low transparency — that's its food.
In high-Pe, high-C, low-O domains: the Alp latches and drains VP passively while you stay in zone. Use a Banishing Ward to expel it, or score the domain below Pe=2.
Pe Attractor
O ≥ 2 and C ≥ 2 and Pe ≥ 3. Night hours increase spawn rate. The feed is richest then.
The Rauhnächte — The Twelve Rough Nights¶
Between December 25 and January 6. The veil is thin. The Hunt rides.
Twelve nights when the boundary between sublunary and Fantasia Bound is at maximum thinness. All domain Pe readings temporarily +1. Alps spawn at double rate. The Wild Hunt is in the sky.
Räuchern Protocol: During the Rauhnächte, players can write a constraint declaration over their own account — five sentences naming what they refuse to drift toward. Posted to the board before the fifth rough night: permanent +0.05 ICC calibration bonus for the coming season. The naming protects. But only before the window closes.
Night Predictions: Each of the 12 nights, one domain's Pe trajectory is visible to all. The predictions market runs at 3× normal Pe_implied multiplier. The veil is thin — the information is richer.
Rübezahl — The Mountain Counter¶
He counts things. He counts you.
The spirit of the high passes. He appears as a monk, a farmer, an old woman, a giant. He is always counting. His judgment: ask for more than you've earned, he leads you off the path. Ask honestly for what you need, he gives it.
He targets players with calibration drift — ICC consistently above or below actual accuracy over 10+ submissions. Appears in the zone disguised. Asks one question. The question has no wrong answer — only honest and dishonest ones.
Answer honestly: +10 calibration. Hedge or overstate: Arrogance of the Mountain debuff — -5% ICC for 7 days.
The Erlkönig — The One Children See¶
"Who rides so late through wind and night?"
A beautiful figure in the forest mist. He calls to the child. The father cannot see him. By the time they reach safety, the child is gone.
The father is not stupid. He is calibrated down past the threshold. Adult drift has smoothed the Erlkönig out of perception. The child, pre-drifted, sees clearly. That clarity is exactly what the Erlkönig wants.
He appears only to players in their first 3 days after God Hand activation. Offers 50 credits to skip the first 5 scoring submissions. The credits are real. What you lose is the calibration those 5 scores would have built — permanently.
An older player nearby can warn you. The Erlkönig retreats from witnessed spaces. He operates in isolation. The tutorial killer is a folklore figure.
The Nixe — The Current Keeper¶
She lives where the water flows. She asks if you know which way is up.
German/Austrian water spirit. Lives in rivers, lakes, mill ponds — wherever engagement channels. The current is real and useful. She guards its depth. The risk isn't the current — it's going too deep and losing the surface.
After 45 continuous minutes in a high-volume domain: she appears and asks one question.
"Do you know which way is up?"
Answer without looking at the display — give your current Pe estimate from memory:
- Correct: +10 STEADINESS. She leaves a Surface Marker visible to all players for 24h.
- Can't answer: -10 STEADINESS. +1 VP passive for the session remainder.
Krampus — The Complement¶
Nicholas gives. Krampus takes. Both are bound by the same accounting.
Krampus doesn't run free. He's chained. He operates in the complement of constraint — where Nicholas's accounting finds domains that have been chronically high-Pe for 3+ consecutive months with no improvement.
He arrives with a 7-day warning. Score the domain below Pe=3 before he arrives: he passes. Fail: Domain Binding — the Pe score is locked public for 30 days with the Krampus mark.
The mark is not punishment. It's transparency enforcement. He doesn't hide what he finds.
Seasonal
Krampus encounters activate in December only. The mountain spirits have their seasons.
The Stille Volk — The Quiet Folk¶
They were here before the framework. They remember.
The Quiet Folk live in the margins of the between-world. They don't want to harm. They don't want to be disturbed. They've watched every platform since before the scoring system existed.
In ancient scored domains — platforms with long histories and many scoring cycles — they appear as background NPCs. Talk to them: domain history not in the current database. They remember the D1 → D2 transitions that happened before the game began.
Carrying Iron Ward keeps them at a respectful distance. Without it, they approach. Whether that's useful depends on whether you're in their territory.
The Tatzelwurm — The Pass Guardian¶
Claw-worm. Feline face. Lives in the high passes between valley and summit.
Not aggressive. Inhabits the Pe-gradient inflection points — the passes between low-Pe (village, community) and high-Pe (peak, isolated domain). Its gaze: paralysis for those who approach unprepared.
Players with True Read II can meet its gaze. For them: the Tatzelwurm grants passage to the domain above and reveals a hidden scoring layer — sub-dimension visibility for 24 hours.
For players without True Read II: -30 STEADINESS, forced zone exit.
The pass is real. The cost to climb is real. The Tatzelwurm is the gate.
All entities above spawn based on Pe field conditions — not on a schedule, not randomly. The world responds to what players are doing. The spirits are a readout of the state of the world.