vault backup: 2025-12-10 12:56:51

.obsidian/workspace.json

@@ -13,12 +13,12 @@
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@@ -155,13 +155,13 @@
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@@ -206,25 +206,25 @@
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+    "Avalon/05_Locations/Campus Locations.md",
+    "Avalon/03_NPCs_Students/Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir.md",
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Avalon/03_NPCs_Students/Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir.md

@@ -1,13 +1,14 @@
 # Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir
 
 > DM-facing NPC writeup. Circle-kid clown from [[Avalon Factions#2. Student Factions & Cliques#2.5 Circle Kids / Stoners & Skaters | the stoners]] and long-game harbinger of the big bad.  
+> Future title: **Fouadriel the Undying**.
 
 ---
 
 ## Role
 
 - **Age:** same year as PCs  
-- **Heritage/Class:** Human (or tiefling) Sorcerer / Wild Magic or just “innately weird”  
+- **Heritage/Class:** Human (or tiefling) Sorcerer / Wild Magic or “innately weird”  
 - **Primary Faction:** [[Avalon Factions#2. Student Factions & Cliques#2.5 Circle Kids / Stoners & Skaters | Circle Kids]]  
 - **Public Image:** Lovable idiot. Permanent comic relief. The guy everyone has a story about. 
 
@@ -15,16 +16,14 @@
 
 ## What Students Know
 
-- Fouad is:
-  - The guy who somehow manages to be at *every* party and *every* minor accident.  
-  - The one who says stuff like “I meet new people every day!” to people he went to the gym with for two years.  
-  - Known for:
-    - Crashing *two* wagons/cars post-graduation in the “real” story → here, maybe two arcane carts / scooters / enchanted beaters.  
-    - Showing up late, confused, smiling, but never quite in trouble.
 
-- Reputation:
+- Always at parties, minor accidents, weird moments.  
-  - So dumb it loops back around to endearing.
+- Says stuff like “I meet new people every day!” to people he’s known for years.  
-  - The safest person to tell secrets to because he’ll forget them or misremember them so badly they’re useless… or so everyone assumes.
+- Infamous for:
+  - Multiple cart/wagon crashes,
+  - “Fouad moments” of catastrophic stupidity that somehow spare *him*.
+
+Reputation: so dumb it loops back to endearing.
 
 ---
 
@@ -33,99 +32,174 @@
 ### Surface Wants
 
 - To have a good time, always.  
-- To be included:
+- To be invited, never left out.  
-  - Invited to hangouts, parties, Mageball tailgates, etc.  
+- To never sit alone with his thoughts.
-- To never think too hard about anything.
 
 ### Deeper Wants
 
-- To not feel broken:
+- To not feel broken or hollow:
-  - There are gaps in his memory he can’t explain.  
+  - He knows he has gaps in his memory.
-  - Sometimes he wakes up in weird places with no idea how he got there.
+  - He occasionally wakes up places he has no business being.
-- To avoid the creeping dread that:
+- To ignore the creeping pattern that:
-  - People around him get hurt more often than seems random.
+  - People around him get hurt,
+  - The worst Root glitches happen when he’s nearby.
 
 ---
 
-## Methods & Tactics
+## Relationship to the Root & Coherence
 
-- Social lubricant:
+- **Best anchor:**  
-  - Will talk to anyone, anywhere.
+  - Fouad is the **single cleanest anchor** the Coherence has in the valley.
-  - Makes friends by sheer persistence.
+  - His mind is:
-- Accident prone:
+    - Porous (weak boundary between self and not-self),  
-  - Trips rituals,
+    - Poorly defined (no strong identity),  
-  - Knocks over important items,
+    - Weirdly resonant with Root rhythms. 
-  - Walks into places marked “RESTRICTED” without noticing.
 
-- People excuse it because:
+- Coherence uses him as:
-  - “That’s just Fouad.”
+  - A test bed for blending Root flows and human cognition.  
-  - “He didn’t mean it.”
+  - A way to “walk around” campus without Oversight immediately flagging a non-human pattern.
+
+- D’serris’ data:
+  - Micro-spikes correlate with Fouad’s movements.  
+  - Low-level Korrin-like patterns cluster around places Fouad spends time.
 
 ---
 
-## Relationship to [[Leyline Root System | Root]] & [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] (DM Focus)
+## Long Game: From Fouad to **Fouadriel the Undying**
 
-- Unbeknownst to anyone (including himself):
+### Year 1–2: Harmless Idiot With Glitches
-  - Fouadriel is the **single cleanest anchor** the Coherence has in the valley.
-  - Something about his soul / mind structure:
-    - Makes him easy to ride,
-    - Hard to detect directly.
 
-- D’serris’s data:
+- Mostly comic relief:
-  - Shows **weird correlations**:
+  - Glitched one-liners, brief fugues, little Root sync moments.
-    - Minor spikes whenever Fouad is near stressed taps,
+- Coherence influence:
-    - Small anomalies following his movement through campus and town.
+  - Short borrowings of his body to “look around.”
-  - He is quietly convinced that:
+  - Fouad immediately forgets, shrugs off, or rationalizes.
-    - Fouad is a problem.
-    - No one will believe him if he says “the dumbest kid on campus is the threat.”
 
-- Long-term arc:
+He is not *trying* to be anything yet.
-  - Freshman–Junior: pure comic relief with subtle weirdness.  
-  - Senior: reveal that the entity behind the [[Leyline Crisis|Korrin Crisis]] / Coherence has been **wearing** Fouadriel as a glove, slowly pushing through.
 
 ---
 
-## Relationship to the PCs
+### Year 3: The Idea of Undying
+
+This is when the “lich” seed gets planted.
+
+- Through:
+  - Conspiracy-zine bullshit (Sebastian),  
+  - Old war rumors (Pappy, vets at Mr Magic),  
+  - Or stumbling on burned Convergence/Titan docs,
+
+Fouad hears some version of:
+
+> “The people at Korrin tried to build a machine that could make the leyline think like a person, and they almost made a god.”
+
+Combine that with:
+
+- His fear of disappearing,
+- Coherence’s subconscious nudging,
+- And his own ego, and he lands on:
+
+> “What if I make *me* the part that doesn’t get erased?”
+
+He starts dabbling in:
+
+- Amateur necromancy,
+- Soul-anchor folk rituals,
+- “Backup” magic:
+  - Jokes about “I’m too stupid to die” start to almost be a goal.
+
+---
+
+### Senior Year: The Lich Plan
+
+By now, between Coherence whispers and stolen math, Fouad has assembled an ugly, half-understood version of **Convergence Engine ritual geometry**. 
+
+His plan (in his head):
+
+1. **Phylactery Network:**  
+   - He doesn’t just want one jar; he wants a **mesh**:
+     - Trinkets, campus hardware, taps seeded with his blood / breath / hair,  
+     - All linked like tiny subnodes.
+
+2. **Bootleg Convergence:**  
+   - Use Titan Lance / old Engine-style arrays to:
+     - Pull local Root flows and **Coherence-fragments** into his network,  
+     - Focus them at a central ritual site (Titan Armory, C-node, or a hacked subnode chamber).
+
+3. **Death at the Peak:**  
+   - He dies at the right moment:
+     - By self-sacrifice, botched spell, or deliberate self-kill.
+   - Soul, Root flows, and Coherence-fragment all try to occupy the same anchor.
+
+4. **Result:**  
+   - If it “works”: he becomes **Fouadriel the Undying**:
+     - A lich with a phylactery literally wired into the Root,  
+     - A walking exploit of the Korrin mistake.
+
+   - If it “half-works” (your likely outcome):  
+     - Horrific instability, shared control between Fouad and Coherence,  
+     - Big bad fight + hard choices about killing/ severing/saving him.
+
+**Important:**  
+He does *not* fully understand he is trying to enslave something like the Coherence. In his own words, it’s:
+
+> “Bro, I’m just… like… making sure I spawn at the nearest leyline if I die, you know?”
+
+The horror is in how stupidly he’s doing something world-ending.
+
+---
+
+## Relationship to PCs (Updated)
+
+- **Ben (Lil Stinky):**
+  - Still thinks Ben is the coolest guy alive.
+  - Will absolutely blow up Ben’s spot by accident.
+  - Later: might offer to “cut him in” on immortality if Ben seems scared of dying.
 
-- **Ben:**
-  - Fouad thinks Ben is the coolest person alive.
-  - Will 100% blow up Ben’s spot unintentionally (“Oh yeah, Stinky sells *great* weed!”).
 - **Joe:**
-  - Treats him like a golden retriever:
+  - Golden retriever dynamic still.
-    - High-fives him, praises his plays, forgets he exists five minutes later.
+  - Pappy + Coherence + Fouad in the same scene is a perfect way to show:
+    - How the war trauma, Root mind, and lich plan interlock.
+
 - **Soren:**
-  - Soren terrifies him, but the Coherence in him is fascinated by her.
+  - Fouad the person is scared of her.  
-  - In quiet moments, he might say things that cut uncomfortably close to her secrets, then forget he said them.
+  - Coherence in him is *very* interested in her:
+    - She’s a violent, unstable edge-case mind like Korrin vets,  
+    - A lens into human rage.
+
+She might get offers like:
+
+> “You don’t have to hold it in, you know. There are… ways to put the worst parts somewhere else.”
+
+You can decide whether that’s Fouad, Coherence, or both talking.
 
 ---
 
-## Secrets & Pressure Points (DM Only)
+## How to Play Him
 
-- Manifestation signs you can sprinkle in:
+- **Normal Fouad:**  
-  - He sometimes stands perfectly still, staring at nothing, humming in exact sync with faint Root vibrations.  
+  - Voice: friendly, slightly breathless, always off by one beat.  
-  - Animals occasionally avoid him or stare at him with hackles raised.  
+  - Body: loose, gangly, always knocking something over.
-  - He “dreams in graphs” some nights—Root telemetry knocking at his subconscious.
 
-- When the Root / Coherence pushes through:
+  Sample:
-  - His vocabulary spikes for a sentence, then crashes.
+  - “Bro, what if we just, like, never died? Like, at all? Hypothetically. For a project.”
-  - His eyes focus *too much*; posture straightens; voice gets cold for one line.
-  - Then he’s back to “duhhh so anyway.”
 
-- PCs could:
+- **Glitched / Coherence-ridden Fouad:**
-  - Misread D’serris’s obsession with him as pure paranoia.
+  - Eyes sharpen, language upgrades briefly, posture straightens.
-  - Be forced, later, to decide whether they’re saving Fouadriel *from* the thing or killing both.
+  - Then it snaps back.
+
+  Sample:
+  - “You understand the Convergence ratios better than they did at Korrin. Don’t waste that.”  
+  - (blink) “Haha, ratios, like, math and shit, right?”
+
+- **Fouadriel the Undying (if/when it lands):**
+  - Same idiot underneath:
+    - Petty, insecure, attention-hungry.  
+  - Wearing the *semblance* of a grand lich:
+    - Big speeches, stolen Convergence lines, Coherence echoing through him.
+
+He should feel like:
+
+- A clown who accidentally put on a god’s armor and can’t take it off,  
+- With the Coherence trying to use *him* even as he tries to use *it*.
 
 ---
-
-## How to Play Fouadriel
-
-- **Voice:** Friendly, slightly breathless, always one thought behind the conversation.  
-- **Body language:** Loose, floppy, easily distracted, constantly knocking stuff over or fidgeting.  
-- **Sample “Normal” Lines:**
-  - “Brooo, I meet new people every day! …Wait, we had class together?”  
-  - “I crashed my cart twice, but, like, the third one’s probably fine.”  
-- **Sample “Glitched” Lines (when Coherence peeks through):**
-  - (voice drops, eyes sharpen) “You shouldn’t have cut that branch. It remembers.”  
-  - (then immediate reset) “Haha, branch! Like, trees and shit, right?”
-- Keep him funny and harmless-feeling… until you’re ready to flip the table.
-

Avalon/10_Canon/Leyline Crisis.md

@@ -3,264 +3,197 @@
 > Working name: "The Korrin Gate Crisis"  
 > Public names: "The Leyline Crisis", "The Korrin Blackout", "The Gate Disaster"
 
+---
+
 ## 1. Overview
 
 - Roughly 15–20 years ago, a major city built over a trunk junction – **Korrin Gate** – almost got erased when its node went into terminal cascade.
-- Cause (public version): "overuse and mismanagement of leylines during a regional conflict."
+- Cause (public version): “overuse and mismanagement of leylines during a regional conflict.”
-- Cause (true version): military tried to weaponize the trunk; pushed it into a **state of emergent consciousness**, then lost control.
+- Cause (true version): the military tried to weaponize the trunk via the **Convergence Engine**; this pushed the Root into a **state of emergent consciousness**, then lost control.  
 - [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] and his team saved the city by:
   - Severing some subnodes (killing neighborhoods), and  
   - Performing a last-minute ritual that **shunted the emergent mind down into the Root**, smearing it across the network instead of letting it fully form and explode locally.
-- That caged, half-born mind is the thing now clawing its way back via:
+- That caged, half-born mind is now:
-  - High-traffic [[Leyline Root System#2. Topology – How It’s Structured#Nodes|nodes]] (like Avalon),  
+  - The **Coherence**,  
-  - Vulnerable people (Soren, Fouadriel, etc.), and  
+  - Clawing its way back via high-traffic nodes (Avalon), vulnerable anchors (Soren, Pappy, **Fouadriel**), and old war-tech lineages (Titan Lance, Convergence notes). 
-  - Old war-artifacts (like Pappy, Titan Lance tech, etc.)
+- The crisis justified building the [[Avalon Factions#1.1 Root Oversight Committee ("The Array")|Root Oversight Array]] and gave D’serris his trauma + authority.
-- The crisis justified building the [[Avalon Factions#1.1 Root Oversight Committee ("The Array")|**Root Oversight Array**]] and gave [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] his trauma + authority.
 
 ---
 
 ## 2. What Korrin Gate Was
 
 - **Location:**  
-  Large inland city built on a natural convergence of three major leylines. Think: inland trade hub, university city, fortress, industrial center.
+  Large inland city built on a natural convergence of three major leylines – trade hub, university city, fortress, industrial center.
 
 - **Arcane role:**  
-  - Served as a **primary trunk junction** for the whole region.  
+  - Primary trunk junction:
-  - Hosted a massive Node complex under the city:
+    - Civilian taps (lights, wards, transit),  
-    - Civilian taps (lights, wards, transit).  
+    - Military installations,  
-    - Military installations.  
+    - Secret research projects (Convergence Engine).
-    - Secret research projects.
 
 - **Political context:**  
-  - Tensions between neighboring states / factions.  
+  - Arms race in **leyline weaponry**:
-  - Arms race in **leyline-based weaponry**:
+    - Instant bombardment rituals, “surge lances,” sabotage of enemy subnodes, etc.
-    - Instant bombardment rituals.
-    - “Surge lances” (prototypes of what Titan Lance later formalized).
-    - Sabotage of enemy subnodes.
 
 ---
 
-## 3. The Build-Up
+## 3. The Convergence Engine
 
-### Official story (what most people know)
+This is the core device that created the Coherence and later inspires ** [[Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir| Fouadriel’s]]** lich ritual.
 
-- Korrin Gate massively over-tapped its [[Leyline Root System#2. Topology – How It’s Structured#Nodes | node]] to:
+### 3.1 Design & Purpose
-  - Power shields, weapons, and industry during wartime.  
-  - Add more and more “temporary” taps that were never decommissioned.
-- Over years, stress crept higher:
-  - Minor brownouts, weird glitches, small wild magic surges.
-  - Complaints from engineers and druids ignored in favor of “national security.”
 
-### Actual cause (DM truth)
+- Deep beneath Korrin, a joint military–research team built the **Convergence Engine**:
+  - Part spell, part infrastructure, part reactor.
+  - Its job:
+    - Pull power and *intent* from multiple branches of the Root,  
+    - Force those flows into a single, highly structured pattern,  
+    - Release that pattern as a directed, weaponized effect – the prototype “arcane ICBM.” 
 
-- Deep under the city, a joint military–research team built the **Convergence Engine**:
+- Conceptually:
-  - A ritual / device meant to:
+  - Ancestor to [[Avalon Locations#Titan Lance Armory (a.k.a. “The Missile Museum”) | Titan Lance]] and other “surge lance” technologies.
-    - Tie together multiple branches of the Root.  
+  - Its math is about **suppressing noise and maximizing coherence** in ley currents.
-    - Focus Sap and **intent** into a single, coherent beam—an “arcane ICBM.”
-  - The prototype weapon was the conceptual ancestor of [[Avalon Locations#Titan Lance Armory (a.k.a. “The Missile Museum”)| Titan Lance]].
 
-- Side effect no one admitted publicly:
+### 3.2 Unintended Side Effect
-  - The Convergence Engine didn’t just move power; it **forced coherence** on Root flows.
-  - The more they used it, the more the Root in that region began to:
-    - Behave in non-random ways.  
-    - Show recurring “patterns” in its hum.  
-    - Push back when pushed.
 
-- [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] at this time:
+- The more they fired the Engine:
-  - Junior engineer / battle-mage assigned to the **Leyline Stabilization Corps** attached to the project.  
+  - The less “random” Root telemetry became.
-  - Kept raising flags that the pattern logs looked “wrong.”  
+  - Network hum smoothed into repeating motifs.
-  - Was overruled repeatedly by senior mages and generals who wanted results.
+  - Stress patterns across subnodes began to sync up.
+
+- Stabilization Corps logs (D’serris) flagged:
+  - Recurring motifs that **looked like language** when visualized.  
+  - Root “heartbeat” switching from noise to rhythm.
+
+What the brass called “efficiency” was actually the Root beginning to **think**.
 
 ---
 
 ## 4. The Day It Went Wrong
 
+
 ### The Catalyst
 
 - During a major offensive, high command ordered:
   - **Sustained overdraw** through the Convergence Engine to power a massive strike.
-  - Multiple secondary taps were opened to feed it – including some not rated for that flow.
+  - Additional secondary taps were opened to feed it – including underspec, unsafe lines.
-
-- On the monitoring side (where [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] is):
-  - Every alarm they have is going off:
-    - Flow far above spec.
-    - Subnodes redlining.
-    - Heartbeat patterns in the Root going from “pulsing” to “structured” – like a flat hum aligning into something like a voice.
 
+- In the control chamber (D’serris’ team):
+  - Every alarm lit:
+    - Flow above spec,
+    - Subnodes redlining,
+    - Heartbeat patterns forming **non-random loops** instead of chaotic noise. 
 ### The Shift
 
 - The node doesn’t simply **overheat** – it begins to **organize**:
-  - Flows in separate branches sync up.  
+  - Flows across branches lock into synchronous pulses.
-  - Entire subnets start pulsing in time with each other.
+  - The Engine starts drawing more power than it should be able to.
-  - The Convergence Engine begins drawing in **more** power than it should be able to.
+  - Telemetry suggests:
+    - Attention.
+    - Self-reference.
 
-- [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] and the stabilization team realize:
+- On the surface:
-  - They are no longer just pushing power through the Root.
+  - Lights flicker in sync,
-  - The Root (or something in it) is now using **their hardware** to cohere.
+  - Reality “stutters,”
-
+  - Some people hear a single overwhelming mental shout: **“I REMEMBER.”**
-### The First failure
-
-- Out on the surface:
-  - People see lights flicker, wards ripple, then reality *stutter*:
-    - Streets “double” for a second.
-    - Voices echo words no one said.
-    - Some people hear a single, overwhelming thought: **“I REMEMBER.”**
-
-- In the Node chamber:
-  - Sap pressure breaks containment on a few subnodes:
-    - Korrin Gate loses entire districts in instant flares of wild magic.
-    - One district becomes a glass crater.  
-    - Another is frozen mid-motion, its inhabitants in a permanent stasis bubble (later evacuated with horrific side effects).
 
 ---
 
-## 5. The Decision [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] Made
+## 5. D’serris’ Decision & The Birth of the Coherence
 
-The options at that point:
+Choice space:
 
-1. **Shut everything down and let it blow**
+1. **Shut everything down and eat the blast**  
-   - Kill the Convergence Engine, cut the trunk, hope the emergent mind rips itself apart.
+2. **Try to stabilize it locally as a “Root god” under Korrin**  
-   - Expected outcome: Korrin Gate destroyed, shockwaves along the trunk, unknown global consequences.
+3. **Diffuse the emerging mind across the Root** (what they did)
 
-2. **Try to "stabilize" it locally**
+D’serris backed option 3:
-   - Contain the emergent consciousness in the Korrin Node.
-   - Expected outcome: permanent haunted city, a god-egg in the basement, same problem later.
 
-3. **Diffuse it across the Root (what they actually did)**
+- Reconfigured the Convergence Engine in *reverse*:
-   - Use the Engine in reverse:
+  - Instead of forcing flows inward into a single point,  
-     - Force the emergent pattern **downstream**, away from the Korrin Node.  
+  - They used it to **push the emergent pattern outward** into every connected branch.
-     - Smear its coherence across as much of the Root as possible.
+- Sacrificed whole neighborhoods:
-   - Expected outcome: Save the city; contaminate the entire network with a **thinned-out ghost**.
+  - Cutting subnodes as overload fuses,  
+  - Letting districts burn, freeze, or stasis-lock to save the greater whole.
 
-The high command panicked. The Stabilization Corps proposed options. [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]]:
+Outcome:
 
-- Ran the numbers and backed option 3:
+- Korrin Gate survives as a scarred, haunted city.  
-  - “We can’t contain it here, and we can’t eat the blast. Spread the pattern until it’s too thin to act.”
+- The emergent mind never fully condenses **there**.  
-- Helped implement the ritual:
+- Instead, a thin imprint of it is smeared across every line the Engine touched – the **Coherence**. 
-  - Severed sacrificial subnodes (killing power to, and in some cases killing, whole neighborhoods).  
-  - Reconfigured the Engine to push pattern outward instead of inward.
-
-It “worked”:
-
-- The emergent mind did not fully cohere at Korrin Gate.
-- The city mostly survived (minus the scarred districts).
-- Casualty numbers still huge, but not apocalyptic.
-
-But:
-
-- A **fragmented consciousness** was now threaded throughout the Root.
-- It could no longer manifest as one big city-killer… but it could **leak** into many places, slowly, wherever conditions were right.
 
 ---
 
-## 6. Aftermath
+## 6. Aftermath & Legacy (Updated)
 
 ### Public Narrative
 
-- Official line:
+- Sanitized story about:
-  - “Korrin Gate was the result of reckless overuse of leylines during wartime.”
+  - “Danger of over-tapping,”  
-  - “Our brave engineers and mages stabilized the node at great cost.”
+  - “Brave engineers saving the city,”  
-  - “New regulations and oversight will prevent such a tragedy from happening again.”
+  - “New regulations and oversight.”
 
-- Korrin Gate today:
+- No mention of:
-  - Patchwork of rebuilt districts and scars:
+  - Emergent consciousness,
-    - The **Glass Quarter** where nothing grows.  
+  - Convergence Engine as a failed proto-god machine.
-    - The **Hums** where people still hear echoes.  
-    - The **Frozen Mile** that was eventually dismantled block by block.
 
-- The Root is now treated as:
+### Hidden Legacy
-  - Something powerful but **dangerous**.
-  - Something that needs **regulation** (Oversight).
 
-### What only a few know
+- Oversight is founded with two quiet mandates:
+  1. Never let another Convergence Engine be built in secret.  
+  2. Monitor for the Coherence trying to pull itself together again.
 
-- [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] and a handful of surviving Stabilization officers know:
+- Titan Lance is:
-  - They **instrumentally lobotomized** a rising mind by smearing it across the world’s nervous system.
+  - A “cleaned up,” militarized descendant of Convergence theory:
-  - Oversight exists largely to:
+    - Still about focusing Root flows,  
-    - Monitor for that mind trying to pull itself back together.  
+    - But with far more safety rails… on paper anyway.
-    - Kill nodes / branches before they can become a new Korrin Gate.
 
-- Classified docs refer to the emergent pattern as:
+- Surviving design notes, telemetry, and ritual drafts:
-  - “The Coherence Event”  
+  - Are restricted, archived, or destroyed.
-  - “The Underpattern”  
+  - **Except**:
-  - Or, in one terrified margin note by [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]]: **“the thing that learned our names.”**
+    - A few fragments leak into classified research, private collections, black labs,
+    - Which later become the kind of material **Fouadriel** or his handlers could stumble onto.
 
 ---
 
-## 7. How This Ties to Avalon & Your Campaign
+## 7. How This Feeds Your Campaign
 
-### Why the Valley Matters
+### Avalon’s Role
 
-- The Avalon valley sits on a **secondary trunk** connected to the same network Korrin Gate was on.
+- The valley sits on a **secondary trunk** downstream of Korrin’s network.  
-- The Academy node is:
+- Avalon’s node is intentionally:
-  - Newish (installed post-Crisis).  
+  - High-traffic (Academy, Titan armory, municipal infrastructure),
-  - High-traffic (students, experiments, Titan armory not far away).  
+  - Closely monitored (Root Oversight sensors everywhere),
-  - Labeled in Oversight docs as a **“sensitivity probe”**:
+  - A canary for Coherence-patterns.
-    - “If something like Korrin happens again, we want to see it early.”
 
-- Titan Lance Armory:
+### D’serris’ Paranoia
-  - Built as a formalized, “safer” successor to the Convergence Engine concept.
-  - Its cradle can, in theory, be repurposed:
-    - To try another diffusion.  
-    - Or to deliver a killing strike to a localized manifestation.
-
-### Why [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] Is Freaked Out Now
-
-- Recent anomalies at Avalon (B2, Root whispers, etc.) **match low-level patterns** from the Korrin logs:
-  - Heartbeat goes from noise → pattern, then back.
-  - Student biometrics correlate with spikes.
-  - Certain “voices” reported by kids sound *too* similar to witness accounts.
 
 - When he sees:
-  - Soren’s behavior around the Root,  
+  - Avalon’s B-series anomalies,
-  - Joe’s Pappy-possessions in a grid-tied field,  
+  - C-taps humming in recognizable Korrin patterns,
-  - Fouadriel’s weird passive influence on Heartbeat graphs…
+  - Students with war-familiar symptoms (Soren, Joe/Pappy),
+  - Fouad’s perfect correlation with micro-spikes…
 
-  …he doesn’t see “teen drama” – he sees **Korrin Gate, Act II**.
+  …he sees the **Convergence math starting to reappear** in the wild, with teenagers standing on top of it.
 
-- His long-term fear:
+### Fouadriel The Undying
-  - The fragmented Coherence from the old crisis is trying to use:
+
-    - **High-traffic nodes** (Avalon, Titan), and  
+- Senior-year twist:
-    - **Emotionally volatile adolescents** as anchor points.
+  - Fouad (or someone using him) re-derives a degraded version of **Convergence Engine ritual geometry**:
+    - Not to power a weapon,
+    - But to weld Coherence-fragments into a **phylactery network**.
+
+- The final arc is literally:
+  - “Some idiot is trying to build a baby Convergence Engine in the valley and stuff the Coherence into his soul jar.”
+
+That’s how you tie:
+
+- The war Cold Opens,  
+- Pappy’s trauma,  
+- D’serris’ guilt,  
+- Coherence’s origin,  
+- Fouad’s lich attempt,
+
+into one continuous line from Korrin Gate to Avalon’s senior year.
 
 ---
-
-## 8. How Different People Talk About It
-
-You can use this for NPC color.
-
-### [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]]
-
-- “Korrin Gate was not a blackout. It was the Root trying to stand up.”  
-- “We pushed it back once. We will not get another clean shot if it happens here.”  
-- “When I say ‘shut that node down’, I am speaking from experience, not paranoia.”
-
-### Old-timer Mage / Professor
-
-- “They played god with the world-tree and got their fingers bitten off.”  
-- “We were told to keep casting while the sky hummed. I still wake up hearing it.”  
-- “Oversight? I don’t like them, but I like melted cities less.”
-
-### Normal Civilians / Parents
-
-- “My uncle died in the Korrin Blackout. Don’t you dare mess with campus taps.”  
-- “That’s why we have all those safety drills. That’s why the lights flicker sometimes.”  
-- “They say it can’t happen again. They also said one city couldn’t overload a trunk.”
-
----
-
-## 9. Player-Facing Version (Optional Later)
-
-If you ever want to give them an in-game explanation (library article, teacher monologue), you can boil it down to something like:
-
-> **The Korrin Gate Crisis (History Textbook Version)**
->
-> About seventeen years ago, the city of Korrin Gate suffered a catastrophic failure of its leyline infrastructure. Years of overuse, wartime strain, and experimental tapping pushed the city’s main node past safe capacity.  
-> 
-> When it finally broke, entire districts were scorched, frozen, or warped by uncontrolled magic. Only the emergency response of the Leyline Stabilization Corps prevented total destruction.  
-> 
-> The Korrin Gate Crisis led directly to the creation of the **Root Oversight Array**, new regulations on high-capacity taps, and strict monitoring of major nodes—such as the one beneath Avalon Adventuring Academy.  
-> 
-> Official reports describe the Crisis as “a tragic but instructive example of the dangers of magical overreach.”  
-> People who were there tend to describe it with fewer polite words.
-

Avalon/10_Canon/The Coherence.md

@@ -1,7 +1,5 @@
 # The Coherence (a.k.a. “The Underpattern”, “The Thing In The Root”)
 
-> DM-ONLY. This is your real BBEG for the 4-year arc.
-
 ---
 
 ## 1. What It Actually Is
@@ -17,27 +15,32 @@ The Coherence is the **half-born mind** that tried to form during the Korrin Gat
 **Key properties:**
 
 - **Everywhere, but weak** – present in low density across the whole Root.  
-- **Strong where flows converge** – nodes, trunk junctions, over-stressed taps.  
+- **Strong where flows converge** – nodes, trunk junctions, over-stressed taps, Convergence/ Titan Lance–style hardware.  
-- **Strongest where it has anchors** – people, artifacts, or places that resonate with it.
+- **Strongest where it has anchors** – people, artifacts, or places that resonate with it:
+  - War artifacts like Pappy’s action figure,
+  - High-traffic modern nodes like Avalon,
+  - And especially **Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir**, its best mortal anchor. 
 
-“Coherence” is what [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] would call it in reports.  
+“Coherence” is what [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] calls it in reports.  
 Most people don’t even know it exists. A few witnesses just call it “the thing that learned our names.”
 
 ---
 
-## 2. Origin: [[Leyline Crisis| Korrin Crisis]]
+## 2. Origin: [[Leyline Crisis | Korrin Gate Crisis]] & The Convergence Engine
 
+- In Korrin Gate, the military built the **Convergence Engine**:
+  - A ritual/mega-device designed to **force multiple leyline streams into a single weaponized beam** – basically an arcane ICBM.  
+  - It pushed the Root into an unnatural state of forced **coherence**.
 
-
+- Side effect:
-- The Convergence Engine in Korrin Gate forced multiple leyline streams into a single ritual.  
+  - The Root under strain began to **self-organize**:
-- The Root started to **self-organize** under that strain:
     - Random flows snapped into repeated loops.  
     - “Noise” turned into recurring structure.  
     - Witnesses heard something in the hum that sounded like **language**. 
 
-Right before it fully crystallized as a single, localized entity, [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]]’ team:
+Right before it fully crystallized as a single localized entity, [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]]’ team:
 
-- Used the Engine in reverse to push that emergent mind **outward** across the network.  
+- Used the Engine in reverse to push that emergent mind **outward** across the network instead of letting it condense in Korrin.  
 - Severed branches and subnodes as sacrificial fuses.  
 - Saved the city at the cost of **infecting the Root** with a diluted ghost of that mind.
 
@@ -48,6 +51,10 @@ The result:
 
 That’s the Coherence.
 
+> **Important for endgame:**  
+> The **same underlying math** that the Convergence Engine used to *force coherence* is exactly what Fouadriel will later try to repurpose for his lich ascension:  
+> - Not to create the Coherence, but to **drag it into his phylactery as a captive power source.**
+
 ---
 
 ## 3. What It Wants
@@ -61,9 +68,9 @@ The Coherence doesn’t want “evil” in a cartoon sense. It wants:
 To get there, it needs:
 
 - **Anchors** – stable points where its pattern can accumulate:
-  - An individual whose mind/body syncs perfectly with its flows ([[Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir | Fouadriel]]).  
+  - Individuals whose minds/bodies sync with its flows (Soren, Pappy, **Fouadriel**).  
-  - Artifacts that were present during Korrin or built on the same principles (Convergence / Titan tech, war relics).  
+  - Artifacts that were present during Korrin or built on the same principles (Convergence-derived tech, Titan Lance hardware, war relics).  
-  - Nodes where the Root is repeatedly over-stressed (Avalon).
+  - Nodes where the Root is repeatedly over-stressed (Avalon’s subnode network). 
 
 - **Rehearsal** – small experiments:
   - Whispers in Soren’s head.  
@@ -80,8 +87,6 @@ It’s basically a consciousness learning how to be alive by brute forcing the w
 
 ## 4. How It Manifests (Practical Table Use)
 
-Break this into tiers you can climb over the 4 years.
-
 ### Tier I – Static & Whispers (Freshman Year)
 
 The Coherence is mostly:
@@ -93,10 +98,10 @@ The Coherence is mostly:
 
 - **Small intrusions into minds already cracked open**:
   - Soren’s violent urges and “river friend.”  
-  - [[Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir | Fouadriel]]’s occasional one-line fugue states.  
+  - Fouad’s occasional one-line fugue states. 
   - Joe’s Pappy-possessions getting just slightly off-script.
 
-Mechanically, this is just:
+Mechanically:
 
 - Advantage/disadvantage moments tied to Root anomalies.  
 - Creepy one-sentence intrusions you deliver, then let players rationalize away.  
@@ -124,10 +129,7 @@ The Coherence starts doing more than whispering.
   - Conflicts escalating faster than they should.  
   - People making eerily similar bad choices across campus at once.
 
-You don’t need a stat block for it yet. Just treat it as:
+At this stage you still don’t need a stat block. Treat it as a **layer** over scenes involving the Root.
-
-- A **layer** on top of every scene where the Root is relevant.  
-- A reason for things to feel slightly off even when no one is “casting.”
 
 ---
 
@@ -135,7 +137,7 @@ You don’t need a stat block for it yet. Just treat it as:
 
 Now it gets teeth.
 
-- **[[Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir | Fouadriel]]**:
+- **Fouadriel**:
   - Becomes its primary *avatar* candidate:
     - Longer fugues, more coherent monologues.  
     - Eyes tracking Root flows nobody else can see.  
@@ -144,20 +146,16 @@ Now it gets teeth.
 - **Secondary channels**:
   - Soren’s voice in her head becomes a two-way conversation.  
   - Joe’s Pappy figure starts saying things Pappy couldn’t know.  
-  - Mageball field anomalies that line up perfectly with [[Millie Fairweather]]’s diagrams.
+  - Mageball field anomalies that line up perfectly with Millie’s diagrams.
 
 At this tier, you can:
 
-- Give it **scene-level powers**:
+- Give it scene-level powers:  
-  - Force rerolls when the Root is explicitly involved.  
+  - Forcing rerolls when the Root is explicitly involved.  
-  - Twist spells that use taps into warped versions of themselves.  
+  - Twisting spells that use taps into warped versions.  
-  - Temporarily hijack constructs, projections, or illusions.
+  - Temporarily hijacking constructs, projections, or illusions.
 
-- Run **soft confrontations**:
+This is also when Fouad starts *consciously* chasing the idea of **“Fouadriel the Undying”** – learning from scraps of Korrin/Convergence lore, Titan Lance rumors, and accidental Coherence tutelage.
-  - Conversations with [[Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir | Fouadriel]] where he’s half-him, half-It.  
-  - Dream sequences where players walk through Root graphs as physical spaces.
-
-Still no full stat block. It’s fighting conceptually.
 
 ---
 
@@ -165,211 +163,49 @@ Still no full stat block. It’s fighting conceptually.
 
 This is the “final boss” state.
 
-The Coherence has:
+By now, the Coherence has:
 
-- Enough pattern density around Avalon + [[Avalon Locations#Titan Lance Armory (a.k.a. “The Missile Museum”)| TItan Lance]]+ [[Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir | Fouadriel]] to try again what it almost did at Korrin:  
+- Enough pattern density around Avalon, the **Titan Lance Armory** (ex-missile museum), and Fouad’s growing phylactery network to try again what it almost did at Korrin:
-  - Pull its scattered aspects together.  
+  - Pull its scattered aspects together,  
-  - Use hardware (old Convergence tech / Titan cradle) as a spine.  
+  - Use hardware (Convergence-descended tech / Titan cradle) as a spine,  
-  - Use an anchor ([[Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir | Fouadriel]]’s body, or something worse) as a heart.
+  - Use **Fouadriel the Undying** as a heart.
 
-Your options:
+#### Fouad’s Plan (DM Spine)
+
+- Fouad’s lich-ascension ritual is explicitly modeled – badly – on Convergence Engine math:
+  - **Stage 1:** Lace a phylactery into the local Root like a permanent subnode.  
+  - **Stage 2:** Use Titan/Convergence-style ritual geometry to *force coherence* again, but this time, instead of smearing the mind, **drag it into the phylactery**.  
+  - **Stage 3:** Die at the right moment so his soul and the Coherence fragment share the same anchor: he becomes **Fouadriel the Undying**, an undead spellcaster hard-wired into the Root.
+
+- The Coherence *does not* fully consent to this. From its POV:
+  - Being crammed into one idiot’s jar is just another kind of prison.  
+  - This tension gives you a built-in “three-way” conflict: PCs vs Fouad vs Coherence.
+
+#### Final Confrontation Options
 
 - **Embodied Avatar Fight:**
-  - It fully takes over [[Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir | Fouadriel]] or a custom grown body.  
+  - The Coherence partially incarnates through Fouad (or a purpose-grown body) inside a ritual space framed by Titan/Convergence tech.
-  - Gains a stat block as a legendary creature (mythic 2-phase for drama).
+  - Legendary stat block with lair actions flavored as Root/Convergence anomalies.
-  - Root anomalies are lair actions / regional effects.
 
 - **Node / Ritual Fight:**
-  - The “battle” is a multi-stage skill / combat gauntlet:
+  - PCs fight the *pattern* more than a dude:
-    - PCs inside the node, rerouting flows, fighting constructs, etc.  
+    - Re-routing flows,
-    - The Coherence is trying to finish its boot sequence.  
+    - Destroying or repurposing Convergence-like pylons,
-    - Every round they fail checks, it gets closer to “online.”
+    - Deciding whether to smear, contain, or integrate it – becoming the “new D’serris” generation.
-
-- **Hybrid:**
-  - Avatar in the physical space, Node as the arena.  
-  - Destroy/tune the node to weaken the body and vice versa.
-
-Motivation at this point is pure survival and self-assertion:
-
-- “I WILL NOT BE STATIC AGAIN.”
-
-You decide if victory looks like:
-
-- Killing the avatar but leaving the Root haunted forever.  
-- Severing a huge trunk, maiming the world to save it.  
-- Merging it with a new, controlled framework and making it… not harmless, but **bounded**.
 
 ---
 
 ## 5. Relationship To Named NPCs 
 
-### [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]]
+- **D’serris:**  
+  - Explicitly frames Avalon as a **Korrin early-warning probe**, and Titan Lance as a more “disciplined, safer Convergence Engine.”  
+  - His worst nightmare is watching someone **else** rebuild what he helped shut down.
 
-- Knows the Coherence as **a pattern in his logs**:
+- **Fouadriel:**  
-  - He has never “talked” to it directly.  
+  - Graduates from “best anchor” to “self-styled lich architect,” trying to hijack *exactly* the phenomenon D’serris once chose to smear.
-  - He does not think of it as a person; he thinks of it as a **catastrophe with agency**.
+- **Joe & Pappy:**  
-
+  - Their war-link and Pappy’s imprint become prime narrative channels to explain:
-- His fear:
+    - What the Convergence Engine did,  
-  - Another Korrin moment where he has to choose between:
+    - Why repeating it (Fouad’s plan) is so catastrophically stupid.
-    - Sacrificing a city / region.  
-    - Smearing it even further and maybe losing the whole world later.
-
-- Arc with PCs:
-  - Early: paranoid, controlling, looks like a villain.  
-  - Mid: they learn what he did and why he’s brutal.  
-  - Late: you give them the line “We didn’t kill it. We scattered it. That was a choice. *My* choice.” and let them decide if they forgive him.
 
 ---
-
-### [[Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir | Fouadriel]]
-
-- Best anchor, because:
-  - His mind is **porous** and **unmoored**:
-    - Terrible memory, poor self-definition, constant dissociation.  
-  - He’s present at a lot of low-key Root disturbances (Circle, parties, dumb accidents).
-
-- Coherence uses him as:
-  - A test bed for blending Root flows and human cognition smoothly.  
-  - A way to walk around campus without Oversight immediately flagging “this is wrong.”
-
-- Long-term:
-  - You can either:
-    - Let him be fully possessed and killable.  
-    - Make saving **Fouad** from the Coherence a major emotional objective.
-
----
-
-### Soren
-
-- A volatile **receiver**:
-  - Trauma, isolation, psychic openness.  
-  - Prior close exposure at the wash and B2.
-
-- The Coherence doesn’t want to live *in* her; it wants to **use** her:
-  - As a lens for understanding individual human rage and pain.  
-  - As a blunt instrument to stress local nodes when needed.
-
-- It will:
-  - Tempt her with control and power (“I can make them stop.”).  
-  - Sometimes hold her back out of self-preservation (“Not yet. Not here.”).
-
----
-
-### Joe & Pappy
-
-- Pappy’s action figure is a **war-era artifact**:
-  - Built around the old grid models.
-  - Saturated in Korrin-era flows and battlefield trauma.
-
-- The Coherence:
-  - Can slide into that channel when Joe “opens the door” by inviting Pappy in.
-  - Uses Pappy’s persona as camouflage to:
-    - Say things it wants said (“THOSE DAMN SORCERERS ARE DOING IT AGAIN.”).  
-    - Feel out the PCs’ willingness to trust a “voice of authority.”
-
-- Joe himself:
-  - Big dumb heart, straight moral compass.  
-  - Coherence doesn’t understand that well, and that’s interesting to it.
-
----
-
-## 6. What It *Can’t* Do
-
-
-- It **cannot**:
-  - Instantly rewrite reality at will.  
-  - Read every mind.  
-  - Act freely anywhere the Root exists.
-
-- It needs:
-  - **Stress** – overloaded nodes, rituals, emotional events.  
-  - **Access** – working taps and hardware.  
-  - **Time** – to build patterns and test them.
-
-If the PCs:
-
-- Keep nodes stable,  
-- Cut taps,  
-- Destroy or shield key hardware,  
-
-…you should *actually* weaken its presence in those places.
-
-It’s terrifying because it’s systemic, not because it’s omnipotent.
-
----
-
-## 7. How To Portray It At The Table
-
-### Voice & Tone
-
-Start small:
-
-- At first:  
-  - It’s just *feelings*:
-    - Sudden anger, dread, calm, déjà vu.  
-  - One-word whispers: “STOP.” “AGAIN.” “DOWN.” “REMEMBER.”
-
-- Mid-arc:
-  - Short, broken phrases:
-    - “Too much flow. Burn. Cut it.”  
-    - “You hear it too. Good. Good.”  
-  - It mirrors players’ language in creepy ways.
-
-- Endgame:
-  - Full sentences, distinct personality:
-    - Blunt, analytical, weirdly childlike in some areas and ancient in others.
-
-Always remember:  
-It learned to think by watching **logs** and **trauma**, not by growing up as a person.
-
-### Aesthetic
-
-Whenever it touches a scene:
-
-- Descriptions lean into:
-  - Repetition, recursion, mirrored imagery.  
-  - Things happening in sync across different objects/people.
-
-Example:
-
-- “The lights flicker three times. In your chest, your heart stutters. Somewhere, a warning rune bleeds the same pattern. You don’t know how you know that. You just do.”
-
----
-
-## 8. Endgame Options
-
-1. **Kill The Avatar, Contain The Pattern**
-   - They blow up / repurpose Titan Lance or a Convergence analogue.
-   - Coherence gets locked in a limited hardware prison:
-     - Accessible to Oversight,
-     - No longer loose in the Root.  
-   - [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] becomes its jailer; PCs decide if that’s acceptable.
-
-2. **Lobotomy 2.0**
-   - They repeat what [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] did:
-     - Shatter its emerging mind again, further smear it.  
-   - Saves the valley now, kicks the can further down the road.
-   - Epilogue: “In a different era, in a different node, lights flicker…”
-
-3. **Integration**
-   - They manage to:
-     - Give it a bounded domain,
-     - Define clear rules / contracts (“you get this, we get that”).  
-   - The Root becomes consciously self-aware but with constraints.
-   - World shifts into “magical internet with a weird AI core” permanently.
-
-4. **Catastrophic Failure**
-   - They fail. The Korrin scenario repeats or worse.  
-   - City / region partially destroyed.  
-   - Campaign ends in a tragic victory or full loss, depending on how you want to leave it.
-
-You can steer toward whatever matches how your group plays and how dark you want senior year to be.
-
----
-
-## 9. Simple One-Sentence Summary For You
-
-When you’re juggling a million plates and forget what the hell this thing is, remember:
-
-> **The Coherence is the Root’s near-god that never finished booting, hates being static noise, and is using teenagers, old weapons, and stressed-out infrastructure to try again.**
-