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The MC's Corebound Origin

PROPOSED TERM: [Zone Wardheart name] — the specific Crown-Wardheart of the starting Zone whose decay released the MC has no committed name yet.

Scope​

This file owns the Game 1 protagonist's local origin truth: the MC is the Game 1 instance of the universe-scope Corebound pattern, released by the failing Crown-Wardheart of the starting Zone into a nearby survivable pocket, arriving without a clean Called mark, and bound causally to this anchor chain rather than to a generic destiny arc. This file records local truth and local consequences. It does not authorize early player-facing exposition of Corebound, Calling, Shroud, Accord, or higher-being classification mechanics; those remain capped by the lh-* exposure tables.

Facts​

Fact: The MC is Game 1's local Corebound instance​

The MC is the Game 1 instantiation of ul-hero-calling.md's Corebound fact: a mortal drawn into an anchor-bound arrival without a clean, fully-resolved Called mark. In local truth the MC is Corebound, not a cleanly Called hero, and that classification is committed rather than provisional.

Canonicity: hard canon for Game 1 Cross-refs: ../universe/ul-hero-calling.md, ../hooks/lh-game1-cosmology-hooks.md Exposure note: Early Game 1 surfaces this indirectly through the MC's arrival pattern and absent mark; the term itself is not early player-facing.

Fact: A prior-era intervention lies behind the arrival, but the local resolved condition is Corebound​

The MC's arrival descends from an older divine intervention against demon-crisis pressure rather than from ordinary travel, birth, or local summoning. What matters in Game 1 is not a clean historical hero-mark, but the anchor-bound condition the MC arrives in now: the intervention did not resolve as a normal Called arrival and instead completed as a Corebound release.

Canonicity: hard canon for Game 1 Cross-refs: ../universe/ul-hero-calling.md, ../universe/ul-divine-layer.md

Fact: The failing Crown-Wardheart of the starting Zone released the MC​

The delayed arrival completed when the starting Zone's Crown-Wardheart fell into the failure state that defines the Zone's degraded condition. The MC was released into a constrained nearby pocket inside the anchor's pull radius rather than placed cleanly on the Nexus itself. This is why the Game 1 opening begins in an anchor-adjacent survivable pocket and not at a random safe point elsewhere in the Zone.

Canonicity: hard canon for Game 1 Cross-refs: ../universe/ul-wardhearts-and-nexuses.md, gl-afterwar-state.md, ../hooks/lh-game1-world-hooks.md

Fact: The MC arrived without a clean Called mark and without hero-class powers​

The normal Called mark never attached. The MC carries no clean hero-signature, no mark-derived shield, and no hero-class power package. The MC's playable edge is mortal capability, learning, and adaptation under pressure, not a divine gift.

Canonicity: hard canon for Game 1 Cross-refs: ../universe/ul-hero-calling.md, ../universe/ul-shroud.md, gl-mc-earthborn-backgrounds.md

Fact: Higher beings cannot classify the MC through the normal mark channel​

Higher beings may notice crisis patterns, shrine disturbances, Wardheart instability, or other anchor-adjacent anomalies around the MC, but the MC is not legible through the normal Called-mark channel because no clean mark exists to read. This is a classification failure, not a stronger version of ordinary Shroud shielding.

Canonicity: hard canon for Game 1 Cross-refs: ../universe/ul-divine-layer.md, ../universe/ul-shroud.md, ../hooks/lh-game1-cosmology-hooks.md Exposure note: Hidden or hinted only. Early play does not explain this mechanism outright.

Fact: The MC's bond to the starting anchor chain is causal and local​

The MC is tied to this specific Nexus/Wardheart chain because the failure state of this anchor is what completed the arrival. Establishing the Core in Act 0 is therefore a continuation of the same local bond that governed the MC's release. Other Nexuses did not release the MC because they did not supply this failure event.

Canonicity: hard canon for Game 1 Cross-refs: ../universe/ul-wardhearts-and-nexuses.md, gl-afterwar-state.md

Fact: The specific Zone Wardheart name is deferred​

PROPOSED TERM: [Zone Wardheart name] — the specific Crown-Wardheart of the starting Zone has no committed name. It is referred to as "the starting Wardheart" or "the Zone's Crown-Wardheart" in deferred terms. The name will be committed by a future content wave.

Canonicity: proposed

Cross-references​

  • ../universe/ul-hero-calling.md
  • ../universe/ul-shroud.md
  • ../universe/ul-wardhearts-and-nexuses.md
  • ../universe/ul-divine-layer.md
  • gl-afterwar-state.md
  • gl-mc-earthborn-backgrounds.md
  • ../hooks/lh-game1-cosmology-hooks.md
  • ../hooks/lh-game1-world-hooks.md