System Overview
The generative philosophy, pipeline design, and how the seven layers of the Terheia canon relate to each other.
The Generative Approach
Terheia is not a reference document. It is a generative system — a set of rules that produce a world rather than a description of a world that already exists. The distinction matters. Reference documentation lists facts. Generative systems define the constraints from which facts must follow. When a contributor asks whether a character can learn a second magic school, reference documentation requires someone to have anticipated the question. A generative system answers it: no, because attunement is fixed at birth and cannot be changed or expanded — this is a Layer 1 constraint, inherited by every layer below it.
The generative approach does not eliminate authorial judgment. It structures it. A contributor writing a scene at a node-adjacent settlement does not need to invent the settlement's relationship to magic — the node proximity rules already define how substrate concentration behaves there, which determines what magic looks like locally, which shapes what the institutions present will be doing. The author's task is to render that in prose. The system handles consistency; the author handles texture.
This is what "generative rather than descriptive" means in practice: the pipeline produces the world, and prose renders what the pipeline produces.
The Pipeline
The master pipeline consists of seven layers. Each layer filters the next — rules defined at Layer 1 constrain what is possible at Layer 2, Layer 2 constrains Layer 3, and so on. The propagation is strictly downward. Nothing at a lower layer is permitted to contradict something established at a higher layer.
| Layer | Domain | What it defines |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cosmology | Moons, magic schools, tiers, the suppressed Psionic school, and the substrate that connects all magic |
| 2 | World | Nodes that amplify local magic, substrate density and behavior, and the resulting magical physics of geography |
| 3 | Society | States, cultures, ethnicities, wealth strata, and the three major institutions produced by Layer 1–2 constraints |
| 4 | Infrastructure | Materials, transport, communication (accuracy over speed), medicine, the contamination grade system, and warfare |
| 5 | Life | Biological systems and a bestiary of creatures defined by tier, moon attunement, and ecological role |
| 6 | Objects | A nine-stage cascade that filters every object through cosmological, material, social, and individual constraints |
| 7 | Narrative | Seven invariants, monotonic trajectories, escalation compression, and eight forms of hope that govern story structure |
Layer 6 (Object Generation) is worth noting for its scope: every object that appears in prose — a weapon, a piece of furniture, a medical instrument, a communication device — passes through nine filters before it reaches the page. The filters are: cosmological alignment, material constraints, crafting tradition, social stratum, institutional affiliation, individual history, current condition, magical interaction, and sensory signature. An object that passes all nine filters is internally consistent with every layer of the canon above it. An object that fails any filter reveals a canon violation that can then be corrected at its source.
Design Principles
Downward constraint propagation
Constraints move from high layers to low layers, never the reverse. A narrative decision (Layer 7) cannot redefine a magic school (Layer 1). A social institution (Layer 3) cannot override the physics of substrate (Layer 2). When a story requires something that appears to violate a higher-layer rule, the correct response is to identify which layer the violation occurs at and either revise the story or formally document a canon deviation with the governance process.
Causal consistency
Every element of the world has a cause traceable to a higher layer. An institution doesn't exist because a story needs it — it exists because the combination of magic availability (Layer 1), node geography (Layer 2), and social organization principles (Layer 3) makes it the predictable result of those conditions. This means new elements can be added without disrupting existing canon, as long as their causal origin is correctly placed.
Contributor isolation
The pipeline separates what contributors need to know from what they don't. A writer drafting prose for Layer 7 narrative does not need to understand the full object generation cascade (Layer 6) unless an object plays a significant role in their scene. The seven-layer structure allows contributors to work at the appropriate level of abstraction. The Story Spine Validator provides a formal interface — any story that validates against the schema is guaranteed to be internally consistent with the pipeline's constraints.
Detectable violations
Because constraints propagate downward through defined rules, violations are detectable. A character whose magic tier is described above what their cost signature supports violates the mechanics document. A settlement at an accelerating node that shows no contamination effects violates Layer 4 infrastructure rules. The pipeline's generative structure means consistency errors have a specific location in the layer hierarchy — they are not merely "doesn't feel right" but "this contradicts rule X at layer Y."
Using This Documentation
The documents are ordered by pipeline layer. Canon Core covers all seven layers at the rule level — it is the authoritative reference for what the pipeline defines. The subsequent documents each expand a domain in detail: Magic Schools and Magic Mechanics expand Layer 1; World & Society expands Layers 2–3; Infrastructure & Life expands Layers 4–5. Narrative Architecture expands Layer 7. Volume Blueprint Protocol documents how the pipeline translates to per-volume drafting. Story Spine Validator provides the formal validation interface. Data Reference consolidates all enumerations and lookup tables.
New contributors should read this overview, then Canon Core, then the domain documents relevant to their work. Writers should additionally read Narrative Architecture and Volume Blueprint Protocol before drafting. The Story Spine Validator should be consulted before submitting any story for canonical review.