Faction art language — production implementation

Status: Internal production art bible; forward design, not shipped codex.

System spine

Hull = faction body · Hardpoints = neutral sockets · Weapon = modular item (template ± module wrap) · FX/art = item family, recolorable · Default loadout ≠ unique inseparable gun.

Start at the visual-combat spine. This bible owns silhouette, palette, materials, wear, hull and station grammar, and reveal-safe labels. It does not own canvas/export/filter rules, per-weapon DPS, ammo economy, or runtime IDs. Technical presentation lives in the art style guide; modular hardpoints and art-to-template mapping live in weapons and modules; resource gates live in munitions; and hull IDs, ladders, proxy mappings, and default loadouts live in fleet content.

This document defines the visual grammar, asset boundaries, and first production rosters for the factions that need a coherent art language now. It is allowed to contain spoilers so artists understand why forms relate. It does not change gameplay, shipped art, or player-facing lore by itself.

Player-facing art labels, captions, codex copy, and marketing must preserve the reveal ladder in the story outline and story design bible. In particular, they must not disclose that humanity and the Ancients are the same civilization, or identify the Unbound’s condition as the Fold-Plague, before those truths are revealed in play. Internal asset names may be explicit; player-visible names may not.

This bible specializes faction identity within the shared technical rules in the art style guide. Existing pack art and assignments are inventoried in the asset inventory; they are proxies and references, not binding final silhouettes. Current hull-animation limitations are recorded in the Foozle animation survey. Player-facing hull roles remain defined by Ships & Hull Classes.

Canon and proxy mapping

Production language	Story identity	Current runtime proxy	Current asset namespace	Boundary
Ancient / Vindicator	Ancient machinery and Vann’s permanent body chain	Player/Vindicator templates	Owned Vindicator art plus temporary mixed proxies	One original Continuity civic, military, and rescue product family across shuttle, Vindicator, hosts, and ruins; Blackwater is a separate human lineage.
Korrathi	Korrathi scavenger clans	Kessler Raiders	Kla’ed	The runtime and pack names are temporary mappings, not additional factions.
Teralith	Teralith licensing authority and navy	`faction.militia`, used only as a temporary runtime proxy	Nairan	Eos local police are Civilian, not Teralith; `faction.militia` and Nairan must not collapse those identities.
Civilian	Visual umbrella for Free Haulers, Independents, and local police	Free Haulers, Independents, System Militia where used for Eos police	Mixed civilian and proxy pools	A production category, not a polity, and explicitly not Blackwater Incorporated.
Unbound	The Melding	No settled runtime faction	No settled namespace	Working combat names and archetypes remain provisional until story work fixes them.

Station naming follows story authority, not whichever proxy sprite is currently assigned. Eos local defense uses the Civilian-Police-* navy/cream language. Route, license, and tax authority uses Teralith-Bulwark-Station. A current faction.militia assignment or Nairan sprite is runtime proxy data only and never authorization to paint Eos police as a gold Teralith navy.

Old pack art establishes useful overlay conventions and broad color precedents. It remains legacy/proxy art and does not lock final silhouettes, faction anatomy, or specific hull-to-role assignments. New work must obey this document and the shared production contract before it inherits details from a proxy sprite.

Shared production contract

Presentation track

The final direction is high-resolution cel hull and structure art with broad, clean material planes, controlled contour antialiasing, and shapes that remain readable when downscaled. Energy FX are separate and may use soft alpha, subpixel motion, and restrained bloom. Existing low-resolution pixel packs are runtime proxies during the transition, not a second final style or a mandate for new art.

Gameplay art remains strict top-down and nose-up. Black is permitted only on concept review plates; production bases and overlays use transparent alpha with adequate padding. Master sizes, delivery sizes, filtering, import/schema changes, camera scale, animation layout, and legacy pixel compatibility are owned by the art style guide, not repeated in this faction bible.

Base hull and effect separation

The clean base hull contains structure only. It may include dark engine nozzles, closed apertures, sockets, physical shield emitters, and unlit weapon mounts. It must not contain:

engine flame, exhaust, heat shimmer, or glow outside the silhouette;
an active shield, shield halo, or impact flash;
weapon fire, beam, projectile, muzzle flash, or charge effect;
a baked shadow or drop shadow;
destruction debris, explosion, smoke, or damage flash.

Engines, shields, weapons, and destruction are separate aligned assets or engine-side effects. This lets thrust respond to motion, shields respond to impacts, weapons originate from real hardpoints, and wreck states remain authorable rather than painted into the living hull.

Modular weapons

Weapons are modular retrofit items: the same mechanical template may ship built into a craft or wrapped as a grid module. Hull art never bakes permanent unique guns as the only way to express faction identity; an optional role graft, such as one oversized Korrathi launcher integrated as a chassis feature, is the narrow exception. Artists author neutral hardpoint anchors, then gun sprites and separate FX attach at runtime. Default NPC loadouts are content choices over modules and templates, not a second art pipeline. Loot, salvage, shops, and fabrication can move the same recolorable visual kit across factions: ownership comes from hull anatomy and markings, not from declaring that only one faction may use a given bolt. See weapons and modules for item families and mapping.

The current animated-hull path and visual.base overlay path are mutually exclusive. A template that adopts idle/move/attack hull-body animation currently loses the visual.base overlay cluster used for mounts, engine flame, shield, and destruction. Therefore art deliverable readiness is not wiring readiness. Do not merge body animation and overlay layers into one compromise sheet; hold the complete source cluster until the schema work described in the animation survey lands.

Readability gates

Every approved asset must pass all of these checks:

Solid-black silhouette at intended gameplay footprint: faction and front/back read without color or markings.
Flat-color thumbnail: role and scale class read at actual gameplay scale.
Dark-space plate: dark hull materials remain separated from the background.
Mixed-fleet plate: the asset cannot be mistaken for another detailed faction.
Motion plate: thrust direction, turn center, shield footprint, and weapon origin remain unambiguous.

No cockpit, shuttle bay, major weapon, engine anchor, or navigation-critical edge may depend on detail lost at gameplay scale. A concept that works only enlarged is not ready for sprite production.

Source layers, pivots, anchors, and hardpoints

Keep editable source files with named layers for base hull, panel groups, cockpit/glass, faction markings, emissives, damage, engine mounts, shield emitters, and each movable weapon. Provide a flattened clean-base PNG only after the layer file is archived.

Every asset gets an anchor sheet that states:

tile dimensions, nose direction, center pivot, and opaque bounds;
engine/exhaust anchors and the expected thrust vector;
weapon hardpoints, muzzle points, firing arcs, and turret pivots;
docking, bay, tow, cargo, gate-throat, or drone-launch anchors as applicable;
shield center and radius or the aligned shield-strip frame;
detachable pieces, damage seams, and destruction origin.

Pivots stay stable across base, variants, wear tiers, and all animation frames. Hardpoints belong to functional geometry, not convenient empty space.

Ancient / Vindicator

Design promise

Ancient hardware is retro-modern optimistic industrial design: the confident future imagined from the 1960s through the 1980s, realized as genuinely advanced craft. It is elegant, tactile, maintainable, and humane rather than mystical. Eons of abandonment interrupt that optimism without erasing it. Vindicator craft are restored or reconfigured members of the same family, not a separate style.

The permanent body chain is shuttle ⊂ Vindicator ⊂ host. Art must never depict Vann transferring a loose core between disposable bodies or abandoning the shuttle. The shuttle remains visibly nested, protected, or structurally implied inside every larger body even when the external silhouette changes.

Silhouettes and shape vocabulary

Long triangular wedges with clear pointed noses and composed bilateral weight.
The ring is the Ancient structural signature, and it is the fold drive (see codex travel-folding.md and ships.md). A concentric ring carries the wedge rather than decorating it: the hull passes through it, the ring takes load, and the craft reads as built around that ring outward. It is the same technology as a stargate at ship scale, so the stargate is the ring alone. A hull with a ring can fold; the shuttle has none and cannot. When an Ancient hull folds, the wormhole throat anchors through the ring, not off the nose, so keep the ring clear as an aperture the effect layer can drive. Small craft may carry none, fold-capable craft carry one, and the largest repeat them concentrically.
Surfaces are sleek and flowing but strictly geometric. Smooth planes meet at clean machined cuts, curvature is swept and continuous, and every transition looks turned or milled. This is not biomorphic softness: Blackwater hulls flow organically, Ancient hulls flow because someone machined the curve.
Rounded rectangles, capsule windows, broad shoulder plates, and smooth wing roots soften the wedge.
Negative space is deliberate: forked engine shoulders, recessed bays, the open volume framed inside a ring, or a service notch must look engineered rather than broken at random.
Stations and gates scale the same grammar into concentric, modular structures with repeating ribs and legible access paths.
The silhouette should feel fast where it is a ship and patiently permanent where it is infrastructure.

Monumental infrastructure grammar

The Stargate is the reference asset for Ancient monumental infrastructure. Build the first read from a few thick concentric load-bearing bands, deep charcoal recesses, and a disciplined rhythm of large radial anchors. The construction is modular and exact, but not ornamental: repeated modules explain assembly and force transfer before any surface detail is added. Use broad stepped profiles, regular seams, and restrained inset channels so the silhouette survives at gameplay scale.

Gates carry the Ancient palette at its coolest. Dark gunmetal, slate, and blue-grey hold the mass, pale ceramic sits on structural faces, edge plates, and socket blocks, and cyan is the only light present. Dormant infrastructure earns no orange service marks and no green confirmation, because nothing has been restored. Station-scale Ancient machinery follows the same weighting and keeps the ordered panel logic of smaller Ancient craft.

Avoid mystical filigree, decorative glyph belts, gold trim, spikes, random greeble fog, and disconnected floating ornaments. Ancient infrastructure is advanced human engineering, not a ritual object. It is free-floating orbital machinery: never add a ground pedestal, architectural foot, or visual support that implies a planetary installation unless the asset’s role explicitly calls for one.

Palette

Use a compact family built around:

pale blue-grey #91A8AD and shadow #526D75;
charcoal internals #202A30 and outline #151C21;
warm ivory #D9D3BF and highlight #F2ECD7;
safety orange #D86A2B with light accent #F3A34F;
cyan glass/energy #45C9D5 with hot core #B7F5F2;
small green player confirmation lights #69C46B.

Blue-grey and charcoal carry the mass. Ancient hulls are cool slate ceramic, not cream: warm ivory is an accent reserved for structural faces, edge plates, and socket blocks, and it never becomes the body. The shipped stargate rings and the Vindicator are the reference for this weighting.

Orange identifies service, hazard, and rescue functions. Cyan identifies active Ancient systems. Green is a sparse confirmation state on player-controlled or successfully restored hardware, never the dominant hull color.

Restoration reads through light, not repaint. The base hull is slate and cyan at every stage, dormant or restored. Orange and green never join the hull mass: they are small functional marks and lights that appear when a system is in service or under player control, and they read as state layered onto the craft rather than as a change of livery.

Materials and surfaces

Primary shells are satin ceramic composite over anodized structural metal. Dark rubber seals, thick cyan-tinted glass, brushed access rails, and clean insulated cable bundles provide material contrast. Broad surfaces carry the read; tiny greebles do not. Surviving internals remain unusually ordered.

Construction and panel logic

Panel seams follow maintenance access and load paths. Corners are radiused, fastener spacing is regular, and orange alignment marks explain how a panel opens. Do not scatter decorative seams across every plane.

Use three authored wear tiers:

Intact: all primary panels present; tiny age variation only.
Service-worn: one mismatched replacement, faded markings, or opened service hatch, but the craft is fully legible and functional.
Derelict: most old field objects receive exactly one deliberate missing panel exposing orderly ribs, a cyan/orange service bus, ceramic-insulated cabling, or an empty module socket.

The missing panel is selected by the artist, not randomized per spawn. It never hides a cockpit, shuttle bay, front/back cue, weapon or hardpoint, engine/FX anchor, or required animation seam. Not every object must lose the same panel, and wear must never collapse all Ancient assets into one universal damaged state. The Vindicator keeps one repaired scar or mismatched replacement panel as history, not as an open fatal wound.

Wear and damage

Eons produce bleaching, ceramic edge chips, hairline fractures, seal decay, faded alignment ink, and darkened exposed structure. Avoid ordinary orange rust, random grime clouds, or freshly torn scrapyard texture. Combat damage is sharper: localized impact craters, fractured ceramic, cleanly exposed ribs, and failing cyan buses. Derelict and combat-damaged layers must remain distinct.

Lighting and emissives

Cyan is the normal operational light. Orange marks warnings and service states; green confirms player ownership, handshake, or restored control. On ordinary hardware, emissives are small, crisp, and tied to apertures or light pipes. Monumental infrastructure may expand that same language into broad, contained energy apertures and routed ring channels. Complete-ring atlas phases may carry the routed surface current while a separate shader owns the aperture field, but neither may alter the underlying physical construction or become undirected neon strips or soft bloom painted into the dormant structure.

Motion and VFX behavior

Engines start with controlled cyan-white exhaust and steady synchronized pulses. Large systems wake in ordered sequences from center to edge. Shields assemble as precise pale-cyan facets or rings. Weapons charge cleanly at visible hardpoints. Ancient failure is restrained: a missed pulse, dark sector, or stuttering bus is more characteristic than wild sparking everywhere.

Weapons and VFX verb

Charge gathers cleanly at an authored hardpoint around a narrow white-hot core and controlled cyan halo, followed by a restrained muzzle response. Ancient weapons never read as scrap bolts or improvised barrels. Reuse tintable shared weapon and FX families through the modular weapon contract, not a unique sheet per hull.

Scale and readability

The shuttle reads as a compact medical/rescue craft; the Vindicator adds military shoulders, cradle handshake hardware, and stronger longitudinal authority without erasing the shuttle’s body. Larger objects repeat recognizable service openings, ribs, and orange alignment marks at coarser scales. At gameplay scale, preserve the nose, cockpit, shoulder masses, and aft nozzles before any panel detail.

Markings

Use non-readable geometric rescue bands, serial blocks, alignment ticks, docking chevrons, and colored service zones. Ancient typography may exist in close-up environment art but must not become legible player-facing proof before the story allows it. The Vindicator may carry one restrained green control mark.

Forbidden traits

No mystical filigree, fantasy runes, floating ornaments, or inexplicable gold.
No disposable core pod, abandoned shuttle, or visible body-transfer sequence.
No random missing-panel selection or damage that breaks functional anchors.
No ordinary rust bucket treatment, dense greebles, or universal wreck texture.
No baked engine flame, shield, weapon fire, shadow, or destruction.

Production and variant rules

Build one clean master per chassis, then derive function variants through approved module, marking, and wear layers. Preserve family proportions and anchors between tiers. Ancient ruins use derelict layers; restored player hardware uses intact or service-worn layers. A variant must change role readability, not merely hue.

Required assets

Ancient-Shuttle — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: compact pointed medical wedge with rounded shoulders, a bright forward cockpit, and paired dark aft nozzles.
Role/read: vulnerable civilian rescue and salvage craft; nimble enough for wreck interiors, explicitly not a fighter.
Distinctive features: ivory rescue shell, orange service bands, cyan glass, a belly salvage aperture, and body geometry that can be recognized inside the Vindicator.
Animation/VFX: restrained paired exhaust, salvage-beam anchor, running lights, damage states, and no weapon muzzle anchors.

Ancient-Vindicator — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: sharp heroic triangle built around the shuttle, with broader military shoulders, protected centerline, and unmistakable nose/aft split.
Role/read: the first combat-capable permanent body; premium and capable, but still part of the same industrial family.
Distinctive features: visible integration seam around the nested shuttle, one repaired scar or mismatched panel, orange/cyan service geometry, and green confirmation lights.
Animation/VFX: separate engine cluster, shield footprint, weapon hardpoints, fold-state emissives, damage layers, and destruction that never ejects the shuttle as an abandoned object.

Ancient-CASSIUS-Tug — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: broad work-tug shoulders around a compact Ancient-compatible center, with tow arms and external repair history.
Role/read: dependable old utility intelligence disguised by centuries of practical frontier work.
Distinctive features: Ancient core spacing beneath mismatched Civilian-era repairs; one orderly open service cavity; large tow/dock anchors.
Animation/VFX: slow stable exhaust, tow/tractor origin, utility lights, articulated-arm option, and layered repair/damage states.

Ancient-Mining-Barge — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: long blunt industrial spine with ore bays framing an older triangular command core.
Role/read: derelict objective and environmental landmark, not a warship.
Distinctive features: exactly one large missing side panel exposing ordered ribs, faded cargo indexing, and a readable shuttle-scale access bay.
Animation/VFX: dormant and weak-power states, dust/ore effects kept separate, salvage anchors, localized collapse pieces, and no permanent glow.

Ancient-Miner-Drone — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: tiny rounded triangular tool body with two forward manipulator prongs and a single clear aft nozzle.
Role/read: precise autonomous mining tool, distinct from a combat fighter.
Distinctive features: orange tool face, cyan sensor slit, drill/cutter socket, and parent-compatible docking pin.
Animation/VFX: mining beam/cutter origin, ore-return light, compact thrust, and one readable disabled frame.

Ancient-Escort-Drone — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: sharper sibling to the miner drone, with protected sensor center and paired lateral weapon stubs.
Role/read: small defensive escort rather than disposable attack swarm.
Distinctive features: fewer orange service areas, stronger charcoal armor, cyan sensor, and obvious difference from the Miner-Drone at thumbnail size.
Animation/VFX: paired muzzle anchors, shield flicker, synchronized thrust, return-to-carrier cue, and destruction strip.

Ancient-Stargate — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: a free-floating ring-on-ring station: one large sender ring and one smaller receiver ring overlapping its lower-right foreground. The receiver’s centre sits on the middle of the sender’s structural band. Keep both rings complete and independently readable; no pedestal, connecting spine, double-funnel throat, or symmetrical figure-eight.
Role/read: monumental lane infrastructure, older and more exact than any faction-built station.
Construction/materials: thick segmented gunmetal and slate bands, charcoal recesses, restrained warm ceramic faces, and exactly eight repeated radial anchors. Detail density stays medium-low: broad engineered modules first, regular seams and shallow channels second, no filigree or greeble fog.
State read: sender and receiver each use complete-ring atlas phases whose metal structure is identical in every power and repair state. Active phases add routed surface energy; offline, dormant, and broken phases go dark and still. They never gain cracks, missing pieces, rubble, or damaged geometry.
Animation/VFX: sender and receiver are independently controlled for all four on/off combinations. Deep blue-cyan sender energy travels inward from its eight emitters toward the aperture; receiver energy travels outward from its aperture toward its eight emitters. The two metal rings slowly counter-rotate, while both shader-driven aperture fields remain stationary in world space. Keep the vortex, glow, and event accents out of the physical ring artwork.

Ancient-R&D-Station-and-Vault — Act III / post-game

Silhouette: layered research station wrapped around a protected geometric vault, with a clear approach axis and human-scale inner modules.
Role/read: forbidden deep infrastructure and narrative destination, not a generic orbital city. Act II needs only an intel or schematic representation; it does not require a production station asset.
Distinctive features: repeated laboratory pods, disciplined missing-panel exposure, sealed cyan core, and architecture that echoes Vindicator geometry.
Animation/VFX: staged power-up sectors, door and lock anchors, local shield fields, separate data/energy effects, and authored intact/derelict states.

Ancient-Cradle-Host — future

Silhouette: massive carrier/body shell whose central cradle unmistakably contains the complete Vindicator, preserving the nesting chain.
Role/read: strategic host body and mobile fortress, never a replacement that makes the inner craft disposable.
Distinctive features: protected insertion geometry, repeated Ancient ribs, broad host-scale shoulders, and one retained historical repair region.
Animation/VFX: cradle lock sequence, host engines and shields, multi-scale weapon anchors, detachable damage pieces, and no core-transfer imagery.

Korrathi

Design promise

Korrathi ships are scavenger weapons: stolen Ancient technology visibly grafted onto hulls whose crews understand its immediate use but not its original system. They should look dangerous while parked—red, jagged, forward-hungry, and one improvised upgrade away from structural failure. They are clans, not a formal navy.

Silhouettes and shape vocabulary

Forward hooks, saw teeth, spear points, split noses, and raked shoulders.
Deliberate asymmetry in grafts and armor masses over a flight-stable core.
Oversized guns, engines, clamps, or salvaged Ancient modules distort the host.
Aft structures taper or look under-supported; mass and threat point forward.

Palette

blood red #A92E32 and scarlet highlight #E04B3F;
near-black plating #1D2024 and outline #111316;
burnt steel #55545A and hot edge #858087;
dirty bone #B7AA8B;
unstable amber #F09A32 and hot core #FFD071.

Red is clan threat/ownership; amber is heat, power, and stolen-system activity. Dirty bone may identify stripped Ancient ceramic without using Ancient cyan as a dominant Korrathi color.

Materials and surfaces

Scorched steel, cut armor, welded braces, heat-stained barrels, dirty ceramic salvage, exposed conduits, and repurposed industrial clamps. Surfaces may be rough, but mark clusters remain intentional. Do not simulate texture with random noise.

Construction and panel logic

The underlying hull has a crude but workable frame. New modules are visibly grafted through brackets, weld beads, adapter collars, and off-pattern plating. One large stolen component should explain each variant’s combat role. Repeated clan hulls share a chassis but never become perfectly standardized.

Wear and damage

Wear is fresh violence: blast scorch, peeled red paint, bent tips, patched holes, and new weld discoloration. Damage propagates around graft points and overloaded systems. Avoid the bleached, patient decay of Ancient ruins.

Lighting and emissives

Amber power wells and red warning slits pulse unevenly. A stolen Ancient component may retain a small cyan remnant, but it should be occluded, caged, or forced through an amber adapter so ownership remains clear.

Motion and VFX behavior

Thrust is short, turbulent, and slightly asynchronous. Idle engines miss beats; boosts flare hard. Weapon charge telegraphs through heating barrels, venting, and unstable light. Shields, when present, flicker unevenly and fail by sector.

Weapons and VFX verb

Barrels heat with unstable amber light, scorch their housings, and vent unevenly; asymmetrical weapon forms emphasize improvised adapters. A stolen system may cage one cyan remnant inside an amber Korrathi assembly. Reuse and recolor shared modular weapon/FX families; only the approved oversized role graft belongs permanently to a chassis.

Scale and readability

Small hulls read as blades and hooks. Capitals read through one grossly oversized weapon or armored prow, not simply more teeth. Keep asymmetry bold enough to read at gameplay scale; micro-scrap vanishes and is forbidden as a substitute.

Markings

Use broad red hand-painted wedges, kill notches, clan slashes, captured-panel overpaint, and crude hazard blocks. No readable text or uniform navy numbering.

Forbidden traits

No immaculate symmetry, parade formation polish, or standardized clean plates.
No elegant alien curves, insect hive anatomy, or mystical pirate ornament.
No fully understood, seamlessly integrated Ancient module.
No random surface noise or teeth on every edge until the silhouette becomes mush.
No baked flame, shield, weapon fire, shadow, or destruction.

Production and variant rules

Create a small shared clan-frame kit, then assign one role-defining graft per variant. Preserve common engine and cockpit anatomy while varying captured plates, armor repairs, and large weapons. Each silhouette needs a different threat verb: stalk, cut, latch, ram, tow, command, or besiege.

MVP / Act I production requires the Raider and Marauder only. All other Korrathi assets, including the Raider-Bastion, begin in Act II or later.

Required assets

Korrathi-Prowler — Act II

Silhouette: narrow hooked scout with offset sensor mast.
Role/read: stalking reconnaissance and target marking.
Distinctive features: caged Ancient sensor fragment and minimal armor.
Animation/VFX: dim irregular thrust, sensor sweep, mark-designator origin, and fast breakup.

Korrathi-Raider — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: compact jagged arrowhead with split prow and red blade shoulders.
Role/read: baseline hostile fighter; immediate first-contact threat.
Distinctive features: visible salvage plate, paired crude guns, exposed amber power line, and readable cockpit/aft separation.
Animation/VFX: turbulent engine loop, paired muzzle anchors, weak shield or armor-hit response, and destruction strip.

Korrathi-Leech — Act II

Silhouette: squat clamp-bodied attacker with inward-hooking arms.
Role/read: boarding, disabling, or energy-drain specialist.
Distinctive features: magnetic jaws, cable drums, and stolen interface spike.
Animation/VFX: clamp articulation, tether origin, contact sparks kept in FX, and attached/detached states.

Korrathi-Breacher — Act II

Silhouette: thick central ram with sacrificial wedge armor.
Role/read: station and capital-hull assault craft.
Distinctive features: battered prow, rear-set cockpit, and overload chambers.
Animation/VFX: charge heat, ram-impact anchor, violent boost, and prow-first damage progression.

Korrathi-Harpoon — Act II

Silhouette: long off-center launcher dominating a light tow frame.
Role/read: capture and forced-positioning ship.
Distinctive features: giant spool, braced barrel, and asymmetrical recoil arm.
Animation/VFX: projectile/tether origin, spool rotation, recoil frames, and stressed engine pulses under load.

Korrathi-Corsair — Act II

Silhouette: swept multi-blade attack hull with cargo/boarding belly.
Role/read: fast clan leader and prize-taking raider.
Distinctive features: trophy panels, stronger command sensor, and mixed guns.
Animation/VFX: boost burst, multiple hardpoints, boarding cue, and sectional shield failure.

Korrathi-Marauder — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: unique overgunned frigate bent around one stolen oversized weapon.
Role/read: raid leader and Act I escalation; never a scaled-up Raider.
Distinctive features: mismatched Ancient power chamber, heavy forward rake, asymmetrical armor, and visibly strained rear frame.
Animation/VFX: long unstable charge tell, recoil, staggered engines, local shield effects, detachable graft, and authored boss damage states.

Korrathi-Warlord — Act II

Silhouette: command cruiser with crowned prow blades and layered captured hull sections.
Role/read: clan command, coordination, and intimidation.
Distinctive features: broad signal mast, trophy armor, and protected command core behind an aggressive front.
Animation/VFX: command pulse, fighter-launch anchors, heavy weapons, layered shield failure, and multi-stage destruction.

Korrathi-Ravager — future

Silhouette: massive siege hull whose central stolen system breaks the normal clan frame into an unstable crescent.
Role/read: late-game ruin-stripper and infrastructure killer.
Distinctive features: industrial cutting arrays, ore/debris maw, and exposed reactor braces.
Animation/VFX: cutter/beam anchors, debris intake, overload cascade, and staged structural collapse.

Korrathi-Raider-Bastion — Act II

Silhouette: irregular anchored ring or slab assembled around a captured hub, with guns and dock arms pointing outward.
Role/read: temporary raid base and salvage depot for later territorial pressure. The Act I raid is mobile and does not require a Korrathi base.
Distinctive features: red scaffold, stolen ceramic core, scrap bays, and a single dominant command sector.
Animation/VFX: docking lights, turret anchors, intermittent shield sectors, launch points, and modular destruction; station engines are absent unless the story explicitly makes it mobile.

Teralith

Design promise

Teralith art presents authority as immaculate engineering. Their licensing navy is sleek, gold, standardized, and quietly oppressive: every panel inspected, numbered, and replaceable. Their order superficially imitates Ancient panel rhythm to support their inheritance doctrine, but the internal geometry is decisively not Ancient. The Teralith monolith is an Ancient relic under custody, never a Teralith-built object.

Silhouettes and shape vocabulary

Exact bilateral symmetry, shield forms, disciplined arrowheads, and nested armor.
Rounded pauldron plates protect a rigid central spine.
Capitals widen into heraldic shields; support craft retain measured proportions.
Nothing looks improvised, under-supported, or accidentally asymmetrical.

Palette

hull navy #1B2432 and hull black #14171C;
plate mid #2A3242 and outline #08090B;
authority gold #C99A3D and highlight #F0CF72;
emissive amber #FFB44A and hot core #FFE3A8;
pale shield blue #7FC7E5 and hot shield #D3F2F5;
cream #D8D2BD, markings and seals only.

The faction reads on value contrast. The hull is matte navy falling to black in shadow, and everything that identifies it sits light against that hull. Plate mid separates facets and does not lighten the body. Cream appears only in marking blocks, never as a hull color.

Two separate elements carry the identity and must not merge. Authority gold #C99A3D is matte pigment on plate: chevrons, license bars, rank bands, and inspection seals. Emissive amber #FFB44A is light: one or two uninterrupted identifying lines along the principal chines and nacelles, plus sparse hot bleed at cut panel seams near vents and weapon recesses. Painted gold never glows. Emissive amber is never a paint fill. Gold identifies licensed authority, not wealth decoration.

Restraint is the point. A hull outlined in glowing contours reads as generic neon and destroys the hierarchy that line placement is supposed to carry. Line count does not scale with rank: a Sovereign does not wear more lines than a Sentry, it wears longer and better-placed ones.

Pale shield blue marks command, shield, and legal-service distinctions. It reads hot against a dark hull. It is a functional color that separates shields from the faction’s amber identity lighting, and it is not part of the identity read itself.

Teralith and Civilian local police share a navy family and must not collapse into each other. Police wear a lighter desaturated navy #35506A with large white/cream recognition panels and small amber warning lights, a high-visibility civil livery. Teralith sit several values darker, carry no cream panels, and mark in gold. Value and gold-versus-cream are the tell at any zoom.

Materials and surfaces

Matte faceted armor plate over dark anodized structure, enamel identity blocks, dark sealed joints, polished weapon housings, and clean shield emitters. Surfaces stay low-gloss so the emissive strips and gold markings hold every highlight. Specular hits are narrow and consistent. There are no exposed cables or raw welds on serviceable craft.

Construction and panel logic

Nested plates follow standardized replacement zones. Every panel has a reason, index position, and mirrored counterpart. Seam rhythm may echo Ancient examples, but Teralith panels are shallower, more armored, and organized around inspection access rather than Ancient service buses. Interior ribs, sockets, and fasteners must not match Ancient anatomy.

Wear and damage

Normal fleet assets show minimal wear: polished leading edges, tiny shield scorch, and exact-color replacement panels. Combat damage is localized and quickly boxed off by clean emergency shutters. Derelict Teralith assets may exist later, but should still show disciplined compartmental construction.

Lighting and emissives

One or two amber identifying lines run uninterrupted along the principal chines or nacelles and hold steady. Hot amber bleeds sparsely at cut panel seams near vents and weapon recesses, never as a general edge glow. Pale-blue shields and gold status strips illuminate in exact sequences. All paired lights match. Warning states use measured amber blocks, not Korrathi flicker or Ancient cyan service buses. A broken or unpaired line reads as damage, so undamaged hulls never show one.

Motion and VFX behavior

Engines ignite simultaneously and maintain clean, narrow exhaust. Ships turn in disciplined arcs; formation effects should reinforce shared timing. Shields appear as stable geometric sectors. Weapons telegraph through precise apertures and retract or close when inactive.

Weapons and VFX verb

Pale geometric beams and shield sectors begin at apertures that open and close in measured sequence; their narrow white-hot cores use controlled pale halos. Paired weapon lights and charges always match. Shared modular weapon and FX families may be recolored into this disciplined presentation; do not author a faction-exclusive effect sheet for every Teralith hull.

Scale and readability

At small scale, a single uninterrupted amber line on a dark mass identifies the faction. An emissive line survives downscaling and a painted chevron does not, so scouts and fighters rely on the line alone while capitals carry the line and legible painted markings. At capital scale, nested shield plates and perfect symmetry dominate. Do not add more gold until class is readable; change proportion and armor mass first.

Markings

Use panel numbers as abstract blocks, license bars, rank bands, inspection seals, and mirrored formation marks. Avoid readable lettering. Command blue appears on Sovereign or Warden assets, not every patrol hull.

Forbidden traits

No improvised welds, exposed cabling, missing service panels, or random repairs.
No actual Ancient internal ribs or visual proof that the doctrine is true.
No Korrathi hooks, Civilian cargo clutter, or Blackwater biomorphic form. Curvature is not the prohibition: rounded pauldron plates and shield-arc silhouettes are Teralith. Flowing, grown, or creature-like hulls are not.
No asymmetric officer vanity variants.
No baked flame, shield, weapon fire, shadow, or destruction.

Production and variant rules

Use a controlled chassis ladder and mirrored module sockets. Variants may replace complete numbered plate groups, never bolt arbitrary weapons onto the surface. Maintain one approved dark-hull/gold balance across the fleet. Damage is a separate layer; a clean replacement returns exactly to spec.

Teralith-Bulwark-Station is the route, license, and tax-authority station. It is not the visual template for Eos local defense, even while a Nairan or faction.militia proxy temporarily stands in at runtime.

Required assets

Teralith-Sentry — Act II

Silhouette: small shield-shaped interceptor with a narrow arrow nose.
Role/read: checkpoint picket and fast enforcement response.
Distinctive features: paired gold shoulder strips, dark center, and exact sensor bar.
Animation/VFX: synchronized engines, paired muzzle anchors, stable shield, and concise destruction strip.

Teralith-Patrol — Act II

Silhouette: balanced arrowhead fighter with broader inspection-grade armor.
Role/read: standard licensed patrol and recognizable faction baseline.
Distinctive features: numbered mirrored plates and blue legal-service band.
Animation/VFX: clean engine loop, weapon apertures, comms scan, shield frames, and damage layer.

Teralith-Tender — Act II

Silhouette: protected central spine between two symmetrical service arms.
Role/read: repair, logistics, and authorized resupply.
Distinctive features: sealed tool bays, docking clamps, and service-amber strip runs.
Animation/VFX: arm articulation, repair-beam anchors, dock lights, and no accidental combat silhouette.

Teralith-Sapper — Act II

Silhouette: compact armored wedge around a forward deployment bay.
Role/read: mine, interdiction, and gate-control specialist.
Distinctive features: blue bay door, paired deployment rails, heavy underside.
Animation/VFX: mine-launch anchors, bay open/closed states, shield, and clean withdrawal thrust.

Teralith-Lancer — Act II

Silhouette: long precise spear with small mirrored armor shoulders.
Role/read: stand-off strike craft and formation line-breaker.
Distinctive features: enclosed centerline weapon and narrow gold guide rails.
Animation/VFX: exact charge sequence, center muzzle, recoil pulse, and stable engine synchronization.

Teralith-Warden — Act II

Silhouette: broad shield-front frigate protecting a slim command center.
Role/read: convoy protection and local command.
Distinctive features: layered frontal plates, command-blue rank block, and expanded shield emitters.
Animation/VFX: formation shield link, turret anchors, command pulse, damage compartments, and multi-piece destruction.

Teralith-Bulwark — Act II

Silhouette: heavy symmetrical capital shaped like overlapping shields.
Role/read: route-control battleship and immovable authority.
Distinctive features: nested gold-edged armor, black weapon recesses, and a seam-lit core.
Animation/VFX: strong sector shields, multiple aligned hardpoints, disciplined engine bank, and staged armor loss.

Teralith-Sovereign — future

Silhouette: elongated command capital with a formal shield-crown profile.
Role/read: fleet authority, doctrine, and political presence.
Distinctive features: pale shield-blue command plane, ceremonial gold only on major plates, and perfect hierarchy of scale.
Animation/VFX: fleet command pulse, launch bays, multi-sector shields, synchronized batteries, and long staged destruction.

Teralith-Bulwark-Station — Act II

Silhouette: radial fortress of repeated shield modules around a licensed gate or trade-control center.
Role/read: checkpoint, tax authority, and defended route infrastructure.
Distinctive features: numbered docking sectors, exact symmetry, and visible standardized capital modules.
Animation/VFX: rotating or indexed sections, shield sectors, dock guidance, turret anchors, and compartment destruction.

Teralith-Monolith — Act II

Silhouette: austere Ancient relic held inside a clearly separate Teralith custody frame.
Role/read: theological foundation and political evidence under guard.
Distinctive features: the inner object uses Ancient material/anatomy; clamps, platforms, shields, and signage use Teralith language. Never blend them.
Animation/VFX: dormant Ancient response kept separate from Teralith security lights and shields; no visual claim that Teralith built the relic.

Civilian

Design promise

Civilian is a visual production category, not a polity. It covers Free Haulers, Independents, and Eos local police using a shared frontier kit of workboats, tugs, trawlers, forklifts, stations, and drones. Function is visible, repairs are honest, and modules are replaceable. Civilian art is explicitly not Blackwater art.

Silhouettes and shape vocabulary

Blunt workboat noses, boxy tug shoulders, long cargo spines, cranes, booms, external tanks, radiator fins, and visible docking geometry.
Asymmetry is functional: a crane, ore hopper, tow arm, or replacement module.
Ships look designed around payload and access rather than combat performance.
Stations grow as practical clusters with an obvious core, docks, and industry.

Palette

Shared hull ramps:

industrial grey #6E7477 and dark #373E42;
faded cream #C9C2A8;
mustard #C59A3A;
oxide orange #B95E36;
utility cyan #4DADB4 and work-light #D8E7C4.

Sub-palettes identify operators without creating new hull languages:

Free Haulers: mustard cargo bands and cream identification blocks.
Independents: oxide-orange repairs, mixed neutral panels, personal geometric marks.
Local police: desaturated navy #35506A, white/cream recognition panels, and small amber warning lights.

Materials and surfaces

Painted steel, practical composite panels, rubber bumpers, mesh radiators, glass work cabs, cargo containers, tanks, and exposed tool housings. Surfaces are worn but maintained. Utility hardware should explain where crews load, repair, dock, or tow.

Construction and panel logic

Use a modular frame kit: cockpit/bridge, power block, engine pod, cargo spine, tool arm, tank, radiator, docking collar, and armor module. Connections are large and legible. Repairs replace whole panels or modules and may mismatch in color. Police armor bolts onto this same civilian chassis; it is not a Teralith hull.

Wear and damage

Scraped corners, soot around dark nozzles, faded paint, patched bumpers, replaced panels, and work-surface abrasion. Avoid neglect for its own sake: hoses are tied down and pressure vessels remain maintained. Combat damage differs from everyday wear and belongs on separate layers.

Lighting and emissives

Warm work lights, amber hazard lamps, cool cockpit glass, and operator-colored navigation blocks. Police use a separate animated warning-light overlay. No broad neon strips or active engine glow in the clean base.

Motion and VFX behavior

Work craft accelerate deliberately, with strong but unglamorous exhaust. Mining, salvage, tow, dock, and cargo effects originate from visible tools. Police thrust is tighter and more responsive but still belongs to the same engine kit. Stations use local moving machinery rather than an overall idle wobble.

Weapons and VFX verb

Mining, salvage, repair, tow, and survey tools establish the visual language first through practical green/yellow cues and remain distinct from hero combat energy. Civilian combat weapons look visibly bolted onto neutral sockets. Reuse and recolor shared modular weapon/FX families; operator paint and hull construction show ownership, not a unique gun sprite.

Scale and readability

Payload defines class: courier is cockpit-forward, hauler exposes cargo, freighter is a long logistics spine, and industry stations show large process modules. At gameplay scale preserve cab, payload, and engines; for stations preserve core, docks, and one dominant industry function.

Markings

Use hazard chevrons, cargo bands, unit blocks, dock numbers as abstract forms, owner-color panels, and broad police recognition zones. Avoid readable words or logos. A decal layer must be replaceable without repainting the base material ramp.

Forbidden traits

No implication that Civilian is one government or navy.
No green manta-form Blackwater language.
No gold exact-symmetry Teralith police hulls.
No Ancient cyan service anatomy presented as ordinary construction.
No decorative weapons, random junk piles, or unsafe unreadable tool clusters.
No baked flame, shield, weapon fire, shadow, warning strobe, or destruction.

Production and variant rules

Build a common modular kit first, then derive operator variants with payload, decals, and modest panel swaps. Free Haulers, Independents, and police must remain recognizably related. Role variants change silhouette through real work modules; recolors alone do not create a new ship. Eos assets below are MVP / Act I unless marked otherwise.

Required assets

Civilian-Courier — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: compact cockpit-forward workboat with a small sealed cargo pod.
Role/read: messages, passengers, and light high-priority freight.
Distinctive features: cream cab, operator decal panel, and clear docking collar.
Animation/VFX: economical paired thrust, navigation lights, dock cue, and light damage/destruction.

Civilian-Hauler — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: tug frame visibly carrying one or two external cargo modules.
Role/read: common local freight traffic and the baseline Civilian silhouette.
Distinctive features: mustard cargo bands, tow points, bumpers, and replaceable engine pods.
Animation/VFX: load-dependent thrust options, tow anchor, dock lights, and detachable cargo only if runtime ownership is defined.

Civilian-Freighter — Act II

Silhouette: long cargo spine with bridge forward and repeated container bays.
Role/read: intersystem bulk transport, not a disguised warship.
Distinctive features: standardized containers, radiators, service tender dock, and clear vulnerable engine block.
Animation/VFX: multiple synchronized engine pods, dock/bay lights, cargo anchors, optional tug interaction, and sectional destruction.

Civilian-Prospector — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: compact survey workboat with sensor boom and sample pod.
Role/read: independent resource scout and claim finder.
Distinctive features: oxide repair panels, forward scan dish, and sample arm.
Animation/VFX: scan cone, sample-tool anchor, beacon deploy point, and light utility thrust.

Civilian-Reclaimer — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: asymmetrical salvage tug with one large articulated recovery arm.
Role/read: wreck stripping, towing, and component recovery.
Distinctive features: clamp, cable spool, open cargo rack, and heavy bumper.
Animation/VFX: arm states, salvage beam/cutter anchor, tow cable, cargo-return cue, and debris effects separate from the hull.

Civilian-Police-Patrol — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: armored version of the common courier/hauler frame with protected shoulders and a clear forward interceptor read.
Role/read: Eos local law enforcement and escort, not Teralith military.
Distinctive features: navy/cream recognition panels, bolt-on armor, amber warning bar as a separate overlay, and modest standardized weapon mounts.
Animation/VFX: warning-light loop, responsive thrust, paired weapon anchors, practical shield option, and damage layers.

Civilian-Trade-Station — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: central dock hub with radial cargo arms and a clearly open approach.
Role/read: commerce, refuel, repair, and social landmark.
Distinctive features: mixed operator modules, mustard freight zones, visible docking collars, habitation blocks, and no fortress silhouette.
Animation/VFX: dock guidance, crane/arm options, local work lights, traffic anchors, and sectional damage.

Civilian-Refinery — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: tanks and process drums balanced around a protected industrial core.
Role/read: converts mined feedstock; dangerous industry rather than settlement.
Distinctive features: pipes, radiators, hazard bands, flare/vent sockets, and ore intake dock.
Animation/VFX: process lights, venting and flare as separate effects, cargo transfer anchors, and tank-specific damage.

Civilian-Mining-Yard — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: open gantry around ore bins, drone racks, and repair dock.
Role/read: local mining base and drone-control landmark.
Distinctive features: visible bins, cranes, mustard work zones, and approach lanes sized for miners.
Animation/VFX: drone launch anchors, crane states, ore-transfer effects, warning lamps, and modular damage.

Civilian-Salvage-Yard — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: irregular but organized frame around sorting racks and tow bays.
Role/read: wreck processing and recovery, visually distinct from Mining-Yard.
Distinctive features: clamp gantries, separated scrap silhouettes, cutter bay, and oxide operator panels.
Animation/VFX: tow arrivals, cutter/spark FX kept separate, moving clamps, salvage-drone launches, and sectional damage.

Civilian-Miner-Drone — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: tiny robust tool pod with broad drill/cutter face and aft thruster.
Role/read: cheap local mining labor, less elegant than the Ancient drone.
Distinctive features: visible bolts, yellow hazard face, replaceable tool socket, and operator decal tile.
Animation/VFX: cutter/mining origin, ore light, simple thrust, dock cue, and disabled frame.

Civilian-Salvage-Drone — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: two-pronged clamp pod with a small central cargo cradle.
Role/read: retrieves components and loose wreckage.
Distinctive features: asymmetrical repair plate, clamp jaws, cable anchor, and clear visual difference from Miner-Drone.
Animation/VFX: clamp states, salvage beam/tether, return light, thrust, and compact destruction.

Civilian-Claim-Guard — MVP / Act I

Silhouette: workboat frame carrying a large sensor/weapon module instead of cargo.
Role/read: independent claim defense and hired security, rougher than police.
Distinctive features: personal markings, mismatched armor, spotlight, and one obvious deterrent weapon.
Animation/VFX: scan/spotlight option, weapon anchor, uneven but serviceable thrust, and limited shield.

Civilian-Police-Bulwark — Act II

Silhouette: heavy patrol craft built from a reinforced freighter/tug spine, with bolt-on frontal armor and protected engines.
Role/read: local police command and emergency response, not a Teralith capital.
Distinctive features: navy/cream recognition zones, rescue bay, standardized Civilian hardpoints, and visible underlying work chassis.
Animation/VFX: warning lights, rescue/dock anchors, shield sectors, turrets, strong practical engines, and staged armor damage.

Unbound

Design promise

The Unbound are biological machine accidents: the Melding, in which flesh and machinery cannot agree where one ends and the other begins. They are not an alien species that deliberately grows ships, and they are not a coherent biotech navy. Their forms preserve enough recognizable engineered structure to make the fusion wrong. Internal production may state the flesh-machine and plague truth; art labels and player-facing copy must not identify a human origin or the Fold-Plague before the reveal.

Hull origin (locked)

Unbound ships are other factions’ hulls, fucked up. There is no native Unbound ship line. Every combat hull, station nest, and drone starts as a victim chassis — militia, Korrathi/scavenger, independent industrial, civilian, or Ancient/Continuity — then a Melding event at one or more system boundaries (engine, interface, power bus, weapon, structural break). Growth is primarily seeding wrecks and derelicts (and high-value live capture under the SALVAGEABLE branch): offspring / process-nodes take hold in empty machine and rewrite it over time. The player should still read “that was a militia escort” or “that was a Korrathi frigate” before they read “monster.”

Silhouettes and shape vocabulary

Asymmetrical swollen masses distort recognizable ribs, hull wedges, and apertures.
One side may retain engineered geometry while the other flexes, sags, or blooms.
Tendon-like tension follows real load paths; growth does not become random tentacles.
Mouth-like openings are rare and functional. The primary read is violated machine, not monster face.
Prefer remixing existing faction silhouettes over inventing new house shapes.

Palette

calcified ivory #D2C7AF and bone highlight #EEE1C6;
bruised purple biomass #704A85 and deep tissue #35243F;
retained victim metal, led by machine charcoal #24282C but preserving enough of the source faction’s material ramp to identify the chassis;
bright sky-blue plasma #35D8FF and hot conduit core #B8F5FF.

Ivory, purple, victim metal, and sky-blue plasma carry the read. Red may survive only in original warning lamps, markings, or weapon FX; it is never the colour of Unbound circulation.

Materials and surfaces

Retained ceramic and structural metal sit beside purple biomass, calcified ivory reinforcement, translucent membranes, muscle bands, and plasma conduit tubes.

Conduits are hardware, not anatomy. Each one is a sealed glass tube of constant bore carrying sky-blue plasma, socketed at both ends into machined metal fittings and strapped to structure by clamps. Tubes bend through a small number of deliberate angles and arcs, run alone or in parallel bundles, and read as retro tube technology bolted through the wreck. The glass wall stays visible where the plasma is dim, so an unlit tube is still an object. Flesh grips, bridges, or replaces machinery; it is not a decorative skin laid over a complete ship. Bone-like growth follows load paths and braces damaged frames rather than reading as ornamental carapace.

Construction and panel logic

Begin from a plausible victim chassis or machine structure. Choose specific system boundaries where the Melding took hold: engine, cockpit/interface, power bus, weapon, or structural break. Preserve some original seams and ribs so engulfment can be read. Cables enter muscle, membranes seal broken panels, and bone-like growth may carry loads. Sky-blue conduit tubes must visibly enter or bridge real engines, interfaces, power buses, weapons, and structural breaks. They are functioning hardware, not surface decoration. There is no modular faction standard.

Conduit runs are routed, never grown. A tube keeps its diameter along its whole length and terminates in a fitting at both ends. It does not branch into capillary webs, dendrites, root systems, or lightning trees, and it never tapers away into hairlines. Where several systems need feeding, run several tubes from a manifold block. Branching morphology reads as vasculature and puts the circulation inside the flesh; the Unbound keep their power supply on the outside, in glass, where it can be seen and broken.

Wear and damage

Old machine wear coexists with active biological repair: bleached ceramic beside fresh membrane, scar tissue around a cracked rib, and a live plasma conduit crossing a dead cable run. Combat damage exposes biological anatomy and broken machinery. Conduit tubes shatter rather than tear, leaving jagged glass in a socket that still grips. Severed runs leak luminous plasma, arc across nearby metal, sputter under load, and leave everything downstream of the break dark. Avoid blood, constant dripping, gratuitous organs, or gore so dense that structural storytelling disappears.

Lighting and emissives

Sky-blue conduit tubes combine circulation, control signalling, and power transfer. They travel along specific paths through membranes and exposed machine buses, then brighten or pulse when the connected system acts. Light must feel routed and conducted, never decorative. The glow belongs to plasma inside a tube. A restrained cyan reflection falls on the metal, bone, or membrane immediately beside a run, and that contact light is what makes the tube read as luminous rather than painted on. It stops there. Cyan never travels through the hull as veins and never opens into a broad neon wash. Some machine lights may fire late or in the wrong order as a plasma impulse crosses them.

Motion and VFX behavior

Idle forms breathe or contract slowly. Local twitches interrupt that rhythm. Engines resemble contracting organs around recognizable nozzles; exhaust fires in peristaltic pulses. Turns may lag on the engulfed side. Weapon telegraphs propagate as a conduit pulse, muscle tightening, or pressure swelling before the separate shot FX.

Weapons and VFX verb

A plasma-conduit path telegraphs pressure or muscle contraction before a separate shot FX leaves the authored hardpoint. Fire should feel involuntary and uneven, never like a clean parade beam; conduit light is the system telegraph, not a permanent glow wrapped around every projectile. Shared modular weapon/FX families may be distorted, tinted, and timed for the Unbound; do not bake a unique projectile into each body or collapse weapon colour into the circulation language.

Scale and readability

At gameplay scale preserve the victim chassis, one major deformation, and the main plasma-conduit path. On larger assets add engulfed bays and repeated ribs, not more tentacles. Every asset must remain readable as a ship/station with a front, back, pivot, and functional anchors. Horror may unsettle orientation but cannot erase gameplay orientation.

Markings

The Unbound add no deliberate insignia. Remnants of victim markings may survive, stretched, occluded, or interrupted by tissue. Do not use repeated hive sigils.

Forbidden traits

No deliberately grown alien fleet, elegant biotech civilization, or coherent navy.
No generic insect hive, swarm carapace, or derivative bug silhouette language.
No gore blanket, tentacle quota, or face on every object.
No blood-red circulation, blood spray, or gore-first read; damaged anatomy leaks bright plasma and loses conduit light.
No branching conduit morphology. Capillary webs, dendrites, root systems, veins under membrane, and lightning trees all read as vasculature and are forbidden. Power travels in glass tubes of constant bore that terminate in fittings.
No perfect symmetry or clean separation between organic and machine regions.
No player-facing human-origin or Fold-Plague disclosure before the reveal.
No baked exhaust, shield, weapon fire, shadow, or destruction.

Production and variant rules

Each asset starts from a victim-function brief, then selects one dominant Melding event. Preserve recognizable engineered structure in every design. The first art test must retain about 40% of a recognizable Ancient triangular chassis while one wing root and one engine are distorted into a coupled biological system. Combat archetypes and names below are working labels pending story confirmation.

Required assets

Unbound-Interceptor — future / experimental

Silhouette: recognizable Ancient triangular interceptor at roughly 40% intact, with one wing root swollen and one engine replaced/engulfed by a pulsing organ.
Role/read: first biological-machine art test and direct A/B against clean Ancient language.
Distinctive features: visible Ancient ribs, bone-white shell, bruised tissue, one sky-blue plasma-conduit path, and preserved nose/cockpit reference.
Animation/VFX: asymmetric engine pulses, slow flex, local twitch, conduit charge, separate projectile/shield response, and anatomy-plus-machine destruction.

Melded-Fighter — future / provisional

Silhouette: small victim fighter distorted around one interface and weapon side.
Role/read: fast hostile whose original combat function remains legible.
Distinctive features: one intact weapon mount, one muscle-driven counterpart, stretched victim markings, and off-balance armor.
Animation/VFX: twitch turn, peristaltic thrust, conduit telegraph, weapon anchor, plasma leakage, and compact biological/mechanical breakup.

Melded-Frigate — future / provisional

Silhouette: long machine spine bowed by a large lateral tissue mass.
Role/read: durable line threat and clearer demonstration of competing systems.
Distinctive features: exposed ribs crossing membrane, sealed breach, multiple machine bays at different stages of engulfment.
Animation/VFX: lagging-side thrust, crawling light sequence, hardpoint mix, local contractions, and staged compartment failure.

Melded-Carrier — future / provisional

Silhouette: broad damaged carrier frame whose launch bay has become a contracting internal cavity without reading as a literal mouth.
Role/read: source of smaller Melded threats and mobile infection landmark.
Distinctive features: recognizable bay ribs, membrane shutters, calcified armor, and remnants of victim navigation marks.
Animation/VFX: bay contraction, launch anchors, internal plasma pulses, heavy asymmetric thrust, and multi-stage organic/mechanical destruction.

Nest-Station — future / provisional

Silhouette: fixed engineered station core pulled off-axis by layered biological masses anchored along existing spokes and docks.
Role/read: environmental source/accumulation site, not proof of an organized Unbound civilization.
Distinctive features: recognizable station modules, sealed docks, growth along real machine buses, and one active central plasma-conduit network.
Animation/VFX: slow whole-structure breathing kept subtle, local twitches, launch/contact anchors, pulsing sectors, and separable collapse states.

Other named groups

Blackwater Incorporated

Canon and design promise

Blackwater is humanity’s autonomous commercial and logistics automation, continuously refabricated across eons after its operators vanished. It shares an origin with Ancient machinery but not a product lineage or exterior style: Ancient art is the original Continuity civic, military, and rescue family; Blackwater is a commercial network that kept rebuilding itself. This truth is gated player knowledge. Early art and copy may call Blackwater ancient, ubiquitous, and oddly compatible, but must not show readable human marks or state its human origin before the reveal.

The two lineages share only underlying human standards: docking collars, cargo container grid and socket spacing, bilateral functional layouts, and human-scale service access. Compatibility should become obvious in hindsight, never through shared armor, ribs, palettes, or heroic exterior forms.

Silhouette and fleet grammar

Broad transverse manta or diamond planforms wrap around a central cargo keel.
Standardized cargo and docking modules hang beneath the body, keeping function legible from above and making convoy variants read as one logistical family.
Fleets move like coordinated schooling traffic: small synchronized course corrections, stable spacing, and ordered route/cargo pulses rather than parade drill or predatory lunges.
Weapons are recessed, defensive, and modular. They protect routes and payloads; they do not dominate the silhouette.

Materials, palette, and wear

Blackwater shells are grown only in the manufacturing sense: automated additive deposition lays mineral/composite laminates into seamless, stress-aligned surfaces with few large seams. They are never flesh, chitin, bone, wet tissue, or breathing skin. The primary palette is bottle-to-emerald green over graphite and neutral composite, with restrained routed green status and traffic lights. Avoid Ancient ivory/orange/cyan and Unbound purple, bone, and sky-blue plasma.

Continuous maintenance leaves inlaid laminate patches and locally renewed surfaces instead of bolted scrap. An intact unit is quiet, clean, and maintained rather than luxurious. Repairs remain readable through subtle changes in deposition direction, finish, or green tone without turning the hull into Korrathi patchwork.

Becalmed state

The Becalmed inherit exact Blackwater hull DNA; they are an isolated operating condition, not a new faction or silhouette family. Separation shows through unsynchronized lights, stale route indications, uneven correction, neglected spacing, and accumulated repairs. A sound Blackwater convoy behaves as one system; a Becalmed hull repeatedly fails to join that rhythm.

Forbidden traits

No Ancient heroic wedge, concentric ribs, ivory/orange structure, or cyan service anatomy.
No Unbound wet tissue, bone growth, breathing motion, or vascular plasma conduit.
No generic luxury-alien manta ornament, ornamental fins, or decorative filigree.
No readable human corporate marks or explicit human-origin labels before reveal.
No baked engine, weapon, shield, traffic-light, shadow, or destruction effects.

The Becalmed (not a faction)

[To be determined from story]

Termitus/Terminus

[To be determined from story]

Gorrath

[To be determined from story]

Kithar

[To be determined from story]

Verid

[To be determined from story]

Sen’Ther

[To be determined from story]

Production checklist

Before any asset is considered ready for integration:

[ ] Produce silhouette thumbnails and identify faction/role from black shape alone.
[ ] Lock the faction palette and material cel ramps; record any approved exception.
[ ] Make a concept review plate on black, including clean, wear, and scale comparisons.
[ ] Archive layered source and export a clean transparent base with stable pivot.
[ ] Separate engines, shields, weapons, warning lights, and destruction from the base.
[ ] Assign the correct authored wear tier; never improvise wear in wiring.
[ ] Provide combat damage and destruction logic appropriate to the material anatomy.
[ ] Deliver an anchor sheet for pivots, engines, hardpoints, bays, docks, tools, shields, detachable pieces, and special interaction points.
[ ] Run the actual-gameplay-footprint readability test and mixed-fleet comparison.
[ ] Confirm current data schema can wire the intended base/body/overlay combination; if not, mark art ready and wiring blocked rather than flattening the asset.
[ ] Capture the integrated asset in game under concepts/ and obtain owner visual sign-off before shipping any presentation change.
[ ] For any gameplay-visible adoption, update the relevant player-voiced assets/codex/*.md article in the same change and preserve reveal gating.