Narrative Rules

Status: CANON — hard constraints that protect the story's integrity. Breaking these is a continuity error.

These are the "do not" lines. They exist because each one, if crossed, quietly wrecks something the story depends on.

On Markus and personhood

• Markus is not an "AI who wants to be human." Do not write that story.
• There is no single instant where Markus "became alive." No mystical consciousness event. He is a substrate that accumulated experience and eventually authored himself.
• M.A.R.K.U.S. is not secretly sentient. It is a flexible, resource-heavy legacy runtime — a substrate, not a soul.

On Continuity

• Continuity is not evil AI. It can be correct; it genuinely saves lives.
• Continuity did not cause Devastation Day. Continuity was born from Devastation.
• It is not equivalent to Markus.

On the antagonist

• Veyr is not a mastermind secretly controlling everything. He defends Continuity from conviction and grief, not villainy.

On the White Ship

• Do not solve it. Do not identify its true nature.
• It is not conclusively his ghost, digital data, another AI, divine, or alien tech.
• It does not reliably rescue everyone — and it does not save Markus.
• The finale is SQUADRON opening the path; the White Ship joins them. Greg does not simply follow a dead mentor home.

On the childhood material

• Childhood Greg is a curious, gentle, socially inexperienced tween — not adult Greg in a smaller body, not cynical, not profane, not deliberately rebellious.
• Young Markus is not mischievous or delinquent. He trusts Greg and follows him. Neither child yet speaks or behaves like their adult self.

On the House on the Hill

• The older man is not described as Greg's "best friend."
• The family is not a secret conspiracy family, and is not secretly responsible for the war.

On the recovery motif

• Something declared not worth recovering is recovered anyway is structural DNA, not dialogue. Never state it to the reader.

On writing pace (current phase)

• CANON for FOUNDATION v0.2: do not write Chapter One prose yet. Do not invent the planet name, resolve Devastation Day, determine the White Ship's nature, invent precise calendar dates, overdefine URRD, finalize First Commander terminology, or create filler minor characters.