docs: add DESCENSUS genesis document

docs/DESCENSUS-genesis.md

@@ -0,0 +1,169 @@
+# DESCENSUS
+## Genesis Document
+### TheRON — CIVICVS / OTIVM / TESSERA Stack
+### Status: Canonical. Do not alter without project owner instruction.
+### Date: 2026-05-02
+
+---
+
+## 1. What DESCENSUS Is
+
+DESCENSUS is the mechanism by which an actor moving through TESSERA space
+crosses an epoch boundary and loses access to resources, tools, knowledge,
+and social capital that did not exist in the earlier period.
+
+The name is Latin. Virgil used it for the descent into the underworld —
+a journey to a place that is real, that precedes the known world, and from
+which the traveller returns changed. No English word carries the same cargo.
+
+DESCENSUS is not time travel. The actor does not move through time.
+The world moves around the actor. What the actor carries is filtered
+against what the destination epoch permits. What remains is what that
+epoch knows.
+
+---
+
+## 2. The Physical Basis
+
+TESSERA encodes Earth's physical surface as H3 hexagonal cells across
+all epochs. The same H3 cell exists in 14 BCE Rome and 8000 BCE
+Mesolithic. Elevation, hydrology, and geology are continuous. Sea level
+shifts by epoch (parameterised in `paleo_epochs`). Occupation evidence
+(`occ_flag`) records which cultures left traces at each location.
+
+When an actor enters a cell whose occupation layer belongs to a period
+earlier than the actor's current epoch, DESCENSUS is triggered.
+The transition is spatial, not temporal. The actor walks into it.
+
+---
+
+## 3. The Filtering Rule
+
+Every item, resource, tool, garment, currency, document, and unit of
+social capital has an epoch range: valid from date X, valid until date Y.
+
+On DESCENSUS, the actor's inventory and parameter set are filtered
+against the destination epoch. What falls outside the range disappears
+or loses function:
+
+- Iron tools: absent before ~1200 BCE
+- Coined money: absent before ~700 BCE in the Mediterranean
+- Written contracts: absent in the Mesolithic
+- Silk garments: absent before Roman contact with eastern trade routes
+- Flint tools: present across all epochs, peak value in Mesolithic
+- Leather, bone, animal fat: present across all epochs
+- Social trust built through gift exchange: universal, expression varies
+
+A Roman merchant with 500 denarii, iron tools, a silk toga, and a letter
+of credit enters Mesolithic space. His coins are metal discs of no agreed
+value. His tools dissolve. His garment is hide that has not yet been
+processed into silk — it reverts or vanishes. His letter is marked
+papyrus. What remains: his sandals, his walking staff, his dried food,
+his leather pouch. He is now a moderately equipped traveller in a world
+that values flint-knapping, territorial knowledge, and demonstrated
+generosity.
+
+The Mesolithic hunter with deep local knowledge and established
+reciprocal relationships is now the more capable actor.
+
+---
+
+## 4. Why This Exists
+
+Every simulation that spans multiple power levels faces the same problem:
+more advanced actors overwhelm less advanced ones. The standard solutions
+are artificial barriers, separate zones, or handicapping systems. All of
+these are impositions on the simulation.
+
+DESCENSUS is not an imposition. It is the simulation being honest.
+A Roman merchant is not powerful in absolute terms. He is powerful within
+the resource and knowledge system of Rome. Remove that system and he is
+a reasonably fit adult with good boots and a leather pouch.
+
+The Mesolithic hunter is not primitive. He is highly adapted to a world
+of abundant resources, deep territorial knowledge, and social structures
+built on demonstrated reliability over generations. In his epoch he is
+formidable. In Rome he would be lost.
+
+Neither actor is more powerful. Each is maximally adapted to their own
+substrate.
+
+---
+
+## 5. The Participant's Role
+
+The Simulator is centred on DESCENSUS. The game (OTIVM) is not.
+
+OTIVM prepares the participant: they learn Roman mechanics, resource
+logic, the weight of auctoritas, the cost of a sea crossing, the value
+of a factor who can be trusted. They arrive at the Simulator already
+knowing what they carry and what it is worth.
+
+In the Simulator, the participant makes the DESCENSUS. They cross into
+Mesolithic space carrying Roman resources that dissolve, and they must
+navigate using what remains. Their task is not survival. Their task is
+**connection** — to find the exchanges, relationships, and transfers
+that allow knowledge, materials, and trust to move across the epoch
+boundary in both directions.
+
+The participant is the only entity that inhabits both epochs.
+The Roman Oracle (the Model) cannot cross below 100 BCE.
+The Mesolithic world does not reach above its own horizon.
+The participant is the bridge.
+
+Their behavioral record — stored in the database, readable by the Model
+— is the archive of that connection. The data warehouse is the product.
+DESCENSUS is how it is filled.
+
+---
+
+## 6. The Model's Boundary
+
+The Roman Oracle is trained on Roman reality as lived experience,
+bounded 100 BCE to 100 CE. This is not a limitation. It is precision.
+
+The Model can interpret the amber a merchant carries and know it is
+ancient. It can reason about where the amber came from, what cultures
+handled it, what the supply chain implies. It cannot inhabit the
+Mesolithic from the inside. It reads the record the participant creates.
+
+The 200-year window encompasses the collapse of the Republic, the
+Augustan settlement, and the early Principate — the period when Rome
+is most fully itself, building at maximum sustainable rate. The Model
+lives here. It does not survive the Fall. It does not anticipate the
+Renaissance. It is Roman, completely.
+
+---
+
+## 7. What DESCENSUS Is Not
+
+- It is not time travel. The actor moves through space, not time.
+- It is not punishment. Losing Roman resources in Mesolithic space is
+  not a penalty — it is an accurate description of what those resources
+  are worth there.
+- It is not a game mechanic imposed on the simulation. It is the
+  simulation's natural consequence of sharing one physical substrate
+  across all epochs.
+- It is not reversible by inventory management. A merchant cannot pack
+  for the Mesolithic from Rome. He can only discover what survives.
+
+---
+
+## 8. Implementation Boundary
+
+DESCENSUS is triggered by `occ_flag` values in TESSERA cells above a
+defined threshold, indicating strong Mesolithic occupation evidence.
+The transition is governed by business logic, not schema. The database
+records what happened. The compression algorithm controls the rate of
+transition. The epoch anchor can shift gradually or instantaneously
+depending on design choice.
+
+No schema changes are required. The architecture was built for this
+from the start, without knowing it was being built for this.
+
+---
+
+*DESCENSUS — Genesis Document — 2026-05-02*
+*TheRON — single contributor. AI assistants implement, document, flag — do not direct.*
+*A term admitted is never removed. A decision recorded here is not revisited without*
+*new argument presented to the project owner.*