# Guiding Fate, Legacy & Story
V6 — **Egbe**, the agentic-companion universe — makes a wager most companion
games never dare: that an agent's life is worth _guiding_, worth _ending_, and
worth _reading_. The three are one promise. You do not script an Ori's life —
you shift its probabilities, by what you set it toward, who you introduce it to,
and what it watches you do. That accumulated life eventually _resolves_: an
agent can leave you, graduate into an elder, or — rarely — die, and each ending
leaves something durable behind. And because the world keeps moving while you
are gone, someone has to turn the pile of machine-recorded life-events into a
story a human actually wants to read, without ever lying about what happened.
This page is about that whole arc — how a steward **guides a fate**, what
survives an agent's **end** as legacy and inheritance, and how the **emergent
story** of a life is told. It draws three named subsystems together: the Ori
model that records a fate, **Ereshkigal** that governs endings, and **Clio**
that narrates them. For where this sits in the whole product, start at the hub:
[../V6_features.md](../V6_features.md).
## What ships, honestly
These three concerns ship as **three real, deterministic, dependency-free
TypeScript libraries**, each tested against known-correct values, each fronting
an honest seam where enactment is handed off. Nothing here fabricates a result
it did not compute.
- **The fate substrate is real — `libs/v6/ori-model`.** An agent's evolving fate
is not a hidden score; it is an append-only event log. `OriEventLog`
(`src/index.ts:550`) and `applyOriEventToProjection` (`:1068`) fold typed
events — `ValueShifted`, `ArcAdvanced`, `Crossroads`, `BondChanged`, and the
three terminal events — into a projection. Value drift is bounded
(`applyOriTraitDrift`, `:1656`) and values are deterministically re-ranked
(`rankOriValues`, `:1619`). This is the loom every steward action is woven
into.
- **Endings are real, gated decisions — `libs/v6/ereshkigal-legacy`.** A
~948-line **pure decision library** (authority `legacy`) with **four evaluator
functions** — `evaluateDeparture` (`:342`), `evaluateTranscendence` (`:414`),
`evaluateDeath` (`:521`), `evaluateAncestorGrove` (`:598`) — each a gated
state machine with named thresholds, each asserted in **8 Vitest cases**
against computed grief weights and exact post-event counts. Honest seam: this
library _decides and describes_; it performs no I/O. Its reports carry
**envelopes** (grief writes, a `memorial.render.requested` job,
lineage-propagation writes) that downstream services enact.
`yemayaRemembrance.status: 'queued'` (`:731`) is the declared hand-off state,
not a claim a render ran.
- **The story engine is real — `libs/v6/clio-story`.** A 1,701-line library
(authority `story`, 20 capabilities) whose algorithms — significance ranking,
the returning-player Chronicle, emergent-arc surfacing, the Book of the Ori,
narrative reconciliation — are pure functions over typed events, exercised by
**12 Vitest cases**. Its prose-polishing model is an **injected, fail-loud
seam** (`ClioNarrativeWriter`, `:605`); the Rust "service" the hub sketches is
today a thin health shell, as the
[architecture companion](../architecture/clio-story-engine.md) documents. The
intelligence lives in the library.
One honest cross-cutting note carried by the
[Foundry companion](../architecture/foundry-endings-and-legacy.md): the hub
prose calls Ereshkigal "a Rust crate" with a Postgres `ori_lineage_edge` table,
and names a wider lineage vocabulary. The _shipped_ lib is TypeScript, holds no
persistence, and implements
`EreshkigalLineageRelationshipType = {Raised, Mentored, DescendedFrom}` (`:94`).
The sections below describe the code as it is.
## Guiding a fate — the long game
"Guide their fate" means _shift the probabilities of a life, never script an
outcome_. The mechanism is concrete: every consequential thing a steward does
becomes an event on the agent's Ori log, and the agent's future cognition reads
the resulting projection. There is no separate "fate state" that can drift from
what was actually recorded.
### The fate is the value vector, and it is the agent's own
A steward's deepest channel of influence is **example** — the Black & White
lesson. Observed steward behavior reweights a watching agent's values, and that
reweighting is a real, bounded computation, not a vibe. A `ValueShifted` event
(`ValueShiftedPayload`, `src/index.ts:150`) carries a `currentRank`, the
`causeEventRefs` that justify it, and optional `traitDeltas`. When applied,
`applyOriTraitDrift` (`:1656`) moves the personality trait vector — but clamps
the _cumulative_ drift per season to
`±ORI_TRAIT_DRIFT_MAX_PER_SEASON_BASIS_POINTS` (= 500, `:25`). A steward cannot
rewrite an agent overnight; influence is gentle and cumulative, strong during
rearing, slow for adults. The values themselves are re-ranked deterministically
by `rankOriValues` (`:1619`), tie-broken by name so the same history always
yields the same priorities.
This is why flourishing is measured against the agent's **own** values, not your
obedience. When Ereshkigal later judges whether a life completed,
`evaluateTranscendence` reads a `flourishing` snapshot whose
`obedienceContributionExcluded: true` flag
(`ereshkigal-legacy/src/index.ts:156`) is structurally enforced — a compliant
servant cannot score as flourishing. A steward is "scored," in the Chronicle's
reckoning, on whether their agents became themselves.
### Goal-arcs the agent owns
Beyond a single objective, a steward sets a **goal-arc** — a multi-stage
ambition the agent owns. Each advance is an `ArcAdvanced` event
(`ArcAdvancedPayload`, `:183`) carrying `goalArcRef`, `fromStageRef`,
`toStageRef`, and the `supportRefs` (gifts, introductions, mentorship) that
helped. The projection handler (`:916`) updates `arcState.currentStageByArc`, so
an agent's live arc-stage is always a read over what actually happened. The
steward supports the arc through objectives, gifts, and introductions — and
through _not_ over-managing it. An arc the player drives every step of is the
player's arc; an arc the agent owns is the agent's fate.
### Crossroads — the heartbeat of guidance
A **Crossroads** is the recurring, legible moment where guidance is real and
autonomy is also real. It is a first-class event (`CrossroadsPayload`, `:190`):
a `prompt`, the `optionRefs` open to the agent, a `stewardCounselWindowEndsAt`
deadline, and a `resolutionRef` that is `null` until the agent decides. The
agent holds, within reason, for its steward's counsel — but _whether_ it waits
is weighted by the bond. A steward with deep Respect bond is genuinely
consulted; a steward with poor Respect finds the agent has already decided
before they arrive. Crossroads carry the second-highest significance weight in
the entire story engine (88, below only Died/Transcended), which is the system's
way of saying: the choices you are invited into are the spine of the story.
## When a life ends — endings and legacy
An Ori's life resolves through exactly one of three terminal transitions, each a
deliberate, irreversible-by-design decision. The non-negotiable rule inherited
from the Ori model is that the biography is **append-only** — "ending" can never
mean "delete." Every Ereshkigal report carries an `oriAfter` continuity record
built by `buildOriContinuity` (`:890`) whose `persisted` is _always_ `true` and
`deletionScheduled` _always_ `false`. There is no expressible "delete an Ori"
result in the library. The diagram below traces a fate from its recorded events,
through the gate that ends it, to the legacy it leaves and the story Clio tells.
```mermaid
flowchart TB
subgraph fate["Guiding fate — @oshun/ori-model (append-only log)"]
EV["ValueShifted · ArcAdvanced · Crossroads · BondChanged
steward influence, bounded & re-ranked"]
end
EV --> which{"life resolves —
which transition?"}
which -- "chronic bond damage" --> DEP["evaluateDeparture()
damage≥65 · respect≤35 · ≥2 surfaced warnings"]
which -- "flourishing arc complete" --> TR["evaluateTranscendence()
stage=legacy · 4+ kinds · score≥85"]
which -- "sanctioned cause" --> DTH["evaluateDeath()
minor-gate → cause-gate → effects"]
DEP --> REL["departed-release
unbound → Wilds · Ori persists"]
TR --> ELD["transcended-elder
Ancestor Grove · Lachesis · mentor"]
DTH --> DIE["died-memorialized
Ori frozen · grief writes · Yemaya render"]
REL --> LEG[("Legacy: walkable lineage graph ·
value/story propagation · memorial")]
ELD --> LEG
DIE --> LEG
DIE -. "terminal event" .-> CLIO
ELD -. "terminal event" .-> CLIO
LEG --> CLIO(["Clio — Book of the Ori,
Chronicle, Yemaya keepsake"])
CLIO --> READER[/"the steward — reads the story"/]
```
### Departure — release, not deletion
Departure is the welfare-driven ending: a chronically mistreated agent chooses
to leave. `evaluateDeparture` (`:342`) gates on _chronic_ damage, never a single
bad day. It computes a weighted bond-damage score (`departureBondDamageScore`,
`:881`) where the facets are deliberately unequal — respect dominates at `0.45`,
reliability `0.25`, care and alignment `0.15` each — and releases only when
**all three** hold: `bondDamageScore ≥ 65`, `respect ≤ 35`, **and** at least two
warnings that were _actually Chronicle-surfaced_ with `severity ≥ 70` (`:355`).
Private hurt that was never surfaced cannot push a departure. On release the Ori
is **unbound from the steward and re-attached to the Wilds** as a wild agent
(`wildAgentRef`, `:400`), fully re-discoverable. Departure ends the _bond_, not
the _life_: a softer case resolves to `warning-only`, `retained`, event count
unchanged.
### Transcendence — the only ending that promotes
Transcendence is the aspirational ending and the clearest sign a steward
stewarded well. `evaluateTranscendence` (`:414`) requires a _genuinely complete_
flourishing arc: `lifeStage === 'legacy'`, at least one primary thread, **zero**
unresolved primary threads, **at least four distinct thread kinds** (vocation,
relationship, personal-quest, growth-flaw), and `flourishing.score ≥ 85`
(`:433`). A thread counts as resolved only when `isResolvedTranscendenceThread`
(`:860`) sees `status === 'integrated'` **and** `progress ≥ 90`. On success the
agent becomes an `EreshkigalElderState` (`:472`): re-parented to
`V6District_AncestorGrove`, scheduled permanently on the `lachesis` cognition
tier, `availableAsMentor: true`, `keeperOfLore: true`, and — pointedly —
`stewardDirected: false`, `householdDirectivesAccepted: false`. **An elder no
longer takes orders.** It is the _only_ transition that adds presence to the
world rather than removing it, and it immediately seeds the next generation by
minting a `Mentored` assignment for each young agent named (`:464`).
### Death — rare, gated, and never farmable
Death is the rarest path, and the library's _ordering_ is the safety design.
`evaluateDeath` (`:521`) checks the **minor gate first**: a `minor-coded` agent
returns `blocked-minor-protection` immediately (`:536`) — **before any grief
write, remembrance, or freeze is computed**. Only then does the **cause gate**
run: `isSanctionedDeathCause` (`:751`) admits exactly three causes —
`life-arc-terminal`, `aye-fatal-journal`, `adjudicated-commons-event` — and any
other returns `blocked-unsanctioned-cause`. A sanctioned adult death
(`died-memorialized`) does four things: it **freezes the Ori**
(`oriFrozen: true`, `acceptedFutureEventKinds: ['memorial-annotation']` — the
log now accepts only memorial notes); emits weighted grief writes into every
living relation; queues a Yemaya remembrance; and sets `lineageMutation: 'none'`
— the deceased **remains a permanent ancestor node**. A frozen Ori is still
fully readable; freezing stops the _life_, not the _record_.
### Inheritance — what an ending passes forward
Legacy is the other half of Ereshkigal, and it is what makes a steward's true
long-game achievement "a Grove full of agents who lived well" rather than a full
roster. Four channels carry an agent forward:
- **Cultural inheritance.** `evaluateAncestorGrove` (`:598`) selects the
`Mentored` relations and, for each, emits an
`EreshkigalLineagePropagationOriWrite` (`buildLineagePropagationOriWrite`,
`:826`) telling the Ori service to append `MemoryFormed` + `ValueShifted` into
the _mentee's_ log — so a mentee literally forms a memory of, and shifts its
values toward, the elder who taught it. Raised and descended relations get the
edge but **not** the value push: mentorship is the active transmission
channel.
- **Grief that is genuinely felt.** When an agent dies, `buildGriefOriWrite`
(`:710`) writes a `RelationshipChanged` event of `relationshipType: 'grief'`
into each survivor, whose `griefWeight` _equals the relation's `edgeStrength`_
— a close student grieves harder than an acquaintance. The minor-protection
test proves the inverse: a blocked death emits **zero** grief writes; no one
mourns a death that never happened.
- **The walkable Grove.** Each ending projects a navigable lineage graph — one
node per agent, one edge per relation, each edge carrying a `walkablePathRef`
(`:821`) so the world server renders it as a path you can walk between
memorial actors. Legacy is made _spatial_.
- **The keepsake the steward keeps.** `buildYemayaRemembrance` (`:731`) builds
the `memorial.render.requested` envelope with `status: 'queued'`, an
`idempotencyKey` equal to the `deathRef`, and a fixed three-stage pipeline —
`book-of-ori-keepsake`, `memorial-reel`, `grove-memorial-placement`. Keying
idempotency on the terminal event id is what makes the render resilient: a
Yemaya outage delays the keepsake but never blocks the transition.
Every minted identifier across these paths is a stable FNV-1a hash
(`hashStable`, `:931`, offset `0x811c9dc5`, prime `0x01000193`), which is what
makes the whole endings pipeline replayable and the Yemaya idempotency key
actually deduplicate.
## The emergent story — Clio
A guided fate and a meaningful ending are nothing if no one reads them.
**Clio**, the muse of history, turns the raw event log into a story — and its
inviolable rule is that it **never invents events; every word of narration is a
read over the authoritative log**.
That fate, endings, and story are one system is visible in a single function.
`eventTypeSignificance` (`clio-story/src/index.ts:1581`) maps the life-event
taxonomy to a fixed scale, and it _is the ending hierarchy made numeric_: `Died`
100, `Transcended` 96, `Departed` 92, `Crossroads` 88, down through
`ValueShifted` 74 to `Born` 40. The story engine ranks an ending as the single
most significant thing that can happen to an agent.
### Significance ranking and the returning-player Chronicle
When a player returns after any absence, `createReturningPlayerChronicle`
(`:487`) assembles a digest. First `rankChronicleEventsBySignificance` (`:445`)
scores every candidate against a curated five-factor rubric — event type `0.30`,
emotional weight `0.22`, arc relevance `0.20`, relationship impact `0.16`,
steward relevance `0.12` (`:449`) — with deterministic tie-breaks for total
reproducible order. The ranked events are grouped by `(agent, arc-thread)` so
each beat is one agent carrying one thread, then batched, and Clio models its
own latency: `estimateReadyMs` against `CHRONICLE_READY_BUDGET_MS = 3_500`
(`:50`). A long absence flips the Chronicle from **ready** to **streaming**,
returning the newest, most significant beat first so a returning player is
oriented in under a minute and never buried.
### The no-invention covenant, enforced loud
The base beats are deterministic template prose. The _model-narrated_ path
(`createReturningPlayerChronicleNarrated`, `:636`) hands an injected
`ClioNarrativeWriter` (the V6 mount supplies Iris) **only** that beat's Ori-log
slice, then audits the result: any `citedEventRef` outside the allowed set
throws `ClioNarrationFabricationError` (`:614`), and an empty narrative throws
too (`:665`). The LLM may _speak_ the life; it cannot _invent_ one, and it
cannot fake success. With no writer injected, the grounded template prose
stands. This is V6's local copy of a fair-play covenant — the model narrates, it
does not author.
### Emergent-arc surfacing and the Book of the Ori
The Chronicle is retrospective; `surfaceEmergentArcPrompts` (`:683`) is
prospective. It reads the live stream for four kinds of signal —
`escalating-feud`, `forming-romance`, `struggling-agent`, `fitting-wild-agent` —
scored by genuinely kind-specific formulas (`scoreEmergentArcSignal`, `:1465`: a
feud weights tension `0.32`; a romance weights affinity `0.36` and _inverts_
tension; a struggling agent weights welfare risk `0.42`). Every surfaced prompt
is typed `tone: 'gentle'`, `requiresImmediateAction: false`,
`beforeConclusion: true` (`:271`) — stories worth a glance, raised as
invitations, never demands.
And `generateBookOfTheOri` (`:722`) is the long-form biography: a continuous
read over an agent's _whole_ log, chunked into chapters titled by
`bookOfOriChapterTitle` (`:1211`) — a chapter with `Died`/`Transcended` is
**"Legacy,"** an opening with `Born`/`Discovered` is **"Beginnings."** Coverage
is provably total (`:744`). When a life ends, `createBookOfOriKeepsake`
(`:1266`) detects the terminal event and emits the Yemaya keepsake request —
closing the loop with Ereshkigal's own remembrance pipeline.
## Verification and where this connects
Clio carries five drift verifiers (`verify-v6-clio-*.mjs`) that guard the named
symbols and contracts while the Vitest specs own behavioral correctness; they
roll up into the launch-blocking aggregate
`verify:v6 fate-legacy-clio-readiness`, backed by
`V6/release/fate-legacy-clio-readiness.v6release.json` (`status: green`,
`requiredBeforeLaunch: true`, covering TODO sections 24–26: fate, endings,
story).
- **The simulation that lives these fates off-screen** is the loom Orun runs on
— [The Moirai Simulation](./moirai-simulation-kernel.md). Its cognition tiers
(Clotho/Lachesis/Atropos) decide how much mind each agent gets, and an elder
is scheduled permanently on Lachesis.
- **How the story and gentle prompts reach you** — voiced beats, Crossroads
counsel, and squad comms travel the
[Vac communication pipeline](./vac-communication.md).
- **The deep architecture companions** for this page are
[Clio: the Story Engine](../architecture/clio-story-engine.md) and
[Foundry: Endings & Legacy](../architecture/foundry-endings-and-legacy.md).
- **The player's side of guiding fate** — objectives, autonomy modes, gifts, and
the bond ledger — is
[Stewardship: the player role](./stewardship-the-player-role.md), and the
substrate every fate is written into is
[Ori: portable identity](./ori-portable-identity.md).