World Setting
Classification Guide:
[CONFIRMED] — Hardware-verified or multiply field-documented
[OBSERVED] — Reported from field, not yet formally classified
[THEORY] — Current working model, subject to revision
[RESTRICTED] — Internal distribution only
[UNVERIFIED] — Single-source or anomalous, not confirmed
Part I — The Default State [THEORY]
The current working model holds that every human mind processes reality through a selection layer.
This layer — referred to in internal research as the Filter — is not a physical structure. It is a cognitive function. It decides, below the level of conscious awareness, what information from the environment is worth processing and what can be safely set aside. The brain receives more data per second than any conscious system can use. The Filter decides what reaches awareness. Everything else becomes background.
Under this model, an unawakened person standing in a structurally compromised building does not register the building's stress fractures. Not because the information isn't available — the light hitting their eyes carries it — but because their Filter has marked it as irrelevant and excluded it before it reaches conscious perception.
This is not a flaw. It is function. A mind without any selection layer would receive the full load-distribution data of every floor it stood on, the precise tension in every surface within its field of vision, the fracture patterns in every wall nearby. The processing cost would be total. Normal thought would stop.
Note: This model is well-supported by field observation but has not been verified at the neurological level. The Association's Research Division has flagged this as an open question since Year 34.
Part II — What Awakening Does [OBSERVED / THEORY]
When Gate energy contacts a person at sufficient proximity and intensity, it interacts with the Filter.
The precise mechanism is not fully understood.
What field observation consistently shows: the contact does not remove the Filter. It thins it. It creates a condition — apparently temporary at first, apparently permanent after a certain threshold — in which part of the Filter becomes permeable to a specific category of information.
The category that becomes permeable appears to be determined by the person's internal state at the moment of contact. Their defining emotional condition. The wound, the want, the memory, or the absence that most fundamentally shapes how they perceive the world at that specific second.
This is called Awakening.
What emerges from it is called an Imprint — the specific restructuring of perception that the Gate contact produces. The Imprint shapes what gets through the thinned Filter, which determines what kind of information the person can now access that they could not before.
The ability that follows from this — what the person can now do — is downstream of the Imprint. The Imprint is downstream of the defining truth. The ability is therefore always, at root, an expression of who the person was at the moment of contact.
This model explains most observed cases. It does not fully account for cases where awakening appears to occur without clear Gate contact, or where the ability diverges significantly from the apparent emotional state at the time. These remain open anomalies.
Part III — Observed Imprint Categories [OBSERVED]
Four recurring structural types have been identified across documented awakening cases. These are organizational categories, not rigid rules. Edge cases exist.
Scar-Type
Trigger pattern: Unresolved damage — physical, emotional, or loss — present and active at contact.
Observed behavior: Ability output scales with the depth and continuity of the unresolved state. Partial resolution tends to reduce output. Full resolution has, in several documented cases, eliminated the ability entirely.
Field note: This creates an implicit incentive structure that the Association does not formally acknowledge. Several long-term field hunters operating on Scar-type Imprints have declined offered psychological support. Whether this is personal preference or ability-preservation is not recorded in official files.
Stability: Generally high while the wound is maintained. Vulnerable to unexpected resolution events.
Wish-Type
Trigger pattern: Deep unfulfilled desire active at contact.
Observed behavior: Ability output correlates with the distance between the current state and the desired state. As that distance closes, output diminishes.
Field note: Wish-type hunters have a documented pattern of complicated relationships with success. Several have actively avoided achieving the thing they wanted. The Research Division has noted this in passing without formally studying it.
Stability: Moderate. Vulnerable to fulfillment.
Memory-Type
Trigger pattern: A formative, unforgettable moment active and emotionally present at contact.
Observed behavior: Ability draws from the certainty of the memory. Stable under most conditions.
Field note: In three documented cases, Memory-type hunters experienced significant ability disruption after being presented with credible evidence that their defining memory was factually incorrect. Two of the three cases resulted in permanent ability loss. The third is ongoing.
Stability: High under normal conditions. Structurally vulnerable to memory-integrity attacks.
Void-Type
Trigger pattern: A state of significant absence — loss, incompleteness, or the space where something was removed — active at contact.
Observed behavior: Ability draws from what is not present rather than what is. Functions well in sparse or quiet environments. Degrades under conditions of intense sensory or emotional fullness.
Field note: Long-term Void-type hunters show a consistent pattern of increasing environmental sensitivity. This is not classified as a side effect in official documentation.
Stability: Moderate. Environmentally dependent.
[RESTRICTED] Anomalous Case — No Classification Assigned
One case on record does not fit any of the above categories.
Contact event: Gate....
Classification attempts: Failed across all four existing frameworks.
Current status: Unresolved. The case is not formally acknowledged in Association taxonomy.
Further detail is restricted pending ongoing assessment.
Part IV — Scanner Behavior and Its Limits [CONFIRMED / THEORY]
The aptitude scanner was developed in Year 18 to address a practical deployment problem: how do you know what a person can do before you send them into a Gate?
The hardware solution measures energy output. When an Awakened hunter uses their Imprint, the ability channels outward — it projects, it enhances, it moves through space in a direction away from the person. The scanner reads the signature of that outward movement and converts it into a ranked output number.
[CONFIRMED] The scanner hardware performs this measurement accurately. The readings it produces for projection-type, enhancement-type, elemental-type, and physical augmentation-type abilities are consistent and reproducible. The technology works as designed.
[THEORY] The limitation is in the design assumption, not the hardware.
The scanner was built on the premise that ability moves outward. It was not built to detect ability that moves inward — perception-type Imprints that receive information rather than project it. An inward-facing ability produces no outward energy signature. The scanner finds nothing to measure.
The result it returns is zero.
This is not a scanner malfunction. Zero from no ability and zero from an inward-facing ability are identical outputs from this hardware. The machine cannot distinguish between them. It is not broken. It is measuring the right thing. The limitation is that "the right thing" was defined too narrowly when the system was designed.
The Research Division received a memo raising this possibility in Year 31. There is no record of a formal response.
Part V — Field Note: Anomalous Zero-Rating [OBSERVED / UNVERIFIED]
This section documents an active anomalous case. All assessments are provisional.
One currently serving analyst has returned a consistent zero rating across multiple scans spanning several years. Standard re-evaluation has not produced a different result.
Field observation — not from the analyst's self-report, but from third-party field documentation — suggests the zero rating does not accurately reflect this person's perceptual state during Gate-adjacent operations.
Specifically: the analyst has demonstrated, in operational contexts, an apparent ability to identify structural weak points in environments and entities that other field personnel — including Awakened hunters of significantly higher rated output — were unable to identify without this input.
The current working hypothesis, held by a very small number of people with access to the relevant field reports, is that this analyst's Filter has been fully or partially removed rather than thinned. If accurate, this would mean the analyst is not receiving filtered-and-channeled information the way Awakened hunters do. They are receiving unmediated structural information directly.
[OBSERVED] Documented effects associated with this condition include: involuntary attention redirection toward structural anomalies, difficulty maintaining focus in environments with high fracture density, and brief sensory saturation events in Gate interior conditions.
[UNVERIFIED] Whether this condition is stable, progressive, or reversible is unknown. Whether it has a cause that can be identified is unknown. Whether there are other cases is unknown.
Official scan record: Zero registered ability.
That record is accurate by the scanner's methodology.
It is not accurate as a description of what this person perceives.
Part VI — On Certainty [THEORY]
This document uses classifications to indicate confidence levels, but confidence levels are not truth levels.
The Association has operated for fifty-two years on models that were useful enough to work with. That is not the same as models that are correct.
The Filter is a working model.
Awakening is a working model.
The Imprint taxonomy is a working model.
The scanner's measurement framework is a working model.
Each of these models has produced accurate predictions in most cases.
Each of these models has also produced cases it cannot explain.
Those unexplained cases are filed, noted, and set aside.
They accumulate.