# HEXWORK — *A Lantern in the Deep*

## Pre-Production Bible — Index

> **Logline:** *The Witcher meets NetHack inside a dead god-machine, rendered as 3D ASCII in your terminal.*
> A first-person/orbitable 3D roguelike RPG. Witcher-and-Elder-Scrolls-style
> low fantasy on the surface; retro-futurist machine-ruin underneath. Emergent,
> systemic, unapologetically cruel — but every cruelty is deducible, every death
> is a story, and every system compounds with every other system in 3D space.

| # | Document | Audience | Answers |
|---|----------|----------|---------|
| 00 | [Vision Pitch](00-vision-pitch.md) | The suits | Why this game, why now, why us, what it costs |
| 01 | [Player Experience](01-player-experience.md) | Everyone | What players see, do, feel, think — minute by minute |
| 02 | [Lore Bible](02-lore-bible.md) | Writers, designers, artists | The world of Vael, the Aetherium, gods, factions, tone |
| 03 | [Systems Design](03-systems-design.md) | Designers, engineers | Every feature: items, magic, NPCs, dungeons, emergent sim |
| 04 | [Software Architecture](04-software-architecture.md) | Engineers | Rust workspace, crates, sim, ECS, data flow, saves, tests |
| 05 | [Renderer Spec](05-renderer-spec.md) | Engine team | How 3D ASCII actually works, looks, and performs |
| 06 | [Implementation Checklist](06-implementation-checklist.md) | Everyone | Ordered checkbox list to ship the game start → finish |

**Design laws (memorize these; they govern every doc):**

1. **TDTTOE — The Devteam Thinks Of Everything.** Any interaction the systems
   imply *must* work. If acid melts iron grates, it melts iron helmets.
2. **HWISKT — "How Was I Supposed To Know That?" is a compliment** — but only
   when the answer is *"by reasoning about consistent rules."* Never random
   gotchas. Deducible cruelty only.
3. **Illiteracy, not nostalgia.** The goal is making veterans feel like
   first-time NetHack players again. Verticality + 3D physics + machine-law
   magic exist to break expert instincts.
4. **Every death is a story.** Permadeath stays. Death replays (`.hexdemo`
   files) ship in v1. If a death isn't worth retelling, the system that caused
   it is unfinished.
5. **Modern kindness, ancient soul.** Auto-explore, message log, search,
   colorblind and screen-reader support — QoL is sacred. Hand-holding is not.