# THE REALM-EXPRESSION SYSTEM
**Kidunaverse Design Round 2 · a continuous expression space, not templates · July 7, 2026**

A realm (duna or alliance) expresses itself through a bounded set of continuous variables — the "rendering" clause of its configuration (working-organization Part III §5). There are no types, no templates, no "health orgs get the clinical skin." Every realm sets the same dials; the dials are continuous; the invariants are untouchable.

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## 1. What a realm MAY set

| Variable | Range / bound | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| **ground hue** | one hue, mixed ≤12% into espresso `#1C140D`; drawn from the sanctioned deep set (camel, chocolate, aubergine, navy, violet, sky-dark, magenta-dark) | the neighborhood's temperature; the primary drift tell |
| **ground motion** | breathing amplitude 0–1, period 30–120s | how alive the floor feels |
| **rendering voice** | prose register in the baseline prompt | word choice and the pacing of ideas when grounded here (clinical / loud / quiet) — text only; see §2.10 for the spoken voice |
| **compression bias** | says-less ↔ says-more | how much a rendering elaborates (Cosmic Humanity would rather say less) |
| **type mood** | display scale ×0.9–1.15 · line-height snug↔loose · claim density 0.8–1.2 | spaciousness; never a different typeface |
| **claim garnish** | one optional per-claim annotation slot | e.g. BiHome's confidence interval, Lui Mutual's reserve band |
| **code skin** | how a traveling code renders | ember, ticket, printed QR — ritual only; the JWT and readout are fixed |
| **room dress** | room surface palette + presence-mark styling within the ground-hue bound | Cosmic Humanity's rooms ≠ Fellowship of Play's rooms |
| **field tells** | particle temperature; weather-tint intensity ×0.5–1.5 | how loudly the ground reports |
| **sound** | opt-in palette, off by default, only past the member's Contract | rooms and bells only; never the Thread |

All values are per-realm scalars in the duna's configuration — a point in expression space, editable by proposal like any policy. Two realms can be arbitrarily close or far; nothing snaps to an archetype.

## 2. What a realm may NEVER touch

1. **The eight invariants' semantics** — Thread, Account, Docket, Seal, Codes, Rooms, Contract, Vigil. A realm can change how a claim *sounds*, never whether it is cited, consequence-ordered, correctable.
2. **Sky = touchable. Gold = signature moments.** The two meaning-bearing colors are system-wide; a realm's hue may never collide with them (the sanctioned deep set excludes both).
3. **The Docket's anatomy and gravity** — title · consequence · acts · context-back; press-and-hold; bounded deck; words-not-numerals. No realm makes signing lighter or louder.
4. **Citations.** Every claim cites, in every realm, at every compression.
5. **The type families** — Goudy Heavyface display, Avenir body, IBM Plex Sans callouts. Mood moves; family doesn't.
6. **Legibility floors** — body ≥14px, contrast ≥ WCAG AA on the realm's ground (the 12% mix bound exists to guarantee this), motion-reduction honored.
7. **The member's Contract** — thresholds, interrupt rules, tone clauses bind identically everywhere; a realm cannot buy louder access to a member.
8. **The meter's honesty** — compute/token display is system-rendered, uneditable by realm.
9. **DS core tokens** — no realm injects colors outside the palette or redefines `--accent`/`--kid-sun-gold` semantics.
10. **The ally's spoken voice.** In a realtime voice session, timbre, pacing, warmth, and interruption style are constant per ally, everywhere — a realm's rendering voice (row 1) drifts word choice and the pacing of ideas, never how the voice sounds. Audible identity is felt far more strongly than type mood ever was; a voice that changes personality mid-conversation reads as a different person, and barge-in trust doesn't survive that. (Resolved in Design R3, `OPEN-QUESTIONS.md` #5.)

## 3. The seven real realms, as points in the space

| Realm | ground hue | voice | compression | type mood | code skin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Kinship Duna** | camel 8% | warm, direct, literary | balanced | 1.0 · body | ember |
| **BiHome** | sky-dark 8% + mint garnish | clinical, cited, calm | says-more (with confidence) | 0.95 · snug | ember |
| **Service Alliance** | chocolate 12% | practical, brief | says-less | 1.0 · dense | ticket |
| **Cosmic Humanity** | aubergine 12% / violet | quiet, spacious, unhurried | says-least | 1.1 · loose | ember, dim |
| **Fellowship of Play** | magenta-dark 10% + lime sparks | loud, alive | says-more, punchy | 1.15 · dense | ticket |
| **Party Line** | magenta-dark 12% | playful, telegraphic | says-less | 1.1 · dense | ticket/QR |
| **Lui Mutual** | navy 10% | sober, obligation-literate | says-more, precise | 0.9 · snug | printed QR |

The same claim rendered by BiHome and Fellowship of Play differs in hue, register, density, and garnish — and is identical in citation, ordering, correctability, and what gold means. That is the whole system.

## 4. Enforcement

Expression values live in the realm's graph configuration and are validated at write time (bounds above are schema, not convention). The client renders only from validated configs; there is no realm-supplied CSS/code path. A realm that wants a variable outside the bounds proposes a change *to this document* — expression space grows by legislation, not exception.
