Wounds and Mortality¶

Wound Type from Physics¶

A wound is not classified. It is computed from the contact geometry between the weapon and the body.

When two rigid bodies collide, the physics engine computes contact points with normals, penetration depths, and relative velocity. That data, combined with the weapon's geometry, determines wound type.

Edge vs Flat vs Point¶

A weapon has geometric regions — the cutting edge, the point/tip, the blade flat, the pommel. The collision system knows where on the weapon the contact occurred. The contact point maps to the weapon's geometric region:

• Contact near the edge → slash/cut
• Contact at the point → thrust/penetration
• Contact on the flat or shaft → blunt impact
• Contact at the pommel → blunt impact, concentrated

Velocity Determines the Rest¶

The relative velocity at the contact point determines the motion type:

• High tangential velocity, low normal velocity — the blade dragged across the surface. Slash. Long and shallow.
• High normal velocity, low tangential velocity — the weapon drove straight in. Thrust. Deep and narrow.
• High normal velocity on a blunt surface — force distributed across a wide area. Blunt trauma. No cutting.
• High normal velocity on the edge — chop. Deep cut, short length. The axe.

The wound is the output of the physics:

Armor Interaction¶

The same contact is evaluated against armor before reaching the body:

• Edge against plate armor: if edgeSharpness < armorHardness, the edge doesn't penetrate. The contact becomes blunt force transferred through the armor.
• Point against plate: may penetrate weak points (joint gaps, visor slots) while bouncing off solid plate.
• Edge against leather: sharpness usually exceeds hardness. The cut goes through, reduced by thickness.
• Blunt against anything: force transfers through. Plate distributes it. Leather doesn't.

What Wounds Do¶

Wounds don't reduce a health bar. They affect the body's physics:

Local muscle impairment. A wound on a body segment reduces the muscles attached to that segment. A slashed sword arm has reduced MaxForce and ActivationSpeed on the arm muscles. The swing is weaker. The guard is slower. The player feels the wound through the physics.

Blood loss as systemic fatigue. Severe wounds (arteries, deep cuts) accelerate global FatigueRate. All muscles fatigue faster. The character's overall performance degrades. Multiple wounds compound. The player feels every movement getting heavier.

Pain as motor control disruption. A fresh wound disrupts the motor control system briefly — motor target accuracy degrades for a fraction of a second. The character flinches. The swing deviates from intent. Pain is a momentary physics disruption.

The Mortality Split¶

Real God (Pre-River)¶

Real God is mortal. The tribrid body has angel and demon natures that provide accelerated regeneration, but the regeneration has a ceiling. Enough damage exceeds the ceiling. Real God dies.

The healing ceiling:

• MaxHealingRate — wound severity healed per second. Higher than humans (angel + demon natures). Finite.
• OverloadThreshold — when total active wound severity exceeds this, healing stalls. The body can't keep up.

When total wound severity exceeds the overload threshold, healing can't keep up. The body degrades faster than it repairs. Real God dies from accumulated damage exceeding the regeneration ceiling. Not from one wound — from the total load exceeding what the body can hold.

Near-death is real for Real God. The body's physics degrade globally — muscles weaken, motor control destabilizes, balance falters. The player feels death approaching through the physics. Death is: the body's systems failed because the damage exceeded what the regeneration could hold.

Death means consequences. The tribrid nature eventually restores the body even from death, but it takes time. The world moved while the player was dead. Time passed. Faction territory shifted. NPCs acted. Death is a cost measured in what the living world did while God was gone.

This is what makes Real God's combat tense. Every fight has genuine risk. Every wound matters. Every decision to press the attack instead of retreating is a bet with the player's life. Real God plays a mortal game with a higher threshold than humans — but the threshold exists.

True God (Post-River)¶

True God cannot die. The River's fourth heritage completed the darkfire. The container broke and reformed as something that holds everything. True God regenerates without limit — the four heritages are a closed system. A neck slash heals in seconds. A thrust through the heart heals before the blade withdraws. The prime that no factoring algorithm reaches.

Combat for True God is not about survival. The player who cannot die still faces every being with the knowledge of what they're doing to them. The absorption is still destructive. The wounds the player inflicts on others are still fatal. The asymmetry is total — True God takes a sword through the chest and heals. The opponent takes the same wound and dies.

The tension shifts from physical to moral. Real God can claim self-defense. True God cannot. The gameplay shift from "manage my survival" to "witness the cost of my power" is the River's real gift — not immortality, but the removal of the last excuse for violence.

Why The River Death Has Value¶

The player has spent 40+ hours managing wounds, fearing death, retreating to heal, feeling the physics of a body that can break. They've learned what it means to be killable.

Then they enter the water. They die. "You have died." They come back as something that can't die.

The combat feels completely different. Not because the mechanics changed — the physics is the same, the footwork is the same, the momentum is the same. Because the stakes changed. Every wound that used to matter doesn't. Every near-death that used to spike adrenaline doesn't. The thing the player learned to fear is gone.

The player who sails over keeps the mortality. Keeps the fear. Keeps the stakes. Real God's combat stays tense until the Throne.

The player who enters loses the mortality. Gains something else. True God's combat tension is the tension of being the most powerful being in existence and choosing what to do with it.

Same engine. Same physics. Same body. Different mortality. Different game.

Visible Wounds¶

Every wound the physics computes produces a visible mark on the body. The physics is honest — if the sword hit, the body shows it.

Slashes leave an open line on the mesh — depth and length from the physics. The wound gapes proportionally to depth. Shallow slashes are surface cuts. Deep slashes expose tissue.

Thrusts leave a puncture at the contact point. On a through-and-through (penetration depth exceeds segment thickness), exit wound visible on the opposite side.

Blunt impacts leave deformation — bruising, swelling. No break in the skin. Discoloration and distortion at the impact point.

Burns leave charred tissue. The area matches the contact area the heat transfer computed. A brief slash contact leaves a line of light burning. A sustained bind contact leaves a deep char.

Dismemberment¶

A limb separates when the penetration force exceeds the structural integrity of the connecting joint:

• The weapon's contact force at the joint exceeds the joint's structural threshold
• Prior wounds in the area may have weakened the joint
• The weapon's edge geometry and velocity produce sufficient cutting depth to pass through the segment

When a limb separates:

1. The severed segment becomes an independent rigid body — it falls, obeys gravity. It's a physics object now.
2. The character's body physics immediately adapts — the balance controller compensates for lost mass, remaining muscles adjust.
3. The character can still fight. A one-armed fighter uses their remaining arm. The motor control system adapts to available segments.
4. Blood loss from the severed limb massively accelerates fatigue degradation. For NPCs, rapidly fatal. For Real God, pushes hard against the regeneration ceiling. For True God, the limb regrows.

True God regeneration of severed limbs is the most visually striking expression of the mortality split. The player watches the arm reform — new bone, new muscle, new skin, the darkfire rebuilding what was lost. The opponent watches God regrow an arm and understands what they're fighting.

Why Visible Wounds Belong¶

The wounds serve the game, not spectacle:

• The grey. The player sees what their weapon does to another being's body. Abstract violence is easy to ignore. Concrete violence weighs.
• Restraint alternative. The player who restrains instead of killing never sees dismemberment on the beings they spare. The visual difference between the absorber's path and the restrainer's path is the moral argument made visible. No morality meter needed. The bodies tell the story.
• The absorption moment. The being at grapple range, about to be absorbed, carries every wound from the fight on their body. The player sees the full consequence of the combat that preceded the absorption. The visual weight of that moment is the combat made permanent.

God's Body as Record¶

The player's own body is the most honest feedback system in the game.

Real God¶

The wound heals visibly — flesh closes, blood stops, muscle reconnects. But it takes time. During that time, the arm is impaired. The player fights through the healing.

Real God accumulates scars during a fight. Not permanent — the regeneration clears them eventually. But during the fight, the body tells the story of every hit taken. The player looks down and sees slash marks across the torso, a thrust scar on the shoulder, a burn on the forearm. The body IS the consent tracker for what happened to the player — their own flesh records the fight the same way the system records what they did to others.

A severed limb for Real God is a crisis. The arm regrows — slowly. Minutes. During those minutes, the player fights one-armed. The combat system handles it — motor control adapts, balance compensates. But it's worse. Significantly worse. And if the damage overwhelms the ceiling — if too many wounds compound with a severed limb — Real God dies.

True God¶

The wound heals immediately. The flesh closes as the blade withdraws. The blood stops before it flows. The arm that was severed regrows in seconds.

The player watches their own body refuse to be damaged.

The horror of True God's combat is not in taking wounds. It's in not taking them. A sword opens the throat and the throat closes. An arrow pierces the chest and the body pushes it out. The opponent watches God regrow an arm and doesn't fight the same way afterward. They fight like someone who knows they can't win. Or they run. Or they offer themselves.

True God's body shows no scars. No accumulation. No record of damage taken. The body that walked through the entire pilgrimage carrying the evidence of every fight arrives at the Throne unmarked. The physical history is gone. The consent tracker's history — what the player did to others — remains. God's wounds disappear. Everyone else's don't.

The Wound Progression¶

Early game (Eden, Acts 1-2). The player takes wounds and heals them. The regeneration feels like a safety net. Minor scars during fights, cleared between.

Mid game (Acts 3-4). Wounds get worse. Faction war escalation. Corrupted zone creatures. Deep slashes, burns, limbs impaired for significant durations. The regeneration ceiling becomes relevant. The body during a hard fight looks battered.

Hell (Act 5). The Diminishment circle reduces the player's physics — including regeneration. Wounds heal slower. The body accumulates damage faster than it clears. The player enters Hell looking whole and descends looking increasingly broken. By the time the player reaches The River, their body tells the story of the descent — every wound from every circle still partially visible.

The River. The player enters the water carrying the physical evidence of every fight in Hell. The water strips everything. The wounds. The scars. The fatigue. The mechanism. "You have died." The body that stands up has no marks. No history. The physical slate is clean because the physical being is new.

Post-River (True God). Wounds don't accumulate. The body is perpetually unmarked. Every hit heals instantly. The player who spent 40 hours watching wounds accumulate now watches them disappear on contact. The body that was falling apart in Hell is now indestructible.

The Throne. True God faces Michael unmarked. Real God faces Michael carrying every wound from Heaven's ascent. The visual difference between the two Gods at the moment of confrontation is the mortality split made flesh. One God earned the scars. The other God transcended them. Neither is endorsed.

What NPCs Experience¶

NPCs are not tribrids. A neck slash to a human is fatal. A thrust through an angel's chest is fatal (angels are immortal but killable). A deep wound to a demon is fatal.

The wound system applies identically — same physics, same impairment, same severity calculation. But NPCs don't have tribrid regeneration. A severe wound bleeds. The fatigue compounds. The NPC weakens. Eventually the NPC collapses and dies. Or the NPC is wounded badly enough that they can't defend themselves and the player absorbs them.

The mortality asymmetry IS the narrative. The player takes wounds that heal. NPCs take the same wounds and die. Same physics. Different bodies. The player watches an NPC die from a wound the player would have healed from in thirty seconds.

The HUD and Mortality¶

Real God's HUD shows wound states and regeneration load — because that information is life-or-death. Wound locations on the character model. Fatigue state visible in the model's posture. Buff/debuff effects visible on the body. Not numbers. A body. The HUD is a survival instrument.

True God's HUD disappears because survival information is meaningless. There's no wound state to manage. No regeneration ceiling to track. No death to avoid. The instrument went blank because the thing it measured no longer exists. True God can still access the body view menu — they aren't blind to their state. They just don't have it on screen constantly. The player must choose to look.

Magic Wounds¶

Elemental weapons produce secondary wound effects alongside physical wounds. The physical wound comes from the contact geometry. The elemental wound comes from the weapon's additional components:

Fire. Heat transfer on contact. Duration and area from contact physics. A fire sword slash produces a slash wound AND a burn wound at the same location. The slash impairs muscles mechanically. The burn impairs them thermally. Sustained contact (the bind) means continuous heat transfer — the fire sword's advantage in the bind is physical. Metal armor conducts heat to the body underneath. Leather insulates.

Ice. Heat extraction at the contact point. Localized cooling reduces muscle ActivationSpeed in the affected region. A frozen sword arm parries slower. The effect is local, graduated, and temporary — body heat restores the tissue. Not a slow debuff. Localized thermal physics.

Lightning. Involuntary muscle contractions at the contact point. Electrical impulse overrides motor control with random high-force activations. The affected limb spasms — the weapon jerks, the guard collapses, the step falters. Metal armor conducts lightning deeper into the body. Leather insulates.

Tribrid Regeneration¶

The three natures contribute differently to healing:

• Angel nature: Structured healing. Steady, predictable regeneration rate. Bone, muscle, and tendon heal cleanly. The reliable baseline.
• Demon nature: Aggressive healing. Faster rate but costs energy — accelerates fatigue during healing. The sprint recovery.
• Human nature: Adaptive healing. The healing prioritizes the most functionally important wound first. The triage.

The composite healing rate handles minor wounds in seconds. Severe wounds in minutes. Catastrophic wounds take the character out of combat for a significant real-time duration — alive but incapacitated. Real God can be overwhelmed before the healing catches up. True God cannot.

Relationship to the Design Philosophy¶

The mortality split passes the fusion test:

• Character: Real God fights like someone who can die. True God fights like someone who can't. The footwork changes. The aggression changes. The risk tolerance changes. The mortality IS the character.
• Theme: The River strips mortality alongside everything else. The human sacrifice — entering the water as a killable being — earns the transformation. The death is real. "You have died" means the body that knew fear is gone. The being that stands up has lost something every human carries.
• Gameplay: One physics parameter — the regeneration ceiling — changes from finite to infinite at The River. The entire combat experience pivots on it. Every system (wounds, fatigue, balance, healing) operates identically. The difference is a single value. The gameplay shift is total.

Mortality as a physics parameter. Not a design choice — a physical property of the body that changes once, at the water, and never changes back.

The Rating¶

This level of wound fidelity pushes toward a mature rating. That's correct for this game. The design documents describe a game about a being who destroys others to understand them, where the central mechanic is annihilation as empathy, where the fiction addresses sacrifice, deicide, and the moral weight of omniscience. Sanitizing the combat would be dishonest to the themes.

The game is a mirror. The mirror shows what happened. If the sword severed the arm, the mirror shows a severed arm. If the player doesn't want to see severed arms, the player can restrain instead of cut. The choice is the player's. The consequence is the physics. The mirror reflects both.