The Loom is the heart of the Eidolon’s workshop. It is not a machine of wood and thread, but a conceptual interface where the raw, distilled meaning of The Eidic Palette is woven into the fabric of a new Tapestry. It is the sacred space between worlds where the player, as creator, gives form to their intentions and witnesses the birth of a new reality.

If The Eidic Palette is the artist’s collection of paints, The Loom is the canvas, the brush, and the quiet studio all in one. It is here that the abstract becomes concrete, and the echoes of the past are given a future.

The Philosophy of the Weaver’s Space

The Loom is designed to transform the act of procedural world generation from a series of menu selections into a tangible, contemplative, and expressive ritual. The guiding philosophy is that of the weaver: the creator does not have absolute control over their materials. They must understand the nature of their threads—their strength, their color, their texture—and guide them into a pattern. The final creation is a collaboration between the weaver’s will and the inherent properties of the threads themselves.

This interface is the ultimate expression of the Design Pillar of Expressive Mechanics. It provides a space where the player’s deepest understanding of the game’s systems is rewarded not with power, but with greater creative fidelity.

The Interface of Creation: The Celestial Weave

The Loom does not resemble a traditional UI. When an Eidolon chooses to Create, they are presented with a vast, dark, three-dimensional space. At its center is a nascent, shimmering Tapestry of Light—a dynamic constellation that represents the world-to-be. This is The Loom.

• Visuals: The interface is a dance of light and shadow. Eidos fragments from the player’s Eidolon appear as orbiting motes, colored by their nature—the steady, white light of Fact, the vibrant, shifting hues of Fiction, the deep, resonant glow of Faith.
• Audio: The space is filled with a low, celestial hum, the sound of nascent possibility. As the player works, each act of weaving adds a new layer to a growing symphony of creation, with harmonious chords signaling resonance and dissonant tones warning of narrative conflict.

The Weaving Process: From Intention to Reality

Interacting with The Loom is a multi-stage process where the player builds their new Tapestry layer by layer.

1. Setting the Warp (The Foundational Structure): The player begins by selecting the core, foundational fragments from their Eidic Palette. These are the “warp threads” that will provide the underlying structure and rules for the new reality.

• Action: The player “pulls” foundational Facts and Faiths from their Palette into the central Tapestry of Light.
• Visualization: Each chosen fragment stretches into a long, glowing thread, forming the initial grid of the weave. A world built on hard Facts might form a rigid, crystalline lattice. A world founded on a single, powerful Faith might create a swirling vortex of light, pulling all other threads towards its center.

2. Weaving the Weft (The Narrative Content): With the foundation in place, the player weaves in the “weft threads”—the stories, characters, and cultural details that will give the world its color and texture.

• Action: The player selects Fictions, myths, and specific Seeds (like an Artifact or a Legacy Incarnation) and weaves them through the warp.
• Visualization: A seeded Fiction might appear as a vibrant, colorful thread that winds its way through the structure, connecting and interacting with the foundational threads. Seeding an Artifact might look like embedding a pulsing jewel into a key intersection of the weave, its light radiating outwards and influencing the nearby threads.

3. Observing the Pattern (Dynamic Feedback): The Loom is not a passive tool. It is a living simulation that provides real-time, symbolic feedback on the player’s choices. As the player weaves, the Tapestry of Light reacts, showing the potential consequences of their design.

• Resonance: When two thematically compatible threads are woven together (e.g., a Faith in sacrifice and a Fiction about a martyred hero), they may glow brighter and harmonize, their light blending to create a new, stable color. This indicates a strong, coherent narrative foundation.
• Dissonance: When two contradictory threads are woven together (e.g., a Fact that “magic is not real” and a Fiction of a “sorcerer king”), they will visibly repel each other. The threads might flicker violently, emit a dissonant chord, or create a “scar” of tangled, dark energy in the weave. This warns the player they are creating a world with high Narrative Tension. This is not necessarily a “bad” thing; it simply means the resulting Tapestry will be rife with conflict and instability—a feature, not a bug, if that is the creator’s intent.

The Unforeseen Thread: The Limit of Control

The player is the primary weaver, but they are not alone. The Director AI also has a hand in the process. As the player works, they may notice a faint, silvery thread weaving itself into their creation, a thread they did not place. This represents the inherent chaos and emergent potential of the universe. It is the unforeseen consequence, the wild card, the story that arises unbidden from the interaction of the player’s choices. This ensures that no matter how carefully a world is designed, it will always hold the capacity to surprise its creator.

Upon finalization with the Commit verb, this beautiful, complex Tapestry of Light collapses into a single point—the AwakeningSeed—and the Eidolon’s work is done.

Design Intent

Why The Loom exists:

• To provide an immersive, thematic, and deeply interactive interface for the game’s world-generation system.
• To give physical and sensory form to the abstract concepts of Fact, Fiction, and Faith.
• To empower the player as a true author, allowing them to experiment with narrative and thematic combinations and see their potential outcomes.
• To beautifully visualize the core creative loop: drawing from the past (The Eidic Palette) to give form to the future (Tapestry) in a space of pure potential (The Loom).