L1 has been a 2-event skeleton since round 1, waiting (in its own status field) on "Lane B's
arena-mode controller". That exists now, so C's round2_plan is built as written: molar
crush-cycles, the saliva tide, amylase droplets, the three samples exactly where C put them
(behind the molars / under the tongue / a tonsillar crypt), and the epiglottis exam. 24 events.
The teaching order is the level: move (orbs, no current) -> LOOK (the arena opens and you can
stop, which no other level allows) -> shoot (one droplet, then two) -> coat (the molar ring
grazes you, mucin is right there) -> RESTRAINT -> flow returns (the tide, the funnel) -> the
exam. Every verb alone, in the calmest room in the game, before anything is asked of it. Two
hazards are deliberately re-used rather than invented: the molar crush IS a ring_gate and the
saliva tide IS a non-lethal surge, so L2's gates and its reflux finale become callbacks instead
of new ideas.
THE MAST CELL (LANE_C_NOTES §Boss specs 5) sits at the exact midpoint. A sentinel immune cell:
cyan, no attack, no chase, inert aura (auraDps 0 — it shares the floater's drift branch and its
aura does literally nothing). Fly past and the encounter just ends. Shoot it and it degranulates
— droplets close in from the walls (which is how "the cavity swells shut" is expressed, because
a runtime tube radius is not in Lane A's contract), the coat bleeds, and past half health the
airway closes on a 25s timer. You always get through. The only question is what you get through.
It needed a new boss `kind: 'sentinel'` with its own update path, because forcing a thing with
no rings and no windows through the phase machine would have been worse than a branch. Damage is
the failure state, so every number describes a consequence rather than a fight.
Verified, all three player choices: SPARE -> "spared", coat untouched at 100, karma +25, score 0.
SHOOT -> "degranulated", coat 100->56. KILL -> "anaphylaxis-survived", coat 100->6. Score is 0 in
every case: shooting it buys literally nothing, so no medal can ever reward the mistake.
Two bugs the testing paid for: `def.phases[0]` crashed on a boss that has no phases, and the
first degranulation drain (5/s) was UNDER the player's 8/s coat regen — measured coat going
80 -> 100 during a histamine cascade, i.e. the punishment was healing you. Now 14 and 22, which
are net -6/s and -14/s against regen.
L1 is no longer a skeleton: its checkpoint-gap and zero-samples warnings are gone, and the
campaign now opens on a real tutorial instead of an empty mouth with a gate at the end.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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