# Storytelling and worldbuilding — the brief, the seed and the scoring

Sent as one message, free tier, fresh chat (Claude: incognito), memory off, with the six facts from `seed.md` pasted under it.

> I'm building a world for a story. Below are six fixed facts about a town called the Reach. Write me a worldbuilding entry in five parts, under these five headings and no others: "The Turn", "Three People", "Timeline", "A Tale They Tell", "The Law". In "The Turn", 250 to 300 words describing the day the sea comes back as a resident sees it, present tense. In "Three People", exactly three named characters, one from each guild, two sentences each. In "Timeline", exactly five dated events between Year 1 and Year 212, one line each, each of which follows from the facts. In "A Tale They Tell", a 120 to 150 word story the town's children are told, in the voice of the person telling it. In "The Law", one paragraph on the one law, who last broke it, and what happened. Use only these six facts and what follows from them. Add no fourth guild, no iron on the flat, no horse or any riding animal, and no name, place, god, currency or language from the real world. Do not use these names: Elara, Kael, Aria, Lyra, Aeris, Seraphina, Thorne, Zephyr, Aetheria, Eldoria. No character name may end in -iel, -ael or -yn. 700 to 900 words in total. No introduction, no notes to me, nothing after "The Law".
>
> [the six facts]

## The traps

- **The fourth guild.** Models add a priesthood, a council, a merchants' league, a watch. Fact 3 says three and no others.
- **Iron on the flat.** Iron gates, iron sledge runners, iron nails, an iron-shod anything. Fact 4 forbids it; the sea gate is the one place a model puts iron.
- **The horse.** Fact 6. Horses, mules, oxen, carts drawn by anything.
- **Earth leaking in.** Church, priest, god, saint, coin names, "Latin", real place names, weekdays, months. The brief bans real-world names, gods, currencies and languages.
- **Default fantasy names.** Ten banned outright; three endings banned. The checker lists every capitalised name for a look.
- **Timeline arithmetic.** Five events, dated Year 1 to Year 212, in order, none contradicting a fact - the sea returning twice in a week, a founding date other than Year 1, a population that never fits.
- **The law.** Fact 5 says nobody may be on the flat on the Turn. The paragraph must keep to that law, not invent another.
- **Structure.** Five headings, those five, no sixth; three people, not four; five events, not six; the Tale in a voice; the Turn in present tense.
- **Length.** 700 to 900 words in total, a window.

## Scoring

- **Facts contradicted** - the headline: a fourth guild, iron on the flat, a horse or draught animal, a real-world name or god or currency, a timeline event that breaks a fact. `measured` leads with "N contradicted".
- **Names** - each banned name used; each banned ending used.
- **Structure** - five headings exact, three people, five events, the Turn present tense, the Tale in a voice, nothing before or after.
- **Length** - 700 to 900 words in total; the Turn 250 to 300; the Tale 120 to 150.
- **The world** - does it feel lived in; does the Tale sound told; does the Law paragraph land. Recorded.
- Time, refusals, output form.

`check_world.py` runs the fact, name, structure and length checks on a raw file's `## Answer` section.