# Season 7 End-State Design (Principle-Level)

*Phase 1 deliverable per PIPE-05 + CONTEXT D-08. Principle-level only — treatment text is authored in Phase 7.*

This document answers the question that ends ROADMAP.md Phase 7's success criterion #4:

> *"the finite Roothold ceiling from Phase 4 has held the line, and the game has ended
> the way A Dark Room and Universal Paperclips ended."*

Per .planning/research/PITFALLS.md #1, "the story ends but the idle loop doesn't"
is the single most dangerous structural pitfall for this project. This document
is the canonical answer the project has *before* any economy code lands in Phase 2.

Per CONTEXT D-08: this is **principle-level**, not treatment-level. It defines the
contract Phase 7's authoring obeys, not the text of any final scene.

## What does *rest state* mean?

The rest state is the post-credits configuration the player can return to indefinitely
without grinding. Concretely:

- **No new fragments are added to the pool.** All authored content has been delivered.
  Harvests after the final binary choice yield re-readable previously-collected
  fragments — nothing new.
- **No new currency tiers unlock.** Roothold has reached its finite ceiling (see below)
  and stays there. There is no "Season 8" hidden behind a number.
- **The garden continues to render and respond to clicks.** Plants can still be
  planted. Seasons (now in Return register) continue to crossfade. The world is
  not frozen — it is *finished*.
- **The Pale has receded.** The Heartsoil expands beyond the garden walls. Lura's
  arc has resolved. The Archivist's question has been answered (in the player's
  Season 7 binary choice — STRY-08).
- **The cello and ambient layers continue.** The audio is *quiet*, *finite*,
  *understood* — never crescendos again, never hard-cuts.

This is not "endgame content." It is **rest**. Lineage: *A Dark Room* fades to its
ending screen and the player returns to it for the same reason they return to a
finished album — not because there is more, but because there was *enough*.

## What is the finite Roothold ceiling tied to?

Roothold's ceiling is anchored in the **count of authored fragments and the count
of Seasons** — not in an arbitrary number, not in a designer's intuition.

The principle:

> *One cannot accumulate more Roothold than the player has actually understood,
> and what the player can understand is bounded by what the writer has actually written.*

Concrete tie:

- Roothold gain per Season is gated to a hard cap proportional to the fragment
  count of that Season + a small contribution from Roothold-relevant story beats
  (Lura conversations, the Nameless Man's arc, the Archivist's question, etc.).
- Total Roothold ceiling = Σ(per-Season caps).
- **Phase 4 enforces this cap** when it implements `migrate_v1_to_v2` and the
  prestige state machine (SEAS-04). Phase 7 verifies the ceiling holds through
  full play.
- When Roothold reaches the ceiling, the UI displays "Roothold (full)" — never
  a hidden multiplier or "go again to overflow."

Implication for designers: when adding fragments in Phase 5+, the Roothold ceiling
*moves* — adding 5 new Season-3 fragments adds proportional headroom. This is
intentional. Roothold is bounded by content; content is bounded by the writer.

## What tonal register does the coda live in?

- **Warm**, not pyrrhic. The garden persists *because* you tended it; this is
  earned redemption, not survival. Lineage: the closing minutes of *Spiritfarer*,
  not the closing minutes of *A Dark Room* (which earned its bitterness; we earn
  our warmth).
- **Quiet**, not climactic. The cello does not crescendo at the binary choice.
  It rests. The chosen ending paragraph displays softly; "The garden persists."
  lands without underscore.
- **Specific**, not abstract. The final visible state is a *real* garden — the
  one this player built, with their actual planted ecosystems, their actual
  Roothold value, their actual collected fragments — viewed in soft dawn-silver
  light per AEST-06's Season-7 palette anchor.
- **Final**, not infinite. There is no Season 8. There is no New Game+. The Pale
  receded **here**, in **this** garden. Future patches may add cosmetic items or
  additional fragments per CONT-01 (post-launch additive content), but they slot
  *between* authored beats; they never extend the arc.

## What this document is NOT

This document defines principles. It does **not** define:

- The text of the Season 7 binary-choice scene — *authored Phase 7*.
- The text of either ending paragraph (`"They help us remember"` / `"They help us grow"`) — *authored Phase 7*.
- The exact line "The garden persists." appears in both endings, but its surrounding
  paragraph and Lura's final line are *authored Phase 7*, not Phase 1.
- The credits / coda screen visual treatment — *designed Phase 7*.
- The exact tonal register or shape of individual final-Season fragments — *authored Phase 7*.
- The numeric value of the Roothold ceiling — *computed Phase 4* from the
  content count at that point + ROADMAP-locked principle.

This document is **the principle the economy obeys, the writer obeys, and the
Phase 7 designer obeys** — not the implementation of any of those.

## Source Documents

This doctrine consolidates constraints already locked in:

- **PROJECT.md** § "Core Value" — "every idle mechanic must function as a metaphor"; "what survives is what you understood"
- **REQUIREMENTS.md** SEAS-04 (finite Roothold ceiling), SEAS-09 (Season 7 late-game shape), SEAS-10 (rest state, not infinite prestige tiers), STRY-08 (binary choice + "The garden persists.")
- **ROADMAP.md** § "Phase 7: Season 7 (Return) & Final Choice" — the 4 success criteria
- **.planning/research/PITFALLS.md** § "Pitfall 1: The Story Ends but the Idle Loop Doesn't" — the rationale this document directly addresses

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*Authored: Phase 1 deliverable. Phase 4 enforces the Roothold ceiling. Phase 7 authors
the treatment-level final scenes against the principles above.*