# Character State: ch-15

## Lena Duval
- **Location:** The Heart Tree (Siphon Hub Core).
- **Physical:** Fully integrated; no longer breathes. Translucent, cyan-bioluminescent skin with capillary systems linked to the cypress roots.
- **Emotional:** Divine stillness. She exists as a collective consciousness, her human grief now a distant echo.
- **Active Obligations:** All blood-oaths PAID.
- **Open Loops:** Maintaining the Veil (Continuous); The Burden of Memory (Unresolved—she keeps the locket as a tether to her lost humanity).
- **Known Secrets:** Witness to her mother’s ritual (Integrated/Resolved through ascension).
- **Arc:** 100% (Transcended). Permanent.

## Jax Harlan
- **Location:** Security Annex ruins / Inner Perimeter.
- **Physical:** Infected with Green Fever; skin possesses an iridescent, sap-like sheen. Right hand scarred from Siphon feedback.
- **Emotional:** Mournful but resolute. He is the bridge between the human and the divine.
- **Active Obligations:** Identifying the TDC mole to prevent future incursion (UNPAID).
- **Open Loops:** Adapting to terrestrial defense; monitoring the "Black Box" transmitter.
- **Known Secrets:** Knows the exact location/nature of the TDC Black Box.
- **Arc:** 100% (The Anchor). Permanent.

## Aunt Maribelle Duval (DECEASED)
- **Status:** Consumed by the Great Hum. Her legacy is the dissolution of the Coven's political power.

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# World State: ch-15

## NPC Memory
- **The Duval Coven:** SUBMISSIVE. The remaining elders have transitioned into "Grave-Tenders." They have surrendered all agency to the Heart Tree.
- **TDC Survivors:** TERRIFIED. Total retreat from the "Green Hell." The "Black Zone" policy is officially enacted, treating the Bend as a necrotic, untouchable sector.

## Faction Attitudes
- **The Great Hum:** DOMINANT. The swamp is now an apex sentient entity. It is predatory toward technology and any intent of "development."
- **Terrebonne Development Corp:** DEFEATED. They have shifted from exploitation to containment, using electronic cordons to warn of the "dead zone."

## Active World Events
- **The Grand Recission:** Permanent. Sentient flora is digesting steel, concrete, and wires within the Hub.
- **The Veil:** Active. A sentient white mist barrier reacting to intent.
- **The Great Silence:** Permanent. An EMP effect radiating 5 miles from the Heart Tree, rendering electronics useless.

## Key Objects/Locations
- **The Heart Tree:** The pulsing, bioluminescent nexus of Cypress Bend.
- **The Silver Locket:** Absorbed into the bark of the Heart Tree; holds Lena's discarded human sentiment.
- **The Black Box:** A hidden TDC transmitter in the Annex ruins; it is actively pinging an unknown recipient in New Orleans, bypassed by the Great Silence due to proprietary shielding.

## Voice/Thematic Pulse
- **Sensory:** The air smells of magnolia, ozone, and wet earth.
- **State:** The Bend is no longer a place, but a living organism. Logic follows the "Gator's Truth"—nature does not negotiate; it merely persists.