# Character State: ch-17

## Lena Duval
- **Location:** The Heart Tree (Siphon Hub Core).
- **Physical:** Final Apotheosis. Skin is translucent, bioluminescent parchment; neural pathways are indistinguishable from cypress roots. She no longer breathes air but pulses with the grove’s sap.
- **Emotional:** Serenity/Bayou Nirvana. She has transcended human ego, achieving an omniscient ecological awareness.
- **Active Obligations:** Perpetual Anchor of the "Veil of the Great Silence."
- **Open Loops:** None.
- **Known Secrets:** Carries the truth of her mother’s sacrifice as a foundational memory, now understood as a necessary tether for the land's survival.
- **Arc:** 100% (Complete). From runaway to the Living Spirit of Cypress Bend.
- **Permanent:** YES.

## Jax Harlan
- **Location:** The Security Annex (The Shallows).
- **Physical:** Relic of the "Green Fever." Heavily scarred, immune to all terrestrial and swamp toxins. A literal apex biological hunter.
- **Emotional:** Absolute clarity. He has shed all corporate identity to become the land’s proactive immune system.
- **Active Obligations:** Eternal Guardian; elimination of terrestrial/TDC intrusions.
- **Open Loops:** None.
- **Known Secrets:** None.
- **Arc:** 100% (Complete). From corporate tool to the "Apex Guardian."
- **Permanent:** YES.

# World State: ch-17

## NPC Memory
- **The Duval Coven:** Subservient. Shifted from power-seekers to a priesthood of biological maintenance.
- **TDC Executives:** Pure Terror/Avoidance. Cypress Bend is officially a "Black Zone"; all records are being scrubbed to prevent corporate collapse.

## Faction Attitudes
- **The Great Hum:** Dominant. The sentient ecosystem has successfully metabolized all TDC infrastructure into nutrients.
- **Terrebonne Development Corp:** Defeated. Total policy shift to containment; they treat the area as a supernatural exclusion zone.

## Active World Events
- **The Great Silence:** A permanent EM dead zone (5-mile radius). Human technology is absorbed or short-circuited upon entry.
- **The Grand Recession:** The completion of the "Biological Cathedral." Concrete and steel have been fully replaced by ancient grove mimicry.

## Key Objects/Locations
- **The Heart Tree:** The central processing unit of the ecosystem; seat of Lena's consciousness.
- **Siphon Hub:** A fused organic-digital temple. The Duval bloodline acts as the permanent firewall against the outside world.
- **The Veil:** The sentient, shimmering barrier separating the reclaimed land from the external world.
- **The Shallows:** Jax’s territory; a threshold graveyard of rusted machinery and overgrown patrol boats.