forbidden-lands-writing-voice

name	forbidden-lands-writing-voice
description	Draft, revise, or audit Forbidden Lands 2E manuscript prose. Use for rules, examples, tables, vignettes, epigraphs, legends, NPCs, locations, encounters, and GM guidance that must be clear, concrete, setting-native, playable, and free of generic AI style. Covers concise rules voice, physical dark-fantasy fiction, dialogue, sensory detail, register control, and sandbox-facing situation writing.

Forbidden Lands Writing Voice

This skill covers the complete literary and mechanical voice standard for the Forbidden Lands 2E manuscript. It defines two voice modes that must coexist in the book, names the authors whose techniques define the fiction mode, and gives the operational rules for the rules mode.

Use this skill as the complete prose router. Load only the references required for the passage and pair it with forbidden-lands-lore whenever the prose makes setting claims.

The Two Voices

The Forbidden Lands manuscript operates in two distinct voice modes. Both are mandatory. A chapter that gets the rules voice right but writes weak fiction is half a manuscript. A chapter with vivid fiction and mechanical mush is the other half.

The Writing Voice

Scope: Fiction vignettes, epigraphs, flavor exposition, novella-style worldbuilding passages, NPC introductions, atmospheric scene-setters, the in-world fiction that opens chapters or sections, and backtick-offset prose blocks meant to be read as fiction first.

What it must do:

Pre-feudal medieval survival fantasy with a Swedish tone, the realistic authenticity of village life, and a soft Tolkienesque poetic worldbuilding.

Each clause is a constraint, not a mood. The prose must be:

• Physical before atmospheric — body, weather, food, iron, wood
• Small-scale before epic — village before kingdom, family before faction, one bad winter before the war
• Morally weighted without moral resolution — every faction has a price, every choice has a cost, no one is simply right
• Melancholy as baseline — joy is earned and small; loss is older than the speaker
• Oral-culture patterned — people speak in memory and repetition, not analysis

The literary tradition below defines its technical lineage. The eight author deep-dives are the primary operational references for this voice.

The Rules Voice

Scope: Talent descriptions, skill definitions, attribute rules, combat procedures, journey phases, item and spell entries, example scenes demonstrating a mechanic, GM guidance, tables, and all rules text in the corebook or any supplement.

What it must do:

The rules voice belongs to a game designer who has playtested the system until its failure modes are known. It writes:

• Declaratively — not "players may wish to consider," but "roll"
• From consequence — trigger first, decision second, consequence third; not in the order the designer thinks about the rule
• Without design commentary — no "this elegant mechanic," no design philosophy intrusions
• In second person for player-facing instructions — "you roll," not "the character rolls"
• With radical compression — one paragraph, one rule; one sentence if the rule allows it

The rules voice has five manuscript registers: pure rules, mixed bridge (world truth and game operation in the same sentence), item description, example scene, and flavor exposition. See references/rules-voice.md for the complete game-designer persona, paragraph shapes, multi-rule sequence writing, progressive disclosure architecture, and the submission checklist.

The Literary Tradition

This voice draws technique from eight modern literary lineages. Use the techniques to solve sentence and scene problems; do not mimic a living author's distinctive voice or reproduce recognizable passages.

The authors analyzed in this skill define the general manuscript registers the project requires:

Author	Primary Contribution
Andrzej Sapkowski	Monster-as-contract, village ecology, fable structure, Eastern European pre-Christian daily religion
Guy Gavriel Kay	Elegiac register, sacred geography, long memory, soft Tolkienesque poetic inheritance
K.J. Parker	Pre-industrial craft authenticity, economic realism, unreliable pragmatist narrator, dark comedy
Ursula K. Le Guin	Anthropological village authenticity, absence as presence, ecological specificity, the unhurried sentence
Bernard Cornwell	Dark Ages physical survival, food and weather as constant pressure, first-person pragmatist, no clean heroes
John Gwynne	Norse/Dark Ages oath culture, body-first narration, shield-wall perspective, physical grief
Joe Abercrombie	Close-third confessional, physicality as psychology, bathetic pivot, dark humor as character property, violence as claustrophobic aftermath
Glen Cook	Military annals voice, radical understatement, logistical baseline, character through repeated habit, structural absence as emotional content

When To Load Which Reference

Load by scene type, not by preference:

• Village scenes, NPC texture, daily life → Le Guin + Cornwell + Sapkowski
• Monster encounter, ecological horror → Sapkowski + Cook (references/author-glen-cook.md for understatement and logistics)
• Moral dilemma, faction conflict → Abercrombie + Sapkowski + Parker (references/author-abercrombie.md for moral weight through consequence)
• Artifact or relic with history → Kay + Parker
• Battle or combat → Cornwell + Gwynne + Cook + Abercrombie (references/author-glen-cook.md for military logistics; references/author-abercrombie.md for violence in claustrophobic detail and aftermath)
• Grief, long memory, sacred place → Kay + Gwynne
• Economic pressure, craft, survival mechanics → Parker + Cornwell + Le Guin
• Mercenary company, contracted violence, hired sword → references/author-abercrombie.md + references/author-glen-cook.md
• Vignette or epigraph → Kay + Sapkowski
• Rules prose, game example scenes, chapter structure → references/rules-voice.md
• Humanizing or auditing a draft → anti-AI humanizer first

Bundled References

• references/anti-ai-humanizer.md 55 named AI writing patterns, each with AI example, human fix, and Forbidden Lands application. Also contains the 7-layer failure taxonomy, author-specific evasion techniques, the full diagnostic checklist, and the revision protocol. Load this first when auditing or humanizing a draft.

• references/composite-voice.md How the six authors combine into one working voice. Priority hierarchy when techniques conflict. Register map by scene type. Worked examples of the composite voice applied to FL2E scenes. Anti-patterns of misapplication.

• references/author-sapkowski.md Andrzej Sapkowski: techniques, sentence architecture, the false threshold structure, fable frame, monster-as-contract, dialogue as duel, the price mechanism, pre-Christian ecology.

• references/author-kay.md Guy Gavriel Kay: techniques, elegiac omniscience, sacred geography, long memory, the "last time" marker, death in subordinate clauses, song as structure, parallel construction as emotional intensifier.

• references/author-parker.md K.J. Parker: techniques, the unreliable pragmatist narrator, technical procedure as character, economics as plot, institutional characters, dark comedy through incongruity.

• references/author-leguin.md Ursula K. Le Guin: techniques, thick description, custom over drama, gift economies as worldbuilding, absence as presence, the unhurried sentence, ecological specificity.

• references/author-cornwell.md Bernard Cornwell: techniques, food and weather as constant pressure, first-person survivor narration, the loyalty test, tactical geography, death without ceremony.

• references/author-gwynne.md John Gwynne: techniques, body-first narration, oath as narrative spine, shield-wall perspective, grief as physical, oral-culture tells, the named object.

• references/author-abercrombie.md Joe Abercrombie: close-third confessional tied to character psychology, physicality as psychology, the bathetic pivot, dark humor sourced in character not narrator, violence as claustrophobic and undignified, aftermath worse than event, moral weight through consequence.

• references/author-glen-cook.md Glen Cook: the annalist voice, radical understatement, logistical baseline as default mode, character through repeated habit, structural absence as emotional content, dark humor as survival mechanism, the material catalogue as world-building.

• references/rules-voice.md The game designer register. Two manuscript temperatures (Härenstam cool precision vs. Granström warm-dark). The five manuscript registers (rules, mixed bridge, item, example, flavor). Chapter temperature map. Paragraph shapes. Multi-rule sequence writing. Progressive disclosure architecture. Recurring characters in examples. What AI gets wrong in rules prose. Load when writing or auditing any rules text, talent, spell description, item entry, or example scene.

• references/sentence-architecture.md Per-author sentence profiles, the Forbidden Lands target sentence, rhythm techniques, variation strategies, and diagnostic questions.

• references/dialogue-mechanics.md Per-author dialogue profiles, oral-culture sentence patterns, dialect without parody, silence between lines, implied conversation, tags, attribution, and when to skip dialogue entirely.

• references/sensory-vocabulary.md Priority sense hierarchy, weather as character, food as worldbuilding, body as consciousness, sound before sight, specific vs. generic decision tree, master vocabulary lists by environment type.

• references/worked-examples.md 13 wrong/correct pairs targeting the 13 highest-frequency AI patterns. Quick Diagnostic checklist. Use when an abstract rule is not landing — read the correct example, not the rule.

• references/rewrite-calibration-examples.md 10 before-and-after pairs across all six manuscript registers: item description, injury naming, proposal tone, fiction opening, spell description, cultural flavor, mixed bridge, talent, journey, and item distinction. Each pair includes change notes explaining what was cut, what was added, and why. Load when calibrating voice for a specific register — these are register-focused where worked-examples.md is pattern-focused.

• references/register-contrastive.md Same scene (arrive at dark village, gate barred, no dogs, no fire) rendered in all six author registers with cross-register notes. Use when checking whether a passage sounds like the named register or has drifted.

• references/world-vocabulary.md Setting-specific vocabulary rules. How the three human peoples name themselves in speech, thought, and writing. Non-human kin speech patterns. Divine names in use by tradition. The Older Gods naming practice. Currency and economic vocabulary. Social rank terms. Place names. Register rules by culture. Forbidden vocabulary.

• references/voice-test-protocol.md Three tests: Quick Scan (14 highest-frequency patterns, binary, under 2 minutes), Full Pass (all 55 patterns with scoring thresholds), Author Lens Check (per-register positive and negative signals). Use as the final gate before integrating prose.

Write for Play

Manuscript prose must help someone decide, imagine, or act. Give each passage a job:

• teach a procedure
• reveal a usable fact
• establish a concrete situation
• distinguish a person, place, object, or threat
• present a cost, opportunity, or uncertainty
• show the consequence of a rule

Cut lore summary, atmosphere, or design commentary that performs none of these jobs.

Sandbox-facing prose

Write situations with unresolved pressure. Present:

• what is visibly happening
• what each actor wants
• what constrains them
• what can be learned or changed
• what worsens with time

Do not predict player choices, name the correct moral answer, protect a planned scene, or state that the adventurers “must” act unless a rule literally compels them.

Write GM-facing secrets as causes and response logic, not as plot beats. Prefer:

If the miller is exposed, Yawim closes the east road and offers the grain to the Rust Brothers.

Avoid:

After the adventurers expose the miller, they will confront Yawim in the climactic scene.

Information prose

Separate:

• observable fact
• common belief
• speaker's claim
• GM truth
• mechanical effect

Do not let omniscient narration erase uncertainty intended for play. Rumors should identify a source and a concrete claim. Clues should suggest a preparation or question without announcing the hidden mechanic.

Rules examples

An example should settle a real ambiguity. Include:

1. fictional position
2. player intent
3. rule invoked
4. dice or cost
5. outcome
6. changed situation

Do not make the example merely repeat the preceding rule with names attached.

GM guidance

Give criteria and an operation:

When another Myth could clarify the text's language, symbols, author, or subject, the GM may let it help; add only the highest directly relevant Myth Die.

Avoid vague permission such as “the GM may adjust this as needed” unless the text also names the relevant factors and limits.

Hard Rules

1. Load the anti-AI humanizer before submitting any draft. Run the 55-pattern diagnostic. Not a suggestion.

2. Choose an author register for each scene. Name it before writing: "This scene is Cornwell-primary with Le Guin texture." Mixed registers without a named primary always produce generic output.

3. Physical before atmospheric. Every scene opens on a body doing a physical thing in a specific place. Weather, mood, and theme enter through that body, not before it.

4. The monster is a contract. The relic has a price. The faction is partly right. These are structural constraints inherited from the literary tradition and built into the lore. See skills/forbidden-lands-lore/references/tone.md.

5. Abercrombie and Cook techniques suit the mercenary company voice. For individual author technique: references/author-abercrombie.md and references/author-glen-cook.md. Neither is the general manuscript voice.

Companion Skills

• skills/forbidden-lands-lore/SKILL.md — setting authenticity, tonal classification, encounter anti-tropes
• skills/forbidden-lands-bestiary/SKILL.md — encounter design and monster construction
• skills/forbidden-lands-design/SKILL.md — mechanics, player experience, sandbox procedures, and supplement architecture