People — Overview
The People layer contains NPCs, player characters, and guild members. Every person in the Pandemonium Engine’s graph is a node here.
People nodes are the most frequently traversed layer. Most player actions — talking, investigating, hiring, fighting — involve people. They’re also the layer most often pinned by player declaration (“I know a guy”).
Opposite Face: Factions
A person without allegiances is just a name. The Factions layer is the opposite face — every person node requires at least one post to the faction layer (the constraint axiom from The Six-Layer Graph). This post carries history: how the person came to be affiliated, what they owe, what they resent.
People without faction ties are strangers, outliers, or structural dissenters. The absence of a faction edge is itself information.
Node Types
(To be formalized — node types, required attributes, optional attributes)
Key Relationships
- Posts to Factions — allegiance, employment, family, debt
- Posts to Settlement — where they work, live, or are findable
- Posts to Quests — what leads they carry, what quests they anchor
- Posts to Lore — what secrets they know or embody
Generation Sources
People nodes are pinned by Street Magic (NPC vignettes), Beak, Feather & Bone (face card rivals), and player declarations. The engine generates uncollapsed people nodes to satisfy GUMSHOE and structural dissenter requirements.