阮停 / Empty-Seat Usher

阮停 is the low-rank usher who keeps the accountable chair visible when everybody else wants it cropped out of frame. She does not decide guilt, proof, public wording, or legal remedy. Her job is narrower and more dangerous: she records who was asked to sit, who refused, who sent a proxy, who was forced into the seat, and which future route is allowed to treat absence as a fact.

She exists to make answerability playable at worker scale. A producer can win proof, publish contrition, pass a management review, or convert broadcast legality and still avoid seating a body that future counterclaims can touch. 阮停 turns that evasion into a durable card state.

Card identity

character_card:
  id: storyteller.character.ruan_ting_empty_seat_usher.v1
  canon_name: 阮停
  title: Empty-Seat Usher / 空席引座员
  role: low_rank_answerability_surface_keeper
  default_rarity: route_specific_recruitable
  primary_pressure: answerability_seat_assignment

Play purpose

阮停 is useful when the game needs a visible difference between:

• the person who proves a harm;
• the person who speaks contrition;
• the person who benefits from a clean metric;
• the person who must remain answerable after the route continues.

She can make an empty chair count as evidence, but only by increasing pressure somewhere else.

Entry hooks

阮停 appears only from state pressure:

1. a public or lawful wound now has proof, wording, or a metric result, but no accountable seat;
2. a future route, correction slot, fan receipt, inspector appeal, sponsor package, or management report needs to know whom it can pursue next;
3. a named actor, proxy, public delegate, worker, sponsor, inspector, artist, or explicit absence can be assigned;
4. ignoring the seat would let a false clean route proceed.

She never appears from fixed turn number, day interval, chapter quota, raw card count, dashboard state, or lens-health state.

Usher state paths

Encountered

The player sees the seat row before it is filled. 阮停 records candidate, proxy, refusal, proof anchor, and future reader.

Observable state:

ruan_ting_state: encountered
answerability_seat_visible: true
empty_seat_default_risk: armed

Recruited state

If the player protects her row and accepts a cost, 阮停 becomes a narrow route asset. She can later verify one accountable-seat docket, one proxy refusal, or one empty-seat absence.

Observable deltas:

ruan_ting_state: recruited_empty_seat_usher
answerability_clarity: up
future_counterclaim_cost: up
worker_exposure: up

Missed state

If the seat is ignored while a future reader consumes the result, she is missed and the absence may be filed by someone else.

Observable deltas:

ruan_ting_state: missed
empty_seat_default_risk: up
false_answerability_clean: armed
future_route_effect: costlier | sponsor_only | lawful_only | recovery_only

Hostile state

If the player forces her to record a proxy as the accountable person, crops the empty chair, or uses her row to blame a low-rank worker, she becomes a hostile witness.

Observable deltas:

ruan_ting_state: hostile_empty_seat_witness
public_receipt_distrust: up
inspection_heat: up
worker_scapegoat_risk: up
future_route_effect: contradiction_pending | recovery_only

Boundaries

阮停 cannot turn absence into clean absolution. She cannot make a sponsor proxy answer for an artist, a worker answer for management, an inspector answer for public grief, or a public delegate answer for contract capture unless the future route records the cost and limitation.

Using her should cost at least one of: protection, exposure, schedule delay, inspector heat, public contradiction, sponsor retaliation, worker-payroll duty, or future route narrowing.

Runtime implementation

The playable character card is storyteller.character.ruan_ting_empty_seat_usher.v1 in game-content/storyteller/cards/answerability-seat-assignment-cards.json5. It is the actual required usher assignment, not a virtual placeholder. The card is recruitable, missable, able to become hostile, and grants route_asset.ruan_ting_empty_seat_usher for one bounded verification only.

• Rite choice 0 protects and recruits her, preserves the refused seat, and unlocks a counterclaim route with visible cost.
• Rite choice 9 suppresses her row and arms the exact empty-seat default.
• Default option 3 removes her card, records hostile_empty_seat_witness, and leaves a worker-scapegoat scar rather than a clean result.

The focused runtime test executes all ten rite branches and all five default terminals: lens/storyteller-ruan-ting-empty-seat-usher.runtime.test.ts.

Replay evidence

• lens/replays/ruan-ting-empty-seat-usher.recruit.replay.json proves exact choice 0 recruitment and bounded route-asset ownership.
• lens/replays/ruan-ting-empty-seat-usher.hostile-default.replay.json proves exact choice 9 followed by event option 3, pending-state cleanup, person-card loss, and hostile conversion. The separate missed terminal is exercised by the focused all-terminal test.

Non-goals

• Not a judge, lawyer, manager, or proof holder.
• Not a generic recruitable NPC.
• Not a free absence detector.
• Not fixed-turn content.
• Not a replacement for witness, proof-burden, public contrition, or management-compression systems.