Background

backgrounds/<id>.ron — an origin: the GRANT half of the grant/use split. A soul's background is where its skill proficiencies come from; the trade it works is its [Profession], which USES those skills at the bench, never grants them. The SRD ships one background (Acolyte); the rest are OURS, the profession precedent.

A D&D origin is a BUNDLE, not a skill pair: beyond skills it may nudge ability scores, carry a named feature, and outfit the soul with starting coins and equipment. All four extras default empty, so thin origins and any mod file parse unchanged. Tools stay OFF the origin — trade competence is a trained tier the profession owns.

Field	Type	Required	Description
abilities	any[][]	optional	Ability-score bumps this origin grants — `(ability, +bonus)` pairs, the `RaceDef::asi` idiom, composed on top of the racial ASI the way every other increase composes.
coins	uint32	default 0	Starting coin the origin outfits the soul with — minted to its purse at genesis (`Time::ZERO`).
equipment	EquipmentGrant[]	optional	Starting goods the origin outfits the soul with — minted as stacks it carries at genesis.
feature	BackgroundFeature	optional	The origin's feature — the "more than a stat" half of a D&D background (Shelter of the Faithful, Criminal Contact). DERIVED onto a soul from its carried background id, never stored twice.
id	string	required
name	string	required
skills	Skill[]	required	The skill proficiencies this origin grants (an SRD background grants two); unioned onto the soul's set at generation (`soul::finalize`).
source	Source	required

Nested shapes

Every shape Background closes over, so this page stands alone.

Ability

The six ability scores (SRD 5.1). The engine's own stats::Ability is the runtime type; this is the data-layer mirror, bridged by [Ability::engine].

StrDexConIntWisCha

BackgroundFeature

A named origin feature: the half of a D&D background that is not a number. Every feature names a mechanical effect — the type FORBIDS inert prose: if an origin declares a feature, it must DO something the sim reads. text is the flavor the creator sheet shows and the chronicle can quote.

Field	Type	Required	Description
effect	FeatureEffect	required	What the feature DOES in the sim — the mechanical half, read at the point the effect fires. No `Option`: a feature with no effect is inert prose, which the type refuses to represent.
name	string	required	The feature's short title (Never Lost, Never Hungry).
text	string	required	The feature's prose — what standing or knack the origin confers, shown on the creator sheet and quotable in the chronicle.

EquipmentGrant

One starting-goods grant an origin outfits the soul with: qty stacks of the good (a data/goods/ id), minted at genesis.

Field	Type	Required	Description
good	string	required	The good granted — a `data/goods/` id, resolved to a concept at placement.
qty	uint32	required	How many of the good to mint into the soul's hand.

FeatureEffect

What a background feature DOES in the sim. A CLOSED set — each variant is a real, soak-exercised mechanism, never flavor. It grows only when a feature's backing system exists (Shelter of the Faithful waits on a religion system to raise same-faith regard); until then that origin ships no feature at all, rather than an inert one.

Skill

The eighteen SRD skills.

AthleticsAcrobaticsSleightOfHandStealthArcanaHistoryInvestigationNatureReligionAnimalHandlingInsightMedicinePerceptionSurvivalDeceptionIntimidationPerformancePersuasion

Source

Every file's top-level value carries source.

`Srd51`

SRD 5.1 — the System Reference Document, the shipped baseline.

`Original`

Original content authored for this game (not from the SRD).

`Personal`

A player's own transcription or third-party content in a mod tree — provenance stays honest without borrowing the base tree's markers. Never used by shipped files.