APOKRYPHA the pattern archive
The doctrines · classification interview

The classification interview

Ten questions on the disputed material. Each answer weighs for one or two of the five doctrines; none is neutral. The interview returns a classification, not a verdict, and it stays on this device unless you file it.

question 01 AP-0019 · field journal of E. Harrow

The elder told Harrow: the story is not broken. The story was cut, and whoever cut it [····] the knife. Transcription confidence for the statement stands at 84 percent. What holds you in the sentence?

question 02 finding 16 · the manner of the warning

The flood warning is never announced. A god speaks to a reed wall so one man can overhear; a fish arrives small in the wash water. Always one hearer, always in secret. Why the narrowness?

question 03 AP-0058 · the struck passage

The oldest Indian flood sends out no birds; one struck gloss preserves the test, and the teachers said the birds were never ours. In Gilgamesh the raven goes last, in Genesis first. The same test, inverted. What do you read in the striking?

question 04 finding 16 · the fire theft

Fire is never taken by force: an ember in a hollow stalk, one coal in a woven bowl on a water spider’s back. No tradition records force succeeding. What does that record?

question 05 findings 10, 18, 29 · the sealed entries

Three findings on the ledger are sealed at keeper clearance. A reader at the threshold asks whether to seek the seals. What do you tell them?

question 06 AP-0089 · the word for the vessel

One Norse word names the vessel: a mill frame, a coffin, or a boat. Every reader is issued one meaning and is certain of it. The scribe would not choose. Would you?

question 07 AP-0102 · the three missing years

The thief’s torch burned exactly three years of the bamboo chronicle: the years the executed workman lay on the mountain and did not spoil. The loss is filed as an accident. Do you accept the filing?

question 08 AP-0117 · the two waters

Yours punished what was done, the old man said. Ours punished what was never said. Then he asked the father: in your country, is the saying of the names kept up, or has it gone quiet there also? The father did not answer. What is your answer?

question 09 AP-0134 · the standing order

The god’s last decree before withdrawing is not about mankind. It is about the serpents: keep watch over them, and tell them I am still shining. What do you make of the order?

question 10 AP-0001 · findings 2 and 14 · the sentence

The sentence is identical in every medium it has been recovered from; the record around it never is. Reading it is sufficient for carriership. What did you become when you read it?

0 of 10 answered

The five doctrines themselves are stated in the doctrines. The interview may be retaken; the classification on a carrier record is the last one filed.