Arrivals

New elves arrive through three channels: reputation, cultural events, and wandering. Each channel has different triggers, personalities, and first-impression filters. Your settlement's artistic output and social health directly control who shows up and whether they stay.

Overview

After the founding elves, every new elf arrives through one of three channels:

All arrivals use bimodal personality generation: each axis is set to 0.2 or 0.8 (coin flip) with +/-0.1 jitter. This produces elves with strong personality leanings, unlike founders who cluster near the 8 personality corners.

The arrival system runs two tick systems:

• Scheduling (every tick): checks whether a new arrival should be queued
• Spawning (every tick): processes queued arrivals after their spawn delay

Source: src/sim/arrival.rs -- arrival_scheduling_system, arrival_spawn_system.

How It Works

Reputation Channel

Your colony's artistic reputation attracts elves who have heard of the settlement and want to join.

Reputation formula:

reputation = prestige_sum + (portfolio_count x 0.5) + (recent_revel_avg x 0.8)

• prestige_sum: sum of all elves' prestige scores
• portfolio_count: total number of compositions in the settlement
• recent_revel_avg: average audience score from the most recent revel

Scheduling interval:

interval = baseline_interval / clamp(reputation / reputation_pivot, 0.2, 5.0)

• baseline_interval: 300 ticks
• reputation_pivot: 50.0
• At reputation 50: interval = 300 ticks (baseline)
• At reputation 250: interval = 60 ticks (5x faster, max rate)
• At reputation 10: interval = 1,500 ticks (5x slower, min rate)

Jitter of +/-(interval/4) prevents arrivals from being predictable.

Spawn delay: 0-30 ticks after scheduling.

Reputation arrivals start with 60.0 satisfaction and always pass the first-impression filter (threshold 2.0 is unreachable by aesthetic distance, which caps at 2.0).

Source: src/sim/arrival.rs -- reputation_score(), schedule_reputation_arrival().

Cultural Event Channel

When a revel ends with an average audience score >= 75.0, word spreads and 1-2 elves arrive as a burst. These arrivals are drawn specifically by the artistic quality they heard about.

• Spawn delay: 20-80 ticks (they travel from afar)
• Initial satisfaction: 60.0
• First-impression filter: threshold 2.0 (always pass)
• Burst size: 1-2 elves per qualifying revel

This is the primary reward loop for running great revels. The better your compositions match your audience's tastes, the more new elves arrive.

Source: src/sim/arrival.rs -- great revel detection in scheduling system.

Wanderer Channel

Wanderers arrive on a regular interval regardless of your settlement's reputation. They represent elves who stumble upon the settlement while traveling.

• Interval: 500 ticks, with jitter of +/-(interval/3)
• Spawn delay: 0-50 ticks
• Initial satisfaction: 45.0 (lower than reputation/cultural -- they're skeptical)
• First-impression filter: strict threshold of 1.2 (or 1.5 if the settlement recently held a welcoming revel)

Wanderers are the most likely to leave during the evaluation period. Their lower starting satisfaction and stricter aesthetic filter mean they're testing whether this settlement is right for them.

Source: src/sim/arrival.rs -- schedule_wanderer_arrival().

First Impressions

Every arriving elf gets a 50-tick evaluation window to assess the settlement. During this window, their aesthetic position is compared against the colony average:

• If aesthetic distance > threshold: the elf rejects the settlement and leaves, generating a WandererRejected event
• If aesthetic distance <= threshold: the elf settles, generating a WandererSettled or ElfArrived event

The recent-revel bonus (threshold 1.5 instead of 1.2) rewards active settlements. If you're holding regular revels, wanderers are more likely to stay.

Source: src/sim/arrival.rs -- first_impression_system, evaluation window of 50 ticks.

Aesthetic Bias

Arriving elves don't have random aesthetics. Their aesthetic position is generated using a Gaussian distribution centered on the colony average with sigma = 0.3.

This means most arrivals have tastes somewhat similar to the existing population, with occasional outliers. Over many arrivals, the settlement's aesthetic consensus gradually reinforces itself -- new elves who arrive tend to agree with the existing majority, which pushes the colony average further in that direction.

The sigma of 0.3 provides enough variance that surprising arrivals happen. An elf with radically different tastes can still arrive and stay (especially via the reputation channel, which always passes the first-impression filter). These outliers become the seeds of aesthetic diversity and potential rivalry.

Source: src/sim/arrival.rs -- Box-Muller transform with sigma 0.3, centered on colony aesthetic mean.

Name Family Weighting

Arrival names are drawn from name families with weights that reflect the elf's aesthetic position:

A highly traditional, structured elf is more likely to receive a Valdari name. An emotional, personal elf is more likely to be Nelvari. The weighting is probabilistic, not deterministic -- any elf can get any family name, just at different rates.

Source: src/sim/arrival.rs -- name family weight calculation.

Founder Marker

The starting elves carry a Founder marker component. This is a permanent tag that distinguishes the original settlers from later arrivals. Founders use corner-cluster personality generation (base 0.85/0.15 with +/-0.1 jitter) rather than the bimodal generation (0.2/0.8 coin flip) used for arrivals.

The Founder marker has no direct mechanical effect beyond personality generation, but it serves as narrative context -- your founding elves are the original vision for the settlement.

Source: src/sim/components.rs, Founder struct.

Values & Formulas

Arrival Rate Examples

Plus wanderers every ~500 ticks and burst arrivals from great revels.

Satisfaction Starting Points

For context, the departure warning threshold is crossed at 300 ticks of low satisfaction. Wanderers, starting 15 points lower, reach danger faster.

Interactions

Reputation Feedback Loop

Arrivals create a positive feedback loop:

1. More elves produce more compositions
2. More compositions raise portfolio_count in the reputation formula
3. Higher reputation shortens the arrival interval
4. More elves arrive

This loop is bounded by satisfaction -- if new elves aren't happy, they depart, reducing the population back. Overcrowding and aesthetic clashes naturally limit growth.

Aesthetic Drift

Because arrivals are biased toward the colony aesthetic mean (sigma 0.3), a large settlement with strong aesthetic consensus will attract more like-minded elves. This can create aesthetic monocultures where everyone agrees -- which reduces rivalry and revel drama but also makes compositions more predictable.

Wanderers (with their stricter first-impression filter but random timing) are the main source of aesthetic diversity. A wanderer who passes the 1.2 threshold but sits at the edge of the aesthetic space can become the seed of a new artistic movement.

Revel Quality

Great revels (avg score >= 75) directly trigger the cultural event channel. This makes revel optimization a population growth strategy -- running revels that match your audience's tastes not only boosts mood and satisfaction but brings in new elves.

Tips

• Prestige drives reputation. The prestige_sum component of the reputation formula is usually the largest contributor. Elves with high prestige (from Love reactions at revels) are your best recruiters.

• Portfolio padding works. Even mediocre compositions contribute +0.5 to reputation each. A settlement with 20 compositions (even Crude ones) gets +10 reputation from portfolio alone.

• Wanderer rejection is information. When a WandererRejected event fires, it tells you the settlement's aesthetic consensus is narrow enough to filter out travelers. This isn't necessarily bad -- it means your aesthetic identity is strong.

• Early revels attract early arrivals. The cultural event channel (great revel >= 75 avg) is the fastest way to grow in the early game. Schedule revels as soon as you have a FeastHall, 5+ elves, food, and compositions.

• Watch for satisfaction collapse. Rapid growth from high reputation can overwhelm your food supply, crowd housing, and dilute social bonds. New arrivals start with 60 satisfaction but need friend formation and aesthetic alignment to stay above the departure threshold.