# Spellbound Relics 1.8 — Woodland Tricksters

Trail 2 now includes three playful creature encounters: a goblin at the rootway, a giant bat at the companion crossing, and a goblin beside the lantern nest. The remaining encounters and all of Trail 1 retain their existing behavior.

## Play sequence

1. A creature appears beside the path. A written warning tells the player to arrange the wish before casting. **Hear warning** offers the same text through the existing optional device voice. There is no countdown and no theft while the player is choosing stones.
2. A cast with an order/arrangement error can trigger a brief snatching animation. The selected stones appear out of reach, and the spell controls temporarily lock. Meaning errors, unmet story prerequisites and successful alternative spells do not trigger theft.
3. **Abby, fetch the stones!** starts a short chase. **Return the stones now** skips it. Reduced motion returns the stones immediately with written feedback.
4. Every placed stone returns in its previous position so the player can edit the same spell. All world changes, bookmarks and discoveries remain intact. A correct cast makes the creature retreat.

Theft is temporary presentation state, never a subtraction from the saved vocabulary or inventory. Reloading during theft starts with the ordinary full pouch available. Leaving an encounter also restores ordinary controls. **Quiet trail · creatures keep their distance** in Options disables encounters and safely returns any currently held stones. Pocket-garden pouches and completed story encounters are peaceful.

For an already completed journey, **Begin a new journey** provides the existing replay route through the new encounters. No saved journey is reset automatically.

## Implementation and art

`encounter-model.js` contains the pure warning, theft, fetch, return and retreat transitions. `encounters.js` renders and announces those transitions; `encounters.css` animates the creature and a presentation copy of Abby. The actual world actor and story engine remain unchanged. The copied Abby is shown only during the short fetch, while the world actor is hidden, then restored to the original saved position.

The two new transparent sprites are `assets/encounters-v18/goblin.webp` and `bat.webp`. The built-in image-generation tool used Mei’s existing sprite as a style reference. The assets were cropped to alpha bounds and encoded as WebP, preserving transparency. Full prompts are in [generation-prompts.json](assets/encounters-v18/generation-prompts.json).

## Validation and limits

- 82 new checks cover advance warnings, reversible theft, repeated recovery, immediate return, quiet-trail cancellation, alternate valid spells, safe meaning/prerequisite failures, selected encounter locations and unchanged story state.
- All existing vocabulary, character, expansion, panorama, pilot, world and original-guide checks pass.
- Desktop browser playthrough completed Trail 1 and Trail 2 through the final haven. It verified goblin and bat warnings, theft, locked controls, preserved placed stones, calm-mode return, animated Abby fetch, chase skip, quiet-trail cancellation, reload recovery and peaceful pocket gardens.
- Physical phone and Safari checks remain pending. Optional device speech depends on the browser’s installed voices.

These encounters change the instructional condition by making the importance of spell order explicit. Creature events are included in the local evidence log. Performance in this version should be distinguished from earlier versions in any pilot analysis; successful casts do not establish vocabulary transfer or implicit learning.