# Ruins Archive v3a — ancient choral elegy, the structure waking (faithful)

`ruins-archive-v3a` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

Take A is the faithful realization of the row's ancient-choral-elegy brief and the §4.8 ruins-archive notes: C dorian, 70 BPM, an ELEGY-family instance (motifs.ts §7.6, the ruins recontext). The bed is slow choirPad-and-softPad chords in OLD-MODAL voice-leading — the two choir voices move in PARALLEL OPEN FIFTHS (organum), which the row explicitly welcomes: it should read ANCIENT, not sad. The progression is a C-dorian organum (i Cm | bVII Bb | bIII Eb | IV F the bright dorian IV | v Gm | ii Dm), each a root+fifth dyad gliding in parallel. A soft PITCHED sub-pedal is the §4.8 'dust and age' low (rendered pitched, NOT a noise floor — correction 3). The activity lead is the ELEGY core in C dorian (falls 5-4-3 = G-F-Eb, reaches back to 5, trails off 3-2-1 to the tonic) with a STEEPER accent decay (steepenDecay) so every phrase audibly trails off — the §7.6 ruins recontext, 'phrases that begin confidently and let go'. A caveCelesta notes details in the gaps BETWEEN statements like an inventory (the §4.8 Color). struckPiano tone WARM doubles the line — lamplight reading, not glare (the row names no tone; warm fits the intimate room-by-room elegy over bright). Activity L1 (ch4-5) = the celesta elegy line + the celesta inventory-notes — one remembered voice that reads alone over the choir. Activity L2 (ch6-7) ADDS new material, not volume: the warm struckPiano doubling the line AND a slow choir counter-voice a third/sixth below — the elegy harmonized and warmed. Danger is 'the structure waking' (§4.8): danger1 (ch8-9) is the first signs — the elegy head gone apprehensive (dropped a register into a dark choir voice, held) over a slow stoneTom pulse and one far stoneGrind swell per half, the mechanism finding a beat at a distance — real unease, NOT near-silence. Danger2 (ch10-11) is a GENUINE intensity jump at a FASTER danger-section tempo (96 BPM): the mechanism resuming in full — a driving stoneTom-and-kick machinery rhythm (ch10) and a grinding stoneGrind/hat pulse finding its beat (ch11). New percussion, denser and faster — the full ensemble crashing in, NOT danger1 louder. The stoneGrind is a one-shot struck swell used as PERCUSSION (never a held grind bed — correction 3 / noise-duty). Dread is abstract — register, density, the machinery quickening and the tempo jump — never a chromatic darkening (fully diatonic C dorian: the natural 6 and b7 are its colour, no raised 7th, no b2) and never a literal door/collapse foley (that belongs to the game's SFX). The named 'doors grinding, floors giving way, mechanisms resuming' is flavor; the practical job is encounter music whose feeling is the building taking an interest in you.
