# Caves Vaulted — The Patient Dark (v3 take A, faithful)

`caves-vaulted-v3a` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

Take A is the faithful, idiomatic reading of caves-vaulted: the spacious house voice slowed and opened into a cave register, fully diatonic A dorian at 66 BPM, same tempo throughout (the underground.xm replacement). The bed is hollow-fifth softPads over a darkDrone foundation with a once-per-bar sub; each phrase the bare A–E fifth gives way to a D chord whose F# is the dorian sixth — the open door where the old theme had a locked one. The activity branch states the VAULT family motif from A-3 (root–fifth–octave reach, then the warm 6–5 settle); activity L1 is the celesta line plus ONE stereo echo trail (left, short delay), while L2 ADDS the second echo trail (right, longer delay, more octave lift) and a low pad counter-voice tracing the settle an octave down — the twin echo trails fully realized and the space opening, never just louder. Danger is rising water / distant rockfall: danger L1 is deepBooms spaced far apart with lone pitched water-drips (first signs); L2 ADDS a closer rockfall boom landing on the bar plus an accelerating drip cluster that tightens row-by-row — new rhythmic density, dread by proximity, with no chromatic darkening. All noise is one-shot percussion (the deepBoom); no looped noise bed.
