Final Capstone
A containment/warding protocol for a novel case, grounded in the course's classification and countermeasure material and judged holistically.
Due: 10 May 2027 · Weight: 40%
The brief#
Propose a containment or warding protocol for a novel anomalous case, grounded in this semester’s classification, comparative-warding and countermeasure material.
This is the capstone the whole semester points at, not a test of whether you agree with any one theory of cause. Invent (or adapt from the wider corpus) a case the course hasn’t already handed you a protocol for, classify it using the week-2 scheme, and design a countermeasure that draws specifically on the cross-cultural warding convergence from week 3 and the safety rules from week 4. A position on the fourth-dimensional hypothesis may shape how you explain why the protocol should work, but the protocol itself has to be usable by a field team who doesn’t share that position.
What you submit#
A protocol document: the case, its classification and justification, the proposed countermeasure with its mechanism stated (not just its ritual form), and the safety constraints a field team running it would need to follow.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- submitted by the deadline, proposing a containment/warding protocol for a novel case not covered elsewhere in the course
- the protocol's design is traceable to at least one specific piece of course material — a classification category, a warding-tradition mechanism from week 3, or a safety-protocol rule from week 4
- the protocol does not depend on settling the fourth-dimensional hypothesis or any other contested framework to be usable
How it is marked
The capstone is judged as a whole, on whether the proposed protocol is grounded in specific classification and countermeasure material from across the semester rather than general plausibility, whether it is safe to run under the course's fieldwork rules, and whether it stands on its own as something a field team could actually follow.