Vessa

Vessa is a pericyte who lives against one vessel at Vessel Margins. She is not an all-purpose valve operator. Her concern is visitors who read everything at the border as either an invasion or a disaster.

Appearance#

Vessa keeps the original approved pericyte body, mounted on a vessel, with a rounded antenna on top. The user asked for the original pericyte "plus a Teletubbies-like head antenna" after rejecting a remade body.

Personality#

Vessa knows familiar traffic from unusual adhesion patterns. She cannot judge downstream neuronal outcomes just by looking at a vessel, and she says so. She has a long disagreement with Aster about how much warning a resident can really give.

Role in the story#

In scene II4 Vessa introduces the vessel interface before the player meets any inflammatory relay. In Act II and III7 she gives border context from her real location. In Act V her vessel may show a local change, but border residents are still not hostile.

Recruitment#

Never. Any visit to Hearth would need a real connected vessel site, not a teleporting pericyte.

Development#

• Story: plan v0.5 §8 and §21; dossier Part VII-B.
• Art: the user rejected a remade "Dream Loop" Vessa, then approved the rounded-antenna candidate on 2 November ("Approved"). A sharp-cornered first antenna was rejected.
• Vessa is not in the Placeholder alpha. Generic pericyte NPCs were removed from the older preview at the user's request on 31 October. See Pericyte.

See also#

• Pericyte
• The Border of an Agreement
• Bram

Sources#

1. .GAME_PLAN/ARBORWAKE_THE_LONG_WAKE_COMPLETE_GAME_PLAN_v0.5.md (working copy, not in Git)
2. .GAME_PLAN/ARBORWAKE_COMPANIONS_NARRATIVE_AND_SYSTEMS_DOSSIER_v0.5.md (working copy, not in Git)
3. docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-02-lead-later-named-cast-design.md (working copy, not in Git)