Plant the Hearthseed, found a steading, and let the town be judged by how you live.
Wave 6 is the heart of the game. Planting the Hearthseed founds a named steading with a fuel-burning hearth and a land-health grid moved by felling, planting, tilling and gleaning. The five vows are measured from play, and a camp rises to Hamlet and then Steading. Folk have needs, schedules, memories, opinions and gossip. A charter sets the first laws (Rest Day, Gleaning, Night Watch); tithe and hearth tax fill an open-books chest; pennies, shillings and crowns carry real-world prices; and the wheelbarrow and handcart join the cart. The hearth light costs nothing measurable on the GPU.
Every wave closes with a play test on the build machine in the browser, at a 12-chunk view: frame rate, faults, world memory, and a scripted story test that plays the new loop end to end and reloads the world to check it came back exactly. What did not pass is written down and carried into the next wave.