**MORA** is an evidence-driven climate dystopian short-film series; named after the Latin *mora*, the pause or delay between action and consequence[^mora-etymology]. This project transforms real climate policy, scientific papers, legal documents, and recent events into a fictional storytelling set in 2125 through an extended internet presence based around a short-film series. ^ethymo-pitch ## Why this project exists The core problem it addresses is a temporal blindspot: as humans, we struggle to project the impact of decisions made today over future generations. By creating fictional stories set a century from now, MORA tries to enable us to represent ourselves in futures shaped by choices we're collectively making right now. For that, every speculative element in the MORA universe traces back to a source document. That rigor is built in what we call **a vault**, a folder of [Markdown](https://www.markdownguide.org/) files linked together into a knowledge graph. We use [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) to author and navigate it: each file is a note, each `[[wikilink]]` is a connection, and the whole thing becomes a web you can explore non-linearly. The vault is structured so that anyone can follow a narrative claim all the way back to the policy paper, scientific study, or legal text that informed it. Most climate communication operates at two extremes: **academic papers** that are accurate but *often too technical* making them inaccessible, or **disaster spectacle** that is alarming but *disconnected from cause*. MORA aims for evidence-grounded fiction that borrows the rigor of documentary and the emotional reach of drama. ## Built in the open MORA is built on open-source tools with free or permissive licenses wherever possible. This [website](https://publish.obsidian.md/mora-project), the published knowledge base, runs on [Obsidian Publish](https://obsidian.md/publish), and the vault itself is version-controlled on the [(currently private) GitHub repository](https://github.com/Slix-M-Lestragg/---Universe-Bible). Every change to the vault is tracked. Notes added, removed, or revised between releases are logged in detail alongside any new commit. You can browse the full commit history on the repo, and each named release comes with a [[RELEASE|change-log (→ RELEASE)]] directly in the vault, summarizing what's new in that version. The long-term goal is to publish the screenplay of each episode alongside the research vault that produced it where every scene, every speculative claim, every fictional policy leaves a trace. A specific mention around AI usage in this project is needed as AI is both a [[ai_context|fascinating and genuinely scary technology]]. It is used at various stages of this production, always under human supervision and validation. It allows a single creator to oversee and act on the entire project efficiently, from research to visual development. This project is both a guide and a proof-of-concept for AI-assisted short-film production with a very small team. ### Energy-conscious generation Image and video generation for this project runs locally on a single workstation equipped with dual NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPUs, keeping the full system draw under 700 watts during inference. This is a [[energy_consumption|practical choice as much as a principled one]]: local hardware makes the energy cost of generation concrete and measurable — bounded to a session, visible on an electricity bill — rather than abstracted into computational credits whose real cost is easy to ignore. For a broader look at where AI generation sits in the energy conversation, including how it compares to traditional VFX rendering pipelines. ^energy-approach ## What's in this vault ![[RELEASE#^overview]] ![[RELEASE#^new-release-table-of-content]] --- [^mora-etymology]: Latin *mora* — "a delay, a pause, a stopping." <br>From Proto-Italic `morā`, traced to Proto-Indo-European `(s)mer-` ("to think upon, to remember"), the same root as `memor` ("mindful") and `memoria` ("memory"). The English `moratorium` descends from the same stem. <br>The legal maxim `periculum in mora` ("there is danger in delay") captures its classical weight. <br>🔗 Sources: [Lewis & Short](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=mora1), [Logeion](https://logeion.uchicago.edu/mora), [Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mora#Latin).