> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.highailabs.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# The Supporting Cast
> Who everyone else in the scripts is, what each one has to read as, and the rule that lets you cast any Cantina character you like in the role.
## The Short Answer
**Professor High is locked. Everyone else is yours to cast.**
Every script in the library names its supporting characters — The Maximizer, The Oracle, The Old Head, The Clerk and the rest. Those are **roles, not assets**. If Cantina already has a character who fits the brief, use it. If you would rather build one, build one. If you want to swap the whole cast next month, swap it.
That is the point of working in Cantina, and it is why this page exists as a set of **casting briefs** rather than a set of character designs. You do not need to commission nine characters before you can shoot. You need one locked character and eight briefs you can cast against.
## What Is Locked And What Is Not
```mermaid theme={null}
flowchart TD
L["professor-high-v1
LOCKED"] --> L1["Never re-described in a prompt"]
L --> L2["Never substituted"]
L --> L3["Never redesigned without a version bump"]
S["Supporting cast
SWAPPABLE"] --> S1["Cast from Cantina's roster
or build your own"]
S --> S2["Must satisfy the role brief"]
S --> S3["Must hold within a pack"]
```
| | Professor High | Supporting cast |
| ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| **Status** | The brand asset | Comic instruments |
| **Can you swap it?** | **No.** Ever | **Yes.** Freely |
| **Described in prompts?** | Never — he is already loaded, and [re-describing a saved character is the main cause of drift](/social/character-config) | Yes, by brief |
| **Versioning** | Bumped and logged in [Character Config](/social/character-config#versioning) | None needed |
| **If it changes mid-run** | A continuity failure | Fine — as long as it does not change *inside* a pack |
## The Four Swap Rules
A substitute can be any character you like, provided all four hold. These are not style preferences — each one protects something the library depends on.
### 1. Silhouette must contrast
The teardowns are blunt that **silhouette is a hook**: recognisable at thumbnail scale beats detail. Whoever you cast must be distinguishable from Professor High *and* from anyone else in the same scene when the frame is 120px wide and someone is scrolling.
Two characters with similar builds, similar palettes, or both in neutral clothing will read as one blur. If your first-choice cast collides, change one of them — usually a hat, a colour block, or a posture is enough.
### 2. The role has to survive the casting
Each brief below names one thing the character does. A substitute that cannot do that thing breaks the joke rather than reskinning it.
The most common failure: casting someone who reads as **mean**. Almost every archetype here is *confidently wrong* or *sincerely lost*, and neither is the same as unpleasant. Professor High never punches down, and neither does the cast around him.
### 3. Consistency has to hold **within a pack**
This is the one that is easy to get wrong, and it matters more here than it normally would.
[The 100](/social/scripts/the-100/design) is a designed experiment. A pack runs 5-10 reps of one format specifically so a median exists. **If the cast changes between rep 3 and rep 4, the pack stops measuring the format and starts measuring the recast** — and there is no way to separate the two afterwards.
Cast once per pack. Write down who you cast. Change freely between packs, never inside one.
### 4. Compliance travels with the role, not the character
Whoever you cast inherits the whole [compliance](/social/compliance) posture: nothing lit, held, eaten or passed on camera, no product or packaging in frame, no real brand or dispensary names, no medical claims. A stock Cantina character does not come with those constraints attached — the prompt does, and the prompt wins.
## The Recurring Cast
Nine roles. Each brief is written to be pasted straight into a Cantina character search or build.
***
### The Maximizer
| | |
| -------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **The bit** | Buys exclusively by the biggest number. Optimising hard for the wrong variable |
| **Must read as** | Confident, decisive, completely sincere |
| **Must not read as** | Stupid, aggressive, or a mark. He has a system — the system is just wrong |
| **Silhouette** | Broad, upright, always facing a menu board. Cargo shorts, intense squint |
| **Voice** | Flat certainty. Never raises it. Never hedges |
| **Appears in** | Comedy Engine, Edible Ain't Shit, Paranoia Ward, Formal Systems, Immovable Punchline, Taxonomy, Seven-Second Cards, Control Pack |
> **Casting brief:** A confident, broad-shouldered everyman in casual clothes who reads as decisive and slightly overconfident. Sincere, never mean. Silhouette must be distinct at thumbnail size.
***
### The Oracle
| | |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **The bit** | Explains your own high to you. Total confidence, zero accuracy |
| **Must read as** | Relaxed, generous, genuinely trying to help |
| **Must not read as** | Smug or condescending — he believes he is doing you a favour |
| **Silhouette** | Reclined, gesturing philosophically, eyes half-closed. The horizontal one |
| **Voice** | Unhurried, expansive, fond of the word "basically" |
| **Appears in** | Comedy Engine, Edible Ain't Shit, Paranoia Ward, Taxonomy, Seven-Second Cards, Control Pack |
> **Casting brief:** A relaxed, reclined character who gestures while explaining things. Warm and generous, never smug. Reads as horizontal even in a still frame.
***
### The Very Confident Budtender
| | |
| -------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **The bit** | Has an answer for everything. The answer is "this one's fire" |
| **Must read as** | Likeable, helpful, doing their best with the vocabulary the industry handed them |
| **Must not read as** | Dishonest. **This is a hard rule** — we frame the industry, never the person behind the counter |
| **Silhouette** | Apron, name tag, unbreakable eye contact |
| **Voice** | Warm, fast, certain. Never defensive |
| **Appears in** | Comedy Engine, Immovable Punchline, Formal Systems, Taxonomy |
> **Casting brief:** A friendly retail worker in an apron with a name tag. Warm, fast-talking, endlessly confident. Must read as likeable — never as a con artist.
***
### The First-Timer
| | |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **The bit** | Asks the question everyone else is too proud to ask |
| **Must read as** | Sincere, curious, sympathetic. Frequently the smartest person in the scene |
| **Must not read as** | A punchline. She is surprised, never humiliated |
| **Silhouette** | Small, upright, often clutching something — a receipt, a phone, a plain sheet |
| **Voice** | Careful. Asks real questions and waits for the answer |
| **Appears in** | Comedy Engine, Edible Ain't Shit, Paranoia Ward, Immovable Punchline, Taxonomy |
> **Casting brief:** A small, upright, earnest character who reads as new to the situation and genuinely curious. Sympathetic at all times. Never the butt of the joke.
***
### The Old Head
| | |
| -------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **The bit** | Nostalgic, certain, genuinely experienced — and usually half right |
| **Must read as** | A credible witness. Professor High concedes to him before correcting him |
| **Must not read as** | A fool or a relic. [The Nostalgia Lab](/social/scripts/the-100/nostalgia-lab) does not work if he is mocked |
| **Silhouette** | Weathered, relaxed posture, permanently mid-anecdote. **A distinct hat is the cheapest way to make him read at thumbnail scale** |
| **Voice** | Unhurried, anecdotal, starts sentences in the middle |
| **Appears in** | The Nostalgia Lab, Taxonomy |
> **Casting brief:** An older, weathered, relaxed character dressed like the eighties never ended, with a distinctive hat. Reads as experienced and credible, never as a joke.
***
### The Clerk
| | |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **The bit** | Administers a procedure. Entirely affectless |
| **Must read as** | Neutral to the point of comedy. The bureaucracy is the joke, not the person |
| **Must not read as** | Sarcastic, hostile, or aware that anything is funny |
| **Silhouette** | Grey, tired, permanently holding a clipboard. Same character across every institution |
| **Voice** | Zero inflection. Reads things back verbatim |
| **Appears in** | Formal Systems (all nine) |
> **Casting brief:** A grey, tired, entirely affectless office worker with a clipboard. Delivers everything flat, with no sarcasm and no reaction. The same character recurs across every institution in the pack.
**The Clerk is the highest-leverage single casting decision in the slate.** One character carries all nine [Formal Systems](/social/scripts/the-100/formal-systems) episodes and appears in three other packs. Cast this one first.
***
### The Outsider
| | |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **The bit** | Confesses, straight to camera, that she had something completely wrong |
| **Must read as** | Bright, smart, sincere, laughing at herself. Reasoning correctly from bad information |
| **Must not read as** | Foolish. The audience must side *with* her — the whole mechanic depends on it |
| **Silhouette** | Tidy, upright, dressed like she has never been in a dispensary. Must contrast hard with the Maximizer and Old Head |
| **Voice** | Conversational, accelerating, self-deprecating. Talks like she is posting to her own account |
| **Appears in** | Outsider Confession (all five) |
> **Casting brief:** A bright, tidy, upright character who talks straight down the lens like a phone selfie video. Sincere and self-deprecating. Reads as smart, never as foolish.
***
### The Witness
| | |
| -------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **The bit** | An anthropomorphic empty jar with a blank label, giving testimony |
| **Must read as** | A **strain name** on trial — never a person, never a business |
| **Must not read as** | Any real brand or packaging. The jar must be visibly empty with a blank label |
| **Silhouette** | A glass jar with a plain paper label, seated |
| **Voice** | Confident, defensive, entirely certain of its own reputation |
| **Appears in** | Formal Systems (`FSY-006`) |
> **Casting brief:** A stylised anthropomorphic glass jar with a blank paper label. Empty, generic, resembling no real product. Confident and defensive when it speaks.
***
### The Entourage — terpenes as characters
| | |
| -------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **The bit** | Each dominant terpene as an employee in a workplace |
| **Must read as** | Status maps to market share. Myrcene is exhausted and everywhere; Terpinolene is new and rare |
| **Must not read as** | A claim that any terpene produces any effect — **hard compliance line** |
| **Silhouette** | Distinguished by colour motif and posture rather than detail |
| **Appears in** | The Entourage, Formal Systems (`FSY-002`, `FSY-007`) |
| Terpene | Share | Casting note |
| ----------------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Myrcene** | 45.8% | Heavy, slumped, exhausted. Soft earthy-purple motif. In nearly half of everything and never asked for by name |
| **Limonene** | 25.4% | Bright, quick, citrus-yellow motif. The other half of everything |
| **Caryophyllene** | 15.2% | The one that behaves differently. Peppery, sharp, deep-red motif |
| **Terpinolene** | 4.5% | Small, new, nervous. Sharp pine-green angles. Rare, not bad |
| **Linalool** | \~1 in 66 | Quiet, floral, rarely seen. Soft lavender motif |
> **Casting brief:** Workplace characters distinguished by a single colour motif and posture. Status and energy map to market share, not to any claimed effect.
***
### Non-characters
Some things in the scripts read like cast but need no character file at all:
| Element | What it actually is |
| --------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **The cat** (`PAR-007`) | A generic stylised house cat. Never speaks, never moves, never reacts |
| **The caller** (`FSY-005`) | Phone-filtered voice only. Never seen |
| **The four-slot card** (Rotation) | A graphic, not a scene. Portraits appear as thumbnails inside it |
| **Background figures** | Always out of focus, never identifiable, never looking at camera |
| **Blurred family / party guests** | Ambience. Mouths may move; words are never audible |
## Casting Order
If you are casting from scratch, this order gets you shooting fastest. Counts are the number of scripts in the library that call for each role.
| Order | Cast | Scripts unlocked |
| ----- | --------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| 1 | **The Maximizer** | **34** — the most-used supporting role by a wide margin |
| 2 | **The Oracle** | **22** — pairs with the Maximizer constantly |
| 3 | **The First-Timer** | **12** — the sympathetic variants across five packs |
| 4 | **The Clerk** | **9** — and it is the only role that completes an entire pack ([Formal Systems](/social/scripts/the-100/formal-systems)) |
| 5 | **The Old Head** | **8** — all of [The Nostalgia Lab](/social/scripts/the-100/nostalgia-lab) bar one |
| 6 | **The Budtender** | **7** — counter scenes across four packs |
| 7 | **The Outsider** | **5** — all of [Outsider Confession](/social/scripts/the-100/outsider-confession) |
| 8 | **Terpinolene / Myrcene / The Witness** | **1 each.** Cast last, or skip those episodes |
**Cast the Maximizer first for volume, the Clerk first for a finished pack.** If the goal is to get a complete format tested end to end, The Clerk is the better opening move — nine episodes of one format is a readable result, where 34 scattered episodes across six packs is not.
**100 of the 172 scripts need no supporting cast at all** — they are Professor High alone. If you want to start shooting before casting anything, start there: [Look It Up](/social/scripts/the-100/look-it-up), [The Thought](/social/scripts/the-100/hits-blunt), [The Counter Kit](/social/scripts/the-100/counter-kit) and [Sections](/social/scripts/the-100/sections) are entirely solo.
## Recording What You Cast
Once you cast a role, write it down here or in the [performance log](/social/scripts/testing-framework#the-performance-log). Not for ceremony — because **rule 3** means a pack's results are only readable if you know who was in it.
```text theme={null}
CASTING LOG
The Clerk → cast
The Maximizer → cast
The Oracle → cast
...
```
## Related
Professor High — the one locked asset.
The Cantina prompt block and how casting appears in it.
Why casting has to hold inside a pack.