Three steps build every varga
Any D-N chart is built the same way. Slice: divide each 30° sign into N equal parts of 30/N degrees. Locate: find which part holds the planet's degree. Count: assign that part to a sign by the varga's own counting rule. Steps one and two are pure arithmetic; step three is each varga's signature — the only place they differ.
D9: nine parts of 3°20′. D3: three parts of 10°. D2: two parts of 15°. Same slicing logic, different divisors — then each applies its own count.
Movable from itself, fixed from the ninth, dual from the fifth
The D9's parts are 3°20′ wide, and its count runs nine signs in zodiacal order — the only question is where the count starts. Movable signs start from themselves. Fixed signs start from the ninth sign from them. Dual signs start from the fifth. This is the one counting rule to master by hand; everything downstream leans on it.
Moon at 15° Leo: fifth part (13°20′–16°40′). Leo is fixed, so count from Aries, the ninth from Leo: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo — the fifth is Leo itself. Vargottama.
One continuous walk replaces all three cases
Start at 0° Aries and walk the zodiac in 3°20′ steps, assigning navamsha signs in plain order — Aries, Taurus, Gemini, on and on, 108 steps around. That single unbroken sequence reproduces the classical rule exactly. Movable-fixed-dual is just what the walk looks like when you enter it mid-stream. Count by cases for hand-work; hold the walk for intuition.
0° Taurus is the walk's tenth step, and the sequence has already reached Capricorn — precisely the ninth sign from Taurus. The 'cases' were never separate rules.
You have been computing navamshas since lesson 18
Each 3°20′ pada IS one navamsha — lesson 18's pada count was this rule wearing nakshatra clothing. Lesson 43's vargottama bands — first part of a movable sign, middle of a fixed, last of a dual — are simply the slices where the count lands back on the starting sign. Pada, bands, recipe: one machine, three viewing angles.
Arjun's lagna at 2° Libra sits in the first part of a movable sign, counted from Libra itself — so his D9 lagna is Libra too. A vargottama lagna, visible in the lab.
Hora halves, drekkana trines
The D2 hora splits each sign into two 15° halves assigned to only two signs — Cancer, the Moon's hora, and Leo, the Sun's — alternating by odd and even sign. The D3 drekkana cuts three 10° parts, given to the sign itself, the fifth from it, and the ninth from it: a walk around the sign's own trine.
Their full charts arrive in the coming lessons. Today, just see that each is the same recipe with a different step three.
A new D9 sign every thirteen minutes
A navamsha sign spans 3°20′ of zodiac — for the lagna, roughly thirteen minutes of birth time. When a client's time is approximate, the planets' varga positions mostly survive, because planets crawl; it is the varga lagna that scrambles. Trust slow vargas less the finer they get — lesson 4's discipline compounds with every division.
'Born around 7' can leave the D1 lagna untouched while putting the D9 lagna a sign or two adrift.
The meta rule
Slice, locate, count — and nothing else changes
Every varga is the same three steps — slice, locate, count. Master the navamsha's count and you own the recipe for all sixteen. And the recipe rearranges, it does not invent: planets keep their natures, signs keep their lords, the dignity table stands. You read a varga chart with every skill from modules 2 through 5, unchanged.
A varga is a new arrangement, not new planets. One counting rule learned well makes the other fifteen footnotes.