Where a weapon finally kills something, where food stops being a top-up and becomes a budget, and where the map starts to cost you.
You will find it at War, with three tabs: Fronts, Warbands and Diplomacy.
Nothing a country does is on the War page. Declaring a war, opening a front, funding the chest that pays fighters, offering peace and signing a pact are all laws, and a law is passed where every other law is passed: Realm → Council. The War page is what you read, plus the one thing you do in person, which is swing.
You fight only where you stand. A front is one region, and you must be standing in that region to strike a blow in it. Getting there is ordinary travel: one crossing a day, ten health a hop. The fight where you stand, whichever realm's war it belongs to, is the one at the top of the Fronts tab, and the rest are read from there.
A swing costs 10 health and deals damage. Nothing limits how many you take.
That is the first uncapped action in the world. Training is once a day, moving is once a day, working is once a day; a swing is as often as you can pay for it. A full health bar is ten swings, and five q5 meals buy twenty-five more, so a hard day at a front is about thirty-five blows and the limit you actually hit is what is in your larder.
damage = your strength
+ 50 × the quality of the weapon you spend
+ 5 × your rank in your warband
+ 5 if your warband's camp stands in this region
Four numbers from four different places, and none of them substitutes for another:
| where it comes from | |
|---|---|
| strength | training, 5 a day, for ever; plus what any relic you hold lends while you hold it (see Religion) |
| the weapon | the goods market, and it is consumed: one swing, one weapon, gone |
| the rank | your warband's owner promoting you, paid for out of its treasury |
| the camp | your warband's owner planting one where you are fighting |
A weapon dwarfs everything else early on. A q5 weapon is a flat +250, and a world day of training is +5, so it takes roughly ten player years of perfect attendance to match one sword. For a young character, war is decided almost entirely by what they can afford at the goods market. That is deliberate, and it is measured rather than assumed.
You may swing unarmed, and that is ordinary rather than an error. You simply deal your strength and whatever your warband is worth to you.
You may fight for either side, whatever your citizenship. An orc may fight for the dwarves against the kinnaera, or for the kinnaera against the dwarves, or for both in the same battle. Each swing counts for exactly one side.
A front is one region of the enemy, and it must border ground the attacker already holds. It stands for five world days, and when it closes the side that dealt the greater damage takes the region. A tie is held by the defender: the attacker has to exceed the defence, not merely match it.
Each side holds at most one open front per war. Both sides may hold one at the same time, and they need not be in the same place; that is how a counter-attack happens without there being a mechanic called one.
A front can wound you. When it closes, everybody who swung on it has a 1 in 101 chance of coming away wounded, once per front however many times they swung. A wound is public, heals in its own time, and can leave a lasting injury that weakens you in a duel. See what you carry. Uprisings wound nobody.
When a region changes hands, everything follows from that one fact. Anybody standing in it is now standing in the conqueror's country, the companies there are that country's, work done there is taxed by that country, the goods offered there are priced in that country's money, and the duke of that region keeps his duchy and starts helping choose a different king. Your citizenship does not change: you are standing in another country, not a citizen of one. Nothing about you moved.
A swing pays you nothing at the moment you make it. Damage accumulates against you and the whole battle is settled once, when the front closes.
That is not a delay for its own sake. Pay is your total damage times the chest's rate, divided by a thousand, rounded down once. Rounded on every swing instead, a novice dealing 5 damage a blow would earn nothing on every blow at every rate a council would ever set, for ever, and no choice they made would change it. Rounded once across five days, the same novice earns real money.
Three more things fall out of it:
A chest pays only through a warband. If you belong to none when a front settles, your damage counted for your side and you are paid nothing. That is not an error and the page says so plainly.
A chest pays the attacker's side, and only what you dealt for it. If you fought for both sides of one front, each side keeps its own total of your damage, and the settlement pays the attacker's. What you dealt for the defender counted, and earns nothing.
A front shows its five hardest hitters, the five who have dealt the most on it, with their warbands and the side each fights for, and never what they will be paid: what another fighter earns depends on their warband's split and on the settlement, and only your own figure is shown to you.
You are told what you were paid. When a front settles, your own log records the gold that reached your purse and what your warband kept of it, with the region the front stood on. See The chronicle. A day's work is not a fight: a wage is said on the work report the day it is earned and is never written into the log.
A warband costs 150 gold to found. You own it, it passes to your next character when you die, and you are its first member.
It is a faction with two rules turned around:
| a faction | a warband | |
|---|---|---|
| who may join | citizens only | anybody, of any citizenship |
| the treasury | gold in, burned out | gold in, paid out |
Anybody may join any warband in the world. A warband gives no vote, no seat and no claim on any treasury but its own, so a foreigner in one is a mercenary rather than an infiltrator. It is the only institution in this world that crosses a border, and with five countries and few players it is often the only way a battlefield holds more than two people.
One warband at a time. Joining a second is refused; leave the first.
The Warbands tab is a page for one warband: yours, or, reached from the Rankings by its name, any other. The card on the left is the warband (its home, its owner, its living members, its camp, what a rank is worth to you and its split), your rank, and, for a member, its treasury, the donate box and the muster roll; the column on the right is the owner's controls. Joining and leaving are in the card's header, and founding one is offered in place of the card while you belong to none. There is no table of warbands here: the Rankings are the directory.
Every warband publishes three percentages that add to 100: the owner's share, the warband's share and the fighter's share of everything the fighter earns from a war chest. It is set by the owner and it is public before you join, because it is the offer being made to you.
It is not capped. An owner may legally keep 98 and pay you 1. What protects you is that you can read it first and leave at any time.
The split cannot be changed while any member has unsettled damage on an open front. The ratio you fought under is the ratio you are paid on, because it could not have moved in between.
Where a payment does not divide into three whole shares, you get the remainder. The published percentage is a floor for you and a ceiling for the owner.
The owner may promote a member, which costs the warband 50 gold and raises that member's rank by one, up to five. Each rank is worth 5 damage on every swing that member makes, for ever.
The gold is never the member's own, so nobody buys their own strength. It is patronage: the owner chooses who rises.
The owner may plant a camp for 50 gold from the treasury, in whatever region they are standing in. One camp at a time; planting a new one moves it. A camp does two things:
If the owner dies and that player has not yet made a new character, the warband carries on. Nobody can change the split, promote, camp or write its message until the line resumes, and no member inherits those powers by seniority or rank. Members keep fighting and keep their own share; the owner's share waits in the dead character's estate and reaches their next character whole.
Occupied ground is any region held by a country other than the one it began in. Nothing records it: it is simply the difference between where the world started and where it is now, so a region that goes home stops being occupied the moment it does.
If you are standing in occupied ground, and you own or belong to a warband whose camp stands in that region, you may raise a resistance for 500 gold from your own purse. No council votes on it and no king may refuse it: it is what people do when their government cannot help them. The Fronts tab shows which of the four conditions you meet where you stand: the ground is occupied, no other fight stands in it, your warband camps there, and you can pay.
It runs for three world days, shorter than a front because an uprising is quicker than a campaign, and it is fought on exactly the same damage line. If the resistance out-damages the occupier, the region returns to the country it began in — not to whoever won it. Three countries' mercenaries can win a region back for a fourth.
No chest pays in an uprising. Nobody earns gold for a swing in one.
A non-aggression pact does not protect occupied ground. A country that takes a region and then signs a pact has bought safety from declarations, not from the people standing on what it took.
A war is declared by a law of one country's council, naming another. It costs the declaring treasury 500 gold, which is destroyed and reaches nobody: a war that costs nothing is a war nobody has to mean.
There are three ways out.
Peace. One council passes a law offering a peace accord; the other passes a law accepting it. Each acts only on its own country, each king may veto his own half, and the accord stands in public where anybody can read it. An unaccepted offer expires after two full motion-and-veto cycles, which is long enough for the other council to answer it twice over and short enough that peace has to be timed.
A pact. A non-aggression accord is offered and accepted the same way and binds for 30 world days, which is one great year and one full council term: the council that signs it is the council it binds. While it stands, neither country may declare war on the other.
Lapsing. A war in which nobody opens a front for two full front cycles ends by itself. Peace needs two councils to act, councils are often under-filled, and an empty council passes nothing, so without this a war against a kingdom whose players have gone would stand for ever. A war is something a country does, not a state it entered once.
None of the three gives anything back. Ground taken stays taken; the only way home is an uprising.
| found a warband | 150 gold, from your purse |
| promote a member | 50 gold, from the warband's treasury |
| plant a camp | 50 gold, from the warband's treasury |
| raise a resistance | 500 gold, from your purse |
| declare a war | 500 gold, from the treasury, destroyed |
| a swing | 10 health, and one weapon of the quality you chose |
| a front | 5 world days |
| an uprising | 3 world days |
| a pact | 30 world days |