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Act 4 - Banner Network

Act 4 is the network act. Valenar stops feeling like one growing settlement with some nearby support sites and starts feeling like a defended banner network of settlements, outposts, roads, ward lines, and governors.

Role​

  • Make multiple settlements and dependent sites the default strategic shape.
  • Turn roads, caravans, patrols, and governor-style delegation into core play.
  • Force the player to think about link security, supply continuity, and route value under pressure.
  • Introduce the first real question of how different holdings specialize inside one banner network.

What Changes From Act 3​

  • Additional settlements matter as peers, not just as resource satellites.
  • Outposts become route, ward, watch, extraction, or relay tools in a wider network.
  • Travel safety and corridor control become as important as local output.
  • Demonic pressure can sever links between holdings instead of only threatening one map cell at a time.
  • Forces become the canonical mobile actor for inter-Territory defense, escort, and patrol. Operations such as PatrolTerritory, SecureRoute, and EscortCaravan become standard tools (see ../systems/gd-operations.md).
  • Territories, Routes, and Sites are the defended network elements; Forces hold Territory perimeters and clear Route corridors.

Required Outcomes​

  • The player runs more than one meaningful settlement.
  • Routes, caravans, or patrols are part of ordinary planning.
  • Different holdings have distinct roles inside the same network.
  • Frontier defense becomes a line-and-node problem rather than a single-center problem.

Boundary Into Act 5​

Act 4 ends when the player is ready to formalize that network under a Province structure.

  • The banner network is large enough that one-settlement governance is no longer sufficient.
  • Administrative identity starts to matter alongside local output.
  • The next step is Province rule, not just another isolated foothold.

Cross-Act Quest Thread Lanes​

The following cross-act Quest Thread lanes have appearance views in Act 4. Per-act mission entry points for each lane are provided by this act's content; lane canonical owners live under ../quest-threads/.

  • Core/Truth — network-scale Territory control and the first route-corridor knowledge base expand the cosmological-clue footprint; authored story gates for the false-king arc may open in Act 4 as political and structural reach grows.
  • Pressure/Corruption — the banner network's links between holdings become targets for demonic pressure; severing routes, taint-front advance, and corridor containment make this lane operate at multi-site scale for the first time.
  • People/Retinue — governor- style delegation and inter-holding officer assignments expand the retinue surface; named-character arc consequences now carry across site boundaries rather than inside one settlement.
  • Faction/Polity — multiple settlements under one banner create the first real inter-faction contact surface; contested site claims, caravan politics, and governor-network relationships drive the faction arc through Act 4.
  • Rune/Crafting/True Harm — network-scale Operations whose outcomes yield ward or True Harm materials (patrol clears, route securement, site extraction) begin feeding this lane with multi-site craft and ward progress.
  • Reclamation/Crown — this lane begins in Act 4: Banner Network-scale pressure means the first real reclamation question — whether to hold or to push — becomes a strategic decision, not just a local site response.