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Act 5 - Province

Act 5 is the first administrative act. The player now rules a Province rather than only a connected banner network. Law, taxation, standing forces, and Province-facing administration become first-class systems.

Role​

  • Promote one network of settlements into a formal Province structure.
  • Introduce governors, taxation, law, and Province-wide defensive planning.
  • Turn gates, taint, and shield failure into Province-scale strategic problems.
  • Make Province capitals and administrative centers feel different from ordinary settlements.

What Changes From Act 4​

  • The player now organizes settlements under formal Province rule.
  • Province administration can demand tradeoffs that local settlement logic would not choose on its own.
  • Standing Forces and DefenseZones matter more than ad-hoc local response; Province introduces ProvinceDefensePlans and the eight DefenseZone types (Capital, Heartland, Settlement, RouteCorridor, WardLine, FrontierScreen, Containment, Reserve) per ../systems/gd-defense-zones.md.
  • Frontier work is judged by regional stability, not only by site-by-site gain.

Required Outcomes​

  • The player has one real Province under unified rule.
  • Province law, taxation, or administrative projects are part of normal play.
  • A Province capital and non-capital settlements have visibly different roles.
  • The next strategic step becomes crown-scale coordination across multiple Provinces.

Boundary Into Act 6​

Act 5 ends when the player is ready to rule across Provinces rather than inside only one.

  • Provincial administration is stable enough to scale upward.
  • Military and policy questions now cross Province borders.
  • The next ladder rung is crown-scale rule.

Cross-Act Quest Thread Lanes​

The following cross-act Quest Thread lanes have appearance views in Act 5. Per-act mission entry points for each lane are provided by this act's content; lane canonical owners live under ../quest-threads/.

  • Core/Truth — Province-wide Territory knowledge and the first institutional reach bring new authored story gates for the cosmological reveal; the scale of Province administration creates surface area for faction-political strands of the false-king arc.
  • Pressure/Corruption — Province-scale standing Forces and DefenseZone planning formalize the threat-response arc; ProvinceDefensePlans convert the lane's reactive pressure into structured institutional response for the first time.
  • People/Retinue — Province rule introduces officer-class named-character assignments (Province governors, standing-Force commanders, and Province-tier administrative leads) that carry the retinue arc's highest Act 5 stakes.
  • Faction/Polity — formal Province status triggers polity-rank advance mechanics and makes inter-Province faction politics consequential; taxation, law, and Province identity create new stakes for existing faction relationships.
  • Rune/Crafting/True Harm — Province-scale institutional capacity makes dedicated rune research centers and ward-craft infrastructure viable; True Harm material acquisition benefits from Province-wide Operation reach.
  • Reclamation/Crown — the Province's first standing Force doctrine and DefenseZone planning make sustained reclamation Operations possible beyond local site responses; this act escalates the lane's reclamation ambition toward Crown-scale.