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Surviving Nations

PROPOSED TERM: [nation names] — the specific names of the surviving safer-side kingdoms have no committed values yet.

Scope​

This file owns the Game 1 specific surviving-nations layer: the safer-side kingdoms and empires that hold defensive lines on the unblighted portion of the continent, the timing of their appearance in Game 1 play (banners and rumours early, envoys and claims at Province/Crown scale), and their political relationships to one another and to the MC's Zone. It instantiates ul-demon-king-remains.md's Afterwar polity pattern and ul-wardhearts-and-nexuses.md's multiple-Shielded-Zone fact for Game 1. The specific nation names are deferred. Active diplomatic mechanics with these nations live in gd-* design docs once those are authored.

Facts​

Fact: Surviving kingdoms hold defensive lines on the safer side of the continent.​

After the prior Cycle peak, surviving safer-side kingdoms hold defensive lines against residual demon pressure, anchored on their own Shielded Zones and Wardhearts. They are not unified into a single super-realm; they are a loose array of polities sharing the unblighted side of the continent and the structural problem of containment. Their existence is the political backdrop of Game 1.

Canonicity: hard canon for Game 1 Cross-refs: ../universe/ul-demon-cycle.md, ../universe/ul-wardhearts-and-nexuses.md, gl-afterwar-state.md

Fact: Specific surviving-nation names are deferred.​

PROPOSED TERM: [nation names] — the specific names of the surviving kingdoms, their dynasties, capitals, and heraldry are deferred. The MC encounters them through banners, coins, map annotations, survivor rumours, and (later) envoys, but these surfaces use placeholder labels until a future content wave commits the canonical names.

Canonicity: proposed

Fact: In early acts, surviving nations appear only as banners, coins, maps, and rumours.​

In early acts (0–3) the surviving nations appear in the MC's Zone only as artefactual remains: old banners on ruined walls, foreign coins recovered from ruins, map annotations on partial charts, and rumours from refugee NPCs. There is no diplomatic contact, no envoy, no political negotiation. The nations exist as a distant fact the MC and their early settlement know about but do not interact with.

Canonicity: hard canon for Game 1 Exposure note: Surfaces (banners, coins, maps, rumours) reach revealed per lh-game1-world-hooks.md — they are in-Zone observable artefacts.

Fact: Envoys, claims, and diplomatic contact arrive around Province/Crown scale.​

Envoys, territorial claims, and meaningful diplomatic contact from surviving nations first reach the MC's polity around Province/Crown scale (Acts 5–6). Before this scale the surviving nations consider the MC's Zone too small, too distant, or too uncertain to engage diplomatically. The Province/Crown threshold matches the polity scale at which a foreign ruler will dispatch a meaningful envoy.

Canonicity: soft canon for Game 1

Fact: Surviving nations are not unified; they have their own rivalries and contradictions.​

The surviving nations are not a unified bloc. They have rivalries, competing territorial claims, contradictory historical accounts, and conflicting interpretations of which nation has rightful claim to what land. The MC will encounter contradictions in old records — different nation banners flying over the same ruin in different sources, conflicting border accounts, contested heroic histories — that reflect this internal disunity.

Canonicity: soft canon for Game 1

Fact: At least one surviving nation has historical claim to territory in the MC's Zone.​

At least one surviving nation maintains a historical claim to territory inside the MC's starting Zone — likely a pre-Afterwar provincial holding now considered abandoned by the rest of the polity but not formally renounced. This claim becomes politically significant when diplomatic contact begins at Province/Crown scale: a nation with a paper claim to the MC's land is not a neutral negotiating partner.

Canonicity: soft canon for Game 1 Cross-refs: gl-afterwar-state.md

Fact: The false-king rules one of the surviving nations or a polity within the safer-side block.​

The false-king described in gl-game1-false-king.md rules one of the surviving nations or a polity within the safer-side block. Which specific nation is proposed (deferred along with the false-king's identity). The false-king's nation is a real working nation with real defensive responsibilities; the heart-fragment corruption is a hidden condition inside an otherwise functional polity.

Canonicity: soft canon for Game 1 Cross-refs: gl-game1-false-king.md

Cross-references​

  • ../universe/ul-demon-cycle.md
  • ../universe/ul-wardhearts-and-nexuses.md
  • ../universe/ul-demon-king-remains.md
  • gl-afterwar-state.md
  • gl-game1-false-king.md
  • ../hooks/lh-game1-world-hooks.md