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Hero Calling and the Accord of Intervention

PROPOSED TERM: Accord of Intervention — provisional working label per Wave 0 deferral; the term itself is not yet committed canon, only the concept it names.

PROPOSED TERM: Corebound — provisional working label for the mortal-vessel state described below; not yet committed canon.

Scope​

This file owns the universe-scope mechanism, history, and divine contract behind the Hero Calling and the Accord of Intervention by which gods of this setting are permitted to summon, mark, or empower mortal heroes to resist demon waves. The specific Game 1 protagonist's status, mark, and arrival sequence are game-local and live in gl-* files; this file documents the cross-game structure those instances inherit from.

Facts​

Fact: The Accord of Intervention is a divine compact permitting summoning and marking of heroes to resist demon waves.​

The Accord is the cross-game contract under which gods of this setting may reach across the divine layer into the mortal world to call, summon, mark, or empower mortal heroes against demon-origin pressure. It is the structural reason a Hero Calling is possible at all; without the Accord, divine intervention against demons would either be barred or unrestrained.

Canonicity: hard canon Cross-refs: ul-divine-layer.md, ul-shroud.md, ul-demon-cycle.md

Fact: A Calling is not automatic; it requires a god or divine agent acting under the Accord's terms.​

A Calling does not happen as a natural consequence of demon pressure. Some divine actor — a god, a vessel acting on a god's behalf, or a divine agent — must invoke the Accord and pay its cost. This is why Callings are rare events keyed to specific historical crises rather than constant features of the setting.

Canonicity: hard canon Cross-refs: ul-divine-layer.md, ul-shroud.md

Fact: Heroes marked by a Calling carry a recognizable divine signature that the Shroud partially blocks from demon sight.​

A hero who has received a clean Calling carries a divine mark perceptible to other divinely-attuned senses. The Shroud partially shields this mark from demon-origin perception, which is one of the structural reasons Called heroes are effective: demons cannot cleanly identify them at a distance the way they identify ordinary mortals.

Canonicity: hard canon Cross-refs: ul-shroud.md, ul-divine-layer.md, ul-demon-cosmology.md

Fact: The Calling has been invoked multiple times across the setting's history.​

The Accord has been invoked across multiple eras and on multiple continents. The history of Callings is older than any single game's timeline; ruins, oral histories, and old inscriptions across the setting attest to prior Callings that resolved or failed to resolve their respective crises.

Canonicity: hard canon Cross-refs: ul-demon-cycle.md, ul-cosmology.md

Fact: The Accord has constraints; the god invoking it pays a cost.​

A god who invokes the Accord pays a cost — most commonly Shroud-thickening or vessel cost. The act of reaching across the divine boundary to mark a hero spends divine resource, which is one reason gods do not invoke Callings casually or for ordinary threats.

Canonicity: soft canon Cross-refs: ul-shroud.md, ul-divine-layer.md

Fact: Some heroes fit a delayed or improperly anchored Calling pattern: drawn to a Wardheart anchor without a clean divine mark.​

The shared-canon pattern here is a mortal vessel drawn toward a Wardheart or Nexus without having received a clean, fully-paid Calling — a delayed, partial, or improperly anchored invocation of the Accord. Corebound is the current proposed working label for that pattern, not a settled universe-canon term. A mortal who fits the pattern arrives at a place of cosmological significance because the place's anchor exerts pull, not because the mortal has been gifted a clean hero-class divine signature. The pattern itself is universe scope. The specific Game 1 instance — whether the Game 1 protagonist fits this pattern, what locals call it if anything, and the surrounding circumstances — is gl-* scope and lives in a future game-local file.

Canonicity: soft canon (pattern); proposed (Corebound label) Cross-refs: ul-wardhearts-and-nexuses.md, ul-divine-layer.md, ul-shroud.md

Fact: The Accord's terms are not known to mortal scholars, only its effects.​

Mortals can observe that Callings happen and can read the marks on Called heroes after the fact, but the structural terms of the Accord — what gods are bound to and what they exchange to invoke it — are not legible to mortal scholarship. Mortal accounts of the Accord are necessarily partial and reconstructive.

Canonicity: soft canon Cross-refs: ul-divine-layer.md, ul-shroud.md

Fact: The mechanism by which a Calling marks a hero is not yet committed.​

The exact metaphysical change inside a Called hero — what physically or spiritually changes in the marked individual at the moment of Calling — is left as a deferred question. Authoring of game content must not depend on a specific mechanism until this is resolved.

Canonicity: proposed

Fact: Whether a hero can refuse a Calling is bible-only.​

Whether a mortal can decline an invocation of the Accord is reserved as bible-only material. It is not surfaced in any player-facing content and is not used to drive game mechanics until promoted out of bible-only tier.

Canonicity: bible-only

Fact: Whether multiple heroes can be Called simultaneously is bible-only.​

Whether the Accord permits more than one mortal to be Called for the same crisis, and what the consequences of simultaneous Callings would be, is reserved as bible-only material.

Canonicity: bible-only

Fact: An organized order of Called heroes predated the current era.​

There was, in a prior era, an organized order of Called heroes that operated across the setting and is attested in ruins, inscriptions, and oral history. The name of this order is deferred per Wave 0 and must not be invented; this file refers to it only as "the old order of Called heroes" or "the heroes of the previous Calling" until the canonical name is committed.

Canonicity: soft canon Cross-refs: ul-demon-cycle.md, ul-cosmology.md

Cross-references​

  • ul-divine-layer.md
  • ul-shroud.md
  • ul-demon-cycle.md
  • ul-demon-cosmology.md
  • ul-cosmology.md
  • ul-wardhearts-and-nexuses.md