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Quest Thread - Faction and Polity

Identity​

Faction and Polity is the cross-act Quest Thread that carries the political and factional landscape across Acts 3 through 7. The lane begins in Act 3, when Settlement-tier play introduces factional contact at scale, and continues through Act 7's Crown-scale reclamation. Faction stance shifts, contested claims, polity rank advances (Banner Network → Province → Crown), and the political consequences of Operations and Fronts live here.

Scope​

Faction and Polity owns the campaign-spanning identity of the political / factional lane. It declares which world-state surfaces feed the lane and which act docs provide its per-act mission entry points.

Faction and Polity does NOT own:

  • Per-act mission ladders. Mission ladder authoring for this lane is deferred to later per-act content waves.
  • The realm-rank / polity-ladder system itself. That remains owned by ../systems/gd-realm-ranks-and-polity.md.
  • Named-character relationship arcs. Those belong to the People / Retinue lane, even when a character is a faction representative.

Inputs From World Pressure​

The world-state sources from ../systems/gd-dynamic-quest-pressure-model.md that primarily feed this lane:

  • Faction claims and polity transitions — faction stance shifts, polity rank advances, contested claim resolutions. This lane is the primary consumer of those signals.
  • Front campaign goals — Front lifecycle and Campaign Goal resolution at Acts 6 and 7 carry political consequences.
  • Operation outcomes — Operations whose targets carry faction significance (contested Sites, faction-claimed Territories) feed the lane.
  • Site state — Site control transitions that involve faction claims.
  • Authored story gates — explicit faction-arc and polity-advance gates.

Coexistence With Act-Scoped Thread Owners​

Faction and Polity is a cross-act lane. It coexists with Act-scoped thread owners without subsuming them. Per-act mission entry points are provided by the act docs and by any future Act-scoped thread owners that the per-act content waves promote; the cross-act lane owner declares the campaign- spanning identity of the faction / polity arc.

No current Act-scoped thread owner sits inside this lane. When later content waves promote Act 3 + faction-centric thread owners, they will sit beside this cross-act owner without retiring it.

Cross-References​