Characters and Retinue

This page owns Valenar's named-character layer. Named characters are skill-bearing individuals with assignments, not fixed jobs.

Character Tiers

The Main Character is the player's direct avatar and the center of the early acts.
Named companions, officers, specialists, and later governors or commanders are individual characters with their own skills, assignments, and changing areas of responsibility.
Pops fill ordinary settlement jobs once the settlement layer exists.
Population-scale labor is not modeled as hundreds of named people.

A retinue is the MC's small personal group.

It covers companions, escorts, specialists, and expedition-facing support.
It is small enough to feel personal.
It scales into later leadership and command roles without pretending that all population labor is personal.

Named characters are people first. Their long-term identity is expressed through traits, not fixed jobs.
Traits cover origin, background, personality, belief, work style, and acquired history.
Conditions cover temporary mutable state such as Hungry, Cold, Exhausted, Afraid, Bleeding, Tainted, or Poisoned.
Injuries cover mutable medical or physical harm such as Wounded, Sprained Ankle, Burned Hands, Broken Rib, or Concussion.
Acquired traits cover permanent or semi-permanent history that left a mark.
Examples only: example acquired-trait or character-history labels include Scarred Hands, Limp, Demon-Scarred, Veteran of the First Night, and Taint-Touched. These illustrate the taxonomy and are not a canon roster.
Wounded now is a condition or injury. A lasting scar is an acquired trait.
Traits answer who the person is. Conditions answer what is happening now. Acquired traits answer what happened and still matters.

Named characters can move across several assignment contexts without becoming fixed jobs or permanent profession labels.

Core duty covers work at a CoreBuilding, including ward work, stores oversight, recovery support, household coordination, and anchor-side teaching.
Camp duty covers a Camp role such as watch, travel preparation, survey support, field repair, or pack and loadout support.
Site duty covers Location Site work, including investigation, hazard support, salvage oversight, and Dungeon Site support roles tied to discovered places.
Mission duty covers being chosen to lead or participate in a planned operation.
Settlement-facing duty covers liaison, oversight, or specialist leadership in a SettlementBuilding above ordinary population labor.
Party or expedition duty covers travelling with the MC or leading a detached group.
Training and teaching duty covers serving as teacher, student, drill lead, or apprentice.
Later management and governance duty covers governor, steward, commander, and related high-responsibility leadership once those layers exist.

Assignments ask named characters to apply techniques, discover exercises, teach, or push toward breakthroughs inside a specific context; they do not turn the character into a fixed job.
The same skill can matter across several assignment families, and one assignment can benefit from several skills feeding different channels through modifiers and formulas.
Traits and affinities help explain who learns quickly, who teaches well, who stabilizes risky work early, who creates requests or conflict, and who takes on extra mission risk without replacing the assignment decision.

Assignments should produce high-level, grounded consequences.

They request or enable specific work the player can plan around.
They change quality, safety, speed, or yield on grounded activities through skill-driven channels, modifiers, and formulas.
Those changes should resolve into named values the player can inspect, such as CraftQuality, ResourceFidelity, SpellStability, ManaEfficiency, FireControl, or explicit risk and safety ratings, rather than an unnamed "good at this" bonus.
They unlock or improve better approaches to sites, missions, or support routines through techniques rather than fixed job labels.
They generate, interpret, or validate clues when expertise matters.
They create incidental side results when the fiction supports it.
They support teaching, skill transfer, and practice that can reveal exercises or breakthroughs.
They create event triggers where loyalty, injury, reputation, or story position matters.

Examples only. These examples illustrate the assignment model and are not a canon roster.

Example only: a named character with Smithing skill, metalwork affinities, Village Smith background, Patient personality, Scarred Hands as an acquired trait, and the right tools can be assigned to forge work in a SettlementBuilding, repair support at the Core, or salvage support at a Site. That person is not a fixed blacksmith job slot. The assignment is contextual.
Example only: a named character with Reckless as a personality trait or Taint-Sensitive as a trait may become more or less attractive for a given Mission, Dungeon Site support role, or training assignment because those traits change risk, requests, conflict, or event choices.

Named characters should matter because of skill, role, loyalty, or story position.
Ordinary production, hauling, and settlement jobs belong to the broader population simulation.
Character screens must make assignments and tradeoffs legible without forcing every labor slot through a named roster.