Provinces (game feature)

Provinces are settlements built and run by players. A council claims land, puts up buildings and keeps the settlement supplied. Other players can take jobs, bring food and materials, use local services and apply for citizenship.

You do not need to own a province to take part. Visiting an existing settlement is a good way to learn before starting one yourself.

Visit and find work

Type valley to see claimed provinces. Use the world atlas to plan your route. In the game, province <name> shows a claimed province's public information.

Walking in from the outworld brings you to the settlement's gates, on the open ground at its edge. The room tells you which way leads through the gates, and a signpost just inside gives bearings to what the settlement has built. To go back out, return to the approach outside the gates and type leave.

At a settlement, look around and read the signs and service boards. What you can use depends on the buildings, their condition and your standing with that province.

• Jobs — mission search finds work across provinces. Visit a job board and read board before accepting.
• Food and materials — bring goods the settlement needs. Check its offer and storage space before depositing or selling.
• Crafting — use workshops, sawmills and smelteries as your skills and local access allow.
• Rest and blessings — inns offer food and rest; fuelled shrines offer services to players with enough standing.

Useful work builds local reputation. mission status shows your standing and when you can apply for citizenship.

Councils, citizens and settlers

These are different roles:

• Council members are the player owners. A council has up to five members. They manage building work and the treasury and vote on major council decisions. Each character can belong to one council.
• Citizens are players whose application the council has approved. They get access to benefits and services, but citizenship alone gives no council vote. You can be a citizen of more than one province.
• Settlers are the local population housed in the settlement. They need food and pay taxes. They are not players you invite to the council.

The founder invites another player with council invite <player>. That player joins with council accept. A member who leaves also loses the local standing the council seat gave them. Read help council before changing membership or voting.

Only the founder can tear down a completed building, with demolish at its lot. Other members can do so once the founder has been away for 7 days, and nobody can while the council votes on removing a member. If a vote removes the founder, the role passes to another member.

The settlement's edge

Every settlement is ringed by a strip of open ground one lot wide, just outside its buildable lots. It is mostly bare earth, with water where a lake reaches the edge, and you can walk all the way round it. Nothing can be built, prepared, gathered or surveyed there; it stays clear on purpose.

The settlement's entrance is on this strip. The small map shown with each room (also map) shows the strip as you near the edge, and province map marks it as "Outside the settlement". On province map, ? marks entrances, such as mines and the way out to the outworld.

A few settlements have no room for an entrance on their edge, because the whole edge is water or already built over. There you still arrive in the central square and leave from there.

Claim your first province

Running a settlement takes regular work and supplies. Talk with the people who will help you before claiming one.

1. Create a council with council create <name>.
2. Find an ancient claim stone at an unclaimed province in the outworld.
3. Read help claim and make sure you have the claim price in your own purse.
4. Use claim at the stone and let the ceremony finish.
5. Use the new enter exit. You arrive outside your settlement's gates, on the open ground at its edge. You receive a Storehouse plan, and the province begins with a funded treasury.

The council can later claim more land. Every existing holding must first have an Advanced storehouse and another Advanced building. Further claims also need silver, materials and an elapsed cooldown; completing the buildings is only one requirement.

Build your first storehouse

1. Use province map to see the lots. Look at a lot to check its terrain and building options.
2. Wield a pick or axe and use prepare ground on a suitable lot.
3. With your Storehouse plan, use build storehouse to place it.
4. Check wanted and progress at the site for the current stage's needs.
5. Deliver materials, wield a hammer and use build to contribute work.
6. Return as stages become ready. The foreman signs off ready stages at Creation-day inspections; time calendar shows when those fall.

Inside the completed storehouse, the blueprint loft sells more plans. Use list plans and buy plan <number or name>. Plans are bought from your own purse. Read the building's requirements before buying.

Deliver materials

At a construction site:

• build deliver supplies the current stage from province stores.
• build deposit stone supplies stone blocks from available sources.
• build deposit iron and build deposit steel supply bars from your hands or vehicle.
• wanted and progress show what is still needed.

Only the current stage's shortfall is taken. Stone from quarrying, mining or clearing ground is left as blocks or piles; it does not appear in the storehouse by itself.

At the storehouse yard, deposit all block or wagon deposit stone puts stone into the shared stores, up to their free space. value <item> previews an offer where supported.

Private bins and shared stores are different. Logs, timber and planks normally go into your private bin when deposited. Basic resource chunks, firewood bundles and stone blocks go to shared stores. Use stores for the shared stockpile and bin in the vault for your personal materials. Bin access and size depend on local standing. Check help provinces before selling personal materials into the shared pool.

Choose useful buildings

Read each lot's description for terrain requirements. Build a supply chain your group can keep running.

Building	What it is for
Storehouse	Shared resources, private material bins and building plans. Can be fitted with a granary for more food storage.
Food Hall	Buying catches, cooking meals and managing the food supply.
Farm, Pasture and Fishery	Producing food. A Fishery needs water beside its lot.
Smokehouse	Preserving meat and fish and adding food-storage space.
Housing	Homes for settlers who eat food and pay taxes.
Inn	Meals, rest and a place for council members to deposit treasury silver.
Workshop	Equipment work and crafting services.
Sawmill	Processing lumber and helping with timber and plank work.
Mine and Smeltery	Extracting ore, then turning it into usable bars. Deeper mining brings more danger. Up to five mines per province. A smeltery can also build a cutting room for gems.
Shrine	Offerings and blessings tied to its chosen element.
Stables	Mount and hauling services, and hay for the road. Plans need an Improved storehouse.

This is a starting list. The blueprint loft and help provinces describe the other buildings and their requirements.

Improve the settlement

The current building tiers are Restored, Improved and Advanced. Higher tiers add services or improve what a building produces.

Finish the Advanced storehouse before starting other Advanced buildings. With the right plan, use build upgrade to review the materials, commission and upkeep. build upgrade confirm starts the project and spends the listed plan, silver and components.

Construction takes repeated work and inspections, not just one command. Unfinished Advanced work can wait between visits without losing work or gaining stalled wages, but the existing building still needs upkeep. Cancelling it returns only the current stage's delivered materials; earlier work and starting costs stay spent. Read the cancellation preview before confirming.

Installed improvements

Some buildings can be fitted with permanent improvements. A council member stands inside the building and types install to see what can be fitted there, its current level and the full bill for the next step. install <name> previews one, and install <name> confirm pays for it and fits it.

• The silver comes from the treasury. Silver already promised to workers on accepted missions cannot be spent.
• Timber, stone, clay and coal come from the stockpile.
• Planks and metal bars must be brought along: in your pack, on the floor or in a cart beside you. Cut gems, where asked for, go in your pack.
• Each level replaces the one before. An installed improvement is permanent: it never wears out and never needs repair.

Building	Improvement	What it does
Storehouse	Granary	More food storage. Five steps (see below).
Smeltery	Cutting room, gem grinder, cutting lamps, water feed	A room for cutting gems and the fittings that make it better. See Gems.
Mine	Sorting rig	Faster sorting of rubble at the mine entrance.

The granary

A granary lets the settlement keep more food. It is built in five steps, each replacing the one before. Any storehouse can take the first two; the last three need an Advanced storehouse. If a settlement has several storehouses, only its best granary counts.

Step	Extra food storage	Storehouse	Silver	Materials
Grain bins	500	any	25,000	150 wood, 100 stone, 40 planks
Granary loft	1,000	any	75,000	300 wood, 150 stone, 100 clay, 100 planks
Staddle-stone granary	2,000	Advanced	250,000	600 wood, 400 stone, 200 planks, 40 iron bars
Frost cellar	3,000	Advanced	500,000	800 wood, 600 stone, 200 clay, 300 planks, 80 iron bars
Vaulted reserve store	4,000	Advanced	1,000,000	1,000 wood, 800 stone, 400 planks, 60 iron bars, 60 steel bars

Keep the settlers fed

Settlers eat from the food stores every day. Three things put food in the stores, and a council that only knows the first will struggle to feed a large settlement:

• Selling to the Food Hall butcher. Hunters and fishers sell their catch for silver. The cook takes only a day's worth from one seller, however it is packaged, so this is a steady trickle from many hands rather than a way to fill an empty larder. When the cooks are short the butcher pays well; when the larder is full he pays a token.
• Preserving at a smokehouse. preserve all cures a whole pack of raw meat or fish in one batch, with no cost to the treasury and no daily limit. This is the fast way to stock a settlement. The racks rest between batches, and the smokehouse takes only what the stores have room for.
• Collecting from producing buildings. Farms, pastures and fisheries bank their harvest where they stand. Nothing reaches the stores until a council member goes into each building and types province collect. The same goes for every producing building. A collection takes only what the stores have room for; the rest stays banked and waits.

Every screen that reports food says how long it will last, in two lines. What is in store will last is the food you hold against what the settlers eat; it falls as they eat and rises when you restock. A full granary would last is the same for a brim-full larder; it grows only when the settlement gains storage, such as a smokehouse, a bigger storehouse or a granary.

As food runs down the settlement passes through well-stocked, lean, hungry and empty. Hungry slows workshops and shops, and empty puts out the hearth. An empty larder also pulls morale down every day until food comes in. When a settlement is short of food, its job board always carries a food run.

Keep it running

Use these checks when you visit:

Command	What to check
province	Overall health, food and morale.
province dashboard	Problems needing attention and work in progress.
province buildings	Building tiers and condition.
stores	Shared materials and free storage.
province balance	Treasury income and costs.
province census	Housing and population.
province log	Recent settlement activity.
province collect	Inside a producing building: move its banked output into the stores.

Keep food available for the settlers and silver in the treasury for wages. Council members can use province deposit <silver> at the inn; this is a permanent contribution. The amount is in silver.

Trade feeds the treasury too. Every purchase at a province's general store, blueprint loft, inn, forge or stable, and every sale to its general store, sends a small trade tax to the treasury: 1% at a Restored building, 2% at Improved and 3% at Advanced. It never costs the trader anything. On a purchase the tax is a share of the price paid, on a sale the province adds it on top of the payout, and the receipt names the rate.

When a worker accepts a mission, its pay is set aside in the treasury until the job is paid, abandoned or runs out. province balance shows what is promised and what is free to spend. Wages, building work, shop payments and improvements can only use the free part.

Repair at the building's outdoor lot. repair shows the cost; repair confirm spends the materials from the province stores. Council members can repair, and so can visitors with Trusted standing or better in that province. Neglected buildings lose output and may close until repaired. Neglect does not demolish them, but a large repair costs more than routine care.

The settlement tracks Economy, Population and Defense. Productive work, food and housing, maintained buildings and activity in the territory help these measures. The province view shows where your settlement needs attention.

Work more than one holding

province map <number or name> and province buildings <number or name> let a council inspect another of its holdings from elsewhere. The map lists your holdings and their numbers. province <name> is the separate public view.

Further help

Type help provinces, help claim, help council, help build, help wagon or help artisan progression in the game. Read Province missions for jobs, deposits and citizenship. The game rules apply here too.