Citizenship

Citizen or wayfarer

When a newcomer finishes the tour of their first town, a page opens to choose a life in the land. On the left, a map of the land: the three Lordships - Raborsch, Suchdol and Maleshov - each with its castle and its Lord, then the Crown lands (Kuttenberg, held ward by ward, and the crown's villages) and the towns outside the lordships. On the right, who answers to whom:

• the Lord rules the lordship from its castle;
• the holder - the faction that holds a town - takes its toll and names its head;
• the town's court - a Bailiff at its head, a Castellan, Stewards, a Treasurer, a Reeve, a Captain of the Watch and his Watchmen - sells the town's houses, sets their upkeep, keeps the peace and judges;
• the citizens, the town's own people, rise in rank through what they do for it.

Become a citizen lists every town you may join: the one you stand in first, then the towns of each lordship. Pick one to see everything about it: its lordship and Lord, the faction that holds it, its head and the officers of its court (or a note that the clerk sells its houses where no court sits; for Kuttenberg, its wards, its Council and its Guard), its citizens and how many were active this week, its houses for sale and its message. Choose it, and a letter of registration asks you to confirm your name, the town, your first rank and the fee. If you stand before that town's clerk, you seal it there and then. If you are elsewhere, a marker shows you the way to its town hall, and the page opens again when you get there, ready to seal.

Stay a wayfarer leaves you free on the roads, sworn to no town: you can still work and trade everywhere, but you cannot buy a house and you pay the full upkeep. You can change your mind at any time: /citizenship, F2 > My town (its town tab), or a town hall's clerk.

1. Register

   Choose your town on the page above, or talk to the clerk at a town hall > Citizenship of the town. Registering costs 20 groschen. You are a citizen of one town at a time: moving to another town starts you again at the bottom.

2. Rise

   Everything you do for the town raises your standing there: your trade in the town and in the woods, mines and ponds around it, what you sell at its market, its work orders and craft orders, its contracts, the war bands and brigands you fight off, the convoys and passengers you bring, the upkeep you pay there - and a little for every minute you spend in it (up to 120 a day). A crime in the town costs you three times what the same good deed would earn.

3. Keep it

   A town forgets the idle. A week (Monday to Monday, UTC) in which you earn less than 200 standing costs you a rank. Two idle weeks cost two ranks.

The citizenship paper

Sealing your citizenship gives you a citizenship paper: your name, your town and its lordship, your rank, the day it was written and its number. It is valid for a month. It sits in your pack (B, Books & papers), where you can read it and show it to those around - everyone within 8 m sees whose paper it is, the town and whether it is valid, expired or void. It can be handed over, traded, stored or dropped like any document. A paper is proof, not citizenship: whoever holds someone else's paper is no citizen of anything, and it still names the person it was written for - so a lost or borrowed paper may serve a scam, until someone looks closely.

A new citizenship voids every paper written before it, wherever it is - the clerk takes back the one you carry - and leaving the register voids it too. At your own town's town hall, the clerk (or F2 > My town, the citizenship card) writes you a new paper: a month on from the end of the current one while it still runs, for 20 groschen, or from today and free once it has run out.