People
Everyone has their reasons.
Nobody below takes orders. They eat, sleep, work, make friends and chase projects of their own, and they trust you exactly as far as you have earned.
Trust is earned one day at a time.
Every resident keeps five bars: hunger, sleep, recreation, belonging and warmth, with Trust in You above them. Fed, rested and among friends, people trust you to about 80; the rest is earned.
Trusting people work harder and answer sooner. Below 70 they take a while to answer, and below 40 they do only what keeps everyone alive. Beside meals and a bed, a colony comes to expect evenings out and its daily bread, though nobody expects what the colony cannot yet make.
- No hatSimple meals and a roofed, floored room; a barracks will do.
- SpecialistA private bedroom: the only bed in a room of nine square metres.
- EstablishedFine meals, and a decor piece in that bedroom.
- MasterLavish meals and a fine bedroom: sixteen square metres, two decor pieces.
- GrandmasterFeasts and a grand bedroom of twenty-five square metres.
Level 0 · No hatNo hat: what everyone expects. Recreation wears off at half speed.
- Meals
- Expects simple meals · has simple meals met+ Last: simple meals
- Housing
- Expects a roofed, floored room · has anywhere to sleep −4 trust− A bed of their own under a roof, on a floor (not yet)
Unmet expectations: −4 trustTrust 64%
A dossier for everyone
Click anyone to see what they are doing and why, every relationship with its reasons, and a body map of their health.
Friends are made
A wound dressed, a brief finished side by side, music or a feast make friends. A crowded bedroom wears ties down, and a neighbour's finer room can stir envy.
Dressed for the work
A sweater feels 4 °C warmer and a hide cloak is enough for the ice. Tools belong to their age and wear out with the work, and clothes wear through in three months to a year of days worn.
Belonging, or leaving
Friends, kin and a career keep people at home. Someone left out drifts, the warning names why, and those who go may write, or ask to come back.
Harm is real. Starvation, exposure, untreated wounds and illness can kill. Residents carry, feed and tend one another in an emergency, and a safety pause stops the clock when a life is at risk.
How trust works in the field guideTime off, well spent.
Recreation runs down while people are awake and fills when they do something they enjoy. A joyless resident takes a long break even in working hours.
From 19:00 to 21:00 everyone's day turns to leisure: people finish the step in hand and stop, and go out to the pastimes and the tavern by variety, company and taste. A band wants a fire circle, a village a pastime place and a tavern, a town their variety. Chess and horseshoes are better with a partner, and an hour fishing from the shore brings a small catch home.
Chess table
Horseshoe pin
Campfire circle
Instrument corner
Projects of their own.
Everyone holds one project chosen from their traits and skills: a hobby, a bed of herbs, a keepsake, a gift for a friend, a hut of their own with a hearth. Some hold an ambition above it: an office, a company's lead, a home and family, standing, or a visit to see the world, and a rival resents whoever wins. They work on it in free time, and when it needs stock or a spot they ask. Allow it, promise it by a date, or say not now; a promise kept is remembered, and so is one broken. From the village they earn coin of their own, from a wage, rewards and crafts sold at the stall, and save toward what they want: a warmer coat, a painting for their room, a gift for a friend.
Flower bed
Herb patch- Pendant
Notebook
Families of their own.
Two adults who think well of each other may court, become partners and move into one room. Nobody asks you; it happens in their free time.
A couple with a bond, a shared room, food put by and trust may want a child of their own, born 270 days later with looks, and sometimes a trait, from both parents, and more readily with room to raise one. An infant rides on a parent's hip and sleeps in a cradle by their bed, and is never left alone: kin go and fetch one. A child plays on a swing or with a toy cart, goes to lessons at the School's desks by day, learns by watching and is brought home after dusk. At twelve a youth takes light chores and may be apprenticed, and at sixteen comes of age with a feast of their own. From sixty an elder is slower at hard work and better at teaching, at the moot and with tales. A widow or widower mourns for sixty days, an orphan is taken in by kin, and a keepsake passes down as an heirloom.
Double bed
Cradle
Swing
Toy cart
A house of their own.
A couple who wed expect a home with its own front door, and the colony expects to see it.
Lay a Cottage, a House or a Family house from the room plans, and Give House settles a household in it, even before the walls are up. Those who wanted it remember being passed over. A home climbs from cottage to house, family house, manor and mansion, with a named grade that earns its household respect and stirs its neighbours' envy. A couple with room to spare are likelier to want a child.
Garden bench
Fountain
Clan shrine
Clans, feuds and what people say.
When a grown child sets up a household, the families become a clan with a family name, a head and a history.
Members lean toward their head's side in a vote, so a law can come back as politics. A serious wrong sets two clans at feud until a settlement, a moot, a wedding or time ends it, and a wedding between them joins them. The head may ask for a clan shrine, and each clan keeps its founding day. Weddings are festivals of their own; an affair found out ends in forgiveness or a parting.
Clans in the field guideRespect
Held apart from liking: earned by good work and fair settlements, lost by failures. A crew can replace a lead it no longer respects.
Gossip
Reasons, fears and sightings pass on in chats, weaker each time and sometimes with the wrong name. Tell The Record sets it straight.
Claims
A contested bed or room opens a case: the parties try, a respected settler proposes, and either may appeal to the moot.
Population
PEOPLE lists everyone, every household and clan, and the bar shows only those who need you once the colony outgrows it.
Letters that wait for an answer.
Whatever asks for a decision comes as a letter with its choices as buttons: take in a traveller, drive off a raiding bear, shelter carters stranded by the snow. A choice the colony cannot afford is greyed, with the reason beside it, and routine news folds into one colony diary a day.
Beds free: 2, after 1. Food: 46 days, after 41. Open work: 20.5 jobs a head, after 18.2.
An arrival letter in the demo colony, counting the costThe ring is closed, and it holds.
A letter when a hungry pack finds the ring closed
Arrivals by policy
Set the trades you want, the beds and food to keep and how many a season. Only someone remarkable brings a letter; from the village the council may vote on each.
A lost traveller
Half frozen, hurt or starving, a stranger reaches the map edge. Take them in and they may ask to stay; turn them away and the kind-hearted remember.
Promises
A request can be allowed, promised by a date or put off. A promise kept is worth trust; one broken costs more.
Fire
A lit hearth beside stacked logs in dry weather can throw a spark, and fire spreads over timber, never stone. Whoever sees it raises the alarm, and the fit fetch water.
