Settlements — Overview
The Settlements layer contains buildings, landmarks, and districts — the physical fabric of a town. Every structure players can enter, reference, or interact with is a node here.
Settlement nodes are the most visible layer to players. They’re what gets described, mapped, and remembered. But they’re meaningful because of their posts — a building without faction control, geographic context, or quest relevance is just scenery.
Opposite Face: Geography
A settlement without regional context is just a map. The Geography layer is the opposite face — where the settlement sits, what surrounds it, what routes connect it. The founding resource (from Ex Novo) is the post that anchors a settlement to its geography and explains why it exists at all.
Temporal Frames
Settlement nodes carry a temporal frame inherited from Beak, Feather & Bone’s suit system:
- Hearts — present social function (tavern, meeting hall)
- Diamonds — present economic function (market, workshop)
- Clubs — future purpose (under construction, preparatory)
- Spades — past purpose (abandoned, historical, sealed)
Spades nodes are especially valuable: abandoned buildings are instant dungeon sites and mystery hooks. See Dungeons.
Procedural Counterpart
The procedures for generating settlement nodes live in Sections — Settlements:
- Founding — geography, terrain, founding resource
- History — development events that create edges and lore nodes
- Districts — spatial groupings of settlement nodes
- Workflow — step-by-step generation at three speeds
Node Types
(To be formalized — building types, landmark types, district-level abstraction vs. specific location)
Key Relationships
- Posts to Factions — which faction controls or contests this building
- Posts to Geography — where the building sits in the regional context
- Posts to People — which NPCs are findable here
- Posts to Quests — what leads or objectives are anchored here
- Posts to Lore — what history is legible in the building’s bones