Characters act in the present. Houses connect those actions to a longer social memory. In The City Of Gold, a House is intended to represent lineage, shared identity, reputation, inheritance, and influence across generations.
A name with consequences
A House name can open doors, create expectations, or attract old hostility. Reputation should not be a universal score. Different regions, institutions, and social groups may remember the same House differently. A dynasty praised for defending one city might be blamed elsewhere for the war that followed.
This gives identity weight without deciding a character's morality. Descendants may embrace a legacy, reform it, exploit it, or struggle against it. The important point is that the world recognizes the relationship.
Lineage and succession
Lineage creates continuity when individual characters change. Succession, inheritance, adoption, marriage, and branches of a family can all become meaningful, but each requires careful rules. We must prevent lineage from becoming either a cosmetic surname or an unrestricted mechanism for transferring power.
Material inheritance is only one dimension. Knowledge, obligations, allies, enemies, titles, and claims can outlast a person. Some legacies should be contested rather than transferred automatically.
Houses and Institutions
Houses are not Institutions. An Institution is an organized power with a functional purpose; a House is a permanent genealogical institution. A House may influence several Institutions, while an Institution may contain members from competing Houses.
Keeping these models separate creates political depth. A merchant company should not automatically become hereditary because one House dominates it, and a House should not need to operate like a company to remain important.
Social influence without guaranteed nobility
Not every House is noble, ancient, or powerful. A craft lineage, a frontier household, or a newly wealthy trading House may matter for different reasons. Influence should emerge through relationships, resources, service, reputation, and circumstance rather than a universal aristocratic template.
Houses currently live under the World umbrella and do not yet have persistence. Before implementation we need approved answers for character identity, House creation, joining, kinship, succession, naming, dissolution, abuse prevention, and the relationship with future game accounts.
The goal is a system where lineage helps the world remember people without trapping every new character inside decisions made before them.