Houses — Questions & Answers

A House is a permanent Character-based family identity with a stable record, structured family name, status, membership and role history, leadership tenures, lineage, heraldry association, and durable world history. It is not a guild, Account, Institution, or cosmetic surname tag.

No. The Account and Community Handle identify the player, the Character is the person living in the world, and the House owns family identity. These layers may be presented together but never replace one another.

No. Houses organize family, lineage, membership, Headship, and dynastic continuity. Institutions are separately founded organizations with constitutions, configurable ranks, permissions, and diplomacy.

No. A Character may have at most one active House membership across every founding, Family, Marriage, and Cadet workflow. Historical former memberships remain recorded.

The canonical structural roles are Head, Consort, and Member. Family relationships such as Sibling, Adoptive Child, or spouse are recorded by Family and do not create additional House authority by title alone.

Head is the House's single current leadership office. It begins through founding or Cadet creation and may later change only through a valid voluntary transfer, succession, or narrowly authorized restoration.

Consort is the House role received by the Joining Spouse when a Marriage effectively continues a House or creates a Cadet House. It is not shared Headship and does not automatically make the Consort an heir.

No. Current House membership and Family relationship records are authoritative. A displayed surname, friendship, Account link, or informal claim cannot create either fact.

An eligible verified Account without a Character may complete the CREATE path by choosing a Character first name and a distinct House family name. Character, Active House, founding Head membership, and first-Character defaults commit atomically.

The founding Character becomes its first Head. Founding credit remains historical even if that Character later transfers Headship or dies.

No. A valid pre-Character Family Onboarding Contract creates the first Character directly in the receiving House. No placeholder House is created and discarded.

The Character owns a personal first name and receives the current structured family surname of their House. A Community Handle remains separate from both.

Yes. Canonical House identity is normalized and reserved against active and historical identity conflicts and protected terms. A client cannot bypass that authority with alternate casing or spacing.

Administrative rename follows the approved authority workflow. It preserves the stable House identity and history and coordinates qualifying current House-derived surnames rather than creating a replacement House.

No. It may update a qualifying House-derived surname. The Character's personal first name and the Account's Community Handle remain their own identities.

No. There is no raw permanent-delete operation for Houses. Any future administrative lifecycle intervention must preserve world history through a separately authorized extinction or archive workflow.

Documented paths include an accepted Sibling invitation, accepted Adoption, effective Continue House Marriage, or effective Cadet House Marriage. Each path revalidates current participants, House state, leadership safety, and conflicting transitions.

Only the current Head of an Active House may issue those Family invitations. The invited person accepts or declines; the Head may cancel while the invitation is pending.

Yes. A verified Account with no Character may be targeted by exact Community Handle for a Sibling or Adoptive Child Family Onboarding Contract. The contract creates no membership or public roster entry until completed.

They choose the Character's canonical first name. The receiving House supplies its current authoritative family surname; the player does not choose another House, surname, or heraldry in that path.

Yes, when the explicit invitation is accepted and completed. Siblinghood can also be derived from shared biological or adoptive parentage, but shared House membership alone never implies it.

Completed Adoption permanently establishes adoptive parentage and coordinates House membership and surname change. It does not fabricate biological parentage, convert Religion, transfer an Account, or automatically designate an heir.

Ordinary Sibling, Adoption, and House transfers do not change Religion. Marriage is the bounded exception governed by the Marriage Head's organized Religion and Canon Law.

Not when doing so would violate leadership safety. If other living active members remain, Headship must first transfer validly. A sole living active Head may depart through an approved Family transition while the old House becomes Extinct atomically.

No. The former membership closes before the new one begins, and membership and surname history remain durable. The Character has only one active House but may have several historical Houses.

The proposer is always the Marriage Head and the recipient is always the Joining Spouse. These are directional Marriage roles, not gender rules and not synonyms for House Head and Consort before completion.

Exactly two ordinary outcomes exist: Continue the Marriage Head's existing House or create a new independent Cadet House. There is no third ordinary outcome or separate choice to continue the recipient's House.

The Marriage Head continues their valid House. The Joining Spouse leaves their former House, enters the destination as Consort, and takes its structured family surname when the Marriage becomes effective.

A new permanent independent House is created. The Marriage Head becomes Head, the Joining Spouse becomes Consort, both receive the Cadet surname, and available parent-House lineage links are preserved.

No. Parent links express lineage only. The Cadet House has its own stable identity, Headship, membership, heraldry, status, and history and is not a subsidiary or jointly owned House.

Zero, one, or two distinct valid parent Houses may be recorded according to the spouses' actual pre-Marriage memberships. Every available lineage link is preserved without duplicating one shared origin.

No. It begins with no designated heir. Dynasty designation is a separate deliberate decision and is never inferred from Marriage or Consort status.

Not necessarily. Acceptance fixes the material terms and creates exclusivity. House, Religion, surname, lineage, and spouse effects occur only when the Marriage passes final authoritative revalidation and becomes effective.

The Marriage Head's current Active organized Religion governs. If its Canon Law requires validation, exact current Religion authority must approve the effective Marriage and Joining-Spouse affiliation transition.

The Marriage Head remains in their current House. The former Joining Spouse returns to their authoritative pre-Marriage House and surname; restoration applies only when durable provenance proves this same Marriage caused that House's extinction.

No. A Cadet House is permanent historical identity. Post-Divorce membership is reconciled under current House rules, and the Cadet House may become Extinct if no active members remain.

Voluntary transfer uses an accepted proposal to an eligible current member. Authority, eligibility, versions, and House safety are rechecked before the old tenure closes and the new one begins atomically.

No. Houses do not support Votes of No Confidence in Version 1. Headship changes only through voluntary transfer, succession, or separately approved future gameplay.

No. A member, Regent, title holder, or client never becomes Head by inference. Without an immediately valid transition, Headship is Vacant.

Dynasty & Succession owns designation, replacement, removal, playable-heir activation, and death inheritance. Houses consumes a valid succession request but does not choose an heir from membership or kinship.

No. Adoption establishes parentage. A successor must be designated separately through Dynasty & Succession and remain eligible when succession executes.

No. Consort status does not designate an heir or guarantee future Headship. Spouse inheritance is a separate property fallback, not automatic House leadership.

Dynasty determines whether an eligible designated successor can activate, and Houses revalidates House-specific Headship eligibility. A valid transition begins a new tenure; otherwise the office becomes Vacant or the House becomes Extinct if no living active member remains.

No. Ordinary offline status does not end Headship, establish death, or authorize another member to take office.

No. A dependent cannot independently lead or bypass player-only rules. A valid designated dependent becomes the Account's playable Character only after permanent death and succession activation.

The approved order is one valid designated successor, otherwise a surviving spouse, otherwise the current Head of the deceased Character's House. These are ordered fallbacks, not percentage shares.

No. Inventory, currency, Buildings, businesses, and other assets remain with their authoritative owners until an owner-domain inheritance or transfer rule applies.

They are designed to pass through the property inheritance order. The Building, furniture, state, and Universal Building Inventory remain with the property; authoritative placed-Building persistence governs implementation.

No. They belong to physical Inventory, Equipment, custody, corpse, and loot rules rather than abstract Family inheritance.

Mayor, Count, Duke, and King may pass to a valid designated heir when current territorial eligibility is satisfied. With no valid heir, the office becomes Vacant.

Religion ranks, Institution leadership, Building Manager roles, arbitrary delegated permissions, and other offices not explicitly defined as hereditary do not pass automatically.

Canonical transitions make a House Extinct when it has no living active membership, including final-member death and approved Family departure by a sole living active Head.

No. Extinction is a permanent historical status, not raw deletion, moderator cleanup, or a voluntary dissolution command.

The stable House identity, former memberships, leadership tenures, heraldry, lineage, and durable history remain available to authorized public history projections.

No. Permanent identity prevents a replacement House from impersonating the historical one through name reuse.

Only through the narrow Divorce exception where durable provenance proves the returning Joining Spouse's departure through that same Marriage caused the extinction. Unrelated extinction cannot be revived.

No. It restores the same stable House ID, identity, heraldry, lineage, and history and begins the returning former spouse's active Head membership.

Founding, memberships and departures, Head tenures and transfers, succession, Family and Marriage consequences, Cadet lineage, surname transitions, extinction, and valid restoration are durable House history.

Yes. Houses owns the association between its identity and a valid canonical heraldic design. Artwork ingestion, licensing, moderation, storage, and safe exports remain owned by the Heraldry and media systems.

No. Crowns, weapons, creatures, and other charges communicate identity only. They do not grant territorial office, combat permission, religious authority, or Institution power.

No. Historical House presentation retains the canonical heraldry association. Extinction prevents active continuity; it does not rewrite the past.

Public projections may show stable House identity, status, description, heraldry, current and historical membership presentation, Headship, lineage links, and world-facing history without exposing private Account fields.

No. Clients use public Character and Community presentation. Email, session data, private Account IDs, and other sensitive fields are not House-public information.

No. Clients render Backend and Platform projections. They cannot create membership, infer Headship, revive a House, assign heraldry, or commit a surname transition from local state.

AIR means a click submits intended action rather than declaring success. The server contends on the minimum affected resources, rechecks current authority and eligibility, and atomically commits one valid result or no gameplay effects.

AIR and versioned transactional authority allow only a compatible result. Competing Marriage, transfer, invitation, death, or membership actions cannot validly leave duplicate memberships or partial surnames.

House identity and reservations, status, membership and role invariants, leadership tenures and transitions, Cadet lineage, House history, extinction decisions, and canonical House events.

Stable Character identity, personal name, life and death state, Account ownership link, active-Character selection, and surname mutation execution remain Character-owned facts consumed or requested by Houses.

Kinship, siblinghood, adoptive parentage, spouse lifecycle, consent contracts, and cross-workflow coordination remain Family-owned. Houses owns resulting membership, leadership, identity, and lineage state.

No. Religion affiliation is Character-bound and independent of ordinary House membership. Marriage is the documented directional exception and is governed through Religion authority.

No. Core identity, creation, membership, Family transitions, Cadet Houses, leadership transfer, death extinction, and key succession projections have runtime foundations. Placed-Building inheritance, deeper NPC family life, reproduction, and some downstream world presentation remain separate or evolving work.

Yes, through deliberate canonical review. Permanent identity, succession ownership, sole-member extinction, historical preservation, atomic House transitions, and Character continuity are established constraints that future work must preserve or explicitly supersede.