Institutions

A single eligible, living Character may found an Institution. There is no founding fee, minimum membership count, required co-founder, completed Building, Mayor approval, or Count approval. The founder becomes the first Leader and receives immutable historical credit for creating the organization. That attribution is not permanent personal authority: if the founder later stops being Leader, the current Constitution and rank permissions determine what they may do.

A Character may hold only one active Institution membership total, not one membership in every category. Founding therefore uses the same global membership boundary as joining. A Character who already belongs to an Institution—or who already has an unresolved application or invitation—must resolve that state before creating another.

Three purposes, one organization engine

Category is permanent. It gives the Institution context and identity, but Military, Religious, and Civic Institutions all use the same constitutional, membership, leadership, and diplomacy architecture.

Founding records a durable Constitution rather than temporary setup choices. It includes the Institution’s immutable category and governance, a hierarchy of two to ten ranks, custom rank names and descriptions, permission assignments, Regent-delegable permissions, and one succession method. Institution V1 provides no post-creation constitutional amendment system, so those structural choices cannot be silently rewritten after players have joined under them.

Two to ten ranks

Position one is the unique Leader rank. At least one lower rank must exist, and every accepted applicant or invitee enters at the lowest configured rank. Rank order expresses hierarchy; the permission set expresses delegated authority. Names such as Commander, Chancellor, Abbot, Councillor, Officer, or Initiate are presentation. Calling a rank “King” or “Council” does not create powers its permissions do not contain.

Eighteen configurable permissions

Institution V1 has exactly 18 configurable rank permissions. They let founders distribute ordinary work without converting every action into a Leader-only privilege. Each command must still check the acting Character’s current membership, configured rank, exact permission, Institution state, and current version.

There is no unrestricted client-side “join Institution” switch. Membership begins through founding, an accepted application, or an accepted invitation. An application is initiated by the Character who wants to join; an invitation is issued by a current member whose rank grants invite_members. A pending invitation belongs to the Institution rather than the individual inviter, so a later change in that inviter’s status does not erase a valid offer.

One Character may have at most one unresolved Institution join intent across the entire system: either one application or one invitation, never both. Acceptance rechecks eligibility and then places the new member in the lowest configured rank. It does not grant a custom rank promised informally outside the system.

Leaving, removal, and history

An ordinary member may leave voluntarily at any time, with no V1 leave cooldown. A current member with remove_members may remove an ordinary member, but that permission cannot remove the Leader or bypass succession. Leaving and removal close the current membership and rank tenure; they do not delete the original join, rewrite the record, or erase the Character from Institution history.

The Leader occupies the unique rank-one office. They are not simply the highest-ranking member currently online, and ordinary offline status never removes them. A Leader may serve without a fixed term and may hold several separate tenures over the Institution’s lifetime. When the office becomes Vacant, the Constitution invokes exactly one selected method; an unavailable method does not quietly fall back to another.

A vacancy does not destroy or archive the Institution. Members, Communication, Buildings, history, diplomacy, and permission-based non-Leader administration continue. Only authority that specifically requires an occupied Leader office is unavailable.

A Regent is not a second Leader

Under Regent succession, the serving Leader may appoint an eligible current member. During that Leader’s tenure, the Regent receives only the immutable subset of permissions the founding Constitution marked as delegable. The appointment does not grant every Leader power, permit redelegation, authorize constitutional change, or grow stronger because the Leader is offline. If the office becomes Vacant, a still-eligible Regent succeeds; otherwise the office remains Vacant.

Resignation is a leadership transition

A Leader cannot use ordinary member Leave to bypass the office. They resign through the dedicated leadership workflow, which closes the tenure, creates a vacancy, and immediately invokes succession. The former Leader remains a member in the highest configured non-Leader rank and may then leave separately.

Council Vote and Full Membership Vote turn a vacancy into a constitutional election. Council Vote uses the highest populated eligible rank below Leader, falling downward one rank at a time without combining ranks. Full Membership Vote uses every eligible active member. Every eligible current member is automatically a candidate; there is no nomination or signature phase.

Elections and runoffs last exactly 48 real-world hours. Eligible voters may change their ballot while the vote is open; only the latest valid choice counts. Self-voting is allowed, there is no quorum, and a multi-candidate vote does not close early because a live total appears decisive. A unique highest total wins. A top tie opens a new 48-hour runoff among only the tied candidates.

Members may see live aggregate candidate totals and participation. Public visitors see the vacancy, candidates, status, and closing time, but not live totals. Individual ballots, ballot changes, and participation identities remain permanently private. Final aggregate candidate totals become public after the vote closes. The Institutions Q&A holds the detailed zero-, one-, and multiple-candidate rules, withdrawal cases, and repeated-runoff behavior.

Vote of No Confidence

Any one eligible member of the constitutional electorate may initiate a 48-real-world-hour Vote of No Confidence against a serving Leader. There is no petition threshold, no quorum, and no early result. Eligible voters choose Remove or Retain and may change their ballot; the challenged Leader cannot vote. Removal requires more than half of valid ballots actually cast, so a tie fails and non-participation does not count as Retain.

A failed challenge creates a two-real-world-week cooldown against that same serving Leader. A successful challenge ends the Leader tenure, moves the former Leader to the highest non-Leader rank, preserves the complete result, and invokes the configured succession method. It does not expel the former Leader from the Institution.

Institution identity is not created by a structure. A one-person Institution can exist before it has the resources, land, or reason to establish a physical home. When players construct an Institution Building, it follows the normal Universal Building lifecycle: its own crafted Blueprint, valid placement, construction materials, Maximum Building HP, maintenance, repair, ownership, and destruction rules. Founding, category, governance, or rank authority cannot conjure one automatically.

Building Access has a narrow meaning

building_access is one of the 18 Institution rank permissions. It allows applicable access or use of Institution-restricted Buildings under each Building’s policy. It does not make the Character an owner or Manager, and it does not automatically grant Inventory management, currency withdrawal, Workforce or Production control, Maintenance and Repair authority, or transfer power. Those actions require their own rules.

Institution diplomacy is authoritative game state controlled by current ranks with manage_diplomacy. It remains available during a leadership vacancy because it is a configured permission rather than an automatic Leader monopoly. Clients present four conceptual relationships: a Character’s Own Institution, Ally, Neutral or Unrelated, and Enemy.

An Alliance Request may be sent only while the pair is mutually Neutral, with no Enemy direction, unresolved request, or applicable cooldown. The receiving Institution may accept or reject it; the sender may cancel it. Rejection creates a pair-specific one-real-world-week wait before another Alliance Request. Either Ally may end the Alliance unilaterally, which creates the same one-week request cooldown.

Enemy is different. An authorized Institution may declare another an Enemy without approval, and that record belongs only to the declaring direction. The other Institution does not secretly gain a matching declaration. Removing Enemy returns only that direction to Neutral and creates no cooldown. For safety, clients show Enemy presentation to both sides if either direction is hostile, while preserving the actual directional records beneath that presentation.

Declaring Enemy does not start a War. It creates no combat permission, siege, surrender, peace, territorial transfer, reward, penalty, or Alliance military obligation. Those mechanics belong to a separate future Warfare system.

A Religious Institution is permanently linked to exactly one Active organized Religion. Its founder and every active member must currently follow that Religion. The Institution creator need not be the Religion founder, and the Institution remains its own organization with its own Constitution, membership, ranks, permissions, leadership, history, and diplomacy.

If a member stops following the linked Religion, their Institution membership and rank tenure end automatically, Institution-derived authority is removed, and history is preserved. This is an eligibility consequence, not a permanent Institution ban. If the Character later legitimately rejoins the Religion, they may apply or accept an invitation again through the ordinary Institution process. Membership is never restored automatically.

Identical words do not merge those authority systems. Institution Building Access cannot satisfy Religion Building Access, and an Institution title cannot grant ceremony or consecrated-Building powers. Likewise, Religion rank never grants Institution authority. A linked Religious Institution also does not own its Religion’s consecrated religious Buildings merely because both share the same faith.

An Institution is meant to remain legible as its people change. Its public constitutional view can show category, governance, current Leader or explicit Vacancy, Leader title, succession method, configured ranks, rank permissions, current members grouped by rank, and a valid Appointed Successor or Regent where applicable. Legacy compatibility role names never replace that configured public hierarchy.

Leadership history preserves each separate tenure, including the Character, constitutional title, start and end, ending reason, and the method that installed the next Leader. Completed elections and runoffs publish final aggregate candidate totals. Completed No Confidence challenges—including failed ones—publish the challenged Leader, outcome, and aggregate Remove and Retain totals. Individual ballots, participation identities, and minute-by-minute changes remain private.

Diplomacy also leaves a durable public record of Alliance formation and ending and directional Enemy declaration and removal. Pending negotiations, private request messages, declined recruitment details, and individual ballots do not become public merely because the Institution itself is public. History records consequential world facts without turning every private decision into spectacle.

Two Institutions can share a category and still feel profoundly different. One may put responsibility in a narrow council; another may involve every member in succession. One may delegate recruitment and public communication broadly; another may reserve those capabilities for a small senior rank. Their diplomacy, Buildings, leadership history, banner, charter, and member culture can take them in different directions even though the same authoritative system protects both.

That is the Institution pillar: persistent organizations whose identity is created by players, whose power is made explicit by a Constitution, and whose legacy survives the people currently holding office. This article explains the system as a whole. The Institutions Q&A is the exhaustive reference for election edge cases, invitation states, vacancies, No Confidence, diplomacy, and other detailed rules.