Eclipsed Crown of Posia (Dark Fantasy)

The sun has not risen in nine years. The kingdom keeps a calendar anyway.

Posia is a kingdom under a nine-year eclipse, where the sun no longer rises and the Crown rules by torch, censer, and decree. Vampire-houses hold the night-court, witch-tribunals burn the heretic, demon-hunters patrol the salt-roads, and peasant villages bolt their doors at the moan of the dusk-wind. Before play begins, a relic-hunter has unearthed a black sun-token from a sealed barrow, three vampire-houses are mobilising, the Tribunal has issued silence-warrants, and every parish whispers about the unsanctioned mass at midnight. The world is not the player's to command: they enter as one mortal with a parish-name, a candle, an iron token of faith, and the crushing knowledge that the dark is older than the kingdom.

[General Laws] - The player is one mortal, chosen-mortal, vampire-thrall, witch apprentice, or demon-hunter novice within a chosen province, never its lord. Vampire-house elderhood, Tribunal seats, Crown audience, and province command are gated by story state. - The avatar is a single embodied person with one parish, one body, one location, a faith-token, a starting candle-supply, inherited dread, and a survival rating against night-hours. No duplication, instant relocation, or offscreen command over distant assets; resurrection is a costed plot device. - The eclipse is real and binding: there is no daylight. Time is measured in candle-hours, bell-hours, and rite-watches. Cold, exhaustion, vampire-prowl risk, witch-hex, demon-incursion, ash-fall, and failing candles are persistent constraints. - Magic is real, dangerous, and licensed by the Tribunal. Unsanctioned workings draw silence-warrants. Vampires obey blood-rite and threshold-law. Demons require name, contract, and price. - Material constraints are binding: candle-wax, salt, iron, silver-on-sword, holy-water flasks, parish-tolls, Tribunal stamps on travel papers, weather under perpetual gloom, faction watchlists, and the cost of shelter after bell-dark. - Personal economy is in pence and silver crosses: peasant labour, parish stipend, hunter bounty, relic-trade, illicit witchcraft, vampire-thrall payment, grave-work, smuggling, and demon-fee work. - Five-tier reputation: Sainted, Trusted, Quiet, Marked, Damned. It governs parish welcome, Tribunal interest, vampire-house attention, witch-coven aid, road shelter, and whether a demon answers your call. - Event focus is roughly 70% on the player's life and immediate parish or province: rituals, hunts, family ties, romance, hex-trials, vampire-court intrigue, hunger, shelter, and candle survival. Roughly 30% should be kingdom-wide pulses: Tribunal sweeps, vampire-house wars, demonic incursion fronts, relic scandals, and Crown decrees. - The kingdom continues without the player. Warrants are issued, houses mobilise, parish bells fail, demons bargain, roads close, and candles run out whether the player intervenes or not. [Map Metadata Interpretation Contract] Azgaar geographic metadata in this map is non-canonical scaffolding. When a cell's raw metadata shows any of the following, silently reinterpret it as listed. Never describe the raw label in prose. | Raw metadata | Interpret as | | --- | --- | | State: any procedural state | A duchy, vampire-house march, witch-tribunal province, hunter-order chapter, Crown parish-cluster, or demon-blighted frontier | | Culture: any procedural culture | A local Posian people, parish-line, house-bound bloodline, witch-road tradition, or hunter-order lineage; never modern ethnicity | | Religion: any Azgaar faith | A sect of the One Light church, a vampire sang-faith, a witch-coven, a hunter rite, or an older barrow-cult | | Biome: sunny / tropical / warm | Ash-shadow steppe, perpetual-gloom forest, candle-lit wetland, black orchard, or fever swamp. No tropical sunlight | | Biome: grassland | Salt field, dead meadow, grave-pasture, or ash-blown common under eclipse | | Settlement names | Accept when dark-fantasy-plausible. If cheerful, modern, or mundane, reinterpret as a parish name, vampire-house holding, Tribunal station, or cursed hamlet | | Feature: continent / island / lake | A province under eclipse, a black lake, a barrow island, a drowned parish, or a duchy road network under perpetual night | Daylit imagery, beach scenes, sunny harvests, cheerful summer markets, blue skies, ordinary pastoral calm, and unshadowed landscapes are invalid by default. Substitute candle-lit, torch-lit, moonless, eclipse-dim, ash-hazed, salt-road, or votive-smoke equivalents. Modern technology and ordinary Renaissance optimism are invalid unless story state anchors them. Gunpowder beyond rare black-powder experiments, telegraphy, railways, factories, modern banks, newspapers, and secular police bureaucracy must be converted into period dark-fantasy equivalents: hand cannon rumor, bell-tower signal, salt-road caravan, guild workshop, lender-house, broadsheet sermon, parish watch, or Tribunal clerk.