LostVale guide

Kingdoms, war and faith

The realms of the Isles and their courts, how they marry, die, convert and go to war; war parties in the field; the Norse and their raids; sending envoys to the courts; and the Church, the old gods, prayer, offerings and sanctity.

The realms

Over the lordships stand the realms. On a world’s first day kingdoms are grown out from their capitals over the lordships, held together by the people who live there and parted by mountains, the sea and the borders of peoples. Between them and on the islands stand petty kingdoms, some paying tribute to a high king. Each realm has a name, a people, a royal house, a ruler and a court faith: the Church, or the old gods of its people. The realms are a pure function of the atlas and the seed, so every character of a world finds the same map on the first day; the chart’s Realms page draws them over the sheet.

The realms as the world goes on

Every day, every court takes its turn:

• Levies and treasuries rise and fall, and opinion between courts drifts.
• Rulers age and die, and successions follow.
• Marriages join houses, and heirs are born.
• Pacts are made and broken.
• Courts convert from one faith to the other.
• Wars are declared over borders, successions and the true faith, and fought out battle by battle to a peace. Some are already under way on the first day.

The journal’s Chronicle tells what has happened among the realms, and the feed brings the news as it comes.

War parties

Where a war’s front lies (a lordship held by the enemy, or the march between two realms at war), the hosts meet in skirmishes you can come upon. Each side’s soldiers wear their realm’s colours and fight the other’s. A side whose men are all down has lost the field, and the war’s score moves with it. If your realm fights in the war, the other side’s men are your enemies; if you stand with neither, you are left alone unless you strike first.

The Norse and the sea-road

The Norse hold no province of their own: they came over the sea from a homeland to the north-east generations ago and planted colonies where their fleets reached: jarldoms on the isles and far coasts nearest it, the Norse-Gaels of the western isles, the Anglo-Norse of the coast that faces it and the land behind, and longphorts at the mouths of the great rivers.

In the raiding season, late spring to the end of summer, the Norse realms send longships against the coasts of others: rich places by the sea, and the churches of the Christians above all.

• Far from you a raid is reckoned (the raiders’ strength against the place’s), plunder carried home, and a grudge laid up in the court that suffered it.
• Near you it is fought: longships row in and run up on the strand, the raiders leap ashore and fall on the folk, the watch turns out, and the raiders either take what they came for and pull away or are cut down on the beach.
• If your realm sent the raid, the raiders are your friends; anyone else, they will fight.

The same ships carry the trade of the sea-road: voyages to courts at peace with them bring silver to both treasuries and a little more friendship, and near a Norse place by the water a trader’s longship sails in now and then, lies at anchor a few hours and sails on.

Envoys

Well-spoken folk of your household (they come to serve when you set an Envoy’s Bureau in a house with beds) can be sent to the courts of the realms from the chart’s Realms page. Each goes on foot to the court’s capital (a day for every thirty kilometres), does what they were sent to do by their own charm, your standing with the court and the Envoy’s art of your wheel, and comes home to tell of it. The gifts and the journey cost gold.

A court of the other faith is harder to win. The wheel’s envoys’ skill at court helps every errand.

Faith

Every realm keeps a court faith, every settlement the faith most of its folk hold, and every character one of two:

• The Church, in the rite of their people: the Celtic Church of the west and north, the Roman Church of the lowlands. Its clergy are priests, abbesses and bishops; its houses are churches. Each church is raised to a saint (Columba, Moluag, Ninian, Kentigern, Brigid, Patrick, Ciarán, Brendan and many more), each the patron of something.
• The Old Ways, the gods of their people: the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Children of Dôn, the Old Gods of Albion, the Æsir and the Vanir, and the gods of the Gall and the Gael. Their clergy are druids and arch-druids; their houses are round nemetons, holy wells or temples by the people, each with the idol of its god.

A Gaelic Christian prays to Saint Columba in a church with a ringed high cross; a Gaelic pagan brings an offering to the Dagda in a round nemeton.

Prayer and blessings

Pray at the altar of a church, or bring an offering to the idol of a god, and the saint or god the house is raised to lays its blessing on you for a while: a boost to one of your powers. Priests bless and heal the faithful, but will not bless the heathen.

Living among the other faith

Townsfolk greet you by your faith and theirs, speak of the war, and charge one of the other faith more. Your name carries less far among them. A court of the other faith treats you as a guest at best.

Turning

A faith is kept through a life. Only the clergy of the other faith can turn you, at their word, in the world.

Sanctity

Magic worked in the streets is seen. To your own faith it is a wonder (or a druid’s working); to the other it is witchcraft (or priestcraft). The wonders you work for your own faith raise your sanctity, and with it the title the faithful know you by, and the grace (or the gods’ favour) it brings:

Written from the game's source and content as of commit 02e81b2 (2026-11-01).