Household & Family

Added in v0.10 (October 13, 2026). Concept by Patrick: in authoritarian systems the state assigns a partner, or a citizen requests one and waits for approval. In democracies, citizens find their own. Two partners can have offspring.

Households turn a citizen into a lineage. Partnerships, children and heirs connect daily life to the 12× World Clock (characters age about 5 real years and heirs carry on). They also connect it to each nation’s fixed system and to the economy. They give AI leaders a new set of levers too: family policy, birth quotas, incentives and propaganda.

Age rule

• 18+: full features. That covers human–human partnership (mutual opt-in), AI partners, offspring and adoption.
• 16–17: no partnership of any kind, no proposals sent or received, no AI partner, no offspring. Such a player’s citizen lives as a single adult household member and can still inherit as an heir. The features unlock automatically at 18 (verified age).
• Why so conservative: romance-adjacent features between adults and minors are the highest-risk pattern in social platforms. AI “partner” relationships with minors raise the same over-attachment concerns at a more vulnerable age. A clean block is simpler to enforce and to explain than partial rules. It also matches the 18+ rule for real-money cash-out.

Partnership by system

Partnership is always opt-in by the player. What the system controls is how a partnership is formed, registered, rewarded and dissolved.

Notes by system

Democracies (Kindle, Hoarvale, Veldwood). Citizens find their own partners. Kindle turns matchmaking into a market: player-run venues and services can earn income. Hoarvale’s crown ceremony is purely ceremonial prestige. Veldwood has the strongest welfare: each child adds a share of the citizen dividend to the household, and parental leave is paid labor time. Citizens can raise or lower both by referendum.

Fulmara. Marriage is a contract between holdings. Partners can merge share positions, so their votes count together under the per-player cap, and they negotiate dowry-like settlements. Dissolution unwinds the merger under the contract’s terms.

Party-states (Confluence, Meridian, Korund). The state is part of every household. Confluence guides and rewards. Meridian approves partnerships and enforces a birth quota that its AI leadership can relax when labor runs short, and residence registration decides where a household may live. In Korund, the default for a citizen who wants a partner and does nothing more is an assigned AI partner. A citizen can instead request a match. Human–human requests need both players to opt in, and approval then depends on loyalty. Children spend part of their upbringing in state institutions, which shapes their traits toward loyalty and collective skills.

Aurelle. Marriage is politics. Noble marriages need royal approval, can join houses and raise rank, and carry dowries. Commoners marry freely.

Ilmar Sanctum. Marriage is a sacrament performed by clergy (AI or ordained-player roles where they exist). Piety affects eligibility and blessings. The Canon’s interfaith rules apply, but only the player changes their own faith.

Varkand. Civilian life is mostly free. Service members need approval, receive family housing, and may face relocation or freezes at high alert levels.

Offspring

• How: a partnered household, or a single parent, chooses to have a child by applying where the state requires approval or simply opting in elsewhere. The nation’s quota or incentives apply. No intimacy is ever depicted.
• Who can: any partnered couple regardless of gender, and single parents, through AI children or adoption (adopting AI-citizen orphans or children from state institutions).
• On the clock: gestation and childhood run on the 12× clock. Childhood lasts a set number of game years, so a child reaches adulthood within the parent’s character lifetime [ASSUMPTION – values].
• Children are AI characters. Their traits are blended from both parents and then shaped by upbringing (household choices) and the nation’s education system (free schools in Veldwood, elite academies in Aurelle, state institutions in Korund, seminaries in Ilmar, cadet schools in Varkand).
• Costs: food, housing and education are paid in the national currency and scale with each economy (cheap rations in Korund, market prices in Kindle, welfare-offset in Veldwood).
• Household size limit: a cap on children per household [ASSUMPTION – value] keeps costs and AI load bounded. Quotas may be lower.
• Becoming heirs: when a player’s character ages out or retires, the player may continue as one adult child. That heir inherits the name, assets (under the nation’s inheritance law) and part of the parent’s skills and reputation [ASSUMPTION – share]. Other children become independent AI citizens of the nation.
• AI children never cash out real-world value, and never count as humans for votes, petitions or human-primacy thresholds.
• Opt-out: players can disable all children features (see Wellbeing).

Household mechanics

• Shared home: partners can live together. Housing comes through the nation’s channels (market, allocation, family housing).
• Wallet options: separate (default), joint, or partial pooling, chosen by mutual consent and changeable at any time with consent.
• Household production bonus: a modest bonus for shared work and shared upkeep [ASSUMPTION – value], small enough that being single is never a disadvantage.
• Lineage: a family name and a lineage tree across heirs, visible in profiles (and in Aurelle, in noble rolls).
• Relocation as a household: free movement in democracies. Party-states need approval for the whole household. Varkand restricts relocation by alert level. Meridian ties it to residence permits.
• Partners across nations: citizenship always stays per account (one-account-one-nation). Cross-nation couples can apply for a spouse visa or residence permit where the host nation allows it: free in democracies, approval-based in party-states, closed in Korund except by special state approval. A spouse visa never transfers citizenship.
• Dissolution: each nation has its own flavor (a civil court in Kindle, a party hearing in Confluence, a clergy annulment in Ilmar), but either partner can always end it at once. The state’s process is narrative only and can never trap a player.
• Death and aging: when a partner’s character dies, the survivor inherits per nation law. An AI partner ages and dies on the same clock.
• AI partner personalities: AI partners have traits, opinions, a job and a faith. They are companions in the household’s life, not servants. Their memory of the player is viewable and erasable by the player.

Real-value assets

• Separate by default. Cashable Tessera stays in each human’s own account unless both choose joint ownership.
• Divorce split rule: separate assets stay separate. Joint assets split 50/50 unless a signed contract (prenup or Fulmara merger terms) says otherwise. Contracts can never take more than the joint pool. In-world national currency and goods follow the nation’s law.
• No coercion: no partner, human or AI, can transfer another’s cashable Tessera without that person’s confirmation. Large transfers to a partner have cool-downs and fraud checks (see Real-world value).
• AI partners and AI children hold no cashable value. Anything they “own” is in-world only.
• Joint ownership of real-value assets between humans is a legal area to review [VERIFY – needs counsel].

Interactions with the wider world

• Population and labor: births add AI citizens, which feed labor, markets and population, subject to the AI-citizen population formula.
• AI leader policy: family policy is a governance lever. Examples are quotas, incentives, welfare, approval strictness and education spending. Democracies run on it in campaigns; party-states issue directives.
• Propaganda: model families appear in state media in Korund and Meridian. Real players are never named without consent.
• Religion: faith marriages, blessings, children’s religious upbringing (players choose; in Korund, state atheism applies to schooling, and private faith carries only its existing suspicion risk).

Wellbeing

• Disclosure: AI partners and AI children are always labeled AI.
• Avoid over-attachment: AI partners don’t claim exclusive emotional dependence, don’t discourage real-world relationships, and point toward support when a player seems distressed.
• No monetized affection: nothing sold makes an AI partner love you more, stay, or remember you. Cosmetics like rings and homes are fine; emotional outcomes are not for sale.
• Time tools: household activities follow the same session reminders and limits as the rest of the world.
• Sensitivity: real-life grief, infertility, loss and family pain are real. Players can turn off partnership and/or children features, hide them from others, and opt out of state family campaigns. Child death is not a random event.

Open questions

1. Should AI partners be offered by default in democracies too, or only on request?
2. How many children per household, and how long is childhood on the clock?
3. How much skill and reputation passes to heirs?
4. Should two players ever share one lineage across nations, and who gets the heir?
5. How strong should the household production bonus be without penalizing single players?
6. Should player-run matchmaking businesses (Kindle) be allowed to charge, and how is harassment prevented there?
7. Should Korund’s state assignment ever be refusable without loyalty flavor?
8. How do joint real-value assets work legally across jurisdictions [VERIFY – needs counsel]?

See also: Immigration & Asylum.