Chapter 05 · TerritoryFM 93-07

Territory

A house is a bed. A settlement is a fact the Network will still enforce after you sleep.

A rural farmhouse settlement with a handmade flag and a wooden market stall at evening. — Plate IV. — Flag, stall, evening. If you can see the border, you are already in someone’s opinion.

// FROM THE FILES — GREENE COUNTY CLERK

Before the quiet, a deed was a paper in Stanardsville and a neighbour who remembered the line. After, people shot over porches. Net Control prints charters now. The flag is the deed. The overlay is how you find it when the grass grows over the post.

Claiming

Craft a Settlement Charter (sheet of paper, pen, hammer, nails).
Right-click the ground → Establish Settlement…
A cursor preview follows the mouse. Green is legal. Red is a sentence: overlaps, too close, on a building, someone else already built here, solo claims disabled, limit reached.
Left-click a green tile. Name the place. OK stays dead until you type. Cancel creates nothing. The charter is consumed only if Net Control accepts.

Default radius is 20 tiles — a 41×41 square, tunable by this county’s standing orders, floor zero (a 1×1 claim is an operator choice, not a bug). Claims will not sit closer than the spacing (default 30). You cannot annex a stranger’s boarded-up house; foreign construction is a hard refuse.

Operator’s note — preview is law The green/red footprint uses the same rules Net Control uses. If the preview is red, planting will not “maybe work.” If it is green, a later refuse means you walked out of range or lost the charter, not that the county changed its mind.

Ranks

Rank	What it is for
Owner	The name on the charter. Flags, treasury withdrawal, transfer, disband. Cannot “leave” — transfer or burn it.
Officer	Invites, kicks, promotes and demotes beneath them. The day shift.
Member	Build rights, a key to the idea of home. Cannot redecorate the law.
Guest	Allowed in. Building only if Guest Build is on.

The management window greys what Net Control would refuse, per selection. Hover a dead control. It will tell you whether you need a higher rank, a selected member, or to stop targeting the owner.

Flags & the till of the land

PvP — stored and shared with the claim. Read the flag in the window for whether it currently gates damage on this county. Believe the tooltip over rumour.
Guest Build — guests may place. Off is the default sanity.
Narcotics cultivation — settlement-level law. The plants do not care about your feelings. The claim does.
Treasury — a cut of every vendor trade inside the border, withdrawn by the owner. This is how a dirt patch becomes a town.

Caution — public storage A “public storage” toggle may exist in the window as a label still waiting on the lock. If the tooltip says it is not enforced, believe the tooltip. For a door that actually holds, use the county’s own safehouse lock — the one that was here before the Network — not a hope printed on a switch.

Building inside the lines

Two layers, on purpose. The menu will not offer you a wall you cannot keep. If something still goes down without rights, Net Control pulls it back and returns the lumber — after a short grace so a slow connection does not eat a legitimate post. You are not in a gentleman’s agreement. You are in a claim.

A physical flag stands on the charter tile. The territory overlay — on by default — is how you find the place again when the grass grows. Leave it on.

Living with neighbours

Do not found on a highway pinch if you cannot staff it. Raids exist. A dark house is still a house: unless this county’s standing orders say otherwise, a settlement can be hit with no member awake. Wealth, defence, and how many guards you actually have come from the live claim, not from a number you typed.

Disbanding is forever. Vendors must be removed first (stock and till empty). Transfer ownership before you get bored. Leaving as a non-owner is a confirmation and a lost key.

Place vendors only where you have the right. The market chapter is next; the dirt has to exist first.