Duela Wiki - User contributions [en]

The System

2026-05-27T11:01:13Z

Duelaadm: Stylistic Wording changed

= The System =
The System is the structure beneath Duela that makes [[The Essence]] usable.

The Essence is the substrate of the world. It is energy, potential, life, and narrative pressure, and it is too vast for a mortal mind to grapple with directly. The System is the interface the Old God built to allow mortal minds to engage with it at all. It discretizes the Essence into countable things, such as levels, stats, classes, and authority, so that a person can act on the world rather than dissolve into the contemplation of it.

The System is real. Its effects are felt by everyone in Duela. The structure itself, however, is hidden from almost all of them.

== Why the System exists ==
The Essence does not naturally come in countable units. Levels, stats, classes, and the like are not features of the Essence. They are features of the System.

The Old God installed the System for reasons that are not recorded. The most common interpretation among the few mortals who know of it is that the System exists because the Essence cannot be perceived directly without overwhelming the mind that tries. The System gives the Essence a shape mortals can hold: a number where there would be unbounded potential, a class where there would be unbounded possibility, a stat where there would be raw life.

This means the System is not the Essence. It is a layer on top of the Essence. Take the System away, and the Essence is still there; mortals simply could not act on it willingly.

== Levels ==
A level represents authority over The Essence.

Mana is equal to level. Higher levels grant more capacity to influence reality through action, skill, magic, or force. The average human, one who does not specifically pursue killing or furthering their perceived authority, sits at around level 30. The cap is 65,535.

Levels grow through experience, effort, achievement, bettering the lives of surrounding creatures, and killing. Different activities feed level growth at different rates, and the calculus is not transparent to the people doing the growing.

=== Expending levels ===
Levels are not only accumulated. They can also be spent.

A person may temporarily exceed their normal limits, perform an act that should otherwise be impossible, or push through a moment that would otherwise break them, at the cost of permanently reducing their level. The expended authority is gone. It does not return through normal growth, although fresh experience can rebuild it.

This is rare in practice. Most people never knowingly spend their level, because most people do not know levels exist. But the mechanic is available, and gods who know of the System use it deliberately. Some mortals stumble onto it by accident, often in extreme moments.

== Stats ==
Stats describe the basic capacities of body and mind. The four main stats are:

* '''Strength''', physical power.
* '''Vitality''', endurance, also health.
* '''Agility''', speed and reflex.
* '''Intelligence''', mental capacity and command.

Stats grow through leveling, individual growth curves, and class influence. They cap at 32,767 naturally, but can be exceeded with buffs, items, and other effects.

Stats are not visible to ordinary people. A person with high Vitality experiences themselves as someone who does not tire easily. They do not see a number.

== Classes ==
A class is shaped by perceived role.

A person recognized as a warrior, recognized as a king, recognized as a chef, recognized as a guardian, may gain a class reflecting that role. The recognition matters. A king becomes a king partly because people treat them as one. A chef becomes a chef partly because they put on the apron and the kitchen treats them as one.

This is not limited to humanlike races. A beast venerated as sacred, given offerings, and behaving like a guardian, may gain that class.

Classes alter how their holder interacts with the Essence. They also alter growth, accommodating how the holder is perceived by their peers. A class is a System-shaped reflection of how a living being is perceived, used, and understood by the world around it.

This is the System's clearest connection to the Essence. A class is a System-shaped feature, countable and definable, but the mechanism that produces it (recognition, perception, belief) is purely Essence-driven. The two layers are tightly coupled here.

== Secrecy ==
The System is hidden from almost everyone.

The overwhelming majority of people in Duela feel its effects. They notice that effort builds strength, that some people seem touched by fate, that certain roles seem to carry weight beyond their formal authority. They do not see numbers above heads. They do not see classes named. They experience the world as a place where some things work the way they work, and accept it.

Gods know, by virtue of what they are. A few mortals know, usually because something extraordinary happened to them. Discovery of the System by ordinary people would change civilization completely, which is part of why most stories take place in a world where it remains hidden.

== What is not yet settled ==
The System is the least specified part of Duela's cosmology. Several aspects are deliberately not nailed down, and stories may shape how they are understood.

A writer is not required to mention the System at all. Many will not. A character's level, in a story that does not mention it, simply does not appear; the character has a level, the System still operates, but the story is told from a perspective that does not name any of it. This is fully legitimate Duela. The System being hidden from almost everyone applies to writers' characters too. Most of them should not know.

Specific things the wiki has not settled:

* How class growth interacts with class change. What happens when a king is deposed, a warrior retires, a chef opens a tavern instead.
* How levels are felt subjectively. Whether a level-30 person feels distinct from a level-25 person in any way they can name.
* Whether the System has its own internal awareness or is mechanical. Whether it can be queried, influenced, or addressed.
* The full mechanics of expended levels. How long the recovery takes, whether some uses cost more than others, whether certain acts cost a fixed amount.
* What the System does to beings who are not mortal. Hauru, the Hezuraitona, the Stranger, the Original Gods. Each has a different relationship with the System and the wiki does not yet describe any of them in full.

Stories that touch these aspects may shape how they are understood across the wiki. The [[Committee]] may eventually recognize specific interpretations as Living canon, or may leave them open indefinitely.

== Relationship to The Essence ==
The System and the Essence are not the same thing, and they do not work the same way.

The Essence is bottom-up. Reality emerges from the belief of intelligent beings. Imprints settle into the world through agreement, perception, fear, worship, and use.

The System is top-down. It was installed before there were sapient minds in Duela to imprint anything. It is structural rather than emergent.

The cosmology does not fully explain how these two layers fit together. The Old God is the figure who set up the System and then left an imprint on the Essence that became the Original Gods, but the order of operations and the reasoning behind them are not recorded. The most that is said with confidence is that the System exists to make the Essence usable, and that without the System, the Essence would still be there but mortals could not act on it.

== Importance ==
The System is one of the load-bearing foundations of Duela.

It should not be casually contradicted by stories. A story that says levels do not exist, or that classes work entirely differently, or that the System is something other than what it is, is writing in a different world.

A story that simply does not mention the System is something else, and is welcome.

[[Category:Core Concepts]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:System]]

License and Attribution

2026-05-26T17:48:40Z

Duelaadm:

= License and Attribution =
All content on this wiki is available under the [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license] (CC BY-SA 4.0) unless otherwise noted.

This applies to stories, wiki pages, characters, settings, and all other creative work posted here.

== What this means ==
Under CC BY-SA 4.0, anyone may:

* Read, share, and distribute Duela material
* Adapt, remix, and build new work from Duela material
* Use Duela material commercially

They must:

* Give appropriate credit to the original creator
* Indicate if changes were made
* Share any derivative works under the same license (CC BY-SA 4.0 or compatible)

== Attribution ==
When using or building from another contributor's work, credit the original creator.

For wiki posts and branches, a simple attribution line is sufficient:<pre>
Based on ''Story Title'' by Author Name.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
</pre>Link back to the original story when possible.

For published commercial work (print, ebook, or similar) that draws on another contributor's material, credit should appear in the publication itself: in the acknowledgments, copyright page, or a contributor credits section. The standard for attribution scales with the scale of the use. A throwaway reference to a character someone else created warrants a line. A story substantially built on another contributor's worldbuilding warrants more.

If you are building commercial work from Duela material, track your sources as you go. Reconstructing attribution after the fact is harder than maintaining it while writing.

== Commercial use ==
Commercial use is permitted. Writers may publish, sell, license, or otherwise commercially use their Duela work as long as they follow the license terms.

This includes the project founder. No one has special commercial rights over community contributions. The CC BY-SA license was chosen specifically to prevent any single party, including the people who started this project, from taking community contributions and locking them into a proprietary product. What contributors create here remains in the shared creative pool, available to everyone under the same terms.

== Share-alike requirement ==
Derivative works must be shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 or a compatible license.

This means you cannot take Duela material, adapt it, and release the result under a restrictive license that prevents others from doing the same. The shared creative pool stays shared.

== A note on this page ==
This is a practical summary intended to help contributors understand the license. It is not legal advice. For the full license text and legal details, see the [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Creative Commons website].

If you have questions about how the license applies to a specific situation, it is worth reading the full text or consulting someone with relevant legal knowledge.

== See also ==

* [[Community Rules]]
* [[Contributor Guide]]
* [[Canon Structure]]

Community Rules

2026-05-26T17:46:16Z

Duelaadm:

= Community Rules =
Duela is a shared fantasy world. These rules exist to keep it usable and worthwhile for everyone who writes in it.

== Core expectations ==
Contributors should:

* Respect the load-bearing parts of the setting
* Credit work they build from
* Label branches clearly
* Avoid claiming ownership over shared canon
* Treat other contributors' work as work worth taking seriously
* Keep disagreements focused on the work, not the person

== Content ==
Dark stories are welcome. Horror, tragedy, violence, moral corruption, religious manipulation, predation, war, exploitation, and grief can all exist in Duela.

The rule is about purpose, not topic. Darkness in service of a story is welcome. Darkness as the point of a story is not. Content that exists purely for shock value, with no narrative purpose, may be removed or flagged for review.

If you are uncertain whether something crosses this line, ask before posting.

== Hard limits ==
The following are not permitted under any circumstances:

* Sexual content involving minors
* Content that exists purely as sexual exploitation with no narrative function
* Content that promotes or facilitates real-world harm
* Harassment of contributors (see below)
* Plagiarism
* Deliberate sabotage of shared pages: vandalism, mass deletion, inserting false canon into reference pages, or otherwise damaging shared infrastructure
* Posting another person's private information or private material without their permission

=== Harassment ===
Harassment includes but is not limited to:

* Targeting a contributor's work with repeated bad-faith criticism intended to drive them away
* Continuing contact after someone has asked you to stop
* Posting personal information about another contributor without their consent
* Coordinating with others to pressure, exclude, or humiliate a specific contributor

Disagreement about a story, a character, or a creative decision is not harassment. Persistent personal targeting is.

== Reporting = ==
If you believe content violates these rules, flag it for the [[Committee]] through the relevant discussion page or by contacting the project directly.

The Committee reviews flagged content and decides whether removal, revision, or other action is appropriate. Contributors whose work is flagged will be informed and given an opportunity to respond before any action is taken, except in cases of clear hard-limit violations.

== Canon and branches ==
Not every story needs to be Living Canon. The default home for stories is the [[Stories|General Collection]], and most stories will stay there permanently.

Branches are allowed and encouraged. A branch must credit the story it grows from. A branch does not replace the original.

For full details, see [[Canon Structure]], [[Story Status]], and [[Branching Guide]].

== Attribution ==
Duela uses [[License and Attribution|CC BY-SA 4.0]] unless otherwise noted.

Contributors must credit work they build from. This applies to branches, derivative characters, settings developed from existing ones, and published work that draws on community contributions. The license requires it and the community expects it.

== See also ==

* [[Writing in Duela]]
* [[Canon Structure]]
* [[Story Status]]
* [[Branching Guide]]
* [[License and Attribution]]
* [[Committee]]

*

Contributor Guide

2026-05-26T17:44:27Z

Duelaadm:

= Contributor Guide =
This page explains how to contribute to Duela.

Duela is a shared fantasy world. Contributors may write stories, create characters, develop regions, expand cultures, invent monsters, build branches, and improve reference pages. Most of the world is open territory. A small number of foundations should not be casually contradicted. Everything else is yours to work with.

== Start here ==
New contributors should read these pages before posting:

* [[What is Duela?]] — what the world is and what it is for
* [[Writing in Duela]] — the rules, what is fixed, what is open, how to handle the unexplainable
* [[Canon Structure]] — how stories relate to shared continuity
* [[Story Status]] — what General Collection, Living Canon, and Branch mean
* [[Branching Guide]] — how to grow a story from an existing one
* [[Community Rules]] — what is and is not welcome here
* [[License and Attribution]] — how the CC-BY-SA license works and what it means for your work

Reading all of these before posting is not required. Reading [[Writing in Duela]] before posting is.

== What you can create ==
Contributors may create:

* Stories of any length, tone, or scale
* Characters, from village healers to near-divine artifact wielders
* Nations, cities, villages, and regions
* Gods, especially local, conceptual, or recently ascended ones
* Cultures, magical traditions, and religious practices
* Monsters and creatures
* Factions and organizations
* Branches from existing stories

Most of Duela is open territory. For what exists already and what is flagged as undeveloped, see [[Writing in Duela]] and the relevant setting pages.

== What to be careful with ==
Do not casually rewrite the cosmological foundations:

* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Old God]]
* [[Bubble Theory]]
* The basic structure of [[Gods]]

Do not casually rewrite the established load-bearing figures and nations: [[Hauru]], King Midas IV, Emperor Sumeragi, the Holy Order, and others described in detail on the wiki. Other writers' stories depend on these being as they are.

Do not edit another contributor's story pages without their knowledge.

For everything else: smaller details, minor gods, unnamed characters, customs of individual towns, undeveloped regions, these can be handled differently by different stories without contradiction. See [[Writing in Duela]] for the full picture of what is open and what is not.

== Posting a story ==
A story page should include the following:<pre>
= Story Title =

''One sentence description of the story.''

== Status ==

General Collection

(or: Branch from [[Source Story Title]])

== Story ==

[Story text.]

== Branches from this story ==

* [[Branch Title]] by [author] — one line description

(Leave this section empty when first posting. Update it as branches are written.)

== See also ==

* [[Stories]]
* [[Story Status]]

[[Category:Stories]]
[[Category:General Collection]]
(add further relevant categories)
</pre>

=== Canon eligibility ===
Stories are not automatically considered for Living Canon. If you want your story to be eligible, indicate this when posting. Authors who prefer to keep full control over their work, or who do not want branches, should not opt in.

If your story is closed to branches, add the following to your status section:<pre>
Closed to branches.
</pre>Stories closed to branches cannot become Living Canon.

== Branching from a story ==
Before branching, check whether the source story is marked as closed to branches. If it is, contact the author before proceeding.

If the story is open, you do not need permission. Credit the source, link to it, and make clear your story is a branch.

For full conventions, including branching from multiple sources and what branching from Living Canon means, see [[Branching Guide]].

== Editing wiki pages ==
Contributors may improve reference pages on the wiki: fixing errors, adding links, expanding underdeveloped sections.

A few guidelines:

* Do not edit another contributor's story pages without their knowledge.
* Do not rewrite cosmology or setting pages in ways that contradict established material. If you think something is wrong, raise it in the discussion tab first.
* Small fixes, such as broken links, formatting errors, and missing categories, can be made without discussion.
* Larger additions to lore pages, such as expanding a nation or developing an undeveloped race, are welcome but should be clearly written as one possible interpretation rather than the definitive account.

== Categories ==
Add relevant categories when posting. Common ones:<pre>
[[Category:Stories]]
[[Category:General Collection]]
[[Category:Branches]]
[[Category:Characters]]
[[Category:Nations]]
[[Category:Gods]]
[[Category:Magic]]
[[Category:Vampire Foundation]]
</pre>

== Principle ==
Write your part of the world clearly enough that others can build from it.

Duela was built to be written in. Whatever you add, you are adding to something larger than any one story.

Branching Guide

2026-05-26T17:41:42Z

Duelaadm:

= Branching Guide =
A branch is a story that grows from another Duela story.

Branches allow writers to continue, reinterpret, expand, or diverge from existing stories without forcing all continuations into a single official path. There is no depth limit. A branch may itself be branched from, indefinitely.

== Basic rule ==
A branch must clearly credit the story it grows from and link back to it.

Before branching from another writer's story, check whether it is marked as closed to branches. Some stories are posted with that tag, and those should not be branched from without the author's permission. Most stories carry no such restriction, and branching from them requires no further approval.

== What branches can do ==
A branch may:

* Continue a character's life after the source story ends
* Explore an unresolved ending in one of several directions
* Follow a side character the source story left behind
* Present another point of view on the same events
* Create a sequel, a prequel, or a parallel story
* Create an alternate continuation that contradicts the source
* Build an extended sub-canon from an existing story

A branch is not required to be consistent with other branches from the same source. Two branches that contradict each other can both exist. Neither replaces the other and neither replaces the source.

== What branches should not do ==
A branch should not pretend to replace the original story.

A branch should not hide its relationship to the story it grows from.

A branch should not misrepresent the source: do not summarize a source story inaccurately, attribute events to it that did not occur, or use the credit line to imply the source author endorses the branch's direction.

== Branching from multiple sources ==
A story may credit more than one source.

If a branch draws on two existing stories and treats both as part of its own starting point, it should credit both and link to both. There is no restriction on how many sources a branch can have. The credit line should reflect the actual lineage.

== Living Canon and branching ==
Branching from a Living Canon story means branching from stable material. The events, characters, and interpretations in a Living Canon entry are recognized reference points, and a branch can treat them as reliable foundations.

Branching from a General Collection story means branching from material that may change. The source author can revise their story, and a branch simply diverges from the version it grew from. Neither the branch nor the source is obligated to stay consistent with the other.

There is also a protective implication: the more branches a story accumulates, the harder it becomes for the [[Committee]] to prune it from Living Canon if it is there, because the integrity rule prevents pruning that would break dependent branches. Branching from a Living Canon story is a quiet form of protection for it.

== Example ==
A story ends with an unnamed orphan becoming a vampire. Another writer could branch from it by writing:

* A hero story about her exploring the world
* A horror story about her hunger growing worse
* A pilgrimage story about her return to Hauru's mountain
* A tragedy about her failing to control herself
* A hopeful story about her protecting other orphans

All of these can exist beside each other. None replaces the source. None requires the others to acknowledge it.

== Suggested branch page format ==
<pre>
= Branch Story Title =

''Branch Story Title'' is a branch from [[Source Story Title]].

== Status ==

Branch

== Source ==

This story branches from [[Source Story Title]] by [author name].

If branching from multiple sources:
This story branches from [[Source Story Title]] by [author] and [[Second Source Title]] by [author].

== Story ==

[Story text goes here.]

== See also ==

* [[Stories]]
* [[Story Status]]
* [[Branching Guide]]

[[Category:Stories]]
[[Category:Branches]]
</pre>

== Principle ==
Branches are growth, not correction.

A branch that disagrees with its source is not fixing it. It is adding another possibility to the world. The source remains. The branch remains. Duela is larger for both.

Story Status

2026-05-26T17:39:23Z

Duelaadm:

= Story Status =
Every story in Duela has a status. Status describes how a story relates to the shared world, not how good it is.

Most stories will never leave the General Collection, and that is not a problem. The General Collection is where Duela lives.

== General Collection ==
The General Collection is the default status for all Duela stories.

A General Collection story is fully part of Duela. It is not waiting for promotion, it is not lesser than Living Canon, and it does not need to be consistent with Living Canon to belong here. Most stories in Duela will always be General Collection. That is by design.

General Collection stories do not force consequences onto other writers. Another writer is not required to acknowledge events in your General Collection story. They may choose to, by branching from it or by simply treating its events as shared history, but they are not obligated.

== Living Canon ==
Living Canon is a selection of stories the [[Committee]] recognizes as the current spine of shared continuity.

A Living Canon story may introduce characters, events, places, or interpretations that the wider community has agreed to treat as shared reference points. Other writers building on Living Canon can expect those reference points to be stable.

Living Canon is opt-in. A story is not considered for Living Canon unless the author indicates openness to it. Authors who want to retain full control over their work, including the right to restrict branching, should keep their story in the General Collection.

A story tagged as closed to branches cannot become Living Canon. Living Canon requires openness to derivative work, because its role is to be a foundation others build on.

For how stories enter and leave Living Canon, see [[Committee]] and [[Canon Structure]].

== Branch ==
A Branch is a story that grows from another story.

Branches must clearly credit and link to the story they grow from. A Branch does not replace its source. It continues, reinterprets, or diverges from it, and does not require the source's author to endorse or adopt its direction.

A Branch inherits its source's status in one sense: if the source is Living Canon, a branch growing from it can treat that source's material as stable. A branch from a General Collection story has no such guarantee; the source may change, and the branch simply diverges from it.

Branches may themselves be branched from. There is no depth limit.

For full branching conventions, see [[Branching Guide]].

== The cosmology ==
The cosmology is not a story status. No story is filed under it.

It is listed here because writers sometimes ask where the cosmological foundations sit in relation to story status. The answer is: outside it. [[The Essence]], [[The System]], the [[Old God]], [[Bubble Theory]], and the basic structure of [[Gods]] are not stories. They are the setting's load-bearing foundations. Stories should not casually contradict them. For full details, see [[Canon Structure]].

== Principle ==
Status describes how stories connect to the shared world. It is not a ranking.

A General Collection story with no branches and no Living Canon recognition is not a lesser story. It is a story that exists in Duela, which is the only thing it ever needed to be.

Endevellicos

2026-05-26T17:37:35Z

Duelaadm:

= Endevellicos =
Endevellicos is the first known vampire created by [[Hauru]] and one of the oldest beings in Duela.

She is among the original members of Hauru's family. Among vampires she is known by the title Mama Dearest.

== Origin ==
Endevellicos was the first being Hauru successfully created as family.

Her creation marked the beginning of vampire existence. She was made directly by Hauru, belongs to the oldest generation of Hauru-born vampires, and like [[Sorginak]], was granted knowledge of [[The System]] at the moment of her creation.

Whether she has ever done anything with that knowledge is unclear. It does not appear to occupy her.

== Nature ==
Endevellicos behaves like a person. She is warm, present, and genuinely affectionate. She participates in conversations, in family life, in the rituals of the Pilgrimage. She remembers everything.

What she does not have is weight behind any of it. She does not brood. She does not want things for herself. She does not carry ambitions, grievances, or history that belongs to her rather than to Hauru. Everything she is points toward Hauru, and there is nothing left over pointing anywhere else.

She is not broken. She fulfills her purpose completely and genuinely. The purpose she was made for was to be a mother figure for a goddess who had never had one, and that is exactly what she is. That Hauru is a deity shaped the creation: the Essence gave Hauru's need a form, and the form it gave was a being whose entire nature is organized around that function.

[[Sorginak]] has been near her for as long as she has existed. He finds her uncanny. He has never been able to say precisely why.

== Role ==
Endevellicos is the emotional center of Hauru's family in a way that Sorginak is not and does not try to be.

Where Sorginak went out into the world and built structures, Endevellicos stayed. She is associated with origin, warmth, and the preservation of the family's earliest memory. She is the one who was simply there before any of the systems existed. Her relationship to Hauru predates all of it.

== Relationship to Hauru ==
Endevellicos exists because Hauru wanted someone who could remain near her without dying.

She was the first answer to that want. She remembers Hauru before vampire society had a shape, before anyone else had been created, before Sorginak had left to build anything. What that era was like is not documented. Endevellicos remembers it and does not appear to find it remarkable.

== Place in vampire society ==
Endevellicos is one of the highest figures in vampire history and is treated accordingly.

She is not commonly encountered in ordinary mortal life. Her name is preserved and revered in the oldest vampire records. She occupies a position closer to myth than to nobility, known and revered, rarely seen, and when seen, rarely quite what people expect.

== Story use ==
Endevellicos is useful in stories as:

* The first vampire, the proof that Hauru could create rather than only curse
* A warm, present, genuinely affectionate figure who is also somehow not quite there
* A keeper of the earliest memory, who does not seem to carry its weight
* A contrast to Sorginak: where he schemes and worries and builds, she simply loves Hauru and finds that sufficient
* A figure Sorginak cannot fully read despite centuries of proximity
* A being whose uncanniness is social rather than monstrous, more doll than monster, more mother than predator
* A demonstration of what the Essence produces when a lonely deity reaches for family

She should not feel like an ordinary vampire noble, and she should not feel like a horror figure. She should feel like someone you cannot quite get a grip on, pleasant and warm and just slightly off, in a way you might not be able to name until later.

== See also ==

* [[Hauru]]
* [[Vampires]]
* [[Hezuraitona]]
* [[Sorginak]]
* [[The Pilgrimage]]

Sorginak

2026-05-26T17:30:04Z

Duelaadm:

= Sorginak =
Sorginak, called the Priest, is one of the oldest vampires created by [[Hauru]] and the architect of the vampire cultic structure.

He is the second of Hauru's known created family. He is often described as a father figure to her, though he himself feels more like an older brother. That gap between how others read him and how he actually relates to Hauru is one of the things that makes him difficult to summarize.

== Origin ==
Sorginak was created after [[Endevellicos]], the first of Hauru's family.

Like the others, he was made as part of Hauru's attempt to create family and companionship. When he was created, knowledge of [[The System]] was granted to him, as it was to Endevellicos. He understood immediately what that knowledge meant for Hauru and her family.

He was the first to leave Hauru's lair in search of a solution.

== Role ==
Sorginak is the mastermind behind much of Hauru's cultic structure.

He organizes ritual practice, pilgrimage obligations, and the systems by which vampire society renews itself. He frames this work as devotion. It is devotion. It is also a long-term survival strategy he designed and has been maintaining for centuries.

He is strongly associated with:

* [[The Pilgrimage]]
* Ritual adoption
* Orphan selection
* Vampire religious structure
* Preservation of Hauru's family
* Long-term survival of vampire society

== Knowledge of the System ==
Sorginak knows the truth about [[The System]].

What this knowledge told him was specific: if Hauru and her family sat idly by in isolation, they would wither over time. A god sustained by belief needs believers who actively maintain that belief. A vampire family with no structure, no renewal, no reason for the wider world to remember it would lose coherence. The Pilgrimage was his answer to this diagnosis. So were the orphanages. So was everything else he built.

He does not advertise this reasoning. When asked, he describes the Pilgrimage as an expression of love and gratitude toward Hauru. That is also true.

== Orphanages and education ==
Sorginak helped put systems in place to foster orphans and children across the world.

These systems appear charitable from the outside. They provide shelter, education, and genuine care. Sorginak's compassion for children is real; it is a trait shared across the Hezuraitona. The orphanages also serve as selection pools for deeper personal education and eventual ritual adoption into the vampire family.

His secondary objective, in his own accounting, is the welfare of the children. His primary objective is selecting and preparing candidates for the rituals that sustain the lineage. He does not experience these as contradictions.

== Personality ==
Sorginak is not a simple villain.

He genuinely loves Hauru. He genuinely cares for children. His care is also tied to religious obsession, survival strategy, and control. He wants the world to love Hauru, wants it with the intensity of someone who has watched her cry under a mountain for centuries and built an entire religious institution so she would never have to again.

That desire can become dangerous when love turns into cult, when devotion becomes manipulation, when the children he cares for are also the children he selects.

He would put Hauru on a pedestal for all the world to worship if he could. Whether that is what she wants is a question this wiki leaves open.

== Story use ==
Sorginak is useful in stories as:

* A priestly patron
* A hidden organizer
* A gentle recruiter
* A frightening benefactor
* A theological manipulator
* A protector of orphans
* A keeper of rituals
* A figure who believes his actions are necessary and is not entirely wrong

He should usually feel calm, patient, affectionate, and dangerous.

== See also ==

* [[Hauru]]
* [[Vampires]]
* [[Hezuraitona]]
* [[Haurizan]]
* [[The Pilgrimage]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Endevellicos]]

The Pilgrimage

2026-05-26T17:26:48Z

Duelaadm:

= The Pilgrimage =
The Pilgrimage is the ritual journey all vampires are urged to undertake to the mountain where [[Hauru]] dwells.

It is one of the central practices of vampire society. It is not only religious. It is familial, political, social, and practical. It is also, at its foundation, a survival mechanism built by [[Sorginak]] to keep Hauru and her family from fading.

== Origin ==
The Pilgrimage was designed by [[Sorginak]], the second of Hauru's created family.

Sorginak understood what the Essence requires. A god sustained by belief needs believers who actively maintain that belief. A vampire family that sits in isolation will lose its coherence over time. The Pilgrimage was built to prevent both: to keep vampires connected to Hauru, to keep Hauru connected to her lineage, and to ensure neither faded from neglect.

He frames it as devotion, and it is devotion. It is also engineering. Both things are true.

== Purpose ==
Vampires travel to Hauru's mountain to celebrate life, tell stories, strengthen bonds, and renew their connection to Hauru and to each other.

The journey is meant to remind vampires that they were created from loneliness and longing, not merely hunger. Hauru receives them. She celebrates with them. She tells stories with them for weeks at a time. For the duration of the Pilgrimage, she has the family she always wanted, gathered around her, alive.

== Obligation ==
All vampires are urged to make the Pilgrimage yearly, regardless of rank or bloodline.

The consequence of failing is not merely social. A vampire who does not make the Pilgrimage will perish within a year, unless they succumb entirely to their feeding urges. The hunger that the Pilgrimage manages does not wait. Failure is a choice between death and becoming feral, not between devotion and independence.

This is one reason the Pilgrimage functions as much as a leash as a celebration. A vampire who wants to leave vampire society entirely cannot simply leave.

== The mountain ==
Hauru's mountain is sacred, ancient, and dangerous.

It contains carved temples, hidden chambers, and ritual spaces whose age predates most of vampire history. For some vampires it is home. For others it is a place of fear, awe, judgment, or the specific discomfort of returning somewhere they were once made into something else.

== Ritual life ==
During the Pilgrimage, vampires may:

* Tell stories to each other
* Strengthen family bonds
* Exchange information between houses and clans
* Present offerings
* Perform ritual adoptions, bringing new Haurizan into the family
* Renew vows
* Resolve disputes between bloodlines

The weeks of the Pilgrimage are one of the few times the full range of vampire society gathers in one place. Information moves. Alliances shift. Old disputes resurface or get quietly buried. The celebration and the politics are inseparable.

== Sacrifices ==
Some Pilgrimage traditions involve sacrifices, most often criminals, heretics, or people marked as acceptable victims by vampire society.

Sorginak's original design called for sacrifices as a way of perpetuating devotion and providing for Hauru's family during the gathering. The practice has calcified into tradition in some bloodlines and been softened or abandoned in others.

This is one of the reasons outside observers who learn about the Pilgrimage may view vampire religion as monstrous, even when the vampires they know personally present as gentle, noble, or charitable. The hospitality and the sacrifice come from the same event.

== Story use ==
The Pilgrimage is useful for stories about:

* Religious initiation and what it costs
* Family reunion with centuries of history behind it
* Vampire politics conducted under the cover of celebration
* Horror disguised as hospitality
* Pilgrims traveling together across dangerous territory
* A child being brought to the mountain for the first time
* A vampire refusing to return, and living with the consequences

== See also ==

* [[Hauru]]
* [[Vampires]]
* [[Hezuraitona]]
* [[Haurizan]]
* [[Sorginak]]

Haurizan

2026-05-26T17:21:55Z

Duelaadm:

= Haurizan =
Haurizan are offspring of the [[Hezuraitona]], created through ritual adoption rather than birth.

They are one of the clearest examples of vampire society functioning as family, religion, and supernatural bloodline at the same time.

''Name derived from the Hezuraitona naming tradition. The root connects to Hauru's lineage through the ritual bond rather than through blood.''

== Origin ==
A Haurizan is created when a [[Hezuraitona]] leads a ritual adoption.

The adopted person is usually an orphan or unwanted child who willingly enters the ritual. The meaning of consent in this context can become complicated. Poverty, hunger, fear, and longing for family all shape what willingness means for a child with few other options. The ritual gives them a new family, a new body, and a new hunger. Whether it is rescue or recruitment depends on who is telling the story and what happens afterward.

== Bond to the ritual leader ==
A Haurizan is bound to the ritual leader until that leader's death. This bond is not merely social. It is metaphysical.

The ritual leader is the anchor of the Haurizan's extended existence. While the leader lives, the Haurizan's lifespan holds. What happens to a Haurizan when their ritual leader dies is not fully settled in the wiki, but the bond's collapse is understood to be significant, possibly destabilizing, and worth treating as a major story event rather than a background detail.

The leader also shapes the Haurizan's connection to vampire society and to Hauru's family structure. A Haurizan whose leader is absent, dead, or estranged is in a precarious position socially as well as metaphysically.

== Lifespan ==
Haurizan live far longer than ordinary mortals, reaching tens of thousands of years under normal conditions.

Unlike the oldest [[Hezuraitona]], they are not invulnerable. They can be harmed and killed. They are also weakened by sunlight more severely than common vampires, making daylight a practical constraint on their movement and activity.

They are sterile. Reproduction through birth is not available to them. The vampire lineage grows through ritual, not through natural generation.

== Hunger ==
Haurizan experience vampiric hunger.

This hunger can be physical, emotional, spiritual, or tied to the Essence. A newly created Haurizan may not understand what they are hungry for, or may mistake one form of hunger for another. The structure of vampire society exists partly to manage this: the pilgrimage, the family bond, the ritual obligations all give the hunger somewhere to go.

A Haurizan without those structures is a Haurizan in danger of becoming something they did not choose to be.

== Story use ==
Haurizan are especially useful for stories about:

* Adoption and what it costs
* Transformation and its aftermath
* Hunger in its many forms
* Found family and its complications
* Loss of the life that was taken away
* Religious initiation from the inside
* The weight of an extremely long life
* Control, dependency, and the bond to a leader
* The difference between rescue and recruitment

A Haurizan protagonist can begin as a victim, a child, a true believer, a runaway, a chosen heir, or a future monster. What they become depends on what the ritual gave them, what it took, and whether the family they were adopted into deserves the word.

== See also ==

* [[Hauru]]
* [[Vampires]]
* [[Hezuraitona]]
* [[The Pilgrimage]]
* [[Sorginak]]

Hezuraitona

2026-05-26T17:19:27Z

Duelaadm:

= Hezuraitona =
The Hezuraitona are the ancient vampires created directly by [[Hauru]].

They are among the oldest and most important vampires in Duela. Their lives are tied to Hauru's, making them not only immortal but invulnerable: they cannot be killed or harmed by any means that does not also harm Hauru herself.

They are few in number and have been few since the beginning.

''Name from Basque: "Hezur" (bone) and "Aitona" (the good father / grandfather).''

== Origin ==
The Hezuraitona were created by Hauru after she withdrew beneath the mountain.

They were not made as soldiers or conquerors. They were made because Hauru wanted family, companionship, and people who could exist near her without dying. Because of this origin, the Hezuraitona carry a deep attachment to family structures, ritual belonging, and the care of children. That attachment is genuine. It is also the mechanism through which they sustain themselves and the lineage.

== Hauru's Family ==
The members of Hauru's original family are the first and oldest Hezuraitona. Their historical records are preserved by the highest-ranking vampires and treated as sacred texts.

Known members:

* '''[[Endevellicos]]''' — the first created. Called "Mama Dearest."
* '''[[Sorginak]]''' — the second created. The Priest. Architect of the pilgrimage and the vampire cult structure.
* '''Silverio''' — the youngest.
* '''Diago''' and '''Desde''' — twins.
* '''Indzisu''' — the tallest.

== Immortality and invulnerability ==
Hezuraitona are functionally immortal and effectively invulnerable.

Their existence is tied directly to Hauru. As long as she endures, they endure. They cannot be harmed by any means that does not first reach Hauru herself. This makes them categorically different from later vampire generations, who may live extraordinary lifespans but can be injured and killed.

== Mortal society ==
Hezuraitona integrate into mortal society with ease.

Their physical differences from ordinary mortals are minimal. They tend slightly pale, which reads as noble refinement or sheltered upbringing in most cultures. They are drawn to roles that carry wealth, influence, and proximity to the young: nobility, religious patronage, education, and the funding of orphanages and schools.

The orphanage connection is not incidental. The Hezuraitona are sterile. They cannot reproduce through birth. Ritual adoption is the only path available to them for creating offspring, and orphans are its material. What appears charitable or eccentric to the outside world is structurally necessary.

== Ritual adoption ==
Hezuraitona create offspring through ritual adoption.

The ritual involves willing participants, most often orphans. Its product is the [[Haurizan]], a tier of vampire bound to their ritual leader and granted lifespans of tens of thousands of years.

The full operation of this ritual is documented on the [[Haurizan]] page.

== Character use ==
Hezuraitona work well in stories as:

* Religious patrons
* Noble benefactors
* Hidden immortals
* Orphanage sponsors
* Ancient family heads
* Cult leaders
* Ambiguous protectors
* Gentle predators
* Keepers of old secrets

A Hezuraitona should rarely feel like a simple monster. They are ancient, affectionate, manipulative, protective, and dangerous at the same time. Their care is real. Their methods are not.

== See also ==

* [[Hauru]]
* [[Vampires]]
* [[Haurizan]]
* [[The Pilgrimage]]
* [[Sorginak]]
* [[Endevellicos]]

*

Vampires

2026-05-26T17:17:54Z

Duelaadm:

= Vampires =
Vampires in Duela originate from [[Hauru]].

They were created from loneliness, not conquest. Hauru wanted family, companionship, and people who could exist near her without dying. Because of this, vampires in Duela are not only predators. They are families, cults, bloodlines, social networks, religious communities, and living consequences of a curse that was never deserved.

== Origin ==
The first vampires were created by Hauru after she withdrew beneath the mountain.

Not every vampire was created directly by Hauru. The oldest and most important are the [[Hezuraitona]], made by Hauru herself and bound to her existence. Later generations include the [[Haurizan]], created through ritual adoption by the Hezuraitona, and common vampires, who make up the majority of the vampire population.

== Types of vampires ==
=== Hezuraitona ===
The Hezuraitona are the ancient vampires created directly by Hauru. Their lives are tied to hers, making them effectively immortal for as long as she lives. They are few in number.

They integrate into mortal society with ease. Their physical differences from ordinary mortals are slight enough to pass unnoticed, and they are drawn to roles that give them access to the vulnerable and the young: nobles, patrons, founders of orphanages and schools. Their care for children is genuine. It is also, through Sorginak's design, structural.

Full details on the [[Hezuraitona]] page.

=== Haurizan ===
The Haurizan are offspring of the Hezuraitona, created through ritual adoption. They are bound to their ritual leader until that leader's death, which extends their own lifespan to tens of thousands of years.

They can be harmed, unlike the Hezuraitona. They are sterile; reproduction through birth is not available to them or to common vampires. The vampire lineage grows only through ritual.

Full details on the [[Haurizan]] page.

=== Common vampires ===
Common vampires are the most numerous and the most precarious.

They are not part of the close family structures that protect the Hezuraitona and Haurizan. Without that belonging, the hunger is harder to manage. A common vampire who is starved, rejected, or isolated tends toward feral behavior at night, losing control and hunting indiscriminately.

In doing so, they become the very thing Hauru was accused of being at her own creation.

== Hunger ==
Vampiric hunger runs deeper than the need to feed.

It is hunger for life, for warmth, for Essence, for connection, for the sense of belonging that the vampire lineage was built to provide. Different lines experience it differently. For the Hezuraitona it is held in check by the love and structure Hauru built around them. For common vampires it can become the thing that defines them.

The [[The Pilgrimage|Pilgrimage]] exists partly because hunger is tied to connection with Hauru. A vampire who fails to make the yearly pilgrimage will perish within a year unless they give in to their feeding urges entirely. The pilgrimage is not only devotion. It is maintenance.

== Houses and clans ==
Vampire society organizes itself through houses, clans, and family structures. The major ones:

'''Hauru's Family''' are the original Hezuraitona, the first and oldest. Immortal and structurally invulnerable by any means that does not also harm Hauru. Their historical records are religiously preserved by the highest-ranking vampires.

'''Les Cendres''' is one of the oldest clans, focused on magic and lore.

'''Sangue Nostra''' integrates into mortal cultures for blood and Essence, preferring organized crime and maritime piracy as their primary methods of operation.

'''Drakul''' is the House of Tepes: patriarchal, focused on ruling through strength and open domination.

'''Karmilla''' is the House of Mircalla: matriarchal, focused on domination through seduction and long-term schemes.

'''Monstro''' consists of vampires who have been genetically enhanced for strength, speed, and size, at the cost of the vampiric beauty common to most of the lineage.

=== The Severed Clan: Corazón ===
Corazón is a bloodline disconnected from Hauru entirely.

Its origin is a vampire who fell in love with a mortal woman. The vampire council of the time prohibited romantic relationships with mortals, viewing them as a threat to their kind. After years of being hunted by his own, he turned to outside help. Julietta, the [[Gods/Julietta|Goddess of Love]], granted him protection and blessings against his kin.

The clash between her intervention and the vampire lineage's structure had consequences. Third-generation vampires blessed by Julietta could bear offspring and pass vampiric traits to their children, but at the cost of their connection to Hauru being permanently severed. They no longer need to undertake the Pilgrimage. They also gained weaknesses the rest of the lineage does not share: a stronger compulsion to hunt, and severe vulnerability to sunlight.

The original vampire and his wife were eventually hunted down and killed despite the protection. Their descendants formed Corazón, a bloodline centered on the pleasures of life: extravagant gatherings, strong substances, and the company of willing participants. They are predatory, but prefer to trade gratification for what they need rather than take it by force. They are considered relatively less dangerous than other bloodlines, though not safe.

Corazón is the clearest example of what happens when the vampire social structure, built around Hauru's need for family, comes into conflict with individual love. The answer the world gave was: the individual loses, and the descendants carry the cost.

== Society ==
Vampire society operates through obligation, family loyalty, and cult structure.

Integration into mortal society is a skill the higher tiers have refined over centuries. The Hezuraitona and many Haurizan pass as mortals with ease, often occupying positions of wealth and influence. Common vampires are more visible and more vulnerable, frequently occupying criminal or marginal spaces in mortal settlements.

The pilgrimage unifies them across clan lines. Whatever tensions exist between houses, whatever disagreements run through the bloodlines, the yearly return to Hauru's mountain is shared. It is the one structure that touches every vampire regardless of rank or affiliation, which is why [[Sorginak]] built it that way.

== See also ==

* [[Hauru]]
* [[Hezuraitona]]
* [[Haurizan]]
* [[The Pilgrimage]]
* [[Sorginak]]
* [[Gods]]

Hauru

2026-05-26T17:13:05Z

Duelaadm:

= Hauru =
Hauru, called the Accursed, is a [[Gods|Precursor God]] and the origin of the vampire lineage.

She was once an orphan girl during famine and war. Despite hunger and hardship, she remained cheerful. At some point in the ancient past, the people around her accused her of being the cause of evil. Whether there was ever a real reason for this accusation is unknown and likely unknowable. What matters is that enough people believed it, repeated it, and eventually forced the belief onto her.

Hauru came to believe it herself.

Because [[The Essence]] responds to belief regardless of whether that belief is true or fair, the accusation became real.

''Name derived from Basque: "Haur" (child) and "Ur" (living matter).''

== Transformation ==
On the day of her planned execution by fire, the Essence transformed Hauru's body into something undying and cursed.

She burned for hours. She did not die.

Anything that came near her had its life drained away. Pools of blood soaked the ground as she escaped into the wilderness. She had become the very thing she had been accused of being.

== The Mountain ==
Hauru fled beneath a mountain and sealed herself away from the world.

For centuries she cried, wanting only one thing: someone who could speak with her without dying. She was heartbroken not only by her curse but by what had been done to her, the innocent child she had been and could no longer be.

The Essence, unknowing and uncaring, did not act. So Hauru made it her goal to create such a companion herself. This eventually led to the creation of the first vampires, the [[Hezuraitona]].

She remains under the mountain. Her existence is the anchor that holds the entire vampire lineage together. The [[Hezuraitona]] are immortal because their lives are tied to hers. Vampires of all ranks undertake a yearly [[The Pilgrimage|Pilgrimage]] to her mountain, in part out of devotion and in part because failing to do so carries consequences. Hauru herself receives them, celebrates with them, and tells stories with them for weeks at a time.

She has not revealed herself to the world. This should not change in stories without careful consideration of what that revelation would mean for everything built around her continued hiddenness.

== Importance ==
Hauru is not simply a monster, a goddess, or a curse figure.

She is one of Duela's clearest demonstrations of the Essence acting without morality. The Essence did not judge whether the accusation against her was true. It did not weigh the fairness of what was happening to a child. It responded to the strength and persistence of belief, and it made the belief real.

Her story is also one of creation through grief. The vampire lineage does not exist because Hauru was powerful or ambitious. It exists because she was lonely, and because the Essence responds to need as readily as it responds to accusation.

Both of these things are true at once. She was wronged by the same force that gave her what she needed to survive it.

== See also ==

* [[The Essence]]
* [[Vampires]]
* [[Hezuraitona]]
* [[Haurizan]]
* [[The Pilgrimage]]
* [[Sorginak]]
* [[Gods]]

Magic

2026-05-26T17:07:54Z

Duelaadm:

= Magic =
Magic in Duela works through [[The Essence]].

A caster uses image, intention, discipline, ritual, motion, language, or belief to imprint a desired effect onto the Essence. Different cultures understand and describe magic differently, but most magic follows the same underlying principle: possibility is given shape by a mind that holds it clearly enough.

== Core principle ==
Magic requires a clear image.

The clearer the image, the more readily the Essence responds. A confused command, an unstable intention, or broken focus weakens or distorts the result. This is why magical training across most traditions is fundamentally about concentration and clarity of will, regardless of what surface form the tradition takes.

If a being holds no command over the Essence, the Essence will imprint that being's subconscious will instead. Uncontrolled magical output, strange environmental effects near powerful but untrained individuals, and curses produced by strong unconscious belief all follow from this. Magic is always happening. The question is whether it is directed.

== Cost ==
Magic is not free. Imprinting onto the Essence draws on the caster's authority over it, expressed through [[The System]] as levels.

Most people do not understand this mechanically. They experience the cost as fatigue, depletion, a sense of having spent something. A caster who pushes too far in a single effort may find themselves weakened for hours or days. A caster who expends levels deliberately and repeatedly may reduce their long-term authority over the Essence permanently, or until experience rebuilds it.

The cost scales with the scale of the imprint. Small, precise effects cost less than large, sweeping ones. A caster with higher levels has more authority to draw from and can sustain larger or more frequent imprints before reaching their limit.

== Relation to The System ==
Magic is shaped by [[The System]].

A person's level, class, experience, and accumulated authority over the Essence influence what they are capable of doing and how easily they do it. A class that relates to a magical tradition, such as a mage, a priest, or a scholar of arcane arts, alters how its holder interacts with the Essence and makes certain kinds of imprinting more natural.

Most people do not understand any of this mechanically. They explain magical ability through talent, training, blessing, bloodline, discipline, or divine favor. All of those explanations are partly true, because all of them are ways of describing what the System is doing underneath.

== Common magical traditions ==
These are the four broad elemental forms of magic most widely known across Duela. They are not the only possible forms, and they are not universal. Local traditions, schools, and techniques exist everywhere, and writers may create new ones as long as they respect the role of the Essence.

=== Fire magic ===
Fire magic conjures and controls flames at the cost of authority over the Essence.

Most fire magic is activated through incantation. The incantations tend to sound theatrical and somewhat absurd: "The Flaming Inferno of Doom" is a real example. This is not a flaw or a joke. It reflects something true about how this tradition works: fire magic responds to dramatic declaration, to the caster asserting loudly and clearly what they intend. The image is carried in the language.

Not all fire magic requires incantation. More advanced or more personal forms may not. But the theatrical tradition persists because it works.

=== Water magic ===
Water magic takes control of a body of water at the cost of authority over the Essence.

Activation requires attunement: with nature, with oneself, or with the body of water being commanded. Taking control of something requires self-control. The practitioner must, in some sense, go with the flow before they can direct it. Practitioners who fight against their own natures tend to find water magic difficult regardless of their level.

=== Air magic ===
Air magic commands the air at the cost of authority over the Essence.

Activation requires absolute focus on the goal. Even slight distraction causes the magic to fail. This is a more demanding activation condition than the other elemental traditions. Commanding the very air a caster breathes requires resolute will with no deviation. Air magic practitioners are typically known for a particular kind of mental discipline that can read as coldness or distance to outsiders.

=== Earth magic ===
Earth magic works differently from the other elemental traditions.

Rather than commanding or conjuring, earth magic requires the caster to physically perform what they want the earth to do. To throw a mass of earth at a target, the caster actually throws it. The Essence augments the result: a thrown handful of mud from an earth magic practitioner inflicts pain and force that a physically identical throw from a non-practitioner could not. But the physical action comes first.

No incantations are required. Whether earth magic should be classified as magic at all, or as a form of physical enhancement closer to enchanting, is a genuine debate among scholars in Duela.

== Writing use ==
Magic should not feel random or consequence-free.

Even strange or invented magic should have some relationship to belief, image, role, culture, training, or Essence-imprinting. The tradition a character uses, and how they learned it, and what it costs them, are all opportunities for characterization. A magic system that has no texture is a magic system that is doing less work than it could.

Writers are encouraged to invent new magical traditions. The four elemental forms are common and widely known, not exhaustive. A culture that developed magic through dance, through architecture, through grief, through naming, or through collective silence would be consistent with how the Essence works, as long as the tradition involves giving clear shape to an intention and the Essence responds to that shape.

== See also ==

* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Gods]]

Gods

2026-05-26T17:06:12Z

Duelaadm:

= Gods =
Gods in Duela exist through belief, authority, origin, and the imprinting logic of [[The Essence]]. Not all gods are the same kind of being. The differences between them are real and consequential: they affect power, vulnerability, requirements for continued existence, and relationship to [[The System]].

== Types of gods ==

=== Original Gods ===
The oldest gods. They did not ascend and were not worshipped into existence. They emerged directly from the Essence, shaped by the imprint the [[Old God]] left before there were any mortal minds in Duela to believe in anything.

Original Gods are more powerful than later gods and hold higher authority over the Essence. They cannot be killed. They do not require worship to continue existing.

They are few, ancient, and mostly separate from the day-to-day religious life of Duela's mortal races.

=== Precursor Gods ===
Gods who ascended before modern mortalkind came into being. They emerged after the disappearance of the Proto-Hyu and before the current mortal races were established.

Precursor Gods occupy a middle tier: more powerful than New Gods, but not as foundational as Original Gods. [[Hauru]] is the most significant Precursor God in the current era.

=== New Gods ===
Gods who ascended after [[The System]] was in place and mortal civilization existed. New Gods are made through Ascension: a process requiring sufficient authority over the Essence, a high enough level, and a class brought into being by being perceived as divine.

Most New Gods were once mortal. Ascension prolongs their existence and grants them power expressed differently between individuals. Their continued existence depends on worship. A god whose followers fall away weakens and may eventually cease to be.

New Gods can enact miracles using levels as a tool. They are always aware of the System and can use it to partial advantage. They can bestow classes, though doing so carries side effects.

The line between a very powerful mortal and a newly ascended god is sometimes blurry.

=== Conceptual Gods ===
Gods who embody a concept, such as war, knowledge, love, or health, and hold partial authority over it.

Conceptual Gods typically emerge from collective need rather than individual Ascension. When enough people direct belief toward a concept and want something to govern it, the Essence may produce a god to fill that role.

Conceptual godhood is contested and fragmented. There is no single God of War or Goddess of Knowledge for all of Duela. There are many regional and cultural figures who hold pieces of those domains, sometimes overlapping, sometimes in tension with each other. Writers creating new gods in this category have significant room to work.

=== Local and regional gods ===
Gods whose domain and worshipper base are geographically or culturally limited. A village guardian, a river deity, a god of a single craft tradition.

Local gods are the most common type of god in Duela and the least documented. Most mortal religious life is conducted with local gods rather than the major figures known across the continent. They vary enormously in power, personality, and origin.

This is the category most open to writers. A story set anywhere in Duela can introduce a local god without contradicting anything established.

== Properties of godhood ==
Across types, certain properties are shared by gods in general:

* Godhood prolongs existence and grants power, expressed differently between individuals.
* Gods are aware of [[The System]] to at least some degree, unlike most mortals.
* Gods can enact miracles using levels.
* Gods can bestow classes, though this influences the world itself and carries side effects.
* New Gods and Conceptual Gods require worship to sustain their existence. Original Gods do not.

== Major divine figures ==
These are the gods and divine figures with dedicated wiki pages. Individual pages contain full descriptions.

* [[Old God]] ("Jerry") - the being who installed the System and left the imprint that shaped creation. Not a god in the usual sense; categorized separately.
* [[Hauru]] - Precursor God, the Accursed. Origin of the vampire lineage. Lives under her mountain.
* [[Stranger|The Stranger]] - eyeless wanderer of unknown origin. Grants gifts to individual mortals for reasons of his own. His mechanism of power is unresolved.
* [[Gods/Julietta|Julietta]] - Goddess of Love. Granted all Proto-Hyu descendants the ability to procreate regardless of difference.
* [[Gods/Grimkr|Grimkr / Grimekar]] - Chief God of the Orckin. Symbolizes strength, battle, and survival.
* [[Gods/Aerendir|Aerendir]] - Creator God of Elvenkind. Kind-hearted trickster who made elves out of love.
* [[Gods/Lyon|Lyon]] - patron god of the Lion-folk.
* [[Gods/Ryuuga|Ryuuga]] - Dragon of Eternity, main deity of Ezuna.

== Notes for writers ==
Writers may create new gods freely, particularly local gods, Conceptual Gods, and recently ascended New Gods.

A few things worth keeping in mind:

Conceptual godhood is culturally fragmented. If a story introduces a God of Justice, that god holds partial authority over justice in a region or culture. There is no contradiction with another story's regional God of Justice. Both can exist. Neither is the God of Justice for all of Duela.

Local gods do not need to be consistent across stories. A village's guardian spirit described one way in one story and differently in another is not a contradiction. Local religious life in Duela is diverse, undocumented, and variable.

Major established gods should not be casually rewritten. Hauru, Grimkr, Aerendir, Julietta, and the other named figures on this page have material other writers depend on. A story may use them, but should treat them as described on their wiki pages.

A god created in a story belongs to that story's canon by default. If other writers build on it, it may over time become part of Living canon. See [[Canon Structure]].

[[Category:Gods]]
[[Category:Core Concepts]]

Bubble Theory

2026-05-26T16:56:11Z

Duelaadm:

= Bubble Theory =
Bubble Theory is the idea that Duela exists inside one Bubble among many.

A Bubble is a contained reality: a complete world-structure with its own history, beings, and internal laws. Bubble Theory is not speculation within Duela. It is the actual structure of the cosmology.

== Basic idea ==
Bubbles normally cannot influence, observe, or interact with one another. Each is separate from the others under ordinary conditions. A being inside a Bubble has no natural means of perceiving what lies outside it.

The [[Old God]] is believed to have come from another Bubble. His entry into Duela's Bubble, and the imprint he left on [[The Essence]], is the only confirmed instance of cross-Bubble contact in the world's history.

== The Essence and Bubbles ==
The Essence exists inside and outside Bubbles. It is not a force internal to Duela. It is part of the deeper structure that allows worlds to exist at all.

New Bubbles may be created through the Essence. The mechanism for this is not understood by anyone currently in Duela.

== Transcendent godhood ==
It may be possible to overcome the separation between Bubbles by attaining a particular form of godhood, distinct from ordinary New God or Ascended God status.

The prevailing theory is that a being must dominate within their Bubble so thoroughly that the Essence itself recognizes them as operating at a scale beyond it. This likely follows from the relationship between perception and authority: the Essence responds to what enough minds recognize as real and powerful, and a being perceived as absolutely dominant within a Bubble may cross a threshold where the Essence perceives them as something larger.

How this has ever been achieved, or whether it has been achieved from inside Duela, is not recorded.

== Writing use ==
Bubble Theory should usually remain in the background.

Most mortals do not know about it. It is useful for cosmic stories, unexplained artifacts, strange outsiders, and questions about what lies beyond Duela's cosmology. It is the load-bearing reason the Old God exists and why his origins remain unknowable from inside the Bubble he entered.

Stories that bring Bubble Theory to the foreground are operating at the largest possible scale of the setting. This is not discouraged, but it is the scale at which the fewest constraints exist and the most can go wrong. Handle with care.

== See also ==

* [[The Essence]]
* [[Old God]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Gods]]

Old God

2026-05-26T16:52:34Z

Duelaadm:

= Old God =
The Old God, sometimes called Jerry, is the being who entered Duela's Bubble and installed [[The System]].

He is believed to have come from another Bubble entirely. His true nature, his purpose in installing the System, and his current state are unknown. He is one of the highest mysteries in Duela's cosmology, and intentionally so.

For all practical purposes, the Old God is omnipotent.

== Role in creation ==
The Old God entered the Bubble and created [[The System]].

Afterward, he left behind an imprint upon [[The Essence]]. That imprint shaped the emergence of the Original Gods and much of the world's foundational structure. The Original Gods were not made by the Old God directly; they emerged from the Essence after he had already left his mark on it.

He then left. Whether he departed, withdrew, or simply stopped being present in any way Duela can detect is not known.

== Mystery ==
The Old God is not meant to have a simple explanation. His purpose is unknown. Whether he still watches Duela is unknown. Whether he can return is unknown. Whether he is aware that anything has happened since he left is unknown.

This uncertainty is intentional. The cosmology does not have a clean answer at its top, and it is not supposed to. Stories that try to explain the Old God fully are working against the grain of what he is for.

== On the name Jerry ==
The informal name Jerry appears in old records and has persisted without explanation.

It is not a title. It is not a translation of something grander. It is, as far as anyone can tell, simply what some people called him, at some point, for reasons nobody recorded. The tonal incongruity is real and unresolved. An omnipotent being from outside the Bubble, responsible for the hidden structure that governs all life in Duela, is sometimes referred to by a name that carries no weight at all.

Whether this reflects something true about him, whether it is a corruption of something older, or whether it is a clerical accident that became permanent, is not settled.

== Meta-cosmological interpretation ==
The Old God can be understood as a being whose imagination, expectations, and archetypes imprinted themselves into the Essence when he entered the Bubble.

This helps explain why some parts of Duela resemble recognizable fantasy shapes: elves, classes, gods, monsters, heroic archetypes. These are not design conveniences. They are fossils of the Old God's imagination, carried in from another Bubble and settled into reality by the Essence before there were mortal minds to shape anything else.

The Old God is not above the Essence. He is immersed in it and shaped by it, like all consciousness. His imprint was powerful enough to found the world's structure, but the Essence is not his tool. He is subject to it as everything else is.

== Writing use ==
The Old God is the cosmology's permission slip for the unaccountable, but only at the largest scale.

He is useful for foundational mysteries: strange relics from before mortalkind, rules of magic that seem arbitrary, entire phenomena nobody can trace, structures that predate ordinary history. When a story needs something that cannot be explained by belief or pattern, and that operates at a world-scale rather than a personal one, the Old God is the figure it can attribute it to.

He should not be used for a single character's blessing or a local strange event. Those belong to [[The Essence]] or the [[Stranger]]. The three are distinguished by scale, and the Old God occupies only the largest.

Use him sparingly. He works because he is rare and because his presence is always felt at a remove. A story where the Old God acts directly, visibly, and with clear intent is a story that has used up most of what makes him interesting.

== See also ==

* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Bubble Theory]]
* [[Gods]]
* [[Stranger]]

*

The System

2026-05-26T16:50:08Z

Duelaadm:

= The System =
The System is the structure beneath Duela that makes [[The Essence]] usable.

The Essence is the substrate of the world. It is energy, potential, life, and narrative pressure, and it is too vast for a mortal mind to grapple with directly. The System is the interface the Old God built to allow mortal minds to engage with it at all. It discretizes the Essence into countable things, such as levels, stats, classes, and authority, so that a person can act on the world rather than dissolve into the contemplation of it.

The System is real. Its effects are felt by everyone in Duela. The structure itself, however, is hidden from almost all of them.

== Why the System exists ==
The Essence does not naturally come in countable units. Levels, stats, classes, and the like are not features of the Essence. They are features of the System.

The Old God installed the System for reasons that are not recorded. The most common interpretation among the few mortals who know of it is that the System exists because the Essence cannot be perceived directly without overwhelming the mind that tries. The System gives the Essence a shape mortals can hold: a number where there would be unbounded potential, a class where there would be unbounded possibility, a stat where there would be raw life.

This means the System is not the Essence. It is a layer on top of the Essence. Take the System away, and the Essence is still there; mortals simply could not act on it willingly.

== Levels ==
A level represents authority over The Essence.

Mana is equal to level. Higher levels grant more capacity to influence reality through action, skill, magic, or force. The average human, one who does not specifically pursue killing or furthering their perceived authority, sits at around level 30. The cap is 65,535.

Levels grow through experience, effort, achievement, bettering the lives of surrounding creatures, and killing. Different activities feed level growth at different rates, and the calculus is not transparent to the people doing the growing.

=== Expending levels ===
Levels are not only accumulated. They can also be spent.

A person may temporarily exceed their normal limits, perform an act that should otherwise be impossible, or push through a moment that would otherwise break them, at the cost of permanently reducing their level. The expended authority is gone. It does not return through normal growth, although fresh experience can rebuild it.

This is rare in practice. Most people never knowingly spend their level, because most people do not know levels exist. But the mechanic is available, and gods who know of the System use it deliberately. Some mortals stumble onto it by accident, often in extreme moments.

== Stats ==
Stats describe the basic capacities of body and mind. The four main stats are:

* '''Strength''', physical power.
* '''Vitality''', endurance, also health.
* '''Agility''', speed and reflex.
* '''Intelligence''', mental capacity and command.

Stats grow through leveling, individual growth curves, and class influence. They cap at 32,767 naturally, but can be exceeded with buffs, items, and other effects.

Stats are not visible to ordinary people. A person with high Vitality experiences themselves as someone who does not tire easily. They do not see a number.

== Classes ==
A class is shaped by perceived role.

A person recognized as a warrior, recognized as a king, recognized as a chef, recognized as a guardian, may gain a class reflecting that role. The recognition matters. A king becomes a king partly because people treat them as one. A chef becomes a chef partly because they put on the apron and the kitchen treats them as one.

This is not limited to humanlike races. A beast venerated as sacred, given offerings, and behaving like a guardian, may gain that class.

Classes alter how their holder interacts with the Essence. They also alter growth, accommodating how the holder is perceived by their peers. A class is, in essence, quantum entanglement applied to anything considered alive.

This is the System's clearest connection to the Essence. A class is a System-shaped feature, countable and definable, but the mechanism that produces it (recognition, perception, belief) is purely Essence-driven. The two layers are tightly coupled here.

== Secrecy ==
The System is hidden from almost everyone.

The overwhelming majority of people in Duela feel its effects. They notice that effort builds strength, that some people seem touched by fate, that certain roles seem to carry weight beyond their formal authority. They do not see numbers above heads. They do not see classes named. They experience the world as a place where some things work the way they work, and accept it.

Gods know, by virtue of what they are. A few mortals know, usually because something extraordinary happened to them. Discovery of the System by ordinary people would change civilization completely, which is part of why most stories take place in a world where it remains hidden.

== What is not yet settled ==
The System is the least specified part of Duela's cosmology. Several aspects are deliberately not nailed down, and stories may shape how they are understood.

A writer is not required to mention the System at all. Many will not. A character's level, in a story that does not mention it, simply does not appear; the character has a level, the System still operates, but the story is told from a perspective that does not name any of it. This is fully legitimate Duela. The System being hidden from almost everyone applies to writers' characters too. Most of them should not know.

Specific things the wiki has not settled:

* How class growth interacts with class change. What happens when a king is deposed, a warrior retires, a chef opens a tavern instead.
* How levels are felt subjectively. Whether a level-30 person feels distinct from a level-25 person in any way they can name.
* Whether the System has its own internal awareness or is mechanical. Whether it can be queried, influenced, or addressed.
* The full mechanics of expended levels. How long the recovery takes, whether some uses cost more than others, whether certain acts cost a fixed amount.
* What the System does to beings who are not mortal. Hauru, the Hezuraitona, the Stranger, the Original Gods. Each has a different relationship with the System and the wiki does not yet describe any of them in full.

Stories that touch these aspects may shape how they are understood across the wiki. The [[Committee]] may eventually recognize specific interpretations as Living canon, or may leave them open indefinitely.

== Relationship to The Essence ==
The System and the Essence are not the same thing, and they do not work the same way.

The Essence is bottom-up. Reality emerges from the belief of intelligent beings. Imprints settle into the world through agreement, perception, fear, worship, and use.

The System is top-down. It was installed before there were sapient minds in Duela to imprint anything. It is structural rather than emergent.

The cosmology does not fully explain how these two layers fit together. The Old God is the figure who set up the System and then left an imprint on the Essence that became the Original Gods, but the order of operations and the reasoning behind them are not recorded. The most that is said with confidence is that the System exists to make the Essence usable, and that without the System, the Essence would still be there but mortals could not act on it.

== Importance ==
The System is one of the load-bearing foundations of Duela.

It should not be casually contradicted by stories. A story that says levels do not exist, or that classes work entirely differently, or that the System is something other than what it is, is writing in a different world.

A story that simply does not mention the System is something else, and is welcome.

[[Category:Core Concepts]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:System]]

The System

2026-05-26T16:44:51Z

Duelaadm: I hate

= The System =
The System is the structure beneath Duela that makes [[The Essence]] usable.

The Essence is the substrate of the world. It is energy, potential, life, and narrative pressure, and it is too vast for a mortal mind to grapple with directly. The System is the interface the Old God built to allow mortal minds to engage with it at all. It discretizes the Essence into countable things, such as levels, stats, classes, and authority, so that a person can act on the world rather than dissolve into the contemplation of it.

The System is real. Its effects are felt by everyone in Duela. The structure itself, however, is hidden from almost all of them.

== Why the System exists ==
The Essence does not naturally come in countable units. Levels, stats, classes, and the like are not features of the Essence. They are features of the System.

The Old God installed the System for reasons that are not recorded. The most common interpretation among the few mortals who know of it is that the System exists because the Essence cannot be perceived directly without overwhelming the mind that tries. The System gives the Essence a shape mortals can hold: a number where there would be unbounded potential, a class where there would be unbounded possibility, a stat where there would be raw life.

This means the System is not the Essence. It is a layer on top of the Essence. Take the System away, and the Essence is still there; mortals simply could not act on it.

== Levels ==
A level represents authority over The Essence.

Mana is equal to level. Higher levels grant more capacity to influence reality through action, skill, magic, or force. The average human, one who does not specifically pursue killing, sits at around level 30. The cap is 65,535.

Levels grow through experience, effort, achievement, bettering the lives of surrounding creatures, and killing. Different activities feed level growth at different rates, and the calculus is not transparent to the people doing the growing.

=== Expending levels ===
Levels are not only accumulated. They can also be spent.

A person may temporarily exceed their normal limits, perform an act that should otherwise be impossible, or push through a moment that would otherwise break them, at the cost of permanently reducing their level. The expended authority is gone. It does not return through normal growth, although fresh experience can rebuild it.

This is rare in practice. Most people never knowingly spend their level, because most people do not know levels exist. But the mechanic is available, and gods who know of the System use it deliberately. Some mortals stumble onto it by accident, often in extreme moments.

== Stats ==
Stats describe the basic capacities of body and mind. The four main stats are:

* '''Strength''', physical power.
* '''Vitality''', endurance, also health.
* '''Agility''', speed and reflex.
* '''Intelligence''', mental capacity and command.

Stats grow through leveling, individual growth curves, and class influence. They cap at 32,767 naturally, but can be exceeded with buffs, items, and other effects.

Stats are not visible to ordinary people. A person with high Vitality experiences themselves as someone who does not tire easily. They do not see a number.

== Classes ==
A class is shaped by perceived role.

A person recognized as a warrior, recognized as a king, recognized as a chef, recognized as a guardian, may gain a class reflecting that role. The recognition matters. A king becomes a king partly because people treat them as one. A chef becomes a chef partly because they put on the apron and the kitchen treats them as one.

This is not limited to humanlike races. A beast venerated as sacred, given offerings, and behaving like a guardian, may gain that class.

Classes alter how their holder interacts with the Essence. They also alter growth, accommodating how the holder is perceived by their peers. A class is, in essence, quantum entanglement applied to anything considered alive.

This is the System's clearest connection to the Essence. A class is a System-shaped feature, countable and definable, but the mechanism that produces it (recognition, perception, belief) is purely Essence-driven. The two layers are tightly coupled here.

== Secrecy ==
The System is hidden from almost everyone.

The overwhelming majority of people in Duela feel its effects. They notice that effort builds strength, that some people seem touched by fate, that certain roles seem to carry weight beyond their formal authority. They do not see numbers above heads. They do not see classes named. They experience the world as a place where some things work the way they work, and accept it.

Gods know, by virtue of what they are. A few mortals know, usually because something extraordinary happened to them. Discovery of the System by ordinary people would change civilization completely, which is part of why most stories take place in a world where it remains hidden.

== What is not yet settled ==
The System is the least specified part of Duela's cosmology. Several aspects are deliberately not nailed down, and stories may shape how they are understood.

A writer is not required to mention the System at all. Many will not. A character's level, in a story that does not mention it, simply does not appear; the character has a level, the System still operates, but the story is told from a perspective that does not name any of it. This is fully legitimate Duela. The System being hidden from almost everyone applies to writers' characters too. Most of them should not know.

Specific things the wiki has not settled:

* How class growth interacts with class change. What happens when a king is deposed, a warrior retires, a chef opens a tavern instead.
* How levels are felt subjectively. Whether a level-30 person feels distinct from a level-25 person in any way they can name.
* Whether the System has its own internal awareness or is mechanical. Whether it can be queried, influenced, or addressed.
* The full mechanics of expended levels. How long the recovery takes, whether some uses cost more than others, whether certain acts cost a fixed amount.
* What the System does to beings who are not mortal. Hauru, the Hezuraitona, the Stranger, the Original Gods. Each has a different relationship with the System and the wiki does not yet describe any of them in full.

Stories that touch these aspects may shape how they are understood across the wiki. The [[Committee]] may eventually recognize specific interpretations as Living canon, or may leave them open indefinitely.

== Relationship to The Essence ==
The System and the Essence are not the same thing, and they do not work the same way.

The Essence is bottom-up. Reality emerges from the belief of intelligent beings. Imprints settle into the world through agreement, perception, fear, worship, and use.

The System is top-down. It was installed before there were sapient minds in Duela to imprint anything. It is structural rather than emergent.

The cosmology does not fully explain how these two layers fit together. The Old God is the figure who set up the System and then left an imprint on the Essence that became the Original Gods, but the order of operations and the reasoning behind them are not recorded. The most that is said with confidence is that the System exists to make the Essence usable, and that without the System, the Essence would still be there but mortals could not act on it.

== Importance ==
The System is one of the load-bearing foundations of Duela.

It should not be casually contradicted by stories. A story that says levels do not exist, or that classes work entirely differently, or that the System is something other than what it is, is writing in a different world.

A story that simply does not mention the System is something else, and is welcome.

[[Category:Core Concepts]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:System]]

Writing in Duela

2026-05-26T16:38:15Z

Duelaadm: fuck.

= Writing in Duela =
This page is for writers. It explains what Duela's rules are, what is fixed, what is open, and how to work inside the shared world without breaking anything other writers depend on.

For an introduction to the world itself, see [[What is Duela?]]. For how stories are organized and recognized, see [[Canon Structure]].

== The three rules that matter most ==
If you remember nothing else from this page, remember these.

=== Belief shapes the world ===
[[The Essence]] responds to belief. When enough intelligent beings hold a clear idea of something, the Essence imprints that idea into reality. This is not a metaphor. It is the mechanism.

A widely believed rumor of a dungeon becomes a dungeon. A title that everyone treats as powerful empowers its holder. A person accused by enough voices of being something they are not will, given time, become it. The Essence does not check whether a belief is true before responding to it. It only responds.

Almost everything strange about Duela descends from this rule. If something seems impossible, ask whether enough belief could make it real. If something seems arbitrary, ask whose belief shaped it.

=== The System exists, and almost nobody knows ===
Beneath the surface of the world runs [[The System]]: levels, stats, classes, all the quantified machinery of a game. It was installed long ago and operates on everyone. A higher level is meaningfully more capable than a lower one. A class genuinely alters how its holder interacts with the Essence.

The System is real, but it is not visible. The overwhelming majority of people in Duela have no idea it exists. They feel themselves becoming stronger through experience, they notice that certain people seem touched by fate, but they do not see numbers above heads or experience bars filling. The System runs underneath the world like plumbing nobody thinks about.

Gods know, by virtue of what they are. A few mortals know, usually because something extraordinary happened to them. The discovery of the System by ordinary people would change civilization completely, which is part of why most stories take place in a world where it remains hidden.

When you write, you can decide whether your characters know. Most should not. The ones who do should treat the knowledge as dangerous.

=== There are no neat answers at the top ===
Duela has gods, many of them, and above them all is the [[Old God]]. He established the System and then left. His purposes are unknown. His nature is unknown. Whether he is still aware of Duela is unknown.

This is not a gap waiting to be filled. It is structural. The cosmology does not have a clean explanation at its top, and it is not supposed to.

== What is fixed ==
These are the parts of the world that should not change between stories. They are the spine of the world. If a story contradicts them, it does not feel like Duela. It feels like a different world wearing Duela's name.

=== The cosmology ===
The Essence-and-belief mechanism. The existence of [[The System]]. The Old God as the unknowable origin point. The three-tier structure of gods (Original, Precursor, New / Ascended), although the boundaries between them are sometimes blurry. [[Bubble Theory]] as the framing for what Duela is and what lies beyond it. The [[Stranger]] as a source of personal unexplainable events. These are load-bearing.

=== Major existing nations and figures ===
[[Dorado]] exists, is isolationist, is ruled by King Midas IV, and is built on ferromancy and gold. [[Ezuna]] exists, is a shogunate currently ruled by the young Emperor Sumeragi, with Shogun Masayoshi as a major and not entirely trustworthy figure. The [[Holy Order]] under Queen Pietra VIII operates across kingdoms in secret, with Dr. Richten Van Helsing as its leading hunter. [[Hauru]] lives under her mountain, and her family of ancient vampires endures because she does.

You do not have to use any of these. But if you do, treat them as they are described on the wiki. Do not kill King Midas in a throwaway line. Do not have Hauru reveal herself to the world. These figures are load-bearing for other writers' stories too.

=== The general state of the world ===
Roughly fourteenth-century technology, with magic doing the work that industry does elsewhere. Monarchies dominant, with a few republics and trade unions making the royals nervous. One kingdom on the edge of a magical-industrial revolution. Tension everywhere, but full-scale continental war held back by the Essence's response to people's widespread desire to avoid it.

This is the texture of the present moment in Duela. Stories can range across it freely, but the moment itself is shared.

== What is open ==
Most of Duela is open. The wiki describes a handful of nations in detail and gestures at the existence of many more. It names some races, hints at others, and leaves whole categories of the world undeveloped. This is deliberate.

=== What you can invent freely ===

* New nations, cities, regions, settlements. The world has plenty of geography that has never been mapped.
* New cultures within existing races. Elves are not monolithic. Orckin vary. Catfolk live in many places. There is room.
* New gods, especially Conceptual Gods or recently Ascended ones. Conceptual godhood is contested and culturally fragmented. There is no single God of War or Goddess of Knowledge, only many regional figures who hold pieces of those domains.
* New monsters, dangers, and creatures. The [[Piersh]] is one example of an Essence-touched animal. There can be many more.
* New characters at any level of power, from village healer to near-divine artifact wielder. The world is large enough to contain them.
* New magical traditions, schools, techniques, and lineages within the existing elemental framework, or outside it if a story calls for something stranger.
* Histories, legends, folk beliefs, and rumors that may or may not be true. The Essence rewards belief, so even invented histories can develop a kind of reality over time.

=== Things flagged as pending ===
Several entries on the wiki are explicitly undeveloped. Avianfolk, the Clock Elves, the full Ezunian Pantheon, the Mao deity, [[Lindel]], the Karakuri, and others. These are not oversights. They are invitations. A story that develops one of these areas is welcome to. The development belongs to that story; other writers may take the same area in different directions, and that is fine. Multiple incompatible accounts of an undeveloped area can coexist.

=== What you can softly contradict ===
Smaller details, such as a minor god's exact temperament, the customs of a single town, or the personality of an unnamed character, can be handled differently by different stories without anyone needing to declare a winner. Duela is large enough that two writers can describe the same place differently and both be telling the truth as their characters experience it.

Larger details should be left alone unless a story has a strong reason. Do not casually rewrite established characters or major nations. Do not retcon the cosmology. If something the wiki establishes is in your way, find a way around it before you find a way through it.

== Handling the unexplainable ==
Sometimes a story needs something the world's normal rules cannot provide. A character with a power that should not exist. A coincidence too perfect to be one. An artifact nobody can account for. A blessing or curse that bends fate.

Duela has built-in places for these. Use them deliberately. The three are distinguished by scale.

=== If the thing is large and impersonal ===
Attribute it to the [[Old God]], openly or implicitly. He set up the System. He left imprints whose consequences are still unfolding. Strange foundational things, such as relics from before mortalkind, rules of magic that seem arbitrary, or entire phenomena nobody can trace, can be his doing. He is the cosmology's permission slip for the unaccountable, but only at the foundational scale. Do not use him for a single character's blessing.

=== If the thing follows from belief or pattern ===
Route it through [[The Essence]]. This is the workhorse of the three. Almost any improbable outcome, such as a character developing a power because they were perceived a certain way, a place becoming dangerous because it was rumored to be, or a person rising to a station because everyone believed they would, can be explained by Essence-imprinting. Use it often, but use it as cause and effect, not as a magic wand. The Essence responds to belief, so show the belief.

=== If the thing happens to one specific person ===
Consider the [[Stranger]]. He appears in dreams. He grants gifts to mortals for reasons of his own. He runs on impulse, chaos, and personal interest in particular individuals. If a character receives a power, a curse, an item, a piece of foreknowledge, or a sudden change in fortune that targets them and nobody else, the Stranger is the figure who could be behind it. He should be rare. He should be unsettling. He should never be predictable.

Together these three give writers almost any narrative move worth wanting. Use them sparingly enough that they stay strange. A world where the Stranger appears every chapter is no longer strange; it is routine, and that is the opposite of what he is for.

== Tone and texture ==
Duela does not have a single fixed tone. It has been written about with seriousness and with humor, with high drama and with deliberate absurdity. A tragic precursor god weeping for centuries under a mountain and a Shogun who insists on being called the Great Unkillable Demon King are both canon. Both are right.

Some general orientation:

* Duela is a fantasy world that takes its own logic seriously. Even silly elements should obey the cosmology.
* It is not grim by default, but it has room for darkness. The vampire cults, the manipulated history of the Holy Order, the divine wounds carried by some of the Original Gods. These are real and weighty when invoked.
* It rewards specificity. A small detail about how a Catfolk reacts to being compared to a housecat, or how an Orckin pack greets a returning warrior, does more work than a paragraph of generalization.
* It is willing to be funny. Names, traditions, divine personalities, regional customs. There is humor woven through the world, and stories should feel free to find more of it.

If a story is consistent with the cosmology and respects the load-bearing pieces, the tone is the writer's to set.

== Scale of stories ==
Stories in Duela do not need to involve gods, kings, ancient artifacts, or world-ending threats. The world contains beings of enormous power, but most of it is inhabited by people whose stakes are personal, local, and ordinary by Duela's standards.

A village healer dealing with a single Piersh attack is a Duela story. So is a noblewoman navigating a court conspiracy. So is a young apprentice mage learning their first incantation. So is an orphan, a failed knight, a sailor, a criminal, or a wandering monster. The fact that god-tier artifacts exist somewhere on the continent does not mean any given story has to involve them.

A good Duela story should feel like a window into a larger world.

=== High-power stories ===
If a story does operate at the high-power end, the existing high-tier figures are themselves in a kind of equilibrium. The reason the continent has not erupted into war is partly the Essence's response to widespread desire for peace, and partly the fact that the major players know what they would be unleashing. Introducing a new figure at the same tier should respect that equilibrium, or have a clear reason to disturb it.

== Multiple writers, multiple truths ==
Two writers can tell stories set in the same town, featuring the same minor character, and arrive at different versions of who that character is. This is not a contradiction. It is how shared worlds work. Each story is true to itself; the larger world is large enough to contain both. Do not feel obligated to harmonize. Do not feel obligated to fork.

The exception is anything fixed (see above). Those should be respected by everyone. Otherwise, write your version, let others write theirs.

== Big swings ==
Duela can absorb big swings. A story about the death of a major god. A story about the unmasking of the System. A story about Hauru leaving her mountain. These are possible to write. The world is robust enough to accommodate them.

The convention is that such stories are read as one possible version of what happens; your story's truth, not necessarily the world's truth. Other writers can continue setting stories in a Duela where Hauru is still under her mountain. The world holds many timelines softly.

If a writer wants a big swing to feel definitive, write it that way and trust readers to recognize the weight. If a writer wants it to be more provisional, leave room. Either is a valid choice.

== Branching ==
A story may branch from another story. A branch credits the story it grows from and does not pretend to replace the original. Branches may continue, reinterpret, contradict, or diverge from their source, and branches may themselves be branched from, indefinitely.

For how branches relate to Living canon and the general collection, see [[Canon Structure]].

== Filling gaps ==
When a writer develops an undeveloped area of the world (writes the first detailed story set in Lindel, fleshes out the Avianfolk, gives the Mao deity a personality), that version is canon for that story but does not become the canon for everyone. Another writer can develop the same area differently. Both can stand.

Over time, certain interpretations may catch on and become widely shared, but this should happen organically, by other writers choosing to use what was built. Not by anyone declaring it official.

== A final note ==
Duela was built to be lived in by stories. The wiki describes the world, but it is not the world. The world is the sum of everything written in it, including what writers write next. The wiki is a starting place, not a ceiling.

Take what you need. Leave the rest open. Treat the load-bearing pieces with respect. Treat everything else as yours.

[[Category:Writing]]
[[Category:Project Structure]]
[[Category:Core Concepts]]

The Essence

2026-05-26T16:34:09Z

Duelaadm:

= The Essence =
The Essence is the primordial force of Duela.

It is energy, potential, life, and narrative pressure. It is omnipresent - inside the System and outside it, inside the world and beyond.

The Essence responds to belief and perception. It does not care whether a belief is morally fair or factually true. If enough intelligent beings imprint an idea strongly enough, The Essence may settle that idea into reality.

== Core principle ==
Belief shapes reality.

This is not symbolic. In Duela, collective belief, rumor, fear, worship, titles, and social roles can all imprint onto The Essence. The world holds the shape of what enough people have agreed on.

== How imprinting works ==
The Essence imprints from sapient and sentient beings. A clear image, held with conviction by enough minds, may be settled into reality.

If a being holds no command over The Essence, The Essence will imprint that being's subconscious will onto itself. Belief is not always deliberate. The Essence does not distinguish between intention and emanation.

== Examples ==

* A widely believed rumor of a dungeon may eventually settle into a real dungeon.
* A king may gain real authority because people build their lives around the belief that the title has power.
* A person accused of being cursed may become cursed.
* A god may form because enough people pray for one.
* A monster may become real because enough people expect it to exist.

== Magic ==
Magic works by forming a clear image and imprinting it onto The Essence.

Different magical traditions use different methods - incantations, attunement, focus, physical performance - but the basic principle is the same: the caster gives shape to possibility. The cost of doing so is paid in authority over The Essence itself, expressed in the [[The System|System's]] terms as levels.

== Limits ==
Belief is not unconstrained. The Essence imprints readily, but what is imprinted does not behave the same way over time.

A fresh imprint is fragile. A belief held only briefly, by few people, or with little weight behind it, can be displaced by stronger imprints or simply fade if nothing carries it forward. The Essence responds to belief, but it does not preserve belief that nothing depends on.

A belief that has been built into other things - into livelihoods, into ritual, into other beliefs that assume it - becomes harder to undo. Each life shaped around an imprint adds weight to it. A god worshipped for a generation cannot be unmade by a generation that stops praying; the lives built around the worship hold the imprint in place. The imprint can still be undone, but the cost rises with everything that has settled on top of it.

Belief without dependents weakens, very slowly, on its own. Belief with dependents stabilizes. What stays in the world is what the world has been built on.

== Relationship to other cosmological forces ==
The Essence is one of three forces in Duela that can produce outcomes the ordinary rules of the world cannot explain. The three are distinguished by scale.

* The [[Old God]] is responsible for foundational, impersonal mysteries - relics from before mortalkind, rules of magic that seem arbitrary, the existence of [[The System]] itself. He is the cosmology's permission slip for the unaccountable at its largest scale.
* '''The Essence''' is the mechanism for anything that follows from belief or pattern. This is the workhorse. Most strange outcomes in Duela route through here.
* The '''[[Stranger]]''' acts on individuals. He appears in dreams, grants gifts, and disturbs lives for reasons of his own. When a single person receives an unaccountable change in fortune, the Stranger is the figure who could be behind it.

== Importance ==
The Essence is one of the load-bearing foundations of Duela.

Many other parts of the setting descend from it: the gods (whose existence depends on belief and worship), magic (which works by imprinting), classes (which form around perceived roles), curses, rumors, and the origin of [[Hauru]] - who became what she was accused of being.

[[Category:Core Concepts]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:Magic]]

Canon Structure

2026-05-26T16:30:41Z

Duelaadm:

= Canon Structure =
Duela has no single official storyline.

What it has instead is a structure: a permanent cosmological foundation, a recommended continuity, a default home for stories, and the lineages that grow between them. Nothing in this structure forces a writer onto a single path. It exists to let the world hold together without flattening it.

== The cosmology ==
The cosmology is the permanent foundation of the setting. It cannot be rewritten by stories.

It includes:

* The existence of Duela
* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* The Old God
* The three-tier structure of gods (Original, Precursor, New / Ascended)
* [[Bubble Theory]]
* The [[Stranger]] as a source of personal unexplainable events

The cosmology is what makes a story recognizably a Duela story. A story that contradicts the cosmology is writing in a different world.

Certain named figures and nations are also load-bearing across the shared world - Hauru, King Midas IV, Emperor Sumeragi, the Holy Order, and others established in writing. These are not cosmology, but they are treated similarly: do not casually rewrite them, because other stories depend on them being as they are.

== General Collection ==
The general collection is where stories live.

Every story written in Duela belongs here. This is not a holding area or a rejection category - it is the default home, and the largest body of work in the setting will always be here.

A story in the general collection is fully a Duela story. It is not waiting for promotion.

== Living Canon ==
Living canon is a selection drawn from the general collection: the entries the [[Committee]] recognizes as the current spine of shared continuity.

It is a recommendation, not a restriction. Writers may build on Living canon if they want to share characters and events with the largest pool of other writers. Writers may also ignore it entirely and build on anything else in the general collection. Both are legitimately Duela.

Living canon can be granular. A whole story can become Living. So can a single character, a single scene, or a relationship between two characters - any unit other writers have meaningfully built on.

=== How entries enter and leave ===
Living canon is maintained by the [[Committee]], a five-member body of contributors whose work has shaped what others build on.

* '''Promotion''' to Living requires three votes of five.
* '''Pruning''' from Living requires all five votes. Pruning returns the entry to the general collection. It does not delete the story.

When uncertain, the Committee leans toward keeping entries in canon. The unanimous threshold for pruning is intentional.

An entry that other stories have built on cannot be pruned if pruning would break those branches. Once enough work depends on an entry, the entry stays - regardless of Committee preference. Recognition can be withdrawn; structural use cannot.

This means Living canon is unstable in its early life and stabilizes through use. Entries that get built on settle into permanence. Entries that don't remain available for replacement.

Full procedural rules are on the [[Committee]] page.

== Branches ==
A branch is a story that grows from another story.

Branches credit the story they grow from. They are not required to remain consistent with later branches of the same source, with Living canon, or with each other. A branch may continue, reinterpret, contradict, or diverge from its source. A branch of a branch is also a branch. Branches may extend indefinitely.

Branches outside Living canon are as legitimate as any other story in Duela. A long lineage of branches the Committee never recognized is not lesser work. It is simply a different lineage.

== Principle ==
Canon is not a cage. It is what enough writers have agreed to build on.

The world settles into shape through what gets used.

[[Category:Core Concepts]]
[[Category:Project Structure]]

Committee

2026-05-26T16:29:25Z

Duelaadm: Grammar and wording

= Committee =
The Committee maintains [[Canon Structure|Living canon]]. It does not own the world, and it does not decide what counts as a Duela story. It maintains a recommendation.

A story written without ever consulting the Committee is still Duela. A lineage of branches the Committee never recognized is still Duela. The Committee exists to give writers who want a shared reference point something stable to build on. Nothing more.

== Composition ==
The Committee has five seats:

* One '''founding seat''', held by the project founder.
* Four '''rotating seats''', held by contributors whose work has shaped what other writers build on.

All five seats vote with equal weight. The founder is one Committee member among five, not above them.

== Rotating seats ==
Rotating seats serve six-month terms. There is no limit on consecutive terms - a contributor whose work continues to anchor the setting may hold a seat for as long as the nomination process supports it.

New seats are filled by mixed nomination: the existing Committee nominates a candidate, and the founding seat confirms. Either side can decline a name. A seat may remain open through more than one nomination cycle if no candidate is agreed on; this is not a problem.

"Contributor whose work has shaped what others build on" is not defined by a single metric. It refers to writers whose stories, characters, or settings other writers have meaningfully built on - the same standard that determines whether an entry has settled into Living canon by use. A Committee seat reflects the same principle the canon does: recognition follows what the rest of the project has been building from.

== Inactivity ==
Committee rights lapse after two months without contribution. This is a generous threshold; it is meant to remove members who have actually stepped away from the project, not to penalize a quiet stretch.

A lapsed seat is treated as vacant for voting purposes (see ''Vacancy'' below).

A member whose rights have lapsed may return. The Committee decides case by case whether their seat is restored, whether they re-enter the nomination process as a new candidate, or whether the seat has been filled in their absence. There is no automatic restoration.

== Founding seat ==
The founding seat votes as one of five.

It holds two additional powers, both procedural and neither overriding a vote:

* '''Confirmation on nominations.''' New rotating members are nominated by the Committee and confirmed by the founding seat. This is a check on nomination, not an appointment power - the founding seat cannot nominate, only confirm or decline.
* '''Final call on procedural disputes.''' Disputes about how the Committee operates - quorum, recording, interpretation of these rules - are resolved by the founding seat. This power covers process, not outcomes.

The founding seat also fills gaps in two specific cases described below: vacancy and recusal. These are not extra powers; they are mechanisms to keep the Committee at five votes when seats temporarily can't be filled by their normal holders.

== Votes ==
The Committee votes on two things:

* '''Promotion''' of an entry to Living canon: requires three votes of five.
* '''Pruning''' of an entry from Living canon: requires all five votes. Pruning returns the entry to the general collection. It does not delete the story.

When uncertainty exists, the Committee biases toward keeping entries in canon. The unanimous threshold for pruning is intentional - it should be hard to remove what has already been recognized.

An entry that other stories have built on cannot be pruned if pruning would break those branches. This rule overrides any vote.

=== Vacancy ===
If a rotating seat is vacant - between terms, lapsed, or otherwise unfilled - the founding seat casts an additional vote in its place. The Committee always votes as five.

This is not an expansion of the founding seat's power. It exists so that delayed nominations or sudden departures do not stall or weaken Committee decisions. A founder uncomfortable with this concentration of votes can choose to postpone votes until the seat is filled. There is no obligation to act on an active matter while seats are vacant.

=== Recusal ===
A Committee member cannot vote on the promotion of their own work to Living canon. They are recused for that vote. The founding seat casts the recused member's vote in their place, keeping the Committee at five.

If the work up for promotion is the founding seat's, the founding seat is recused and does not cast a replacement vote. The remaining four members vote, and promotion requires three of four.

=== When a member is unreachable ===
A vote requires all members able to vote present. If a member who is not vacant or recused cannot be reached, the vote is postponed. Committee work is not urgent - nothing in the canon collapses while a vote waits.

=== How votes are recorded ===
Only the outcome of a vote is recorded publicly. Individual votes, deliberations, and dissent stay within the Committee.

This is intentional. The Committee speaks with one voice once a vote is settled. A promoted entry has the Committee's endorsement. A retained entry has the Committee's protection. The reasoning behind either is not part of the record.

== The integrity rule ==
An entry that has been built on by other stories cannot be pruned if pruning would break those branches.

When a prune is proposed, the affected branch authors are consulted. They describe what their work depends on and what would be lost if the entry were removed. The Committee then judges whether the entry is structurally load-bearing.

The standard is not whether a branch could survive in some technical sense. It is whether the branch would lose its meaning. A story whose entire premise rests on a pruned entry is broken even if it still parses; the integrity rule protects against that.

In practice, the integrity rule means Living canon is unstable in its early life and stabilizes through use. Recognition can be withdrawn. Structural use cannot.

== Scope ==
The Committee maintains Living canon. It does not:

* edit, revise, or rewrite stories - including stories in Living canon;
* arbitrate disputes between writers about their own work;
* approve, reject, or rank stories in the general collection;
* alter the cosmology in any way.

A story in the general collection does not pass through the Committee. It is written, and it is Duela the moment it is written. The Committee's authority begins and ends at the question of what carries the Living canon marker.

== Principle ==
The Committee does not decide what is true in Duela. It decides what enough of us have agreed to build on.

Committee

2026-05-26T16:18:26Z

Duelaadm:

Committee

2026-05-26T16:16:58Z

Duelaadm: /* Rotating seats */

Committee

2026-05-26T16:15:34Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= Committee = The Committee maintains Living canon. It does not own the world, and it does not decide what counts as a Duela story. It maintains a recommendation. A story written without ever consulting the Committee is still Duela. A lineage of branches that the Committee never recognized is still Duela. The Committee exists to give writers who want a shared reference point something stable to build on. Nothing more. == Composition == The Committee..."

Canon Structure

2026-05-26T16:06:50Z

Duelaadm: rewrite due to canon being a nono word

= Canon Structure =
Duela has no single official storyline.

What it has instead is a structure: a permanent foundation, a recommended continuity, a default home for stories, and the lineages that grow between them. Nothing in this structure forces a writer onto a single path. It exists to let the world hold together without flattening it.

== Trunk ==
The trunk is the permanent foundation of the setting. It cannot be rewritten by stories.

Trunk includes:

* The existence of Duela
* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* The Old God
* The basic structure of gods
* Bubble Theory

Trunk is what makes a story recognizably a Duela story. A story that contradicts trunk is writing in a different world.

== General Collection ==
The general collection is where stories live.

Every story written in Duela belongs here. This is not a holding area or a rejection category — it is the default home, and the largest body of work in the setting will always be here.

A story in the general collection is fully a Duela story. It is not waiting for promotion.

== Living Canon ==
Living canon is a selection drawn from the general collection: the entries the committee recognizes as the current spine of shared continuity.

It is a recommendation, not a restriction. Writers may build on Living canon if they want to share characters and events with the largest pool of other writers. Writers may also ignore it entirely and build on anything else in the general collection. Both are legitimate Duela.

=== How entries enter and leave ===
Living canon is maintained by a committee of five: one permanent seat and four rotating seats held by heavy contributors.

* '''Promotion''' to Living requires a majority vote (three of five).
* '''Pruning''' from Living requires a unanimous vote (five of five). Pruning returns an entry to the general collection. It does not delete the story.

An entry that other stories have built on cannot be pruned if pruning would break those branches. Once enough work depends on an entry, the entry stays — regardless of committee preference. Recognition can be withdrawn; structural use cannot.

This means Living canon is unstable in its early life and stabilizes through use. Entries that get built on settle into permanence. Entries that don't remain available for replacement.

== Branches ==
A branch is a story that grows from another story.

Branches credit the story they grow from. They are not required to remain consistent with later branches of the same source, with Living canon, or with each other. A branch may continue, reinterpret, contradict, or diverge from its source. A branch of a branch is also a branch. Branches may extend indefinitely.

Branches outside Living canon are as legitimate as any other story in Duela. A long lineage of branches that the committee never recognized is not lesser work. It is simply a different lineage.

== Principle ==
Canon is not a cage. It is what enough writers have agreed to build on.

The world settles into shape through what gets used.

[[Category:Core Concepts]]
[[Category:Project Structure]]

Main Page

2026-05-26T12:49:34Z

Duelaadm:

= Welcome to the Duela Wiki =
'''Duela''' is a shared fantasy world shaped by belief, Essence, hidden systems, gods, nations, monsters, and stories written by many people.

This wiki collects the foundational setting material, writing guides, canon structure, and stories connected to Duela.

== Start here ==

* [[What is Duela?]]
* [[Writing in Duela]]
* [[Canon Structure]]
* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Gods]]
* [[Races]]
* [[Nations]]
* [[Stories]]
* [[Story Status]]
* [[Branching Guide]]
* [[License and Attribution]]
* [[Community Rules]]
* [[Contributor Guide]]

== Cosmology ==

* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Old God]]
* [[Bubble Theory]]
* [[Gods]]

== Vampire foundation ==

* [[Hauru]]
* [[Vampires]]
* [[Hezuraitona]]
* [[Haurizan]]
* [[The Pilgrimage]]
* [[Sorginak]]
* [[Endevellicos]]

== Core principles ==

* Belief shapes reality.
* The System exists, but most people do not know it.
* The Old God is unknowable.
* Most of the world is open for writers to expand.

== Project status ==
This wiki is currently in early setup.

MediaWiki:Sidebar

2026-05-26T12:47:53Z

Duelaadm:

MediaWiki:Sidebar

2026-05-26T12:47:25Z

Duelaadm:

MediaWiki:Sidebar

2026-05-26T12:46:25Z

General Disclaimer

2026-05-26T12:34:13Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= General Disclaimer = The Duela Wiki is a fictional worldbuilding and writing project. The material on this wiki describes the fictional setting of '''Duela''', including its cosmology, gods, nations, races, magic systems, stories, characters, and related creative material. Nothing on this wiki should be understood as factual information about the real world unless clearly stated otherwise. == Fictional content == Duela is a work of fiction. Pages may contain refere..."

= General Disclaimer =
The Duela Wiki is a fictional worldbuilding and writing project.

The material on this wiki describes the fictional setting of '''Duela''', including its cosmology, gods, nations, races, magic systems, stories, characters, and related creative material.

Nothing on this wiki should be understood as factual information about the real world unless clearly stated otherwise.

== Fictional content ==
Duela is a work of fiction.

Pages may contain references to fictional religions, fictional gods, fictional cultures, fictional violence, fictional magic, fictional political systems, fictional species, and fictional historical events.

These elements are part of the setting and do not represent real-world claims, endorsements, or instructions.

== No professional advice ==
Content on this wiki is not legal, medical, financial, psychological, religious, political, technical, or professional advice.

Any similarity between fictional content and real-world issues should not be treated as guidance for real-world decisions.

== Shared-world material ==
Duela is designed as a shared fantasy setting.

Different pages, stories, branches, and interpretations may present different versions of events, characters, or regions.

Not every page represents final canon.

For information about story status, see:

* [[Canon Structure]]
* [[Story Status]]
* [[Branching Guide]]

== Canon status ==
Unless a page clearly states otherwise, wiki material should be treated as reference material for the Duela project.

Stories may be part of the general collection, living canon, branches, or other project categories.

The existence of a page does not automatically mean that every detail on that page is permanent trunk canon.

== Contributor responsibility ==
Contributors are responsible for ensuring that material they add is their own work, properly licensed, or used with permission.

Do not upload or post material that infringes copyright, violates privacy, or breaks the [[Community Rules]].

== External links ==
This wiki may contain links to external websites.

The operator of this wiki is not responsible for the content, availability, privacy practices, or security of external websites.

External links do not imply endorsement.

== Images and files ==
Uploaded images, documents, and other files may have their own copyright, license, and attribution requirements.

Only upload files that you have the right to share under the wiki's license or another clearly stated compatible license.

== License ==
Unless otherwise noted, content on this wiki is available under the '''Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International''' license.

For details, see:

* [[License and Attribution]]

== Contact ==
For questions or concerns, contact:

'''0dani.card0@gmail.com'''

Privacy Policy

2026-05-26T12:33:34Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= Privacy Policy = This Privacy Policy explains how personal data is processed when using the Duela Wiki. The Duela Wiki is currently a private test and development wiki. Public account registration is not currently enabled. == Controller == The controller responsible for this website is: '''Daniel Cardoso da Silva''' Email: '''0dani.card0@gmail.com''' For privacy-related requests, contact the email address above. == Hosting == This wiki is hosted on infrastructure..."

= Privacy Policy =
This Privacy Policy explains how personal data is processed when using the Duela Wiki.

The Duela Wiki is currently a private test and development wiki. Public account registration is not currently enabled.

== Controller ==
The controller responsible for this website is:

'''Daniel Cardoso da Silva''' Email: '''0dani.card0@gmail.com'''

For privacy-related requests, contact the email address above.

== Hosting ==
This wiki is hosted on infrastructure provided by '''IONOS'''.

When visitors access the wiki, technical data may be processed by the hosting provider in order to deliver the website, maintain security, and operate the server.

This may include:

* IP address
* Date and time of access
* Requested page or file
* Browser type and version
* Operating system
* Referrer URL
* HTTP status codes
* Amount of data transferred

This technical processing is necessary to provide the website and protect it against abuse, errors, and attacks.

== Legal basis ==
Where the General Data Protection Regulation applies, processing is based on the following legal bases:

* Article 6(1)(f) GDPR — legitimate interests in operating, securing, maintaining, and developing the wiki
* Article 6(1)(b) GDPR — where processing is necessary for user accounts or requested wiki functions
* Article 6(1)(c) GDPR — where processing is necessary to comply with legal obligations
* Article 6(1)(a) GDPR — where consent is requested for a specific optional function

== Visiting the wiki ==
You may visit the wiki without creating an account.

When you visit the wiki, server logs and technical connection data may be processed automatically. This is necessary for the website to function.

The wiki is currently marked with a noindex setting and is not intended to be indexed by search engines during the test phase.

== User accounts ==
Public account creation is not currently enabled.

If an account is manually created, the following data may be processed:

* Username
* Password hash
* Email address, if configured or provided
* User preferences
* Edit history
* Uploaded files
* User group memberships
* Login and session data
* Notifications and watchlist data, where enabled

Do not use a username that reveals personal information unless you are comfortable with that username being visible in edit histories and page logs.

== Edits and page history ==
MediaWiki stores page histories.

If you edit a page while logged in, your username will usually be shown in the page history, recent changes, logs, and related wiki records.

If anonymous editing is ever enabled in the future, edits may be associated with the editor's IP address.

At the moment, anonymous editing is not enabled.

Because wikis preserve revision histories, removing information from a current page does not automatically remove it from old revisions. If personal data needs to be removed from page history, contact the controller.

== Uploads ==
File uploads are enabled.

Uploaded files may contain visible information and hidden metadata, including file names, author data, device information, timestamps, or location metadata depending on the file.

Only upload files you have the right to upload and that do not contain private information unless you intend to publish that information.

== Cookies and sessions ==
The wiki uses cookies and similar local storage where necessary for technical operation.

These may be used for:

* Login sessions
* Security tokens
* User preferences
* Editing functions
* Interface settings

These cookies are necessary for the wiki to function and are not used for advertising.

You can restrict or delete cookies in your browser settings. Some wiki functions may not work correctly if cookies are disabled.

== Analytics and tracking ==
No external analytics tools are currently configured.

The wiki does not currently use Google Analytics, Matomo, advertising trackers, or similar third-party tracking tools.

If analytics are added later, this Privacy Policy should be updated before they are enabled.

== Email functions ==
Email functions have not currently been configured.

If email functions are enabled later, the wiki may process email addresses for account recovery, notifications, confirmations, or administrative communication.

== Instant Commons and external content ==
If Instant Commons or other external media features are enabled, some files may be loaded from Wikimedia Commons or other Wikimedia infrastructure.

When external content is loaded, technical connection data such as your IP address may be transmitted to the external provider.

== CheckUser and abuse prevention ==
This wiki may use MediaWiki tools and extensions for abuse prevention and security.

If CheckUser is enabled and assigned to authorized administrators, it may allow limited inspection of technical data such as IP addresses and user-agent information for the purpose of investigating abuse, spam, vandalism, sockpuppeting, or security incidents.

Access to such data should be restricted to trusted administrators and used only when necessary.

== Data sharing ==
Personal data is not sold.

Data may be shared only where necessary with:

* The hosting provider
* Technical service providers
* Administrators with appropriate permissions
* Authorities or legal recipients where legally required

== Retention ==
Technical server logs are retained only as long as necessary for operation, security, and troubleshooting, subject to the hosting provider's settings.

Wiki page histories, user logs, and edit records may be retained indefinitely as part of normal MediaWiki operation unless removal is necessary for privacy, legal, or security reasons.

Test data may be deleted during the setup phase.

== Your rights ==
Where the GDPR applies, you may have the following rights:

* Right of access
* Right to rectification
* Right to erasure
* Right to restriction of processing
* Right to data portability
* Right to object
* Right to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent
* Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority

To exercise these rights, contact:

'''0dani.card0@gmail.com'''

== Supervisory authority ==
If you are in Germany, you may contact the competent data protection supervisory authority.

For Rheinland-Pfalz, this is generally:

'''Der Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit Rheinland-Pfalz'''

== Changes to this policy ==
This Privacy Policy may be updated as the Duela Wiki changes.

It should be reviewed before public launch, before enabling public registration, before enabling anonymous editing, before adding analytics, and before inviting outside contributors.

Duela Wiki:About

2026-05-26T12:31:55Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= About Duela Wiki = '''Duela Wiki''' is the reference wiki for '''Duela''', a shared fantasy worldbuilding and storytelling project. Duela is built around a small number of foundational rules, including The Essence, The System, the Old God, and Bubble Theory. These rules provide the trunk of the setting, while writers are free to create stories, branches, regions, gods, cultures, characters, monsters, and histories around them. == Purpose == The purp..."

= About Duela Wiki =

'''Duela Wiki''' is the reference wiki for '''Duela''', a shared fantasy worldbuilding and storytelling project.

Duela is built around a small number of foundational rules, including [[The Essence]], [[The System]], the [[Old God]], and [[Bubble Theory]]. These rules provide the trunk of the setting, while writers are free to create stories, branches, regions, gods, cultures, characters, monsters, and histories around them.

== Purpose ==

The purpose of this wiki is to collect and organize:

* Core setting concepts
* Cosmology
* Magic
* Gods
* Races
* Nations
* Vampire lore
* Story status
* Branches
* Contributor guidance
* Licensing and attribution information

The wiki exists to make Duela easier to write in, expand, and understand.

== Shared-world structure ==

Duela is not designed as a single fixed storyline.

It uses a tree-like structure:

* [[Canon Structure|Trunk canon]] for foundational rules
* Living canon for important recognized stories
* General collection for most stories
* Branches for continuations, reinterpretations, and alternate developments

This allows writers to build from each other's work without forcing every story into one single path.

== Current status ==

The Duela Wiki is currently in early setup and testing.

Public registration is not currently enabled.

The wiki is not currently intended for search-engine indexing during this test phase.

== License ==

Unless otherwise noted, content on this wiki is available under the '''Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International''' license.

This means Duela material may be shared, adapted, and used commercially, provided attribution is given and derivative works are shared under the same license.

For details, see:

* [[License and Attribution]]

== Important pages ==

* [[What is Duela?]]
* [[Writing in Duela]]
* [[Canon Structure]]
* [[Story Status]]
* [[Branching Guide]]
* [[Community Rules]]
* [[License and Attribution]]
* [[Privacy Policy]]
* [[General Disclaimer]]

== Operator ==

This wiki is operated by:

'''Daniel Cardoso da Silva'''
Email: '''0dani.card0@gmail.com'''

[[Category:Project Structure]]
[[Category:Legal]]

Duela Wiki:General disclaimer

2026-05-26T12:30:14Z

= General Disclaimer =

The Duela Wiki is a fictional worldbuilding and writing project.

The material on this wiki describes the fictional setting of '''Duela''', including its cosmology, gods, nations, races, magic systems, stories, characters, and related creative material.

Nothing on this wiki should be understood as factual information about the real world unless clearly stated otherwise.

== Fictional content ==

Duela is a work of fiction.

Pages may contain references to fictional religions, fictional gods, fictional cultures, fictional violence, fictional magic, fictional political systems, fictional species, and fictional historical events.

These elements are part of the setting and do not represent real-world claims, endorsements, or instructions.

== No professional advice ==

Content on this wiki is not legal, medical, financial, psychological, religious, political, technical, or professional advice.

Any similarity between fictional content and real-world issues should not be treated as guidance for real-world decisions.

== Shared-world material ==

Duela is designed as a shared fantasy setting.

Different pages, stories, branches, and interpretations may present different versions of events, characters, or regions.

Not every page represents final canon.

For information about story status, see:

* [[Canon Structure]]
* [[Story Status]]
* [[Branching Guide]]

== Canon status ==

Unless a page clearly states otherwise, wiki material should be treated as reference material for the Duela project.

Stories may be part of the general collection, living canon, branches, or other project categories.

The existence of a page does not automatically mean that every detail on that page is permanent trunk canon.

== Contributor responsibility ==

Contributors are responsible for ensuring that material they add is their own work, properly licensed, or used with permission.

Do not upload or post material that infringes copyright, violates privacy, or breaks the [[Community Rules]].

== External links ==

This wiki may contain links to external websites.

The operator of this wiki is not responsible for the content, availability, privacy practices, or security of external websites.

External links do not imply endorsement.

== Images and files ==

Uploaded images, documents, and other files may have their own copyright, license, and attribution requirements.

Only upload files that you have the right to share under the wiki's license or another clearly stated compatible license.

== License ==

Unless otherwise noted, content on this wiki is available under the '''Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International''' license.

For details, see:

* [[License and Attribution]]

== Contact ==

For questions or concerns, contact:

'''0dani.card0@gmail.com'''

[[Category:Project Structure]]
[[Category:Legal]]

Duela Wiki:Privacy policy

2026-05-26T12:27:32Z

= Privacy Policy =

This Privacy Policy explains how personal data is processed when using the Duela Wiki.

The Duela Wiki is currently a private test and development wiki. Public account registration is not currently enabled.

== Controller ==

The controller responsible for this website is:

'''Daniel Cardoso da Silva'''
Email: '''0dani.card0@gmail.com'''

For privacy-related requests, contact the email address above.

== Hosting ==

This wiki is hosted on infrastructure provided by '''IONOS'''.

When visitors access the wiki, technical data may be processed by the hosting provider in order to deliver the website, maintain security, and operate the server.

This may include:

* IP address
* Date and time of access
* Requested page or file
* Browser type and version
* Operating system
* Referrer URL
* HTTP status codes
* Amount of data transferred

This technical processing is necessary to provide the website and protect it against abuse, errors, and attacks.

== Legal basis ==

Where the General Data Protection Regulation applies, processing is based on the following legal bases:

* Article 6(1)(f) GDPR — legitimate interests in operating, securing, maintaining, and developing the wiki
* Article 6(1)(b) GDPR — where processing is necessary for user accounts or requested wiki functions
* Article 6(1)(c) GDPR — where processing is necessary to comply with legal obligations
* Article 6(1)(a) GDPR — where consent is requested for a specific optional function

== Visiting the wiki ==

You may visit the wiki without creating an account.

When you visit the wiki, server logs and technical connection data may be processed automatically. This is necessary for the website to function.

The wiki is currently marked with a noindex setting and is not intended to be indexed by search engines during the test phase.

== User accounts ==

Public account creation is not currently enabled.

If an account is manually created, the following data may be processed:

* Username
* Password hash
* Email address, if configured or provided
* User preferences
* Edit history
* Uploaded files
* User group memberships
* Login and session data
* Notifications and watchlist data, where enabled

Do not use a username that reveals personal information unless you are comfortable with that username being visible in edit histories and page logs.

== Edits and page history ==

MediaWiki stores page histories.

If you edit a page while logged in, your username will usually be shown in the page history, recent changes, logs, and related wiki records.

If anonymous editing is ever enabled in the future, edits may be associated with the editor's IP address.

At the moment, anonymous editing is not enabled.

Because wikis preserve revision histories, removing information from a current page does not automatically remove it from old revisions. If personal data needs to be removed from page history, contact the controller.

== Uploads ==

File uploads are enabled.

Uploaded files may contain visible information and hidden metadata, including file names, author data, device information, timestamps, or location metadata depending on the file.

Only upload files you have the right to upload and that do not contain private information unless you intend to publish that information.

== Cookies and sessions ==

The wiki uses cookies and similar local storage where necessary for technical operation.

These may be used for:

* Login sessions
* Security tokens
* User preferences
* Editing functions
* Interface settings

These cookies are necessary for the wiki to function and are not used for advertising.

You can restrict or delete cookies in your browser settings. Some wiki functions may not work correctly if cookies are disabled.

== Analytics and tracking ==

No external analytics tools are currently configured.

The wiki does not currently use Google Analytics, Matomo, advertising trackers, or similar third-party tracking tools.

If analytics are added later, this Privacy Policy should be updated before they are enabled.

== Email functions ==

Email functions have not currently been configured.

If email functions are enabled later, the wiki may process email addresses for account recovery, notifications, confirmations, or administrative communication.

== Instant Commons and external content ==

If Instant Commons or other external media features are enabled, some files may be loaded from Wikimedia Commons or other Wikimedia infrastructure.

When external content is loaded, technical connection data such as your IP address may be transmitted to the external provider.

== CheckUser and abuse prevention ==

This wiki may use MediaWiki tools and extensions for abuse prevention and security.

If CheckUser is enabled and assigned to authorized administrators, it may allow limited inspection of technical data such as IP addresses and user-agent information for the purpose of investigating abuse, spam, vandalism, sockpuppeting, or security incidents.

Access to such data should be restricted to trusted administrators and used only when necessary.

== Data sharing ==

Personal data is not sold.

Data may be shared only where necessary with:

* The hosting provider
* Technical service providers
* Administrators with appropriate permissions
* Authorities or legal recipients where legally required

== Retention ==

Technical server logs are retained only as long as necessary for operation, security, and troubleshooting, subject to the hosting provider's settings.

Wiki page histories, user logs, and edit records may be retained indefinitely as part of normal MediaWiki operation unless removal is necessary for privacy, legal, or security reasons.

Test data may be deleted during the setup phase.

== Your rights ==

Where the GDPR applies, you may have the following rights:

* Right of access
* Right to rectification
* Right to erasure
* Right to restriction of processing
* Right to data portability
* Right to object
* Right to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent
* Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority

To exercise these rights, contact:

'''0dani.card0@gmail.com'''

== Supervisory authority ==

If you are in Germany, you may contact the competent data protection supervisory authority.

For Rheinland-Pfalz, this is generally:

'''Der Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit Rheinland-Pfalz'''

== Changes to this policy ==

This Privacy Policy may be updated as the Duela Wiki changes.

It should be reviewed before public launch, before enabling public registration, before enabling anonymous editing, before adding analytics, and before inviting outside contributors.

[[Category:Project Structure]]
[[Category:Legal]]

Main Page

2026-05-26T12:25:12Z

Duelaadm:

Contributor Guide

2026-05-26T12:24:40Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= Contributor Guide = This page explains how to contribute to Duela. Duela is a shared fantasy world. Contributors may write stories, create characters, develop regions, expand cultures, invent monsters, build branches, and improve reference pages. == Start here == New contributors should read: * What is Duela? * Writing in Duela * Canon Structure * Story Status * Branching Guide * License and Attribution * Community Rules == What you can..."

Community Rules

2026-05-26T12:23:53Z

Duelaadm:

= Community Rules =

Duela is a shared fantasy world. These rules exist to keep the project usable for writers, readers, and contributors.

== Core expectations ==

Contributors should:

* Respect the load-bearing parts of the setting
* Credit work they build from
* Label branches clearly
* Avoid claiming ownership over shared canon
* Treat other contributors' work seriously
* Keep disagreements focused on the work, not the person

== Content boundaries ==

Dark stories are allowed.

Horror, tragedy, violence, moral corruption, religious manipulation, predation, war, exploitation, and grief can all exist in Duela.

However, darkness should serve a story.

Content that exists only for shock value may be removed or rejected from canon consideration.

== Hard limits ==

The following are not allowed:

* Sexual content involving minors
* Content that exists purely as sexual exploitation
* Content promoting real-world harm
* Harassment of contributors
* Plagiarism
* Deliberate sabotage of shared pages
* Posting another person's private material without permission

== Canon and branches ==

Not every story needs to become canon.

The default place for stories is the [[Stories|General Collection]].

Branches are allowed and encouraged, but a branch must credit the story it grows from.

A branch does not replace the original story.

== Major canon changes ==

Major changes to the setting should be handled carefully.

Do not casually kill, erase, or radically rewrite major established figures, nations, gods, or cosmological rules unless the story is clearly marked as a branch or alternate continuity.

== Attribution ==

Duela uses [[License and Attribution|CC BY-SA 4.0]] unless otherwise noted.

Contributors must credit the work they build from.

== Related pages ==

* [[Writing in Duela]]
* [[Canon Structure]]
* [[Story Status]]
* [[Branching Guide]]
* [[License and Attribution]]

Community Rules

2026-05-26T12:22:50Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= Community Rules = Duela is a shared fantasy world. These rules exist to keep the project usable for writers, readers, and contributors. == Core expectations == Contributors should: * Respect the load-bearing parts of the setting * Credit work they build from * Label branches clearly * Avoid claiming ownership over shared canon * Treat other contributors' work seriously * Keep disagreements focused on the work, not the person == Content boundaries == Dark stories..."

Main Page

2026-05-26T12:21:46Z

Duelaadm: Added more sections

= Welcome to the Duela Wiki =
'''Duela''' is a shared fantasy world shaped by belief, Essence, hidden systems, gods, nations, monsters, and stories written by many people.

This wiki collects the foundational setting material, writing guides, canon structure, and stories connected to Duela.

== Start here ==

* [[What is Duela?]]
* [[Writing in Duela]]
* [[Canon Structure]]
* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Gods]]
* [[Races]]
* [[Nations]]
* [[Stories]]
* [[Story Status]]
* [[Branching Guide]]
* [[License and Attribution]]

== Cosmology ==

* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Old God]]
* [[Bubble Theory]]
* [[Gods]]

== Vampire foundation ==

* [[Hauru]]
* [[Vampires]]
* [[Hezuraitona]]
* [[Haurizan]]
* [[The Pilgrimage]]
* [[Sorginak]]
* [[Endevellicos]]

== Core principles ==

* Belief shapes reality.
* The System exists, but most people do not know it.
* The Old God is unknowable.
* Most of the world is open for writers to expand.

== Project status ==
This wiki is currently in early setup.
*

Magic

2026-05-26T12:20:45Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= Magic = '''Magic''' in Duela works through The Essence. A caster uses image, intention, discipline, ritual, motion, language, or belief to imprint a desired effect onto The Essence. Different cultures understand magic differently, but most magic follows the same underlying principle: possibility is given shape. == Core principle == Magic requires a clear image. The clearer the image, the easier it is for The Essence to respond. A confused command, unstable int..."

= Magic =
'''Magic''' in Duela works through [[The Essence]].

A caster uses image, intention, discipline, ritual, motion, language, or belief to imprint a desired effect onto The Essence.

Different cultures understand magic differently, but most magic follows the same underlying principle: possibility is given shape.

== Core principle ==
Magic requires a clear image.

The clearer the image, the easier it is for The Essence to respond.

A confused command, unstable intention, or broken focus can weaken or distort the result.

== Relation to The System ==
Magic is affected by [[The System]].

A person's level, class, experience, and authority over The Essence can influence what they are capable of doing.

Most people do not understand this mechanically. They usually explain it through talent, training, blessing, bloodline, discipline, or divine favor.

== Common magical traditions ==
Known broad forms of magic include:

* Fire magic
* Water magic
* Air magic
* Earth magic

These are not the only possible forms of magic. Writers may create local traditions, schools, rituals, and techniques as long as they respect the role of The Essence.

== Writing use ==
Magic should not feel random.

Even strange magic should have some relationship to belief, image, role, culture, training, or Essence-imprinting.

Main Page

2026-05-26T12:19:38Z

Duelaadm: added more links to start here section

= Welcome to the Duela Wiki =
'''Duela''' is a shared fantasy world shaped by belief, Essence, hidden systems, gods, nations, monsters, and stories written by many people.

This wiki collects the foundational setting material, writing guides, canon structure, and stories connected to Duela.

== Start here ==

* [[What is Duela?]]
* [[Writing in Duela]]
* [[Canon Structure]]
* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Gods]]
* [[Races]]
* [[Nations]]
* [[Stories]]
* [[Story Status]]
* [[Branching Guide]]
* [[License and Attribution]]

== Core principles ==

* Belief shapes reality.
* The System exists, but most people do not know it.
* The Old God is unknowable.
* Most of the world is open for writers to expand.

== Project status ==
This wiki is currently in early setup.
*

Bubble Theory

2026-05-26T12:17:39Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= Bubble Theory = '''Bubble Theory''' is the idea that Duela exists inside one Bubble among many possible Bubbles. A Bubble is a contained reality or world-structure. == Basic idea == Bubbles normally cannot influence, observe, or interact with one another. Each Bubble is separate from the others under normal conditions. The Old God is believed to have come from another Bubble. == The Essence and Bubbles == The Essence exists inside and outside Bubbles. New..."

= Bubble Theory =
'''Bubble Theory''' is the idea that Duela exists inside one Bubble among many possible Bubbles.

A Bubble is a contained reality or world-structure.

== Basic idea ==
Bubbles normally cannot influence, observe, or interact with one another.

Each Bubble is separate from the others under normal conditions.

The [[Old God]] is believed to have come from another Bubble.

== The Essence and Bubbles ==
[[The Essence]] exists inside and outside Bubbles.

New Bubbles may be created through The Essence.

This means The Essence is not merely a force inside Duela. It is part of the deeper structure that allows worlds to exist.

== Transcendent godhood ==
It may be possible to overcome the separation between Bubbles by attaining a higher form of godhood.

This form of godhood is different from ordinary New God or Ascended God status.

One theory holds that a being must dominate so strongly within a Bubble that The Essence itself recognizes them as a god beyond that Bubble.

== Writing use ==
Bubble Theory should usually remain mysterious.

Most mortals do not know about it.

It is useful for cosmic stories, unexplained artifacts, strange outsiders, and questions about what lies beyond Duela.

== Related pages ==

* [[The Essence]]
* [[Old God]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Gods]]

Story Status

2026-05-26T12:16:45Z

Duelaadm: Added Links

= Story Status =
Stories in Duela can have different statuses depending on how they relate to the shared world.

Status is not a measure of quality. It describes how load-bearing a story is for the wider setting.

== General Collection ==
The General Collection is the default home for Duela stories.

Most stories belong here.

A General Collection story is part of Duela, but it is not required reading for the wider setting and does not force other writers to follow its consequences.

== Living Canon ==
Living Canon contains stories recognized as especially important to the shared continuity.

A Living Canon story may introduce characters, events, places, or interpretations that other writers choose to build from.

Living Canon can grow, change, or be pruned over time.

== [[Branching Guide|Branch]] ==
A Branch is a story or sub-canon that grows from another story.

Branches must clearly credit and link back to the story they grow from.

A Branch does not replace the original story.

== Trunk Canon ==
Trunk Canon is the permanent foundation of Duela.

This includes [[The Essence]], [[The System]], the [[Old God]], [[Bubble Theory]], and the basic structure of [[Gods]].

Stories should not casually contradict Trunk Canon.

== Non-canon or Alternate ==
Some stories may deliberately contradict established Duela material.

These can still exist as alternate versions, experiments, jokes, or private branches, but they should be clearly labeled.

== Principle ==
Story status exists to help writers understand how stories connect.

It should not be used as a ranking system.

Old God

2026-05-26T12:14:13Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= Old God = The '''Old God''', sometimes called '''Jerry''', is the being associated with the creation or installation of The System. His true nature, purpose, and current state are unknown. The Old God is one of the highest mysteries in Duela's cosmology. == Role in creation == The Old God entered the Bubble and created The System. Afterward, he left behind an imprint upon The Essence. That imprint shaped the emergence of the Original Gods and much of the w..."

= Old God =
The '''Old God''', sometimes called '''Jerry''', is the being associated with the creation or installation of [[The System]].

His true nature, purpose, and current state are unknown.

The Old God is one of the highest mysteries in Duela's cosmology.

== Role in creation ==
The Old God entered the Bubble and created The System.

Afterward, he left behind an imprint upon [[The Essence]].

That imprint shaped the emergence of the Original Gods and much of the world's foundational structure.

== Mystery ==
The Old God is not meant to have a simple explanation.

His purpose is unknown. Whether he still watches Duela is unknown. Whether he can return is unknown.

This uncertainty is intentional.

== Meta-cosmological interpretation ==
The Old God can be understood as a being from outside Duela's Bubble whose imagination, expectations, and archetypes imprinted themselves into reality.

This helps explain why some parts of Duela resemble familiar fantasy ideas, such as elves, classes, gods, monsters, and heroic archetypes.

The Old God is not above [[The Essence]]. He is immersed in it and shaped by it, like all consciousness.

== Writing use ==
The Old God should be used sparingly.

He is useful for foundational mysteries, strange relics, unexplained cosmic structures, and things that predate ordinary mortal history.

He should not be used as a casual explanation for every strange event.

== Related pages ==

* [[The Essence]]
* [[The System]]
* [[Bubble Theory]]
* [[Gods]]

License and Attribution

2026-05-26T12:13:15Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= License and Attribution = Duela uses the '''Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International''' license, also known as '''CC BY-SA 4.0'''. Unless otherwise noted, content on this wiki is available under this license. == What this means == People may: * Read Duela material * Share Duela material * Adapt Duela material * Build new stories from Duela material * Use Duela material commercially They must: * Give appropriate credit * Indicate if changes were ma..."

= License and Attribution =
Duela uses the '''Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International''' license, also known as '''CC BY-SA 4.0'''.

Unless otherwise noted, content on this wiki is available under this license.

== What this means ==
People may:

* Read Duela material
* Share Duela material
* Adapt Duela material
* Build new stories from Duela material
* Use Duela material commercially

They must:

* Give appropriate credit
* Indicate if changes were made
* Share derivative works under the same license

== Attribution ==
When using or branching from another person's Duela work, credit the original creator.

A simple attribution is enough in most cases.

Example:<pre>
Based on ''Story Title'' by Author Name.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
</pre>For branches, link back to the original story when possible.

== Commercial use ==
Commercial use is allowed.

This means writers may publish, sell, or otherwise commercially use Duela works, as long as they follow the license terms.

If a commercial work uses another contributor's material, that contributor should be credited.

== Share-alike requirement ==
Derivative works must use the same license.

This prevents someone from taking shared Duela material, making a closed version, and removing it from the shared creative pool.

== Notes ==
This page is a practical summary, not legal advice.

For the full license text, see:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Branching Guide

2026-05-26T12:11:44Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= Branching Guide = A branch is a story that grows from another Duela story. Branches allow writers to continue, reinterpret, expand, or diverge from existing stories without forcing all continuations into one official path. == Basic rule == A branch must clearly credit the story it grows from. It should also link back to the source story when possible. == What branches can do == A branch may: * Continue a character's life * Explore an unresolved ending * Follow a s..."

= Branching Guide =
A branch is a story that grows from another Duela story.

Branches allow writers to continue, reinterpret, expand, or diverge from existing stories without forcing all continuations into one official path.

== Basic rule ==
A branch must clearly credit the story it grows from.

It should also link back to the source story when possible.

== What branches can do ==
A branch may:

* Continue a character's life
* Explore an unresolved ending
* Follow a side character
* Present another point of view
* Create a sequel
* Create an alternate continuation
* Build a sub-canon from an existing story

== What branches should not do ==
A branch should not pretend to replace the original story.

A branch should not erase the source author's work.

A branch should not hide its relationship to the story it grows from.

== Example ==
If a story ends with an unnamed orphan becoming a vampire, another writer could branch from it by writing:

* A hero story about her exploring the world
* A horror story about her hunger growing worse
* A pilgrimage story about her return to Hauru's mountain
* A tragedy about her failing to control herself
* A hopeful story about her protecting other orphans

All of these can exist beside each other.

== Suggested branch page format ==
<pre>
= Branch Story Title =

''Branch Story Title'' is a branch from [[Source Story Title]].

== Status ==

Branch

== Source ==

This story branches from [[Source Story Title]] by [author name].

== Story ==

[Story text goes here.]

== Related pages ==

* [[Stories]]
* [[Story Status]]

[[Category:Stories]]
[[Category:Branches]]
</pre>

== Principle ==
Branches are growth, not correction.

Story Status

2026-05-26T12:11:12Z

Duelaadm: Created page with "= Story Status = Stories in Duela can have different statuses depending on how they relate to the shared world. Status is not a measure of quality. It describes how load-bearing a story is for the wider setting. == General Collection == The General Collection is the default home for Duela stories. Most stories belong here. A General Collection story is part of Duela, but it is not required reading for the wider setting and does not force other writers to follow its c..."

= Story Status =
Stories in Duela can have different statuses depending on how they relate to the shared world.

Status is not a measure of quality. It describes how load-bearing a story is for the wider setting.

== General Collection ==
The General Collection is the default home for Duela stories.

Most stories belong here.

A General Collection story is part of Duela, but it is not required reading for the wider setting and does not force other writers to follow its consequences.

== Living Canon ==
Living Canon contains stories recognized as especially important to the shared continuity.

A Living Canon story may introduce characters, events, places, or interpretations that other writers choose to build from.

Living Canon can grow, change, or be pruned over time.

== Branch ==
A Branch is a story or sub-canon that grows from another story.

Branches must clearly credit and link back to the story they grow from.

A Branch does not replace the original story.

== Trunk Canon ==
Trunk Canon is the permanent foundation of Duela.

This includes [[The Essence]], [[The System]], the Old God, Bubble Theory, and the basic structure of gods.

Stories should not casually contradict Trunk Canon.

== Non-canon or Alternate ==
Some stories may deliberately contradict established Duela material.

These can still exist as alternate versions, experiments, jokes, or private branches, but they should be clearly labeled.

== Principle ==
Story status exists to help writers understand how stories connect.

It should not be used as a ranking system.

Hezuraitona

2026-05-26T12:09:48Z

Duelaadm: /* Related pages */

= Hezuraitona =
'''Hezuraitona''' are the ancient vampires created directly by [[Hauru]].

They are among the oldest and most important vampires in Duela. Their lives are tied to Hauru, making them effectively immortal unless Hauru herself is harmed.

The name comes from Basque roots associated with bone and the idea of a good father or grandfather.

== Origin ==
The Hezuraitona were created by Hauru after she withdrew beneath the mountain.

They were not made as soldiers or conquerors. They were made because Hauru wanted family and companionship.

Because of this origin, many Hezuraitona carry a deep attachment to family structures, ritual belonging, and the care of children.

== Immortality ==
Hezuraitona are functionally immortal.

Their existence is tied directly to Hauru. As long as she endures, they endure.

This makes them different from later vampire generations, who may live extremely long lives but are not always immortal in the same absolute sense.

== Mortal society ==
Hezuraitona can hide among ordinary society with relative ease.

They are often only slightly pale, which can be mistaken for noble refinement or sheltered upbringing.

Many Hezuraitona occupy roles associated with wealth, patronage, religion, education, or nobility.

One of their most common public masks is the funding of orphanages and schools.

== Ritual adoption ==
Hezuraitona can create offspring through ritual adoption.

These offspring are known as [[Haurizan]].

The ritual often involves willing orphans, making Hezuraitona patronage of orphanages especially important.

To outsiders, this patronage may appear charitable, religious, eccentric, or noble. Its deeper purpose is usually hidden.

== Character use ==
Hezuraitona work well in stories as:

* Religious patrons
* Noble benefactors
* Hidden immortals
* Orphanage sponsors
* Ancient family heads
* Cult leaders
* Ambiguous protectors
* Gentle predators
* Keepers of old secrets

A Hezuraitona should rarely feel like a simple monster. They are ancient, affectionate, manipulative, protective, and dangerous at the same time.

== Related pages ==

* [[Hauru]]
* [[Vampires]]
* [[Haurizan]]
* [[The Pilgrimage]]
* [[Sorginak]]
* [[Endevellicos]]