Canon Structure

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.