Committee

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 has five seats:

• One permanent seat, held by the project founder.
• Four rotating seats, held by heavy contributors.

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 permanent 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.

"Heavy contributor" 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.

Permanent seat

The permanent seat votes as one of five.

It holds two additional powers:

• Procedural final call. Disputes about how the Committee operates — quorum, recording, interpretation of these rules — are resolved by the permanent seat. This power covers process, not outcomes. It does not override a vote.
• Vote multiplication on vacancy. If a rotating seat is unfilled when a vote is called, the permanent seat casts an additional vote for each vacant seat. This keeps the Committee at five votes regardless of vacancies, and removes the incentive to stall nominations to influence outcomes.

Votes

The Committee votes on two things:

• Promotion of an entry to Living canon: requires a majority (three of five).
• Pruning of an entry from Living canon: requires unanimity (five of five). Pruning returns the 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. This rule overrides any vote.

When a member is unreachable

A vote requires all five members present. If a member is unreachable, the vote is postponed. There is no urgency in Committee work — 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, regardless of how its members voted internally. 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 Trunk in any way.

A story in the general collection does not pass through the Committee. It is simply 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.