Canon Structure

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 Recognition can be withdrawn; structural use cannot.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.