Political Units

Political Units are a type of cultural covenant which represent a politically-driven unit of government or leadership, such as cities, kingdoms, empires, duchies, etc.

The five kinds of component of which Cultural Covenants are composed are: Landholds, Lawholds, Craftholds, Shrineholds and Heraldholds.

  • LandHold -- the physical forms or materials which make up the political unit and consist either of the physical boundaries of the unit or of the political sub-units of which it is made
  • LawHold -- the legal forms which define the political unit, including those who enforce those forms, like police, courts, armies and gangs which affect the level of lawfulness
  • CraftHold -- the commercial aspect of the political unit which defines its function, merging with the populace for political units where the function is usually defined by the guilds and freemen who do a permanent business there
  • ShrineHold -- the ethical aspect which forms a kind of aggregate soul of the political unit which defines its values and the standards by which they live up to those values; consisting of temples, religions, churches, etc., it can be considered as a measure of the moral compass of the community taken as a whole
  • HeraldHold -- the cultural aspect which defines the ethnic, cultural, racial participation of the community in common interests, including schools, myths and stories available to the political unit which serve as a kind of institutional memory and as a templates for common action

Statistics

Statistics for political units are:

  • LandHold:
    • Primary -- the physical objects and material sources which define the form of the cultural covenant
    • Secondary -- the means by which those physical objects and material sources are evaluated, especially by those outside
  • LawHold:
    • Primary -- that which makes decisions for the whole cultural covenant
    • Secondary -- that which determines the degree to which the whole cultural covenant follows decisions
  • CraftHold:
    • Primary -- the skills and proficiences which enable the membership to accomplish their functions
    • Secondary -- the actual membership or sub-objects which define the function as well as the personnel of the cultural covenant
  • ShrineHold:
    • Primary -- the values which allow the culture to have a kind of collective soul
    • Secondary -- that which allows those values to be expressed
  • HeraldHold:
    • Primary -- the histories, memes, stories and traditions which serve as the collective memory of the cultural covenant and as templates for complex actions
    • Secondary -- the qualities of the storytelling

Traits

Traits for political units are (with their determining holdings in parens):

  • Unary traits:
  • Binary traits:
  • Trinary traits:
  • Quaternary traits:
    • Diplomacy? (Landhold over Shrinehold over Crafthold over Lawhold)
    • Population? (Lawhold over Heraldhold over Shrinehold over Crafthold)
    • Religions (Crafthold over Landhold over Heraldhold over Shrinehold)
    • Media? (Shrinehold over Lawhold over Landhold over Heraldhold)
    • Wealth? (Heraldhold over Crafthold over Lawhold over Landhold)
  • Pentary trait:
    • Military? (Landhold-Lawhold-Crafthold-Shrinehold-Heraldhold)

See Also

— Scotus - 27 May 2000
— GedTheGreysHain - 29 Jun 2002 [Updated a bit to reflect changes in related topics]