Rules of the Political Stage

1. Politics is allowed. Harassment is not.

The following are explicitly allowed on political surfaces. They are features, not violations:

• Declaring war, and publishing an address about it on the Crier.
• Publicly rebuking a kingdom or alliance through a Formal Censure, or praising one with a Formal Commendation.
• Harsh in-character rhetoric: calling a rival kingdom cowardly, corrupt, doomed; mocking a lost battle; propaganda, ultimatums, gloating, and grudges: aimed at kingdoms, alliances, and their in-game deeds.
• Press articles with strong opinions about in-game events and factions.

The line: attack the kingdom, not the player. Content stops being roleplay and becomes a violation when it targets the human being (their real identity, their protected characteristics, their safety) or when it would break the rules anywhere else in the game. The following are not allowed on any political surface (these mirror the Code of Conduct, and they are what the automated filter and moderators actually act on):

• Harassment and threats against people — targeted abuse of the person behind the kingdom, intimidation, threats of real-world harm.
• Hate speech and slurs — attacks on protected characteristics. Slurs never render on a public surface.
• Sharing personal information — real names, addresses, contact details, or anything that identifies someone off-platform, whether it's yours or someone else's.
• Sexual harassment and predatory conduct.
• Encouraging self-harm.
• Extremist or violent-ideology content.
• Scams, phishing, and account-theft attempts.
• Impersonation — posing as game staff, system messages, another player, or another alliance.
• Spam and flooding — posting limits are enforced automatically on every surface.
• Filter evasion — deliberately disguising content to slip past the filter is itself a violation.

Two technical rules apply everywhere: posts are plain text (no HTML or scripts; they're rejected outright), and while you may paste ordinary web links in long-form posts, links are never clickable: readers who want to follow one must copy it deliberately.

2. Who moderates what

The automated filter (every post, instantly). Everything you submit on a political surface passes a content check before it publishes. Mild rough language passes. Stronger profanity may publish with the offending words starred out. If that happens, you'll be told your post was altered, and your draft is never lost. Content the filter can't confidently judge may be held for review by a person before it publishes; there is no guaranteed review timeframe, and we won't pretend otherwise. Serious violations are blocked on the spot, and the worst categories alert staff immediately. The filter never tells you which word or rule it matched. That would be a manual for evading it. Names are stricter than posts: board names, gazette mastheads, and other titles are simply rejected if they fail the check, and you pick another. The same filter already runs on chat, mail, profiles, decrees, and war names.

Alliance officers, on their own boards. Officers of the alliance that owns a board are its first line of moderation. They can remove posts (never edit them; nobody can edit a published post, including its author after a short grace window), pin threads, and lock their boards. A removed post leaves a visible stub in the thread, "[removed by a board moderator]", so removal is never silent. Every officer removal is recorded in the alliance's audit log, and the original text remains visible to game staff, who can overturn the removal. Officers cannot restrict anyone's account and cannot see anything staff tools see.

Embassy boards: each side polices its own. On a shared embassy board between two alliances, officers may only remove posts written by their own alliance's members — you moderate your delegation, not your rival's. If things get out of hand, either side may lock the embassy board, immediately and without the partner's consent; only the side that locked it (or game staff) can unlock it. Cross-side disputes go to reports, not to removals.

Region boards: the region's own keepers. A region's message board is moderated by its founder, its Lord Steward, and any officers granted the comms power. They hold the same first-line tools as alliance officers on alliance boards (remove (never edit), pin, and the same visible removal stubs) and the same limits: removals are logged, the original text remains visible to game staff, staff can overturn, and region moderators cannot restrict anyone's account. Everything else on this page applies to region boards exactly as written.

Game staff, above all. Staff can remove any content anywhere, restore content officers removed, restrict accounts, and freeze entire surfaces. Staff decisions override officer decisions.

"This board is locked": what it means. A locked or archived board is read-only: existing posts stay visible to whoever could read them before, but nobody can post. Boards can be locked by their own officers, locked one-sidedly on embassies (above), archived permanently when an alliance disbands or an embassy closes, or frozen game-wide by staff during a moderation incident ("Boards are temporarily locked by the stewards"). Locking never deletes anything.

3. Reporting

Every piece of player-written content on the political stage (board posts, embassy posts, press articles, Crier addresses, the citations on Formal Commendations and Censures) can be reported from a Report option next to the content. When you report:

1. Your report goes into the moderation queue with a report number. Save the number. It is your record of the report.
2. A human reviews it. Automated tools sort the queue; people make the decisions. Reports of the most dangerous categories (threats of self-harm, someone's personal information exposed) alert staff immediately and are handled with priority.
3. Honest limits: there is no promised response time, reports don't get a reply, and there is no status page to watch. If you must follow up, contact support and quote your report number.

The player you report is never told who reported them — not in any notification, message, or public record. Reporting a post you simply disagree with politically is not a violation, but knowingly false or revenge reports are (Code of Conduct §7), and per-player report limits are enforced automatically.

Reports filed from the Report option beside a specific post or message carry the content's reference with them and resolve fastest. For anything else, the free-form report page is the fallback.

4. Consequences

Enforcement escalates. Each step below corresponds to a real tool moderators have; nothing on this list is decorative:

1. Content action — a post published with words starred out, held before publication, or blocked outright by the filter; or removed after the fact by an officer or staff. If staff remove your content, you are notified with the policy category and reason.
2. Surface restrictions — staff can restrict your posting on the specific surface you misused: board posting, chat, private messages, profile editing, market listings, war naming, or the report system itself (for report abuse). Restrictions can be timed (a timeout) or indefinite (a ban from that surface).
3. Full communication mute — repeated or severe abuse can cost access to all communication surfaces at once. The most severe content can trigger an immediate automatic temporary restriction while a person reviews what happened.
4. Account action — warnings, suspension, or permanent ban, per Code of Conduct §9. Severe safety, fraud, and exploit violations skip straight here.

Alliance officers can only ever do step 1, on their own boards. Everything from step 2 up is game staff only.

5. Appeals

• Restricted or actioned? Use the Appeal form. It handles both account-level actions (suspension, ban) and moderation restrictions (mutes, posting restrictions). One appeal per enforcement action; a person reviews every appeal; the outcome appears on that same page. There is no promised decision timeframe.
• Your post was removed by an alliance officer? Officer removals are appealed to game staff: report the removal itself through the standard report flow. Staff can see the original post and can restore it. (Whether your alliance's officers were fair is otherwise alliance politics. Pick better officers, or a different alliance.)
• Appeals should add facts or context, not volume. Repetitive or abusive appeals may be closed without further review (Code of Conduct §10).

6. Transparency

• Removals are visible. A removed post leaves a stub in place ("[removed by its author]", "[removed by a board moderator]", or "[removed]") so threads never silently rewrite themselves. Stubs never name the acting officer and never reveal what the filter matched.
• Officer actions are logged. Every officer removal, pin, and lock is recorded in the alliance audit log, visible to that alliance's leadership and to staff.
• The record survives the prose. Moderation can remove a player's words, never the event. If a war address is removed, the Crier still shows the war: with "no address published" where the speech used to be. The events themselves (wars declared, peace signed, treaties made) are permanent public record.
• Reporters stay anonymous, forever — to the reported player, on every surface, in every notification.
• Rules changes are announced. Material updates to this policy follow the Code of Conduct's update practice (§15).

Questions about this policy: Contact Support.