Renown is the political bottleneck of the realm — and the Banquet is how lords spend their hoard to climb. A primer on the upcoming Lifetime Rank system.
Renown is not gold. Gold buys arrows. Renown buys the right to call lords to your banner.
All players generate a natural Renown trickle over time — the floor below which progression cannot stall. But the only way to accelerate is the Banquet: a feast supercharged by eight Refined Goods drawn from culture- and terrain-gated industry. Tapestries from Highland villages. Salted Sturgeon from the coasts. Spiced Mead from Fenland breweries. No raw wheat or wood ever feeds a Banquet. It is the prepared, the refined, the rare.
Lifetime Rank — Thane, Earl, Marcher Lord, Sovereign — is accumulated from Renown that has been pooled and spent. Lifetime Rank is permanent. Current Renown is also the ammunition for offensive marches: every attack consumes a flat sum from the pool. A lord who endlessly spams wars will see their Banquets burn faster than their kitchens can refine.
Renown ships as part of Phase 2 backend work and lands the moment the engine writes the first Refined Good to a player's stores.