Land Management

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## Land Parcels

The world of Elyria is divided up into sections of land called parcels. Each parcel is 64 m x 64 m wide by 64 m deep. The 'ground level' of the surface is at center of a parcel. The first continent should have around 8,000,000 parcels of land and accounts for only 28% of the total landmass of Elyria

## Obtaining Land

### Gentry

Gentry are landowners and can obtain land through a number of means. They can obtain land through purchase, inheritance, marriage, adverse possession, and IP. As soon as you own land you become Gentry. As you gain more land adjacent to each other and attract friends to come and join you in your efforts, you start to move beyond a simple Gentry and into the realm of the Aristocracy.

### Buying Land

The Count will have a Land Management Table in a public County office that shows all parcels of land within the county. The Count, or a representative he appoints (a land manager) can go in, insert blank deeds obtained from a scribe, and then drag/drop them onto the parcels of land on the table and fill in the values.

Anyone can come look at the table, see the unclaimed parcels of land with the "deeds" pinned to them, sign their name, put any required money "into the table", and take the deeds. Poof! They've purchased the land.

Once you've purchased a plot of land, you own it and can legally build on it. And before anyone asks, yes you can re-sell your recently purchased land. You can even build a Land Management Table of your own that shows all the land you own and put it up for sale

### Inheritance

While it's possible to inherit land from yourself or from others, when the game first launches you'll likely be children of NPC families. In this case, you won’t inherit the land of your NPC parents unless you reach a certain amount of Favor with them. Otherwise, they'll will the land back to the Count. To inherit land from your NPC parents you’ll need to complete a certain number of tasks for them, make improvements to the land, etc. If you ask them, they’ll let you know whether you’re in the will or not.

### Marriage

Unless the marriage contract is specifically altered not to share ownership, any land owned by either spouse becomes the shared property of both.

### Adverse Possession

Adverse Possession is the process of obtaining land that was previously owned but has been abandoned. Abandoned land is land which has not been visited by owners or family members in the last 28 real-life days. Right away, that means it’ll most often be land that’s remote, infrequently visited, or land which has been left unattended due to people going offline for several weeks or months. Once a land has been officially abandoned someone can attempt to take possession adversely.

First you go to the Land Management Table located at the County Seat and it'll show you the land on it that has become "Abandoned". While at the table you can submit your own contract in place of any contract that existed for abandoned land. You’ll need to obtain a new contract from a scribe before-hand, but once doing so you can specify the purchase price, property tax, etc. The contract is between you and the Count, just like when someone normally buys the land, but because you're claiming the land through Adverse Possession, it means you set the terms of the contract. You put that into the table. And you click "Adverse Possession" in the UI and you will get back a copy of the deed/contract that’s set to become official in 28 days, assuming you maintain possession of the land.

You then must go to the land, build a simple house on it, and then keep the house from being destroyed for 28 days. After 28 days, if the structure hasn’t been destroyed, you own the land in full.

It gives the Count "notice" that you're claiming the land. If he sees the contract and doesn't like it, he may come and fight you off the land. If he **does** like the contract, maybe you were fair and generous, he may actually come help you defend the land from the previous owner. This process of signing a new contract is important because Adverse Possession is supposed to be a legal way to take ownership of land, not an illegal way, so there still needs to be a contract associated.

It takes almost a full two months to gain land this way from the moment someone abandons the land. One month for it to become officially abandoned, and one month for someone else to take ownership.

### Exposition Points

Land will be available for purchase with Exposition Points (EP) during Exposition. Land purchased with exposition points does not require you do visit the Land Management Table. You simply pick an unowned piece of land and buy it directly with EP.

## Land Use

* **Residential & Commercial Construction** – Buildings houses, inns, crafting buildings, taverns, etc. This just means using the land to build stuff on.
* **Agriculture** – This means farming, beekeeping, breeding, harvesting, or really anything that involves the natural, renewable resources of the land.
* **Industry** – This means mining or otherwise harvesting the non-renewable resources of the land.

### Designation

This concerns both macro- and micromanagement aspects of 'land' management.

You can designate an area as private to you, private to an organization, private to a settlement, private to a family, private to a list of people, or private to a nation-state. You can also mark a space as common with the same specific designations. Within a space, you can also designate certain items and emplacements as public or private. You can also designate a space for a particular activity which helps OPCs and NPCs find the stuff they're looking for. (E.g you can designate a room as your "shop" and then tell your xPC to "tend the shop" and they would be able to find the appropriate place more easily.) You can also designate restrictions based on time, or timespan (this is common every other day, or this is common throughout the month of Ocei), and you can designate what behaviors are valid in an area based on implicit contracts bound to the area (aka you can have "house rules").

## Settlements

If you have enough land and the right requirements you can create a Hamlet, and then upgrade it to a Village, Town, City or Capital. These settlements have military counterparts which work much the same, except they are defensive structures, typically smaller, and are funded at least in part via contracts with Dukes. These are currently referred to as Outposts, Garrisons, Forts, Keeps, and Strongholds.

See Settlements for more details.

### Land incorporation

Ref.:

When you incorporate a settlement with your land, it becomes governed by the settlement. Generally, you retain land use rights - unless your incorporation contract says otherwise - meaning that the land is still yours to do with as you please within the laws of the settlement.

When a settlement sells you land, it's really selling the land use rights - meaning that while you own the land, it's still governed by the settlement. The settlement no longer has the rights to do anything with that land beyond upholding the law, while you have the right to use/exploit/rent out/etc. that land.

When a parcel is owned by the settlement and the settlement has the land use rights, the settlement can do whatever it wants with that land, even designate it as a common area for citizens of the settlement to use as they see fit.

When you incorporate a settlement, part of what you'll do is establish the terms for incorporating your land. You may, for example, decide that everyone that contributes land to the settlement keeps their land rights, or that they keep the rights for X% of the land they contribute, etc. It's entirely up to you.

You can also establish terms for citizenship in the settlement during the incorporation of land. An example of establishing a method of citizenship during incorporation might be: "you are automatically a citizen if you incorporated land, but if you simply purchase land use rights, you also have to pay a flat yearly fee for citizenship here.".

## Selling and Renting Land

In Chronicles of Elyria, you can sell and rent their lands using the contract feature.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Caspian, DJ #18 Kingdom & Land Management, 8 January 2016
2. ↑ Snipehunter, Post #15 in Forum thread 'Mines', 5 November 2018
3. ↑ Caspian, A Year of Foundation, 12 January 2018
4. ↑ Snipehunter, CoE Discord tag ##8.8.2018#Designations#, 8 August 2018
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Snipehunter, CoE Discord tag ##8.12.2019#Military Settlement Designations#, 12 August 2019
6. ↑ Snipehunter, CoE Discord ##06.28.2018#Settlements and Land#, 28 June 2018