10
Seating the Nine
How to put banners on a first board without locking the map
Until coordinates are a production lock, seat Houses by relationship and color, not by a fake atlas.
- Seat Valoris and Draconis as neighbors. They co-rule. Share a border color, never a banner.
- Seat Lunara opposite Aetherion. Confirmed rivalry. Do not hand them the same quadrant’s Discovery.
- Seat Noctara and Veyrith where a crystal seam can be a line of tiles, not an automatic alliance.
- Give Caeldris a road. Commerce dies if the ledger house is trapped in a cul-de-sac.
- Give Tempest water or a coast. If the board is a dry citadel, say so at setup rather than pretending at fleets.
- Solaria wants a yard. A forge House with no packed earth will spend the game walking.
House mats still show public Reign and a facedown Path. Nothing in this book changes the 10-total / 6-aligned Crown. Paint the mat in the House cloth color so the table can read it without asking.