Bounties

Every capital has a bounty board. A lord, or a guild or house paying from its treasury, puts up gold on a target: a camp, den, AI castle, merchant caravan or a realm event's hostile host, or a lord at war with them. The gold is taken when the bounty is posted and held until someone earns it. Nobody has to accept a bounty; whoever does the deed is paid as soon as the battle report shows it.

The basics

• Post a bounty from the target's panel on the world map (camps, dens, castles, caravans, raider and other hostile hosts) or from a lord's card (a lord you are at war with).
• Choose the gold (100 to 1,000,000), how long it stands (24 hours, 3 days or 7 days), and, if you hold the Steward's power in your guild or a body above it, whether it comes from your purse or the body's treasury.
• A bounty on a target is paid in full to whoever takes the target off the map. If several lords wore it down over several assaults, it is split by the damage each dealt.
• A bounty on a lord is paid in parts: each time any lord beats one of that lord's villages in battle, they are paid one part.
• When a bounty lapses, its target leaves the map without anyone clearing it, or you take it down, whatever gold is left goes back where it came from.
• The board of each capital shows in its territory panel on the world map. The Realm panel's Bounties tab lists every open bounty in the realm and your recent ones.

Limits are in the bounty reference.

Which board

A bounty on a map target hangs on the board of the territory the target stood in when it was posted. A caravan or a host may move on, but its bounty stays on that board. A bounty on a lord hangs on the board of the territory their first village stands in.

Bounties on targets

The bounty is claimed in the battle that takes the target off the map: a camp or den cleared, a caravan beaten, a tiered castle or a realm event's host that falls. A battle that leaves the target standing pays nothing.

• If the target keeps a record of damage by lord (tier II castles and up, and the realm event hosts), the gold is split by each lord's share of that damage over every assault, the same shares that split its hoard (Military).
• Otherwise one army takes it all, and a levy or muster host splits it by the value of the troops each lord brought.

Worked example: Aldric puts 1,000 gold on an outlaw fort. Brun's army breaks its walls and kills half the garrison, then Cora's army takes it. The battle report's shares are Brun 60% and Cora 40%, so Brun is paid 600 gold and Cora 400, at the moment Cora's battle ends.

A lord, or a body, may have 5 bounties up at once and only one on the same target.

Bounties on a lord

The poster must be at war with the lord: their own war for a bounty from their purse, or the body's war for one from its treasury. The poster chooses how many parts the gold is paid in (1 to 10), and each part is the gold divided by the parts, rounded down.

Each time an army or a host wins a battle against one of the lord's villages, the attackers are paid one part, split as above. The same village pays again only after 12 game hours, so beating one village over and over does not empty the bounty. Once the gold left is less than one gold, the bounty closes. Anyone who can attack the lord can claim it, not only the poster's side. The lord is told in their inbox when a bounty is put on them.

Worked example: Aldric puts 1,000 gold on Brun in 4 parts, 250 a village. Cora beats Brun's village Fernwell and is paid 250. She beats it again an hour later and is paid nothing. Dagny beats Brun's other village and is paid 250. 500 is still held.

Escrow, refunds and the inbox

• Posting: the gold leaves your purse or the treasury at once. A Steward's post counts against the daily draw the leader allows them. Logged under Trade ledger.
• Claims: each lord paid gets a Battles entry linking the battle. The poster gets a Battles entry saying who claimed it.
• Lapsing, a target gone, or taking it down: the rest is refunded to the purse or treasury it came from, logged under Trade ledger. If the body that posted it is gone by then, the gold goes to the lord who posted it.
• Closed bounties stay on the record for 3 real days.

Interactions

• Military: claims come from the battle reports of armies and hosts.
• Musters and levies: a host's claim is split by the troops each lord brought, or by damage on a tiered target.
• Realm events: raider, warlord and invader hosts, the Black Knight and rebel bands can carry bounties. The relic procession cannot.
• Guilds and Houses: treasury bounties need the Steward's power; bounties on lords need a war.
• Lands and territories: treasury gold comes from territory taxes.

For maintainers

• Rules: bountyContent in server/src/features/bounties/index.ts, served as GameContent.bounties. claimShares and lordPayout in bounties/logic.ts.
• State: meta key bounties_v1.
• Claims come from battleHooks.fought in registry.ts, raised by armyBattle and hostBattle in the military feature with the report, the target, whether it was cleared, the hands and the village. Raids and capital battles are not counted.
• Treasury gold is landsLive(game).save.treasury; Steward limits use realm.drawLeft and recordDraw.
• Client: clients/web/src/features/bounties/ (board in vk:territory-panel, forms in vk:entity-panel and vk:lord-panel, the Realm panel tab listed in the lands feature).
• Tests: server/src/features/bounties/bounties.test.ts.