The Definitive Country Almanac: The Living Worlds Movement — Part 1#

Kethra Almanac • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 19 September 2026 • Sections 1–4 (Sections 5–8 are in Part 2)

Status: approved. Briana approved the whole almanac on 19 September 2026 (the Almanac Approval Decision). Where this file calls something a proposal, read it as approved, except the open points that decision lists.

Status before approval:

• Established in earlier files, and taken as given here (proposals there too, unless the spine's canon table covers them):
  • The names Living Worlds Movement and Continuance Circle, approved by Briana (the faction roster, 15 September). The roster's role notes, which describe the source material rather than a decision about Kethra: "Broad environmental and political movement." and "Coercive extremist faction within that movement." This almanac departs from "within that movement": on Kethra the Circle broke away in 2299, and the Movement disowns it (Chapter V). The roster keeps them as separate entries and does not write the Movement as extremist, and neither does this almanac.
  • Placement: canon. Briana approved it on 19 September 2026: the Movement and the Circle are on Kethra in AL 2314 (the spine's canon table; the Living Worlds Placement Decision). Until then the spine's table of factions marked the pair "Tentative" and "Briana to confirm or strike", and the Who's Who marked each placement with a question ("❓ placement"). Her request for this almanac had first been taken as placing the pair at proposal level, and she approved that placement the same day. The spine's row and the Who's Who's marks now say so. The register's placement of both in the later colonial-fracture era is not overruled: a movement about the hot era can exist in more than one era.
  • Chapter V's three rows. The Stewardship school: "A growing wing within the Cantorate | The Return is a judgement, not a gift. Humans must limit the Seeding, protect the Wild, and prepare. | Inside the Church. Allied in practice with the Living Worlds Movement." The Living Worlds Movement: "Broad civic movement; secular and religious members | Protect the native Wild. Set limits on seeding before the hot era sets them for us. Accept that Kethra was not made for humans. | Legal. A political force in the Hall of Voices, through the Tideward League party." The Continuance Circle: "Small and covert | The coercive, extremist fringe of the environmental cause. It sabotages seeding works and threatens charter companies. | Outlawed. The Living Worlds Movement disowns it (see the register)."
  • The Introduction: "The Living Worlds Movement calls it the planet reasserting itself" (the Creep); Earth grasses invading the Wild's margins ("The Living Worlds Movement treats this as a harm to the native Wild."); and "The Living Worlds Movement argues that the coming hot era is the native Wild's season, and that humanity must set limits on the Seeding before the planet sets them instead." Chapter I, of the retreat inland from the lowest steps, which the capital calls "prudence": "The Living Worlds Movement calls it the first evacuation."
  • The Crown almanac: the Seeding Limits Bill "would make the boundary of the Corran Wild permanent and cap net new seeding in the Crown. It is the Living Worlds Movement's central demand and the Charter Party's most divisive question."; the Hall of Voices elected in 2311 (Charter Party 158, Commonweal 131, Tideward League 52, Guildists 47, Southern Accord 19, others 13); the Tideward League's row, "Environmental. Wants seeding limits and preparation for the hot era. Close to the Living Worlds Movement. The fastest-growing party."; "The rise of the Tideward League. The brightening of Hyperion enters mainstream politics." (2291–2314); the Stewardship school "about 45% of the faithful, and rising". The Who's Who: "Its Crown political arm is the Tideward League."
  • The Lesser Crowns almanac: the Seven fear the Bill "will be pressed on them next"; five of the seven against (Sallow "Strongly against"), Cordale "Neutral", and Brightwick "For (Stewardship city)"; the Stewardship school "about 30% of the faithful, strongest in Brightwick and Cordale".
  • The Vardane almanac: "The Living Worlds Movement has almost no legal presence in the Imperium."
  • The Assembly almanac: the Brightening Commission of the Science Council (2301–2311) and the Brightening Report (2311), "Hyperion's heat, in numbers the whole planet must now argue about".
  • The spine's Hyperion figures: about 195 AU and closing, adding about 0.76% to Kethra's heat, red nights about 250 lux; "About 20% brighter within one lifetime"; 0.93% by AL 2374, 1.05% by AL 2414, a peak of about 1.3% in AL 2539; at Landfall 0.26% and 90 lux; the last hot era's peak about AL −665; "No human has ever lived through a hot era." Sea level "rising about 0.3 m per century now and accelerating". Gardenland "About 19 million km² (about 11% of the land)"; "the rest is native Wild".
  • From the register. The Movement: "Civic movement"; its objective is to "Protect living environments while preserving legitimate civic participation"; its fear is "Ecological catastrophe and collective blame for extremist violence"; its leverage is "Public trust, scientific networks and community organisation"; its split is that "Reformers, direct-action groups and scientists disagree on tactics; they are not all extremists." The Circle: "Extremist organisation"; objective "Force preservation priorities onto political decisions"; fear "Moderation and negotiation making its coercion appear unnecessary"; leverage "A committed covert network and willingness to intimidate"; split "Members differ on targets and acceptable harm; affiliation with the broader movement is contested." The Movement's and the Circle's positions towards each other are used in full. The Movement's entries towards the Helion Systems Authority, Ormath Industries and the Horizon Free Company, and the Circle's towards the Helion Systems Authority, are not used: none of those is on Kethra in AL 2314 (the Who's Who).
• Proposal: everything else. It is built on the spine, the Introduction, Chapters I–VI, the Crown, Lesser Crowns, Assembly and Southern Holds almanacs, and the Who's Who.
• Two things settled here that earlier files left loose: what the Tideward League is to the Movement (the Who's Who's "arm", Chapter V's "through the … party" and the Crown almanac's "Close to" are all true: the Tideward League is a registered Crown party, founded by the Movement in 2291 and formally separate from it, as a Crown party must be); and the spine's row, which said the pair "would be inherited names" while its own preamble says every faction in that table has a native Kethran name. The names are Kethran, and the row now says so.
• Settled on 19 September 2026: "the Mending Accord" (AL 2163) is the treaty's formal name, and "the Mending Ban" is the everyday name for the ban it sets (the Mending Accord Naming Decision). This almanac needs neither name.

Reading note. The Movement is not a state, not a church and not a party. It is about two million people who have read the same numbers and drawn the same conclusion, organised into local Wild Watches, a yearly Convention, a scientific wing called the Fellows, and a party in the Crown called the Tideward League. Its argument is the spine's: no living human has seen a hot era, and one is 225 years away. Every Movement place named here is on the interactive Atlas, and the generated Register of the Living Worlds Movement lists them.

Section 1: National Overview & Identity#

Official Name & Etymology#

• Formal name: The Living Worlds Movement, as its Convention's charter of 2273 names it.
• Short name: the Movement. Its members are Worlders; a local group is a Wild Watch; its scientists are the Fellows; its party in the Crown is the Tideward League. Its voters are Tideward League voters: "the Tidewards" is always the district below the Stair. The Cantorate's allied wing has its own noun: a Steward (Chapter V).
• Where the name comes from. From a pamphlet, Two Living Worlds (2268), by Dilys Uche, a Hollin naturalist: "There are two living worlds on this planet, the one the Founders brought and the one they found, and the Seeding is the first eating the second." The Corran Convention that met on the pamphlet's strength took its title from it.
• Name check (naming principles). The name comes from the pamphlet. The flag's design (below) comes from the Hedge and the red night: different sources.

What others call it:

Greeting, between Worlders: "Which world?" Reply: "Both." The capital's everyday greeting is "Good step" (Chapter IV); a Worlder on the Tidewards answers it, "Lower every year."

National Symbols#

The State Profile#

Chronological Timeline#

Section 2: Geography & Environment#

Physical Geography#

The Movement's geography is the planet's: nineteen million square kilometres of gardenland and everything else.

The two worlds#

The protected Wilds. The Movement did not make these, and defends every one: the Corran Wild (181,000 km², Highcairn and Corrandale, the largest in the Crown, whose boundary the Bill would make permanent), the Lowfen Reedlands Reserve (22,000 km²), the Ashcombe Steppe Commons (96,000 km²), the Saltreach Flats (4,100 km², a tidehound breeding ground) and the Duskwood Park (38 km², fenced, in Aletheia itself) in the Crown (the Crown almanac); the Whitefell Wild (210,000 km²) in Ormsby and the Inner Meres (18,000 km²) in Sallow (the Lesser Crowns almanac); the Duskwood Keeping (410,000 km²) and the Irrin Slopes (38,000 km²) in Ilyr (the Ilyr almanac); the Northreach Reserve (about 400,000 km²) in the Imperium (the Vardane almanac). About 1.4 million km² in all: less than a tenth of the gardenland, and the Movement's whole map.

The Hedge and the Creep#

• The Hedge is "the boundary between gardenland and Wild" (the Introduction): a live front, and on the frontier a burnt and patrolled strip. Hedge work, "clearing, burning and re-seeding the boundary", is a trade (the Introduction). The Movement's Wild Watches do Hedge work too, on the other side of the argument: they clear nothing, and they count.
• The Creep is the capital farmers' word for the Wild growing back: "Native plants photosynthesise in Hyperion's deep red light", "the native Wild keeps growing through the night, while Earth fields merely rest", and "As Hyperion brightens, the Wild's advantage grows" (the Introduction). "The Living Worlds Movement calls it the planet reasserting itself."
• Earth grasses invade the margins of the Wild, and the Movement "treats this as a harm to the native Wild" (the Introduction). It is the one point on which the Movement and the Charter Party agree that something is spreading where it should not, and disagree about which.

"Climate"#

The Movement's weather is the spine's table.

• "About 20% brighter within one lifetime" (the spine). "Old people remember dimmer red nights. This is real, not nostalgia."
• The seas: "rising about 0.3 m per century now and accelerating" (the spine); about 0.35 m and 0.4 °C since AL 2200 (the Crown almanac). The Long Gate closes about 40 times a year (the Crown almanac). The Tidewards flood at every double spring (Chapter III).
• The Movement's reading of it: the retreat inland from the lowest steps, which the capital calls "prudence", is "the first evacuation" (Chapter I).
• What no one has: experience. "No human has ever lived through a hot era" (the spine). The last peak was about AL −665; the next is centred on AL 2539, 225 years away.

Life and Resources#

Section 3: History & Chronology#

Before the name (2204–2268)#

The Long Gate went across the Thess estuary in 2204 (the Crown almanac), and every year since it has closed more often. The people who noticed first lived below it, in the Tidewards, where the double springs came up the streets. The people who could say why lived at Hollin, where the sediment cores from Aumer (the Ilyr almanac) said what the Stair already showed: warm eras raise the seas, and one was coming. The Cantorate said the Father's Return would be "a time of plenty" (the Introduction). A wing of it began to say otherwise: the Stewardship school, for whom the Return is "a judgement, not a gift" (Chapter V).

Two Living Worlds (2268–2279)#

In 2268 Dilys Uche, a Hollin naturalist, published Two Living Worlds, and in Thaw of that year 340 people met in a hired grain hall above Corran Mouth: naturalists, Stewards, Tidewards ward councillors, a few Hedge-hands from the Corran, and the first Fellows. The Corran Convention founded the Movement and has met every Thaw since. Its first act was the Wild Watch at the Corran (2270), under Zofia Gunnarsson: a hut on the Hedge and a register of everything that crossed it, in either direction. Its second was the Charter of the Convention (2273), with the Three Asks: protect the Wild; limit the Seeding; prepare for the hot era. The Asks have not changed.

The war and the Lean Years (2279–2291)#

The Corridor War was fought over phosphate (the Introduction), which is the Seeding's debt, and the Convention declared for neither side; its Wild Watches served on the fire lines in the charter-country, where the war and the ember season met. Then came the Lean Years (2285–2290), the famine that "made the frontier briefly rich" (the Southern Holds almanac) and the capital hungry. Nobody votes for seeding limits in a famine, and the Movement learned it: its membership fell by half, and the Convention of 2288 sat with 90 delegates.

The Tideward League (2291–2306)#

The Armistice let the Movement do what the war had not: stand for election. The Tideward League was founded in 2291 by Amadou Marrable, a Tidewards ward councillor, as the Movement's party in the Crown, and named for the district where the floods are felt first. Four seats in 2296; eleven in 2301, the year the Assembly's Science Council sat the Brightening Commission (the Assembly almanac) with three of the Movement's Fellows on it; twenty-seven in 2306.

The same years gave the Movement the fire it would be blamed for. In 2299 a faction of the Wild Watches asked the Convention to pledge itself to "direct defence of the Wild", which meant sabotage, and lost, 310 votes to 95. The losers left, and in 2304 burned a Seedwright camp at Wendford the night before the Charter Court was to license its conversion. The Court, whose docket runs two years behind (the Crown almanac), granted a continuance, its word for an adjournment, and the burners took the word for a name: the Continuance Circle. In 2306 they burned the rebuilt works, and three people died: two works-hands, Leopold Greenhalgh and Joaquin Sørlie, and one of the Circle's own, Jorunn Salazar. The Crown outlawed the Circle. The Convention of 2306 disowned it, 870 votes to 61, in the words the register gives the Movement: "Coercion and attacks on civilians do not speak for this movement." The Circle's answer is the register's too: "Moderation protects the people causing destruction."

The Report and the Bill (2311–2314)#

The Brightening Report (2311) put "Hyperion's heat, in numbers the whole planet must now argue about" (the Assembly almanac), and the Crown argued: the Tideward League won 52 seats that year, "the fastest-growing party" (the Crown almanac). In 2313 its leader, Wystan Mwangi, moved the Seeding Limits Bill with a group of Charter Party dissidents from the Corran Reaches: the Corran Wild's boundary made permanent, and net new seeding in the Crown capped. It is "the Living Worlds Movement's central demand and the Charter Party's most divisive question" (the Crown almanac). Its second reading falls in Reaping 2314, and nobody knows the numbers (Part 2).

Historical Rulers & Leaders#

Convenors of the Living Worlds Convention (complete)#

13 Convenors since the Corran Convention of 2268. The Convention elects the Convenor for three years, once re-electable; the founder held the first two terms. (All proposal. Generated from a fixed seed with mixed name pools, each name checked against every earlier file; see the naming principles.) The current Convenor is in bold.

Leaders of the Tideward League in the Hall of Voices (complete)#

3 leaders since the Tideward League's founding in 2291. (All proposal.)

Figures every Worlder knows#

Section 4: Demographics & Society#

Population Metrics#

The three wings#

Who the Worlders are#

Language#

• Hallspeech in the Hall; Landspeech at the Convention; Southspeech at the Wild Watches on the frontier.
• The Movement's words: Worlder; Wild Watch (a local group, and its hut); the Asks; Steward (Chapter V's noun, borrowed); the Creep (the farmers' word, used without shame); the first evacuation (Chapter I); "Which world?" "Both."; "Lower every year"; a continuance (the Circle, never named).

Religion & Belief Systems#

The Movement is secular in form and mostly Steward in fact. The Stewardship school teaches that the Return "is a judgement, not a gift" and is "Allied in practice with the Living Worlds Movement" (Chapter V); the Movement's Convention opens with a Steward's reading and a Plain Reckoner's figures, in that order, by a rule of 2273. The Literalist majority of the Cantorate holds that the Return is "a time of plenty" (the Introduction), and the Seeding a duty (the Lesser Crowns almanac). The Wolf Rite "does not believe in the Return" (Chapter V) and expects the world to burn "to its roots, as the emberscrub does, and grow again" (Chapter IV), which is the Movement's argument in another accent. The Ashward expect the end and dig for it (the Southern Holds almanac); the Movement wants nothing to do with them, and is accused of them anyway.

Public Health#

Education#