The Definitive Country Almanac: The Outer Lantern League — Part 2#

Kethra Almanac • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 18 September 2026 • Sections 5–8 (Sections 1–4 are in Part 1)

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: proposal throughout, except what Part 1 lists as established in earlier files.

Section 5: Government, Law & Politics#

Constitutional Framework#

The five articles of the Covenant#

The second article is why the Imperium calls the Lamps pirate nests and the Coalition's owners call them bolt-holes. It answers the register's fear, "debt and seizures converting frontier settlements into permanent dependants", which is the fear the League was founded on. The fifth article is why Vesper cannot get what it wants: "a negotiator who can bind the League" (the register).

The Council of Lamps#

• The Lamplighter chairs the Council, speaks for it, and signs for it. The Lamplighter's own seat passes to a deputy, and the Lamplighter votes only to break a tie.
• Showing the light. Votes are taken with lamps: each seat shows a lit lamp for yes and a shuttered one for no. Full light means every seat lit.
• What binds. Ordinary business needs a majority. Amending the Covenant needs two-thirds, 30 seats. A treaty binds only the Lamps whose keepers sign it, because of the fifth article.
• Sittings. The Council sits at the Wick at Lampfall, and whenever the Lamplighter calls it. Keepers who cannot come vote by string.

Trimmers and Flints#

Chapter II calls the League a captains' coalition in which "negotiators and militant captains compete for the League's voice". In the League they are called trimmers and flints.

The Binding Question and Lampfall 2314#

• The Binding Articles, first drafted by Lamplighter Sunniva Asante, would let two-thirds of the Council, 30 seats, bind every Lamp to a treaty. They amend the fifth article, so they need 30 seats to pass.
• The count: trimmers 26, flints 18, and Dimlight's keeper, Ilka Callander, undecided. The trimmers need four more: Dimlight, and three flints.
• Why it matters. Vesper wants "a negotiator who can bind the League" (the register). With the Articles, the League could sign the audit deal the register describes. Without them, any deal is only as good as each Lamp's own signature.
• The election. Asante may not stand again. The trimmers' candidate is Colm Nyberg, Keeper of Hob, who says the Articles are the price of repairs. The flints' candidate is Captain Kasimir Sokol (Part 1), who says: "A Lamplighter who can bind us can be bought."
• Dimlight's doubt. Ilka Callander, a great-granddaughter of Hearthport's Warden Dev Callander (the Kronos colony almanac), fears that any treaty would have to name Dimlight, which "the Imperium doesn't officially know about" (chapter 11).

The Lamps (administrative divisions)#

Every Lamp governs itself (the fifth article). Every place below is on the interactive Atlas.

The Rovessa keep a supply berth at the Wick (the Rovessa almanac).

The Judiciary#

• Captains' justice (Chapter II). A dispute at a Lamp is judged by the next captain in: the master of the next hull to berth, sitting with seven keepers drawn by lot. The custom began because the Lanterns had no judges. It survives because no one is judged by a neighbour, or by a neighbour's friend.
• The Bench of Three at the Wick, three captains drawn by lot, hears killings, cases of informing, and appeals.
• Sentences: restitution; putting off the Lamp, which means passage to another Lamp or out of the League; and dousing, expulsion from the League, the worst sentence there is.
• No executions. The Covenant has none.
• Spacing is "a charge against the Lantern League that the League denies" (Chapter V). The Imperium's case is the Kettle informers (2306): three Imperial informers vanished from the Wick. The League says they were put off the Lamp in a lifeboat bound for Castellan Rock. No lifeboat arrived. Nobody has proved it, and nobody has disproved it.
• Chapter II says that in the belt "the 7-hour light delay makes appeals to the capital theoretical". The League has no capital to appeal to.

Foreign Relations & Defence#

Standing#

• No seat anywhere. The Homeworld Assembly treats the League as a dues dispute inside the Vesper Compact. Every Lampfall the Council sends the Assembly a Lamp Letter asking to be heard. Every year it is tabled, and not read.
• The League keeps the Frame Accord, "no frame without a hand" (the spine), and the Quiet Sky Accord: the Light is a local broadcast aimed along the lanes, not out of the system.

Relations#

The first two rows follow the relationship register, in both directions.

The Arrears: two sets of books#

• The way out, in the register's words: "Independent maintenance audits followed by repairs and restored payments." Both sides say yes. Neither has agreed who would be independent.
• The way to make it worse: "Collective punishment or an attack that harms ordinary orbital residents." The League says the Dues Order is collective punishment already. Vesper's fear is a flint attack on a Vesper tender or a Belt Line post.

Defence#

Defence spending: about Cr 1.2 billion a year, about 6.3% of output.

• Frames. Most are old, bought or salvaged, and refitted at Hob. Their pilots often carry black sockets, unlicensed link-implants, which are "common in the belt" (Chapter V). The League keeps the Frame Accord: there is a hand in every frame.
• Doctrine. One dark, all dark. The League cannot defend 31 Lamps one by one. It relies on three things: dispersal, so that no single rock is worth taking; the Dark, the Light withdrawn from anyone who attacks; and the captains' raids. Since 2300 the Dark never includes the hazard light.
• The Seam. League crews raid both the Coalition's and the Imperium's workings (chapter 11). They do not try to hold the Seam; they take metal, which the League calls the Seam take. Some flints claim the Seam by first light, because the Lanterns charted it before anyone mined it.

Section 6: Economy, Infrastructure & Industry#

Macroeconomics#

The register lists the League's leverage as "local navigation, dispersed repair yards and community loyalty". That is also its economy.

Working. 506,000 × Cr 38,000 ≈ Cr 19.2 billion. Cr 1.2 billion ÷ Cr 19.2 billion ≈ 6.3%.

Money: the Lamp Tally#

• No currency of its own, on purpose: nothing that can be owed at interest.
• Trade outside the League is in chits (the Coalition's, about Cr 0.59: the Coalition almanac), crowns and Imperial marks.
• Between Lamps, the Lamp tally. Each Lamp keeps an account of what it has given and received, and the accounts are settled at Lampfall. There is no interest. A debt still unpaid after three Lampfalls is forgiven and remembered: struck from the tally, and written in the debtor Lamp's minutes, where anyone can read it.
• Dimlight smuggles chits into Hearthport, where they are "illegal, and trusted" (the Kronos colony almanac).

The Light#

Infrastructure#

Communications#

• The Glim: the League's news, read over the Light at every change of shift.
• Lamp-talk: short messages passed from Lamp to Lamp on the Light.
• Seven hours to Kethra, as for all the belt (chapter 11). Since 2310, whether a League string reaches Kethra at all is Vesper's decision.
• Vesper hears everything on the Belt Line (chapter 11). League secrets travel by hull.

Section 7: Culture, Arts & Daily Life#

Holidays & Celebrations#

Culinary Traditions#

• Lamp-garden greens, beans and algae; vat protein.
• Moth bread: a flat sweet loaf baked for every newcomer, and eaten with them on their first night.
• Lamp tea: mint grown under the lamps.
• Tally soup at Lampfall, to which every household adds something.
• Kethra food is rarer here than in the Coalition. A Rovessa convoy is a feast.

Arts & Literature#

• Lamp-craft: every household makes its own lantern from scrap. The lantern walls of the Wick hold thousands of them.
• Light-songs: call-and-response songs sung between Lamps over the Light. Leave a Light is one.
• The Rolls: the Spill Roll (187 names) and the Ingle Roll (340 names).
• Literature:
  • The Keepers' Book: Dunya Crane's records, 2242–2271;
  • Moth (2279): the memoir of Ama Okonjo, a runaway from the Bond;
  • Letters of Light (2296): the Lamp Raids, told by the Revoked captain Yaw Ivanek, who died in 2309.

Sports & Recreation#

Social Norms & Etiquette#

• Never ask a moth where they came from. They will tell you when they want to.
• No debt crosses the sill. Don't mention what someone owes elsewhere.
• Never douse a hazard lamp. Not in a Dark, not ever.
• Never call a keeper "lampblack".
• The next captain in judges. If you are the next captain in, you may not refuse.
• Greeting: "Is your lamp lit?" Reply: "Lit, and for you."
• Read the window before you knock.

Section 8: Appendices & Reference Materials#

Statistical Tables#

Working. About 2,500 arrivals a year took the League from 31,000 to 52,000 between 2242 and 2251. Between 2251 and 2291 arrivals averaged about 6,000 a year, some 240,000 people, and with their children the League reached 300,000: about 4.5% growth a year. Arrivals peaked at about 11,000 a year in the 2290s, when the Imperial concession rush drove prospectors off their rocks, and have fallen to about 4,500 today. With the belt's natural growth (Chapter I), that takes 300,000 to 506,000 in 23 years: about 2.3% a year on average, and about 1.1% today.

Gazetteer#

Every place below is on the interactive Atlas. The generated Register of the Outer Lantern League lists them.

Bibliography#

In-world sources#

• The Lantern Covenant (2242) and the Beacon Settlement (2251)
• The Keepers' Book (2242–2271)
• Moth (2279) and Letters of Light (2296)
• The Glim (every shift)
• The Spill Roll and the Ingle Roll
• Minutes of the Council of Lamps, including every year's Lamp Letter to the Assembly

Development sources#

• 00 - Spine and Status · Chapter I · Chapter II · Chapter IV · Chapter V · Chapter VI
• 11 - Kronos and the Cinderbelt and 15 - The Kronos colony
• The Cinderbelt Coalition almanac (the Hollow, scrip, the Long Shift, Yardmaster Yusra Onwu); the Vardane Imperium almanac (the Bond, the concessions, the Belt Marshal, the Roll of Service); the Caldren Crown almanac (the First Voices, Armistice Day); the Rovessa almanac (the High Houses, the Wick berth)
• 10 - Who's Who (the flag)
• The faction roster and the relationship register: the League's objective, fear, leverage and split, its positions towards Vesper and the Rovessa, and theirs towards it
• Almanac structure supplied by Briana.

Guidance for AI actors#

• Keeper, captain or moth; trimmer or flint. Every League character is one of the first three, and leans towards one of the last two.
• Never ask a moth where they came from, and never let a League character collect a debt made somewhere else.
• No one can sign for the whole League unless the Binding Articles pass. A deal with one Lamp is a deal with one Lamp.
• The Wick is known to everyone and admitted by no one. Officials of Vesper, the Coalition and the Imperium don't name it in public, even when everyone in the room knows where it is.
• Spacing is an accusation, not a fact. Don't settle it in a scene.
• Most League people are Cinderborn (Chapter I), and cannot simply go to Kethra.
• Seven hours, and Vesper listening. Belt Line messages are slow, and they are read. Secrets go by hull.
• This almanac is approved. Briana approved the whole almanac on 19 September 2026 (the Almanac Approval Decision).