The Definitive Country Almanac: The Homeworld Assembly — Part 1#

Kethra Almanac • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 18 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 name Homeworld Assembly, approved by Briana; the Assembly and the Crown factions live on Kethra (the spine's canon table). "The planetary union … founded AL 2150. Its name declares Kethra the new homeworld." (The spine.) "A loose union of … states, seated in Aletheia. Monitors the fuel clauses of the Armistice. True unification comes later (era 3)." (The Who's Who.)
  • The Charter of Aletheia, AL 2150, "after the Iron Winter showed the planet what uncoordinated war machines could do". Its seat is Aletheia. Members include the Crown, the Imperium, the Sanctum, the Line free ports and the Holds Compact (admitted 2290); Vesper and the Coalition hold associate seats ("they can speak, and vote only on space affairs. Their status is disputed"). Its organs: the Assembly Floor ("One delegation per member state. Most decisions are by weighted majority; the Accords require unanimity"); the Accord Council ("Seven permanent seats, the largest states and the space members, plus four seats that rotate"); the Speaker ("Elected for six years. Presides, represents the planet, and has no army"); Homeguard Command ("A joint defence command built from national contingents. Its mandate is planetary defence and enforcing the Accords. Its commander, the Warden-General, rotates among member states every four years"); the Accord Inspectorate ("Inspects frame factories, heavy broadcasters and gene clinics. It is the Assembly's most hated and most necessary body"); and Accord Tribunals, "Assembly courts for breaches of the Accords", staffed from member states. (Chapter II.)
  • The three Assembly Accords, which "bind every member state": the Quiet Sky Accord (2150), the Frame Accord (2150, "No frame without a hand") and the Mending Accord (2163). (Chapter II.)
  • The Assembly Precinct on Step 6 of Aletheia: "the Floor, the Accord Council, embassies, and Homeguard Command's headquarters" (Chapter III). Hallspeech is spoken in the Assembly (Chapter IV). The Assembly seal is "the open door, crossed out": the Long Door closed for ever, the Oath of the Unmapped (Chapter IV). Assembly Day, 19 Blaze, is "an official holiday, and not much celebrated"; Landfall Day is "the national day of every Assembly state" (Chapter V). The Assembly Clearing House "settles trade between the member states" (Chapter VI), and "the crown is the settlement currency" (the Crown almanac).
  • The members' own accounts: the Crown is founding member, host and permanent Accord Council seat, and "pooled part of its sovereignty in the Assembly after the Iron Winter"; the Imperium joined in 2150 and accepted the Frame Accord, holds a permanent Council seat, and calls its accession "the only external law the Articles recognise"; Ilyr co-authored the Frame and Quiet Sky Accords and supervises Mending therapies; the seven Lesser Crowns and the three coast states are founding members; the twelve Line free ports hold one seat; the Holds Compact was admitted in 2290, "when the north needed its grain", after the Long Knock; the Rovessa are an observer, with the Deck Law recognised in 2152 and a rescue fund; the Coalition wants a full seat "which the planets have never granted"; the League has no seat and sends a Lamp Letter every year; the Assembly has asked for Vesper's relays in an emergency since 2150 and been refused. (The Crown, Vardane, Ilyr, Lesser Crowns, coast states, Line, Southern Holds, Rovessa, Coalition, League and Vesper almanacs.)
  • The Assembly Games, every four years since 2152, hosted in turn; the Imperium's boycott of 2280–2288 (the Crown and Vardane almanacs). The Assembly Fuel Monitors "certify deliveries; they have no mandate over people" (the Kronos colony almanac). Deepwell, chartered by the Assembly in 2166 (the Ilyr almanac). The Armistice Commission sits at Saltline (the Line almanac). Ansel Harrow of the Iron Winter, "the pilot who led the first mixed-nation frame company into the corridor provinces", revered by "the military; the Assembly" (Chapter IV).
  • From the register: its objective is to keep civilian government functioning while defending the homeworld; its fear is occupation or emergency powers becoming permanent military government; its leverage is public mandate, diplomatic legitimacy and civilian mobilisation; its split is that survival advocates accept costly foreign help, while constitutionalists fear the price. Its positions towards Homeguard Command and the Cinderbelt Coalition, and theirs towards it, are used throughout. The register describes the Assembly in a later war, the defence of the homeworld; the character it describes is already visible in AL 2314.
• Proposal: everything else. It is built on the spine, Chapters II–VI, the Who's Who and the members' almanacs. The number of member states is 15, which is what those almanacs seat between them (an earlier draft of the chapters said 23; it has been corrected).

Reading note. The Assembly is not a government. It is fifteen governments in one round room, bound by three laws they will not break and very little else. It was made by a disaster, it failed its first war, and it is still the only place on Kethra where everyone sits down. Every Assembly place named here is on the interactive Atlas. The full list is the generated Register of the Homeworld Assembly.

Section 1: National Overview & Identity#

Official Name & Etymology#

• Formal name: The Homeworld Assembly of the States of Kethra, as the Charter of Aletheia titles it.
• Short name: the Assembly; in the Round, the Floor.
• People: it has none. Its staff are Precinct people; its delegates are the Floor; its inspectors are the Hand (from the Frame Accord's words).

Where the name comes from. The Charter's first article says that Kethra is the homeworld of humanity, here and nowhere else. The name was the point. In 2150 the planet had just watched machines built for a war on Oreth kill 1.3 million people (Chapter IV), and the Founders' warning of "the Dark that listens" was on every mind. Calling the union the Homeworld Assembly told the songs' green world that it was not coming back for it, and told the Dark, whatever it was, that no one here was looking. The Oath of the Unmapped became planetary law that day, as the Quiet Sky Accord.

What others call it:

The Speaker's opening, at every sitting: "The Door is closed. The Floor is open." The Door is the Long Door of the songs, closed for ever (Chapter IV); the Floor is whatever comes next.

National Symbols#

The State Profile#

Chronological Timeline#

Section 2: Geography & Environment#

Physical Geography#

The Assembly holds no land. It holds a precinct, a memorial, and its members' promises.

The Precinct#

"Climate"#

The Assembly's weather is Aletheia's (the Crown almanac). Its seasons are the Floor's: the sitting from Sowing to Kindling, and the recess through the red nights, when the delegations go home and the Inspectorate does not.

Life and Resources#

Section 3: History & Chronology#

The Iron Winter and the Conference (2141–2150)#

For five winters Vardane defence machines, their control network broken, killed anything that moved in the corridor provinces (Chapter IV). Piloted frames from every nation destroyed them; Ansel Harrow of the Crown's Frame Corps led the first mixed-nation company (the Crown almanac). When the last machine was cut down on the field outside Tolvard in 2146, the pilots of five flags stood in the same wreckage, and the Crown called them and their governments to Aletheia.

The Aletheia Conference sat for three years. It agreed three things: that no machine would ever again kill without a human hand; that the Oath of the Unmapped would be law, not custom; and that the states of Kethra would sit together, somewhere, for ever. It could not agree on anything else, and the Charter of Aletheia is the record of that.

The Charter (2150)#

On 19 Blaze 2150 fourteen states signed: the Crown, the Imperium, the Sanctum, the seven Lesser Crowns, the three coast states and the Line free ports. Vesper and the Coalition were given associate seats, because they were not states and nobody could say what they were. The Rovessa took an observer's chair, because they had no land. The Holds were turned away: "they were not a state, the Crown and the Imperium said" (the Southern Holds almanac), and the Long Knock began.

The Imperium signed because the Frame Accord was aimed at it, and it preferred to sign than to be inspected as an enemy. It kept the first Day of the Hand that year (the Vardane almanac), and has kept the Accords faithfully ever since, while recognising nothing else the Assembly does.

The Accords at work (2150–2233)#

The Assembly's first century was the Inspectorate's. The Sethe drones case (2171) settled what a hand was: an Imperial corridor company had armed its mining drones against raiders, and the first Accord Tribunal ruled them frames without one. The Marrach broadcaster (2205) settled what the Quiet Sky forbade: a merchant house had built a transmitter to reach its haulers in the belt, and pointed it, for a season, at the stars. The Mending Accord (2163) gave Ilyr the supervision of every therapy on Kethra, and Ilyr has never let go of it (the Ilyr almanac).

Everything else the Assembly tried in those years, it deferred. The Accord Council's first belt question, Castellan Rock in 2188, was deferred. The Coalition's request for a full seat was deferred. The Holds knocked every year, and every year the Floor deferred.

The Fever and the First Dark (2233–2251)#

Vesper Fever killed 40,000 in orbit (Chapter I) and shut the docks; the Assembly's Fever Convention (2237) let a port close to orbit without breaching the Clearing House rules, which is the most the Assembly has ever done about a plague. When the Lanterns went dark in 2247, the Floor declined to hear them: a dues dispute inside the Vesper Compact, it ruled, and the Coalition, not the Assembly, made the peace (the League almanac).

The war the Charter could not stop (2279–2291)#

The Charter has no article against war between members, because in 2150 no one would sign one. When the Imperium moved on the Line corridors in 2279 (the Crown almanac), the Assembly discovered this. In 2280 the Imperium withdrew its delegation from the Floor, the Empty Chairs, and kept the Accords, which the Articles recognise; the Inspectorate went on checking sockets on both fronts for twelve years, and no one on either side ever refused it. Speaker Matteo Ibsen of Cordale made the Eleven Attempts between 2282 and 2288, eleven proposals for a truce, each refused by one side or the other; his memoir of that name is the Assembly's most read book. Homeguard stood aside. Its Warden-Generals were Lesser Crowns officers, some of whose states were sending frames to the Crown (the Lesser Crowns almanac), and the Charter gave them no orders to give. When the Imperium took Hearthport in 2284, Homeguard did nothing, and the belt has remembered it.

The Assembly's one act of the war was the Grain Convoys of the Lean Years: the Rovessa Grain Flag carried Holds grain north (the Crown almanac), and Homeguard escorted it from 2287. The price was the Holds' admission in 2290, "when the north needed its grain" (the Southern Holds almanac). The Long Knock ended because the north was hungry.

The Armistice and after (2291–2314)#

The Armistice of Saltline was signed on the Rovessa's Captains' Table, "the only neutral ground left" (the Line almanac), and the Assembly wrote the part of it that anyone still reads: the fuel clauses, under which the Imperium keeps the Kronos moons and delivers fuel at a fixed price through Vesper, with Fuel Monitors to certify it (chapter 11). The Armistice Commission sits at Saltline. The Monitors "have no mandate over people" (the Kronos colony almanac), and the Cold Strike of 2296 showed what that meant; the Floor's motion to widen their mandate failed, because the Imperium's weight and the Crown's fuel were on the same side.

Since then the Assembly has sat, deferred and inspected. The Brightening Report (2311) put Hyperion's heat into numbers the whole planet must argue about. The Lamp Letter is tabled every year. And in 2313 Warden-General Zeno Nordqvist asked the Floor for something the Assembly has never had: the Requisition Bill, a standing power to requisition production and docks in an emergency (Part 2). The Coalition's answer is the register's: "emergency requisitions may turn an equal partner into an administered dependency."

Historical Rulers & Leaders#

Speakers of the Assembly (complete)#

28 Speakers since the Charter. The Floor elects the Speaker for six years (Chapter II), and no Speaker serves twice. By the small-state convention of 2156, no Speaker has come from the Crown or the Imperium since the first. (All proposal. Generated from a fixed seed with mixed name pools; see the naming principles.) The current Speaker is in bold.

Warden-Generals of Homeguard Command (complete)#

42 Warden-Generals since 2150. The office "rotates among member states every four years" (Chapter II), in the order of the Charter's signatures; the Holds Compact enters the rotation after the Line ports. The first was Ansel Harrow of the Iron Winter (Chapter IV). The current Warden-General is in bold; his successor takes office on Assembly Day 2314.

Figures every Assembly clerk knows#

Section 4: Demographics & Society#

Population Metrics#

The Assembly has no population. It has members, and a staff.

Working. Weights are shares of the members' 836 million, with no member above 25%. The Imperium (28.5%) and the Crown (25.6%) are capped, and the 4.1% they lose is spread over the rest in proportion. The two great powers together hold exactly half. A weighted majority needs both of them, or one of them and most of the others; that arithmetic is the Assembly's whole politics. The chartered Holds (about 21 million) are represented through the Crown and the Imperium.

The Precinct's people#

Language#

• Hallspeech: "the formal standard: full sentences, careful vowels, capital names for everything, and a heavy use of song-quotation" (Chapter IV). On the Floor, evidence is marked: "by song" is the Canon; "by record" is the Inspectorate's registry; "by the Floor" is a vote.
• Orethi and Archival may be spoken by right, and the Imperial and Ilyr delegations do. Southspeech was admitted in 2290, with dates given in moons, which the clerks convert.
• Assembly cant: to defer (to do nothing, formally); the Door (the Quiet Sky, and the end of an argument: "that's the Door"); the Hand (the Inspectorate); a string vote (the belt's, seven hours late); the Knock (any petition from outside the Round).

Religion & Belief Systems#

The Assembly has no faith and observes all of them. Its staff, by their own declaration:

The Unmapping (3 Thaw) is the Assembly's own day more than any other: the Quiet Sky honoured in silence (Chapter V), and the one day the Round's door is shut.

Public Health#

The Inspectorate's third arm inspects gene clinics under the Mending Accord (Chapter II). The Mending registry holds every licensed therapy on Kethra, and the Founders' Exemption for the Gift. The Fever Convention (2237) is the Assembly's only public-health law.

Education#