The High Ledger is the public-records, contracts, writ, and civic-paperwork layer of Immortal Realm. It is not flavor. It is not a guild rebrand. It is the institutional backbone the shard's economy, bounty system, and civic justice all plug into.
This guide covers what the Ledger does, how to join, how the ranks work, and how non-members interact with it.
What the High Ledger Is
The Ledger is one of the shard's institutional Orders. Its concrete functions:
- Public records. Attestations, witnessed events, public-facing notices. The Ledger maintains durable records that other players and institutions can reference.
- Player contracts. Two players can file a binding contract through the Ledger — terms, signatures, witnesses, resolution. The contract is a real game object, not a roleplay handshake.
- Crown Writs. The official-realm bounty branch. Crown Writs are issued by the Ledger as part of the broader bounty hunting system; they carry official authority distinct from player-issued bounties.
- Civic Justice integration. Parole deeds, bail contracts, and the shard's prison/release flow all run through Ledger paperwork.
- Cross-Order interoperability. Witness+ Ledger members can target an Expedition Charter and stamp a rank-tiered timer extension on it: +5 minutes at Witness or Arbiter, +10 at Chancellor, +15 at Proctor or above. The buff persists on the charter item, so the Ledger member can prepare it in advance and the charter can be traded or used later. The Ledger isn't a paperwork hub for other Orders' rosters, but its civic instruments plug into them.
The single best framing: the Ledger is what makes the shard's institutions feel real. Without it, civic systems would be private state inside each Order. With it, they're public records anyone can read.
How to Join
The Ledger Hall is in Britain (Trammel, around 1476, 1645). Speak to Keeper Marcellus Vane — the Keeper of the High Ledger — and choose to begin joining. A multi-page induction gump opens that walks you through the Code of the Ledger, the Order's binding rules. Accepting registers you with OrderRegistry.JoinPlayer as a Clerk (rank 1).
The only joining gate is whether you're already in another Order — OrderRegistry enforces single-order membership, so you have to leave any other Order first. There is no civic-record screening; players with active Crown Writs against them aren't blocked from joining the Ledger.
Members can open the Order's interface any time with [ledger (registered as AccessLevel.Player).
Ranks
The Ledger uses a seven-tier ladder. All six promotion paths are wired — every rank above Clerk has a defined service-point threshold, and the upper ranks add witnessing-breadth gates and minimum-hold-time gates on top.
| # | Rank | Gates |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Clerk | Entry rank on joining. Routine filings, basic contracts, lookups. |
| 2 | Recorder | 20 service points + Clerk exam pass. 24-hour retake cooldown on a failed exam. |
| 3 | Witness | 60 service points + 5 clean witnessings + Recorder exam. |
| 4 | Arbiter | 180 service points + 15 clean witnessings + 8 distinct counterparties witnessed + Royal Magistrate exam (24h retake cooldown on fail). First rank that issues authority — every prior rank was a clerk, filer, or co-signer. |
| 5 | Chancellor | 360 service points + 25 clean witnessings + 14 distinct counterparties + 7-day minimum hold at Arbiter. |
| 6 | Proctor | 720 service points + 40 clean witnessings + 22 distinct counterparties + 14-day minimum hold at Chancellor. |
| 7 | High Registrar | 1,440 service points + 60 clean witnessings + 32 distinct counterparties + 30-day minimum hold at Proctor. Non-singular — multiple players can hold the rank simultaneously. |
Service points come from a small set of public-facing Ledger activities, with daily caps to prevent grinding:
| Activity | Points | Cap |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger lookup (researching the public record) | 1 | 10/day |
| Attestation filed | 2 | (subject to 200/day overall) |
| Contract witnessed | 3 | (subject to 200/day overall) |
Daily total cap is 200 service points/day with a 20 filings/day ceiling on top. The minimum-hold-time gates above Arbiter mean reaching High Registrar takes about 51 days of held-rank time at minimum (7+14+30) on top of the cumulative point grind.
Like the College, advancement is service-driven rather than skill-grind-driven. A new Clerk who works steadily can reach Recorder in a session; the High Registrar capstone represents months of consistent civic engagement plus held-rank time.
Public Records
The Ledger's most distinctive output is the Public Records Wall at the Hall. Mechanics:
- It's a placed Item — double-click within 3 tiles to open the Public Contracts Viewer.
- Anyone alive can view; reading is free, public, and requires no membership.
- The wall surfaces filed contracts (open and closed) with their state — Pending / Active / Fulfilled / Refused / Expired — title, parties, witness, and resolution.
- Civic attestations are immutable once filed. Per the Code's first point, an attestation cannot be altered, withdrawn, or deleted — the only correction is a new attestation that narratively supersedes the old one.
The Wall produces a continuous public history of the shard's contract activity. Crown Writs surface on the parallel Bounty Board (/bounties) rather than on the contracts wall — the two surfaces are separate views of two separate record sets.
Contracts and Filings
Two players can file a binding contract through the Ledger. The flow:
- Both parties travel to the Hall. The counterparty must be a player, in-world, alive, and not the initiator (the Code forbids self-naming a record).
- A witness must be in range. Either a Recorder+ Ledger member (rank 2 or higher) or the fallback NPC Velgar Thorn must be within 4 tiles of the Filing Desk when the gump opens. Clerks (rank 1) can't witness.
- Initiator double-clicks the Contract Filing Desk within 2 tiles, then targets the counterparty. The Filing Gump opens.
- Initiator fills in the contract — Title (≤ 60 chars), Terms (≤ 500 chars), expiration (1-30 days), and selects the witness from the qualifying list.
- Filing fee withdrawn from the initiator's bank: 500 gold with a player witness, 1,500 gold with the fallback NPC.
- Pending → Active. The counterparty has 7 days to sign or refuse. If they refuse, the initiator gets 50% of the fee back. If they don't act in 7 days, it auto-Refuses.
- Both parties mark fulfilled. Each party marks fulfilled separately; the contract closes only when both have done so. The witness (if a Ledger member, not Velgar) gets a "clean witnessing" credited to their record at close.
Filing limits cap volume: 5 contracts/day per initiator, 3 pending per counterparty, 60-minute cooldown between filings against the same counterparty. The Ledger doesn't enforce contracts by force; it enforces by public recordkeeping — broken contracts publicly damage civic standing in ways that compound across the wall.
Crown Writs
The Crown Writ branch is the Ledger's bounty-hunting authority. Crown Writs are official-realm bounties posted by Ledger members against pre-approved NPC targets, carrying:
- A target — pre-approved NPC types in the system's catalog.
- Official Crown branding distinct from Player Writs.
- A realm-paid PvP Token reward (no gold escrow; the bounty system pays in PvP Tokens).
- A 150-minute board term (
CrownWritTermMinutes).
Hunters claim Crown Writs the same way they claim Player Writs — using a Hunter's Warrant at the Board of Writs — but the Crown branch has its own ranking ladder and its own slot on the public board.
The Ledger member must be Recorder+ (rank 2+) to craft and post Crown Writs via the Civic Authority gump. Arbiter+ (rank 4+) can additionally take a player-filed Player Writ and promote it to officialized status — the writ keeps Branch = Player (so Velvet Hand disruption still applies), but it gains Crown branding and a token reward boost based on the Arbiter's tier.
Full mechanics for the bounty system are in Immortal Realm Bounty Hunting. The web-side board is at /bounties.
Parole, Bail, and Civic Justice
When a player is imprisoned through the bounty system, the Ledger crafts the instruments that can release them. Both are items, not on-the-spot NPC paperwork:
- Bail Contract. Crafted by a Recorder+ Ledger member at the Civic Authority gump. Reduces the prisoner's remaining sentence by a rank-tiered amount: 5 minutes (Recorder/Witness), 10 minutes (Arbiter), 15 minutes (Chancellor/Proctor/High Registrar — full release from a standard 15-minute sentence). The deed is consumed on use. The bail-poster pays nothing in gold and takes no civic-standing hit if the released prisoner reoffends — the deed is a sentence-reduction instrument, not a behavioral bond.
- Parole Deed. Crafted by a Witness+ Ledger member. Releases the prisoner immediately and extends their post-release writ-protection window beyond the default 45 minutes — to 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 minutes by crafter rank (Arbiter / Chancellor / Proctor / High Registrar; Witness's parole gives the same 45 minutes as natural release). No conditions are attached — there are no travel restrictions, activity bans, check-in cadences, or companion limits. The deed releases with extended protection, full stop.
- Delivery for both. The prisoner can use the deed on themselves inside the prison, OR someone can deliver it within 3 tiles of any Warden NPC and pick the prisoner from a list.
- Surrender is a separate Bounty-system action, not a Ledger filing. A player with an active writ on their head can yield to the Warden directly, accepting a 15-minute prison stint instead of fighting the hunter through. This pays the placer 2 PvP Tokens and the hunter (if there's an active claim) 1 PvP Token, then discharges the writ. No Ledger paperwork involved.
This is the Civic Justice layer — the mechanic that turns "you got killed and looted" into a structured civic event with paperwork, witnesses, and consequences beyond a single PvP encounter. The Ledger's role is supplying the instruments; the Bounty system's Warden delivers the outcomes.
Why the Ledger Matters to the Economy
A working public-records system changes how the player economy works:
- Crafter commissions can be filed as contracts. The buyer drafts terms (≤500 chars), the crafter signs, both mark fulfilled on delivery. If the crafter flakes, the contract closes as Refused or Expired on the public wall. This makes high-trust commissions viable across players who don't already know each other.
- Gold loans become possible at scale. A loan filed as a Ledger contract is enforceable through civic standing, not just personal trust — defaulting publicly leaves a record on the wall that compounds across future contract filings.
- Multi-party agreements that don't fit a quick trade or auction listing — joint ventures, gear leases, escrow-by-witness arrangements — get a paper trail.
The economy operates more like a real one when you have public records and contracts available as primitives.
How Non-Members Interact
You don't have to be a Ledger member to use it.
- Read the Public Records Wall. Walk up to the wall in the Hall, double-click within 3 tiles, view the Public Contracts Viewer.
- File a contract. Anyone can initiate at the Filing Desk. The witness has to be a Recorder+ Ledger member or Velgar Thorn (the fallback NPC), but the parties don't have to be members.
- Claim a Crown Writ. Open to any qualified hunter (Hunter's Warrant in pack), regardless of Order membership.
- Use a Bail Contract or Parole Deed. Anyone can use one — but the deed has to come from a Recorder+ (Bail) or Witness+ (Parole) Ledger member. Non-members acquire deeds by working with members, not by walking into the Hall.
- Receive an attestation. A Ledger member can file a Civic attestation about you (positive or negative); body capped at 200 chars and immutable once filed.
The Ledger services the shard. Membership is for the people who want to run the institution; the service surface is available to everyone.
Where to Read Next
For the bounty system the Ledger backstops, see Immortal Realm Bounty Hunting. For the broader Order layer (Chirurgeons, Velvet Hand, Ledger together), see Immortal Realm Custom Systems. For the economy that the Ledger's contracts and records support, see Immortal Realm Economy. The download page is the on-ramp when you're ready.
