Memory, History, Relationships, and Legacy

LWE does not treat every kind of past as the same thing.

That is intentional.

A world becomes much easier to maintain when you separate what objectively happened, what somebody remembers, how people currently relate, and what the past changed long-term.

Objective history

Use Scene Log, Campaign Ledger, Chronicle, and Event for objective occurrence.

Storybook keeps recent scene history bounded and promotes completed material into larger archival structure. You generally do not hand-maintain the archive every turn.

Create or promote an Event when an occurrence deserves its own durable identity beyond ordinary scene history.

Examples:

• a ruler was assassinated
• a treaty was signed
• a city fell
• a magical catastrophe occurred
• the first public appearance of a new species changed the world

Objective history is evidence of what happened.

It is not what every Character knows.

Subjective memory

Use Living Memory when one Character needs a durable personal past.

Memory may contain:

• what they remember
• what they misunderstood
• what they still do not know
• emotional reinforcement
• secrets
• gaps
• changed interpretation over time

A Character can sincerely remember something incorrectly.

Do not “correct” subjective memory simply because objective history exists elsewhere. Reconciliation should preserve the difference between evidence and belief.

Relationship truth

Use Relationship Profile for the current pair dynamic.

It answers what each side currently feels, trusts, fears, resents, expects, or owes.

Use Relationship Thread only when the relationship itself has become an independently important story structure with key scenes, absence state, and a meaningful arc.

This separation prevents relationship history from swallowing the Character record.

Place memory

Use Location Memory when past events leave durable scars, customs, rumors, rebuilding, monuments, laws, hauntings, or atmosphere on a place.

The event says:

The bridge collapsed during the uprising.

The Location Memory says:

Every year the district closes the river road on the anniversary, and older residents still call the replacement bridge “the second crossing.”

That is a world remembering.

Reputation

Use Public Reputation for audience perception.

Reputation is always contextual.

The same Character may be:

• a hero to one city
• a criminal to another
• irrelevant to most of the world
• distrusted by a specific guild
• beloved by a fandom
• feared by witnesses who saw something others did not

Do not turn every action into global reputation.

Ask who could know, who would care, and through what channel the information reached them.

Long history and inheritance

For long campaigns, LWE can keep meaning across generations and eras.

Era defines a meaningful historical phase.
Legacy tracks consequences that outlive the originating event.
Historical Burden tracks unresolved inherited weight.
Inherited World captures a present shaped by previous history.
Descendant Line tracks meaningful lineage.
Successor Hook marks a possible inheritance, mantle, burden, promise, office, or role.
Successor Record tracks the realized successor.

These systems are not mandatory.

They exist so a five-year political campaign, immortal-character saga, dynasty game, or multi-era world does not have to flatten everything into a single lore page.

Promotion should be earned

The engine should generally move information upward only when it needs stronger persistence.

An incidental detail can remain incidental.

A choice-relevant scene fact may need short continuity.

A recurring memory may become Living Memory.

A relationship may earn a Profile.

An objective historical occurrence may earn an Event.

A consequence that survives the people who caused it may earn Legacy.

Do not create prestige records because their names sound important.

Let the world earn its history.

That keeps memory useful, retrieval bounded, and every surviving record worth opening.