Character death and archival

Purpose and authority

This policy governs gameplay death, player kills, character kills, voluntary retirement, permanent archival, and the public record of an approved character death. It applies to players requesting or affected by those outcomes and to staff reviewing them.

Ordinary medical death and permanent character archival are separate outcomes. A gameplay result, roleplay scene, staff sanction, or private agreement does not replace the review required for archival.

The roleplay charter governs scene conduct and the use of in-character knowledge. The community-safety policy governs consent and sensitive content. The sanctions-and-appeals policy governs formal moderation. This policy does not turn an in-character consequence into an out-of-character punishment.

Definitions

A gameplay death is the server’s dead state and hospital recovery flow. It creates medical and scene consequences but does not decide whether the character ends permanently.

A player kill (PK) is the default outcome of a gameplay death. It ends the dead character’s participation in the immediate scene. The character remains active and playable.

A character kill (CK) permanently ends a character as deceased after private review, Management approval, and final archival.

Archival is the irreversible step that makes a character unselectable while preserving the character’s identity and history.

Voluntary retirement is owner-requested archival without an in-character death. Retirement is private and is not a CK.

A memorial is the limited public record created for an archived CK. It is not a public case file.

PK and the new-life boundary

A gameplay death is a PK unless an approved CK case is completed. Accepting death, using hospital recovery, leaving a corpse, losing a fight, being murdered, or receiving a staff sanction does not by itself create a CK.

After a PK, the dead character must not:

• return to or rejoin the immediate scene while it continues;
• retaliate for the death or direct another person to retaliate using knowledge from the death outcome;
• use the death, corpse, hospital result, or out-of-character evidence to learn an attacker’s identity or other facts the character did not independently know; or
• treat the PK as erasing durable in-character records or consequences.

Knowledge established independently of the death remains available. The PK does not erase property, debt, criminal or civil records, relationships, item history, injuries, or other durable state. Surviving witnesses and later investigation may still create in-character consequences, but the dead character may not feed them prohibited death-scene knowledge.

CK requests and review

A player may ask for CK review through the private archival route. An involved party or staff member may also ask Management to review a sustained narrative outcome. A request changes no game state and does not prove that a CK is justified.

A fight, gameplay death, written narration, player vote, threat, or casual out-of-character agreement cannot impose a CK. Management must find that the outcome has a credible roleplay basis, complies with the roleplay and safety policies, respects consent where those policies require it, and is not being used to punish a player, settle an ordinary dispute, erase obligations, or transfer value to another character.

The character owner receives private notice of an approved CK and a 24-hour hold before archival. During that period the owner may:

• cancel the case before final archival;
• request one reconsideration, which suspends archival until a different Management reviewer decides it; or
• waive the remaining hold so an approved CK may proceed sooner.

No response is not consent. It allows an otherwise valid approval to become executable when the hold ends, but the owner may still cancel before final archival. An upheld reconsideration may proceed without another hold. An overturned, declined, revoked, expired, or cancelled case changes no character state.

Final archival is performed separately against the exact offline character. An approved case that has not reached that step is not a completed CK. Once archival commits, there is no ordinary reversal or second reconsideration. A proven technical or data error may be reviewed privately, but no player or staff command can reactivate the character.

Voluntary retirement

Only the character owner may request voluntary retirement. It is staff-assisted because active responsibilities and unresolved transactions must be settled before the character can be archived. The owner may cancel until final archival.

Retirement is permanent, but it is not an in-character death. It creates no public deceased status and no memorial. Players may choose an appropriate in-character departure, but the server does not publish the retirement reason or require other characters to know it.

Retirement cannot be used to escape an active medical state, wanted status, world-facing obligation, unresolved transaction, or reviewed consequence. Those states must be resolved through their normal game systems first.

Consequences of archival

CK and retirement use the same irreversible archival boundary. After archival:

• the character cannot be selected, played, renamed, or reactivated;
• one active character slot becomes available on the account;
• the archived name remains permanently reserved;
• account-wide progression remains unchanged; and
• the archived character’s records and authored history remain attributable to that identity.

World-facing ownership, access, leadership, active work, custody, debts, and unresolved transactions must be disposed of through their normal systems before archival. Archival itself does not sell, transfer, forgive, refund, liquidate, or confiscate them.

Personal cash, bank funds, clothing, held items, phone state, documents, photos, notes, and similar character-bound state remain frozen on the archived character. They do not pass to another character or account. There is no inheritance, replacement-character transfer, automatic refund, or compensation for choosing or receiving an approved archival outcome.

Privacy and memorials

Archival requests, evidence, reasons, ownership checks, disposition issues, reviewer identities, staff actions, and retirement details are private. Players must not publish or pressure another person to publish case material. Staff may share only what is necessary for the private review or a separate authorized safety or appeal process.

An archived CK creates deceased status in the public in-character records and a limited memorial. The memorial may contain only the character name, recorded death date, an optional reviewed epitaph, a stable non-personal reference, and a revision count. The recorded date is the approved record date and is not a promise of the precise scene time.

A memorial does not publish the killer, cause, location, account identity, requester, owner, reviewer, staff actor, evidence, sanctions, assets, or private case reference. Memorials have no public comments, reactions, or popularity ranking. A correction appends a reviewed revision instead of rewriting the original archival history.

Retirement remains private. Existing in-character records remain as history, but no new public retirement or deceased marker is added.

Reporting, reconsideration, and appeals

Use the private archival route in the Southland Discord for a CK or retirement request, a pre-commit cancellation, or the one CK reconsideration. Include the character, the requested outcome, and a concise account of the relevant facts. Do not post private evidence in a public channel.

Use /report for an active rules or safety problem. Use the private support route for an offline concern, suspected privacy misuse, or a possible technical or data error. Preserve the visible reference and relevant evidence without repeating a destructive action.

CK reconsideration is not a sanction appeal. If staff also issue a formal sanction, that sanction may be challenged through the sanction-linked appeal route under the sanctions-and-appeals policy. An in-character disagreement or an archival decision does not create a sanction appeal by itself.

Related policies and guides

Read the roleplay charter for scene conduct, PK revenge, and in-character knowledge. Read the community-safety policy for consent, sensitive content, privacy, and harassment. Read the sanctions-and-appeals policy for formal moderation review.

The accounts-and-characters guide explains character slots and selection. The injuries-and-help guide explains medical death and hospital recovery. The support-and-reporting guide explains the available private help routes.