The Shrine

The shrine turns a church's slow lumen trickle into brief, sharp advantages. Wake a god on one island, spend that island's lumen, and time the rite for the hour when it actually matters.

The Church

Where lumen is made and stored. Build it tall.

Lumen

A trickle resource that funds every rite at the shrine.

Combat

Where attack, defence, and speed rites pay off.

Market

The trade systems Market Silence can shut down.

How shrine power works

Lumen belongs to the island that makes it

The church produces 0.2 lumen per level per hour before world speed and stores up to 300 plus 100 lumen per level. Lumen can be taken when a shrine is overrun, but it is not traded. A tall church is a bigger battery, not a realm treasury.

A church is a lamp, and the deep reads lamps

A stocked reliquary glows on the map, and that glow is what draws the Black Tide: raiders sail for lit harbours, not dark ones. Every church you build, and every level you raise one, also answers you in kind. A Tide warband comes to that church's ocean, or the one already there grows, and its storm covers the ocean until it falls. The taller the church, the bigger the warband it calls.

This is worth weighing rather than fearing. A church is the only source of lumen and the only path to a shrine; a realm without one is safer and poorer. A new Governor cannot raise a church at all while their Sanctuary holds. On an island with no church, the shrine belongs to the Matron of the First Flame. Before your realm's first church she explains the Favour you are under, and once Sanctuary is over, she teaches the church. On a later island she says how ready it is for what a church there would call. Once a church stands, she keeps the shrine's Matron tab: her advice on its next level, above the rites you have running.

Your first church waits until you are ready

The Matron will not let a Governor light a first church that the Tide's answer would break. Until a church stands anywhere in your realm, the island you build on needs 4,695 attack it could send: its warships, and the troops those ships can carry. That is 3 times the first warband's defence, so you win losing about a third of what you send. Her shrine and the church's page in your build list show the bar as how ready the island is, and the build waits until it is full. Troops at sea do not count, and neither do troops with no ship to carry them.

After your first church, she only advises. A church on any other island, and every level you raise one, may be built at once. She still shows the bar for the warband it will call: the attack, and from the second rung up the catapults for the first siege wave against its hall. A taller hall takes more than one wave. She says so when a bigger warband already holds those waters: then your church feeds that one rather than calling its own.

Master Quill: Bring the catapults with the army

A won fight does not free a Tide island; razing its hall does. The first warband's bar asks no catapults, but its hall still stands until catapults bring it down, and the storm stays with it.

Two brakes: your lumen bank and divine strain

The first brake is lumen itself: it trickles in slowly and the bank is capped, so a rite is only ever as affordable as the church can fund.

The second is divine strain — a per-governor allowance of 3 rite slots, shared across every island you hold. Every rite you cast — any blessing, curse, or effect — spends one slot, no matter how much lumen it costs. Slots come back one at a time, about one an hour, so a fully rested altar returns from empty in roughly 3 hours. From full you can fire a cluster of 3 rites at once, but the next then waits for a slot to return. So even a deep lumen bank — or a stack of lumen crystals — cannot be poured into an endless stream of rites; strain decides the tempo.

A god must be found before it can be woken

Gods do not appear in the shrine by default. Most start unknown, a blank niche with only a vague clue. There are a few ways to bring a god's name home. Some are found by expedition: charter routes from your Settlement's Harbour, and the right one returns with the discovery. Thalor and Veyra are reachable this way today. Others leave their traces scattered across the world. Nyssa is one of these. Her relic fragments wash ashore on islands that hold a church; gather them, assemble the wayward compass at your workshop, and the finished compass points the way to her. And some answer only to deeds: Korvath, the war god, reveals himself the first time you break a rival governor's island — take it and burn it down, liberate it from a fallen owner, or wrest it back from the Black Tide, and his banner comes home with the news. However a god is first found, a dispatch announces the discovery. Once discovered, a god stays known, and only then waits on a tall enough church.

Awakening opens one god on one island

A god needs a church level and a one-time troop sacrifice. Only human infantry are eligible for the altar; ships, siege, and hounds stay out of it. Awakening is permanent on that island, and later awakenings cost more troops because each awakened god raises the price of those still asleep.

Rites are moment tools

Blessings land on your own island by default. Any blessing can also be sent to a friendly shore: another of your islands, an alliance member, or a friend. You always pay the lumen from the casting island; the blessing simply lands where you send it. Curses are hostile and land on an enemy island or, for Market Silence, across one enemy governor's holdings. Recasting a blessing extends its timer until the stack cap, but each stack held makes the next cast more expensive, and whoever recasts last is the one credited on the island.

The gods in play

Thalor guards walls, wards off the Black Tide, and steadies a battered island's spirits back to health. Veyra does not help your island directly; she makes an enemy's logistics worse. Nyssa blesses coin and harvest — a 2-hour window for an economic push. Korvath is the war god: he sharpens a decisive strike, quickens your forges and drill-yards, and lets a fleet sail unmarked.

Blessings

Blessings require the patron god to be awake on the casting island, and the lumen is always paid there. Any blessing can be cast on a friendly island instead of your own — another of your islands, an alliance member, or a friend. The stack cap applies per island, so allies stacking the same blessing on one shore deepen the timer, not the strength.

	Blessing	God	Cost	Duration	Max stack	Effect
	Bone-Set Walls	Thalor	350	2h	8h	+30% wall defence
	Steady the Watch	Thalor	500	2h	8h	Holds happiness at maximum while active — a rescue from famine, food crisis, or neglect. Clears every low-happiness combat/production penalty for the duration
	Rotsalt	Thalor	1,500	12h	24h	Blocks all Black Tide attacks, plunder and curses on this island only
	Warlord's Edge	Korvath	500	1h	4h	+25% attack power
	Forge Heart	Korvath	900	2h	8h	+25% build speed
	The War-Forge	Korvath	900	2h	8h	+25% training speed
	Unsigned Sails	Korvath	800	1h	4h	Your attacks sail unmarked: no Governor named in any warning, report, feed, or war record. A punch-down assault on a far smaller realm that still plays is named all the same; a plunder run stays unseen. Does not cover a combined strike (many harbours, many hands), and a blow struck at a creature is always signed: the world hears who struck it. The trade-off: an unsigned strike earns you no ranking score (warlord, plunder, conquests)
	Plenty's Bounty	Nyssa	600	2h	8h	+150% lumber, +100% gold
	Coin of Plenty	Nyssa	1,800	2h	8h	+150% coin income
	Wayward Wind	Nyssa	1,200	2h	8h	+50% fleet speed

When the bonus is counted

Blessings that travel with a fleet — Warlord's Edge's attack power and Wayward Wind's fleet speed — are sealed into the fleet at the moment it sails. A rite that is live at launch still counts when the fleet lands, even if it expired somewhere in transit; a rite cast after the fleet has sailed does not help it. The dispatch screen shows exactly what the fleet carries, and the mission view repeats it while the fleet is at sea. Defensive rites work the other way: they stay on the island that holds them and are read when the blow lands, so a defender can still bless their walls against a fleet already on the horizon.

Curses

Curses cannot stack on the same target and cannot be cleansed early. Famine targets one enemy island. Market Silence targets one enemy governor and blocks trade across every island they hold.

	Curse	God	Cost	Duration	Target	Effect
	Famine	Veyra	1,700	4h	Enemy island	Food to 0, no food production, minus 10 happiness
	Becalm	Veyra	1,400	2h	Enemy island	Halves the target's outgoing fleet speed
	Blight	Veyra	2,000	4h	Enemy island	Halves all production on the target island
	Market Silence	Veyra	1,000	1h	Enemy player, Church L19	Bazaar and marketplace blocked across every island

Common questions

Reference

Which gods exist, and what does it cost to wake them?4 gods, church 2 to 14

The sacrifice shown is the first awakening amount from the catalog. The altar takes the selected eligible infantry, or the cheapest eligible infantry first when no selection is provided.

	God	Domain	Church Lv	First sacrifice	Status
	Thalor	Defence, endurance, recovery	2	300	Live
	Korvath	Attack, conquest, plunder	6	300	Live
	Veyra	Stealth, deception, misdirect	14	300	Live
	Nyssa	Luck, wealth, risk	14	300	Live

Master Quill: Margin note

Lumen is slow and the shrine never owes you a refund. Spend it on the rite that decides the next hour, not on the buff you might use later.