Magicbane Loreplay Ruleset
A house-rules reference for the Magicbane (Shadowbane emulator) server project, derived from the original Ubisoft/Wolfpack Shadowbane Loreplay Ruleset as published for the Vindication server.
Companion to: Magicbane_Project_Knowledge.md. That document records what the server does. This one records what we have agreed to do on top of it.
The single most important fact about this document: none of it is enforced by the Magicbane codebase. Charter class restrictions are not implemented anywhere in the source [V, §KB]. Every rule below is a voluntary constraint. If a rule is broken, nothing will stop it, nothing will log it, and nothing will break. The value is entirely in the play experience.
Confidence markers (matching the main KB): - [V] Verified — stated explicitly in the source text, or confirmed in game/source code - [D] Derived — inferred from the source text or database, internally consistent - [?] Uncertain — plausible but unconfirmed, or the source itself is ambiguous
1. Scope and origin
Loreplay was an official Ubisoft ruleset run on a single production server (Vindication), not a community mod. It restricted which characters could join which guild charters, who could group, and who could exchange beneficial powers — with the stated goal of making the play environment mirror Shadowbane's factionalized fiction.
It was one server among many. Normal servers had none of these restrictions. Adopting it here is a deliberate choice, not a restoration of default behaviour.
The ruleset is built around 17 Factionholds — NPC strongholds, one per playable charter type, each seeded with that faction's permitted races and classes. The 17 Factionholds do not exist in Magicbane's world data [V, §KB]. Only their charter definitions are being carried over.
2. The seven core rules [V]
Quoted in substance from the announcement text. "Faction" means Guild Charter Type throughout.
| # | Rule |
|---|---|
| 1 | Guild membership is restricted by charter type. Each charter has an allowable Race and Class list, plus a Gender restriction in one case. |
| 2 | Nations may form on one charter type only. A Noble House can only swear fealty to another Noble House. |
| 3 | Only individuals of the same faction may group together. |
| 4 | Beneficial powers may only be cast on members of the same faction. A Human Priest in a Noble House cannot bless a Human Priest in a Church of the All-Father guild. |
| 5 | Summon counts as a beneficial power and is bound by rule 4. |
| 6 | Members of errant guilds resolve rules 3–4 by faction: an errant Oblivion guild may still buff members of other Oblivion guilds — but errant guilds of the same faction may not group with each other, only within their own guild. |
| 7 | A truly errant player — no guild, no faction — cannot group with anyone, cannot cast beneficial powers on anyone, and cannot receive them. |
2a. Rules 4 and 6 are not contradictory
They look like a conflict and are not. Once a guild is errant:
- Buffing keys off faction — permitted across guilds of the same charter.
- Grouping keys off guild — permitted only within your own guild.
Two different gates, deliberately. Recorded explicitly here so it isn't "corrected" in a later session.
2b. What actually binds on a solo server
Rules 3–7 only fire when two characters share a space, which for this server means multiboxing. They are not inert:
- Dante Kell (Redemption, charter 3) and Kharesh (Virakt Khar'ika, charter 13) are different factions. No shared group, no cross-buffs, and no
./summonbetween them — rule 5 makes that explicit, and it is the easiest rule to break by reflex. - Dante and Rhys Kindle (Grey Sands, charter 3) are the same faction. Grouping and buffing permitted.
Rule 2 is the one that binds constantly, and it does so through the existing nation structure. See §5.
3. Charter catalogue [V]
17 charters. Factionhold name in the first column is the NPC stronghold associated with that charter on Vindication; the charter name in bold is what matters here.
Verified against source HTML, not transcribed from screenshots — extracted from the archived loreplay.php capture (§10). All 17 race lists and 17 class lists match character for character.
| Factionhold | Charter | Races | Classes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fort Irsadeng | Amazon Temple | Aelfborn, Elf, Half-Giant, Human | Bard, Druid, Fury, Huntress, Priest, Scout, Warrior, Wizard |
| The Aerie | Aracoix Kh'ree | Aracoix | Assassin, Barbarian, Huntress, Priest, Ranger, Scout, Thief, Warlock, Warrior |
| Brakkolumbir | Barbarian Clan | Aelfborn, Half-Giant, Human, Minotaur | Barbarian, Bard, Fury, Priest, Scout, Thief, Warrior |
| Fort Ekarros | Centaur Cohort | Centaur | Barbarian, Crusader, Druid, Huntress, Prelate, Priest, Ranger, Sentinel, Warrior |
| Greensward Parish | Church of the All-Father | Aelfborn, Centaur, Elf, Half-Giant, Human | Bard, Channeler, Crusader, Nightstalker, Prelate, Priest, Scout, Sentinel |
| Morloch's Wrath | Cult of the Scourge | Aelfborn, Human, Minotaur, Nephilim | Bard, Channeler, Doomsayer, Priest, Scout, Warrior, Wizard |
| Korvambar | Dwarfhold | Dwarf | Crusader, Prelate, Priest, Sentinel, Warrior |
| Aelarnost | High Court | Elf, Minotaur | Assassin, Bard, Channeler, Druid, Necromancer, Priest, Ranger, Scout, Thief, Warrior, Wizard |
| Leontar Fort | Mercenary Company | Aelfborn, Aracoix, Half-Giant, Shade | Bard, Priest, Scout, Thief, Warlock, Warrior |
| Erkesh Point | Military Legion | Centaur, Half-Giant, Human | Bard, Priest, Scout, Warlock, Warrior, Wizard |
| New Mellissar | Noble House | Aelfborn, Half-Giant, Human | Assassin, Bard, Channeler, Priest, Scout, Thief, Warlock, Warrior, Wizard |
| Wood's Hollow | Ranger's Brotherhood | Aelfborn, Elf, Half-Giant, Human, Shade | Bard, Channeler, Druid, Priest, Ranger, Scout, Warrior |
| Gray Sands | Temple of the Cleansing Flame | Half-Giant, Human | Bard, Channeler, Confessor, Nightstalker, Priest, Scout, Templar |
| Carloon Outpost | Thieves' Den | Aelfborn, Aracoix, Elf, Human, Irekei, Nephilim, Shade | Assassin, Barbarian, Bard, Priest, Scout, Thief |
| Duskfall Point | Unholy Legion | Human, Shade, Vampire | Assassin, Channeler, Necromancer, Priest, Scout, Thief, Warlock, Warrior, Wizard |
| Kaal Tharkhan | Virakt | Irekei | Assassin, Bard, Channeler, Fury, Huntress, Nightstalker, Priest, Ranger, Scout, Thief, Warrior, Wizard |
| Qibbura Outpost | Wizard's Conclave | Aelfborn, Elf, Human, Nephilim, Shade | Assassin, Bard, Channeler, Doomsayer, Fury, Necromancer, Priest, Warlock, Wizard |
Gender: Amazon Temple is female only, and the source states outright it is the only charter with a gender restriction. [V]
3a. High Court — Elf and Minotaur is correct [V]
Worth recording because it looks like an error and is not.
Minotaurs were created in the frigid Northlands and served as shock troops of the Deathless Empire under Elvish masters before breaking away [V, Morloch wiki: Minotaur]. The Elven Lore page goes further: Valdimanthor renewed the ancient pacts with the Minotaurs, and their strength made the armies of the Court unstoppable [V, Morloch wiki: Elven Lore]. That is a named military alliance between the Elven High Court and the Minotaurs in primary lore.
Aelfborn's absence is likewise deliberate, not an omission. Shadowbane's Elves are haughty and imperious, once held dominance in the world, and kept humans as slaves; period lore has pureblood Elves despising "the lesser races" and hating even the Irekei, who are themselves desert Elves. A pureblood court excluding halfbreeds is the expected result.
Structural confirmation from the table itself: the four purely racial charters — Aracoix Kh'ree, Centaur Cohort, Dwarfhold, Virakt — each list exactly one race. High Court listing two marks it as an Elven-led faction rather than an Elves-only one. Its class list (Assassin, Necromancer, Thief) is not a noble-elf roster either.
3b. All listed classes are promotion classes [D]
Every entry in the Class column is a promotion class — no base archetypes (Fighter, Rogue, Mage, Healer) appear anywhere in the table. Since a character cannot exceed level 10 without a promotion class [V, §KB], a character below that threshold has no defined faction eligibility under the source text. See the house ruling in §6a.
3c. Factionholds were physical strongholds [V]
The source describes them as functioning places, not merely charter definitions:
- Once a character leaves the Starter Island they must join either a Factionhold or a player guild matching their faction type.
- Seventeen Factionholds, scattered across the world — described as smaller versions of Safeholds, but faction-gated.
- Membership is refused to anyone who doesn't fit. The page's own example: a Human Confessor cannot join a Church of the All-Father Factionhold or a player guild of that charter.
- Factionhold guards attack members of any other faction on sight. The example given is a Shade Thief of a Thieves' Den walking into the Oblivion Factionhold and being attacked immediately.
- No Safehold off the Beginner's Island permitted Any Race / Any Class guild templates on this server.
Contrast worth recording: Magicbane's NPC city guards check race, not guild [V, §KB]. The Loreplay rule was faction-based. Different mechanism entirely.
3d. Sea Dog's Rest was the exception [V]
- Built on a Thieves' Den charter, so only Thieves' Den-eligible characters could join. Carloon Outpost was the guarded Thieves' Den.
- The only Factionhold with no guards — members of any faction could trade there freely.
- The Law Gate was located in Sea Dog's Rest, reachable by anyone via the always-open White Portal without a Traveler rune.
Magicbane diverges [V, §KB]: Sea Dog's Rest exists as an NPC city in The Outlands (20) at 88795 / 45062, but the white Law portal leads to Aeldreth Havens, not Sea Dog's Rest. The Loreplay placement was server-specific.
4. Race → eligible charters [D]
Derived from §3. Useful when planning a new guild around an existing character, or a character around an existing guild.
| Race | Count | Eligible charters |
|---|---|---|
| Human | 11 | Amazon Temple, Barbarian Clan, Church of the All-Father, Cult of the Scourge, Military Legion, Noble House, Ranger's Brotherhood, Temple of the Cleansing Flame, Thieves' Den, Unholy Legion, Wizard's Conclave |
| Aelfborn | 9 | Amazon Temple, Barbarian Clan, Church of the All-Father, Cult of the Scourge, Mercenary Company, Noble House, Ranger's Brotherhood, Thieves' Den, Wizard's Conclave |
| Half-Giant | 8 | Amazon Temple, Barbarian Clan, Church of the All-Father, Mercenary Company, Military Legion, Noble House, Ranger's Brotherhood, Temple of the Cleansing Flame |
| Elf | 5 | Amazon Temple, High Court, Ranger's Brotherhood, Thieves' Den, Wizard's Conclave |
| Shade | 5 | Mercenary Company, Ranger's Brotherhood, Thieves' Den, Unholy Legion, Wizard's Conclave |
| Aracoix | 3 | Aracoix Kh'ree, Mercenary Company, Thieves' Den |
| Centaur | 3 | Centaur Cohort, Church of the All-Father, Military Legion |
| Minotaur | 3 | Barbarian Clan, Cult of the Scourge, High Court |
| Nephilim | 3 | Cult of the Scourge, Thieves' Den, Wizard's Conclave |
| Irekei | 2 | Thieves' Den, Virakt |
| Dwarf | 1 | Dwarfhold only |
| Vampire | 1 | Unholy Legion only |
Dwarf and Vampire are single-charter races. A Dwarf character locks its guild choice at creation.
5. Nations and fealty [V]
Rule 2 is absolute: a nation is single-charter. Combined with the engine's own cap, the full constraint set is:
- A nation may hold at most 8 guilds total, including the nation itself [V, §KB] — not 8 sub-guilds.
- Every guild in that nation must share the same charter type.
- One city per guild —
obj_guild.ownedCityis a single column [V, §KB].
So the practical ceiling on a Loreplay nation is 8 same-charter guilds, 8 cities.
5a. Consequences for the current nation
| Guild | Charter | Loreplay charter | Nation status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Redemption | 3 TEMPLE | Temple of the Cleansing Flame | Sovereign / Nation |
| The Grey Sands | 3 TEMPLE | Temple of the Cleansing Flame | Province — legal ✓ |
| Fortress of the Flame | 3 TEMPLE | Temple of the Cleansing Flame | Province — legal ✓ |
| Voss Kingdom | 7 NOBLE | Noble House | Cannot ever join ✗ |
| Tree of Fire (Virakt Khar'ika) | 13 VIRAKT | Virakt | Cannot ever join ✗ |
| Talonguard Kh'ree | 20 KHREE | Aracoix Kh'ree | Cannot ever join ✗ |
This settles a standing item on the KB's "on the horizon" list: swearing Voss Kingdom and Tree of Fire into Redemption's nation is not Loreplay-legal and should be removed as a goal. If those guilds are to have nations, each needs its own, founded with same-charter partners.
Redemption's nation currently holds 3 of its 8 slots. Five more charter-3 guilds could join.
6. House rulings
Where the source is silent, ambiguous, or collides with Magicbane's build. These are our decisions, not Ubisoft's — kept separate from §2–5 for exactly that reason.
6a. Pre-promotion characters — RULING NEEDED
The source lists only promotion classes (§3b), so a level 1–10 character has no defined eligibility. Options:
- Grandfather in — any base class may join any charter, and must promote into a legal class by level 10.
- Restrict by archetype — a character may only join a charter that permits at least one promotion of its base class.
- Ignore — treat guild membership as unconstrained until promotion.
Option 1 is the least disruptive and matches how characters are actually built here. Not yet decided.
6b. Charters with no Loreplay counterpart [D]
The GuildType enum contains ordinals with no entry in the 17-faction table. Confirmed so far:
- 18 HERALD — shared by Starkholm and all six Uthgaard hamlets [V, §KB]. No Loreplay faction is named Herald.
- 0 — Khan'Ov Srekel's Freehold charter, added in Patch 22 (2008), five years after Loreplay [V, §KB].
Ruling: these are NPC/system charters, outside the Loreplay scheme entirely. Player guilds should not use them. Grund Stonewall's membership in Heroes of Erkeng Hold (charter 18) is therefore out of scope, not illegal — he is parked in an NPC guild.
6c. Vampire as a race
Unholy Legion lists Vampire as a race, not a class. Magicbane has a Vampire promotion class with a master trainer but no known rune dropper [V, §KB], so the route in is currently unavailable regardless. No ruling needed until that changes.
6d. Confessor and Templar are charter-exclusive [D]
Both appear in exactly one charter: Temple of the Cleansing Flame. Under Loreplay, a Templar or Confessor character has no legal guild other than charter 3. This is a strong argument for Redemption remaining the project's primary line.
Similarly narrow: - Crusader, Prelate, Sentinel — confined to the same three "holy" charters (Centaur Cohort, Church of the All-Father, Dwarfhold) and appear nowhere else. - Doomsayer — Cult of the Scourge and Wizard's Conclave only. - Priest — the only class permitted by all 17 charters.
7. Roster audit against the ruleset [D]
Current characters checked against §3. Race is unrecorded for several in the KB.
| Character | Race | Class | Guild / charter | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dante Kell | Human | Templar | Redemption (3) | Legal ✓ |
| Roderick Soulseeker | Human | Confessor | Redemption (3) | Legal ✓ |
| Strix Yull | Human | Scout | Redemption (3) | Legal ✓ |
| Rhys Kindle | Human | Bard | Grey Sands (3) | Legal ✓ |
| Kharesh | Irekei | Assassin | Virakt Khar'ika (13) | Legal ✓ |
| Serra Morrow | unknown | Channeler | Redemption (3) | Class legal; race must be Half-Giant or Human |
| Wrenna Miller | unknown | Priest | Redemption (3) | Class legal; race must be Half-Giant or Human |
| Magkar Vossk | unknown | Warlock | Voss Kingdom (7) | Class legal; race must be Aelfborn, Half-Giant, or Human |
| Grund Stonewall | Dwarf | Warrior | Heroes of Erkeng Hold (18) | Out of scope — NPC charter (§6b). Dwarf + Warrior would be legal in a Dwarfhold. |
The roster is compliant so far as it is known. Three races need confirming:
SELECT c.UID, c.char_firstname, c.char_raceID, r.name AS race_name
FROM obj_character c
LEFT JOIN static_rune_runebase r ON r.ID = c.char_raceID
WHERE c.UID IN (42433, 42443, 42667);
(Race storage on obj_character is char_raceID; the join target above is a guess and should be checked with SHOW COLUMNS before running — per the KB's standing rule on column-name guessing.)
8. Open questions
- §6a pre-promotion ruling — undecided.
- What is the "Oblivion" faction? The source text references it twice — once in rule 6 ("an Oblivion Guild without a Nation can still cast beneficial powers on other members of Oblivion Guilds") and once as "the Oblivion Factionhold" in §3c. No Oblivion charter appears in the 17-entry table. Either the announcement prose was written against an earlier draft list, or Oblivion is an eighteenth charter omitted from the Factionholds section. Checking the
GuildTypeenum for an OBLIVION ordinal would resolve it. - Are there more than 17 charters in the
GuildTypeenum? Full ordinal list has not been dumped. 3, 7, 13, 18 and 20 are confirmed; 18 has no Loreplay counterpart, so others may not either. - Which enum ordinal corresponds to each of the 17 charters? Only five mappings are confirmed. A full dump of
GuildTypeagainst this table would close the gap. - Does the charter tooltip in game list "ill-favored" classes matching these lists? Sentinel was noted as ill-favored for Temple of the Cleansing Flame [V, §KB], which agrees with §3. Whether the client tooltips reproduce the whole Loreplay table, or an unrelated Wolfpack-era list, is unknown — and would be a second independent source if they do.
9. Corrections log
- "The Loreplay Gray Sands listing gives eight classes without Sentinel" (main KB §9) — wrong count. The listing gives seven: Bard, Channeler, Confessor, Nightstalker, Priest, Scout, Templar. The substantive conclusion (Sentinel is not a legal Temple of the Cleansing Flame class) is unaffected and confirmed. Verified against source HTML 8/16/2026 — seven, not eight.
- "Voss Kingdom and Tree of Fire can be sworn into the nation" (main KB, "on the horizon") — not Loreplay-legal. Rule 2 forbids mixed-charter nations. Removed as a goal; see §5a.
- "High Court listing Elf + Minotaur is lore-implausible, probably a source error, Aelfborn was likely intended" — wrong on all three counts, and wrong in the first draft of this document. The Elf/Minotaur military pact is explicit in the primary lore, and Aelfborn's exclusion follows directly from Elven pureblood attitudes. The flag came from generic fantasy assumptions (elves noble, minotaurs brutish) rather than from Shadowbane's own lore, in which the Elves are an imperial slaver culture with Minotaur shock troops. Check the setting's lore before calling something lore-implausible.
- "
chronicles.ubi.comwas never crawled, so the Chronicles site isn't archived" — wrong, and it cost several hours. The host ischronicle.ubi.com, singular. One failed probe of a guessed hostname was treated as evidence the site was unarchived, and work proceeded againstshadowbane.ubi.cominstead — a Microsoft CMS host that serves HTML at image URLs, where the stylesheet and artwork genuinely are unrecoverable. The correct host holds 2,691 files including 1,062 images and the working stylesheet. A failed guess at a hostname is not evidence of absence.
10. Source provenance
Primary source — contemporaneous with the live Loreplay server.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Original URL | http://chronicle.ubi.com/loreplay.php |
| Wayback capture | 20051012173952 (12 Oct 2005) |
| Raw retrieval | https://web.archive.org/web/20051012173952id_/http://chronicle.ubi.com/loreplay.php |
| Retrieved | 16 Aug 2026 |
| Local copy | docs/restore/chronicle.ubi.com/loreplay.php.html (33,514 bytes) |
| Stylesheet | css/Shadowbane_Site.css, capture 20051012172008 — same crawl |
Corroborating source — same text, three years later.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Original URL | http://shadowbane.ubi.com/loreplay.php |
| Wayback capture | 20080827231248 (27 Aug 2008) |
| Local copy | docs/restore/shadowbane.ubi.com/loreplay.php.html (33,493 bytes) |
The two are textually identical. Extracting the ruleset body from both — from "The Shadowbane Team is proud" through the end of the Factionholds table — gives 7,718 characters in each, matching exactly. The ruleset was never revised between 2005 and 2008; the only differences between captures are navigation chrome.
A third capture at http://www.shadowbane.com/community/loreplay.php (20081122055242) carries the announcement and the seven rules but drops the Factionholds table entirely.
10a. Dating [V]
The 2005 capture's navigation lists the server forums as Mourning, Redemption, Vindication, Wrath, and Test Server — Vindication, the Loreplay server, is present. This capture is contemporaneous with live operation.
The 2008 capture lists Malog, Saedron, Thurin, and Test Server — the three post-reboot servers from March 2008 [V, §KB]. Vindication is gone; that page is an orphan preserved after the server it describes had closed.
Since the text is identical across both, the ruleset is recorded as announced and as maintained, unchanged across the server's life. What no capture records is how the rules were applied in practice.
The "Copyright © 2000 - 2002 Wolfpack Studios, Inc. and Ubisoft, Inc." footer is a stale site template, not a date for this content. Loreplay postdates Throne of Oblivion, which the announcement names as the most recent expansion.
Other provenance:
| Item | Source |
|---|---|
| Charter → enum ordinals | Magicbane database and Enum.java, per Magicbane_Project_Knowledge.md |
| Nation cap, level cap, class implementation status | Magicbane_Project_Knowledge.md |
| Minotaur / High Court lore (§3a) | Morloch wiki — Minotaur and Elven Lore pages |
Note on hostnames: chronicles.ubi.com (plural) holds only a 2005 robots.txt and was never crawled. The Chronicles of Shadowbane site is at chronicle.ubi.com (singular), which has 72 captures spanning 2005–2022. A local archive of 925 pages, the stylesheet, and ~800 images from the 2005 captures is held at docs/restore/chronicle.ubi.com/.