The Matter of Tork — The Place of the Sword

What is the Türk's place now?

The other two legitimacy disasters audit a claim: the Farr Proof asks whether your fortune is real, the Ghāzī Burden whether your sword is. The Matter of Tork (matter_of_tork) asks the question legitimacy cannot answer. By the time it fires your legitimacy is settled — you came through the farr, the ghazā, or the mystical turn. But the Türk military constituency, whose entire world-picture ranked men by proximity to the golden line of Chinggis, has just been made irrelevant by that settlement. They did not evaporate. They are standing in the realm, armed, a third of the land and most of the cavalry. What becomes of them?

It is not a wager. It is friction — a light standing bleed representing an armed class whose world you have voided — resolved not by accumulating credibility but by choosing a disposition. And the dispositions are the only door to their mechanics: nothing else in the mod lets you settle the Türk question, so the disaster legitimately pushes you toward one of five answers.

Trigger

The Matter fires for any qualifying consolidator — farr, ghāzī, or mystical — because the Türk question exists regardless of how Tāzīk your court is. The gate (matter_of_tork_can_start, 03_matter_triggers.txt):

• eranzamin_contender and the territorial gate held 24 months;
• NOT of the Borjigin dynasty, and NOT holding chinggisid_regency — a khan, or a regent ruling in his name, has no Matter; the Türks have no grievance against the golden line itself;
• NOT amir_sultanate / turkmen_confederation — there the Türk class is the constituency; those face the Matter of Tazik instead;
• num_pop_type_in_country:tribesmen >= 750 — the question needs a questioner. A realm consolidated on rural-gentry arms with no real tribal host never poses it.

Expected firing window in practice: roughly year 50–70 of a campaign, as Iran is consolidated.

The standing bleed

About a fifth the weight of the farr/ghāzī wager-bleeds — friction, not audit:

Field	Value
amirs_estate_target_satisfaction	−0.10
tribes_estate_target_satisfaction	−0.10
monthly_amirs_estate_rebel_growth	+0.01
monthly_tribes_estate_rebel_growth	+0.015
monthly_legitimacy	−0.10
stability_decay	−0.001

Horizon: 240 months. Run out the clock without answering and the tribes answer for you (see Catastrophe).

The Approach layer — the Council on the Hosts

The disaster opens with the Council on the Hosts (matter_of_tork.2), offering four approaches. An approach is not the answer — it is a direction of preparation that generates the tools the answer needs. A Change Approach panel button re-convenes the council at any time. Core rules:

• the horizon clock never resets on a switch — time spent is spent;
• earned gains persist; only the ambient approach modifier swaps. Privileges granted, the ghulām corps built, axis moved, land conquered — all keep. Trading time for breadth is legal and priced in horizon-months.

Each approach has its own panel actions and event chain, armed only while it is active.

1. "Reduce our reliance on these barbarians" — the ghulām effort

Prepares Expulsion and Eradication; useful under any answer. The palace slave-army (Sāmānid/Ghaznavid ancestry, Abbas's Caucasian corps as the late form). Actions:

• Purchase Ghulam Levies — raises the corps tier (I→II→III, persistent matter_ghulam_corps_N modifiers). Gated on ghulām barracks levels (1 / 3 / 6) and, past tier I, the slave caravans.
• Declare Royal Inju — a political act, not mere demolition: the Tāzīk king declares a tribal province crown demesne (the Ilkhanid injü), breaks its tribal_pasture, and pushes the hosts off. Province-level; rolls a crisis (quiet / unrest / an amir's open protest). Eradication needs 5 declared; Expulsion needs 2 — you cannot end or expel a class whose economic base still stands.
• Institutionalize the Slave Caravans — requires a caravanserai network and a fortified border facing an unfortified non-Muslim neighbour. Unlocks corps tiers II–III.

Anger machinery: while the military estates sit below 30% satisfaction under this approach, a counter runs — warning at 24 months, the plot realized (early mass defection) at 48.

2. "Iran is the Beacon of Civilization" — Iranization

Prepares Co-optation (disposition A). The amīrs transition from tribal elite to pure military administration; the tribes Iranize in identity without ceasing to be pastoral (the historical outcome). Requires seating the amīrs first via amirs_umara_at_the_diwan — Niẓām al-Mulk's nightmare as the price of his solution; its grant fires a one-shot −20 axis push toward Türk. Conditional amir privileges (Iqtaʿ Commutation, Chancery Commissions), a tribes privilege (Salaried Pastoral Levies), the Madrasa of the Registers (worsens civilian admin while it runs — the long work is paid in the coin of government), Qanat Settlement, the Shāhnāma Recension. Completion grants the Īlāt Compact government reform.

3. "Forge a new Identity" — the vilāyat courtship

Prepares the Sufi Synthesis (disposition C), and is the road that makes mysticism −50 reachable. The murīd–murshid bond, the qizilbash answer. Ambient +0.2/mo toward mysticism (clergy seethe). Endow the Lodges, Invite the Shaykhs, the Shia turn (change_religion at mysticism ≤ −25 with a shaykh at court — the Ḥaydar moment, priced). Event chain: the camps take to the devotion first (which is why the bond will work), the jurists' ultimatum, the red headgear.

4. "Why tame what we can unleash?" — the march, earned

Prepares Frontier Confederation (disposition B). Tribal cavalry buffed now (they are being used for what they are). The march is earned by conquest: Release the March picks a seat among tribal pasturelands whose area is ≥ 8 owned locations and borders a country that is neither you nor your subject. The Begs quarrel over the vanguard.

The five dispositions

Claimed via panel buttons; one answer per realm. Each is gated by the legitimacy identity you already hold — the cleaner your legitimacy road, the harder your Türk options.

	A. Co-opt	B. Frontier	C. Sufi	D. Expel	E. Eradicate
Farr	yes	weak*	yes (moderate)	yes	yes
Ghāzī	yes	yes** (native)	yes (very hard)	yes	yes
Sufi/mystical	yes	yes	native	yes	yes

* The farr king can exile the hosts to the frontier but cannot give them a mission there — hired marchers, not sworn (matter_marcher_compact_mercenary). ** The ghāzī already has the dār al-ḥarb war to point them at — sworn marchers (matter_marcher_compact).

The Sufi asymmetry (farr easy, ghāzī hard) is a category-of-legitimacy fact: the synthesis is a charismatic-person legitimacy. Farr is already one (king bears the divine glory) — adding murshid-hood is fusion of like with like. Ghāzī-orthodoxy is a law-and-deed theory whose foundation is the denial that any living person carries sacral charisma — adding murshid-hood fuses a thing with its own negation. The ghāzī must therefore repudiate his own apparatus: he keeps ghazi_sultanate/dar_al_jihad (the synthesis is an addition, not a recantation of the ghazā) but loses the muhtasib_regime law and is steered into zill_allah_regime, paying −40 legitimacy and weathering a 20-year clergy storm. The farr king pays −10 and walks. This is the road Islamic gunpowder orthodoxy historically refused — the Ottomans kept the law and built the devshirme instead.

A — Co-optation / Iranization (≈20-year process)

Türk dissolves into Tāzīk. Completion needs 240 months and the axis actually at +90 (the whole reform stack must cooperate, not just the approach tools); a share of remaining tribesmen settle into the peasantry. Grants the Īlāt Compact. Risk: low. Cost: time, a soft military generation, cabinet opportunity.

B — Frontier Confederation (instant; a March subject)

The hosts become marcher-lords on the dār al-ḥarb edge — a March of huge tribal demographics: militarily formidable, fiscally poor, structurally unruly. The Aq Qoyunlu fuse, lit by your own hand and pointed outward. Risk: medium, deferred.

C — Sufi Synthesis (instant; mysticism-gated)

The murīd-bond replaces the khan-bond: cavalry kept whole and more loyal than blood. Collapsed with the §20.4 Qizilbash Synthesis END clause — it sets matter_of_tork_resolved_by_synthesis and answers both the Tork and Tazik questions at once.

D — Expulsion (≈10-year process)

Drive them out — steppe, Anatolia, Hindustan. Tranche pop-removal at 3 / 7 / 10 years; at completion one border province is ceded to a spawned independent, hostile confederation (how Türk states historically propagated). Clean interior, a 25-year cavalry gap. Risk: high.

E — Eradication (civil war + 50-year maturation)

End the class as a class. The class being destroyed defects en masse immediately — a civil war against your own sword arm, via the spawn_turkmen_breakaway machinery at full strength (the breakaway gets matter_total_mobilization: +1.5 tribes levy — total mobilization of the hosts). Survive it and the Post-Tribal State payoff applies together with a 50-year aftermath that suppresses it — the sword arm amputated while the slave-army is rebuilt and the neighbours smell blood. The gap's expiry is the maturation. Risk: extreme, front-loaded; reward back-loaded.

The refounded estate — the Dehqan Revival

Expulsion and Eradication don't abolish the amirs estate; they refound it. The estate slot — men of the sword holding land — survives; its Turco-Mongol charter is stripped (matter_tork_refound_amirs_estate: tribal hosts, tribal autonomy, umara-at-the-diwan, commutation all revoked; amir-held ghulām commands transferred to the chancery). The new charter (11_dehqan_privileges.txt), available on matter_turk_dissolved and not after Iranization (which fills the niche with commuted amīrs):

• The Dehqan Revival — the Sasanian-descended gentry rearmed: registered cavalry on service tenure, mustered through the chancery. The asvārān counterfactual, six centuries late — slower and politically dearer than slave-soldiers, but native.
• Service Tenure Registers — the gentry's land held conditional against the registers. The leash, and the gentry know it.
• The Shāhnāma Endowment — the cultural charter the new class needs (Ferdowsī wrote it three centuries early).

A/D/E also set matter_turk_dissolved, foreclosing qizilbash_aristocracy_reform permanently — you destroyed, removed, or dissolved the qizilbash-equivalent before it could exist. The ghulām and dehqān roads are the two armies a post-tribal realm can reach for.

Catastrophe

Horizon reached with no disposition, or an Eradication attempt lost: mass Türk defection (spawn_turkmen_breakaway). A non-khan who offers neither war, nor devotion, nor a place is not worth following.

• War lost / white peace → The Bleeding Flank (matter_turk_defection_scar): the realm is maimed, a rival confederation on the flank.
• War won anyway → Broken Hosts (matter_broken_hosts): weaker than any chosen disposition — the question answered with a sword you did not choose to draw.

A matter_turk_defection_scar realm cannot form Persia (it answered the Place of the Sword by losing it).

Files

disasters/01_matter_of_tork.txt · scripted_triggers/03_matter_triggers.txt · scripted_effects/02_matter_effects.txt · generic_actions/matter_of_tork_actions.txt · events/matter_of_tork_events.txt · gui/panels/disaster/matter_of_tork.gui · static_modifiers/06_matter_resolution_modifiers.txt · privileges 08–11 · reform additions in 01_persian_reforms.txt. Full design: docs/design/matter_of_tork_design.md.