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Edicts
October 13, 2026 at 12:27 PM
Added the nine reported edicts in order and replaced the pre-release curfew wording with the shipped effect
Edicts are the legal instrument of Brencis's rule over Vale Sangora. They are decrees: rules proclaimed by the vrakhir court and enforced by its soldiers, and in The Blood of Dawnwalker they are the form the antagonist's attention takes. When Coen becomes a problem, Brencis does not simply send assassins. He changes the law.
Vale Sangora is an occupied province rather than a lawless one. The vrakhir court holds the castle at Greifberg and the city of Svartrau, and the valley's people live under terms the court sets. The blood tax is the most concrete of those terms, and it is reported to be the specific concession Brencis can offer Laslea in one of the documented endings: exemption from the tax, and permission to practise Christianity, granted as an exception to rules that otherwise apply to everyone.
The regime's reach is not only legal. Roadside shrines across the valley now carry Brencis's likeness rather than the old saints, which is the same authority working through religion instead of through soldiers.
Edicts are tied directly to the notoriety system. As Coen undermines the regime, his infamy rises, and Brencis answers. A new edict is proclaimed at sunrise, at the start of a fresh day on the 30-day clock, so each cycle of the calendar can carry a new restriction. The higher the meter, the harsher the decree.
Creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz described the mechanism in plain terms before launch: undermining Brencis gains notoriety, and the more notorious Coen becomes, the more edicts Brencis passes in order to thwart him. The intent, in the same account, was that edicts would twist and change the general open world gameplay rather than simply raise enemy counts.
Edict | Effect in Play |
|---|---|
More soldiers on the roads | Patrol density rises across the valley, which makes overland travel between quests slower and louder. See Exploration. |
More soldiers in the villages | Settlements gain garrisons, which narrows where Coen can move openly by day. |
Military checkpoints | Reported as a specific response to clearing camps, gating routes that were previously open. |
Fewer people out at night | The fifth edict leaves fewer people outdoors between dusk and dawn, which means fewer people to feed on at night. Pre-release coverage described this as a curfew. This presses directly on blood craving. |
City lockdown | In the harshest documented case, Svartrau itself is sealed, and crossing the capital becomes a problem in its own right. |
Because the time cost of a journey is real, an edict is not only an obstacle but a tax on the calendar: routing around a lockdown or waiting out a curfew spends segments that could have gone to a quest.
Walkthroughs of the shipped game report nine edicts, one for each infamy level, always in the same order. Each is issued a day after the infamy level rises rather than at once, and is announced in a cutscene in which it is read out in Svartrau. The edicts stay hidden in the Court menu until they are issued, and their restrictions stack.
Edict | Effect |
|---|---|
1 | Additional patrols in settlements. |
2 | Military checkpoints appear throughout the valley. |
3 | Prices rise throughout the valley. |
4 | More soldiers patrol the roads, and patrol commanders now recognise Coen. |
5 | Fewer people are outdoors between dusk and dawn. |
6 | Further checkpoints and further price rises. |
7 | Headhunters appear in the valley, and all soldiers now recognise Coen. |
8 | All soldiers become stronger. |
9 | The gates of Svartrau are shut, and the city can only be entered by climbing the walls at night. |
Infamy rises through court activities and through clearing soldier camps, and defeating each of the three boyars raises it by a full level. See Court Activities.
Edicts are regime wide, but the officers beneath Brencis run their own territories and track Coen's interference with them separately. Ambrus, Bakir and Xanthe each hold operations in the valley, and provoking one of them raises a personal aggression meter alongside the global infamy that drives the edicts. The distinction matters: edicts are the court's answer, while an officer's response is personal and opens a questline of its own. Factions covers the wider political map, including the rebels who read a harsh edict as a recruiting opportunity.
The reported epilogues treat the edicts as the thing that ends when Brencis does. Where the vrakhir are removed, the valley becomes independent and somewhat lawless, with the Manumits keeping the worst opportunists in check and the old religion returning. Where a new ruler takes the castle instead, reports describe fresh impositions rather than freedom: heavy taxation and encouragement to inform on neighbours. Where Brencis survives, the blood tax and the court's rules continue, with Laslea's exemption as the narrow exception. Law changes hands in this story; it does not disappear.
No first-party list of edicts has been published, so the nine steps above follow walkthroughs of the shipped game.
Whether an edict can be lifted by lowering infamy, or only expires on its own, has not been documented.
Whether the text of proclamations can be read in the world, in the way the epilogue notices on the tree in Laslea are read, is unstated.