Game Manuals and Architectonica
Last updated: August 21, 2026
- Manuals here and manuals there
- Architectonica as a bridge
- Reading order
- Official source
- Related reading
Two tomes sit slightly apart from the rest of the corpus because they document made things rather than the world itself. Game Manuals collects rules material for the Universe's playable experiences. Architectonica collects built structure, connecting the architectural structures and styles categories to the places and institutions that produced them. Both are Codex volumes, which means they are lore records about games and buildings rather than the operational documents themselves.
Manuals here and manuals there
The distinction matters. A Codex Game Manuals entry situates a game inside the Universe: what it depicts, whose story it belongs to, what its terminology means. The playable rules that determine what happens when you press a key live with the game — Terminus maintains its own versioned manual, and physical games ship their own. For a rules question, go to the game; for a lore question about a game, come here.
Architectonica as a bridge
Built structure connects domains that otherwise rarely meet: geography, because a structure has a place; institutions, because someone commissioned it; technology, because citadels and complexes are engineering; and culture, because style is a statement. It is one of the better tomes for readers who like following a thread across the corpus.
Reading order
If you arrive from a game, read the manual entry first and the architectural material second. If you arrive from the world, reverse it.
Codex manual entries are not current rules. Where a game's own manual and a Codex entry differ on a mechanic, the game's manual governs play.
Official source
Canonical source for this subject: Architectonica — Codex tome. Checked 21 August 2026 — where this guide and the live service disagree, the service is right.
Related reading
- Game Manuals and Source Map — Where the rules of a game live, and where its place in the Universe is documented.
- Manual and Versioned Rules — The authoritative player-facing reference, and why its version matters.
- Geography, Sites of Power and Celestial Sources — Codex records for spheres, systems, planets, cities and the places where power concentrates.