Kingdoms
Far less is known about Kingdoms than Palaces. Persona Users on Dark Side of Sumaru speak of hearing distant cries for help that draw them to real world locations, but then little indication of what to do next.
Those that persist in trying to answer the calls are drawn into a Kingdom, a cognitive world where battles rage between two sides. On one side: a supremely powerful Sovereign that leads the Kingdom, and their Legionnaires, a type of Shadow of which they seem to have an endless supply. On the other side: a much weaker rebel effort, often led by a charismatic figure.
So what happens next? They don't know, because as of yet, no one has remained to find out. The anonymous poster on Dark Side of Sumaru stated that they could hardly figure out the stakes, but could very much understand the odds were against them.
As a result, they left, and have not heard the cries again.
OOC Note: As of yet, Kingdoms are not yet well understood on the MUSH. Nevertheless, this section is to help individuals who may not have played Persona 5 Tactica know what a Kingdom is, how it's set up, and how it can lead to a character awakening to a Persona. If you don't want spoilers, then please, stop reading here.
Why Kingdoms?
A Kingdom is meant to represent an alternative for characters who want to awaken within Persona 5 with the Will of Rebellion and desire an Ordeal that explores the character's psyche.
Not all concepts are appropriate for Kingdoms, just like not all concepts are appropriate for the Metaverse and Palaces. It is merely meant to provide an alternative option to explore the nature of rebellion, or more accurately, 'revolution' within one's heart.
What is a Kingdom?
A Kingdom is the result of the Self-Preservation Instinct of humanity deciding that an unawakened individual with the Will of Rebellion is a threat to the status quo. In order to deal with the threat directly, it wields its power to banish the individual with the Will of Rebellion directly into their own cognitive world.
That individual loses their memories of formative moments that shaped their Will of Rebellion while simultaneously using them to form a Kingdom within their psyche. This Kingdom is anchored to a real world location that the person considers either 'safe' or 'meaningful' to them.
Other Persona Users will hear a call for help from a short range, while those with the Will of Rebellion may be drawn to it from much further away. Once they arrive and assent that they desire to help, they are drawn within the Kingdom themselves.
The Kingdom's sources themselves will be deposited within the Kingdom, often in a cell somewhere deep within the Sovereign's territory under their control, and the Sovereign will immediately commence trying to break them down without their context of what's happening.
Sovereigns
At a glance, the individuals who rule the Kingdoms seem much like the Rulers within Palaces. However there are several key difference. For starters, a Sovereign within a Kingdom is not a Shadow, but a Cognition meaningful to the individual the Kingdom was created for. This cognition is almost always a figure who is both personally meaningful to them and an authority figure they have trouble defying.
This authority is writ large into the narrative of the Kingdom. For example, Lady Marie is a domineering heiress of a corporate empire that is using her fiancé to her own ends in reality. In a Kingdom, she becomes a cruel French-themed general who will trample anything and everything to get her way.
Kingdom Sovereigns, when challenged, do not transform into different archetypes. However, the shapes they already have command immense power to fight Persona Users, and more terrifyingly, sometimes unique powers that affect even Persona Users.
More often, though, Persona Users have trouble reaching them to counter them directly, given their unending army of Legionnaires.
Rebel Scum
On the other side are the Rebels. Despite their appearance as squat shadows with exaggerated features, unified to the narrative of Legionnaires, they are in fact cognitions created with the potential to be the mind's 'antibodies.' These cognitions have very little power to fight, but they are usually unified to the narrative of being 'ordinary oppressed citizens' in the regime of the Sovereign.
Sometimes they are already fighting, and often losing. In other Kingdoms, one must inspire them to fight. Each of them have identities of either people who just want to live their lives, or those who have had enough.
They are unified under the banner of the individual's Will of Rebellion, which takes the form of a cognition meaningful to the person in question, typically someone who inspired them in their lives to fight back, and who commands the effort to oppose the Sovereign as a Revolutionary Rebel Army.
The Will of Rebellion in the person possesses great power to fight back as well, but is still decidedly the underdog in this fight. Without intervention, the Will of Rebellion will lose this fight.
There is some good news, though. The Will of Rebellion often possesses the ability to dispel the unusual powers that Sovereign's wield. To continue from the earlier example, Lady Marie can collar and permanently charm Persona Users, but the commanding Will of Rebellion can lift this effect.
Mind you, the Persona Users in question will not know this cognition is a Will of Rebellion; to them, they will seem like a full-fledged person that they can interact or bond with. Even deducing they are likely a cognition does not make them any less real or meaningful.
Caught In the Middle?!
And then there's the person in question, whom the Kingdom formed around. They are actually physically trapped within their own cognitive world, and look exactly as they did previously. The danger to them here is real, and if they are killed, then they will in fact die, and everything collapses. Fortunately, the purpose of the Sovereign is not to kill this person, but to break them.
These unfortunate souls lack the memories that formed their Will of Rebellion in the first place, absent that context they are typically terrified and put out by why their normal lives have been interrupted. Almost certainly they'll be found in the Sovereign's side in the Jail Cell, for the Sovereign's purpose is to bring their Will of Rebellion to them to destroy these Rebellious feelings within them forever.
While Persona Users do not understand this at first, their entire purpose here is to first secure that person, and then convince them to fight on the side of the Rebels. This is much more difficult than it sounds, their own trauma is embodied in the Sovereign themselves. However, by bringing them with them, and having them witness your own heroics, it is not impossible to slowly coax them back into the mindset of Rebellion themselves.
This is how one aids them in moving forward, by having them take part in battling, and defeating the Sovereign. As well as what comes after.
What happens if the Rebels win?
If the Rebels win, and the Sovereign is defeated, then the person will have their memories restored immediately in an attempt to re-traumatize them. And what will appear is--!
The Person's Shadow, of course. Their Shadow will reflect the Self-Preservation Instinct and the darkest reflection of those feelings within that person, and accordingly that 'Rebellion' is a narcissistic and vain impulse that brings only pointless suffering to yourself and others.
It will then attempt to kill your Will of Rebellion and to get your buy-in on this idea using your recent re-experienced trauma. In these circumstances, the pain will be so fresh and the impulse to just go back to living under the status quo is so strong that the person will find it difficult to refute.
However, if they reject their Shadow's words and decide they want to change themselves, they will awaken to their Persona as the Will of Rebellion joins with them to become a part of their resolve to change the way they live.
Sometimes, this is enough to convince the Shadow, but despite awakening to a Persona being the act of 'harnessing' the Shadow, but that does not mean the battle is necessarily won. The Shadow in question may still act independently under the powers of the Stagnation and try to make one last ditch effort to get their point of view accepted, utilizing magic and abilities that often correlate with the person's narrative on what hurt them in the first place.
It is only then by defeating them, and accepting that these feelings are a part of who they are and were, and deciding to move forward anyway with this newfound strength that the Shadow will relent, and the Kingdom will begin to dissolve for good.
What happens if the Rebels lose?
If the Cognition representing the Will of Rebellion dies, it will reform, but be immediately captured by the Sovereign. The Sovereign will bring them before the person in question, and force them to kill their Will of Rebellion with their own hands.
If this happens, it is permanently gone and cannot ever reform. The Kingdom will dissolve, and the person will have their memories returned, the idea of Rebellion crushed out of them forever as they decide to live under the status quo.
But It Can Get Worse!
Sometimes servants of the Stagnation have machinations that go far beyond their mandate. In these cases, they can lock someone in a Kingdom for far longer, using their abilities towards memory and emotion to attempt to do much, much worse in pursuit of a lasting "peace."
The details of this will be shared with interested characters, but it is similar to the goals of Jerri in the Repaint Your Heart DLC.
At times, the Self-Preservation Instinct itself may take an active hand in creating a Kingdom itself and supervising the effort. It only does this for individuals it deems as most threatening to the status quo of the world: for example, individuals who might disrupt an entire government through a massive scandal.
When this is the case, the Kingdoms it forms are multilayered, where a typical Kingdom might only have one relatively simple layer. Even defeating one Sovereign in these multilayered Kingdoms may simply put you in a different area, facing a different Sovereign, and being confronted with a new formative trauma. It is only through great effort that one can ever reach the innermost Kingdom where one finds the Shadow.
It truly is an absurdly rigged game.
How do we get out?
Real time passes fighting in a Kingdom, and I have finals tomorrow! So hey, your cause is great, but I can't stay here forever as part of your revolution.
The base of operations for the Will of Rebellion will always have a way to leave the Kingdom for the Persona Users it summoned. This usually takes the form of a golden door. If one leaves with the intent of running away, it will vanish behind them, but should one have the resolve to return and continue the fight, then that door will form at the place where they were drawn in, representing the choice to return.
Other Persona Users can be led to this door by others who've been there already and even drawn in, but they won't be able to see it until they've been inside too.
The Actual Awakening
As previously mentioned, without outside help, the Will of Rebellion in a Kingdom is sure to lose. That means that for the source of a Kingdom to awaken as a Persona User themselves, they need Persona Users to come in from outside to help them confront their Shadow.
"Hey, that kind of sounds like the TV dungeons from Persona 4?" You're right! But it's not exactly the same, either. In a TV dungeon, an unawakened person confronts the hidden side(s) of themselves that they find embarrassing; in a Kingdom, one awakens via one's Will of Rebellion and then confronts oneself with this new self-knowledge.
As a method of awakening, this is meant to be a quicker, simpler way than making up an entire Palace, that allows one to focus more on one's own trauma than on changing the heart of a wicked person. We welcome and invite OC Palaces and for player characters to awaken within these Palaces as a result of their experiences within; one doesn't need to resolve a Palace to awaken within it, either. However, if one ultimately desires a Change of Heart for the Ruler, then at this time that requires the assistance of the Phantom Thieves. If that's your intent, please be sure to reach out to them for their buy-in and to figure out how they get involved. If you'd rather not rely on a specific group of players, then an OC Kingdom might be the choice for you. You could still run an OC Palace later if you so choose.
As for Kingdoms, while in Tactica proper, the Kingdom has multiple layers as described in But It Can Get Worse!, OC Kingdoms don't need to be nearly so complex. OCs are encouraged to make them as complicated or as simple as they want their awakening process to be as long as they otherwise follow the above guidelines, and are encouraged to invite other characters that may or may not include a Phantom Thief to come rescue them for their awakening.
OOC Minutia
- In Persona 5 Tactica canon, the Kingdom presented is the result of an invasion by the force known as 'the Stagnation' taking a direct active hand in its formation. This option is not available for player characters at the start of the Velvet Room MUSH. As the plot of the game progresses, we will announce when this option is available for player characters on game.