Topics: fantasy worldbuilding, characters, factions, relics, creatures, locations, canon.

Tags: law, adventurer, salvage.

Core principle: salvage law exists because ruins are not neutral treasure boxes. A recovered object may belong to the finder, the local lord, an extinct monastery, a dwarven maintenance clan, a dragon treaty, a royal archive, a saint cult, a buried village, or nobody safely living.

Charter types: a Lantern Writ allows shallow search and rescue; a Bronze Salvage Writ allows monster parts and common goods; a Red Map Writ allows disputed ruins; a Deep Warrant permits sealed places under witness; a Relic Custody Writ decides whether an artifact must go to temple, crown, clan, college, or guild escrow.

Share structure: standard contracts divide reward into finder share, guide share, healer share, cartographer share, porter wage, local lord's due, temple inspection fee, guild risk tithe, death-benefit pool, and hazard reserve. Parties that ignore shares often survive the dungeon and lose the reward in court.

Jurisdiction conflicts: Valemere claims old imperial archives, Khundravan claims infrastructure and runes, Moonmere claims living wood and grove memory, the Temple claims saint relics and abyssal evidence, the College claims dangerous spell grammar, and dragons claim anything covered by old territorial clauses.