The machine screams. The earth breathes. Listen to the breathing.

In a world defined by ruined technology, corporate ambition, psychic contamination, and the ceaseless hunger for salvage, the Stillwater Compact has chosen another path.

The Compact is a decentralized union of communes, hidden valleys, river settlements, and cultivated sanctuaries bound by a radical conviction: the collapse of the old world was not an accident. Technology was not merely involved in the disaster. It was the disease that made the disaster inevitable.

Where others seek to control the Cognitive Static, exploit it, map it, weaponize it, or worship it, the Compact refuses the entire bargain. Its people grow food, protect water, cultivate damaged soil, preserve practical knowledge, and attempt to live so lightly upon the world that the ghosts of the past can find nothing within them to seize.

The Path of the Unbroken World

The Compact traces its origins to survivors of Arcology Terra-Veridia, whose automated systems became instruments of death during the Feedback Cascade. Led by the botanist Elara, they escaped not through advanced technology, but through knowledge of water, air, plants, physical terrain, and the strength of their own hands.

From that experience emerged a culture of technological asceticism. The Compact rejects advanced corporate systems, networked machinery, CRI technology, and the scavenger economy built around the ruins of the old world.

Its members do not seek to rebuild what was lost. They seek to build a form of civilization that cannot fail in the same way again.

A Nation of Spirit

The Stillwater Compact has no capital, central government, permanent ruler, or standing army. It is held together by shared belief, ritual practice, mutual obligation, and a common relationship with the land.

Each commune governs itself according to local need and tradition. Elders guide the community, Trailwardens defend it, Seers interpret changes in the land, and ordinary members perform the labor required to sustain life without dependence upon the systems that destroyed the old world.

To destroy the Compact, an enemy would have to destroy every hidden settlement, every cultivated valley, and the idea connecting them.

The Three Pillars of Stillness

The Compact’s way of life rests upon principles of ecological and communal endurance. Clean water is sacred. The earth provides only when treated with care. The community survives through shared labor rather than accumulation or individual dominance.

These principles are not abstract philosophy. They determine where settlements are built, what tools may be used, how food is distributed, how outsiders are treated, and what risks the Compact is prepared to accept in order to remain uncorrupted.

Harmonized Lands

The strangest evidence in favor of the Compact’s beliefs is that its methods appear to work.

Territory cultivated and inhabited by the Compact can become Harmonized, reducing the local intensity of the Cognitive Static. Valleys surrounded by dangerous wasteland may possess cleaner water, healthier soil, more stable wildlife, and significantly lower Anomaly Severity than the regions around them.

The Compact explains this as the result of living in balance with the earth. Corporate researchers suspect an unrecognized interaction among ecology, consciousness, attention, and psychic residue. The Compact has little interest in helping them investigate.

Faith and Survival

The Compact’s greatest conflict comes from within.

Traditionalists believe survival depends upon strict isolation and absolute rejection of old-world technology. Pragmatists argue that refusing every outside tool, trade relationship, or fragment of knowledge may eventually destroy the very communities the doctrine was intended to preserve.

Crop failure, disease, contaminated water, environmental change, and threats from outside powers continually force the Compact to choose between remaining pure and remaining alive.

Inside This Book

• The origins and history of the Stillwater Compact;
• The Path of the Unbroken World and the Compact’s rejection of technological civilization;
• The Three Pillars of Stillness and the rituals through which the doctrine is lived;
• The structure of Compact communes and the roles of Elders, Trailwardens, Seers, and community members;
• Veridian Hollow and other hidden settlements of the Compact;
• Harmonized lands and the Compact’s measurable effect upon the Cognitive Static;
• The internal struggle between isolationists and pragmatists;
• Relationships with the corporations, Wayfinders, Helios Foundation, Choir, Null Guard, and other powers of the Wake;
• Character options, cultural traits, equipment restrictions, and faction mechanics;
• Rules and guidance for Compact characters in Deadwake roleplaying campaigns;
• Faction abilities and tactical material for Deadwake miniatures play;
• Adventure hooks, moral dilemmas, scenario concepts, and campaign frameworks; and
• Guidance for using the Compact as allies, patrons, player characters, rivals, or ideological antagonists.

The Compact in Roleplaying Campaigns

Stillwater characters may be Trailwardens, Seers, healers, farmers, hunters, craftspeople, young pilgrims, or members of a commune forced to confront the wider Wake for the first time.

Compact stories naturally explore faith, environmental survival, technological temptation, cultural isolation, communal duty, and the difference between protecting a way of life and imprisoning people within it.

The central question is rarely whether technology can solve the immediate problem. It is whether accepting that solution recreates the dependencies that destroyed the old world.

The Compact in Miniatures Play

Compact forces rely upon terrain knowledge, concealment, ambush, fieldcraft, handcrafted weapons, environmental resilience, and disciplined defense of carefully chosen ground.

They lack the heavy armor, advanced sensors, and overwhelming firepower of the corporations. They compensate through preparation, mobility, Harmonized territory, and an intimate understanding of landscapes their enemies regard as empty or undeveloped.

Using This Sourcebook

This book supports both the Deadwake Role Playing Rules and the Deadwake Miniatures Combat Rules. It contains material for players, Facilitators, miniatures commanders, and readers interested in the independent frontier powers of the Wake.

The appropriate Deadwake core rulebook is required to use the included roleplaying or miniatures mechanics.

Book Details

• Author: Jon Compton
• Publisher: Canvas Temple Publishing, LLC
• Format: Paperback
• Length: 108 pages
• Dimensions: Approximately 7.4 × 9.7 inches
• Language: English
• Publication Date: May 20, 2026
• ISBN-10: 1969445211
• ISBN-13: 9781969445217

The digital edition is sold separately through WargameVault. This listing is for the physical paperback edition.