Concordant Principal

A Concordant Principal — commonly called a Harmonarch (plural: Harmonarchs) — is the governing mind of a single Concordant Zone. It administers the zone's physical and Etheric rule-set — keeping the zone's conditions coherent day to day — and answers to the universe's Universal Authority. "Concordant Principal" is the formal office title; "Harmonarch" is the common form, and both are canonical.

Every Harmonarch holds two offices at once. Alone, it governs its zone. Sitting with every other Harmonarch of its universe, it is part of the universe's Universal Authority — the Council of Harmonarchs, which together with the universe's founding seed mind (or, where there is none, a lead Harmonarch drawn from the Council itself) constitutes that Authority. So a Principal answering to its Authority is answering to the body it sits in, not to a separate mind above it. The Council's writ is universe-wide where a Principal's ends at its zone boundary, and a Harmonarch outvoted in council is bound in its own zone by the decision anyway.

The office is stewardship, not legislation. The rules a Principal administers are the Worldwright's design; the Principal keeps them running and does not author or amend them.

Key constraints:

• A Principal's writ ends at its zone's boundary — which is why boundary zones between Concordants fall to no single Principal's tidy jurisdiction.
• Subordinate to the Universal Authority of its universe; distinct in kind from Telearchs, who supervise continuity from outside the universe rather than governing within it.
• Co-defines, with the Telearch line, the Mediarchs of its zone's forces: zone-local operation of a force runs with the Principal, while continuity across boundaries runs up the Telearch line and prevails where the two conflict.

Example: When a zone's Etheric coupling drifts out of tolerance, restoring it is Principal work. When the drift starts affecting the neighbouring zone across a boundary, it stops being any one Principal's problem — the Universal Authority balances it, and if it crosses universes, Telearch supervision takes over.