Publisher: Lightspress

Authority That Remembers is an issue of the Acta Principia zine focused on the mythpunk fantasy genre.

Mythpunk fantasy frames stories around authority that remembers. Power doesn’t reset between scenes, and meaning doesn’t either. Myths remain active structures that shape law, identity, and expectation long after their origins blur. Characters live inside stories already told about them, their communities, and what the world insists is inevitable. Social pressure weighs as heavily as monsters or magic. Every action lands inside a web of memory, reputation, and obligation that keeps score even when everyone wishes it wouldn’t.

This genre exists to confront a failure in traditional fantasy. Nostalgia often cleans up the past and treats authority as something earned once and held forever. Mythpunk refuses that comfort. Heroic inevitability becomes a story power tells to protect itself. The focus shifts to what happens when old myths still rule but no longer fit the lives bound to them. Conflict grows from inheritance, from laws written for vanished conditions, and from traditions that demand loyalty without consent. Play centers on choosing when to comply, when to reinterpret, and when refusal itself becomes the only honest move.

At the table and in the fiction, mythpunk fantasy addresses consequence drift. Choices don’t vanish after a clean win or loss. Communities remember who broke custom, who benefited from harm, and who paid quietly so others wouldn’t have to. Authority never stays abstract. It appears as favors owed, names spoken carefully, and histories that won’t loosen their grip. The genre supports play where meaning stays contested, power always carries debt, and survival doesn’t excuse what the world turns into along the way.