Caspian :cloud:: Ok folks. I'm sure this has been stated here in Discord before, but I'll go ahead and state it again.

When you incorporate into a settlement, land is transferred from the owners over to the settlement. It becomes the property of the settlement to do what it likes with. The settlement owns the land.

The leaders of the settlement, generally a village or town council, can vote on stuff, with voted weighted by how much land was contributed to the settlement. Like stocks in a company. The more land you contributed to the settlement, the more your vote is worth.

The settlement can choose to sell the land back to the owners, to other people, or to hold onto it as settlement land. If they sell it back to others, it's still incorporated, but is now privately owned. The settlement has no control over what happens on that land, but can collect taxes based on the sale of the land back to private owners. This private property can be used by the settlement as a source of income through property taxes.

If the settlement wants to grow, it must either purchase the surrounding land directly from the count as incorporated land, or must purchase it from private individuals who own the land in order to annex. If they purchase the land, then those new land owners potentially also get a vote in how the settlement is ran.

As to "Mayor" titles. They have a controlling interest in the settlement as though they owned a certain % of the land before it became a settlement. But all land in a settlement is, by default, owned either by the settlement itself, or has been sold back to NPCs as privately owned land. Any land owned by the settlement can, at the desire of the settlement leadership, be sold back to the mayor or councilmembers.
CoE-Common room: Caspian #1/28/2018#
#settlements and land contribution#
Caspian :cloud:: Let me answer those one at a time, Nienori.
1. If you have a mayor package, then when you select a settlement during domain/settlement selection you inherit some % of the land of the settlement, as though your family has always owned it. Those are your lands, but they've been incorporated into the settlement in exchange for voting rights, etc.
2. If you buy plots of land with EP, you can incorporate them into the settlement to increase your voting privilages, as well as to increase the wealth of the settlement, or you can use them as personal lands.
3. If a settlement receives land through Villager Tokens, then it isn't your lands. It's the settlements.