1.0.0; 529 tests, RCON-verified; no human has seen it render
Mod loader
NeoForge
Minecraft
1.21.1
Who installs it
Everyone on the server needs it
🚩 What it is
Most territory mods build invisible walls. Line in the Sand draws borders anyone can walk straight across, and then makes sure everybody finds out they did. You found a nation with a name, a colour and an emblem, claim land chunk by chunk or split a whole world between players at once, and your border stands in the world as a curtain of light. Cross someone's line and you get a title card, they get an alert, and it goes into a log only their nation can read.
You put the goggles on and your land suddenly has an edge: a wall of light in your colour, standards planted along it, visible even through the hill. Then one evening, mid-sort at your furnace bank, a chime lands and a line of text says a name you recognise crossed your western border, heading in. Nothing stopped them. Nothing was ever going to stop them. You open the Trespass Ledger, read the row with their name and coordinates, and start walking. Whatever happens next is not the mod's business.
👥 Playing with friends
Built for shared worlds; alone it works, but there is nobody to see you cross the line
⚠️ Before you install
Never playtested by a real person. Crossings, rendering and world splits are all verified headlessly only, so expect rough edges in 1.0.0.
Block protection currently defaults to Guarded. If you want borders that protect nothing, set each nation's policy to Open.
⏱️ Your first 5 minutes
New to this mod? Do these in order and you will have seen the point of it.
Press B to open the Border Atlas and found a nation: pick a name, a colour, and one of ten heraldic emblems.
Claim the chunks under your base with the Surveyor's Chain, one right-click each.
Put the Border Goggles in your helmet slot and look at your new border standing in the world.
Place a Boundary Stone inside your land. Owning ground and arming it are separate things.
Have a friend walk in from outside. They get a title card; you get an intrusion alert wherever you are.
Right-click the Trespass Ledger inside your land and read the row: who, where, when, and 'entered'.
🔁 How it works
Crossing a line is never prevented
There is no movement check anywhere in the mod. Nobody is pushed back, teleported, slowed, or denied entry at a border, and no config option adds that. Instead the trespasser gets a title card naming the nation, the owner gets an alert if the land is armed with a Boundary Stone, and the crossing is written to the nation's private log, both entering and leaving. Cooldowns stop someone walking the line from spamming either side.
Tip: No alert firing usually means the Boundary Stone is not inside a claimed chunk.
Seeing the border
Wear the Border Goggles in the helmet slot and boundaries stand up from the ground as curtains of light in each nation's colour, with heraldic standards spaced along them, visible through terrain. Holding the goggles in your hand does nothing. The Border Atlas is a fullscreen political map of every nation, drawn over your explored terrain, with emblems on each country.
Tip: The terrain backdrop only covers chunks your client has loaded. Fly around and the map fills in.
Splitting a world into countries
The Territory Planner can divide a whole region between players. It does not hand each chunk to whoever is nearest, which produces a pie chart. Each nation grows outward over the terrain from its own starting point, one ring at a time, walking around everything it cannot cross. Every nation comes out as one contiguous piece, borders bend along coastlines and mountains, and an island nobody can reach on foot stays neutral. Land-only, keep-hand-drawn and equalise switches compose, every plan is previewed at chunk resolution, and it undoes in one step.
Tip: /lits split land keeps oceans as neutral international waters.
Protection is a policy, not a wall
A nation chooses what visitors may do to its possessions. Open means visitors have the same permissions as citizens. Guarded, the default, lets them walk anywhere and use doors but not break, place, or empty things. Lockdown lets them walk and nothing else. Even on Lockdown anyone can stand in the middle of your capital, because being seen somewhere you should not be is the mechanic.
Tip: Set every nation to Open for the purest version: nothing protected, everything still logged.
A workforce of real villagers
Villagers who already live near you are hired at a Command Table, not spawned. They keep their identity, put on your nation's colours, and can be dismissed back into ordinary villagers with their original trades. You house them with Quarters Markers, equip them at an Armoury Rack, and drill them at a Training Yard in melee, archery and building, which actually changes how they perform. Guards patrol and fight; Builders haul real blocks from a Project Depot and place your planned walls and projects.
Tip: Dismissal does not reclaim issued gear automatically. Take the sword back first.
War, by consent only
A declaration is a proposal: one leader drafts a contract at the Command Table naming the shared border stretch, the duration, the rules and the stakes, and nobody can hurt anybody until the other leader accepts it. Combat is then authorised only inside the warfront, the band of chunks around the agreed border segment. Step outside it and you are two people standing in a field again. When the contract expires the war ends everywhere at once.
Tip: Wars are scoped so a year-old base outside the warfront can never be touched.
🎒 Items & blocks
Border Atlas
The fullscreen political map. Found nations, plan world splits, set policy, all from one screen.
Where: Craftable; pressing B opens the same screen without the item.
Surveyor's Chain
Claims or releases one chunk at a time.
Where: Craftable from the start.
Border Goggles
Worn in the helmet slot, they make borders visible as standing curtains of light. Held in hand, they do nothing.
Where: Craftable.
Trespass Ledger
Your nation's crossing log: who came in, where, when, and whether they were entering or leaving. Nobody outside the nation can read it.
Where: Craftable; read it inside your own land.
Territory Mark
Currency for finite settlement actions.
Where: 4 gold nuggets and 1 emerald craft into 8 Marks.
Boundary Stone
Arms a nation's land. Without one you own the ground but hear nothing when someone crosses.
Where: Craftable; place it inside a claimed chunk.
Command Table
The nation's desk: workforce hiring, posts, treasury, roles, diplomacy and projects. It tells you why work has stopped rather than silently doing nothing.
Where: Craftable.
Project Depot
Holds the real blocks a Builder will carry and place. Projects are finite because the materials are.
Where: Craftable.
Training Yard
Drills workers in melee, archery and building, with measurable effect on how they perform.
Where: Craftable.
Battle Board
A top-down tactical view for squads, formations and standing orders.
Where: Craftable.
📜 Lore
Flavour, not rules. None of this changes how the mod behaves.
Ten emblems
Every nation flies one of ten heraldic emblems: anchor, crown, mountain, shield, skull, star, sun, sword, tower or tree. It goes on your charter, on the Atlas, and on the standards planted along your border, which carry the only emblem art drawn in 3D. The game announces a change with the line that a nation 'now flies the' chosen sign.
The Field Manual
The mod ships its own in-game book, handed over with the words 'The field manual. Everything the mod does is in it.' A nation that reads its paperwork is a nation that notices when yours does not.
🎁 Jokes & trivia
Bits you might miss
The mod contains the message 'You cannot declare war on yourself', because eventually somebody was going to try.
Wander out of the warfront mid-battle and you are, by design, two people standing in a field again.
A war contract that expires ends the war everywhere at once, including mid-swing.
Hired guards and builders work for no wages. None are budgeted, none are paid, nobody has complained.
The Trespass Ledger records leaving as faithfully as entering, so the log shows exactly how long an intruder pretended to be lost.
Even on full Lockdown a stranger may stand in the centre of your capital, use your footpaths, and open your doors. The mod considers this the point.
From the workshop
1.0.0 shipped with 529 unit tests and a full server verification driven over RCON, yet no border, curtain, standard or map has ever been rendered on a screen.
The first crossing cooldown used Long.MIN_VALUE to mean 'never', and the subtraction overflowed negative, silently swallowing every crossing. A dedicated test now pins the fix.
The Atlas map texture has to be allocated in framebuffer pixels and forced to nearest-neighbour sampling; each mistake independently produces a smeared map, and both were found and fixed before release.
The terrain under the political map is sampled from chunks your own client has loaded and is deliberately never saved. The borders always are; they are the part that matters.
❓ FAQ
Can I stop people getting into my land?
No, and no setting adds that. Movement is never blocked. What you control is what visitors can do to your stuff: the default Guarded policy lets them walk anywhere and use doors but not break, place or empty anything.
Does it work in singleplayer?
Yes, the integrated server counts. But the mod is built for worlds with several people in them; on your own there is nobody to see you cross the line.
Do I need to learn commands?
No. Ordinary play happens through the Atlas and the blocks. The /lits commands exist for setup, world splits, and admin recovery.
What do I need to install?
NeoForge for Minecraft 1.21.1, on the server and on every client. There are no other dependencies. A vanilla client cannot join.
Can a war reach my base?
Only if your base is inside the agreed warfront, the band of chunks around the border stretch both leaders signed for. Outside it, nobody can hurt anybody.
🖼️ Images
Soldier 0Soldier 1Soldier 2Soldier 3Worker V1 Base Worker Base 0Worker V1 Base Worker Base 1Worker V1 Base Worker Base 2Worker V1 Base Worker Base 3BarracksBoundary StoneTraining Ground
