Blind Scribes

A first hour that teaches

A new character is asked one question: muster, or skip. The Muster Yard is a ten-minute training ground. You look around and read the map, size up a creature, fight it your class's way, loot it, answer a heavy blow, flee, drink a draught, set your wimpy and rest. Deaths in the yard cost nothing.

Walking the core path pays once: level 2, a little gold and two healing potions. Optional schools wait in the yard after that, to take in any order. Skipping costs nothing, and you can come back from any safe room at any level.

Fights you read and answer

Every fight runs in rounds of two seconds. What you type goes off on the next round in place of your swing. Heavy weapon blows and the great spells commit you for longer: that is roundtime, and while it runs you cannot flee or step back.

Every fight also has a range: melee, pole or missile. A spell opens a fight at pole range and the creature has to close on you. A spear reaches from pole, and a bow shoots from any range. You can advance or retreat a band at a time.

Bosses fight in a rhythm. A few ordinary blows, then a wind-up, and on its next turn a heavy blow lands at three times the force, unless you answer it in the round between. Try it:

An illustration of the web client's wind-up strip. In the game the outcome is rolled, and consider tells you your odds for each answer before you start.

Eight towns and a long climb

Levels run from 1 to 50 across 114 zones and eight hub towns, each with its own trades, people and roads out. Every weapon has a blow of its own, every guild a ladder of skills and spells, and skills grow the way they do in DragonRealms, through use, with field experience and mindstates.

Quests come from people: ask them what they know, and they hand out work. Many out-of-the-way zones have someone living in them who knows the place. The Questor gives bounties and campaigns, and a long chain called the Proof runs from level 33 to 40.

See the towns and the zones

Remort, the Mantle and the circles

At level 50 the story of the Mantle of the Ascendant asks you one question, and you seat one of its three endings. Then you can remort: begin again at level 1 as any class, and any race if you like, with every attribute one point higher for good. Your old class is mastered, and its abilities keep unlocking beside the new one's. You keep your skills, gear, money, titles and quest points.

Remort opens places, not power. Gates such as the Skybreak cairn, the Rust Stair and the ring under Corthal open to one remort, and the Drowned Stair to two. The Sounded Coast lies down the river from an empty cradle-berth. About twenty quests appear only once you have begun again, and the ending you seated changes what you see in four mirror zones.

Inside each guild you climb circles, read off your skills, up to circle 150. Circles open each guild's two branch abilities, a title every tenth circle and, at 75, the door to your guild's reliquary. Past circle 101, and again past 126, the guilds ask for a remort.

At fifty: the Quires, the Codex, the seasons

The Quires are a six-tier ladder on the lists. Any boss you have beaten can be wagered again at a quire from 1 to 6. The first two are a gentle way in. From the third, each copy carries an affix from that week's Fair Copy, the same for everyone, so bests compare. A counted win pays marks, spent at the lists' stall on crafting reagents, two cosmetic titles and a small, capped upgrade past a drop's own ceiling. The public board, ranks, shows who has gone furthest against which boss.

The Codex gathers what the game already knows about you into nine chapters, from the Bestiary to the Record, with titles at their milestones. Experience earned past level 50 is tallied there as the margin, toward a title. It never turns into power.

Seasons are world tales that run for about six weeks, with tokens, a stall and a title. Counted Quire wins move a season too, so a level-50 character can carry one alone. A season buys looks, not power.

Crafting and work orders

Three trades, forging, outfitting and remedies, run a recipe ladder from level 1 to 50. Materials come off creatures, off a shop's shelf or out of the ground, and some rooms have a gathering spot of their own. Wearables come out crude, fine, superior or masterwork, and a reagent gives a piece its affix. A crafted piece is built to tie the best ordinary drop of its level, never to beat it: a dependable road, not a shortcut.

Every workshop posts work orders in three tiers, easy, challenging and hard, paid in the materials' worth plus labour. After fifty orders your masterwork carries your name.

Homes and clans

Buy a deeded estate: a cot from Millbrook's Moot House from level 10, then a house or a lodge from Datum's Plot Office. It is reached from any safe room, with a storage chest, furnishings, guests and a description that is yours alone to write. Rent is taken per term you spend online, and nothing is ever confiscated.

Clans can be founded from level 20, with ranks, a treasury, a hall, a channel, clan levels, a weekly quest and a goal board. Each week the clan that best defends a town from invasion becomes its Warden, with its banner over the square.

Quality of life, everywhere

Autoloot and autogold are on from the start. Autodraught drinks your best healing draught for you at a health mark you choose, on your own turn and the draught's own clock. The map draws the rooms you have explored, map zone the whole area, and runto walks you anywhere you have been.

The Day-Book keeps three small daily goals and one weekly one, a bonus lane with no streaks and nothing locked behind it. The Questor draws campaigns of your own, and every few hours a global quest races the whole server. Hire a hand, buy a mount, light a camp in the wild, and ask help search about anything.

A web client worth reading in

The client is set like a manuscript, in a serif made for long reading, with small-caps titles and every room's painting in a gilt frame. It comes in night vellum and day vellum. A slim strip above the room shows the sun or moon's arc, the weather, the season, the tide on the coast and the head of steam underground. The whole page tints gently with the hour and the weather, and the eight towns change to a painted night scene after dark.

Big moments get a small ceremony: a boss card with its portrait the first time you meet one, a toast for a level or a deed, and an illuminated card when you graduate from the Muster. The Map pane draws your explored zone as an inked plan. Sound cues, synthesized in the browser, are off until you turn them on. On a phone the panes fold into one row of buttons, with every target a thumb's width.

Built for screen readers and MUD clients

Screen-reader mode turns every line into plain words: no box drawing, no decorative banners, a spoken prompt, and the map as a list of rooms with the steps to each. The web client has its own live announcer, and a heavy blow's warning is always read first in a busy round.

Nothing is web-only content. Every ceremony has a plain-sentence telnet equivalent, with opt-in banners, word wrap at your window's width and an ASCII fallback. The server speaks GMCP for Mudlet and other clients (room info for mappers, vitals, combat, skills, items, quests, groups, goals) as well as MSSP, and clients that report a screen reader switch the mode on by themselves.

Public telnet is not open yet. For this alpha the web client is the only way in. Public telnet is the first thing planned for the next phase.