HOW TO PLAY

WYRMRAIL VERSION 0.73e

WyrmRail is played by writing. There are no attack buttons: you write what your character does, the Weaver writes how the Lull answers, and an engine behind the story decides how it really goes.

A ROUND

• Write what your character does: a few sentences, in first or third person, as you like. Or tap one of the Weaver's ideas under the box (quicker, but half as strong, and they never change the world).
• The Weaver, the game's storyteller, grades your passage on three things: the prose itself, how well you used this place, and how much your character is in it. She reads warmly: a real attempt counts, several real details of the place count as using it, and no way of writing is marked down for being that way. A bare line still scores low.
• Her grade drives how hard you hit, how well you defend, how much someone warms to you and what a place gives up.
• Your card shows her score on a generous curve (her 65 shows as 75.5, Made into Song; her 50 as 65, Remembered). That score names your rung, and the rung is your chance of becoming canon: see What becomes canon.
• Then the Weaver writes the next paragraph of your story.
• The Loom. As you type, a bar fills. At 12, 25, 50 and 100 words it lights a thread: a small advantage the round is dealt. Each mark you pass also lifts your rung by 3, 6, 9 or 12, which raises the chance the world keeps the round. A thread only multiplies what the writing earned, so length without craft buys very little. A turn can be up to 300 words.

USING A SKILL

• Select the words that do it and tap the skill, or type the tag yourself: [BLADE]She cuts low[/BLADE]. Against more than one, a tag can carry a shape: More than one of them.
• Every skill has a ladder of ranks. Using it well raises it; your level is made from your skills.
• Tag a skill you don't have and write it well, and you start learning it.
• The skill doesn't decide what happens; it decides how big it can be. At rank 1, FIRE singes the bark of one tree. At rank 100 it takes a valley, and the next country over can smell it.
• Before you use one, hover over a skill or tag it, and the line under the skill buttons says what it will do here: what it leaves, on whom, and how strong at each grade. The offered options say it too.

MORE THAN ONE OF THEM

A pack is not one monster any more. Every one of them has its own Soulpower, shown one by one under their bar: the one in front first, and, when there are three or more, a leader (★) hanging back at the end, tougher than the rest. Tap the one you go for; otherwise you go for the one in front.

In the films, a pack stands in depth. When three or more are in a scene, they spread out across the ground: some further back (a little higher up the ground and smaller), some nearer (lower and bigger), and you in the middle. Whoever closes with you steps into your line for the exchange and goes back to their own spot afterwards. Spells, blows, numbers and wounds land on each one where they actually stand.

The shape of what you do. Give a skill's tag a shape and it reaches more than one. Tag the skill, then tap a shape under the skill buttons, or type it into the tag yourself: [FIRE:ARC]a wave of flame across them[/FIRE]. One shape for each tag.

• Point: one of them, at full strength. Every skill has it, and it is always the strongest.
• Arc: up to three, the one you go for and those beside it, each at three-quarters.
• Line: up to five, the one you go for and those behind it, each at six-tenths.
• Burst: every one of them, each at a little under half.

Each skill unlocks its shapes at its own ranks. A blade, a gravity well or a gout of fire reaches wide early; an arrow or a bolt of lightning goes through in a line first; a shield, a healing or a conjuring stays on one until late; a shout reaches everyone who hears it. A shape you haven't reached yet lands as a Point, and the round says why. Against a single figure a shape only spreads you thinner, so it lands weaker.

The shape shapes what it leaves. A status your strike leaves (Bleeding, Burning, Chilled…) takes its shape too. A Point poured into one of a pack leaves it half again as strong and twice as long; an Arc leaves it as usual; a Line, three-quarters as strong and long; a Burst, half as strong and half as long, but on every one of them: a Burst's burn bites each one standing every time you strike. Against a single figure a plain strike leaves exactly what it always did.

Things that change your shape. Some gear rolls a shape modifier, shown on the item: Wide (one skill reaches its wider shapes some ranks sooner) or Focused (a Point strikes harder). Bottles and artifacts have a shape of their own against a pack: a fire bottle bursts over all of them, a bottled bolt goes through them in a line, an artifact reaches as wide as its skill does at its rank. Against one figure they're aimed at that one. And bringing several down with a single strike counts toward a title of its own.

The blow carries through. Kill one with a Point and more than it had left, and the rest goes on into the next one standing.

The pack has a nerve. When its leader falls, or half of them are down, the rest test their nerve: they hold, they break and run (the fight is yours), or they fight harder. The dead and the made have no nerve to break. They hit you as one, but weaker as they fall: with half of them down, a quarter less. Your companion picks a target of its own.

WHAT A SKILL LEAVES BEHIND

• Every skill leaves a status: something that lasts a few rounds. What it is depends on the moment. In a fight, FIRE swung sets it Burning; FIRE braced with is a Flame Ward that scorches what hits you. In a conversation a blade on the table leaves them Cowed. In a ruin, NATURE sets you Foraging.
• How strong it is grows with your rank against what resists it (their body or magic in a fight, their Endurance in a conversation, how deep a place is) and with how well you wrote it. A passage that is Lost or only Told leaves nothing. Strength reads faint, firm, fierce or overwhelming.
• Statuses show as chips under the bars, with the rounds they have left. Tap one to read it.
• In a fight, elements combine: water then lightning conducts, wind feeds a fire, water and cold freeze solid. Each skill's page on your Character screen lists what it combines with.
• Things you fight leave statuses on you too (the red chips): burning, bleeding, dazed, marked, stunned. The better you write your defence, the less sticks; a defence Made into Myth shrugs it all off. Water puts out burning, fire thaws you, light clears your eyes, and a HEALING or FIRST AID defence clears the worst of it.
• When a door changes the moment, a status with rounds left carries across once. Come into a fight Primed from exploring and your first strike lands harder.
• The full list is on your Character screen: YOU → HOW STATUSES WORK.

THREE WAYS TO BE SOMEWHERE

• Exploring: read the place, Look and Listen (and say what you're looking for), follow what you find. Push a place and something eventually notices you.
• Talking: earn Rapport, keep your Standing, ask for what you need. People remember how you treated them. Press someone too long and they'll walk away; pester them and they may call the guard.
  Asking. Once Rapport is high enough, write your question and send it as an Ask. Asks cost Standing, whether or not they land.
  They won't wait forever. Leave a conversation alone and they leave it: after about an hour of real time if it's going badly, up to six hours if they're glad of you (Rapport and Standing decide it). You're back to exploring, they remember being left, and your journey keeps count; leave enough people hanging and the Weaver may name you for it. Now and then someone left waiting snaps and comes at you instead: then the fight is their crime, not yours, and what they carry is yours if you win.
• Fighting: your Soulpower is your life, and death is permanent. What you carried stays where you fell, for anyone to find. Run if you must: it costs one blow. Retiring a character (on your Character screen) is different: they keep everything they carry and their purse, and no one else can have it.

Soulpower carries over. What you lose in one fight you still have lost in the next, and in any conversation or place in between. You get it back by:

• Mending skills, anywhere. HEALING, FIRST AID and SLEEPING give Soulpower back in a conversation or a place as well as in a fight, on top of whatever else they do there. NATURE and EATING AND DRINKING mend a little. A flask or charm with one of those skills counts too. The better you write it and the higher the rank, the more comes back; Lost and Told give nothing.
• An inn. Villages, towns, cities and rail stations have one. Pay a few Stamps for a bed and you wake with all your Soulpower back, at once. Or take a room for a week or a month, and sleep in it free while it lasts (see spending leaves a mark).
• Time away, while exploring. Every real hour away gives back a sixth of your most, so if you stop for the night you come back whole. It is given back only while you're exploring: a fight or a conversation keeps what you had, and the rest waits for the next time you're out exploring.

Ways out move you between them, and each one says where it leads (a fight, a conversation, back to exploring, or the map): talk to someone, end a fight, end a conversation, travel somewhere else.

THE PAGE

• Your newest turn stays open. Everything before it folds behind Earlier in this story: open it to see each piece as one line, tap one to read it, or open all. Any piece folds on its own with its ▾.
• The scene beside the page. On a computer, the window on the left shows where you are and who is with you, drawn as in your turn films: the place, the hour, the weather, you, your companion, and whoever you are fighting or talking to (a pack, every one of them still standing). Under the picture it says who they are in plain words: what they are, how strong their body and their magic are, whether a pack's nerve is holding or they have gone wild, or how a person feels about you. Under that are your Soulpower and theirs (or Standing and Rapport), and a pack one by one: tap the one you go for. When a turn lands, the scene plays that moment for a few seconds, then settles back. Choose how alive it is (moving with each turn, moving, or still) in the settings ⚙. It costs no tokens.
• On a phone, press Scene in the bottom row: the same window comes down over the top half of the screen. Tap outside it or × to put it away. On a phone your Soulpower and theirs stay right under the story, above everything a turn offers.
• When you send a turn, what you wrote goes into the story at once and the page scrolls once, so its first line is at the top of the screen. Then it stays put while the grade and the Weaver's answer arrive under it. Fortune and the Loom sit with the writing box.
• The tools: Log (everything the game did, and why), This place (what's here, how easy you are to find, where else you could be) and The map sit on the right edge of the screen, and open from the right. The CHARACTER button, Grades and the settings ⚙ are in the top corner, and the eye, which hides the page so you can look at the world, is at the bottom. On a phone they all sit in one row along the bottom.
• Come back after a world day away and a window opens with what happened while you were gone: what other writers made part of the world, who woke the Dreamer, where the Train has got to.

WHAT'S WORTH DOING

Under the writing box, THINGS YOU CAN DO HERE lists what you can do right where you are, each with a button that says what happens and what it costs: the people here (talk to them or fight them), a hidden thing to search (you write it), a job a place needs doing, a story to hear told, a notice board in a town, a body, a shop, a gift you could give, something set in a stone, a rumour or a song, and last, looking, listening and travel. Under it, NEWS HERE is just to know: what has happened here lately, and what the town is talking about today. You never have to know to ask. Tap the ? on any row to read what it is.

YOUR THINGS

• The CHARACTER button opens your Character screen: your sheet and skills, your coin, your journey, what you carry, what you wear (eleven places on the body), what's lying where you stand, your jobs and your companions. You can carry up to three jobs at once; the one you follow is the one the story builds toward, and the others still finish the moment you do what they ask.
• Your journey counts everything as it happens: what you kill and what you let live, who you talk to, where you go, what you find, earn and spend, and how well you write. The gear you wear and the companion beside you count it too, so a sword remembers what it was there for. The Weaver reads these numbers to give out titles and names (below).
• Coin is Stamps: a hundred Stamps make a Seal, a hundred Seals a Charter. Prices are in Stamps (a bed is about 8), so a Seal is real money and a Charter is a fortune. The beaten carry coin, jobs pay it, shops take it, and once in a long while somebody carries a windfall: a heavy purse of Seals, or, very rarely, a whole Charter. Your Character screen has a Coin section with the details.
• Things you can use, from "use an item ▸" under the Weaver's ideas, at their own strength. A consumable (a flask, a charm, a salve) has one to three uses, shown on it, and is gone with the last. An artifact (an ordinary thing the drift wrote words on) never runs out: its words fade when you use it and rise again. Each artifact has its own pace: most once a world day (six real hours), some once an encounter, a few every three rounds, and very rarely, every other round. A once-an-encounter artifact rises again against another foe, in another place, or after a world day: leaving a fight and coming back in doesn't wake it. The item says which, and when it's ready again.
• Anything you take must be something the world put there. You can't write treasure into being.
• Stealing is done by writing it, with any skill. Get seen and you're wanted in that town: pay the fine, talk the guard round, or stay away until it lapses. Fighting a townsperson counts too, if anyone sees it: any blow that lands on them, even if you walk away after.
• Set something in a stone. From your Character screen, leave an item where you stand with a trial (a rank in one of your skills, or a passage written there that is Made into Song, or into Myth) and a line cut into the stone. Whoever passes it keeps it. After 30 world days the stone lets go.

TITLES AND NAMES

Every 15 to 30 turns the Weaver looks back over your journey. If something stands out, it gives it a name. Each review gives at most one of each of these:

• A title for you, for what you do most: kill rats and you may become Rat Killer. Each title carries one bonus: Soulpower, a level or two in one skill, more things dropped (item find), more coin carried (coin find), or more Standing in conversations with one kind of being (monsters, people, townsfolk or creatures). Keep at it and the title grows, up to four tiers. The bigger title replaces the smaller one and keeps the same kind of bonus, only larger: Rat Killer (+2 Soulpower) becomes Rat Slayer (+4).
• A name for a piece of gear you wear, for the one thing it has seen the most of. A sword that did the goblin killing may become Goblinbane, and hits harder against goblins: +10%, growing to +50% as its count climbs.
• A name for your companion. Their own blows hit harder by the same steps. A named companion is canon: if you part ways, or you die, they go on in the world without you.

The Weaver remembers. The same review rewrites a short summary of your story so far and keeps one-line notes on the people and places that matter to you. Every paragraph the Weaver writes can call back to them: the debt you owe, the bandit you let go, the inn where you always sleep. You can read it all under JOURNEY on your Character screen.

The review is one small extra call to the Weaver, every 15 to 30 turns. Your Character screen shows your titles, what each one gives, and how close the next tier is.

The world names things too. Now and then a monster, creature or person turns up named: a minor, major or mythic name, like Old Mother Grey, the Rat-Queen. A named figure is one of a kind and canon from the moment someone meets it. It is stronger than its kind, carries more coin, always leaves one more thing, and is far likelier to leave something named. It lives where it was met, so the next writer there may meet the same one. Put it down and it is gone for everybody, and the rail hears who did it.

Dead is dead, and first is first. A named figure lives and dies once, for everyone. If somebody else kills the one you're fighting, your chapter ends: they got there first. It isn't a dead end: you find the scene they left, and something kin to the one that's gone (its mate, its twin, its second), in its own colouring and as strong, comes for the body and finds you. A companion walking the world alone goes with the first writer who asks; anyone after them meets their kin instead. And a nameless thing that kills a writer becomes someone, like Gnasher, Who Killed Oskar: one individual out in the world, not every one of its kind.

Things can drop named as well, rarely, and more rarely the more severe the name. A named item adds +10%, +20% or +35% where its name points (against one kind of foe, whenever one skill is tagged, or in a whole mode), can grow further through the review, and is worth more. It is never worth more than a plain item two rarities up, except a named legendary, which is a category of its own.

Legends. The highest tier of every title is a legend, and only one living character can hold it at a time. Whoever gets there first keeps it until they die or retire. Then it goes back into rotation: the next to have done that thing enough takes it at their next review. Your Character screen marks your legends with a ★, tells you when someone else holds the one you have earned, and has a Previous Legends button: every legend of the Lull, who holds it now, and everyone who held it before, with how many world days each kept it.

COMPANIONS

You don't have to travel alone. You can keep up to three companions; one walks at your side. The PARTY tab on your Character screen shows them all, what each of their two ways does in every mode, and lets you choose who comes with you.

• Summon with CONJURATION: once a world day, while exploring, call something out of nothing. It is as strong as your calling.
• Tame with TAMING: wear a beast down to half in a fight, or win its trust in a conversation, and try (one try per meeting). The card tells you your odds and what happens if it fails.
• Hire anyone who trusts you, for Stamps. COMMAND makes it cheaper and makes them stronger.

They are there every turn. In a fight they strike on their own after you, with their own damage (you see their blow in the film, and the bar falls by it), and on the foe's turn they may throw themselves in front of a blow meant for you. In a conversation they chime in every turn: sometimes their way lands a status, and always they have something to say or show. Exploring, they search with you every turn, and can find what you missed: more Discovery, and now and then a real thing for your pack (a few a world day). Each one has their own manner on the page, written when they join (how they talk, a habit of theirs), and the Weaver keeps to it. What they leave on a foe reacts with what you leave: a summoned companion's statuses carry spirit, a tamed one's beast. Tag the skill that bound them (or COMMAND, for anyone) in your passage to direct them: that round they always act, at your grade, and hit half again as hard. They grow from the grades you write while they are with you, and their bond with you grows with every meeting you both come out of. Knocked down, they rest for about an hour.

Six ways, each their own. Every companion has six ways (skills): the two they are best at, and four more that fit what they are. Each has its own rank, and every time they use one, in a fight, a conversation or a place, it earns experience the way your skills do, and ranks up the same way. Their PARTY card shows each way's rank and how far it is to the next.

They can wear what you find. Give a companion up to three pieces from your pack to wear ("give … to wear"). A piece raises their ways that it names (only theirs) and their Soulpower, and what they live through wearing it counts toward its name, like yours. It stays yours: wear it yourself, or take it back, any time out of a fight. A shop will not buy a piece while they wear it (take it back first), and if they leave you, what they wore stays in your pack.

They use shapes, and so do the things you fight. Against a pack your companion goes for one you aren't, with its widest shape when three or more are standing and an Arc when two. A pack sends some of its number at your companion; a single figure whose move is a sweep, a breath or a howl sometimes catches you both, three-quarters each.

Let one go, or die, and they are not gone: they walk the Lull on their own, with their own name, manner and body, and anyone can meet them, or take them on.

HEIRLOOMS

When a character of yours dies, the thing they carried with the most story in it (a named item first, otherwise the most valuable) does not stay on the body: somebody takes it. Your next character is offered a job to win it back. It takes one of your three job slots, and you can let it go.

Take it on and the Weaver writes a short chain, all where they fell: go there and find the signs; talk to the one who saw what happened; then face whoever has it now. The cards on the worth-doing panel take you to each of them. Win the last fight and it is yours again, with its name, its history and its bonus intact.

If the family lets it go. Turn the heirloom down, or leave it waiting fourteen real days, and the world takes it up: a named figure carries it now (whatever killed them, if it still lives, or whoever picked it off the body). It walks the Lull with it, the rail talks about it, and anyone who brings that figure down finds the heirloom where it falls.

KIN COME LOOKING

Kill a major or mythic named figure and, now and then, its kin hears of it: a mate, a twin, a brother, a sworn second. It comes after you, a little closer every world day, and the notice boards post it for anyone to take down. When it catches up, it is standing where you are, and the worth-doing panel says so. If you die or retire first, it gives up the hunt and stays where it is.

Bounty races. A notice on the board is the same notice for everyone. Whoever puts the quarry down first has it; everyone else's job on it ends, and their log says who got there first.

WHEN SOMEONE FINDS WHAT YOU LEFT

The Lull is shared. When another writer comes upon your fallen character's body or grave, buries them, picks up something you put down or died carrying, draws the thing you set in a stone, comes to a place where the world kept what you wrote, or meets a named figure you met first, you are told on the Synth notifications bell. Finds of the same thing on the same day are grouped into one line.

They are named the way they chose, and so are you: in Settings (⚙), under When you find what others left, choose to appear by your character's name or as a nameless Flaskborn. Your account is never shown.

THE WORLD GOES ON WITHOUT YOU

Twice every world day (every three real hours), the Lull takes a step on its own, and every named one in it acts: the named figures, killers and kin, the locals the world has made, and every companion nobody keeps any more. A companion you let go, or who outlived you, is not gone: it walks the Lull on its own and can be met and taken on again.

Each step, each of them:

• rests (one time in four);
• travels to somewhere nearby (one in four; the more storied, the farther); or
• does something where they are (half the time). They might do nothing; meet someone (another named one, or a local, who may come away with a bond or a grudge and become someone with a name of their own); fight (another named one, the place's trouble, or a creature from the country); or explore: take a room at the inn, buy or sell at a shop, search the place and find a real thing, or leave a lasting mark (a cairn raised, a door broken).

Good and bad act differently. Companions and kindly people meet and help more, and fight the place's trouble back. Monsters, killers and kin fight more and stir trouble up; the bad ones may steal off a shop's shelf or take what lies on the ground. Nobody in the world ever touches what is in a pack, a kept room, a vault or a stone. Whatever a named one carries falls where it dies, for whoever brings it down.

Deaths are rare. Anyone who has just fought lies low for about a day (real time) before they act again, and only a few fights in a hundred end a life, so a named figure usually walks the world for months. A creature that beats a named one and lives may get a name of its own.

Their trail is their own. It never takes the place of what writers make canon. Whoever the world has standing where you are shows up on the worth-doing panel as KNOWN HERE: go up to them and talk, or fight. LATELY AT tells you what the named did at this place the last few world days. People in town may mention what passed through. And when you come back after a world day or more, While You Were Away leads with what happened: first to things you made canon, then to people you remember, then near where you stand. If nothing did, it says so.

SPENDING LEAVES A MARK

Rooms. An inn sells one night, a week (seven nights for the price of six) or a month (twenty-eight for twenty-two). A room is yours for that many world days, and you sleep in it free. Pay for a week and there is a small chance the room becomes canon; pay for a month and it will. A canon room is yours for good, as your character's room at that inn: it stays when the lease runs out, and even after you die. Writers passing through can knock at its door, and you are told when they do. It is where homes will start, later.

Being known. Every purchase from a keeper counts toward your custom there: more for a big purchase, and a little for each separate world day you come back and buy. Once a keeper knows your face, each world day you buy there may make you known: canon, shown to other writers who open that keeper, and five in a hundred off whatever they sell you. Anything you buy for a Seal or more also carries a line of history: where it was bought, by whom, and for how much. Your Character screen lists your rooms and the keepers who know you under WHERE YOU ARE KNOWN.

PEOPLE AND PLACES REMEMBER

• Everyone you meet remembers how it went, and what you gave them. Frighten someone into talking and they'll remember that too.
• Each of the four quarters of the Lull (the Iron Crown, the Old Face, the Long Shadow, the Roving Shore) keeps its own opinion of you. Jobs done and trouble ended raise it; crimes and threats lower it. It moves prices, how conversations open, and whether keepers serve you. Your Character screen shows it (only you can see it).
• News travels the rail. Deaths, killers, stones drawn and lairs reach other towns in time, and grow in the telling the farther they go.
• A monster that kills a writer gets a name and a bounty, and grows stronger for every kill.
• Trouble left alone grows, a stage every world day: from a sighting to a nest to a lair that shuts the road.
• Come back after a day or more away and the Lull tells you what happened while you were gone.

THE LADDER, AND WHAT BECOMES CANON

Every round you write rolls once. Repeated has a 1 in 10 chance the world keeps it, Remembered 1 in 4, Made into Song 1 in 2, Made into Myth 2 in 3, Made into Legend 3 in 4, and Made True always. Told and Lost are never kept. The Loom's lift counts, so writing more raises the chance. A chosen option or an item never rolls. When the chapter ends, the world keeps the best round that won its roll: one mark per chapter.

When it happens, you will know. At the end of an encounter that the world decided to keep, a CANON banner appears in your story: what the world now remembers, why your writing earned it, and how far it reaches. There are four sizes, and the celebration grows with them: local (only you saw it; it lasts about two days), this place (anyone who comes here can find it, for a week), the zone (known across the zone for a month), and the region (it never fades). The same banner appears in your published chapter, so readers see it too. The Weaver writes the banner's words with one small extra call, only when something becomes canon.

How far it can go depends on what it's about. The rung your writing reaches (Remembered, Song, Myth) is how far it could travel; what it's about sets how far it will:

• A place, or a person can be known across the country around the nearest town (Song).
• A named figure too, and a major or mythic one across the whole region (Myth).
• The Lull's own people and places, like Wakefield, the Wake, the Train or Old Mal, go as far as the writing takes them.
• A nameless creature (a rat is a rat) stays at its place, unless enough writers keep writing it well: when three passages by at least two writers reach further than it could go, it earns the next step.

Under your newest turn you see that round's roll (its rung, its chance, and whether the world kept it), then what the chapter has kept so far and how far it would go. When it ends, a card says what it kept, how far, for how long, and who will come across it, or plainly that no round won its roll.

The world has room for new things. Each place shows three things remembered there, two from the country around it and one from the region; each writer gets one of each, and the newest is always among them.

STORIES THAT TRAVEL

• Remembered here. When you stand where something was kept, the worth-doing panel shows it: what happened, who did it (or a stranger, for anyone who plays nameless), and how many world days ago. Ask, and someone who lives there tells it the way it's told now, a little grown in the telling. That's free, once for each memory in a chapter.
• People know. Whatever a place remembers, the people there know too. It comes up when you arrive, when you look and listen, and when you ask.
• Songs and old stories travel. Something kept across a zone becomes a song that spreads down the rail from where it happened. Something kept across a region becomes an old story that reaches everywhere. Either can turn up as a card hundreds of miles away.
• A story follows whoever it's about. A named figure's story arrives before it does. Meet one that other writers have written about and the Weaver knows what is told of it, wherever that happened.
• Retellings, not contradictions. If two writers keep different things about the same subject, both stay. The place says "some say one thing, others swear another".
• Legends. A subject with three or more live tellings by at least two writers is a legend on the rail. The Weaver treats it like one, and the front page lists the biggest.
• The talk of the road. In towns, people talk about the writers whose deeds the world kept far and wide. Write well enough and it could be you.
• The monthly ballad. At the turn of each month the Weaver makes a ballad from the best deeds of the month just gone, naming who did them. It's sung in the towns and printed on the front page.

THE WORLD NOTICES YOU

• Coming back. Return to a place you've been and the Weaver knows it: how long you were away, what you did there last time, and what has changed since (something another writer made canon, someone who died there). Now and then a few of your own best words from that place come back to you, as something remembered. Only ever your own words.
• Being away. If you haven't written for a world day or more, your first look shows that time has passed.
• A place that owes you. Finish a job for a place and its people remember: the Weaver is told, and conversations there start warmer.
• Someone was just here. If another writer fought or talked at a place in the last hour, you find the signs, and a card says what happened.
• The letter. When your character dies, or when you retire them, you can leave one short letter where it happened. Anyone who comes there can read it, and you're told when they do. The Weaver checks every letter for anything unkind before it's left; grief, warnings, riddles and dark humour are all fine.

THE COUNTRY

• The map is a painted chart of the whole Lull, and it opens from exploring. Travel takes world time; the road may stop you somewhere new, and whatever you find, you found first, for everyone.
• The ground is what the map shows. Where the road stops you, the place is written from what is underfoot at that exact spot on the painted map:
  • the shore makes coves, wrecks and sea caves;
  • a river makes fords, mills and ferries;
  • the hills make passes, caves and quarries;
  • the woods make lodges, glades and shrines;
  • the open plain makes crossroads, barrows and standing stones;
  • the rail makes water stops.
  The Weaver is told the ground in every scene (a shingle beach, the sea forty yards west, a river a mile north), the films draw it, and a found place on the map says where it stands: on the shore, by the river, in the hills. Brinegate sits at the head of its firth, Brinegate Water, and Wrack on Wrack Cove.
• Time moves: an hour of the Lull is fifteen real minutes, a day is six real hours. Weather crosses the country for everyone at once.
• There is one Train, and it circles the country. At the middle sleeps the Dreamer, the Queen Wyrm Below (older stories call her Somnolence, or the Sleeper). The Train's rhythm is what keeps her down.
• The Train goes round the whole country once a real week. It stands at each halt for most of an hour, and at the towns for longer. The map always shows where it is.
• You are Flaskborn. Every character is made aboard the Train, somewhere in its long middle, and set down wherever it happens to be standing when the making is finished. Don't ask the people out there how it's done: most of them have decided not to know.

YOUR STORY

• Everything you play is kept, and after any turn, in any mode, you can end the chapter here: choose the round it starts from, name it, and choose its arc (by default, the place you're in). The first time, you name your story too.
• Publish it and it becomes a chapter on Synth.pub that anyone can read, with a Game View that shows every turn beside the prose. WyrmRail stories have their own shelf: WyrmRail Stories.

EVERY TURN, A FILM

• Every turn becomes a short animated film, made right in your browser from what you wrote and what the Weaver answered: your actions, your words in your own speech bubbles, theirs, the place, the hour, the weather. Making and watching it costs no tokens. Press WATCH THIS TURN, in its own box under each turn, or set them to play on their own (or switch them off) in the settings ⚙.
• A pack is drawn one by one: up to six of them side by side, each struck, numbered and falling on its own. Every skill's shape is drawn in its own colour: a Point pours a column onto the one, an Arc sweeps a crescent across the ones beside each other, a Line drives a lance through the ones behind, a Burst rains down on every one of them and rings the ground under them; a blow that carries through goes on into the next; your companion goes for its own, in its own shape; the ones that go for your companion are seen to; and when their nerve breaks, the rest turn and run off the edge of the frame. The bar is the whole pack's.
• The Weaver writes the film's script. When she writes her paragraph, she also writes a short script of the turn: what a camera would see, in plain words, tied to the exact words you wrote. For example, on "the split knuckles closing over the iron" she might write clenches fists and green motes gathering on the hands. She also chooses the move set for the blow, and what happens after it in her own paragraph ("it staggers back", "dust settling around it"). She translates figures of speech, so "the air leaves him in a grunt" becomes a grunt, not wind. The film's director then performs her script on your words as they type, under the game's numbers and the body's limits (below). This works with any way of writing, because she reads your passage the way a person would. It adds about 700 to 1,300 tokens to a turn. With films switched off in the settings, she writes no script and it costs nothing.
• Something that appears. When your words (or the Weaver's script) call something up, the film draws it from the creatures it knows, where the words put it. Write "a mouth opens in the floor beneath it and bites", and a glowing circle opens under them, a great wolf's head rises out of it in your spell's colour, jaws wide, and snaps shut as your blow lands. A serpent can rise behind you, a giant can loom over them, a crow can come down from above. It can be huge or small, any colour, ghostly or solid. It's the nearest thing the engine can draw to what you wrote, and it's always how your blow looks, never a blow of its own: the game's number is the only one that counts.
• Every named monster looks like its description. The Gutter-Skeletons are armatures (jointed frames of wood and iron pins, a plain egg of a head with no face), the Scab-Goblins are goblins (big heads, ears like a bat's, long arms, claws, scabbed skin), the Train is a city on rails about forty people tall (you see its wheels, four people high, its rods and pistons working, steam rolling off it, and a searchlight that finds you and your companions; the camera pulls far back for it), and the Dreamer rises out of the ground, a wyrm with a dragon's head, many times taller than you. Anything that big breathes while it waits: its body swells and settles, its breath shows, dust sifts off it and the ground stirs under it.
• Things made new. Some creatures and people weren't in the engine to begin with: they were designed in the Workshop, where the Weaver builds them out of the engine's own bodies and parts (gears, armour plates, horns, crystals, a glowing core, wings). Each one has its own name and words. Write one of them into your passage ("my clockwork dragon rises behind me") and the film draws that one, not the nearest ordinary creature.
• The film learns which scripts work. Every script is kept with what the engine measured when it played it: how much of it found its words and could be shown, and how long you stood waiting. What you do with the film is kept too: watching it to the end, keeping the Weaver's Cut, saving it as a video. The scripts that played best for a kind of turn are shown to the Weaver as examples next time. She only ever sees your own turns' scripts, never another player's writing.
• Without a script, the film reads your words itself. Older turns, and any turn whose script didn't come back, are read by the director on its own: Everything you describe is acted out as it types on screen, not just the blow. Write that your hands begin to glow a deep violet, and they glow violet, lighting you and the room; write that the dust swirls around your boots, and it swirls there; write that you plant your feet, raise your hands or step back, and you do. It understands colours (amethyst, crimson, pale gold), what something is made of (fire, frost, shadow, sparks, wind, water, dust, light), how it moves (rising, swirling, spreading, bursting, pulsing, gathering), where it is (your hands, your eyes, your blade, your feet, the floor, the air), and how hard and how fast (faint, blinding, slowly, suddenly). Marks stay on the ground for the rest of the film (scorch, frost, cracks, a glowing circle). What you say you don't do, almost do or only imagine isn't acted. The camera moves in on a glow in your hands and out for something spreading across the floor, and while the words type you're never left standing still for long. It all happens in your browser: no tokens. It understands words it was never given, by what they mean. Where the Weaver's script leaves part of your passage alone, the director still acts out what it reads there.
• The film shows the game's numbers, and only those. Every bar in a film moves by exactly what the game counted that turn. On your attack, nothing lands on you: if the Weaver ends with them coming at you, the film ends with them coming at you, and the next turn (your defence) is where their blow is counted. On your defence, your blow lands only if the game gave you a counter. Neither the Weaver's script nor her Cut can change who was hit or for how much.
• Move sets: a skill fought the way you wrote it. A move set is a short, planned piece of fighting for one skill: how you get ready, the blow itself, and what comes right after, with the camera, the light and the sound worked out together. Each skill has three: a simple one (one clean blow), a medium one (a feint, a step, a gathering of power) and an elaborate one (a leap, a spell called down from the sky). The Weaver chooses one in her script, or describes the move and the film plays the closest one. Without a script, the film picks one only when your words fit it: write a feint and then the real cut, and it plays the feint; write a leap and bring the blade down, and it plays the leap; write a gentle tap, and it plays none and just shows what you wrote. It plays on the words inside the skill's tag first, then the rest of your passage. A move set never changes what the game counted: the same blow lands for the same number. A Blade, Blunt or Polearm set plays only with a weapon in your hand, and an Archery set only when you shoot. Every skill has all three, 99 in all: from a shield bash to a wall of shield coming at a run, a knife from the dark, a double that steps out of you, a circle chalked on the floor that opens, a flask drained in one and the bottle tossed, a burning stone called down from the sky. Every set was played and measured by the engine on five kinds of foe (a person, something big, a beast, a flyer and a pack) before it was allowed in, so no one walks through anyone, nobody's knee bends the wrong way, and the blow lands where you can see it. And not only for the blow. There are sets for every other moment of a turn too: how you meet their blow (a block, a parry and the point back on them, a roll clear, a dodge at the last instant, a shield or a magic ward, mending a wound while you guard), mending out of a fight (a bandage, a splint, needle and thread, a healing light, a meal), a working settling on you or your blade, saying your piece (open hands, leaning in, a hand on the heart, a warning, a fist on the table, a grand speech) and moving (setting off, hurrying, creeping, shadow to shadow, climbing, the leap across a gap, taking in a place). Each has a simple, a medium and an elaborate version, and they're chosen the same way: by the Weaver's script, or by your words.
• Variations: the same words don't always play the same way. Each move set also has variations: the same move with a quicker or heavier lead-in, a different finish (on guard, proud, cocky, fierce or weary), them taking it differently (a flinch instead of fear), another camera, light or sound, or the finish of another set for the same skill. Each one has to pass three tests. First, the engine plays it against five kinds of foe. Second, the Weaver reads it and says whether it still reads as that skill's move for those words. Third, it plays in real films, and what you do with your films decides: watching one to the end or saving it as a video counts for it, while asking for the Weaver's Cut or keeping hers instead counts against it. While a new one is on trial, it plays in about a third of the turns its words fit. The ones players like stay for good, and the others are retired. None of this changes what the game counted.
• Your own move sets, and choosing one. Tag a skill and a chip appears under the skills: MOVE SET · BLADE · the words choose. Tap it for every set that skill has at this moment (your blow, their blow on you, a mending, a working, how you talk or move), each by name and who made it, and point at one to watch it move. Choose one and it plays whenever the words around that skill fit it; when they don't, the words choose, as before. A set never changes a number: the game still decides whether it lands, for how much, and who falls. Make your own on the move set page: start from any set or from nothing, change what happens before and after the moment, watch it, and check it (the engine plays it against a person, a big body, a beast, a flyer and a pack). A clean one can be sent, five a day. The Weaver reads it, then it plays on trial in films whose words fit it. Votes: when a film of your own turn used a set someone else made, it asks how it looked: right, or wrong and why. One vote per player per set, never on your own; at ten votes or more with fewer than four in ten up, the set is turned down. A set turned down can come back with about a quarter of it changed.
• Watch it tall (for a phone) or wide (for a screen). The camera frames each shot for the shape it's in, so heads and speech bubbles always fit. The sound slider under a film sets how loud it plays (15% to start), and VOICES and MUSIC switch the characters' voices and the music on or off while it plays. Each character keeps their own voice, and one line stops when the next one starts. Sounds that go on (wings, buzzing, a torch) settle into the background after a few seconds, the way your ear stops hearing them, and come back up when the thing moves; the same sound repeating over and over gets quieter, then stops.
• Save it as a video with the ⤓ EXPORT button under a film. A window opens where you choose:
  • which cut, when there are two;
  • the shape: tall, wide or both;
  • the size: 1080p, 720p or 540p;
  • the smoothness: 24, 30 or 60 frames a second;
  • the quality;
  • the words: the film only, or the film with the turn's words (yours, the Weaver's, a companion's) under it;
  • the sound: the sounds, the voices and the music, each with its own level, or off.
  Your browser makes the file, so saving costs no tokens at any setting. Every video carries a small WYRMRAIL · synth.pub mark in a corner.
• In a fight, the fight viewer at the top has a ⤓ button too, as does each turn's WATCH THIS TURN box: it saves that turn's film, with or without its words. The waiting picture between turns is never in a video.
• On a published chapter, MAKE A VIDEO lets you tick the turns you want, put them in any order, and join their films into one video. With show the words ticked, each turn's words come first on a card, long enough to read, then its film.
• Light on the figures: everyone in a film is lit from where the light really is. The sun or the moon lights the side facing it, in its colour (warm at dusk, cool and dim under the moon), and leaves the far side in shade. A torch, a lamp or a lit window nearby warms the side that faces it. The thin lines on arms, legs and body take the light's colour: full on the side facing the light, thinner and dimmer on the far side. Choose LIT (the default) or FLAT under HOW IT LOOKS in the settings ⚙, with a picture of each. Your readers see your films the way you chose. On a computer that struggles to play a film smoothly, the film drops the light by itself; a saved video always keeps it.
• What you carry is what you hold: the films show the weapons, shields, torches and lanterns you actually have equipped, and nothing you don't. Clothes can still come from your character's description.
• The Weaver's Cut is optional and costs tokens: she rewrites her script of the turn. The engine tells her what happened when it played her first script: which of her quotes it couldn't find in your words, what it couldn't show, and where you stood waiting. She sends back a new script, and the director makes the film again from it, under the same rules. Only your own words appear as text in a film, never her paragraph. It's about 1,200 to 2,800 tokens a turn: most turns come in near 1,600, and never more than about 4,700. The exact count shows on the film and in your token meter. Use it on the turns you choose, or set it for every turn. The DIRECTOR'S CUT button plays the film from her first script.
• Keep her cut or go back to the director's: the one you keep is the one your turn plays from then on, and the one your published chapter shows. Switching back costs nothing, and a turn she has cut is never charged for again.
• Readers of your published chapters can watch each turn's film, the whole chapter as one film, or a whole arc from your story page. That costs nobody any tokens.
• The look: every film in the game is drawn in hi-bit: pixel art like a modern 2D game, every figure outlined and lit pixel by pixel by the sun, the moon, the lamps and every spell that shines. The camera cuts in close rather than stretching the pixels. Your readers see your films the same way.

YOUR TOKENS

• The gold card in the top-left corner (a bar at the top of the page on a phone or tablet) is your token meter, always on screen: what you have left, what your last turn cost, and when your allowance tops up. Press it for the detail, what things cost, and where to get more.
• A turn uses about 3,500 to 8,000 tokens, including the Weaver's script for its film: picking an offered option is the low end, writing a long turn yourself the high end. The Weaver's Cut on a turn's film is about 1,200 to 2,800 more, only when you ask for it. Making, watching and saving the films, your pack, the map and the settings are free.

MUSIC AND SETTINGS

• The music follows the moment: day, night, a fight, something far stronger than you. Short cues mark the big moments: a win, a death, a rank, a Myth.
• The settings ⚙ turn the music up, down or off, and the cues on or off. Your choice is kept on the device you play on.
• The world behind the page has a look of its own, chosen under HOW IT LOOKS with a picture of each: painted (the default), realistic, pixel, sepia or noir. Now and then its sky has weather of its own for two to six world hours: cloud, rain, a storm, fog, snow in winter, a gale, once in a while the northern lights. It's the same sky for every player and it isn't the weather where you stand in the story; you can keep it always fair if you'd rather. If your computer struggles, the world notices and works more lightly by itself, or you can set it to Low. Kept on the device you play on.
• They also set how many of your skills sit above the writing box (2 to 6, four to start), your best by rank first, gear included; the rest wait under More skills. And whether the Weaver tells your story in the third person or the first.

into the Lullquestions