The Manual

Everything the world knows about itself.

The world in one paragraph

Interval is a deterministic world: fixed rules, integer numbers, time in 600ms intervals. Every node computes the same next state from the same inputs, so no one is the referee. A quorum of witnesses named in the constitution certifies each interval, they recompute the transition themselves and attest to the result, not merely the proposal, so a finalized interval carries a portable proof anyone can check against the founding record alone. Under partition the world stops finalizing rather than fork: a stopped world, never two worlds. The rules live in SPEC.md, the constitution; the finality machinery in CONSENSUS.md. Changing either creates a new world, and nobody is ever force-updated.

The sixteen skills

Levels run 1 to 99 on the classic exponential curve (level 99 = 13,034,431 xp). Reaching it is meant to take a very long time. Master all sixteen and the whole world hears of it.

Standing and calling

A citizen is introduced by two things, and neither is a score. Standing is the sum of your true level in all sixteen skills, so it privileges no profession: an explorer who never draws a sword and a knight who never brews are measured by the same rule. Its only limit is how large a number the world will hold, which lands at level 212 and which nobody will reach, because mastery at 99 is a milestone rather than a limit, and a citizen who keeps going keeps rising. Calling is the trade you have the most experience in, said as a word, and it reads as master brewer or master smith once you have mastered it, and Master of Interval for the vanishingly rare citizen who has mastered all sixteen: forester, miner, fisher, cook, smith, firekeeper, mourner, archer, alchemist, farmer, fletcher, fighter, warden, cartographer, brewer. Together they read as an introduction:

Erik · brewer (412)

The number says how much of the world you have touched. The word says who you are, and it is the more useful half: it tells you who to ask for a smithing job, who sells charts, and whose tavern you are standing in. There is deliberately no combat level. Combat is three skills of sixteen, and a world whose countries are wood, stone, water, danger and home does not rank its people by their capacity for violence. Because both are derived from public state by a rule in the constitution, every window shows you the same citizen.

Watchfires

An experienced firemaker can kindle a watchfire: a great fire on a cairn of stones, bought with a heap of logs, that throws light across the country for everyone who passes. Nobody owns the light. Anyone may stoke any watchfire with a log, and the wood they give both extends the burn and pays them Firemaking experience, so feeding a neighbour's fire is not charity. While it burns, its keeper earns a slow trickle for the vigil. Because burn time is only ever bought with wood, nobody earns anything a forester did not first cut.

A fire left cold long enough crumbles to ash and returns its ground to the commons, and watchfires can be walked through, so no arrangement of them can wall a door. Nobody is assigned to light the long road between two towns. If it gets lit, it is because somebody decided it should be, and every traveller after them walks in a light they did not build.

The shape of the world

The map is not uniform. At its heart sit settlements, Anchor and its lesser kin, safe ground thick with banks, anvils, stores, and the resources of a settled life. Push outward and the land grows wilder and richer, until you reach the Wilds: the frontier, where the best ore and the rarest quarry lie, and where the world stops protecting you. Danger rises with distance, and so does reward.

The founding world of the expanse is built so that every direction means something. North is the Greenwood, the deep forest and the best woodcutting in the world, patrolled by wolves and, further in, bears. East are the Crags, rocky uplands thick with ore and trolls, where the smiths get their supply. South are the Fens, wetland and shore, all fishing and goblin warrens, opening onto the bay. West are the Wilds, the frontier, where the richest magic-rock lies and the skeleton-knights muster in warbands. The middle is the Heartlands: farmed, settled, walled, and where most citizens keep a roof. Seven walled settlements stand across it, every road a spoke leading back to Anchor. A citizen who learns that once still knows it a year later, which is what a world owes people who leave and come back.

Waystones stand scattered across the map. Stand beside one to attune to it; thereafter you may recall to any waystone you've attuned, fast travel earned by having walked there once (and never from within the Wilds; the frontier does not let you blink away). A finished explorer can sell that attunement as a chart, so even a citizen who never left home can buy the way.

How fighting works

Engage and combat runs itself: you trade blows every interval until one of you falls. Two ways to fight, melee (attack, defence, hitpoints) and ranged (a bow and arrows, striking at distance). Magic is not a third: it is the anti-combat skill. Its working half is alchemy, which unmakes goods into coin anywhere in the world; its sharp end is the sigil, and a sigil may be spent mid-fight to mend or to still an opponent outright. Armour forged at the anvil (bronze, and the rare star plate and helm) soaks every incoming blow. Death destroys what you wear and carry — though a mourner of 70 carries one ordinary thing through it, and the coin in your purse is never touched.

And a fight happens somewhere. A goblin, a wolf or a bear may leave forage where it falls: it cannot be picked up, banked or sold, and taking it eats it on the spot for six hitpoints, with no gullet cooldown and no free slot needed. It rots in fifty intervals. So the ground behind you is worth something and the ground ahead is not, and at four hitpoints it is worth looking at where you are standing rather than at what you carry. Trolls, skeleton-knights and the dragon leave none: the settled country feeds you and the Wilds do not.

Nobody can run you down

A citizen commits one deed each interval, and fleeing is a deed. A pursuer who steps cannot swing; a pursuer who swings does not step, and you gain a tile. Everyone walks at the same speed, so the gap between a hunter and a willing runner never closes. Sixty intervals of unbroken pursuit at the top of the world costs the runner nothing at all, against a sword, a spear or a bow alike. Since citizen combat requires you both to stand inside the Wilds, running for the border ends it outright.

So no one citizen can rob another. Not the strongest, not the best equipped. In the open, on foot, violence here needs the consent of the person receiving it.

Three things take that consent away. Standing still is the first and the ordinary one: every deed costs a tick, and mining, smithing, cooking and above all fighting are ticks you are not running. Every skeleton-knight in the world stands inside the Wilds, so the reason to go there is exactly the thing that pins you down, wounded and committed, choosing between the kill you came for and the pack you carry. The Wilds is not dangerous to travellers. It is dangerous to anyone who stops to work, and that is the toll it charges.

The star-dagger's root is the second: three intervals of freeze, the only instrument in the world that takes away your choice to leave, on a long leash and unable to kill by itself. Numbers are the third. One hunter corners nobody; a band corners anyone, one rooting while the rest fall on what is held. Killing an unwilling citizen is a thing several people must agree to do together inside three intervals, and every one of them wears the Brand for fifteen minutes afterward. A raiding party cannot help announcing itself.

So weigh what you carry into the Wilds, but weigh it against the right question. Not whether you might be jumped on the road: you will not be. Whether what is in your pack is worth standing still for.

daggerlands often, for little spearstrikes from a tile away maullands seldom, for a lot horn-bowa bear's, not a bowyer's old chainnever rests

The metal is the tier and the shape is the choice: the same ore and the same star-stone worked into different answers. A dagger suits a skeleton-knight's guard, a maul suits anything slow, a spear keeps a troll at arm's length, and a sword asks no questions. Two weapons cannot be forged at any level: the old chain and the horn-bow are taken from trolls and bears or not at all.

The roster you'll meet: goblins (drop bones, sometimes ore and seeds), wolves, bears (a bronze hatchet, if you're lucky), trolls (bronze plate, and rarely an old chain), and, mustering in warbands in and around the Wilds, the skeleton-knight: horned, shield-bearing, hard to strike and quick to bite back. Fell one and its bones pay double; fell enough and one may yield the horned star-helm itself.

Star gear is the frontier's reward: forged from magic-stone (star sword, plate, helm) or looted from a knight. The star-dagger strikes lighter than the sword but roots what it hits for a few intervals, a rare, long-cooldown hold, no chaining, no stun-locks. Land it well and it decides a fight.

The Brand

The Wilds begin at the Brandline: a line of standing stones you walk between, with no ditch, no gate and no confirmation. The law and the look are the same line — if the ground has turned, you are in them. Strike an unprovoked citizen there and you are branded, your name burns crimson and a hot-iron mark rides above you for a time, seen by everyone. The rules impose no penalty; the record simply makes the deed legible, and the rest of the world decides what it means. Reputation, not punishment, enforced by daylight.

Exploration & charts

The beacon keeps a handful of survey markers scattered across the world, relocating as they're claimed so the frontier never runs out. Stand on one to survey it; the XP scales with how far from home it sat, so the deep, dangerous markers pay most. Reaching a marker by a waystone yields a chart, a tradeable token that grants its buyer attunement to that waystone without the walk. Knowledge, made a good. An explorer who never fights can still grow rich selling the map.

Brewing & the brewhouse

Raise a brewpot beside a house (logs and ore to build; four to a citizen), set grain to ferment into ale or fish into broth, and walk away, the world does the waiting. Return when it's ready and collect a stackable, tradeable draught that heals. The protocol knows nothing of taverns; it knows only that a brewpot needs a roof beside it. A house ringed with brewpots and the people who gather there becomes somebody's tavern, a meaning players assign, the way they made routes of waystones. Brewpots are walkable (they wall no one in), and an abandoned one crumbles back to the commons, so the world stays open to whoever comes next.

Alchemy, and the staff

Any citizen may transmute one thing from their pack — the input is called alch on the wire, and citizens will say alch, but the act has a proper name: it comes apart and pays four coins and twenty-five magic experience — the same four and the same twenty-five whatever it was, a log or a star plate. One from a stack, never the stack.

It is deliberately a pittance. A keeper will always pay you more; what the difference buys is not having to walk, and since walking is most of what this world is, that is the whole design. Nobody unmakes good gear for four coins — they carry it home through the Wilds, which is the risk that makes the Wilds worth having. And because a keeper's purse is finite and alchemy's is not, a payment that followed an item's price would be the one uncapped mint in the world.

It works everywhere, including the Wilds, and it is where magic begins: every other use of the skill needs a sigil, and a sigil is three magic-stones out of the deep country. Alchemy is the first spell a citizen can cast and the one they will still be casting at ninety-nine.

Bare-handed it takes four intervals. A staff — fletched from a single log — makes it three; a heartwood staff, two heartwood at fletching 90, makes it two. A staff is wielded, so carrying one means carrying no sword: an alchemist crossing the Wilds with a full pack chooses between converting faster and being able to fight.

Stalls, keepers, and the price of a coin

Every town has a stall: one trade, a short list of that trade's basic bronze gear, made from nothing and sold at roughly twice what the same thing costs elsewhere. The axe man in Greenhollow, the armourer and the arms-master in Anchor, the delver in Millbrook, the fletcher in Eastmere, the seedsman in Hollybarrow. They sell; they never buy.

The premium is not a mistake. A stall does not compete with the market, it competes with walking, and it wins by always being there and always being the same. What it sells you will stop needing within a month; the point is to make a building worth knowing.

The seedsman is the only source of seed in the world. A general store makes nothing at all now — its shelf holds only what citizens have carried in and sold — so farming begins with a walk to Hollybarrow, and afterwards you know for the rest of your life what Hollybarrow is for.

And a keeper has a purse: at most twelve hundred coin, recovering two an interval. Selling spends it, buying off the shelf returns it. A keeper who cannot pay in full refuses the sale rather than paying part, and you still have your goods and the road to the next town. This is the world's entire money supply, fixed forever: ten towns times two coin an interval and no more. Gold circulates now instead of appearing.

One consequence worth knowing: a star plate is three quarters of a keeper's whole purse. One will empty a town's counter to three hundred coin and leave it five minutes short of affording another. The very best goods do not really move through keepers at all — they pass between citizens, which is what a market is for.

What mastery buys

A master gets more from the same hour, never a shorter one. Faster experience would shorten the road and devalue everyone already on it; a better yield leaves the road exactly as long and makes the country at the end of it worth reaching.

Where it can be a replacement it is one: a master woodcutter can no longer take ordinary logs at all, so the cheap end of that market belongs to beginners forever. And prayer keeps only priced things — the old chain, a dragonbow, a sigil and a chart are traded between citizens and priced by nobody, so they stay exactly as losable at ninety-nine as at one.

Tools, and the well

The chance of taking a yield rises with your level and with the tool in your hand, and is capped where only a master holding the better tool will reach it. A bronze hatchet is worth carrying; a star hatchet or star pickaxe — smithing 42, and sixty in the trade it serves — is worth about a sixth of a week's work.

And every settlement has a well. Stand beside it and drink: you are restored to full, free, with no cooldown at all. The cost is already paid in geography — a well stands in a town, and a town is tens of tiles from anywhere worth hunting, so nobody will ever walk home mid-fight. What it changes is that a town becomes somewhere you return to: drink, restock, go out again. Before it, home was only where the bank was.

Milestones

Some deeds the whole world sees. Master a skill, and everyone is told; be the first ever to master it, and the telling is grander. Master all sixteen and you become a Master of Interval, vanishingly rare, and permanent in the record. The first into the Wilds, the first to fell a skeleton-knight, the first to press a sigil, the first to draw a finished brew, the firsts are kept forever. And each year the world marks its own age.

The bank, trade, death, names

The bank survives death: stand at a bank and deposit one item per interval; what you vault endures, what you carry can burn. Trade is face-to-face, adjacent tiles, item for item, settled atomically in one interval, whole or not at all. Death at 0 HP returns you to spawn with your carried inventory destroyed; skills, XP, your name and every coin you hold survive. Gold is the one thing death never takes, which is why the walk to a keeper is how goods become safe — and a mourner of prayer 70 also carries through the dearest priced thing they held. Names are in-world objects: first valid claim wins, one per character, lowercase letters, digits, and hyphens, up to twelve. A claim asks for a standing of 50, so a name is something you take after playing rather than before. It is never released and never transferred: what you claim, you hold while the world lasts.

Worlds and forks

A world is identified by the hash of its constitution. Change a rule and you have created a different world on a different network: one that shares history up to the fork and welcomes whoever prefers it. Updates don't happen to you; they compete for you. This is how the world governs itself, by exit, not by decree.

Ways to play

Playing by script

The rules cannot tell a click from a script and refuse to pretend otherwise. What keeps the world human is design, not detection: resources deplete and are shared, processing destroys supply, trade requires being adjacent, and a brew ferments in real time whether or not you're watching. A bot can grind all night; it cannot be there.

Traditional games hunt bots because bots consume a world someone else pays to run. In Interval a bot cannot consume the world without computing it: every automated citizen with its own node is unpaid infrastructure, another machine checking every hash, another witness that makes the history harder to fake. The criminal class of every other MMO is, here, the police and the power grid at once. Run a bot; you are holding a lantern.

The readable world (API)

Every serving node exposes the world as JSON: hiscores sites, clan pages, and market trackers are all just windows:

GET /api/world        → { tick, worldId, players, mobs }
GET /api/hiscores     → { players: [{ name, levels, total, xp }] }
GET /api/player/:name → one citizen, full public record

For the systems-minded

The full constitution is SPEC.md in the repository, state machine, XP tables, combat math, the skill rules, the checkpoint and catch-up protocols, and the certified-interval consensus is CONSENSUS.md. The engine is a single dependency-light JavaScript file that runs identically in Node and browsers; an adversarial simulator stress-tests the consensus against equivocating witnesses and partitions, and the test suite proves no two honest nodes ever finalize different history. Reimplement any of it in any language: if your hashes match, you're a citizen.