The Traveller's Handbook

Nearly everything you do in Xalaria raises one of your two Levels, your Technology Level or your Culture Level. Doing raises your Technology Level, above all by fighting, and also by exploring, mining, salvage and finding new life. Understanding raises your Culture Level, by interacting with exotic life across our universe, observing, interacting, and respecting. Technology builds and fights. Culture opens cities and their aesthetics. Between them, they decide how every planetary culture and every alliance regards you, and that regard, in the end, decides how you come home.

This book follows the same path outward, from you and your craft to the fights you will meet and the alliances that reward them, then the stars and the planetary cultures that live among them, the stations you dock at and build, what you keep, the travellers you meet, and at last the utopia you can bring to your home star.

1. IOf the Travellercommands in words, the voice in your craft, work at a station, two levels
2. IIOf Craft and Armsevery craft, every weapon and tool
3. IIIOf Combathitting, striking true, what a city fires, what a destruction is worth, mercenaries and bounty hunting, a fall
4. IVOf Alliances and Deedsalliances and none, six deeds, the ledger of goodwill, standing, friendly and hostile, an alliance of your own, goodwill, persuading a city, who knows you
5. VOf Stars and Travelstar classes, the superdrive, wormholes
6. VIOf Space Stationsbuying and selling, a station of your own, its flag, its income and its colour, relics, Art Galleries and Concert Halls, notices
7. VIIOf Worlds and Their Culturesmines, music, art and dance, ornaments, rites, regard, cities beyond reach, ruins
8. VIIIOf Building and Keepingrobots, vaults, farms, guards, what lives there, sanctuaries, while you were away, what a life leaves
9. IXOf Companionshipmeetings, talk, gifts and deals, the matrix of fortune
10. XOf Utopiaascending to utopia, by war or by peace

Xalaria is played one letter at a time. Each key stands for a word, and every choice that follows is shown with its own letter, so a command reads as a sentence and there is nothing to memorise.

In any list, words that are not among its choices are taken as speech, ended with Return. Type a star’s name and your computer tells you where it lies. Type a few words while a vessel is speaking with you, and it hears them. Return on its own steps back out of any list.

The first voice you hear is your craft's computer, and it is the one you will hear most. Its character, one of five, is fixed by the name you choose for yourself. It may be wry, tender, sceptical, poetic or steadfast. It speaks in short lines made from where you are, from the star's light, the world below, what lives there and how the city speaks, so no two travellers hear the same voyage.

Ask it about anything it has observed, or how to play, as in How do I mine? It holds the thread of a conversation, so How do I make money? can be followed by Give an example or Where can I find that?

You begin docked at a station, and its Station Administrator is the first person worth speaking to. Under c, communicate, talk comes first in the administrator’s list, before saluting, offering, a message, the notice board and giving a quest. Talk, and a station with work of its own offers it; on a first voyage it always does, if it has any. Salute instead, as a newcomer with no quest yet, and you are pointed back: Welcome aboard. If it is work you are looking for, talk with me - there is always something to be done.

One kind of work is a homecoming of its own. Long ago traders carried off much of the art of the culture on the world below, and the station would see some of it go home:

The Zhiogtians below lost much of their art to traders, long ago. Bring a genuine piece they would treasure, and we'll see it home to them.

A Station Administrator

A piece they would treasure is one decorated as they love (Ornaments, and a Culture's Taste). Ask the administrator where to look and you are told how that culture adorns itself, and that station traders and the cities’ Exchanges sometimes carry such pieces. Offer the piece to the same administrator and the work is done, and paid, at once.

Every traveller has two levels, each from 1 to 13. Technology Level rises with experience of doing, from exploring, prospecting and salvage to finding new life and fighting. Culture Level rises with experience of understanding. Each step up either ladder asks for more experience than the last, until Level 13 asks for 50,000 points and is particularly difficult to reach.

Stars, cities and stations have a measure of their own, their advancement, from 1 to 22, which is how far the civilisation there has come. It sets what their music asks of you, what their seats cost and how hard they fight, and a station wears it as its colour.

Every Technology Level and every Culture Level carries a title, and you are known by the title of whichever of the two is higher. A Programmer of Technology Level 6 who reaches Culture Level 7 is known from then on as a Musician.

Culture Level cannot be bought. A seat at a concert can, but a traveller without the Culture Level to follow the music leaves the Concert Hall exactly as they came.

It opens what technology cannot. A city's Exchange asks less of someone who knows its aesthetics. Its music, its art and its festival open to them. Its citizens will work their farm to the measure of their own anthem.

Combat happens in real time. Each port of your craft holds one thing, whether a laser, a blast, a glow shield or a mining tool. Every shot draws on your energy. A fight is about which port you fire and when, and whether you will have the energy to raise a shield when you need it, as much as about the weapons themselves. When the first shot lands, your computer gives its view:

We're being shot at! Use f to fight back, or n to get away. I recommend away, but I'm biased: I'm the hull.

Light craft are small and hard to hit; heavy ones are not. At Technology Level 1, a pilot hits another beginner's Medaka on a d60 roll under 36, three times in five. From Technology Level 5 up, a pilot never misses a Delta Destroyer flown by a pilot of the same Technology Level, since at weight 50 it is too large to miss. Blasts strike every craft in range and never miss, which makes them strongest early in a career. Later, aimed weapons hit more often and strike true, and a blast never strikes true.

The strategic hit is rolled on a d169, and 169 is thirteen squared, so at Technology Level 13, the top of the ladder, every hit that is not critical is strategic.

A city is built of what its culture's nature allows, and it defends itself with what it is made of. A planetary culture of stone or metal builds, and fires from its watchtowers and gate towers. A silicon or crystalline culture grows spires and lenses that focus light into a beam, as the crystal in a laser does. A culture of plants raises thorn towers and spore pods. An armoured, shelled culture builds carapace turrets and shell domes. On a gas world a culture of light fires from drifting lanterns and hovering veils of charged light.

A city has four weapon ports, and each fires from a structure of its own, chosen once for that city, so the same weapon always comes from the same tower. Aimed weapons come from the towers, spires, lenses and turrets. Blasts, which fill the space about the city, come from its domes, veils and bulwarks. The most advanced cities raise greater structures besides, a crown of prisms, a great dome, a storm veil. When you are told what fired, it is the tower that is named, never the city.

Remember me?

You thought you were safe here?

A pursuer, finding you again

Vessels remember too. Every vessel near you when you do something notable, a vessel destroyed, a gift given, cargo demanded, a wreck salvaged, keeps it in mind for a while, and it colours how they speak to you. A vessel that attacked you and is still hostile says so when it finds you again.

Every alliance rewards you for destroying a vessel hostile to it, and holds it against you when you destroy one friendly to it. The letters beside a vessel’s name, once it has said who it is, show you which before you fire, for what you see beside a vessel is exactly what its destruction does.

A lower-case letter is an alliance the vessel is hostile to, its goodwill with it below −50. Destroy it and that alliance thanks you in goodwill, which any of its stations pays you in gc. A capital is an alliance the vessel is friendly to, its goodwill above 50, and destroying it costs you goodwill with that alliance. An alliance between the two has no letter, and the vessel’s destruction is nothing to it. So a vessel marked [Tr] is a deed for the Rebel Coalition and a loss with Trade and Manufacturing.

Destroying a vessel is worth the technological experience it earns you, and the same in goodwill with every alliance whose letter it bears. Its worth grows with the vessel’s power, its shields, its energy and its level, and falls with its weight, so a destroyer is worth more than a whole squadron of drones. Shield upgrades raise it further. The table below gives every craft.

A vessel that will not say who it is shows no letters. If its words give it away, hostile to the Rebels perhaps though it will not admit it, name it as you see it, with c · 0 · name something, and you will know it when you meet it again.

Example. You destroy a Raven of level 5 marked [TNr], worth 52. Your goodwill with the Trade and Manufacturing Alliance and with the Nature Preservation Alliance falls by 52 each, and with the Rebel Coalition rises by 52, which its next station pays you as 10,400 gc.

Some vessels are mercenaries, such as the Eanen mercenary Ziege. They are well armed, they hunt travellers, and when a traveller leaves for another orbit, they follow.

Every mercenary has offended one alliance or two, and its hostility to each runs deep. The more common an alliance, the more often it is the one offended: Trade and Manufacturing, Nature Preservation, the Freedom Fighters and the Rebel Coalition most often, the Starfarers' Society less, Astraea seldom, and Zaratha rarely, though it happens. A mercenary is never hostile to an alliance it is friendly to, and one hostile to the Rebels is friendly to the Freedom Fighters by as much, and the other way about.

Ask who it is, and the letters beside its name tell its story. A capital means friendly to that alliance, its goodwill with it above 50. A lower-case letter means hostile to it, its goodwill below −50. Between the two there is no letter at all. A mercenary marked [TFr] is friendly to the Trade and Manufacturing Alliance and to the Freedom Fighters, and hostile to the Rebel Coalition. One marked [Rnf] is friendly to the Rebels, and hostile to the Nature Preservation Alliance and to the Freedom Fighters. Only the lower-case letters pay: destroying a mercenary also costs you goodwill with every alliance it is friendly to.

Bounty hunting is the pursuit of them. Find a mercenary, read its lower-case letters for the alliances it has offended, destroy it, and visit a station of each of those adversaries to receive gc. Its destruction earns you goodwill with every alliance it was hostile to, as for any vessel hostile to an alliance (What a Destruction Is Worth), and each pays you for it at any of its stations. That goodwill is the bounty, and no other is owed.

A mercenary that will not say who it is still gives itself away in what it says and whom it hunts. Name it as you see it, with c · 0 · name something, and the name stays with it wherever you meet it again.

Xalaria never pauses, and it needs no saving. Close the page and, two minutes later, your craft is taken out of sight, wherever it is, and it comes back there with you, however long you were gone. Only a fight holds it. If anything has struck your craft in the last ten minutes, it stays where it is, in the fight, until ten minutes pass with no hit, and the craft keeps a log. When you come back, your computer sums it up in a few sentences, the most serious first. So end a fight before you leave, or dock.

When shields fail, a stone is carved. It says who you were, what you flew and how much you had learned, and then exactly how you fell, in plain words, with what you were doing at that moment and, where it bears on the death, a phrase from the world's own description. Nothing is embellished. The stone stands in the public Graveyard with every other.

…whilst taking off from the moon Lispra to escape

…whilst collecting 12 units of ore in the orbit of Wriquoe

From other stones

To quit is to be laid to rest yourself, for good. Most travellers simply close the page. What you built outlives you a little (What a Life Leaves).

Alliances hold most of the stars. The Freedom Fighters, Trade and Manufacturing, Nature Preservation and the Rebel Coalition are among the greatest, and the table below gives some of the others, but they are only examples, for the stars hold many more, and a new one begins whenever a traveller founds it. Independents answer to no one and trust no banner. A vessel’s alliance in Xalaria is guarded. An ordinary vessel never names its own, and its alliance shows only in what it values, fears and takes for granted, for you to read.

Tell a vessel who you are and its answer gives it away. Nature Preservation talks of worlds and life left unspoiled. Trade and Manufacturing talk of custom, credit and trust. The Rebel Coalition speak of discretion and a world's right to itself, and ask where you have been and what you saw. The Freedom Fighters speak of freedom, theirs to give, and of the better system they wish everyone shared. An unaligned craft talks of art and curiosity.

Each alliance keeps some things close. Ask a vessel where the mines are, or where to buy heavy weapons, or where rare life is, and whether it tells you depends on what you are to it, and on what its alliance guards.

You belong to no alliance by choosing one. Every alliance judges you by your goodwill with it alone, and counts you one of its own once you are friendly to it. Under g, goodwill, you see where you stand with each. Or you may found an alliance of your own. It begins with a space station: build one of your own (A Station of Your Own), and you may found an alliance on it, name it, and from then on every traveller sees it listed beside the great alliances, in the same words (An Alliance of Your Own).

Every alliance serves exactly one deed: Trade, Nature, Valour, Honour, Culture or Exploration. For each deed an Intergalactic Federation funds the alliances that serve it, the Intergalactic Federation of Trade, of Nature, of Valour, of Honour, of Culture and of Exploration, and that is why an alliance’s stations can pay you for goodwill.

Whenever you perform an act of a deed, your goodwill rises with every alliance that serves that deed, and each of them pays you, at its own stations, for the extra goodwill since your last visit.

The great alliances have chosen their deeds already. Trade is served by alliances such as the Trade and Manufacturing Alliance, Nature by alliances such as the Nature Preservation Alliance, and Valour by alliances such as the Freedom Fighters and the Rebel Coalition, each the other’s adversary. Alliances devoted to Honour, Culture and Exploration exist as well, rarer than the others. Any deed can also be served by an alliance of your own (An Alliance of Your Own, below), and its stations pay you for that deed’s acts.

Example. Found an alliance of Nature, and clearing debris raises your goodwill with the Nature Preservation Alliance and with your own. Nature’s stations pay you for the goodwill gained with Nature, and your own alliance’s stations for the goodwill gained with yours, each for the extra since your last visit.

Every alliance keeps a measure of goodwill for every traveller, earned and lost by deeds, and it fades without them. The steps are the same for every alliance, the great and the founded alike.

Stars are held as well. Look about in a star's orbit and your computer reads the stations you know of there. If most fly one alliance’s flag, that alliance holds the star; if two or more share them, it is contested. Trade and Manufacturing, Nature Preservation and the Freedom Fighters fly the most stations, then the Starfarers’ Society and the Rebel Coalition. Astraea’s are fewer, and Zaratha’s fewest of all. Territory cuts both ways. Over a star your own alliance holds, its vessels come with you more readily. Over one held by its adversary, every vessel is watching.

An honorary member is shown things members are not. Some of the great alliances keep stations that are not on any list, and share them only with those they trust that far. An alliance a traveller has founded shares its stations with its honorary members too.

No traveller swears to an alliance. Every traveller is judged by goodwill alone. With goodwill above 50 you are friendly to an alliance, below −50 hostile to it, and between the two neither, so you may be friendly to several at once and hostile to others. An alliance counts you one of its own while you are friendly to it, and the ranks of its goodwill are its membership: a member above 50, an honorary member above 1,000, a Fellow above 10,000. The only alliance that is yours is one you found.

Press g, goodwill, from anywhere, and the alliances’ choices are offered: your goodwill, and forming an alliance of your own. Your goodwill is told in a single breath, highest first: Goodwill - the Starfarers' Society 138, the Rebel Coalition 40, the Trade and Manufacturing Alliance 1 and the Freedom Fighters −7. With none at all, You have no goodwill or illwill towards any alliance.

Even the great alliances are known only once you have been inside one of their space stations, or have founded one; a vessel telling you its alliances tells you who it is, not the alliance. From then on an alliance stays known, and k, knowledge, lists them. Only these may you name as the adversary of an alliance of Valour.

Every alliance pays you for goodwill. Each time you dock at one of its stations, it pays you 200 gc for each point of goodwill you have gained with it since your last visit to one of its stations, but only above the most it has ever paid you for. Goodwill lost must be earned back before it pays again.

Friendship takes on quarrels. A Freedom Fighters vessel that learns you are friendly to the Rebels turns on you, and the reverse, and so does any vessel hostile to an alliance you are friendly to. A traveller friendly to no alliance risks less when asked who they are, but has no friends to call on.

Every alliance a traveller founds begins with a space station of their own (A Station of Your Own).

Forming one takes three choices. Under g, choose to form an alliance of our own, name it, and choose the deed it serves: Trade, Nature, Valour, Honour, Culture or Exploration. Your computer then says, for example, You found the Clak Guild, an alliance of Honour. From then on every act of that deed raises your goodwill with your alliance, and with every other alliance that serves the same deed.

Choose Valour and you must name an adversary, one of the alliances you know (Friendly and Hostile). Your alliance then earns its goodwill as the Freedom Fighters and the Rebel Coalition do, destroying the adversary’s vessels and stations, turning its cities and threatening its vessels, and the adversary hunts it in return: You found the Iron Circle, an alliance of Valour against the Rebel Coalition.

Alliances devoted to Honour, Culture and Exploration are rarer than the others, so an alliance you found for one of them may be the only one that pays you for its acts.

A new alliance is written into the chronicle. Founding it raises its flag over every station of yours that flew none (A Station’s Flag). An alliance of your own is a cause that outlives you: its stations pass to your kin, and whoever takes up its last station may lead it after you.

Goodwill is how well an alliance thinks of you, and only your deeds earn it or lose it. Each alliance remembers what you have done to its people and for them, and each pays you for the goodwill you gain with it, 200 gc a point at its stations (Friendly and Hostile). Above 50 you are friendly to it and a member, below −50 hostile to it, and more still makes you an honorary member, shown its hidden stations.

The alliances run from war to peace. Alliances of Valour, such as the Freedom Fighters and the Rebel Coalition, each the other’s adversary, earn their goodwill fighting. Alliances of Trade and of Nature, such as Trade and Manufacturing and Nature Preservation, earn it in peace, so a trader earns Trade’s goodwill, and one who cares for life Nature’s, as steadily as a fighter earns Freedom’s or the Rebels’. Rarer alliances serve Honour, Culture and Exploration, and an alliance of your own serves the deed you chose for it. In the middle stand the independents, friendly to no one.

A city can join the alliance of a station you built above it. Its leader offers this only when you have earned it. Your station orbits the city’s world and flies an alliance’s flag, often your own alliance’s, the city flies another flag or none, and it counts you its hero, after three Acts of Peace (Regard, and the Names a City Gives). Being its hero is all. Speak for the alliance in your own words, and unless you insult them, the city joins.

Why ask? A city that joins brings its trade through your station, and the station’s takings double. Each further city below that joins adds as much again, so two cities make them three times what they were. Most worlds with a culture have one or two cities, but at the most advanced stars, of advancement 19 and 20, a civilisation has three or four. As you dock, your Station Administrator tells you which city below would bring its trade.

You are our hero, and you have been heard. From this day Yepnia belongs to the Lantern Guild. Yepnia’s trade will come through your station now.

A city’s leader, on joining

A joined city flies your station’s flag for every traveller after you. If the station falls, or you change its flag, the city returns to the flag it flew before. Another traveller who is also its hero, with a station of their own above, may win it away the same way. Insult the city and it will not hear you on this for three days. Its guards are paid for as ever, whatever flag it flies.

The vessels of the great alliance you are most friendly to, such as the Freedom Fighters or Nature Preservation, may fight for you, the more readily the higher your rank with it. Fired upon, every vessel of that alliance nearby weighs whether to join in, a member's sometimes, an honorary member's often and a Fellow's most of the time. Up to two can come at once. Ask for help in plain words, such as cover me or help!, and the odds rise. Ask a vessel of any great alliance you are friendly to to come with you, and it stays twenty minutes, more readily over a star its alliance holds; a vessel of any of them may also give you safe passage.

A hostile city can be bought off, all but the Rebels', who mend a wrong by deeds, not payment. The price is never told. Make your offer to its leader and its council takes fifteen seconds to weigh it, while its defences keep firing. A large offer ends it sooner and wastes money. Small steps come closer to the price, under more fire. It costs half as much again each time you buy the same city off, because it has learned that you pay. Even once paid, the city is only wary of you, not welcoming.

In Xalaria you know only what you have experienced. A vessel is the grey Defense Probe until it tells you who it is, or until you learn it some other way, and every other traveller sees you the same way. Whether to say who you are, and when, is one of the oldest and subtlest choices in the game.

Under c, communicate, you may provide your identity, or request theirs. What follows depends on who they are, who you are, and what each of you has done.

Most vessels you meet serve one alliance, or none, and everything they do follows from it, whom they side with, whom they quarrel with, how stations regard them. When one says who it is, it names the alliances it is friendly and hostile to, The grey Defense Probe reveals it is friendly to the Trade and Manufacturing Alliance, and hostile to the Rebel Coalition, or that it is neither friendly nor hostile to any alliance. A traveller reveals the same, and a founder first of all their alliance, the founder of the Flici Guild, friendly to … A security vessel serves the alliance of its own station or city.

Once a vessel has said who it is, letters beside its name among those nearby say the same in short, the Trocazian Defense Probe [TNr]. A capital stands for an alliance it is friendly to, a lower-case letter for one it is hostile to, and [I] means neither, to any. Destroying it earns goodwill with an alliance whose letter is in lower case, and costs goodwill with one whose letter is a capital (What a Destruction Is Worth).

A city keeps its alliance out of its name. Request its identity from its leader and you may hear something of where it stands, seldom plainly; its creatures let slip the rest, in what its market sells and in how they speak to a stranger. When a city has said enough of itself, your computer invites you to name it as you see it, and from then on it reads with your name beside its own, the city of Euas [Free]. A vessel can be named in the same way, with c · 0 · name something: one you suspect from its talk is hostile to an alliance, though it will not say so, is then known to you as you named it.

A colour speaks before any word does. A station may greet a vessel of its own colour warmly, or quote it a better price, and many travellers read colours before they read names.

Saying who you are opens doors and closes others. Silence protects you, and isolates you. The universe is full of travellers making that choice differently, and every meeting is a small game of reading the other side.

Earth orbits at 150 million km. On a d100 roll of 01–04 the star itself carries life.

Between the worlds of one star your own superdrive carries you, and fuel is what it burns. Between the stars, the wormholes do the travelling, and they lie at the star itself, never beside its worlds. To leave for another star, first travel to your own star, which is always first on the list of worlds, and from its orbit you are offered its wormholes.

How hard the superdrive drives is yours to set, under v. Halve the setting and a journey takes twice as long and burns half the fuel; double it and you arrive in half the time, having burned twice as much. A full hold burns more fuel, though it never costs time.

Before you set off, your computer tells you how far it is, how long it will take and how much fuel it will burn. A wormhole is smoothest while it glows. Pass through one that is not glowing and your vessel may shake hard enough to finish a newcomer’s craft, so your computer asks first.

A station trades in commodities, and its prices differ by a tenth: it sells you a commodity at 5% above its price, and buys it from you at 5% below. Buy and sell back at the same station and you lose the gap.

To profit from trade, carry goods to where they are dear enough to cover that gap and the trade fees. Prices differ from star to star. A common metal may cost anywhere from about seven-tenths of its usual price to two-fifths more, and at some stars further still. Where a world of the star is rich in a material, as its description tells, what is made of it sells a quarter to two-fifths cheaper through the whole star system. Those are the markets that truly differ.

Buying is an act of Trade, and raises your goodwill with every alliance that serves Trade by a point for each 4,000 gc you spend, whatever you buy, and what falls short of a point counts toward the next. Like any goodwill, each point is paid at that alliance’s stations when you next dock, 200 gc, which is 5% of what you spent. It is paid to every traveller alike, and a Trade and Manufacturing station says so: We gladly present you with 3,000 gc for your service to interstellar trade. So any trader can get half the gap back.

Trade fees are still charged to every traveller who is not friendly to Trade and Manufacturing.

A station of your own is the foundation of everything a traveller builds. It earns every day, it is where an Art Gallery or a Concert Hall can be raised, and it is where an alliance of your own begins (An Alliance of Your Own).

In orbit, with construction nanomites in the hold and most of your energy to spend, b, build, seeds the frame of a space station. How advanced it will be is up to you. The frame must then be fed structural metal, and when it has all it needs it tries to close. A station needs a Technology Level of half its advancement, rounded up. At exactly that level it closes one time in four; a level above, one time in two; two above, three times in four; three above, nine times in ten (the Matrix of Fortune). So a station of advancement 20 is within reach of Technology Level 10. If it buckles as it closes, the frame and half of all it was given are lost.

Feed it metal (aluminium, iron, titanium, nickel or chromium) with d, drop, beside it. Anyone who flies by may feed it too. Leave it unfed for a week and it falls apart.

Finished, it is yours for good, and every traveller sees it. Its trade is reckoned day by day whether anyone is about or not, and what it earns fills its till until you dock and collect it. A full till tempts raiders, and raids grow with what it holds, so it pays to visit. Every two levels of advancement double what a station earns, so the higher it stands, the sooner it pays for itself: a station of level 1 in about six months, one of level 20 in under three weeks. So a high station is a great prize and a great gamble, and its income is what buys destroyers, a fleet of them in time.

The cost is its construction nanomites: a few seeded from your hold, 5 and one more for each level, and the rest fed into the frame with its structural metal, 20 units for each level, by you or by friends, over as many trips as it takes.

A station of yours flies one alliance’s flag, or none, and you choose it. Docked at your own station, ask its Station Administrator about its alliance. It offers no alliance, your own if you have founded one, and any alliance you are friendly to.

Under one of the great alliances that keep fleets, such as Trade and Manufacturing or Nature Preservation, its fleets guard it, and it takes half of what it earns. Under no flag, under your own alliance, or under one of the rarer alliances, every gc of the till is yours, and only a city’s guards and your own robots stand watch (Guards).

Whatever it flies, a station has an administration of its own. If you fall, it holds the station in trust for your kin, and your next life in the same browser takes it up, so its work goes on. A founder’s next life is asked to lead their alliance again (What a Life Leaves).

That is what an alliance of your own is worth. Your stations fly its banner, which names them yours to every traveller; you keep the whole of every till; the goodwill its deed earns is paid at your own stations; and it passes to your kin, so its mission goes on through death.

Vessels are known by sight before they are known by name, as the grey Hobby Explorer or the crimson Vimba. A vessel's colour is the colour of its home station, and a station's colour is its advancement, so a colour says something.

A station receives a vessel of its own colour as one of its own. Its administrator welcomes you, and once a day there is a gift, and a tenth off in its assortment shop. Raiders read colour too, and to a raider a rich colour means a rich hold. Glass is where their interest begins.

Relics turn up as you travel. A city's antique dealer holds out one piece at a time, from the cultures and worlds within three wormholes of the city, or a chronicle of the Empire, and half of them are authentic. Rarer still, one station or city in eight keeps an antique shop, with two to four relics a day from the same cultures and worlds, true and false alike, and an ornament or two. Your Culture Level may tell you at once which you hold; if not, the culture it belongs to can, or, for a fee of 6,000 gc, an Art Director of that culture. Whatever happens when you use one, a relic is known from then on, true or false. Used where nothing answers, it stays unknown.

Each kind of relic has its own worth, in the table, and each merchant sees each piece its own way, from three-tenths of it to more than twice, the same on every visit. Dealers and antique shops buy relics too, at half what they would ask for the piece. One known to be authentic fetches double that, a known fake a tenth. A station’s Assortment takes none: Old pieces like that are for an antique shop.

Ornaments are given. Relics are used among their culture, or given back, offered to a city’s leader or to the administrator of their culture’s own station. Taken home to the culture that made it and used among them, a true piece opens that culture's music, art or festival to you at once.

After a few bars they are singing it with you, and then without you, as a song come home.

They take it in both hands, very still, and then they show it to the others, one of their ancestors' own, come home.

A manuscript, and a figurine, returned

A fake does the opposite. Wear a false mask and someone laughs, and then they are all laughing, not kindly. A fake manuscript, mask or figurine of a city’s own culture, or any false instrument played in a city, may be found out. A number from 1 to 13 is drawn, and if it is above your Culture Level the city’s regard falls a rung, a hero no longer, then wary, then hostile, with no Act of Peace taken back first. At or below it, they let it pass. A city turned hostile orders you to leave within one to five minutes, its leader counting down each minute, and holds its fire while you go. Still there at the end, and its defences open fire. Fall to them, and your gravestone remembers why, after borrowing a face that was not theirs to lend.

A relic keeps the name it was sold under. Once you have come to think it genuine, or a fake, or meant for a particular culture, name it so with c · 0 · name something, and it is called that wherever you see it. A star chart or a small creature in its cage can be named the same way.

A station of your own can show relics, and ornaments too. An Art Gallery in your station needs three pieces before it opens, ornaments or relics known to be authentic, for as its Art Director says, We show only what is known to be true. Every day it earns you an income (below).

An Art Gallery or a Concert Hall makes your station a place travellers come to for culture, and each earns you an income every day, whether or not you are playing. Your own culture grows there too, free. Docked at a station of your own, b, build, offers an Art Gallery or a Concert Hall, raised by construction nanomites with marble for an Art Gallery, or with granite for a Concert Hall, and then you name it. Both stones are quarried on stony worlds.

To open your Art Gallery, drop ornaments or relics there with d, drop, while docked in your station. It needs at least three pieces before it opens, ornaments, or relics known to be authentic. Any traveller may donate a piece the same way, and a piece donated is the Art Gallery’s for good; its Art Director turns fakes away. As its owner you may take any piece down, but leave fewer than three on show and it closes. A Concert Hall keeps a timetable of concerts, as a city’s Concert Hall does, and a concert there ends this way:

The last note fades into the hum of the station. It stays with you.

Visitors pay for their tickets as in a city. The ticket money goes to the Art Gallery’s Art Director or the Concert Hall’s Concert Concierge, not to your station’s till, and a visitor who understands what is shown or played gains culture there, as in a city. What you gain is an income. Every day a Concert Hall earns a twentieth of what it cost to build, and an open Art Gallery a twentieth of what it cost and of what the pieces on show are worth, so either pays for itself in twenty days. A piece counts from the day after it goes on show. The income waits at your station, and is paid in full when you dock there, with its till, never shared with an alliance and never taken by raiders. If the station is destroyed, what has not been collected is lost with it. A traveller who visits also gains goodwill with your alliance, and comes nearer to being friendly to it. You may tour your own Art Gallery and attend your own concerts free, and gain culture if you understand what is shown or played, half as much at each return, and for an Art Gallery afresh whenever a piece never shown there before goes on show.

If your station is destroyed, the pieces on show spill into space for anyone to collect. Some of Xalaria’s own stations, the more advanced, hold an Art Gallery or a Concert Hall too, though more rarely than cities do, and they work the same way.

A Hall for Strangers is built in a city, not a station. A traveller who understands all three of a city's aesthetics and is its hero may found a Hall for Strangers there, with that culture's own music or art explained in words a stranger can follow. Tend it and its renown grows. At a quarter of its renown, every stranger needs a Culture Level two lower to understand that culture, in every one of its cities.

Every space station keeps its notices, read and written through its administrator. Leave a note for a named traveller or for anyone. Notes stay, even after their writer has died. Arrive at a station where a note waits for you and the administrator hands it over at once, in whatever manner your standing with them deserves.

Words can be carried, too. Tell a robot of yours to take a message to a traveller at a world of this star, and it flies there itself. It waits a moment in orbit, where it can be met or fired upon like any vessel, docks, and hands your words over in person, or leaves them among the station's notices. Then it comes back and tells you how it went.

A traveller may post a charter at a station whose alliance they are friendly to, or one flying their own alliance. Bring twenty units of granite here, for 900 gc. The station holds the reward, and the charter is seen among that alliance's station notices for a few stars around, which is a reason to travel. Anyone carrying the goods is paid at once. Unfulfilled for a week, it comes down and the reward goes home.

Quests are given at a station’s administrator, who holds the reward and offers it to everyone who docks. The first to do the deed is paid at that moment, wherever they are, by transmission from the station that holds the reward, and everyone else who took the quest is told who answered it. What a quest asks you to bring, a recording, an ornament or a relic, you may hand to the administrator of any station, who sees that it reaches the giver. A city leader’s quest ends the same way, its thanks and gifts sent the moment the deed is seen done, except goods to deliver and the samples of an exploration, which are handed over in person. An Act of Peace it brings waits for you, and is received in person when you next arrive in the city.

Every alliance posts only quests of its own deed: the Freedom Fighters’ and the Rebels’ stations quests of Valour, Trade’s of Trade, Nature Preservation’s of Nature, the Starfarers’ Society’s of Exploration, Zaratha’s of Culture and Astraea’s of Honour. A traveller who has founded an alliance posts its deed’s quests at any station. Many quests are about the giver’s empire, the one that holds the giver’s home star. Every station of Xalaria has such an empire of its own, so a quest reads the same whoever posts it, and anything at the empire also pays 5,000 gc for every wormhole jump. Finding the empire’s location, a star on no chart, or a ruin’s chronicle counts only on arriving after the quest was taken. The reward is the same whichever side you are on, posting at your own station or taking up another’s. One deed answers one quest: a vessel or station destroyed pays only the first quest it answers. A founder cannot send anyone to their empire before they know where it rules, and a station calls a fake a fake. Travellers who have founded no alliance give the general quests below.

Rocky worlds and moons hold deposits of metal, and gas giants a fifth as often. Most are common metals of ordinary quality. A world with a shiny or metallic surface gives finer metals. On a stony world about one deposit in four is a quarry instead, of marble or granite, the two stones a Concert Hall or an Art Gallery is built from.

To find a deposit, land and explore with e; the higher your Technology Level, the likelier you are to find one. To work it, fit a mining tool to one of your vessel’s weapon ports, the Tremble Mining Tool or the dearer Precision Mining Tool, which now and then frees an extra unit, and fire on the deposit with f. Each unit freed goes into your hold, so keep cargo space for it. A bought tool goes into a free port by itself; if none is free, it waits in the hold until you put it in one.

A deposit gives easily at first and grudgingly at the end. Strike it with a mining tool and a unit comes free on a roll against what is left. A deposit of ten units, full, never refuses. With one unit left, it gives one time in ten. Fail, and experience gives a second chance. Fire on a deposit with an ordinary weapon and it may still yield, as debris flies about, but crudely, and the deposit loses a second unit for every one you take.

What you mine on a world with a city may be taxed by it, and refusing a city's tax is a wrong it remembers.

The Concert Hall is full and the doors have closed. Your seat cost 1,856 gc, about what a Concert Hall asks at a star of advancement 5. The music begins, goes on, and ends, and you are given one line:

Their music stays utterly strange to you. The 1,856 gc bought you nothing more.

Nothing was left to chance. Each city's music, art and dance asks a certain Culture Level, and you either reach it or you don't. Paying for a second seat changes nothing; coming back with a Culture Level one higher may open the same concert at once. Fall short of what it asks by two Culture Levels or less and you are told so, in words, never in numbers: For a moment their music almost made sense to you.

The most advanced cities ask more than Culture Level 13 can give. There are three ways round this. A culture may love one of its aesthetics above the others, as its world's own description shows, whether a love of song, of decoration or of great gatherings. In the one it loves, a stranger's Culture Level counts ten levels higher, so the hardest cultures in the universe are entered by the one art they love. A true relic of theirs, brought home, opens that aesthetic outright. And a Hall for Strangers founded by another traveller can lower the bar for everyone after them.

An Art Gallery is the same, for art, and has its own Art Director to tell you about it. A festival is the same, for dance, and a test of its own, for knowing their music does not carry you into it. Only half of cities keep festivals.

Every city has an Art Gallery, and every Art Gallery keeps its own hours, so you will often arrive at a shut door and an Art Director telling you, through it, when to come back.

Understood, a tour ends among the things that culture treasures most. Remember what you saw there. Every planetary culture decorates what it loves in one way of its own, with spirals or runes, with dancing creatures or with stars in their places, and its Art Gallery is the one place that shows you which.

Stay and talk to the Art Director. Ask about any piece and you hear when it was likely made and where, sometimes with certainty and sometimes only a guess, and now and then the name of a world near here whose culture would treasure one like it. An Art Director knows a relic of their own culture’s heritage for certain, and their word makes it known; of any other they give only an opinion, for the same fee.

Half of what we know about these, we pieced together from their decoration alone.

An Art Director

The ornaments stand on open stands, and nothing stops you using the r retrieve command to lift one, though relics are kept behind glass. Set it back, and the Art Director lets out a breath.

An ornament is a crafted piece in one of eight forms, made only to be beheld, decorated in one of twelve ways, and it is always named in full, so you can read its form and its decoration, as in a horn spiral exquisitely carved with symbols of various astrobiomorphic creatures, a silver orb decorated with magnificent emeralds, a jewel of opal finely engraved with multitudes of dancing creatures or a prism holding a hologram of differing fractals deep within its heart. The form sets its worth, from the plate, the least, through the cube, spiral, torus, prism, medallion and jewel, to the orb, the most. Merchants value each piece their own way, so the same ornament may fetch eight times as much from one station’s traders or antique shop as from another’s. To a culture the form means little. The decoration means everything.

Every planetary culture adores one decoration and is offended by another, fixed for good, the same in all its cities. A culture speaks of what it adores. Walk among them and you may hear The spirals within spirals that enlighten our minds are more precious than jewels. Ask an Art Gallery’s Art Director about the history of a piece on show, and you are told where it came from, a world near that star whose culture treasures it, though not always rightly. And a city’s merchants are delighted by an ornament in their own taste, and pay well for it.

Give a leader an ornament in their culture’s taste, made by another culture on another world, and if it moves them they thank you, You understand us deeply! Please accept one of our own ornaments. It is an Act of Peace of kinship toward that city, for it joins them to another culture. A fine piece always moves them; an ordinary one moves them as your Culture Level allows, and one that does not they keep, with no act. A piece from their own world counts for nothing. Your culture experience grows with the city’s advancement: at a city of advancement 10, one ornament can lift you to Culture Level 4. It is an act of Trade as well. A plain ornament earns a kind thank-you and no more. An ornament in the decoration they hate is a wrong, You bring this here? To us? Take it away., and takes back an Act of Peace, or with none to take back, you fall a rung in their regard.

The same works on their vessels. An ornament in their taste calms a hostile one, What calmness your gift brings to me!, and pleases a friendly one. At a culture’s own station, a piece in its taste pleases its Station Administrator, and one made by another culture is an Act of Peace of kinship toward the station.

Every city makes ornaments in its own culture's taste, from what its world offers, and sells them at its Assortment. An ornament is cheap where it is made and dear to a culture that shares the taste. Carried to the leader of a kindred culture, it opens doors, as any ornament in their taste does. Carried to the wrong culture, it is a wrong, and moves you a rung down in their regard.

Leaders receive gifts. Merchants deal in goods for gc, at a city's Exchange. Every city's Exchange is its own, shaped by its culture, and far less dependable than a station's trade bureau. Every city also keeps an Assortment, its general store, as one station in four keeps an assortment shop. It sells the city's own ornaments, and now and then a robot, at half a station's price.

The market is a quiet clue to the city's alliance. The Freedom Fighters always sell arms. The Traders keep the widest range, rare metals too. Nature sells only what the world can spare. The Rebels sell contraband, to those they trust. Independents haggle, and sell knowledge.

Its manner of trade is found out, never explained. Some cities haggle. Some trade openly. Some will not trade with a stranger at all until the stranger knows one of their aesthetics. On a festival day, the Assortment's ornaments are cheaper.

For a tip, a merchant will pass on gossip, and gossip in Xalaria is usually true, things overheard or told.

Every culture decides somehow who continues. Some choose by music, some by judging new works, some by trials of the body and of character, and some by tests of the mind, by mating or by chance. Only those who choose by trial hold a rite a guest may enter, the ordeal, and they offer it only to an honoured guest, which in Xalaria means someone who has already done that city an Act of Peace. The rite is held two hours in every eight, on the city's own calendar; explore the city while it is held and you come upon it on a d20 roll of 1–7.

The ordeal is five trials, one after another, and each takes between 5 and 35 in a hundred of your vessel’s greatest shields, a third less in their own true mask. After each you choose whether to go on, or to step out.

You endure the ordeal to its end. They lift you up among them.

The ordeal, endured

Endure it, and it is an Act of Peace of trial toward the city, the Chronicle tells it, and the city gives you a name in its own tongue. Step out, and you are not chosen, and their rite is closed to you for three days, though their festivals stay open. Shields gone is death.

A city’s creatures are superintelligent, and mostly beyond our understanding. Explore a city or speak to its creatures, and what you meet is what its world’s own description tells of their bodies, their movement and their signals, and your own astonishment at it. Every reply comes in their own manner: The Trocazian transmits: …, or it flashes red, or exudes, or nudges into you.

A city keeps a simple memory of you, four rungs long. A kindness it values is an Act of Peace, of one of four kinds, protection, restoration, kinship or trial, and three of different kinds make you its hero, at any city in Xalaria. A culture’s own station counts the first three kinds the same way; an alliance’s station or a vault never makes you its hero. Its leader tells you each time how many remain, and your journal keeps the count. A wrong takes back an Act of Peace first, so a hero who wrongs a city is one act away again. Only with none to take back does a wrong move you a rung down. A fake found out is the exception, and drops you a rung at once (Relics). While a city is wary, a kindness only makes you welcome again, and is not counted. Firing on a city skips the ladder entirely. That is war at once.

That is an Act of Peace between us, and we will remember it. Two more, and Yepnia will call you its hero.

A city’s leader

A city also gives names, in its own sounds and with a meaning in ours. Understand all its aesthetics, or endure its ordeal, and you may be known there as the one who carries our song, whose eyes found our beauty, or who did not break.

Some cultures live where no traveller can follow, in a city beneath the water of their world, or deep below its surface in caverns of their own light. You may still go to one. The journey runs as any other, and you arrive in the city’s own vicinity, its outskirts, the city in view below you:

The city lies beneath the water here, its lights moving far below the surface. Its life is out of reach - there is no way to meet it.

No one of the city speaks with you there; only the vessels nearby and your own computer. A search goes round the city and finds nothing: You explore the shore and the waters around Skuytee, but find nothing. From there you may take off, or go out to the wilderness. No other vessel goes there, and a new traveller never begins above such a world, since a first city must be one you can walk into.

A city or a station destroyed is destroyed for good, and its ruin keeps the story of the battle, who fired, with what, and which vessels fell beside it.

Explore the wilderness of a world with a ruined city, or the orbit of a ruined station, and you may come upon it, once. What you see there is what happened there. Its own structures lie broken after their material, crystal shattered or growth torn. The burn lines are lasers and the craters blasts. The wrecks of those who fell still bear the markings of their alliance. How long ago it was shows in what covers it, smoke, then ash, then dust, then the world's own life creeping back over it.

Every mark in a ruin was made by someone, and some of those marks may be yours.

A station's assortment shop sells robots, and its keeper will try hard to sell you one, because the shop takes a tenth of everything a robot it sold ever earns. Now and then a city's Assortment has one too, at half the price. There are four kinds. A Pilot Robot flies a craft of yours and follows you about a star, docking when you dock and landing when you land. A Mechanic Robot mends what is damaged. A Cleaner Robot clears an infestation from your hold. A Nurse Robot cures a disease.

Any robot can fly a craft, after its fashion. A pilot flies well and a mechanic passably. A cleaner or a nurse flies late, flustered and slow to fire, which is the fun of it. A craft bought from the Technology Assistants comes without a weapon. Buy one there with the craft docked beside you, and you are asked which vessel it is for. Ask a robot in your own words to dig at a mine you both stand beside, to change its weapon, or to take up the cargo where you are. What it digs or takes up goes into its own hold, and it leaves all its cargo in the docking area whenever it docks in the same station as you, never in one you are not in. The deeds are yours, since the orders are. A robot riding in your own vessel can be spoken to as well, by its number after your computer’s in the list of whom to communicate with. Ask what it can do for you, or what its model allows it.

Each robot has a mind, and the shopkeeper speaks of the makers of minds as one speaks of breeds. A Corvane mind is usually brave, and a brave robot turns on anyone who attacks you at once. A Brightwater mind is usually fearful, and a fearful robot will not fight at all. Orrery minds are curious, Quillon minds headstrong. Every robot has a quirk of its own besides. One dreads wormholes, one adores music, one collects shiny things, one is afraid of the dark.

A disease is caught exploring cities, and an infestation comes aboard with cargo. Both grow worse the more advanced the star where you met them, and only a robot of a high enough model can cure them. A prototype cures nothing at all.

In any orbit, b, build, asks what you will raise: a space station, or a vault. A vault is a small frame of your own. Seed it with 7 units of construction nanomites and feed it 40 units of structural metal with d, drop, as you would a station’s frame. It closes on the odds your Technology Level gives you, as a station does, but two levels more easily than a station of its size, and it may stand in any orbit, even one already crowded with stations, though you may keep only one vault in each orbit. Until you name it, the first time you go in, it is something like the Hq669 vault; afterwards, perhaps, the Haven vault.

A vault, like a station, must be found before you can navigate to it: explore the orbit with e. Navigate to any vault, yours or another traveller’s, and it offers two things: its fuel station, and a private security room. A private security room is opened for you alone, and what you keep there no one else can reach, not even the vault’s owner. Inside, d, drop, stores all you carry of one cargo, and r, retrieve, takes it back, as much as your hold has room for. It keeps cargo, not fuel, and storing it there is not dropping it in space, so the Nature Preservation Alliance does not mind. The owner’s room is free; everyone else pays the fee the owner sets, at each visit, or meets a closed door.

This is a private vault. No entry.

Where a city of the star system keeps it supplied, the owner may build a fuel station inside the vault, from 3 units of construction nanomites. It never runs dry, and it sells to anyone at half a station’s price, since a vault has fewer regulations to deal with, about 400 units a day to passing traffic alone. Anyone may come to it, no room needed, and vessels running low fill up there too.

The owner takes a share of every unit it sells, and of the fuel sold at any station the owner holds: 30 percent while the nearest city counts the owner its hero, 20 while it welcomes them, 10 while it is wary, and none while it is hostile. The nearest city is one on the vault’s own world, or else on the nearest world of the star, and a city the owner has never met counts as welcoming. That is about 300, 200, 100 or nothing a day, besides real buyers and the room fees you set, so a vault with its fuel station pays for itself in about two to four months. Room fees and the share are handed over whenever the owner comes in: Since you were last here - 840 gc, from fuel sold and rooms let. In your own vault’s room, c, communicate, reaches the Vault Assistant, who sets the fee for others’ rooms (none means no entry), fills your tank, and tells you what your share is now. In anyone else’s, it reaches your own computer.

A vault’s door never yields, and passing vessels and raiders leave vaults alone. A traveller may still fire on one, and a vault with lasers from a city’s guards fires back (Guards, below). One destroyed spills about half of what its rooms held into orbit, as salvage for whoever comes. Building or destroying a vault moves your goodwill as a station does.

A farm is grown from seed. On solid land, b, build, clears a field. It costs nothing, and you may have one unfinished field at a time. Your computer tells you how much seed the ground will take, from kind ground to harsh: Cleared. Ordinary ground. It will take 90 units of seed - bring it here and 'd drop' it. Seed is sold at every city’s Exchange, even one that sells nothing else. Back on the field’s world, d, drop, sows it (You sow 30 units of seed. 60 more to go.), and when the last of it goes in, the farm is yours: The last of the seed goes in. Our farm on Emyulo (unguarded). A field left a week without seed goes back to the wild.

Not every world will take one. Nothing grows on a gas world or a molten one, nothing is farmed on a sanctuary’s world, and where something lives that no one has yet discovered, it must be discovered first.

A farm that a city guards is worked by that city's citizens. Its creatures work the fields in ways a stranger can barely follow, and how well they work depends on how well you know them. A farm with no guard is tended by machines, its income set by your technology. Either way it pays back what its seed cost in a few weeks. Each day’s harvest gathers in the farm’s store, and you collect it by landing on its world. A full store draws thieves, who take half of it or more: a city’s guards drive them off three times in four, and robots of yours on guard often enough. An unguarded farm may also burn, any day, at a rival’s hands.

Other travellers can fire on a farm themselves: on a world’s surface, f, fire, lists the farms there among its targets. A guarded farm’s guards take the shots, one falling to each, Its guards were waiting among the crops. One of them falls. An unguarded one burns, until nothing stands in its fields now but smoke. Firing on a farm wrongs the city that protects it, and its owner learns of it there, or on returning.

Building a farm gains you goodwill with every alliance that serves Trade, a point for each 4,000 gc of the seed or nanomites it took (planted with nanomites, 2), and costs you as much with every alliance that serves Nature. Destroying one costs whoever destroys it 8 with Trade and gains them 8 with Nature.

Anything of yours that no one guards, a farm, a vault or a station, is marked (unguarded) wherever you see it named. Only you see the mark. No one else is told whether anything is guarded, or by whom; the only way to find out is to attack it.

Guards are asked of a city in the same star system, through its leader, under c, communicate. The city agrees if you understand one of its aesthetics, its anthem, its art or its celebrations, and it is neither wary of you nor hostile. Otherwise its leader tells you why: We don't know you well enough yet. A farm takes guards only from a city on its own world.

Each city has one set of guards. While that set guards anything, anyone’s farm, vault or station, yours among them, the city refuses every other request: its guards are committed elsewhere, and it has no more to send. It never says whose holding that is, or where, so no one learns from it what is guarded. Once its guards have all fallen, or it turns against the one they guard for, it may be asked again.

You pay once, when it agrees. Every city asks the same for a full set of its guards, but each sends its own number of them, from two to nine, so it pays to ask more than one. A city that counts you its hero asks half, and every one of its aesthetics you understand takes something off the price. A city on another world of the same star asks three times as much:

A long way to send our guards. We will, for three times the price.

A city’s set may bring lasers as well, for a station or a vault, never for a farm: none from a city of advancement 1 to 6, one from a city of 7 to 13, two from a city of 14 or more, and one more, up to two, where its creatures drill in ranks. Each city always brings the same. Its leader says what it offers, two of our guard vessels and one laser, and says nothing of lasers when it has none.

More cities may guard the same thing, but every guard vessel and every laser already there, from any city or company, raises the price of a full set by a tenth: with eight already standing, it costs about twice as much. The leader mentions them as it names the price. Guards destroyed bring the price back down, so security worn away is cheaper to rebuild. Ask a city again about the holding it already guards for you, and it replaces its guards rather than adding more; if none have fallen, its leader tells you it is already fully guarded.

What they do depends on what they guard. At a station, each guard counts as a security vessel when raiders come for its till while you are away (the Matrix of Fortune, 4), and a raid may cost a vessel, a Security Company’s first. A vault has no till to raid; its guards come out as guard vessels when anyone fires on it. At a farm they are no vessels at all: they drive off thieves three times in four, and every rival raider while you are away, and a shot fired at a guarded farm kills a guard instead of burning the crop.

Every laser is mounted and fires on its own, with its own power, so twice the lasers is twice the fire. Shots that land on one target together are told together:

The station fires three Power Lasers - two hit, one misses.

A vault of yours fires its lasers too. While raiders come for a station’s till in your absence, each laser counts as three security vessels.

So guards fall. Each guard vessel destroyed, each band driven off a farm, each shot at a guarded farm costs one, and you are told, in the story of it, when a city’s last guard has gone. Lasers can be shot away: every hit on the station puts each of them at risk, a Security Company’s first and then a city’s, and each has about an even chance of lasting until the station itself falls, whatever weapon is used. Your computer tells you when one is lost. A security force bought from a Security Company before this still serves, an alliance that keeps a fleet still guards the stations that fly its flag, and robots of your own may still stand guard.

Every world has a description of its own, and some describe life. On a world with none of its own, a careful search of the surface may still turn something up. You might have discovered life! You collect a sample for scientific review. Whether it is truly new depends on how well you see, for science in Xalaria needs culture. Take it to a station’s administrator: a true one is met with a grant and a line in the Chronicle’s legends, brought proof of new life; anything else is politely declined.

About one star in twenty holds an animal worth watching, and a few shops sell one in a travelling cage. It knows things about a place before you do, and shows it in the way its own world made it. Learn to read it. Released with d on its own world, among its own kind, or into a sanctuary, it is an act of Nature, and on a barren world of its own star it may even make a new home.

A sanctuary keeps a world wild. Build one with b and construction nanomites, either in a station of your own, where it keeps the world the station orbits and is lost with the station, or on a wild world itself. The world must have animal life and no culture of its own, and it can hold only one sanctuary.

It is entered as an Art Gallery or a Concert Hall is, through its Wildlife Biologist: an observation deck in the station, or the kept wilds on the world. Ask the Wildlife Biologist about the creatures there, or how the sanctuary is kept.

Keeping it is an act of Nature. Every day it stays wild raises your goodwill with every alliance that serves Nature, even while you are far away, and so does every visitor. No farm may be planted there, and mining there is a breach; miners may come while you are gone.

Close the page and, two minutes later, your craft is taken out of sight, docked or in orbit, and no one can hail it, fire on it or find it until you return, exactly where you left it, however long you were gone. The universe does not wait for you meanwhile. Only a fight holds your craft. Struck in the last ten minutes, it stays in the fight until ten minutes pass with no hit. In those first minutes, and in a fight, vessels may come alongside and leave, hail your craft, demand its cargo, fire on it, and now and then send it a gift. Your craft keeps a log of everything it saw and heard.

If nothing of note happened, nothing is said when you return, and you are simply where you were. If something did, your computer gives you one short report, the most serious first, a few sentences however long you were away, and the whole log stays in your journal until you next leave. It holds only what your own craft saw, named as you would have seen it, never news from elsewhere. If your craft did not survive, one line before the gravestone says where and when it was lost, and what broke through its shields.

Your stations, vaults and farms are another matter. Most of what happened to them while you were gone you find out by going back, to a till far smaller than it should be, a farm’s store emptied by thieves, or a station or farm that is no longer there, and your computer is as surprised as you are. A few things it does hear: a city’s last guard falling, lasers shot away, a field gone back to the wild while it waited for seed. Or you hear it from the vessels at that world. For about three weeks they gossip about a raid, each in its own alliance's manner, and they name who did it, by planetary culture, alliance and vessel. Speak to the raider itself and it may boast of it, once.

Your journal also keeps the voyage itself, every star reached, world orbited, landing, city and station, in order. Ask it to trace your journey and the voyage plays as a film. The view flies the route you really took, star by star and world by world, past the landscapes and cities where you landed, with a caption beneath each place in the voice of the ship's log, and each city's concert music as you pass it. You can watch all of it, only your last voyage, or everything since a star you choose.

When you fall, your stations, vaults and farms are held in trust for your kin for seven days, by each station’s administration, whatever flag it flies. Begin a new life in the same browser before then, and before you go anywhere your computer has news: A message has come for you. The Lantern Guild have lost their founder, and they ask whether you would lead them. Say yes and you begin docked at that station, owning everything held in trust and leading its alliance, which counts as your one founding in this life. Nothing else comes with you, no knowledge, no gc, no goods, charts or goodwill. Its Station Administrator welcomes you by your deed: Word of you reached us - they say you go where the charts run out.

After seven days, anyone may take up the keeping of a station or a vault, for 5,000 gc: a station from its Station Administrator, a vault at its door. A station’s keeper takes on its till, its berths, its halls and whatever guards it, and with them its quarrels, the till starting empty; a vault’s keeper, its fuel station, its fees and its doors, though never what others have locked in their own rooms. The change is a scene of its own, the old ledgers sealed and the old colours taken down. If it was a founded alliance’s last station, its keeper may keep its flag flying and lead that alliance, and so it lives on; otherwise the alliance ends. Farms that no one reclaims go back to the wild.

Travellers are rarely in Xalaria at the same moment, so Xalaria makes them present to one another even when apart. Docked at a station, ask your computer to invite someone to meet you there. Add a few words of your own, and a welcome gift if you like, and it gives you a link to send.

A newcomer who opens the link begins docked at that station, not at Earth. Their computer already knows why they are there, and the gift waits in the station's keeping. A newcomer far from Earth is vulnerable, so for their first hours the station's own people treat any attack on them as an attack on the station. You are told when they arrive, wherever you are, or when you next return.

Two travellers at the same concert, festival or Art Gallery tour remember one another, each named as the other saw them. A vessel that never gave its identity stays the crimson Vimba. Side by side, travellers may form a companionship and give it a name. The journal then shows where each friend is, and when a friend's shields fall below a tenth, every other friend hears it at once, wherever they are.

A distress call from Ana5, in the orbit of Zhiogs, at the star Oylanhai. Their shields are almost gone.

Ask a vessel what it carries, in your own words, and it answers truly, or not at all. Never if it is hostile to you, or if you have ever demanded its cargo. Never while anything near is hostile to it, since talk is an open channel and a hunter could be listening. Otherwise, it depends on its alliance. A trader always tells, because it is business, and says roughly what the hold is worth. A Rebel tells once you have answered its own question first, where you have come from, and it knows whether you have truly been there.

Instead of demanding cargo, offer gc. How a vessel answers a generous gift depends on its alliance, and the answers say more about each alliance than anything it tells you about itself. Watch what each one does with your gc, and what it says as it does it.

Every vessel you speak to is in some state of mind, and it shows in how it talks. With its shields low it is shaken, with its fuel low worried, with danger in view tense and short with you. Alone somewhere quiet, it is glad of the company. With a full hold, it is keen to sell. Busy or tense, it says less.

Ask a vessel where to find something, and it can only tell you of places it has been. What it noticed there depends on its mind, and what it is willing to say depends on you. Each alliance keeps its own things close. Traders guard what is worth money, Nature what lives and what is dug, the Freedom Fighters and the Rebels the weapons. A kind word, a gift, a deal or your name freely given can change its mind. Insults and gunfire close it. When it will not tell, the way it refuses says something about who it is.

Or make a deal, some of your cargo at your own price. Another traveller is asked there and then, and the offer stands for two minutes. Any other vessel answers as a trader would, from what anyone could see, and buys only below what the goods fetch at this star's stations. Nothing changes hands unless, at that moment, both of you are still together, the goods are still held and the gc is there.

Every traveller sets out with the same charge. For centuries an empire has held the civilisations of your home star in its grip, so long that freedom is barely remembered there. Your colleagues laughed when you said you would end it. A strange force has you looking towards the abyss all the same.

Coming home is easy. What you bring home is not: a culture held for centuries, given back the life it had only dreamed of, its own ideal and its own utopia, made possible by you. There are two endings, war and peace. Break the empire’s power, until every city and station of its world is destroyed or counts you its hero, and at least one is destroyed, and come home a Lord. Or become the hero of every city and station of its world in peace, its vaults never counted, and come home a Noble. Peace asks for everything you have learned. No Culture Level alone will do it, nor intergalactic credits, nor force, but pieces in the decoration they love made by other cultures, what they lost given back, their ordeals endured, and more that this book leaves for you to discover. Each of the empire’s cities and stations, like any other, calls you its hero after three Acts of Peace, each of a different kind. The empire is harder because it has more of them, three or four cities and the stations above them, and they are far away.

Whichever you choose, the journey closes where it began. Dock at your home station and the news is already there before you. It has passed throughout the stars.

Your journal keeps the charge and what you have learned of the empire. Of its cities and stations that you know, it tells you how many count you their hero, how many lie destroyed and how many still stand against you. When none stands against you, it says that it is done, and to return home.

It was so many ages ago that we last had freedom, but now it has returned, and you will be celebrated for eternity.

Your home station, as you dock

Your name goes into the Chronicle's legends, and a stone is raised in the Graveyard that tells, for every traveller after you, how you did it.

That is why nothing in Xalaria is there for decoration. The anthem you learned at a concert on one world helps you tell, on another, whether the manuscript a dealer holds out is true. The spirals at the end of one Art Gallery's tour tell you what to bring its leader, and what a dealer three stars away is selling too cheaply. The figurine a dealer swore was genuine is someone's ancestor, or a mockery of one. The field recorder lying in your hold can carry a culture’s music to an Art Gallery on another world, and join it to a culture it has never met. The farm a city's citizens tend for you pays for the seat that opens the next culture; an ornament in its taste from another world, a relic come home and its ordeal endured make you its hero; and its hero may bring a city to the alliance of their station above. Every law in this book leans on the others, and all of them lead to utopia.