Five homes, five answers to a drake

The five peoples entered the game on 11 September as climbers. They walked the dragons’ cave with a pick where a dragon has a breath. Early on 13 September they were given an errand of their own: walk down the vent, take an egg from the Clutch and carry it home.

It did not last the day. The note on the recordings asked why the peoples were walking to the bottom of the caves at all: they did not fit, and they had no business there. The errand was the game’s invention, not the setting’s. The lore’s fourth contract is that nobody lives underground, and a dragon’s brood is the one thing no people has ever countered.

So a people now plays above ground, in its own seat, on the whole atlas the world map and the flythrough film are drawn from: 900 by 594 metres, every seat at its map position, joined by the map’s own roads. Its game is the other side of the dragons’ ending. One drake comes up the vent, and the people meets it with the answer the lore gives it.

Five counters

• The Bell Towns, the Human seat: the Toll. Ready a bell, then strike the note as the drake draws breath over that bell’s ring. Sound the alarm early and the market empties; mistime the note and a frontage burns.
• The Spine, the Dwarf seat: the Narrowing. The crews’ stone lands four seconds after the word, never on a body. Close the pass as the drake comes through and lose the east road, or let the forge court burn and close the hall’s doorway before its second pass.
• The Greenwood, the Forest Elf seat: the Rising. A seed set as the drake passes low grows into a tree that catches it and holds it. There are two seeds, and a seed set under empty sky is spent. The drake tears free after the hold; nobody here can kill it.
• The Barrowlands, the Dark Elf seat: the Guttering, played only at night. The drake searches by heat. Put out the lamps at the stones before it is up and walk the marked road, or work by lamplight and put them out at the last breath.
• The Wastes, the Ork seat: the Red Hour. Light a pyre, call the band, brace in the lane and take the gout, then walk up it while the drake is overhead. Afterwards the band is spent, slow and sick for forty seconds.

One shape, five times

Every defense runs the same phases: explore, prepare, approach, defend, aftermath, outcome. Exploring runs no clock. From the press that begins the defense, the drake takes off after 120 to 150 seconds, telegraphs within 26 to 30 more, makes two passes and leaves a 20-second aftermath: about four to five minutes a defense. Each has two plans the player is told about, a mistake that the second pass can recover, and a plain failure: the home burns, and the screen names what was lost and the decision that was missed.

The drake flies one trajectory, and its telegraph, its strike and the counter all read that same one, so what is drawn is what the rules test.

What was checked

The build of 14 September passed its full serial test suite, 434 tests, and six clips of the autopilot defending were recorded at 1280 by 720; while recording, the game drew 9.3 to 14.4 frames a second. An audit found eight problems, and their repairs were committed on 15 September. No defense has been played by a person for a verdict.