The complete rules of THE WINDOW (Contra-Zero Certificates) and the manual of the game, the archive, and the economy

This document is the whole law. Where any summary, tooltip, or memory disagrees with it, this book wins; where this book disagrees with the engine, that is a defect — report it. Six books: I. The Table (the base game), II. The Folded (seven certificates), III. The Archive (four further sets of seven), IV. Tables & Modes (how duels are convened), V. The Ledger (prints, marks, keys, and trade — the player's manual to the economy), VI. Rulings (the case law).

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BOOK I — THE TABLE

I.1 The terms

Every word below is used in its exact sense throughout this book. Nothing here is metaphor.

The axis. The line between the two seats. Chains are built outward from it; it is the origin of every position, and it counts as one for Collect.

A stroke. One unit of the table's substance. Thirty exist. They sit in the plenum or in a player's hoard, and they move between these places. They are never made, never destroyed, never spent out of existence.

The plenum. The table's own hoard of strokes — what is not currently held by a player. It begins with thirty and is drawn from, and returned to, all game.

A hoard. The strokes one player holds. Yours count toward your Substance.

A certificate. A card. Each bears a name, a cost in its ring, and for most, a rule. Forty-three exist across five sets, plus two fixtures.

Cost. The number in the ring. See I.3 — it is weight, never a price.

A chain. The row of certificates one player has built, running outward from the axis. Its order is fixed once built and changes only by Turn, Transport, or Alphabet.

Inner and outer. Inner is toward the axis; the innermost card sits against it. Outer is away; the outermost card ends the chain. Building places at the outer end unless Alphabet stands.

The hand row. The certificates dealt to you and not yet built. Face down, but open to inspection like everything else.

The market. At market and portfolio tables, certificates dealt face down to the middle, available to either player's Build.

Face up, face down. A certificate's two states. Face up is in force: it carries its weight at reckoning and its rule is live. Face down is folded: it carries no weight and its rule is silent — but it has not left. It holds its place in the chain, keeps its serial, and can be raised again by Trace. "Spend" always means: turn face down. This book uses in force and folded for these two states and no other words.

A seam. A border between two adjacent certificates in a chain. Cut names a seam, not a card.

Spoils. A certificate taken by Cut. It sits beside the taker's chain, face down, and scores one Holding.

The hostage. The single certificate held beside the axis by Hold. At most one exists at a time.

A fixture. Sponsorship and Seal. They convene the table and are never dealt, built, folded, or scored.

Action, turn, round. An action is one of the eight (I.5). A turn is one player taking exactly one action. A round is both players' turns; the Seal steps once at its end.

The Seal. The clock. It shows 0 through 12. At twelve the table closes.

Settling. A table settles when it produces a verdict: a win, a loss, or a Balance. An abandoned table settles nothing.

I.2 The matter of the game

Two seats. One axis between them. Thirty strokes in the plenum — the table's own hoard — and never more nor fewer anywhere in the world: strokes move, they are not made or destroyed. A clock called the Seal that steps from 0 toward 12 and cannot be argued with. And certificates: cards, each with a cost printed in its ring, each face-up or face-down, chained outward from the axis on each player's side.

Two certificates are fixtures and belong to the table itself, not to any pool: Sponsorship (cost 1, the spiral — the mark of standing) and Seal (cost 3 — the clock made flesh). They convene the table; they are not dealt, built, or scored.

I.3 On cost

The number in a certificate's ring is its weight, not its price. A certificate is built free. Placing a certificate is an action, and actions are free: every stroke stays where it stands, and a certificate you hold may always be built.

Cost does five things, and nothing else:

1. It is your Substance while the certificate stands in force (I.9).
2. It is the ransom its owner pays to redeem it from the hostage's place (I.7) — the one literal payment in this game, and even there the strokes only change hands.
3. It is the debt Spend-Covering reckons, taken from the most expensive certificate in your chain (Book II).
4. It is a coordinate for Primeladder, which counts the differences between adjacent costs (Book III).
5. It is what Genealogy doubles at your chain's inner end (Book III).

A heavy certificate is therefore prize and exposure at once: worth more standing, dearer to ransom back, and alone in setting your debt. High cost is not strength. It is presence, and presence can be seized.

The fixtures prove the point. Sponsorship carries 1 and Seal carries 3, and neither is ever dealt, built, folded, or scored. They are costs that do nothing but stand — marks of standing, which is what every cost is.

I.4 The playing certificates

The base six: Tally 5 · Pairing 4 · Separation 3 · Escrow 4 · Reflection 2 · Exchange 10. Four of these carry powers (I.7); Tally carries none and is worth its weight; Exchange is the heaviest thing in the game.

I.5 Convening (base table)

Shuffle the base six. Deal three to each seat, face down, into each player's hand row. The first seat takes three strokes from the plenum (the plenum now shows 27). The Seal shows 0. All information is open at all times: hands, chains, everything may be inspected by anyone, always. There is nothing hidden in this game — only things not yet done.

I.6 The turn, and the law of the turn

Play alternates. On your turn you take exactly one action. You may never pass, and nothing may ever leave you without an action: if every action is closed to you, you are compelled to Accelerate — even twice running, even through a card that forbids it. The law of the turn outranks every certificate (Rulings R-01, R-09).

When the second seat has acted, the round ends and the Seal steps once by itself. When the Seal reaches 12, the table closes at once — even in the middle of resolving an action, that action completes and nothing else follows (R-07). Nothing makes the game longer. (One certificate bends this by its own name; see Zenoseal, Book III.)

I.7 The actions

BUILD. Take one card from your hand row (or, at a market table, from the market) and place it face up at the outer end of your chain. Building is how a certificate enters force; its power (if any) is live while it stands face up in your chain.

COLLECT — needs your Pairing face up. Count N = one for the axis, plus one for every face-up chained card on both sides of the table. Take exactly N strokes from the plenum. If the plenum holds fewer than N, the Collect is closed to you: there is no partial collection, ever.

CUT — needs your Separation face up, and spends it (Separation turns face down). Name a seam in the opponent's chain — a border between two adjacent cards. The seam divides their chain into an inner piece (against the axis) and an outer piece. The smaller piece yields its outermost card to you as spoils (laid beside your chain, face down, scored under Holdings). The rest of their chain closes up in order. If the pieces are equal, the defender chooses which piece yields. A seam whose yielding card is shielded by Keeping cannot be named.

SWAP — needs your Reflection face up. The two chains change owners entirely. Every Reflection on the table then turns face down: the mirror is spent by its own use. (Hands, strokes, and spoils do not move — only the chains.)

HOLD — needs your Escrow face up, and the table must hold no hostage already. Name one face-up card in the opponent's chain other than their innermost; it leaves the chain (the chain closes) and sits beside the axis as the hostage. Only one hostage may exist at a time.

RANSOM. If the hostage is yours, you may pay its printed cost in strokes; the payment goes to whoever controls Escrow at that moment — usually the holder, but a Swap can make this strange, and the game lets it be strange. The card returns to your hand row. Each player may ransom at most twice per game. If Escrow leaves force (cut away, challenged face down, or swapped into its victim's own control), the hostage is released at once, free, to its owner's hand.

CONVERT — needs your Exchange face up. Trade with the plenum: give 3 strokes and take 7, or give 7 and take 3. Both directions exist because both are sometimes wise. Once per turn like anything else; no limit per game (R-03).

ACCELERATE. Step the Seal once, immediately, in addition to the automatic step at round's end. You may not Accelerate twice in a row on your own turns — unless the law of the turn compels you (I.6).

I.8 What never happens

These are rules, not omissions. Each is stated because its absence elsewhere would be mistaken for a gap.

• Building is free. The weight in the ring is reckoned, never paid.
• Every certificate stays on the table. A folded card lies face down, in place, for the rest of the game. A certificate is in force, folded, spoils, or hostage — always somewhere, always countable.
• A folded certificate does not leave its chain. It holds its position, keeps its serial, and may be raised again by Trace.
• No stroke is created or destroyed. Thirty at the start, thirty at the close. Every Collect, Convert, Ransom, and Spend-Covering draw only moves them.
• You may never pass. If every action is closed to you, you are compelled to Accelerate (I.6, R-01, R-09).
• The Seal never runs backward and never stops. Only Zenoseal bends its final step, and only by folding itself (R-13).
• Everything is open. Hands, chains, spoils, hostage, hoards, and the Seal may be inspected by either player at any time. There is no bluff in this game — only things not yet done.
• The columns are never added. They are compared, one against one (I.9).

I.9 The three columns — never added

When the Seal closes the table, each player reckons three columns. They are compared column by column; they are never summed, weighted, or traded against each other.

SUBSTANCE. The printed costs of your face-up chained cards, plus your strokes. (Face-down cards contribute nothing — see Descent and Hemiring for the two dissents.) If Spend-Covering is in your chain, its debt is settled first: see Book II. Torsor, if in force, acts after debts (R-06). A debt greater than what you hold takes all of it and stops there; the ledger records what remains present, never a shortfall.

FORM. The length of your longest unbroken run of face-up cards in your chain. A face-down card breaks the run (Gram, Shadow, Noninscript, and Wellformed in Book III each bend this in their own way).

HOLDINGS. One per spoils card beside your chain, plus one if a hostage sits under an Escrow you control when the table closes.

Whoever takes the majority of columns (two or three) wins. If no majority forms — columns split 1-1 with one level, or all three level, or any pattern without a winner — the result is a BALANCE.

I.10 The Balance

A Balance is not a draw, not a tie to be broken, not half a win. It is the table's third verdict, recorded under its own name, counted in its own column forever. The Standing Table (Book IV) tracks wins, losses, and Balances apart — never added — and some of the rarest things in the game are paid only for a Balance.

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BOOK II — THE FOLDED

Seven further certificates, joining the pool at market tables and beyond. Each carries its rule on its face; each rule is total.

TORSOR — 6. While face up at scoring: after all debts, add the absolute difference between the two Substances to your Substance. (Blocked entirely if the opponent's Independence is face up — R-12.)

BALANCE — 2. While face up at scoring: if exactly one column is level, that column is yours. (Blocked by the opponent's Independence. If both players somehow show Balance face up — impossible from one pool, possible in strange futures — the table's single copy rule prevents it today.)

DESCENT — 3. While face down in your chain, it scores the Seal's final step instead of nothing. Built and left standing it is a plain 3; folded at the right hour it is worth the whole clock.

TURN — 2. Spend it: reorder one chain entirely — yours or theirs — into any order you choose. The cards keep their faces; only the order moves.

KEEPING — 3. While face up: its two neighbours in your chain cannot be taken — not by Cut, not by Hold. It never protects itself.

NO-GO — 1. Spend it: challenge one face-up card of the opponent's. In Counterfoil the challenge is a timed pattern drill at the table (Book IV.4); win the drill and the challenged card turns face down (its power dies standing). Escrow challenged down releases its hostage.

SPEND-COVERING — 5. On building it, take five strokes at once from the plenum (or all that remain, if fewer). At scoring you owe the plenum the printed cost of the most expensive card in your chain: the debt is paid from your strokes first; whatever cannot be paid is subtracted from your Substance. Rich now, reckoned later. The debt binds whichever face it shows (R-05).

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BOOK III — THE ARCHIVE

Twenty-eight further certificates in four sets of seven, earned from the Registrars (Book IV). New cost values 7 and a second 10 enter the ladder. Every rule below is exhaustive; interactions not stated do not exist.

Set II — THE LETTERED

ALPHABET — 2. While face up: your Build may place the new card at your chain's inner end, against the axis, instead of the outer. GRAM — 3. While face up: a single face-down card lying between two of your face-up cards does not break your run (it still scores nothing, and adds no length). Two face-down cards together still break it. CANONICAL — 3. While face up: no power may turn another card of yours face down (No-Go's success included). It never protects itself — Canonical may always be challenged. WELLFORMED — 4. At scoring: if your chain holds no face-down card (transparent Noninscript excepted), add two to your Form. FAITHFUL — 3. While face up, anywhere on the table: the chains cannot change owners. Swap is closed to both seats. ADMISSION — 2. Spend it: take any one market card into your hand row. INTERFACE — 4. While face up: your Ransom may be paid to the plenum instead of to the holder. The card still returns to your hand; the count is still conserved.

Set III — THE BEGOTTEN

CONSTRUCTOR — 5. Spend it as your action: build twice — two cards, your choice of order, both at your outer end, as one action. GENERATOR — 6. While face up: at each round's end, take one stroke from the plenum — but only if the plenum then holds more strokes than both hoards together. The trickle stops the moment the table's wealth leaves the table. FORK — 3. While face up, when your chain is Cut: you may throw Fork into the cut — Fork is taken as the spoils instead of the card that would have yielded. GENEALOGY — 5. At scoring: your innermost card, if face up, scores its cost twice. (If Genealogy itself is innermost and face up, it doubles itself.) MODEL-A — 2. While face up: it has the action power of the card immediately inner to it — Collect, Cut, Swap, Hold, Convert, Turn, or No-Go only (R-08). MODEL-B — 2. As Model-A, but the card immediately outer to it. Two Models facing each other copy nothing. OMEGAFAM — 10. While face up: your Collect counts face-down chained cards as well — the whole table, both sides, every card, plus the axis.

Set IV — THE COUNTED

HEMIRING — 4. At scoring, while face up: your face-down chained cards each score one. Nothing of yours is a zero. (Descent still takes the Seal instead; Noninscript still scores nothing — its refusal is deeper.) PRIMELADDER — 5. At scoring, while face up: gain one Substance for every different step your chain contains — a step being the difference between the printed costs of two adjacent cards, whatever their faces. EULERFUSE — 3. Spend it: return one of your spoils cards to your chain's outer end, face down. Holdings become future Substance; every certificate is kept, even in defeat. TRACE — 4. Spend it: turn one face-down card in your chain face up where it lies. Spent powers can be raised again (and see R-13). INDEPENDENCE — 3. While face up at scoring: no card of theirs alters your columns — their Torsor gains nothing from the difference, their Balance cannot claim the level column. Your own scoring cards are unaffected. SELECTION — 3. While face up: your face-up cards do not count toward their Collect (Selection itself included). Their table shrinks by exactly your presence. EXHAUSTION — 1. Spend it: their next action may not repeat the action they took on their previous turn. (Subject always to the law of the turn.)

Set V — THE SEALED

PLENUM — 6. On building it: every stroke in both hoards returns to the plenum. All of them. Yours too. REFUSAL — 2. While face up, when the opponent names a seam or a hostage: you may spend Refusal — the naming is refused; their action is spent to no effect. Their enabling card is not spent; only their turn is consumed (R-10). SHADOW — 2. At scoring, while face up: your longest unbroken run of face-down cards may stand as your Form, if it is greater than your face-up run. STAGE — 3. While face up: Accelerate is unavailable to your opponent — except when the law of the turn compels them (R-09). TRANSPORT — 2. Spend it: move one card of yours to either end of your chain, the rest closing in order. NONINSCRIPT — 1. It scores nothing, face up or face down, and never breaks your run — transparent to Form entirely. It is present, and that is all it is. ZENOSEAL — 7. While face up: when the Seal would reach twelve, it shows eleven instead, and Zenoseal turns face down. (Trace may raise it to fire again — once per raising, bounded and priced; R-13.)

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BOOK IV — TABLES & MODES

IV.1 Base tables

The four clerks of the Plenum convene base tables (I.5): six certificates, three per hand. Settle three of the four — a win or a Balance settles a table — and the market seal breaks.

IV.2 The market table

The Assessor's table. The base six and the Folded seven — thirteen certificates — are shuffled together; five dealt to each seat, three to the market, face down but open to inspection like everything else. Build may take from hand or market. The worked game of the old rulebook plays at this table (and its printed plenum column was wrong by three; the corrected count is 24/21 — Erratum E-01).

IV.3 The Portfolio (archive tables)

Beyond the Assessor, tables are convened from portfolios: each player brings eight distinct certificates they own. The two portfolios are shuffled together into one pool: five dealt to each seat, three to the market, the remainder set aside — out of that table's reach entirely. Your opponent may draw, build, and spend your certificates: inscription circulates at the table; ownership returns when the table closes. Your finishes travel with your prints — a holofoil is a holofoil in whosever hand it lands.

IV.4 The No-Go drill

When a human's No-Go challenge (or a copied one) resolves, the table sets a timed 3×3 pattern drill: reproduce the shown pattern before the timer closes. Success flips the challenged card; failure spends No-Go for nothing. Registrars and Chairs answer the drill at their own listed competence instead.

IV.5 The Registrars

Four booths, four sets. Each Registrar convenes portfolio tables built around its set and teaches its seven cards by playing them against you. First settlement (win or Balance) strikes the set's seven prints to your name, one of them holofoil, plus marks — and a Balance pays better than a win; the Registrars respect a level table. Repeat settlements pay marks and a sealed bundle.

IV.6 The Standing Table

Twelve Chairs, in rising strength — deeper search, thinner error, never stat inflation and never rule exceptions: the Chairs play the same law you do. Beat Chair n to unlock Chair n+1. Wins, losses, and Balances are counted apart, forever unadded. Notable payments: a sealed bundle at every second first-clearing; the unique Misprint — the one Tally in existence whose ring and tally strokes disagree, serial CZ-TALLY-000, the only card that ever failed the Fold — for your first Balance at Chair VI or above; and a holofoil Zenoseal for the first clearing of the Twelfth Chair.

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BOOK V — THE LEDGER

(The player's manual to prints, marks, keys, and trade. Everything here is done inside the game; the paths are given as: Booth → Button.)

V.1 What a print is

Every card you own is a print: a serial-numbered instance of a certificate title, in a finish. Finishes are styling and provenance only — a holofoil Tally and a standard Tally are the same card at the table, forever (R-11). Finishes: standard, gilt, holofoil (animated), and the unique misprint. Rarity runs on two axes and they never mix: rarity of mechanics lives in the sets; rarity of style lives in the print run. Print runs are fixed at the mint, published, and never extended — the full census is public at /ledger on the league server, and anyone may count.

Stamped and unstamped. A print is unstamped until the mint has signed it: fully playable at every table, visible in your collection with the ⧗ badge, but not tradable — an unstamped print is your own ledger's claim, believed by no one else. A stamped print (✓) carries the mint's signature and a real serial from the fixed runs; it is yours in a way mathematics enforces.

V.2 Your ledger key (your account)

Your account is a cryptographic keypair struck in your own browser — no signup, no email, no server permission. Its public half is your address (CZ-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX); its private half signs your trades and exists only in your device's memory and inside your save codes, armored under your passphrase.

Strike it: The Exchange or any stamping flow offers it the first time — Exchange → Strike the key. Read the warning and mean it: lose the passphrase, lose the key, lose the collection. There is no reset, because there is no custodian.

V.3 Save codes (do this tonight)

Topbar → Save → enter a passphrase → Write the save code. The code is plain text: your progress, your collection, your notes, your seen-registry, and your armored key. Copy it into Notes, a file, paper — anywhere. The page holds nothing when it closes; the save code is the only place your world exists. Loading: paste the code, enter its passphrase. Two devices are just two loads of the same code (export freshly whenever you've traded — a stale code is a stale wallet).

V.4 Stamping (making prints real)

Vault Store → Present for stamping → enter the league server URL. Every uncertified print you hold is presented; the mint allocates true serials from the fixed runs and signs each to your key. Watch /ledger change as it happens — those owned counts are your certificates. Offline play accrues unstamped prints without limit; stamping is the one moment supply is drawn down, which is why a million free copies of the game cannot inflate it.

V.5 Marks and notes (the currency)

Marks earned at the tables are unstamped marks — a counter in your own ledger, spendable only in the offline store, meaningless to anyone else. Real currency is notes: mint-signed bearer certificates in denominations M1 · M5 · M25 · M100, from a treasury of 1,500,000 marks minted once and never again (audit: /treasury).

Claim notes: Vault → Claim notes from unstamped marks. The faucet converts up to 50 marks per key per day — a published policy, not a security promise; your real income is server-witnessed play and trade. Spend notes: buying with notes returns a stamped print and exact change; the notes you spent go back to the treasury to be re-issued. The supply never moves. Buying with unstamped marks returns an unstamped print (offline path). Bundle odds (published): a bundle yields three prints — rarity 50% common / 30% uncommon / 17% rare / 3% sealed; finish 70% standard / 20% gilt / 10% holofoil. Bundles are earned at the tables, never sold for money. Prices: singles by rarity M30/M60/M120/M240 · finish upgrade gilt M80, holofoil M200 · bundle M50 (marks).

V.6 Trading (the Exchange)

A trade is an endorsement: you sign a certificate over to another key. The certificate moves whole and in the open; the signature chain is the ownership.

Receiving: Exchange → Copy my ledger card — send that code to your counterparty (it holds only your public key). Sending: paste their ledger card into the Exchange box → select the stamped prints and notes to give → Endorse & write the slip. The instant the slip is written, those certificates leave your collection — the endorsement is the transfer; hand the slip over by any channel at all. Importing: paste a received slip → Import. The game verifies the mint signature and every endorsement hop offline, confirms the chain ends at your key, checks the seen-registry, and only then admits the certificates. A print endorsed to someone else is provably not yours to take; a conflicting endorsement is refused with a fraud proof retained — the sender signed the same print twice, and their own signatures convict them. Notarizing: with a league server configured, imports are notarized automatically; the first endorsement recorded at each hop wins, and conflicts are answered with the prior record attached. The server is a witness, never a warden: it cannot mint, seize, or rewrite what you hold.

V.7 What can and cannot happen

Cannot happen, mathematically: forgery (no mint key, no minting), theft (a pasted code endorsed to another key is unusable and un-re-endorsable), silent inflation (count the serials yourself), tampering (any altered byte kills the signature). Can happen, and is answered: double-spending by a print's true owner — detected on reconciliation, attributable by their own signatures, barred outright when a notary is in the loop. Progress and unstamped marks are self-attested — your solo ledger is yours to keep honestly or not; the economy only ever believes signatures.

V.8 Housekeeping

Back up: your save code (your key and collection) and — if you run the mint — the mint key. Audit anytime: /ledger (prints), /treasury (currency), /provenance/SERIAL (one certificate's whole life). The Misprint is deliberately absent from the mint ledger: it exists exactly once, by award, and its serial is 000.

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BOOK VI — RULINGS

R-01 · No-pass supremacy. If restriction empties your action set, Accelerate is forced — even twice running. R-02 · The drill. No-Go resolves as the timed pattern drill; AIs answer at listed competence. R-03 · Convert is once per turn, unlimited per game. R-04 · Self-keeping release. A Swap that gives the hostage's owner control of Escrow releases the hostage. R-05 · The debt binds any face. Spend-Covering's reckoning applies face up or down. R-06 · Torsor after debts. R-07 · The twelfth step is atomic. An action in progress completes; nothing follows. R-08 · Models copy action powers only — the seven core actions, one hop, with the copier's own face and position; mirrors facing mirrors copy nothing. R-09 · R-01 generalized over Stage and Exhaustion. R-10 · A refusal consumes the turn only — the refused player's enabling card is not spent. R-11 · Finish is never mechanics. R-12 · Independence scope: their Torsor gains nothing against you; their Balance cannot claim; your own scoring cards unaffected. R-13 · Zenoseal per raising: it fires by turning face down; Trace may raise it to fire once more; bounded by Trace's own spending. E-01 · Erratum: the old rulebook's worked game misprints the plenum column by three; conservation forces 24/21.

Every stroke is kept. Each column stands in its own name. — The Fold.