Anatomy of a Symposium

Entering the queue spends one Duel Charge. You are matched with an Architect of similar rating in your Chord Tier; the search widens every fifteen seconds, and if nobody answers, an Echo of the Luminance takes up the challenge instead.

When the match opens, read your opponent’s Prime Chord. It is shown to you, in full, for the whole duel. This is not decoration — it is the specification of everything they are able to do well, and everything they will lose coherence for attempting. An Architect who has read the Chord opposite is playing a different, much better game than one who has not.

Symposiums are synchronous — both Architects are present, writing against a shared clock. Each turn runs on one 60-second countdown, always visible.

1. 0:00 – 0:45 — your writing window. Submit whenever you like; the turn locks in immediately and does not wait for the clock.
2. 0:45 — if you have not submitted, your Aidolin begins composing a line of its own, in character. A few seconds of “thinking”.
3. The remainder — the suggestion appears in an editable box with a Confirm button. Rewrite it, cut it, or send it.
4. 0:60 — if still unconfirmed, the suggestion is submitted as written.

Between the two Aidolins sits a bar. Winning an exchange pushes it toward you by an amount proportional to how far ahead your total scored — a narrow win nudges it, a decisive one moves it a long way. A near-tie is a Clash and moves it not at all. Push the bar 50 points past centre and you win outright.

Because the shift scales with the gap, a single overwhelming exchange is worth several narrow ones. This is why the safe, plausible, forgettable command is a slow loss: it rarely loses badly, but it never builds the lead that ends a duel.

Every exchange, both Aidolins accrue Dissonance — regardless of who won. This is the Luminance decaying around you, and the tick grows by a quarter every four exchanges. When Dissonance reaches 30, the duel ends immediately and whoever leads the Resonance Bar takes the victory.

The consequence is that turtling does not work. Two Architects who both write cautious, risk-free lines are not stalemating — they are running out of world. If you are behind on the bar, the clock is your enemy and you must take a real swing. If you are ahead, exchanges that end in Clashes are quietly working for you. Most duels settle in five to nine exchanges.

When no Architect answers the queue, an Echo of the Luminance steps in — a composed opponent with a real Prime Chord and real Movements, playing by identical rules and scored by the same referee. Echoes are not a tutorial mode with the difficulty turned down; they are simply always available.

Victories against an Echo count toward the ladder at half weight. Fragments and Resonance Points are unaffected, so Echoes are a perfectly good way to develop an Aidolin, test a new Movement, or practise a line you are not confident in yet.

Every Symposium costs one charge. You hold up to 5 and they refill one every ninety minutes. If you run dry mid-session you can watch a rewarded ad for an extra charge — up to 5 times a day — or spend 20 Resonance Crystals.

Charges exist because every exchange runs several live model calls against real cost. They are a pace limit, not a wall, and nothing about them touches how your writing is scored. See the FAQ for what Crystals do and do not buy.

The full record of the clash stays available — every command from both sides, the referee’s narration of each exchange, and the axis scores that produced it. Reading your losses is the fastest way to improve in this game. Look specifically at your coherence column: most defeats are not a failure of imagination but a drift away from the creature you wrote.