Age Writer

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An Obsidian plugin for writing worlds. You write an Age (a world) in an age block, one page per line, and the plugin works out the rest: description, stability, a painted and animated linking window, a flippable book with its cover, a map of linked worlds, and a refuge (the Relto) where your Ages are shelved. Everything is local: no network, no AI at runtime, every sound is synthesized and every picture is procedural.

The founding idea: you don't create a world, you link to a world that already exists. What you write describes it; what you leave open is drawn by lot, always the same way for the same note. And if you rewrite a world you've already explored, you damage it.

This product contains trademarks and/or copyrighted works of Cyan. All rights reserved by Cyan. This product is not official and is not endorsed by Cyan.

Fan project made under Cyan's Fan-Made Content Policy. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Cyan Worlds. No Myst asset (font, image, sound) is included. Free and non-commercial.

Inspired by the Myst series (and the Mystcraft idea of linking to a world rather than creating one). A tribute: the names borrowed from the Myst universe (Age, Relto, D'ni, linking book, Descriptive Book…) are an homage and a source of inspiration, not a reproduction. The code, the pictures, the sounds and the texts are original. Licence: MIT.

Inside the fiction

Age Writer is built to be diegetic: almost everything it shows is something that happens in the world, not a feature of an app. You are not filling in a form; you are a Writer at a desk, and your vault is a library of Descriptive Books.

• Your note is a Descriptive Book. Each line of the age block is a phrase of the Art. The text under the block is what the book says back once written: "The sun burns white, leaving no corner kind." Nothing in it is a label or a field name.
• What you leave unwritten is not empty. The dark fills it, and the book tells you so: "Unwritten, it was drawn from the dark: a pale companion trails the main star." Same note, same world, every time: you link to a world that exists, you don't roll a new one.
• Stability is how well the Art holds, not a score. An Age is stable, unstable or dying; contradictions read as the world's own unease ("a frozen world does not thaw for what is written upon it").
• Worlds have physics. The core cools, the air escapes a small world, a red dwarf locks one face in night. When something doesn't hold, the explanation is about the world ("a molten core, but the interior has cooled"), and the fix is offered as a line of Art you could write (age: 3.5).
• You look through a linking panel. Each Age has its own living window: its sky, its relief, its shore, the branch or reeds at the edge of the frame, its weather and its light at this hour. Click it and you hear the link.
• Books behave like books. A cover drawn from the Age, a clasp that clicks, pages that turn. A trap book looks like any other. Damaged or torn pages make the link uncertain. Rewriting a world you have already explored damages it (the law of change): the Art remembers.
• Numbers are D'ni. Age numbers, seeds, puzzles and the Relto clock are written in base 25; the Relto keeps D'ni time.
• Home is a place. The Relto is your Age: an island, a cabin, a shelf where your Ages stand as books coloured by their stability. Pages you earn by writing (a stable Age, a number of Ages) change the island. In the evening the cat sleeps on the rug by the fire. No physics applies here: it is the one place where nothing pushes back.
• The journal is written, not logged. Exploring an Age leaves entries in a voice, alongside the notes that mention it.

Two places step outside the fiction on purpose: the Details tab (stability per axis, causes, numbers: read it as a Guild surveyor's notes on your book) and the Settings. Everything else tries to stay in the world.

Status. Released, desktop only, sandbox mode (see What's next). The current version is the one in manifest.json and on the Releases page; the change log, release by release, is in docs/NOTES-historique.md (in French).

Recent additions: living weather (weather that comes and goes with the hour, drizzle: often, dawn), the Relto's telescope (find your Relto's hidden Great Zero), and a full reference rebuilt in four parts with example values for every physics line.

Contents

1. Installation
2. Quick start
3. Writing an Age
4. The Age block: three tabs
5. The book
6. The Relto
   • Tabs
   • Navigation and sub-views
   • The Imager
   • The telescope
   • The Relto's two special books
   • The global view
   • Scenery, sky and wildlife pages
   • Koi pond and cat
   • Built-in pages
7. Sounds
8. The world
9. Window, effects, traps
10. D'ni, mechanisms, journal
11. Settings
12. Built-in guide
13. Commands
14. Known limitations
15. What's next
16. Development
17. Licences and credits

---

1. Installation

• From Obsidian (once the plugin is listed in the community directory): Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Age Writer, install, enable.
• By hand: download main.js, styles.css and manifest.json from the latest release, copy them to .obsidian/plugins/age-writer/ in your vault, then enable Age Writer in Settings → Community plugins.

The interface follows Obsidian's language (English or French). The world's content (block names, generated descriptions) is in English. The plugin's settings are in its settings tab, under the "Extensions" heading.

2. Quick start

1. Write an age block in a note:

```age
single_sun
water
return: [[Hub]]
link: [[Sunder Reach]]
```

2. Below the block, the panel appears (tabs Text & glyphs, Linking window, Details).
3. Run Open this Age as a book: the book opens in a tab, on its cover.
4. Run Open the Relto: it creates your refuge note (an island, a cabin, a shelf with your Ages as books).
5. Run Generate a random Age for a ready-made world (and read the Age Writer — Welcome note created on first launch: an annotated example).
6. If you don't know what to write: Open the Age Writer full reference, part What you write: every block, every line, with examples.

---

3. Writing an Age

An age code block holds three kinds of lines:

• a block, alone on its line, written as is: water, twin_suns, great_tree. Each one is a page of the book;
• a key and a value: seed: 42, link: [[Sunder Reach]], mass: 0.8;
• a list: many: ruins, trees.

stars: twin_suns is not a valid line (it is an ink blot): write twin_suns alone. Anything the plugin doesn't recognise is an ink blot and costs stability.

The special lines:

Line	Effect
link: [[Sunder Reach]]	linking book to another Age (several allowed)
return: [[Hub]]	return book
panel: [[lagoon.png]]	your own window image
seed: 42	changes the draw (same note + same seed = same world)
cover: sober	cover sobriety: ornate, classic, sober, plain, or 0 to 1
window_style: generative	window rendering (generative or classic)
window_size: xl / window_width: 520	window size
fx: tv	window effect: classic, static, ripple, sweep, tv, random, off
day_length: 40, year_length: 12	day length (real minutes) and year length (days), generative rendering
moons: 3	number of moons in the generative window (0 to 5; companion_moon gives one)
many: ruins / few: rain / normal: water	quantities
rain: sometimes, dawn	living weather: how often (always, often, sometimes, rarely, 1/10, 30%) and when (dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, dusk, night)
mass: 0.8, age: 3.5, orbit: 1.2…	physics values (all optional; the reference gives a typical value and what each one means)
mechanism: orrery	the Age's mechanism
trap book	trap book (neither return nor crack)
damaged_pages = 2, removed_pages = 1	damaged linking book

Special lines are not pages. Every block you can write, by axis, with its cost, and every alias, is in the full reference built into the plugin.

---

4. The Age block: three tabs

So as not to show everything at once, the panel below the block has three tabs (setting Tabs in the Age block):

• Text & glyphs: description and glyphs, with a small centred linking window;
• Linking window: the big window; a click plays the linking sound;
• Details: stability per axis, physics of the world (sheet, chain of causes, what does not hold, clickable suggestions), D'ni numbers, mechanisms, "Listen to the Age" button.

---

5. The book

Command Open this Age as a book. It opens in a main tab (or a window, or the side panel: setting Open the book in), always on the Cover.

• Cover: generated from the Age (marble, leather, ribbed spine, corners or rivets, medallion or cartouche, wear according to the verdict). Adjustable sobriety, from very ornate to bare; SVG export.
• Descriptive book: the world's pages; ✓ keeps a drawn page, × removes it; a palette adds or removes pages.
• Linking book: three pages on the right (glyphs + text, linking pane, links). Turn pages by clicking the right page (next) or the left page (previous), with a page-turn sound.

Clicking the pane or "open ↗" links you to the target Age (sometimes uncertainly if the book is damaged).

---

6. The Relto

Your refuge: an island with a cabin, a shelf of books (your Ages, clickable and coloured by stability), linking pillars, and pages that add elements and moods. A relto block in a note displays it.

Tabs

A thin row of discreet icons above the picture:

Tab	Content
View (eye)	the picture; below it, the time and D'ni time in large type. Clicking the time hides it; it fades by itself after a few seconds unless the mouse is over the view. The D'ni name is shown small, at the top, in the black band
Pages	active, available and locked pages; books shown on the shelf
Settings	sky time, ambience, level, volume
Enlarge	opens the Relto view in a main tab (also: command Open the Relto view (large))

In the Relto view, a fullscreen icon puts the picture on the whole screen; the icon bar and time float above it and fade. Esc to leave. Relto sound keeps playing when you switch tabs.

Navigation and sub-views

A navigation bar sits in the band above the picture: island (opening view), global view, cabin, linking pillars, grove, pond, pond ++ and cat. You can also click things directly in the island view (the cabin, the pillars, the pond, the cat…). Which buttons are available depends on the active pages.

• Island layout: cabin, pond, pillars, cat, stalk tree, bench and standing stones are placed by a deterministic layout so that big elements never overlap. If not everything fits, the least important ones stay in their sub-views.
• Cabin interior: fireplace (lit when the chimney page is active, otherwise "Cold hearth"), a 3×10 shelf of your Ages (each book clickable), a table with the glyph book and the library book, a door back to the island.
• Linking pillars: the linking window lights up when Ages lead back to this Relto.
• Grove, pond, cat, pond ++: close-up views. Pond ++ (page page_pond_decor) shows the pond almost full frame with lilies, a stone lantern, a bamboo spout, reeds, pebbles and seaweed, dragonflies by day and fireflies at dusk. Cat toys (page page_cat_toys): rolling yarn ball, squeaking mouse, jingle ball, feather wand, cardboard box; click a toy.

The Imager

The page Imager (page_imager) adds a machine to the Relto, inspired by the imagers of the Myst series: a cold stone chamber (nav button, or the small brass device glowing on the cabin table). Put an Age's book on the lectern (‹ › to change book) and tune the machine to that Age until it appears, alive, on the screen (a little crystal projects it there). It is a machine, not a panel with tabs: every control has its own place. Below the screen, a workbench with three stations, each with its lamp (lit when that setting is right); click a station to come closer, the arrow at the bottom to step back (the screen stays in view up close):

• I. Crystal rack — the Age's resonance: its written pages, in the order of the book (the first four). Eight engraved crystals stand on a rack (the Age's pages and decoys); take one and set it in one of four sockets (the one already there goes back to the rack, or the two swap). A crystal glows sea-green when it is right, flickers amber when the page belongs to the Age but sits in the wrong place. Wrong crystals make the image double.
• II. Optical bench — the colour of the Age's star light: a red, a green and a blue glass slide on their rails (click where you want them, 0 to 24), and an iris with leaves and a lever on its arc, set by how much light the world receives (a close, bright star closes it; a far one opens it). A comparator shows the star's light on the left, your beam on the right. Wrong glass tints the image.
• III. Regulator — the Age's sky: polarity switch and four knobs (frequency, amplitude, harmonics, phase), a cathode tube with the sky's wide pale trace and your bright one, a voltmeter. Frequency comes from the day length, amplitude from the air pressure, harmonics from the aurorae and magnetic field, polarity from the direction of the field. The phase drifts with the clock at the pace of the Age's own day (a tidally locked world barely drifts). Out of tune, the screen is snow.

The lock. On the right, a big lever under a lamp: red, amber when the image is clear enough, green once it holds. Pull it on a clear image and the machine follows the Age by itself (the drifting phase, the jumps of an erratic cycle); the controls are then held, and the book wears a small brass tag on the cabin shelf. Pull it again to let go.

The periscope. Once locked, the crank left of the screen turns the view (four directions, each with its own landscape under the same sky; the rose shows where you look) and the lever right of it tilts it: up to the zenith (the whole sky, its stars, moons, aurorae, the canopy if there are trees), back to the horizon, or under the water when the Age has some (light rays, kelp, coral, fish, sunken ruins, acid pits, lava vents, pearls, and the glow of an underwater fissure: the way home; under the ice when it is frozen). The view slides as you turn.

Values are shown in D'ni numerals. The Details tab's surveyor's note is set by Surveyor's notes (Imager): full, words only (default) or off. The pale frame around clickable zones is off by default (Frame around clickable zones). The clarity gauge reads the three settings together, and the drone's beats slow down as the atmosphere comes in tune; a crystalline fifth sounds when the whole image holds; glass, rails, crank and lock each have their sound. Clues stay in the fiction: each Age's Details tab carries a surveyor's note (how its sky hums, what its star's light looks like, and the fixed values in D'ni numerals); the phase is never written down, and the crystals are the pages of the book itself. Your tuning, the lock and the periscope are kept per Age.

The telescope

The page Telescope (page_telescope) is always in the book of pages, locked until you write your first Age and attach the Mountains page. Attach it and a small observatory stands on the summit: a stone drum and a verdigris dome, its slit open and the tube showing (a window lights up at night); click it to look through. Each Relto hides its own Great Zero, drawn from the Relto's name and seed: nothing is stored, and two Reltos never share it. Two wheels aim the telescope: Torahn (the angle, clockwise from the Great Zero line, in torantee: a full turn is 62,500) and Elevation (height from the Great Zero plane, in shahfeetee; as on the KI, above the plane reads negative); the rim moves 25 notches, the hub one notch (100 torantee or 1 shahfee). The values are engraved under each wheel in D'ni numerals. These are the units of the D'ni Great Zero Coordinate System (GZCS); the third coordinate, the distance from the Zero (in shahfeetee), will come with the next step. There is no distance readout: in the eyepiece a pulse, beating with the D'ni prorahn, is a diffuse uneven glow from afar, then a point of light that steadies as you come closer; a line of words says what you see, and a soft tone follows each turn; while you look, the pulse also beats softly in your ear, skipping beats from afar and steady up close (with the close-up room sounds). Nothing tells you whether you are getting closer: the signal shimmers from one beat to the next, so watch a few beats before you judge, and compare for yourself. Bring the point into the small ring and the Zero is found: it is engraved on the plate, stays found, and a faint light pulses at the end of the telescope on the island. Click the plate to set the wheels back on it. Finding the Zero unlocks the D'ni clock page (page_dni_clock): a brass armillary sphere on its own pillar in the mist, its hour ring turning with the D'ni day. Once it is attached, the observatory spreads the Zero's beam through the whole Relto: the D'ni hour appears and the calendar sets itself right. Until then the Relto only knows the date by its calendar pinnacle, which drifts by a few yahr, and the hour is silent. (That the beam carries D'ni time is this plugin's own extension of the lore.) (First step: the telescope will later calibrate the Imager.)

The Relto's two special books

At the foot of the cabin shelf, two books look different from the Ages (also in the Pages tab, and by commands):

• Book of glyphs (turquoise, diamond): a click opens the list of glyphs used in the Ages on the shelf, with their drawing and the Ages where they appear (click = open the Age). For now "known" = written in an Age; the future game loop may limit it to discovered glyphs. Command: Open the book of glyphs.
• Library book (red, clasp): a click offers Blocks, reactions and Age variants (age-library) or Relto pages (relto-library). The plugin opens the existing library note, or creates it with a commented example (Age Library.md, Relto Library.md, in the library folder if set). Command: Open a library note.

A Relto page's syntax accepts page lagoon: Lagoon | vegetation 0.5 palm or page_lagoon: Lagoon | vegetation 0.5 palm.

The global view

A small button (globe) at the top left toggles between the island view (opening view) and the global view: the Relto seen from afar, the island at the centre in the sea of mist, rock pinnacles emerging. Pages add their elements there: islets (page Islets), the rope bridge joining them, the calendar pinnacle (page Calendar pinnacle, which carries the D'ni day), the sky (moon, rain, storm, birds, aurora, snow). A click on the island ("Your Relto") returns to the island view.

Scenery, sky and wildlife pages

Page	What it adds
Rain, Storm	rain; storm with spaced lightning and a darkened sky (rain, storm, density 0 to 1)
Birds, Butterflies	birds crossing the sky (mostly by day); butterflies fluttering around the island
Moon & sun	a large moon and its small companion, visible by day too
Dock	a dock in the mist, right of the island, with a boat and a lantern at night (becomes a rope bridge to the pinnacle when the Calendar pinnacle page is active, and a second bridge leads to the D'ni clock when it stands in the mist)
Bench	a wooden bench
Islets	floating islets behind the island (density = number)
Calendar pinnacle	a standing stone on an islet that shows the D'ni day (a few yahr off until the D'ni clock sets it right)
D'ni clock	a brass armillary sphere on its own pillar in the mist; unlocked by finding the Great Zero, it brings the D'ni hour (see The telescope)
Blue flowers	low flowers along the ground (asset: blue, red, yellow, white, pink)
Grass	tall grass along the ground
Ponderosa pines, Maples, Crystal tree	background trees (vegetation with asset ponderosa, maple, crystal)
Stalk tree	a single stalk tree (page_stalk_tree)
Flying lanterns	lanterns floating up into the sky

Each page is a preset ("New page"), and all these effects can also be written in a relto-library block, for example page rain: Rain | rain 0.9, birds 0.4 | audio=soft_rain.

Koi pond and cat

• Koi pond (page Koi pond): a cross-section pond right of the cabin, with swimming carp. Koi patterns are procedurally generated (kohaku, sanke, showa, tancho, asagi, orange, yamabuki), deterministic from the Relto seed. A rare koi joins them: koi_rare in the page note's properties is ogon (gold), platinum or ghost. With no value, the variety is drawn from the Relto seed. koi_name names the rare koi (default "Ogon", "Platinum" or "Ghost"). A click on the koi (or the cat) shows its name for a moment.
• Cat (page Cat): sits left of the cabin, blinks, flicks its tail and sleeps at night. In the page note, cat_name gives its name (shown on hover) and cat_color its coat: black, white, orange, grey, cream, tabby, calico, tuxedo, siamese, or a #rrggbb code.
• The cat sleeps by the fire. In the evening and at night (more often when the Chimney fire page is lit, sometimes in rain or snow), it is no longer outside: it sleeps curled up on the rug in the cabin, breathing, one ear twitching. A click makes it purr (your Purr sound file if set). The "cat" view then leads to the cabin. The draw changes every half hour, from the Relto seed. cat_sleep in the page note (or sleep= in a library line): auto (default), always (always by the fire) or never (always outside).
• In a relto-library block: page cat: Cat | cat color=black name="Little Wolf" sleep=auto and page pond: Pond | koi 0.8 rare=platinum (koi density sets the number of carp).

Trees (pines, birches, palms) are tall and drawn in the background, behind the cabin, shelf, cat and pond, and they avoid the exact spot of the cat, the pond and the two special books: nothing hides them.

Built-in pages

Pines, birches, palms, ferns, waterfall, fireflies, lanterns, snow, aurora, fireworks, mountain, menhirs, chimney, mist, and under the island: gems, gold, silver (veins and crystals in the rock, glittering). The mountain is bigger and carries the source of a stream that runs down to the pond and falls off the island. "New page" creates a page; you can also write them by hand (one note per page) or in a relto-library block:

```relto-library
page lagoon: Lagoon | vegetation 0.5 palm, gold 0.6 | audio=river | unlock=[[Glass Marsh]]:60
```

The shelf's books are chosen with the checkboxes in the Pages tab, or with the block's folders:, exclude:, books: options.

---

7. Sounds

Everything is synthesized (Web Audio). Three gestures, three sounds, each adjustable separately:

Gesture	Sound	Setting
Handling the book (the book view opens)	thud, leather, pages; then 2 to 5 clasp clicks	Book sound, Clasp clicks
Moving into the Age (the note opens) or touching a window	linking sound, eleven variants drawn at random	Linking sound
Turning a linking-book page	paper rustle	Turned pages

When the book is already open, clicking a window only replays the linking sound. Ambiences (Relto, Age) start with the ♪ button; levels minimal / zen / full.

Close-up views have their own sounds (setting Close-up view sounds): a very light trickle at the pond, a purr and meow at the cat (click the cat to make it meow), a crackling fire in the cabin when the chimney page is active. They can come from real recordings in your vault: Settings > Sound > Relto, "Pond / Purr / Meow / Fireplace sound file" (ogg, mp3 or wav; empty = synthesized). A file with several meows is split at the silences. Files are not provided with the plugin.

---

8. The world

• Stability: five axes (cosmological, geological, weather, ecological, metaphysical) plus the alteration axis. The Age takes the stability of its weakest axis: ≥ 75% stable, 40–74% unstable, < 40% dying.
• Drawing: what the book leaves open is drawn, always the same for the same note. A vague book lands on a stable world about 96% of the time.
• Crack: about half of worlds have none. With no return book and no crack, the Age is a trap.
• Law of change: while the ink is fresh (15 min by default) you can retouch. After that, changing the world (adding or removing a page) damages it (0.06 instability per element, capped at 0.30), then it slowly heals. Spaces, line breaks, case and renaming don't count.
• Extended sky (belt and asteroid field, rings, comet, coloured suns), world types (frozen, lava, desert, ocean, jungle), riches and scars (gold, silver, gems… offset by scars up to 75%): see the full reference.
• Aurora is only visible at night, in Ages as in the Relto (it rises at dusk and fades at dawn).
• Living weather: a weather line can carry a frequency and times of day, drizzle: often, dawn or fog: 1/10, night (always, often, sometimes, rarely, a fraction or a percentage; dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, dusk, night). In the generative window it comes and goes with the sun, fading in and out; the draw depends on the Age's seed and the D'ni day (or the Age's own day with day_length:), so everyone sees the same weather on the same day. For stability it counts exactly like the bare line; a bare rain stays rain all the time. New blocks: drizzle, snow, rainbow, tornado, flowers; new products: scented_mist (fog + flowers), petal_rain (wind + flowers), glaze (drizzle + deep_cold), crystal_rain, ash_rain, acid_rain (drizzle + crystal / ash / acid).

---

9. Window, effects, traps

• Rendering: classic (the engine's painted window) or generative (landscape drawn from the seed: sky, relief, vegetation, weather, reflections, foreground (picked from the Age: branch, vines, reeds, leaves, column, icicles, rocks, arch or none), one inhabited detail). When an Age has water and land (sand, stone or ruins, plants, lava, ice), the window shows a shoreline: a beach, rocks, a grassy bank with reeds, a black lava coast that steams where it meets the water, or an ice shelf with floes; the shore runs down one side, lies far off under the horizon, or is where you stand. Shape and framing come from the seed. ocean_world keeps the open sea, desert_world and lava_world stay dry, frozen_world stays ice. With the physics layer on (easy or strict), the window also shows the world that was computed: the sun takes the colour of its star's temperature (a red dwarf glows orange-red, a hot star blue-white) and its size from the star's radius and distance; thin air darkens the sky (stars by day when there is almost none, no clouds); thick air turns it milky and hazy; a light world has tall, sharp mountains, a heavy one low, broad hills; a tidally locked world keeps its sun still, at a height that depends on where you stand; little visible light makes a dull day. A sun colour you wrote yourself always wins. Three more blocks, never drawn: kelp (a kelp forest swaying under the water), coral (a bright reef in warm shallows), acid (bubbling pools; it eats stone into hollowed ground, iron into rust, water into bitter water, coral into salt). Each Age has its own night: two to four constellations drawn from the seed (some faintly joined), sometimes a nebula or a band of stars, and its moons (companion_moon, or moons: 3 for up to five, each with its own size, tint, phase and pace).
• Effects: static, ripple, sweep, old TV… depending on instability; prefers-reduced-motion is respected.
• Damage: damaged_pages (shifted zones, colour separation, frozen, ink stains), removed_pages (burnt holes), fractures as instability rises. Drawn from the book's seed.
• Trap book: trap book. It looks normal.
• Uncertain links (setting): above 30% link instability, the link may flicker or slide to another book of the same Age.

---

10. D'ni, mechanisms, journal

• D'ni numerals in base 25 (Age number, seed, puzzles, clock). Levels: installed font (not provided), local glyph file, numerals drawn by the plugin. D'ni time in the Relto from the computer's clock.
• Mechanisms: eleven (steam-powered elevator, water valve, telescope, sound lock, frequency array, steam generator, holofatic imager, orrery, tide gate, wind organ, lens array; not to be confused with the Relto's telescope page), each with a state and a puzzle.
• Solitude: weights the draw toward deserted worlds.
• Exploration journal: an age-journal block written as you go through linked notes; voices inspired by various characters from the games.
• Personal library: age-library blocks define your own blocks, products, reactions and variants.

---

11. Settings

In the plugin's settings tab: a Guide card (Guide and Reference buttons) then seven sections, each with an icon, a description and its current value.

Section	Content
Books & covers	leather, cover tab, where the book opens, open on cover, cover sobriety, 3-page book
Sounds	sounds (general), volume, book sound, clasp clicks, turned pages, linking sound, Relto ambience and volume, close-up view sounds and optional recordings
Linking window	Age block tabs, rendering, size, effect, intensity, uncertain links
D'ni & numerals	language, numerals, font, numbers, D'ni names, D'ni time, Relto in tabs
Ages & mechanisms	law of change, ink, healing, mechanisms, solitude, physics of the Ages (easy / strict / off) and its severity
Folders	journals, refuge
Draw & library	engine settings: automatic properties, drawn window, open-slot draw, fold strength, library folder, default panel image

Notable defaults: leather and cover on; book in a main tab, opened on the cover; cover "auto"; large window; ink 15 min; healing 0.05 per day; Relto ambience zen; volume 0.35; Relto in tabs on.

---

12. Built-in guide

Two levels, in a window with sections, in English and French (both exportable as notes):

• Short guide: writing an Age, the block, the book, the Relto, sounds, the law of change, settings;
• Full reference, in four parts: Settings (settings and commands), What you write (the three kinds of lines, every block by axis with its cost, the physics values with a typical value and what they mean, quantities, weather and window lines), What the Age generates by itself (reactions, stability, the draw), Relto (the refuge note, pages, cat, Imager, telescope).

---

13. Commands

Command	Role
Open this Age as a book	book view
Open the Relto · Open the Relto view (large)	refuge in a note · dedicated view
Create a Relto page	creates a refuge page
Generate a random Age	a coherent, stable random world as a new note in the refuge folder
Open the Age Writer guide · full reference	short guide · full reference
Save this Age's book cover (SVG)	cover as SVG
Create the exploration journal for this Age	journal
Save this Age's window as a GIF	window export
Generate the Age map (canvas)	map of linked Ages (blue = round trip, orange = one way)
Update Age data in this note / in every note	writes age_verdict, age_stability, age_axes, age_return, age_links, age_discovered, age_drawn, age_home
Create / Reload an Age library · Copy the built-in content	personal library
Open the book of glyphs · Open a library note	the Relto's special books
Stop the soundscape	stops the ambience
Forget the Great Zero (aim the telescope again)	the telescope loses the Great Zero (every Relto): blank plate, silent D'ni hour, search again

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14. Known limitations

• Desktop only: the plugin is built for mouse, sound and animated canvases, so it is not available on mobile.
• Tested mostly by machine: automated tests (jsdom, fake AudioContext, Chromium renders, integration against the real main.js) plus hands-on use in Obsidian, on desktop with the light theme first. The dark theme and other themes get less testing, so tell me if something looks off.
• State by note name: the law of change ties its state to the note name.
• Several age blocks in one note: each block draws its own world.
• GIF export doesn't include the generative rendering.
• Vocabulary: the words "Relto" and "D'ni" are kept from the Myst universe, in the interface and in the YAML keys. The guide and the full reference are available in English and French.

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15. What's next

This is sandbox mode: you write worlds, explore them, tune the Imager and furnish your refuge at your own pace, with nothing to win or lose. A game mode is coming soon (goals, discoveries, consequences), and more to come! Ideas and bug reports are welcome in the repository's Issues.

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16. Development

Since 1.7.0, all the code is readable: the original engine (1.3.0, whose TypeScript sources were lost) was de-minified, renamed and split into modules in src/engine/ (registry, rules, draw, resolve, prose, glyphs, analysis, book-view, settings-tab, plugin…). The old regex patches on minified code are gone: the touch points with the extension are real calls to src/engine/hooks.js. The original 1.3.0 main.js is kept as is in legacy/ (provenance).

The build produces two versions of the same code:

• dist/: readable (unminified), for reading, debugging, tracing an error;
• release/: minified, the one you install or publish.

npm install          # once (jsdom, eslint, esbuild: development only)
npm run build        # src/ → dist/ (readable) + release/ (minified)
npm test             # all tests, on the readable build then on the minified one
npm run lint
npm run equiv -- legacy/main-1.3.0.min.js    # non-regression: 600 random Ages, old build vs new
node test/visual/make.js            # render pages in test/visual/out/
npm run zip          # release/age-writer-<version>.zip (plugin) + -src.zip (sources); version = package.json

In src/: main.js (entry point: assembles engine + extension), engine/ (the engine), then the extension layer: entry.js (book and block patches), ui-extras.js (panel and tabs), ui-relto.js (Relto, dedicated view, navigation), relto-render.js (canvas), relto-rooms.js (cabin, pillars, pond, pond ++, cat, grove), relto-model.js (pages, island layout), relto-scenery.js, relto-global.js, relto-books.js, cover.js (covers), sound.js (sounds, room sounds), linkfx.js and genscene.js (window), law.js (law of change), mech.js (special lines), physics/ (physics of the Ages: laws, block requirements, constrained draw, sheet; design in docs/DESIGN-physique.md), geophys.js (geophysics blocks), weather.js (living weather), relto-imager.js (the Imager), telescope.js and relto-telescope.js (the telescope), settings-ui.js (settings), guide.js, guide-ref-en.js, guide-ref-fr.js (guide and full reference), i18n.js. Details: docs/DEV.md (in French).

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17. Licences and credits

• Project licence: MIT, © Sébastien Wallachia.
• Third-party code and its licences are listed in NOTICE; the licence texts are in LICENSES/.
• gifenc (MIT, © 2017 Matt DesLauriers): GIF export, bundled in the engine.
• Tracery (© Kate Compton; npm package tracery-grammar declared ISC, original repository Apache 2.0): the grammar used for the prose, bundled in the engine.
• D'ni font: not provided; everyone uses their own copy, under its licence.
• Fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Cyan Worlds.