City, Mayor & Raids

How the city works while you're away, who runs it, and what comes for it.

The Storehouse and haulers

The city's shared stockpile. Its capacity is the economy's ceiling (Racks double it). Build and module costs draw from your bag first, then the store. Producers fill their own yards on the city clock — even while you're in the wilds — and a hauler (a rescued villager assigned at the Storehouse) walks the yards into the store, one leg every 12s (the Tally Board makes it faster). If the store is full the overflow goes back into the yard.

The Town Hall

The ledger is the city's report. The Notice Board posts bounties. The Mayor's Office lets you appoint any recruit for 10 gold — the mayor is the city's class: one civic passive, scaled by their quality. Swapping costs another 10 gold and the old mayor keeps their job. Candidates today: Ysolde (Loremaster, Journeyman), Hesk (Marshal, Journeyman), Wyn (Loremaster, Journeyman), Tovik (Marshal, Journeyman), Tamsin (Shepherd, Apprentice), Tarn (Shepherd, Apprentice), Nell (Loremaster, Apprentice), Marla (Shepherd, Apprentice), Vesna (Merchant, Journeyman), Gerd (Builder, Journeyman), Osk (Steward, Apprentice), Bram (Steward, Apprentice), Ansel (Loremaster, Apprentice), Aldous (Loremaster, Journeyman), Wren (Merchant, Apprentice), Orrin (Builder, Journeyman), Brida (Merchant, Apprentice), Hollis (Steward, Apprentice).

Eras and the charter

The city starts in Era 1. When every building of the current era stands, the Town Hall can charter the next one for a fee, and the Trading Post's shelves gain that era's goods. Money never skips exploration: the post never sells above the chartered era.

Raids

Earned, never random. The clock starts once a stocked Storehouse and a Town Hall stand; every building you raise and every era you charter shortens the interval (never under two minutes). Telegraphed: 30 seconds' warning — the Chapel's Bell Tower makes it half again as long, a Watchtower on the wall adds 20s, a Marshal mayor adds a quarter per quality tier.

The wave is 3 + era raiders up the east road. They head for the store, grab goods and run; they fight only if you close in or strike first, and a killed carrier spills a sack. An empty store gets wrecked instead — offline until repaired for half the materials and half the time. After 90 seconds the raiders bolt with what they hold.

With the Palisade up, raiders must break the gate before they touch the road. Away when it lands? With walls: a share of the store and gate damage. Without: a bigger share, and one building wrecked. Damaged, never erased.

Raids scale with your era. Each era past the first makes every raider +25% hp and +2 damage, adds one good to what each grabs (3 at Era 1), one damage to each gate swing (4 at Era 1), and 2 gold to what a fallen raider spills (none at Era 1). From Era 3 a captain leads the wave: double hp, a double grab, triple gold, harder on the gate. An unattended raid takes 10% of the store behind walls (+2% per era) with 60 gate damage (+20 per era), or 20% (+5% per era) and a wrecked building without.

Rival cities — raiding back

A rival city is your city seen from the road: the same grammar, stored as a record and rebuilt on the clock while you're away. From the wilds, the road east past the bandit camp leads to the first one. Set breaching charges (Engineer: Demolition Bench) against the gate — the first blow rings the bell and the garrison comes in waves of three every 20 seconds until it's spent. Inside: the warehouse (up to 20 goods into a haul cart that follows you home), the vault (gold), the prison (a recruit who follows you home as a villager), and the hall, where the champion stands — 90 hp, a heavier stab, a Keen iron sword you take when they fall. Or go quietly: two sentries walk the inside of the wall; a grappling hook (Gadget Bench, reusable) takes you over at the marked spot, lockpicks open the vault and prison, and you carry six goods in the bag plus one rescued prisoner — get seen and the bell rings anyway. Then the dial: Loot (Heat +1) or Cripple (Heat +2, two of their yards wrecked). Heat sizes their retaliation: a raid scheduled four to eight minutes after you get home, with Heat extra raiders and a shorter warning. Die there and you wake at your shrine; the cart waits at their gate as a sack.

Rival cities scale with your era. A rival's effective era is the higher of its own and yours; each era past its own raises its gate max by 25%, its garrison by 2, its vault by 20 gold and its waves by one, hardens its guards (+25% hp, +2 damage) and champion (+50% hp, +2 damage), and puts era goods on its shelves: Era 3 adds 2 Fittings, 2 Rough Gem, 2 Stamina Draught · Era 4 adds 1 Cut Gem, 2 Essence, 4 Raw Essence. The live numbers climb toward the new maxes on the usual rebuild clocks rather than jumping.

The wilds

The Town Hall is worked from inside too: the city ledger on the dais opens the hall's whole page (ledger, mayor's appointment, charter, modules) and the notice board by the west wall opens the bounties alone: take one, claim it there when it's done. The hall has no keeper, so those two spots are the hall.

Built buildings are rooms you walk into. The inn, forge, trading post, chapel, loom, mill, dock, town hall and the workshops open onto a winlu interior (the same rooms Aether Shard uses): the keeper stands behind their counter, and talking there brings up the building's whole page with TALK TO them on top for quests. The door at the bottom leads back out. Yards, fields, the mine and the storehouse are worked from outside. The valley map (TAB / the pad's BACK button / pause menu MAP; quests are on M) paints every cell the fog has shown you, plus home, Ironhold, the camps you have found and where you stand.

The wilds are one streamed valley, built the Aether Shard way. 512 tiles across and 384 deep, walled by mountains that fade into mist: forests you walk under, hills, meadows, a river with a bridge on the road, two ruins, and the four camps far apart along the trails. Aether Sight mist hides it until you walk near; what you have seen stays lit and rides in your save. Thirty deposits, sixteen bandits and twelve boars have fixed spots, and more come with the map: every patch that streams in rolls its own bandits, boars and deposits from the terrain (forests hide bandits, meadows carry boars, hills hold stone and copper), never on a road or in the calm ring around home, and they go when the patch unloads. Rarely a patch rolls something worth the walk: a wandering champion with a prize sack, a boar herd on a meadow, or a pedlar's cart gone off the road with its goods still in the sack. Walk into the home cell or Ironhold's to enter them; camps are phased into from their clearings.

The wilds scale with your era. The lone bandits and the boars spawn as the era's version each time you walk out the gate: +25% hp and +2 damage per era past the first (a bandit's stab, a boar's gore), a bandit's remains hold one more gold per era, and from Era 3 a boar yields an extra cut of meat. Camps, the rival city and raids scale too — see below.

Producers scale with your era. Every producer building (mine, lumber camp, farm, mason's yard, herbalist, weaver, fishery) makes one more of each of its base goods per cycle per era past the first, and its yard holds two more per era — so a mine that hauls 1 ore and 1 stone at Era 1 hauls 4 and 4 at Era 4. Module bonuses (the kiln's charcoal, the coop's fowl) ride on top unchanged, and haulers carry the bigger yards home.

The Mill and the Fishery scale with your era. Both craft 10% faster per era, and flour, bread and smoked fish come one more per batch per era (the Grain Lift and Smokehouse bonuses ride on top). Fish and grain themselves already grow with the producer scaling.

The Weaver and the Jewelcrafter scale with your era. Both craft 10% faster per era, and goods come in bigger batches (one more leather per tanning, one more cut gem per cutting per era) while a coat, ring or amulet is still one piece. A set gem's socket bonus is +8% at Era 1 and +2% per era after, read live off your city's era.

The Blacksmith and the Alchemist scale with your era. Both craft 10% faster per era past the first. From Era 2 a repair at the forge also tempers your gear so it wears half as fast for 120 s plus 60 s per era; repairs cost one more gold per era. Every brew at the still makes one more potion per era on top of the Still module's bonus.

The Inn's room and the Chapel's prayer scale with your era, each in its own lane. A room always refills stamina; it heals 25 hp at Era 1 and 25 more per era (a full heal by Era 4), from Era 2 it comes with supper (food to full), and from Era 3 it leaves you well fed (+5% power for 180 s, never overwriting a better meal). Prayer always heals to full; from Era 2 it adds a ward — 5% less damage per era past the first (15% at Era 4) for 120 s plus 60 s per era, never overwriting a better tonic. Both cost one more gold per era.

The Trading Post scales with your era. Its shelves have depth: 2 of each good at Era 1, two more per era, restocked one good every 45 seconds on the world clock (BUY shows what's left; a bare shelf reads sold out). It pays 10% more per era for what you sell. Which goods it carries is still set by the charter: iron at Era 2, rough gems at Era 3, raw essence at Era 4.

Deposits scale with your era as well. Every gather deposit (in town and in the wilds) holds one more unit per era past the first, and a spent deposit turns up a find of a higher-tier material once your city has reached the era for it: berry bush → Grain from Era 2; copper vein → Rough Gem from Era 3; deadfall → Boar Hide from Era 2; herb patch → Sunroot from Era 2; stone pile → Cut Stone from Era 2.

Encampments

Enemy camps are sites on the wilds road, not clutter on the map: one lit fire with a name and a guard count. Walk onto it and you phase into the camp — a clearing with two guards at the fire, two sentries walking the edge (one shared alarm; sneak past them or backstab one), a chief by the tents, the hoard sack, and a caged captive who follows you home once the camp is broken. Break it (every guard and the chief down) and the site shows as ashes; it regrows guards, chief, hoard and a new captive on the world clock.

Camps scale with your city's era. When a broken camp regrows it comes back as strong as the valley is then: one more guard per era, guards +25% hp and +2 damage per era, the chief +50% hp and +2 damage per era, and the hoard grows: Era 2 adds 2 Charcoal, 2 Cut Stone, 6 gold · Era 3 adds 1 Fittings, 10 gold, 1 Rough Gem · Era 4 adds 1 Essence, 16 gold, 2 Raw Essence (cumulative). A camp you leave alone stays the era it last regrew in.

Saving

The whole game is one file: autosaved every 20 seconds, at every gate, on death, and when the app loses focus. Reopen and you're where you were, wilds included. Death keeps its price — dulled gear stays dulled and you wake at half health. NEW GAME lives in the pause menu.

Controls

Controller first. Left stick moves · A is the action button (talk, open, gather — and attack when nothing is in reach; the prompt above the skill bar says which) · X heavy · B dodge · LB sneak · RB rest / gather / hone · Y eat · D-pad = the four skill slots · BACK opens the quest log · START opens the menu. In every menu the D-pad moves, A confirms, B backs out, and LB/RB flip the inventory tabs. The HUD's hints and hotbar glyphs switch to the pad the moment one is connected, and the menu has a CONTROLS page with pad, keys and touch side by side.

Handhelds (Knulli / PortMaster): the beta ships as two PortMaster zips — a self-contained one (the official Godot arm64 binary with the game inside; recommended) and a 1 MB one for PortMaster's shared Godot 4.6.3 runtime. Both use WestonPack. Copy it to your ports folder and install with PortMaster. The pad is read by the game; a fallback gptk maps it onto the keyboard controls if your device isn't seen.

Getting the beta: builds (Android APK and the PortMaster zips) are posted to the game's Discord channel only — nothing is linked from this site for now.

Keyboard: WASD move · E action · J light / K heavy · Space dodge · Shift sneak · R rest / gather / hone · Q eat · 1–4 skills · Tab quests · Esc menu. Touch controls appear on phones when no pad is connected; the big button reads ACT next to anything you can use and ATK otherwise. Targets: Android, iOS, Steam, Linux handhelds.

Quest markers

A yellow ! over a recruit means they have work for you. A faded ? means you're on it; a bright ? means it's ready to turn in. The HUD tracks three quests at a time; the QUESTS page (BACK / Tab) has the rest, with who gave it, what's owed and what it pays.