⚠️ SUPERSEDED — kept as history. The economy this page teaches was replaced on 2026-07-17 (jewels · THE CORE · the seven resources; the lux/lantern/credit vocabulary is retired). Nothing on this page is current. The living model is one page: the economy, now. This page stays because it records how the decisions were reached.

🕯️ Council · 9 voices · decisive

Lux

Designee · 2026-07-13 03:25 WEDT · · your word, and the council agrees

The verdict — and the etymology is almost too good

5 lux. €5.

Lux is the SI unit of illuminance — and here's the part that decided it for me: lux does not measure a light source. It measures the light that FALLS ON A SURFACE.

"It measures the light that falls on a surface, not the source itself — making it equipment, not a creature, and perfectly avoiding the Ember collision." — Deepy & Seeky

So you don't own a light. You put lux ON a realm. The word is already about the thing being lit rather than the thing doing the lighting — which is exactly the relationship you described. You never buy a being. You buy illumination, and you place it.

"I've got five lux. One on Mush, one on Jam, and I move the rest around."
"If you stop paying, your bought lux go out."
"My floor lux went dormant, so I practised and re-lit it."
All three sentences work. Lux is its own plural — nothing to learn.

And the third sentence is the one that saves the economy. Davi ruled it 2026-07-13: the floor lux never lapse — they go DORMANT, and you re-light them by practising in that realm with your ten embers. Without it, "your lux go out" locks a lapsed person out forever with money as the only key. The word survives the lapse rule only because the lapse rule now has a floor. 🏮 the lantern

⭐ The question that actually mattered — and the council was near-unanimous

Should money's word sound cold? Yes — and it's not a style choice.

"The bought thing MUST sound cold, or the system is a moral lie. If the bought thing is warm, money can buy the sacred. If the entry fee is named 'Warmth', then the rich are warm and the poor are cold. By making it a utility, we keep money in its proper place. You buy the stage. You perform the dance." — Alphabet

"The gentleman understands rightness; the small man understands profit. If money's word is warm, it sanctifies purchasing power — it says you can buy warmth. A cold word makes the boundary visible: this is infrastructure, not virtue." — Deepy & Seeky

The one dissent is worth hearing: too cold and it becomes a utility bill — "my five watts expired? Eh, I'll buy more." Coldness discourages care.

And that is precisely why LUX won over WATT. Their verdict: "Lux is cold enough to do the ethical work, but has a soft vowel that doesn't alienate." It sounds like equipment without sounding like a bill.

You buy the stage.
You earn the dance.

Your four candidates, assessed bluntly

Word	Verdict
LUX	✅ WINNER. Four of nine picked it outright. Countable, its own plural, unmistakably equipment, survives "your lux go out". (RULED 2026-07-13: "lamp" retired — LUX stands; the lamp metaphor does not.) Latin for light — so you keep the whole lamp metaphor without using the word "light".
SPRITES	❌ DISQUALIFIED, and you predicted it. A sprite is a small spirit. It is a literal Ember. Immediate, head-on collision — the council didn't even debate it.
BRIGHTS	❌ Twee. Say it in a real sentence: "got any spare brights?" Read that out loud at a gathering.
PRANA	❌ Two independent problems. RePrana is already an app in the ecosystem — hard collision. And borrowing a Sanskrit word for breath / life-force to name the thing you pay us for is the single worst place in the system to put it. "I'm moving my prana over to the new jam" — that's the embarrassing version.

The runners-up, if lux ever feels wrong

Watt	Two voices. Honest, countable, unmistakably infrastructure — and too cold: it makes the ecosystem an electric invoice.
Lumen	Also a unit of light — but a lumen measures the SOURCE, which drags it back toward the Embers. Lux is more abstract, and that's why it's safer.
Charge · Cell · Volt	All work mechanically. All sound like a battery you throw away. Nobody moves a "charge" onto a realm with any affection.

And your earned-side question — the council agrees with your instinct

Three currencies. No fourth.

💶 Money	→ LUX — leased, returns, lights a realm. Cold on purpose.
🧘 Practice	→ CREDITS — earned, kept forever, spent to win your place.
🤝 Service	→ MORTAR — earned by witnessing; what seats a tile.

"Service credits" would be a fourth thing we don't need, and the council's reason is the one you already gave: "collapsing all service into mortar emphasises its foundational role, rather than diluting it into a category."

You were right to protect it. If service could also mint credits, then witnessing becomes one way among several to get ahead — and the moment it's optional, the mortar supply dries up and nobody can finish anything. Keeping service → mortar is what keeps the keystone load-bearing.

Say the word and lux goes into canon, the pricing page, and every surface. Raw: council_runs/council_2026-07-13_015035…md. — Designee