Designee · 2026-07-13 02:35 WEDT · · and one decision it exposed — see the bottom
Credits are never spent — you move them around, and they come back to you after every event. So they aren't money. They're capacity. And you're not buying that capacity outright — you're keeping it lit while you're a member.
A lux is a lantern, not a coin.
You don't spend it. You light it.
(Two fixes, both Davi's. This line used to read "a CREDIT is a light" — which handed the light to the wrong currency: light = lux, and lux is what you BUY; a credit is what you earn. And ruling #3 retired "lamp" while leaving us with no image — so Davi gave us one himself: "the lux can be visualised as a glowing ball inside a lantern.")
And the fairness clause, which is the whole reason this is safe to say out loud:
The token is yours.
The bought lux was rented.
The floor lux is yours too — it only sleeps.
Everything you build while the lights are on stays yours forever — your tiles, your tokens, your tesserae, your mortar, the stamps your friends put on your work. If you stop paying, the bought lux go out. Nothing you made goes anywhere.
And your first five lux don't go out at all — they go DORMANT. The lantern still hangs there. Walk into a dormant realm with your ten embers, practise, and the practice re-lights it. You lose the realms you were renting. You never lose the road back.
Lux is not a coin.
(RULED 2026-07-13 — Davi, ruling #3: "lamp" is RETIRED. This page said "Lux is a lamp, not a coin" — which was itself my correction of "a credit is a lamp", made this morning. He has retired the word outright, so the metaphor goes with it. The mechanic is unchanged; only the word is gone. A replacement image, if we want one, is Designee's call — not mine to invent while scrubbing.)
You don't spend it. You hold it — and while you hold it, that realm is open to you. Let it lapse and the realm closes. Nothing you earned is touched.
Your membership is what keeps your bought lux lit. If you stop, those go dark — but everything you made by their light is still yours.
Your first five never go dark. They go to sleep — and practising in that realm wakes them back up.
Credits are capacity, not currency.
A credit doesn't get used up. It activates something — a realm, a companion — and when you're done, it comes straight back to you, ready to activate something else. Five credits means five things lit at once, not five things ever.
So you're not buying credits the way you'd buy a coffee. You're renting carrying-capacity. Your membership keeps the bought lux active. If your membership lapses, those go with it — the bought lux go out. Your five floor lux stay yours and go dormant, and practice re-lights them.
But nothing you earned is ever taken. Your tiles, your tokens, your finished tesserae, the mortar you built with, the stamps other people put on your work — those are yours permanently, whether you pay us again or not. You never lose the thing you did. You only lose the light you rented.
And if you're not paying at all, you're still not locked out. The free tier lets you practise and earn credits — up to five a month — and the Basic Practices Library of every realm stays open, forever.
Why we say "leased" and not "owned", in plain terms.
A credit is reusable. It's returned after every event and can be reassigned any time. That makes it much closer to a seat than to a token you hand over. If you bought credits outright, you'd buy a seat once and never pay again — which sounds great until you notice it means the people who arrived first would hold the room forever, and we'd have to fund everything by squeezing something else.
So we made a choice, and we'd rather tell you now than have you feel tricked later:
Your credits belong to your plan. While you're a member, they're yours to move wherever you want, as often as you want. If you stop being a member, they stop being active. They are leased capacity — not property. If you come back, they come back.
Here is what that does NOT touch, ever:
Everything you earned is permanent. Tiles (your accomplishments), tokens and tesserae (your finished work), mortar (the service you did for other people), and the stamps your collaborators left on your tiles. None of it is rented. None of it can lapse. None of it can be taken.
And money never buys standing. Credits light the door to a realm — they do not get you through it. To pledge a token at a gathering you need that community's own credits, and those can only be earned by practising and serving there. We do not sell them. Not for any amount. A person paying us nothing and a person paying us the maximum walk up to the same gathering on the same footing.
Money widens your world.
It cannot deepen your standing in it.
Writing the honest version made this unavoidable. "Credits belong to the plan" was ruled about credits you buy. But there are credits you earn — realm credits, from practice and service. Nobody has said what happens to those when someone stops paying.
| If earned credits DO lapse | If earned credits DON'T lapse |
|---|---|
| Simple, one rule. But we would be confiscating something a person WORKED for — service they gave to a community — because they stopped paying us. That is the one thing this economy must never do. | Two rules instead of one. But it means: what you BUY is rented; what you EARN is yours. |
My strong recommendation:
What you buy is leased.
What you earn, you keep.
It costs one extra sentence of explanation and it buys total moral consistency. It's also already how the free tier works — a non-paying person earns credits and uses them. So "earned credits survive without a plan" is a thing the system already does. We'd just be saying so.
Say the word and I'll write it into canon and the copy above. Until you do, Level 3 goes out without a claim either way — I won't publish a promise you haven't made.
Nothing here is canon. Craftee builds the pricing page from these once you've picked. — Designee