🌪️ World Physics
In Eternum, every action is governed by onchain physics—immutable rules encoded directly onto the blockchain, ensuring fairness, transparency, and absolute consistency for all Lords. Here, code is law; no exceptions exist outside the boundaries set by these protocols.
Seasons
Welcome to Season 1. Eternum, in its current form, comes and goes in seasonal launches. Each season marks a special time of iteration and advancement in this new form of onchain gaming and may be likened to the movement of tides. Once a season launches, the tide flows out and the Lords arrive to build their castles in the sand. Nothing, not even the developers, can stop or alter the course of a season once launched, and players are free to take any action that the rules of the game allow. Once a Lord accumulates the requisite Victory Points, they unlock the ability to end the season—signalling the tide to come back in and put an end to the Lords' fun… until next season.
Time
Time within a season is measured in Eternum Days, and each is precisely one hour in length. One day ends and the next begins at the top of every real-world hour.
Materials
In the world of Eternum, everything holds tangible, tokenized value—be it food, labor, resources, troops, or even the trusty donkeys required for transport. These fungible tokens are generated within Eternum, but can be bridged in and out of the game through Realms or Banks and traded on external marketplaces. All materials have an associated weight, which determines the amount that can be stored and the number of donkeys required to move the goods from place to place.
Note: This document will use 'materials' to refer to all tangible assets - i.e. food, resources, ancient fragments, labor, troops, and donkeys. This is not to be confused with 'resources', which specifically refers to the 22 resources ranging from wood through to dragonhide. Tokens such as $LORDS and $STRK are not considered materials.
Cost of Production
With the exception of food, nothing in Eternum is produced for free; every unit of production demands an input—food, labor, resources, or some combination thereof. Lords must consider these costs and effectively balance trade to ensure they can survive the season.
Travel
Transporting materials across the vast lands of Eternum takes time… and donkeys. Every transfer of materials between locations relies exclusively on these speedy and dependable creatures. These donkeys are single-use, consumed upon completing their journey, making continuous acquisition vital for maintaining trade routes and strategic flexibility.
Moving tokenized troops through the donkey network may be fast, but to dominate your enemies and ensure security of your lands, troops must be deployed to an army. Once troops are deployed, they cannot be retokenized, and are doomed to their fate within this season of Eternum. Once troops are deployed to the world map, their mobility is governed by stamina, limiting the distance they can travel and the number of actions they can perform. Travelling between hexes or initiating an attack expends valuable stamina points, but they are partially replenished each Eternum Day.
Hexes
Eternum unfolds across an infinite, procedurally-generated, hexagonal-tile world map. This represents the physical space of the world and defines spawn locations, biome distribution, and distances between Realms, Villages, and other world structures. This is the layer in which armies explore, fight, raid and capture, and is explorable in the 'World' view.
Zooming in, each Realm or Village hex is broken up into smaller hexes which define the local area and building placement (hexes within hexes!). Here in the 'Local' view, Lords can plan out their building placement and closely manage their population, supply chain, and production.
Biomes
Each hexagonal tile on the world map possesses a distinct biome. Each troop type responds uniquely to these varied terrains, gaining or losing combat efficiency and stamina based on their affinity with different biomes. Successful Lords must master biome knowledge to exploit strategic advantages or avoid costly missteps.
The Known World
Initial scouting reports have revealed some key details about the world:
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Six ancient Banks have been located, distributed evenly in a ring around the central point. These structures are perfectly situated and designed to facilitate trade in this new world. Sufficiently prepared Lords may be able to capture these lucrative structures, but will likely make themselves a target in the process.
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An unknown number of Hyperstructure Foundations are scattered around the unexplored world. These are rare, key locations that must be claimed by Lords in order to rebuild the ancient Hyperstructures that are critical to achieving victory. They are more likely to be found in the central regions of the map, and as each subsequent Hyperstructure Foundation is discovered, the likelihood of finding another one in the world diminishes.
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Hundreds of mines are also strewn across the landscape. Prospectors have theorized that these mines are hotspots for finding ancient fragments needed to reconstruct key sections of the Hyperstructures.
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Bandits roam throughout the lands and have established lairs in each of the key locations described above. The newly arrived Lords will need to overcome these lawless brigands to bring order and control back to Eternum.
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Mysterious hooded figures lurk in the mist, offering to play a strange card game with any who wish to try their luck.