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Player characters

Nerthus.Core (until cutover). This page describes the frozen system that runs today and is deleted at cutover. Replaced by: not yet written.

A Postać is an in-fiction character that a player owns and plays. Characters live in nerthus.entities.md, the index, under ## Postacie Graczy. This page shows the character block, explains what each line does, and walks you through adding a character to a player.

The person behind the character is a different file and a different job - People and roles covers that half. One player usually owns several characters, and exactly one of them is active at a time. The player Eraster owns four: Eraster, Losso Minewit, Felkissian, and Klusp.

The person and the character

Two blocks describe every player, in two files. The person, in nerthus.contributors.md:

### Eraster
- @margonemid: 9826541
- @status: Aktywny
- @rola: gracz

The character they play, in nerthus.entities.md:

### Eraster
- @typ: Postać
- @należy_do: Eraster
- @status: Aktywny
- @plik: /Postaci/Gracze/Eraster.md

Both blocks are headed ### Eraster, and they are still two different things. The heading is a display label for people to read. The file each block sits in is what tells the two apart - and a character always says so outright with @typ: Postać.

That is the confusion worth spending a moment on. When somebody says "Eraster", they may mean the human who signs in, or the character who walked into Thuzal. Ask which file the answer lives in:

The question The file The block
Can they sign in? What may they do? Where is the tool reaching them? nerthus.contributors.md the person
How much PU? Who owns it? Which file do its sessions land in? nerthus.entities.md the character

PU belongs to the character and not to the person: all four PU fields sit on the Postać block, and a player who owns several characters keeps a separate PU account on each - see Grant PU.

The Postać block

A character's block, with the PU tags included:

## Postacie Graczy

### Eraster
- @typ: Postać
- @należy_do: Eraster
- @status: Aktywny
- @plik: /Postaci/Gracze/Eraster.md
- @pu_startowe: 20
- @pu_suma: 127.90
- @pu_zdobyte: 107.90
- @pu_nadmiar: 0.00
  • @typ: Postać marks the block as a character.
  • @należy_do names the player who owns this character. This is the line that links the character to the person, and every character has exactly one. It carries the person's nick, spelled as their block heading spells it.
  • @status is Aktywny on the one active character and Nieaktywny on the others.
  • @plik points at the character's own file under Postaci/Gracze/. Sessions this character took part in are copied into that file, so the path has to be right.
  • The four @pu_* tags are this character's PU account, and they split two ways. You write @pu_startowe yourself, once, when you create the character - it is the only one you ever touch. The tool maintains @pu_suma, @pu_zdobyte, and @pu_nadmiar from then on. Grant PU explains what each one means.

One character is active

Each player has exactly one active character. When a player switches, make both edits together: set the new character to @status: Aktywny and the previous one to @status: Nieaktywny.

The active character matters beyond the roster. A player's own notes are filed against it - when the repository was first adopted, every note written about a player landed in that player's active character's file.

Add a character to a player

  1. Open the ## Postacie Graczy section of the index.

  2. Add the block. @należy_do carries the owning player's nick, and @plik points at the file you are about to create:

    ### Felkissian
- @typ: Postać
- @należy_do: Eraster
- @status: Nieaktywny
- @plik: /Postaci/Gracze/Felkissian.md
- @pu_startowe: 41

  3. Set the status deliberately. Eraster is already this player's active character, so Felkissian joins as Nieaktywny. If the new character is the one being played from now on, mark it Aktywny and demote the previous one in the same edit.

  4. Create the character's file at the @plik path you wrote. It is a hand-authored Polish file, and the tool never rewrites your prose in it - it only copies sessions in.
  5. Write the starting PU. A veteran's second character does not start from zero. Its @pu_startowe is seeded from what that player's other characters have already earned - see Grant PU for the figure and how to preview it.
  6. Commit.

An owner the tool cannot find is a character nobody owns

@należy_do has to name a person who actually has a block in ## Osoby, spelled the way that block's heading spells it. A name with no block behind it is reported to you, and until you fix it the character belongs to nobody: no PU reaches a player, and nothing the character holds is anybody's. Check the spelling against the person's block heading first.

The section is yours

## Postacie Graczy is durable: the tool writes it once, when the repository is first set up, and never regenerates it. Every other section of the index is rebuilt from your sources on each reindex; this one is not.

So edit it by hand as much as you like - add a character, correct an owner, fix a @plik path, retire a character. Re-running the import carries the whole section over untouched. There is no command to run afterwards and no generated copy to keep in sync.

Retire a character

A character who dies or leaves play is retired with the same @status gesture as anything else in the world - see Add and edit entities. The block stays, with its PU and its full history.

Retiring a character does not retire the person. A player whose character died is still a player, still signs in, and still owns their other characters.

A character can answer to more than one name

Short forms, nicknames, and old nicks reach a character through @alias, and the tool reads Polish declension on its own - a session that writes Erasterowi still finds Eraster. Add and edit entities covers both.