Fetching its whole history from the server — a long-running universe takes a few seconds.
How to play Multiverse Mages
You are the god of magic for one universe. You never cast a spell and never command a mage. You decide what magic is possible, and your mages discover, teach, write down, and lose it.
Your goal: grow a civilization of mages and declare ascension before your universe stagnates or is swallowed by one through a portal. When declare ascension in the God Actions list lights up, it is your moment — press its Declare button. The bottom of the spine shows progress; the World tab shows the mages who live your decisions.
Time
The server keeps time — at whatever speed this server runs (the bar at the bottom shows it, measured) — even when you close the tab. You can't pause it; that is the point.
The year counter in the topbar is the clock. If it is not moving, the episode is over (the badge says so).
A god action takes effect on the next month. One per month: a second click in the same month is refused.
Reloading, or coming back later in the same browser, returns you to the same universe. new universe (bottom right) leaves it and lets you choose again.
What you actually do
Permit / forbid techniques and forms — the rows and columns of the grid (click a row or column label, or the toggles on the left). This is your main lever: a permitted cell can be researched, a forbidden one cannot — by you or anyone who invades you.
God Actions (left sidebar): glowing buttons are legal and affordable right now. Click one, then click a candidate in the panel next to the grid to execute. Faded buttons are denied; dotted ones cost more favor than you have.
Favor is the currency for god actions. It regenerates each tick, faster when mages are productive. Big actions (changing a tradition, inviting a scholar) cost a lot — let it build up.
Edicts are one-off exceptions to your own rules (permit one forbidden cell, forbid one permitted one). There are only a few slots.
Raiding
What a portal needs. The portal cell is Rego × Limen, and its shallowest portal node builds on knowledge in Intellego × Limen — so both cells must be permitted for your mages to research one. A species can only research as deep as its own ceiling; a people whose ceiling is below the portal node's tier cannot reach it themselves.
Mastery. A mage who knows a portal node must hold it at the mastery the server sets (50% on this server's content) before a portal opens. Mastery fades unless it is practised. Name a holder a raider (Raids tab → Portal knowledge, or Name a raider): a raider's readiness months drill her portal node and hold it up.
Opening one. On the Raids tab each bubble-mate sits in a portal seat; press its Raid button. It costs favor and passage (the price is on the tab) and sends your raiders through to take libraries, universities and knowledge.
Reports. Every raid, either way, ends in a report: one at a time, in the corner (or at the top of the Raids tab). × or Esc dismisses it; every report stays in Raid history. Who won is decided by how much of what was on the field the raiders took, not by how the raid ended.
Defending. When you are raided, every graduated mage fights — wardens, professors, researchers, raiders and populace; students stay out. The raid is fought under your ruleset: a cast your law forbids is stopped, whoever tries it.
Reading the screen
Grid tab — the 70 cells. Lit cells are permitted and known; the number is how many nodes are known. Hover a row or column to see what permitting it would unlock. Click a cell for its detail.
Activity feed (under the grid) — discoveries, deaths, library growth, as they happen.
Knowledge tab — the full research tree: what is known, what is next, what is gated.
World tab — your mages, the university, the portal, and the soul of the place.
Raids tab — the universes in your portal seats, how strong they look, your raiders, and every raid either way. A raid on you also brings up a report: × or Esc dismisses it, and it stays in Raid history.
Edicts — click a free + edict slot under Edicts (left), or any cell on the grid: a forbidden cell offers a dispensation (open just it), a permitted one an interdiction (close just it), and a cell an edict holds offers revoke. You have one slot, plus one per worship tier.
Console tab — the raw state: every action's legality, resources, provenance.
A good first ten minutes
Let it run. Watch the feed for discoveries.
Click a lit cell, look at what is next in the Knowledge tab.
When Encourage research or Assign role glow, use them on something you want to happen.
When you can afford it, founding knowledge plants a whole school of magic your mages cannot yet reach.
Permit a new technique or form only when you understand what the extra cells will do to an invader, too.
Winning — declaring ascension
Declare ascension (bottom of the God Actions list, free) lights up the moment your universe meets either ending: a Mastery path (a tier-4 worshipped world holding 13 permitted cells whose deepest node a living mage holds, with at least two copies of each surviving, and two completed universities standing) or an Enduring Canon path (four consecutive eras in which the library held most of what it knew and lost no more than two nodes).
The Ascension panel on the right is the checklist: each bar with your current value, and a ? where the frame does not show the value yet. The Canon is also checked against breadth — how many nodes and cells the universe knows at each era boundary.
It can light at the earliest in year 50. Worship tier is the long pole — it climbs from a productive, well-taught populace, so build mages and universities and keep the world busy.
When it lights, press its Declare button — that is the win. If the universe ever stagnates instead (no mages, or long unworshipped and unchanging), the episode ends the other way, and the ending screen tells you which happened and what you left behind.