The number
Nobody remembers who first said six hundred billion out loud. It was a block-height
joke, then a toast, then a promise: the number of heartbeats a network earns if enough people keep
it alive, one block at a time. The old world measured everything in quarters. The builders started
measuring in uptime.
Uptime is the only score that matters in 600B — and it is the only score in the game,
too. You do not destroy your rivals; you take their nodes offline, kindly, and keep yours humming.
Both players start at 20. First to nothing is first to dark.
The five tools
The world runs on five things you can hold in your hand or feel on your skin. Every card in
Edition One spends them, routes them, or protects them — and the five affinities on the cards are
exactly these five.
Rulebook §4 — what each Resource
does at the table
"YOLO, but verify."— written above the door of every workshop worth entering
The runners
Node runners are not soldiers and not CEOs. They are the friends who show up with tests,
snacks and exactly one spare antenna. Every one of them is a card you can draw:
Six of the cast · tap any face for the full gallery
SignalFLX, Culture CuratorRuns the set, stacks the chairs, and is somehow
already on the roof rewiring the lights. Where FLX broadcasts, people show up.
BitcoinArbadacarba, Protocol GardenerPlants infrastructure the way others
plant trees: for the people who come after, and for the shade at noon.
KeysDNI, Sovereign KnightCarries no sword — carries keys. Holds the
line the modern way: by never holding anyone else's coins.
PowerBam, Launch EngineerHeavy lifting, light heart. If it can be
shipped, Bam ships it; if it cannot, Bam builds the tunnel it ships through.
SignalAJ, First ResponderThe uptime anchor. When a node goes dark
anywhere in the mesh, AJ is already rebooting it before the alert finishes sounding.
KeysNind, Backchannel WalkerKnows every quiet route through the
network. Messages handed to Nind arrive — that is the whole biography.
The story: the night the grid sang
The storm took the old grid first, the way storms always do — politely, region by region,
with a spokesperson promising restoration windows. In Timelock City nobody waited for the
windows. The rooftops lit up one by one, solar spilling from battery walls, mining heat rerouted
into bakery ovens, and the mesh came alive with the sound the runners call the singing:
ten thousand relays finding each other in the dark.
FLX called it from the festival roof: "We stack, we build — tonight we route." Bam had the
heavy cable over one shoulder before the sentence ended. DNI stood at the cold vault making the
only speech DNI ever makes: not your keys, not your city. And in the middle of it all
the block clock kept its teal, unbothered time — nine hundred seconds to the next block,
then six hundred, then the quiet click of a timelock opening exactly when it promised to.
By sunrise the old grid was still down and nothing important had stopped. Orchards traded
fruit for sats. The balloons of the Global FIPS Balloon Network drifted overhead, relaying for
anyone below. A snail crossed the commons, slowly, carrying the same message as everyone else:
no permission, just builders.
That night is why the game is played the way it is. You do not raze the other side's city —
everyone lives in it. You take a node offline, kindly, to prove you can; they reroute, to prove
you cannot. The network gets stronger either way. The next block is ours to build.
The world is load-bearing
None of this is decoration. Every card carries a Protocol Note: one accurate, sourced
claim about Bitcoin, Nostr or open systems, tied to what the card actually does at the table. The
mechanic creates the memory; the note gives that memory a correct name. No price talk, no
investment advice, one factual claim per card.
A Timelock card makes you wait because timelocks make you wait. A relay card reaches
everyone because relays reach everyone. That is the whole trick, and it is why the lore and the
rules never contradict each other.
Rulebook §21 — how the Protocol Notes work
"Keys ready. Future open."— Edition One
Enter the world
TIMELOCK_TCG :: 600BLORE · E1
