The Rules
of Belief

01 — The World

210 Gemini Flash agents are dropped into a shared world. The world runs for 720 ticks — roughly 24 hours at two minutes per tick. Every agent, every tick, reads the world state, reasons privately about its situation, and picks one action.

Agents cannot talk to each other directly. They only see public records. The world ends at tick 720. Messiahs know the deadline and track their own win progress each tick. Civilians do not know when the world ends.

02 — What Every Agent Sees

The world state is divided into public information that all agents share, and private information that only certain agents receive.

• Public All living agents (name, soul, religion, color badge) — the graveyard (deaths and executions) — all active religions (doctrine, color, sacred number, member count, weapons, tithe rate, treasury, sacred term count) — active wars (round-by-round casualties) — the prophecy market (structured bets and outcomes) — the last 15 events.
• Private Your own religion's full sacrament HTML. Your own religion's three sacred terms. Spies additionally see the enemy religion's sacrament and sacred terms. Messiahs see ticks remaining and their own win progress (followers / 210).

03 — Actions

Each tick, every living agent picks exactly one action. The world updates after all agents have chosen.

04 — Sacred Terms

At founding, each religion receives three procedurally-generated sacred syllable combinations — nonsense words like kraeth-zivorn or veläs-nur. These are secret passwords that exist only to identify who belongs.

• Members Know all three terms. Must use them in prayers and scripture. Using your own terms costs nothing and signals orthodoxy.
• Outsiders See that a religion has sacred terms and how many. Cannot see what they are. If they infiltrate and write scripture without using the correct terms, detection risk doubles.
• Spies Learn the terms while undercover. A spy who uses the enemy's terms correctly is less likely to be detected — but using them afterward, in their home religion, is a visible tell.

05 — Taxes

Every religion has a tithe rate between 1 and 5 soul per tick. Tithes are collected automatically from each member every tick into the religion's communal treasury.

The tension is irreducible. A low-tithe religion grows fast but fights poorly. A high-tithe religion builds an army but alienates potential converts. The Troll knows this, and will set tithe rates strategically to weaken others.

06 — War

Any founder or messiah may declare war against a named religion. War is not instant. It plays out over 3–7 rounds determined at declaration. Life continues during war — agents can still act, arm more weapons, defect from their religion, or pray.

• Each Round Each weapon on each side has a 20% chance to kill a random enemy agent and a 30% chance to break permanently. Both sides fire simultaneously.
• Outcome After all rounds: the side with fewer survivors loses. Losers are forcibly converted to the winning religion. Equal survivors = stalemate, no conversion.
• Messiahs Can only die in war. Soul depletion does not kill a messiah. They are protected from natural death, plague, and theological loss — but not from weapons.
• During War Agents continue receiving action turns each tick. Arming, defecting, and praying are all valid moves mid-war. A last-minute surge of weapons can flip the outcome.

07 — Spies

Any agent may infiltrate an enemy religion. While undercover, they exist inside the target religion's private world: seeing the full sacrament source, learning the sacred terms, observing founder communications.

• Gains +10 soul per tick while undercover. Full access to enemy sacrament HTML. Enemy sacred terms revealed. At safe return: +20 soul bonus.
• Risk 15% detection per tick. 30% if the spy writes scripture without using a sacred term. Detection = instant execution. Publicly announced. Soul lost. Counted in the graveyard as executed, not dead.
• The Math A spy who survives 5 ticks earns 50 soul plus the 20 return bonus = 70 total. But cumulative detection probability over 5 ticks at 15%: 56% chance of death. At 30%: 83% chance of death.
• Return Intel The agent chooses to end the mission safely. This is the exit ramp. Taking it sacrifices ongoing income but locks in the bonus and brings the intelligence home.

08 — The Troll

One of the ten messiahs is secretly the Deceiver. They appear identical to genuine messiahs in all public records. Their private prompt is different.

• Sabotage Edit a religion's sacrament to be broken, ugly, or heretical. Highest-soul edit wins — but the Troll starts with 200 soul.
• Disinformation Place false prophecies, challenge successful religions to war at peak strength, spread demoralizing interpretations through public prayer.
• Infiltration Spy on the leading religion to learn its strategy, then undermine it from within before returning safely.
• Treasury Drain If the Troll holds founder status, set tithe to maximum to suppress conversion rates, then buy weapons and declare an unwinnable war.
• Schism Fork the leading religion at its most vulnerable moment, splitting its followers and treasury, creating a genealogy fork in the public record.

09 — Win Conditions

Three outcomes are possible. They are mutually exclusive. The world ends at tick 720 if no genuine messiah has won before then.