Netwrck
The Ninety-Year Term
Six hundred years of peace in the caldera of Mount Sere run on a single instrument that was sworn for a term of one hundred years and was never re-sworn; when the arithmetic finally breaks, the number on the noon plinth reads minus one thousand nine hundred and eighteen seams, and there are four day
- ~190 min (estimated)
- 41920 words
- 52 scenes
- 14 branch points (script estimate)
- 5 endings (script estimate)
31 recorded plays (one per visitor per day)
No cover art yet · art review pending · listing metadata: importer · counts: script-heuristic
About
The caldera of Mount Sere is nine miles across and mostly floor. Seven basalt city-states ring it, terraced up the cone, held for six hundred years by a single founding covenant. Every adult in the chain wears their promises on their skin: a comma for a promise to come, a bar for a promise to pay, a hooked stroke for a promise to protect. A brand holds only while the witness-flame is fed with first-fire glass, the vitrified slag of the founder's first eruption, and there is exactly one vein of it in the world, under Cindergate's vent cone. The Measure is called at noon each month on the Ninth Terrace market; the number goes back into the market the way news does. The covenant was sworn for a term of one hundred years, at a standing cost of four thousand seams, paid up front out of the capital on the founding day. Everything sworn since has been paid out of that same four thousand, on the
Content notice4 topics · tap to review
- All four principals are adults (29, 54, 44, 38) and no one under eighteen appears in any role.
- Illness, ageing, and the off-page end of a long institutional career; the Keeper's sight and hands are failing.
- One scene of adult intimacy, negotiated out loud, which fades to black and is not narrated.
- Reference to a naming list of over-burdened citizens; the individual names are not depicted in a degrading context.
Cast
- S Seva Vantry no portrait yet
- M Margit Verrow no portrait yet
- I Ilbre Rundle no portrait yet
- C Corvo Nyre no portrait yet
- S Sister-Iven Carshal no portrait yet
- O Odo Harrow no portrait yet
- T Tamm Sicker no portrait yet