THE NOUSFARER FIELD GUIDE

Planets & Cities

What waits on a planet of knowledge: the Planet Guide, the arrival gate, the city of Scholar's Towers, its people and its map.

Every planet is one subfield of knowledge, and every planet has a city built from it. Its landscape is the planet’s own: lake basins, red canyons, forests or snowfields, under a sky that turns from day to night.

The Planet Guide and the gate

The captain standing at a lectern in a gilded alcove beside the Planet Guide, a woman in a blue gown; marble panels name the frameworks with their dates. A prompt reads Talk to the Planet Guide.
The Planet Guide waits in the Scholar’s Court by the landing field.

On your first visit the city gate is shut. Walk to the Planet Guide in the Scholar’s Court by the landing field and talk to them. Their briefing introduces the subject: what it studies, its frameworks with their dates at a glance, its central questions, how its approaches developed and where it stands today.

The Planet Guide's briefing for Geometry: an introduction to the subject, a note that Synthetic Geometry crowns the acropolis, and a list of dates from 300 BCE Synthetic Geometry to 1978 Computational Geometry.
The briefing: the subject in a few minutes, with its frameworks in time.

When you have heard it, the bronze arrival gate swings open. It stays open on later visits.

The city

A walled city from the air: towers in arcaded courts, terraces and a park climbing to an acropolis crowned by the tallest tower, forest all round the walls.
Each framework of the subject stands as a tower in the city.

Through the gate, an avenue of sculpture leads over a bridge and through a park to an acropolis. The founding tower, the subject’s first framework, crowns it: the briefing suggests you start there, then walk the streets through time. The other frameworks stand as Scholar’s Towers in their own courts across the city. The longer a framework held sway, the taller its tower.

Townsfolk walk the streets and sit in the arcades; some stop to talk. Docents in the park tell you about the towers and the Nousdex. Artworks stand in the park and in the towers’ halls: press E at one to read its story and collect it (see The Nousdex & Museum).

The map

The city map: the walled city from above with the acropolis, the towers in their courts, the bridge and the landing field, and a key for you, towers, begun, crowned, the Planet Guide, the palace and your marker.
The map (M): towers you have begun or crowned, the Planet Guide and the palace.

Press M (or the map button) for the city map. It shows where you are, every tower (marked when you have begun or crowned it), the Planet Guide and the palace. Tap a tower or any spot to set your own marker; a light trail runs from your feet to it, and it clears when you arrive. Aboard the palace, the same map shows the ship’s rooms and stations.

Climbing a tower is the heart of the game: Scholar’s Towers explains it.

PUT IT INTO PRACTICE

Continue your voyage.

Your next discovery is waiting.

Explore Nousfarer