How it works

Mint

• Random. Every mint draws one of the lives nobody holds yet. You cannot pick who, and neither can anyone else, the team included.
• Paid: 0.39093 USDG a card, no limit per wallet. Large orders go out as several transactions of up to 5,000.
• Forgotten until minted. A life nobody has minted is forgotten; a mint puts it on file. The mint stays open until every life is minted, for up to a year. Lives still unminted when it closes remain forgotten.
• Free: 4,093 claims, one per wallet, while the mint is open. A short human check, then your wallet claims it; you pay only gas.
• Reserved: 136 Aztec (40), Viking (41) and Spartan (55) lives are hidden among the 4,093 free lives; only free claims can reveal them, paid mints never do. Each of the three has one legend, so waking it takes forty claimers working together.
• Legends are never minted. One wakes only when forty lives are laid to rest.

Reveal

• A card is minted sealed and opens on the next block. That block's hash draws its person, and cards open strictly in mint order, so nobody can steer the draw.
• A life is a partial print, a latent lift: only 35–65% of it was recovered. That share is its Coverage. No life shows a whole print.

Legends and awakening

• 936 legends sleep across 93 civilizations: the people each civilization remembers most.
• Forty lives each, at random. Every awakening takes forty lives of one civilization, laid to rest together, and wakes one of its legends still asleep. Which one is drawn from the next block's hash, the way a life is drawn: nobody can know or choose it before, the team included.
• The legend is minted to whoever gave the forty. It is sealed for a moment and opens on the next block, usually within seconds. Its card is the whole print, joined from the forty fragments, in its civilization's ink on a night card.
• Its Awakening says which of its civilization's awakenings woke it: 3 of 10 is the third of ten to wake.
• When every legend of a civilization is awake, all of its legends take a gold border, and their All legends awake trait reads Yes.

Every civilization and its legends →

Awaken

• Awakening is open from the start of the mint, while cards are still being minted.
• Choose forty revealed lives of one civilization. They are laid to rest in one transaction, and one of its sleeping legends wakes.
• This cannot be undone. The forty cards are gone for good. Each person exists once, so a life laid to rest can never be minted again.
• If the legend is still sealed after a few seconds, Open now opens it. Anyone may do this, and the draw is the same whoever does.

Go to Awaken →

Civilization complete

• A civilization is complete when one wallet holds every one of its lives that still exists, and every one of its lives has been minted and revealed. It is marked complete, with a plate of those prints.
• Lives laid to rest do not count against it: the lives that remain are what you need to hold.
• The mark stays, even if the lives move on. Another wallet can complete the same civilization later and gets its own plate.

What a card shows

Civilization · group

The civilization they are filed under. Its group sets the print's ink. 93 civilizations in 16 groups, one historical pigment per group.

Continental EuropeEast AsiaItalian City-StatesClassical MediterraneanBritish IslesArab WorldTurkic WorldAmericasIberiaScandinaviaAfricaIndian SubcontinentIran & Central AsiaAncient Near EastSoutheast AsiaOceania

Era

When they lived. Older eras age the ink toward sepia and space the ridges wider.

Finger

Which finger was printed. It follows their main field: rulers, writers, artists, scientists, soldiers or others.

Right thumbRulers

Right indexWriters

Right middleArtists

Right ringScientists

Left thumbSoldiers

Right littleOthers

Pattern

How many of those five fields they worked in: none is an Arch, one a Loop, two a Whorl, three or more a Double loop.

Coverage

How much of the print this life recovered: 35–65%, fixed by its Wikidata ID. Not part of rarity. Legends are whole prints.

Fours

How many 4s are in the Wikidata ID. Each is marked in red on the print; more 4s add to ID bits. Legends are not rated.

Echo

In how many Wikipedia languages they are written about. Shown only, not part of rarity. In four bands: under 10, 10–29, 30–59, 60+.

Ties

Links on Wikidata to other people. Family: parents, spouses, children, siblings. Mind: teachers, students, influences. Succession: who they replaced or were replaced by. Other: significant people and partners. The card counts them all, and marks up to 24 on the print by kind (● ◆ ■ ▲): filled when the other person is in the collection, hollow when not, gold once they wake as a legend.

Ridge count

Ridges crossed on the straight line from the print's core to its nearest delta, counted on the drawn print.

ID bits · rank

Rarity. Each bit halves the number of lives that share these traits: higher is rarer. The rank is among all 39,093. The formula ↓

Awakening

Which of its civilization's awakenings woke this legend. Every awakening lays forty lives to rest, and the next block draws one of the legends still asleep, at random. A legend still asleep has no number yet.

All legends awake

Yes once every legend of this civilization is awake. All of its legends then take a gold border. Not the same as Civilization complete, which is about holding every life.

Rarity: ID bits

Forensic identification asks how many other prints could match this one. ID bits answer that for each life. Every term is in bits: each bit halves the number of lives that could match.

N = 39,093, every life that can be minted

class        = log2(N / lives of the same finger, pattern and era)
civilization = log2(N / lives of the same civilization)
fours        = log2(N / lives with at least as many 4s in the QID)
kin          = log2(N / lives tied to at least as many legends)

ID bits = class + civilization + fours + kin

• QID is the Wikidata ID (Q followed by digits; the 4s are counted in the digits). fours is 0 for a life with no 4; kin is 0 for a life tied to no legend. Kin counts the legends it has any Wikidata tie with.
• Were an era unknown, class would use finger and pattern only, so missing data never looks rare. Every life has a known era.
• The sum is rounded to one decimal. Today it runs from 7.0 to 28.9.
• Rank orders all 39,093 by ID bits, highest first; equal scores share a rank.
• Nothing is set by hand: a trait counts for as much as it is rare. Coverage and Echo are shown but not counted. Legends are one of a kind and are not rated.

Questions