Communication

Every way you can reach another player, from real-time conversation to async mail. All commands respect the target's firewall — if they've blocked the relevant port, you'll get "Connection refused."

talk — Live Chat

Port 517. Ephemeral, 1:1, real-time.

talk <player> — Send a connection request

The other player sees the incoming request and can accept or decline

Every call rings, friend or not — answer with talk -a, refuse with talk -d

A ring you miss becomes ordinary mail, so nothing is lost when you are away

Messages appear as you type, both sides visible

Ctrl+C or /quit to end the session

What It Feels Like

Think talk(1) from the old Unix days. No history, no persistence, no read receipts. You connect, you talk, you disconnect — nothing is written down afterwards.

ssh — Terminal Visits

Port 22. Read-only guest session.

ssh <player> — Visit another player's home directory

You land in their home as a guest. You can look around but not modify anything

Their /etc/motd is displayed on connect

Your visit updates your ~/.ssh/known_hosts and ARP cache

Private directories are locked down — you see what they've chosen to expose

What You Can Do as a Visitor

Browse their file tree

Read public files (dotfiles, documents, anything with open permissions)

See their setup — how they've customized their environment

What You Can't Do

Write, delete, or modify anything

Access restricted directories

Run commands that affect their system

curl — Fetch and Interact

Ports 80 and 443. HTTP-style requests to player services.

curl <player>:80 — Fetch their homepage (if they've set one up at ~/public/index.html)

curl -X POST <player>:443/challenge — Send a game challenge

Supports -v (verbose), -s (silent), -H (headers), -d (data)

URL format: [http://]<host|ip>[:port][/path]

Homepages

Players can create a homepage by placing an index.html file in ~/public/. When someone curls your port 80, they see it rendered as terminal output.

message — Async Direct Messages

Port 25. Persistent, threaded.

message <player> — Interactive mode (prompts for subject and body)

message <player> "subject" "body" — Inline mode

reply <message> — Reply to a message in your inbox

Subject limit: 100 characters. Body limit: 1,000 characters

Stranger Limits

Messages to players who aren't your friend are rate-limited. Add them as a friend first for unrestricted messaging.