Council was not written all at once. It began as an argument about what a table
loses when it sets down the dice, and became — draft by draft, ruling by ruling —
a whole system. This is that record: the work kept in the order it was made, so
you can watch the game get built.
Read any document in your browser, or take the printable copy. The finished,
revised rules live at The Handbook as they are settled; what follows is the
workshop behind it. Every paper here is by one hand — Sir Landis Fishman.
THE LEDGER ASKS A THING OF YOU
Swear the oath to enter
Beyond this point lie the Archive's papers. Put your hand
on the ledger and swear plainly: you are neither Taxe nor Ali. Note
well — Omar and Cinco rest easy and unhaunted, and so they
shall remain, so long as no forbidden eye reads on.
Should Taxe or Ali break the oath and read on, let it be on
their own heads that Omar and Cinco are haunted for it.
I The Silver Surfer Era
The original insight engine — where the two ways of knowing (a price paid, or a grace given) were first drawn out.
Ruleset Options — the Design Canvas
The opening exploration (options 1a–3b): the first pass at what a diceless game of insight could be.
Council becomes a portable system: the design plan, the drafts that were tried and set aside, and the five Books that stand as the current source of truth.
Council — Game Design Plan
The plan that turned a table's habit into a system any crew could pick up.
Landis's in-world letter to Cinco on the price of a confederation, once posted beneath the landing page's fold. Retired from the live site with the book-edition redesign; kept here as the workshop's record.
The Handbook goes under the pen: handwritten margin notes become a Review Edition, a 41-comment editorial pass, and the clean cut of v3 — which settled the tagline: the pen is mightier than the die.
The Review Edition — Rich Diff & Proposals
HISTORICAL
Every dictated change applied in place, plus the design proposals for the open questions — marked up for review on the reMarkable. The 41-comment review it drew lives in the repo's reviews/ trail.
The bound Player's Handbook — one voyage, one volume: How to Play and Books I–V, set for paper and the reMarkable. This is the current book; it also reads chapter by chapter at /rules/.
The system first in hand at the table: the moment Council became a playable kit for the Council of Un. Not the final copy to be played with — archived as a moment. The one ruled exception to the campaign's separation from this Archive; the honour warning above applies doubly here.
Standing Orders — Player Binder (MVP)
MVP
The crew's binder for the Council of Un: the campaign's own handbook, raised from the generic system.
The 2026-07-09 production session: a full readiness worksheet turned into a working body of systems and table-ready material. A second ruled exception to the campaign's separation from this Archive (after Era VI) — these four pieces are explicitly cleared as player-safe or player-facing; everything sealed from the same session (the research-road packages, the Keeper's session materials, the Confederation draft) stays out entirely.
Checklist Decisions & Notes
CURRENT
Every ruling made against the 2026-07-09 Readiness Worksheet, tier by tier — the clean record, for posterity.
A covering letter to Taxe (redacted, in his own hand) plus two enclosures — Governance and the Atlantis Inventory. The player copy of the systems walkthrough; the unredacted keeper context stays in the Keeper's Binder.
The 14-document master keeper collation — governance, the ledgers, the NPC compendium, the sealed research-road packages, systems & production, the minutes pipeline, and the response list. Reference material, not a spoiler dump meant to be read cover to cover: gated the same way Era VI's Keeper's Booklet is. Taxe & Ali, on your honor — this one spoils the whole table, not just you.
The Keeper's Binder — Landis Edition
KEEPER-ONLY
The master collation of every keeper-side document from the 2026-07-09 session, bound in the house print style.