Realm of Aetherion

1 · Overview & design pillars

Realm of Aetherion takes a clicker's tactile core and wears it as a card-RPG/MMORPG. The loop: equip a loadout, enter a land, strike its bosses on a cooldown, deal a damage range, take retaliation, and collect loot and EXP.

• Clicker core, MMORPG skin. Every visual, sound, and progression cue makes the loop feel like a card-RPG.
• The world is the lands. No global menus — travel to one of five faction territories, each with its own boss ladder and clan owner.
• Ownership on-chain, action off-chain. Equipped NFTs sit in a player-bound contract vault; combat resolves on an authoritative server and settles on-chain.
• Gear is the game. Nine rarities across characters, weapons, armor and accessories drive power, collection and trade.
• AETHER has constant pull. Healing, upgrades, and land fees are recurring sinks; a scheduled emission decay keeps the faucet honest.
• Clans fight over territory. Realm Sieges run on an automated rotation; the winning clan owns the realm for 25 days and its vault collects a share of everything earned there.

2 · Core stats & damage model

Every player has four aggregate stats, summed from equipped NFTs plus the character base and active boosts: HP (survivability), Defense (mitigates retaliation), Speed (reduces cooldown, capped), and Base Damage (flat damage before multipliers).

FlatBase   = sum(3 weapon effective damage) + head + chest + bracelet + earrings
Boost%     = weapon charge + set bonuses + season                 // reserved, 0 today
RawDamage  = FlatBase × (1 + Boost%)
Roll       = RawDamage × random(0.85, 1.15)           // displayed min–max range
DealtToBoss= Roll × (1 − bossDEF / (bossDEF + 1500))   // bosses mitigate too

Mitigation is symmetric and uses diminishing returns: Mitigation = DEF / (DEF + 1500) — so DEF 1,500 is 50% and 4,500 is 75%. Player DEF softens the boss's retaliation; boss DEF softens the player's hit (higher tiers carry more DEF, §6). Characters contribute HP / DEF / Speed only — weapons, armour and accessories are the sole damage sources. Speed reduces the strike cooldown up to a 50% cap; the 2-hour post-defeat lockout ignores Speed entirely.

3 · Rarity system (9 tiers)

Rarity scales base stats by a power multiplier and defines the card foil treatment. Tier-titles run Initiate → Adept → Knight → Champion → Warlord → Ascendant → Hallowed → Astral → Aetherion.

4 · NFTs & gear

Characters

Your character is the survivability core of a loadout — its rarity scales base HP / DEF / SPD (§2), and one character equips at a time. The aetherion collection ships one character per rarity, a tier-titled champion from Ashen Initiate (Common) up to Celestial Aetherion (Celestial):

HP / DEF / SPD are the character's base contribution — armour and accessories add more (§4.3). Characters deal no damage themselves; weapons are the damage source.

Weapons

Three weapon slots — weapons are the primary damage source. Each weapon rolls a permanent base damage within its rarity band on mint (god-rolls are rarer and more valuable):

A weapon's rolled base damage is permanent — weapons don't degrade or need repair, so the number you mint is the number you keep. Higher rarity means a higher band, so upgrading gear (not maintaining it) is how you raise your damage.

Armor & accessories

Four armor slots — Head (HP + dmg), Chest (DEF + dmg), Gloves (HP + SPD), Boots (DEF + SPD) — plus two Rings (HP), a Bracelet (dmg), and Earrings (HP + dmg), all scaling with rarity. Head and Chest share a damage value; Chest and Boots share DEF; Gloves and Boots share SPD (Head HP = Gloves HP).

Armor — per piece

Accessories — per piece

Loadout & sets

A full loadout is 12 slots: character ×1, weapons ×3, the four armor pieces, rings ×2, bracelet ×1, and earrings ×1. Set bonuses reward themed builds — e.g. Aegis of the Warden (DEF + reflect), Cinderforged (damage + slower weapon drain), Fortune's Regalia (loot luck), and the rare Celestial Aspect (global boost aura).

Booster packs

Booster packs are openable NFT chests. Each burns to roll 1–2 random NFTs from a weighted rarity table — higher tiers cost more and skew rarer — and they open in-game in a single signature (multi-select and open your whole stack at once). Weapon and Character packs share the same three-tier ladder; the two caches guarantee a Common piece and roll its slot instead. The Aether Cache is a promotional chest apart from all of them: it yields not a piece but another pack.

Basic Weapon Pack 1 NFT

One random weapon, common-weighted with a thread of fortune to Mythic. Every blade rolls its own permanent base damage.

Standard Weapon Pack 2 NFTs

Two random weapons with sharpened odds; rare-tier steel roughly doubles over Iron. More draws mean more chances at a high base-damage roll to anchor one of your three weapon slots.

Premium Weapon Pack 2 NFTs

Two random weapons, none below Uncommon, with Epic and Mythic odds at their peak. For warbands hunting a top-band blade and the god-roll it carries, from Bloodmourn to Aetherion's Edge.

Basic Character Pack 1 NFT

One random character, the survivability core every loadout is built around, common-weighted to Mythic. Your anchor in the Realm, from the Ashen Initiate upward.

Standard Character Pack 2 NFTs

Two random characters with lifted odds. Better chances at a higher-tier hero to carry bigger HP, DEF, and speed beneath your gear and blades.

Premium Character Pack 2 NFTs

Two random characters, Uncommon floor and peak high-tier odds. For those reaching a Hallowed, Astral, or Celestial anchor and the Celestial Aspect that crowns a full build.

Bulwark Cache gear · 1 NFT

A quartermaster's chest sealed with the Aetherion crest. Yields one piece of armor — helm, cuirass, gauntlets, or greaves — forged plain but sturdy, with a rare gleam of the finer.

Relic Cache trinket · 1 NFT

A jeweler's chest clasped with the Aetherion sigil. Holds one trinket — a ring, a bracelet, or earrings — a modest bauble, with a rare glint of true worth.

Premium Relic Cache trinket · 1 pack

A gilded reliquary that holds not a trinket but another sealed chest — a Premium Ring, Bracelet, or Earrings pack — so the finery inside is twice-drawn and never falls below Uncommon.

Premium Ring Pack 2 NFTs

Two random rings, none below Uncommon, with Epic and Mythic odds at their peak.

Premium Bracelet Pack 2 NFTs

Two random bracelets, an Uncommon floor and the top-band odds that crown a full build.

Premium Earrings Pack 2 NFTs

Two random earrings, none below Uncommon, reaching to the rarest glint.

Aether Cache promo · 1 pack

A reliquary of raw aether, given rather than sold. It holds no piece of its own — it holds another sealed chest, drawn from the four starter packs, so what waits inside is twice unknown.

Weapon & Character packs — the rarity of each rolled NFT (both families share these odds):

Caches — a guaranteed Common piece; the roll picks the slot or type:

Premium trinket packs — the Premium Relic Cache opens into one of three Premium trinket packs; each of those then rolls two accessories, none below Uncommon:

Aether Cache — a promotional chest. It opens into one of the four starter packs rather than an item, which is then opened in turn:

Pack odds are launch reference values, tunable per season. Weapon and Character packs can roll every rarity (Common → Mythic); the two caches always yield a Common gear or trinket piece to seed a new loadout. The Aether Cache is not sold — it is granted, and yields one of those packs.

Crafting — blends

Beyond packs and drops, gear is upgraded by blending: fuse three identical items — the same piece, at the same rarity — with an AETHER fee to forge one of the next rarity up. The three inputs are burned and the upgraded NFT is minted in a single wallet-signed step, so blending is both a progression path and a recurring AETHER sink (§9).

Every line climbs the same ladder — Common → Uncommon → Rare → Epic → Legendary → Mythic, five steps in all. The three highest rarities — Divine, Ethereal, and Celestial — cannot be crafted; they stay mint- and marketplace-only, so blending can never flood the rarest tiers.

The fee triples each tier. Weapons cost double the rest; characters, gear, and trinkets share the cheaper ladder:

Because every blend consumes three inputs, the tree compounds steeply: forging a single Mythic item from Commons takes 243 base pieces and each fee along the way. The AETHER spent at every tier works out equal — fewer blends, higher fee — so a full climb costs 8,100 AETHER for a weapon and 4,050 for a character, gear, or trinket. It's a deep, deliberate sink that also burns low-rarity supply as it lifts a piece toward the top.

Blend recipes and fees are live on-chain and are tunable balance parameters, adjustable per season.

5 · The world — five lands

Players open the world and travel to one of five faction territories. Each has a boss ladder, a siege boss clans battle for ownership (§7), and a current clan owner. Sieges run on an automated per-realm rotation — the map shows each realm's live countdown to its next siege.

6 · Core loop — boss ladders

Each land holds a five-tier ladder (Easy → Infernal). Strike a boss, deal a damage range, take retaliation, and earn EXP, a guaranteed AETHER roll, and a weighted gear/trinket-drop roll (§9). Boss HP / DEF / ATTACK are tuned to the player-stat scale, so a kill takes many strikes and a boss removes a real chunk of HP: an appropriately-geared player clears in ~6 hits at Easy up to ~15–23 hits at Infernal, and under-geared players are defeated mid-fight. Better weapons and DEF visibly cut the hit count, and clearing a tier requires a full loadout (armour + accessories, not just weapons) — so the ladder is a gear-upgrade gate.

Cadence: one strike at a time on an aether-charge cooldown (reducible by SPD up to a 50% cap); a per-tier daily kill cap (above) that resets at 16:00 UTC; a fixed 2-hour lockout on a boss after it defeats you; and tier gating that unlocks higher tiers as you clear lower ones. HP persists during a fight and restores free when it ends (kill / retreat) — buying a mid-fight heal to survive a boss you'd otherwise lose is the AETHER heal sink, priced per-HP by tier so it scales with earnings. Bosses can spawn with affixes (Enraged, Aether-touched, Warded, Hexed) for variety. All AETHER and drop-chance values scale with the current decay factor (§10); each kill's loot is a weighted-probability roll against the tier's drop table (§9).

7 · Clans & territorial war Live

Clan warfare runs in three layers: the clan itself (roster, vault, points, seasons), the Realm Sieges — an automated rotation of massive battles that decide who owns each of the five realms — and Clan Raids on the Warfront, a sixth battleground where a clan brings down one co-op boss together for NFT spoils. Everything below is battle-tested from the Conclave S0 public beta.

Founding & joining. Founding a clan costs 500 AETHER (a treasury sink — clan fees are never paid into any vault). Joining is by petition: applying escrows 50 AETHER, refunded in full if the clan declines, you cancel, or the petition expires after 7 days — and collected as the join fee only when a leader accepts you. Clans start with 5 seats; the leader can buy up to 5 more at 300 AETHER each (hard cap 10 members — seats are permanent for the clan's lifetime). Roles are Leader, up to 3 sub-leaders, and members; the clan hall carries a live chat room, an announcement board, a full activity log, and the vault.

Clan points. Every killing blow a member lands banks points for the clan (and for that member's personal tally) — scaled by where the kill happened. Realm-ladder kills pay 5 / 25 / 125 / 625 / 3,200 points from Easy to Infernal; Warfront raid bosses pay 20 / 100 / 500 / 2,500 / 15,000. Damage dealt is tracked per member alongside points, so standings reward the grinders, not just whoever lands the last hit.

The Conclave — clan seasons. Clans compete in 60-day seasons on the same calendar as the player leaderboard. Season standings derive from the season's kill ledger; the Rankings page carries both the lifetime clan leaderboard and the season's standings. Each season carries a reward table — WAX and booster-pack prizes by final rank — published in-game and paid out when the season closes.

Season prize pool. The Conclave pays a 200,000 WAX prize pool to the top 10 clans by total clan points. The split is top-heavy but every top-10 finish still pays — the champion takes 50,000 WAX (25%), tenth still banks 7,000. The live table is shown on the Rankings board all season and paid to each winning clan when the season closes; a season can carry its own reward table, but this is the standard split.

Realm Sieges — the automated war for the five realms

Each realm has a siege boss (§5) that only clan members may strike. Sieges are run entirely by an automated scheduler: battles open one realm at a time in a fixed rotation — Frostspire Reach → The Cogspire Foundry → Cinderfall Crater → The Sealed Runehold → The Umbral Rift — each lasting 48 hours against a 1,000,000 HP boss. The realm map shows every realm's live countdown to its next siege; a ribbon points at the soonest one.

During a siege every clan member fights on their own siege charge (a separate cooldown from ladder strikes, reduced by Speed, human-verified per hit). Siege bosses carry no per-hit mitigation — your hits land at full sheet value; the boss's difficulty is its million-HP pool and the clock. Clans compete on total damage:

• Kill the boss and the top-damage clan claims the realm instantly — plus the war chest: five weighted NFT drop rolls, claimed by the clan leader and minted on-chain.
• Timer expires with the boss alive? The top-damage clan still claims the realm — but the chest is kill-only, so no NFTs roll.
• Nobody fights? Ownership doesn't move.

One realm per clan. A clan already holding a different realm cannot take a second one — the settlement walks the damage ranking downward and awards the first eligible clan (the current holder defending its own realm always stays eligible). When a top-damage clan is passed over, the battle banner says so by name.

Ownership & the 25-day cycle. A claim starts a 25-day ownership clock, shown on the realm. When it runs out, that realm's siege reopens automatically — the holder defends or loses it, and the cycle repeats. While a clan holds a realm, its vault collects a 10% realm tax on every AETHER drop earned there (taken from the earner's roll before it's credited) — the leader distributes the vault to the roster equally or by damage.

Clan Raids — the Warfront

The Warfront is a sixth battleground where a clan fights together against one boss instance instead of against other clans. The leader or a sub-leader sounds the horns on an open difficulty; the whole clan then batters the same HP pool, each member attacking on a 1-hour raid charge (its own clock — raiding never delays ladder farming or a siege; Speed trims it, and every hit is human-verified). The boss must die within 24 hours or the raid fails — it resets and nothing drops. Raid bosses hit back and keep their defense, so the ladder's mitigation math applies. An officer may sound the retreat to call a raid off early — at the price of a 2-hour clan-wide regroup before the horns can sound again. A victory rests the war band too: after a boss falls, the clan waits a 1-hour cooldown before it can raid again — a kill is never an instant re-spawn.

Victory pays every fighter. On a kill, every participant rolls once against the difficulty's dedicated NFT drop table below, and the killing blow banks the clan points above. Clan raids reward NFTs only — no AETHER. A rolled bundle (2× / 5× / 10×) delivers as individual claims on your Claim tab, each minting on-chain. The tables are exact probability distributions — the "no drop" outcome is part of the table, and every column sums to 100%.

Siege cadence (battle length, boss HP, ownership days), the realm-tax rate, raid cooldowns, open raid difficulties, and every drop weight above are tunable balance parameters — the in-game spoils previews always show the live tables.

8 · Progression & meta

• Account level from EXP unlocks higher tiers, more lands, and loadout presets. The curve is progressive — levels 1–10 cost 1,000 EXP each, then each 10-level band costs 5,000 more per level (11–20 = 5,000, 21–30 = 10,000, and so on) — so climbing stays meaningful at every tier.
• Titles from milestones (first Celestial, land owner, control-boss MVP).
• Codex / Bestiary — a collectible card gallery; completing a land's roster grants a buff.
• Loadout presets — saved farm / control-boss / boss-tuned sets, swapped in one tap.

9 · AETHER economy

AETHER (token.aether, 8 decimals, on WAX) is earned from play and continually spent keeping a warband sharp. The goal: the buy-heal sink roughly cycles what an active player earns, while marketplace tax and a slice of land fees act as a burn for gentle deflation.

Blending — burn three same-rarity items to roll one of the next rarity via ORNG — is the main crafting path and a major sink.

Boss-ladder loot — AETHER & NFT drops

Every mini-boss kill pays a guaranteed AETHER roll from a five-band table (most kills land small; rare bands jackpot), plus a weighted NFT drop — usually nothing, or a gear piece or trinket whose rarity ceiling climbs with difficulty: Common only on Easy, up to Uncommon on Medium, up to Rare on Hard, and up to Epic on Expert and Infernal. The average AETHER per kill scales by tier (Easy ≈ 2 → Infernal ≈ 205); at full daily caps a maxed player earns on the order of ~7,585 AETHER/day before decay. On top of the per-kill odds, each realm mints a capped number of NFT drops per difficulty per day — Easy 5 · Medium 10 · Hard 15 · Expert 20 · Infernal 50 (up to 100 per realm, shared across all players, resetting 16:00 UTC — the same daily boundary as the kill caps) — once a difficulty's slots are spent in a realm, kills there still pay their full AETHER but drop no items until the next day.

AETHER per kill. One of five weighted bands is chosen, then a uniform amount is rolled inside it; the band chances sum to 100%, so AETHER is guaranteed on every kill. Each cell reads chance · AETHER range.

NFT drop chance. Alongside the AETHER, each kill rolls once on the item table — usually a no-drop, with the odds of an item, and the rarity ceiling, climbing by difficulty. Higher rarities are exclusive to higher tiers: farming Easy can only ever yield Commons, and Epics drop from Expert and Infernal alone. Every drop counts against its difficulty's daily lane in that realm — Easy 5 · Medium 10 · Hard 15 · Expert 20 · Infernal 50 per realm per day.

Each rarity's chance spreads evenly across the seven droppable items of that rarity — the four gear slots (Head, Chest, Gloves, Boots) and three trinket types (Ring, Bracelet, Earrings) — so a single named item is that rarity's chance ÷ 7 (an Infernal Common item ≈ 4.29%, an Infernal Epic item ≈ 0.71%).

Both tables reflect the 2026-07-25 rebalance (Easy/Medium AETHER bands tightened; rarity ceilings introduced) and the 2026-07-27 per-difficulty daily drop caps, and remain tunable; all AETHER amounts and drop chances scale with the current §10 decay factor.

That faucet is intentionally large, so it runs behind hard guards. The on-chain deposit / withdrawal gate is live — players deposit and withdraw AETHER to a treasury account with wallet-signed transactions, withdrawals carry a platform fee (with a referral split), and an in-game AETHER ↔ WAX swap quotes and executes through an aggregator without leaving the app. The remaining guards: the heal sink is live and the blend sink follows (sinks before faucet, always); the §10 decay applies to AETHER as well as EXP; per-day and global emission caps bound bot farming; a treasury-health throttle scales rewards down as the reserve drains; and AETHER accrues off-chain, minting on-chain only at withdrawal. NFT scarcity is preserved three ways: drops are only gear and trinkets with per-tier rarity ceilings (Common-only on Easy up to Epic on Expert/Infernal — characters, weapons, and every Legendary-and-above item stay mint/marketplace-only); each realm mints at most a fixed number of drops per difficulty per day (Easy 5 · Medium 10 · Hard 15 · Expert 20 · Infernal 50); and every drop still has to beat its per-kill odds — so farming can never flood the supply.

The treasury — deposits & withdrawals

AETHER earned in play accrues to an off-chain balance; moving it on-chain happens through a treasury account (game.aether). Deposits are ordinary wallet transfers into the treasury — the server confirms each one against the chain and credits only irreversible transactions, and each transaction id can be credited exactly once, so a replay is a no-op. Withdrawals pay AETHER back to the player's wallet, signed by a least-privilege payout key authorised only to transfer AETHER and mint claimed loot — it can never move a player's NFTs or approve anything else.

Every withdrawal needs a fresh wallet signature plus a one-time Aether Seal (a 6-digit confirmation), so a stolen session token alone can't move funds, and the daily cap is re-checked at the instant of payout. If the on-chain transfer fails, the debit is refunded automatically.

These limits are tunable balance parameters that protect the reserve as the economy grows — not fixed protocol constants.

Referrals

Invite champions with your personal link — play.realmofaetherion.io?ref=<your-wallet>. A new player who first signs in through your link is bound to you permanently. From then on, each time they withdraw, you earn a share of the platform fee at no extra cost to them.

The withdrawing player always pays the same 5% — referring simply redirects part of it to you. Referral earnings accrue to a claimable balance you can sweep into your game balance once every 24 hours.

Onsite exchange — RizzSwap

AETHER trades against WAX without leaving the game. The Balance screen opens a swap that quotes and routes AETHER ↔ WAX through the RizzSwap aggregator — so a player can cash a withdrawal out to WAX, or top up AETHER to keep fighting, in a couple of clicks. It's a normal on-chain DEX trade signed in the player's own wallet; the game never custodies the funds.

NFT rentals Live

Not every champion wants to buy a full loadout to climb. Rentals let owners turn idle gear into yield and let renters fight with a full setup for free — the owner earns a commission on whatever the renter wins.

How listing works (owners). You escrow a complete setup — a character, three weapons, and optionally gears & trinkets (up to 12 pieces) — into the game.aether contract with one signed transfer, then set your terms: a custom setup name, a commission of up to 95%, a term length, and manual approval or auto-approve. The listing is built from the on-chain escrow row itself, so what renters see is exactly what the chain holds.

How renting works. Renting costs nothing up front. You browse listings, read the terms sheet, and request; when the owner approves (or instantly, on auto-approve), the setup is chain-locked to you and appears on your paperdoll with a RENTED badge. One live rental per wallet, and your own loadout must be empty first — a rental replaces it entirely.

The split, exactly. On every kill with a rented setup:

• If a clan owns the land (none do yet), a 10% land fee comes off the top.
• The owner takes their commission % of the remainder — AETHER and EXP alike. Both EXP shares settle on-chain (the renter's grant is reduced and a second grant pays the owner).
• A 10% platform fee comes out of the renter's remaining AETHER share (EXP carries no fee); the rest is credited to the renter, at the token's full 8-decimal precision.

NFT drops found while renting go to the owner's keep-or-gift queue: the owner keeps the drop or gifts it to the renter (undecided drops auto-gift after 7 days). Either way it lands on the recipient's Claim tab and mints on-chain when they claim it.

Custody & trust. While a rental runs, the contract refuses to release the escrow — the owner cannot withdraw, sell, or re-equip the pieces out from under the renter. Everything else is deliberately owner-flexible and disclosed in the terms sheet the renter agrees to: the owner may rename the setup, change the commission live, swap/add/remove pieces mid-rental (the character + three weapons can only ever be swapped, never removed), or cancel the rental — fair, because the renter risked nothing. Every kill, coin, edit, and drop is recorded on the setup's own activity ledger.

Fair play. Attack cooldowns and per-tier daily kill caps bind to the NFTs themselves, not the account — a rented setup counts against the same limits as an owned one, so rentals are never a farming-cap bypass. Rental requests are rate-limited to keep the settlement queue honest.

The Quartering — the recurring 25% step-down

The Realm opened to the public on 6 July 2026, 16:00 UTC, with a live countdown in-game. That instant is the genesis of the Quartering: every 60 days, realm AETHER loot is cut 25% (×0.75, compounding). It is not a one-off launch window — it is the §10 emission decay itself, clocked from launch, and the in-game badge counts down to the next cut.

The first 60 days pay in FULL. Period 0 runs at ×1.00; the first 25% cut lands at the end of that window, on 4 September 2026, 16:00 UTC. Rewards step down from there — they never step back up.

There is no floor. The cut recurs for the life of the game rather than settling at a fixed rate: AETHER loot is quartered continuously, every 60 days, for as long as the Realm runs — the table below stops where the numbers stop mattering, not where the mechanic stops. Lifetime emission is therefore bounded, not merely slowed: 4× the first period's output is all the realm will ever pay, and the run-off is steep — 82% of every AETHER the realm will ever drop is claimed in year one, and 97% within two years. Every kill you bank today is worth more than the same kill will ever be worth again.

Kill EXP and NFT drops are NOT quartered. The multiplier touches realm AETHER loot only, so character progression and gear acquisition keep their full rate for the life of the game — the Realm stays fully playable however far the AETHER curve falls; only the token tapers.

Multipliers are the exact integer basis-point values the game applies, truncated at each step exactly as the contract computes them — not rounded decimals, so what you see here is what a kill pays. The 25% cut keeps recurring past the last row; the multiplier is simply carried at basis-point precision, so beyond it a realm AETHER drop rounds to nothing. EXP and NFT drops are never touched by any of this.

10 · Emissions & decay

A scheduled reward decay caps lifetime AETHER emission and front-loads it toward early players. Every 60 days, reward payouts drop by 25% (×0.75), with no floor — the step-down recurs continuously, every 60 days, for as long as the Realm runs. Total lifetime emission is therefore a hard 4× the first period's output, with 82% of it paid inside the first year. It applies to AETHER loot only — kill EXP and NFT drop chance are untouched. This decay and the Quartering are the same mechanism, clocked from the 6 July 2026 launch. Decay is one of four faucet guards — see §9 for the per-day/global emission caps, the treasury-health throttle, and the off-chain-accrual / withdrawal gate that bound the boss-ladder faucet.

The factor is computed lazily on-chain from a stored genesis_time (no scheduler needed), and a share of the saved emissions can route into land/clan reward pools — turning deflation into a progression funnel toward competitive endgame.

11 · Architecture — on-chain / off-chain

On-chain (WAX + AtomicAssets): NFT ownership, the vaulted loadout, AETHER balances and spends, marketplace, land fees, clan vaults, land ownership, settled loot mints, and decay config.

Off-chain (authoritative server): combat resolution, damage rolls, cooldown/charge timers, retaliation, and boss/ladder state. The server validates every action against the player's on-chain loadout, then settles outcomes on-chain via a backbone-signed account. Settlement can be per-kill/checkpoint (cheapest) or per-hit (used for the control boss, where clan attribution matters). Loot is rolled by weighted probability against the tier's drop-table odds (guaranteed AETHER bands + weighted NFT weights) — not an oracle draw; the won NFT is minted on-chain when claimed.

Treasury & exchange: AETHER deposits and withdrawals move through a treasury account signed by a least-privilege payout key (authorised only to transfer AETHER and mint claimed loot NFTs); withdrawals require a fresh wallet signature from the player, so a stolen session token alone can't move funds. An in-game AETHER ↔ WAX swap quotes and executes through an on-chain aggregator, and combat / financial events are logged for the activity feed and audit.

12 · Smart-contract surface

Per-player progress (xp, level, HP, daily kills) lives in the game.aether players table; mint-time NFT attributes (rarity and the weapon's rolled base damage) live on the AtomicAssets data itself, avoiding parallel tables and lowering RAM cost.

13 · UI / UX direction

A land-first, MMORPG feel built on a dark cosmic palette with gold heraldry. Display type is Cinzel; the HUD uses Rajdhani. Signature elements: gold filigree corner brackets on panels, a conic-gradient aether-charge ring as the cooldown, and the rarity foil ladder on cards (matte Common → animated gold Legendary → prismatic Celestial). Loot reveals are card flips with a rarity-scaled burst.

14 · Roadmap

Phase 1 ✓ — Foundation. The AETHER token live on WAX (token.aether, 8 decimals), the heraldic brand, and this site + whitepaper.

Phase 2 ✓ — Assets. The aetherion AtomicAssets collection — characters, weapons, armour and accessories — with nine-rarity art and minting.

Phase 3 ✓ — Core loop & economy. The five lands, Easy→Infernal boss ladders, the equip / strike / settle combat flow, loot and AETHER rewards, the on-chain progressive level curve, the buy-heal sink, and the treasury — wallet-signed deposits and withdrawals (min/daily-cap guarded) with an in-game AETHER ↔ WAX swap and referral rewards.

Phase 4 — Territory & systems. The Quartering — the recurring emission decay that steps AETHER loot down 25% every 60 days from launch, NFT rentals, rankings & leaderboards, the full clan system (vaults, control-boss raids, land ownership), and an in-game marketplace.

Phases 5–12 · unveiled as we ship

See the roadmap on the home page for the visual timeline.

15 · Disclaimer