Hydra

Hydra plays GemStone IV, Simutronics’ text game. One Hydra holds every character you play at once: each has its own window, or none, and all of them keep playing while Hydra rests in the background. A phone or another computer on your home network shows the same characters on Hydra’s web page, and the HydraFE app plays on an iPhone or iPad by itself.

Downloads

Every release is on the releases page:

• Windows: hydra-windows-x86_64.zip
• macOS (Apple silicon): hydra-macos.dmg, or the bare hydra-macos-arm64.zip
• Linux: hydra-linux-x86_64.tar.gz, for glibc 2.39 or newer
• iPhone and iPad: HydraFE, through TestFlight

The guide’s pages are coming, group by group: getting started, the play window, playing, and the phone and web page. The API reference is the whole of Hydra’s code, documented, for anyone writing against it.

How Hydra works

Hydra is one program that plays every character you have at once. Its windows are only views onto those characters: close them all and every character keeps playing.

One Hydra, every character

A single Hydra holds every character’s connection to the game. Each character has a session of its own: the connection, everything the game has told it (its vitals, the room, its hands, its effects, its inventory), and the commands waiting to be sent. When a connection drops, Hydra logs that character back in by itself. A character nobody is using is let go once its connection has dropped twice with no command sent between, so an idle character is not logged back in forever.

You start, watch and stop characters from the hub. Each character can have a play window of its own, and several can play side by side.

Windows come and go; the characters stay

Closing a play window does not stop its character. Closing the hub hides it while any play window is open. Once every window is closed, Hydra rests: it keeps running in the background, and every character keeps playing.

To bring the windows back, start Hydra again (on a Mac, see Install Hydra). Only one Hydra runs at a time on a set of files, so a second start does not begin another one: it opens the windows of the Hydra already running and leaves. On Windows, Hydra’s icon in the tray opens the hub as well, and Hydra can start by itself, resting, when you sign in.

Shut down, on the hub or the tray, is what ends Hydra: every character quits the game in turn, and then Hydra closes.

While a character plays, Hydra keeps Windows from going to sleep.

Starting fresh

Once the last character has stopped and no window is open, Hydra waits a minute and then starts itself again in the background. That gives back the memory that playing and the windows took, which a program can only hand back by ending. You do not see it happen. The wait is Start fresh after, in seconds, on Hydra’s General page of Settings; 0 turns it off. An update Hydra has downloaded takes over at this point too.

Hydra’s commands and the game’s

Anything you type goes to the game, except lines that start with Hydra’s command symbol, ., which are Hydra’s own and never reach the game. .help lists them. If you run Lich, lines that start with ; are Lich’s.

Logs on disk

Hydra keeps a player log for each character, a file a day, switched on its own Logs settings page, and records the wire when recording is on. Both gather in memory and go to disk every five minutes, and when the session ends. .savelogs puts the character’s own on disk right then, and .all .savelogs every character’s.

Lich

If you play with Lich, Hydra runs your own Lich behind any character you turn it on for. Hydra keeps the game connection and hands Lich the game’s text, so Lich’s scripts run as they always have, and what you type passes through Lich on its way to the game. Lich never sees your password.

The web page and the phone

Hydra can serve a web page to your home network. A phone, a tablet or another computer opens it in a browser and plays the same characters, from the same sessions, as the play windows show them. Menu › Pair shows its address and a code to scan, and serves it if it is not served yet.

HydraFE, the app for iPhone and iPad, does that too: it finds Hydra on your home network by itself. It can also run Hydra on the phone alone, with no computer, for when you are away from home. Lich does not run on a phone.

Where Hydra keeps its files

Hydra keeps two folders beside where it starts (on a Mac, in Application Support): data, which holds your settings, layouts, triggers and the characters it knows; and logs, which holds what each character read, a file a day. Install Hydra says where to put them. Passwords are never in either: Hydra keeps one only when you ask, in your computer’s own keyring.

Install Hydra

Every release is on the releases page, a file for each system. The phone app, HydraFE, comes through TestFlight instead.

These beta builds are not signed yet, so the first time you start Hydra your system warns that it does not know who made it. Each section below says how to let it run.

Where Hydra keeps its files

Hydra makes two folders beside where it starts: data, for your settings, layouts, triggers and the characters it knows, and logs, for what each character read. Give Hydra a folder of its own and start it from there. To move Hydra, move the folder: everything goes with it.

On a Mac, the app keeps them in ~/Library/Application Support/Hydra.

Passwords are not in either folder. Hydra keeps one only when you ask, in your computer’s own keyring.

Windows

1. Download hydra-windows-x86_64.zip.
2. Extract it into a folder of your own, such as Documents\Hydra. Not into Program Files: Hydra writes its folders beside hydra.exe, and cannot write there.
3. Double-click hydra.exe. If Windows says Windows protected your PC, choose More info, then Run anyway.

The hub opens, and Hydra’s icon appears in the tray.

A shortcut to hydra.exe works as well: it starts Hydra in the folder hydra.exe is in, unless you change its Start in.

Hydra draws its windows with Vulkan where your graphics card has it, and with DirectX 12 otherwise. If Hydra crashes to the desktop while it plays, and Windows names your graphics driver, choose DirectX 12 under Graphics on Hydra’s General page of Settings and start Hydra again. An overlay such as Overwolf’s, or a recorder’s game capture, hooks into both, and leaving hydra.exe out of them helps too. DirectX 12 can take half a minute to open on some computers; that is the other reason to switch.

macOS

Hydra for macOS runs on Macs with Apple silicon (M1 and later).

1. Download hydra-macos.dmg, open it, and drag Hydra into Applications.

2. Open Terminal and let it run, since it is not signed:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Hydra.app
   

3. Open Hydra from Applications. The hub opens.

Hydra keeps its files in ~/Library/Application Support/Hydra.

Hydra has no menu bar icon on a Mac. With every window closed it rests in the background and every character plays on. To open its windows again, run this in Terminal:

open -n /Applications/Hydra.app

Linux

Hydra for Linux runs on x86-64 with glibc 2.39 or newer: Ubuntu 24.04 and later, Debian 13, Fedora 40 and later, or another distribution as recent.

1. Download hydra-linux-x86_64.tar.gz.

2. Make Hydra a folder, unpack it there, and start it from there:

   mkdir -p ~/Hydra
   cd ~/Hydra
   tar -xzf ~/Downloads/hydra-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
   ./hydra
   

Hydra needs ALSA for sound (libasound.so.2), speech-dispatcher for spoken triggers (libspeechd.so.2) and udev for game controllers (libudev.so.1). Most desktops have them; on Ubuntu or Debian, any missing are installed with:

sudo apt install libasound2t64 libspeechd2

Kept passwords go into your desktop’s keyring, GNOME Keyring or KDE Wallet. Like on a Mac, Hydra has no tray icon: start it again to open its windows.

Updating

On Windows, Hydra updates itself. It looks for a newer release when it starts and every six hours after. When one is out, the hub says so under its header, with What’s new, which opens the release’s notes, and Update. The tray menu offers the same.

Update downloads the release and checks it before using it: every release is signed, and Hydra refuses a file whose signature or checksum does not match. Once it is ready, the hub says it runs from Hydra’s next start, and offers Restart now.

• Restart now quits every character, the same way Shut down does, and starts Hydra again on the new release, with the hub open. If characters are playing, it names them first and asks. Leave Start them again afterwards ticked and they log back in, each with its team; untick it if you are stepping away. A character whose password is not kept is not logged back in: start it from the hub.
• Or carry on playing. The new release runs the next time Hydra starts: when you start it yourself, or when it starts fresh after a minute with nothing playing (see How Hydra works).

Two switches on Hydra’s General page of Settings control this. Check for updates is on unless you turn it off. Update on its own is off unless you turn it on; with it on, Hydra downloads a new release as soon as it is out, without asking, and it runs from the next start.

Hydra writes the new program beside the old one, so its folder must be one you can write to; that is another reason not to keep it in Program Files.

The first beta, 0.1.0-beta.1, cannot update itself. Replace it by hand once, as below, and later releases arrive on their own.

By hand, and on a Mac or Linux

Shut Hydra down first, from the hub’s Shut down or the tray. Then replace hydra.exe, the app, or hydra with the new release’s. Your data and logs folders stay as they are.

Log a character in

The first time, you log in with your account, and Hydra lists its characters for you to play. After that, a character starts with a click.

1. Start Hydra. The hub opens.
2. Choose the New login tab.
3. Type your Account and Password, and choose the Game: Prime, Shattered or Prime Test.
4. Tick Keep the password if you want Hydra to start this account’s characters without asking for it again. It is kept in your computer’s keyring (Credential Manager on Windows, the Keychain on a Mac, GNOME Keyring or KDE Wallet on Linux), and only once the game has accepted it.
5. Choose Log in. Hydra asks the game for the account’s characters and lists them under the form.
6. Choose Play beside a character. Hydra logs it in and opens its play window.

Once the game has let a character in, it is on your roster: the characters Hydra knows, listed on the hub’s Offline tab whenever they are not playing. Add puts a character on the roster without playing it, and the star marks a favourite, which is listed first.

The next time

Open the hub’s Offline tab. A character whose password is kept has Start. One without has a password box, its own Keep box, and Log name in. On Windows, the tray’s Start a character starts any character whose password is kept.

Forgetting

Forget on a character’s card takes it off the roster. Under Kept passwords on the New login tab, the Forget button beside an account takes its password out of the keyring.

Log out on the New login tab clears the account the form logged in, and its list. Characters already playing go on playing.

The hub

The hub is where characters are started, watched and stopped. It opens when Hydra starts, and closing it never stops a character.

Its tabs

• Live: a card for each character playing, or reconnecting. A card shows the character and its connection, its health, mana, stamina and spirit, its roundtime, room and group, and Window, Log and Quit. The Chat card beside them gathers what every character hears on the shared channels (thoughts, speech, arrivals, deaths and announcements), each line marked with who heard it. Its ⚙ chooses the channels and the characters.
• Offline: first the characters that stopped this run, with why, and Reconnect, Remove or Log. Then the rest of your roster, favourites first, each with Start or a password box.
• Teams: characters started together with one click. See Start a team.
• New login: an account’s characters, and the kept passwords. See Log a character in.

A card’s Window opens that character’s play window, or brings it to the front. Log opens what the character has read. Quit quits the game.

The Menu

Every play window has a Menu on its title bar too, so either one reaches everything with the other closed.

• Editors: a list of every editor, each a page of the Editors window: Keybinds, Macros, Aliases, Hotbars, Themes, Triggers, the Controller, Packs, Icons and Cards. Cards is the design every character’s card is drawn from, which parts it shows and where; a value from the game state on it takes a colour for its words and one behind them. A trigger answers what the game says: it colours or hides a line, plays a sound, shows a banner, starts a timer or sends a command. Packs are pictures to fetch: frames, the Injuries doll, compasses. From a play window, an editor works for its character.
• Layout, on a play window: add a widget or a custom window, lay the windows out afresh, switch Arrange and Lock, set the Grid windows snap to, how strongly its Grid lines show and the Veil over a custom window’s cells while arranging, and Title bar settings, Settings at the window’s title bar.
• Logs, on a play window: what its character has read.
• Explorer: the Map Explorer, the whole map and where every character stands, and the bestiary.
• Reports: every report the ledger answers.
• Settings: Hydra’s own settings, and every character’s. From a play window, Settings opens on that character.
• Pair: a window with the web page’s address and a code for a phone’s camera to scan, and Copy for the address. While the web page is not served, it says so and Serve it switches it on, as the Web page switch on Hydra’s General page in Settings does.
• Performance, on the hub: each live card’s timings, for when something feels slow.

A new play window’s title bar shows its character, how it is connected, the Menu and the zoom’s − and +. Anything the Menu holds can be put back on the bar as a button of its own – Lock, Arrange, the Layout, Keys and Drawers menus, Log, Settings – and so can an icon for each drawer, lit while it is open: on the character’s Window page in Settings.

Settings chooses how things behave; the Editors window is where things are made. Settings lists its pages down its side; the Editors window has its editors as tabs along its top. Its For, at the end of that row, picks whose keys, macros, hotbars and controller its pages work on: every character’s, or one character’s own.

Shutting down

Shut down quits every character in turn and closes Hydra. With any character playing, it asks first: Shut Hydra down? Every character will quit.

Closing the hub’s window is not shutting down. It only hides the hub while a play window is open. With none open, Hydra rests in the background and every character plays on. Start Hydra again, or use the tray on Windows, to bring the hub back.

Start a team

A team is a set of characters started together with one click: a hunting party, or everyone you log in each evening.

1. On the hub’s Teams tab, choose New team.
2. Give it a Name.
3. Choose what it Starts with:
   • play windows: each character’s play window opens. If Hydra was resting, only those open, and the hub stays hidden.
   • headless: no play window. A character’s card opens one when you want it.
   • web page: no play window on this computer, and the web page is served for them, for playing from a phone or another computer.
4. Tick its characters. An account plays one character at a time, so a team takes one character per account.
5. Choose Save team.

Launch starts every character in the team. Windows brings up the play window of every member playing, as a character’s own card does for one. Edit changes the team, and Forget removes it.

A team’s characters start with their kept passwords, so keep each one’s password first (see Log a character in). A character whose password is not kept is left out, and the hub says so. On Windows, the tray’s Start a team starts a team too.

Hydra in the tray

On Windows, Hydra’s icon sits in the tray for as long as Hydra runs, its windows open or not. Hovering it says how many characters are playing.

A click on the icon opens the hub. Its menu:

• Open hub.
• Start a character: every roster character whose password is kept. One already playing is marked *, and choosing it brings its window forward.
• Start a team: your teams.
• Start Hydra at sign-in: Hydra starts by itself, resting, when you sign in to Windows, with its files in the folder it is running from now. Untick it to stop that.
• Shut down Hydra: every character quits the game, and Hydra closes.

A character or team started from the tray opens its play windows and leaves the hub as it is.

On a Mac or on Linux there is no tray icon. Hydra rests in the background in the same way, and starting it again opens its hub; on a Mac, see Install Hydra for how.

Run your own Lich

If you play with Lich, Hydra runs your own Lich behind each character you turn it on for. Hydra keeps the game connection and hands Lich the game’s text, so your scripts, settings and aliases work as they always have. Lich never sees your password.

What you need

• Lich, installed: a folder with lich.rbw in it.
• Ruby, which Lich runs on. On Windows, Lich’s installer puts it in C:\Ruby4Lich5, where Hydra finds it. Otherwise Hydra uses the ruby on your PATH.

Turn it on

Type these in a character’s play window:

1. .lich folder <folder>, once: where your Lich is, for example .lich folder C:\Lich5. It holds for every character.
2. .lich on: Lich starts for this character now, and again every time the character starts. It starts once the game has let the character in, so logging in is no slower.

.lich off stops it and leaves it off. .lich alone says whether it runs and where Lich is.

Typing with Lich

• A line starting with ; is Lich’s own command: ;repository, ;kill bigshot.
• A line starting with . is Hydra’s.
• Anything else goes to Lich first, so its aliases and hooks see it, and Lich sends it on to the game.

Lich’s symbol is ; unless you choose another: Lich command symbol, on a character’s General page in the settings.

What the window shows

• .lich view lich, as it starts: what Lich shows. Its squelches hold, and its scripts’ messages appear in the story.
• .lich view game: the game’s own text, with Lich’s lines beside it.

.stop stops everything on the character at once, Lich’s scripts included.

Lich does not run in HydraFE’s own Hydra on a phone.

Bring your setup from Wrayth, Vellum or the Wizard

Hydra reads what Wrayth and Vellum keep, so your keys, highlights and bars come with you. Some of it comes over with a command typed in a play window, some by copying a file into Hydra’s data folder.

Each command answers in the play window: how many came over, and every one that did not, with why.

Keys

.keys import <file> brings another front end’s keys into this character’s keys. Add global to bring them into every character’s: .keys import global <file>.

• Wrayth: a Wrayth settings file. Its ten macro sets come into Hydra’s sets 0 to 9.

• Vellum: a keybinds.toml, or a set you saved with Vellum’s .savekeybinds. Or give it your whole Vellum folder, .vellum-fe in your home folder:

  .keys import C:\Users\you\.vellum-fe
  

  Its global keys come into every character’s, and each character’s own into that character’s, for every character Hydra knows by that name.

Vellum writes its own default keys into your file, so the import leaves those to Hydra: only the keys you made yourself come over. Tab, for one, keeps targeting the next creature, as it does in Hydra.

What a key does comes over too: commands sent, the history, scrolling, Find, the tabs, targeting. A key that does something Hydra’s keys have no action for is named in the answer, and so is a key that would type a letter: a key bound in Hydra holds Ctrl, Alt or Cmd, or is one that types nothing, like F5.

Keys you bring in show on the Keybinds page of the Editors window, where you change them like any other.

Triggers

.trigger import <file> brings highlights in as triggers.

• Wrayth: a Wrayth settings file’s highlights, names and ignores.
• Vellum: a highlights.toml, or the whole .vellum-fe folder, every character’s at once.

Importing the same again replaces what it brought rather than adding a second copy. Triggers you bring in show on the Triggers page of the Editors window: Wrayth’s in the categories Wrayth strings, Wrayth names and Wrayth ignores; Vellum’s in their own category, or Vellum when they had none.

Hotbars and the controller

Hydra reads Vellum’s hotbars.toml and controller.toml as they are: copy them, no command needed.

A character’s own files are named for the game and the character: prime_ on Prime, shattered_ on Shattered. Hydra reads the hotbars files again within a second of one changing, so a bar copied in shows at once; .controller reload reads the controller files again.

The Injuries doll

.doll import <folder> brings a folder of doll pictures into Hydra’s dolls folder, each with the calibration Vellum keeps beside it. Pick one on the Injuries widget’s page.

From the Wizard

.wizard import <folder> brings a Wizard front end folder in, looking one folder deep as an unpacked archive is laid out; .wizard import global <folder> makes the aliases everyone’s and the keys every character’s, for a player whose characters all share them:

• Scripts (.Cmd, .Wiz) become this character’s aliases, each named for its file with the dot in front, typed as the Wizard ran it: s.Cmd becomes .s, and s alone still goes south. put lines are the commands, pause 2 a two-second wait, waitrt the roundtime, %1 and %2 the first and second word typed after the alias (.s sword back). A script that runs another (put .nexus) gets that script’s lines in its place. A script that is one loop, a label at the top and a jump back to it after a pause, becomes the alias of its lines, and the import says to run it on the clock: .every 60 .acorn. A .Wiz whose name a .Cmd also has is named <name>-wiz. A script that matches text, jumps elsewhere or keeps a counter needs Lich, which runs Wizard scripts as they are, and is named, not imported. A script named like one of Hydra’s commands still comes in, and its alias wins: .go2 runs the script, not Hydra’s travel, and the import says so. When a later Hydra brings a command named like one of your aliases, the alias keeps winning, and Hydra says so once, the first time the character logs in. Importing again takes away the aliases an earlier import brought in without the dot, those you have not changed.
• Macros (.Mac) become this character’s keys: Alt and Ctrl letters, and the keypad with or without a modifier. A macro that places the cursor (@), prompts (\?) or uses one of the Wizard’s own {tokens} is named, not bound.
• Highlight strings and names (.His, .Nam) become everyone’s highlights, in the categories Wizard strings and Wizard names, each in its colour from the profile’s .Colors palette, or the Wizard’s own sixteen without one. A string the Wizard marks with a leading $ paints its whole line.

Your scripts

Lich comes with you whole: Hydra runs your own Lich behind each character you ask it to, with your scripts and their settings. See Run your own Lich.

Triggers

A trigger watches what the game says. When a line holds the words you gave it, it acts: it colours the words, hides the line or writes it another way; it plays a sound, shows a banner or a notification, speaks, rumbles the controller or places a picture; it starts a timer, sets a flag or a status, or sends commands to the game. A line is moved to a window of its own by a stream rule. A trigger can watch your character instead of the text, and act when its health falls under half.

This chapter goes through the editor, then how a trigger finds its line, everything it can do, and examples of each kind, each with a line from the game to try it on.

Where they are

Open Menu › Editors › Triggers, on the hub or on any play window’s title bar: the Editors window opens at it.

On the left, every trigger, by category:

• The tick beside a trigger switches it on or off. The tick beside a category switches every trigger in it.
• Find narrows the list to triggers whose name, category or words hold what you type.
• Aa shows a trigger’s colours.
• Click a trigger to open it in the form.

A new trigger

New asks what the trigger should do, and starts one ready for it.

Whichever you start from, every part of a trigger is there to use.

The form

At the top, a sentence says what the trigger does as it stands, and follows every change you make:

When the game says “Speaking to Nisugi”: plays ding.wav, shows the line in a banner and sends the line as a notification. Its sound, banner and notification come at most once every 10 s.

Read it before you save: it is the quickest way to see a trigger does what you meant.

Then its Name, and its Category: type a new one, or pick one from the list beside it. Under them, the trigger’s parts in four sections:

• Find it: what it looks for, a line to try it on, whose it is, and when it may act. See Finding the line.
• Show it, Tell me and Do something: what it does. See What a trigger does.

A folded section says what is in it, or nothing. A trigger opens with the sections it uses open.

Save keeps it, and it works at once on every character it is for. Remove takes it away.

From the command line

.trigger help in a play window lists what the command does:

• .trigger list: the categories; .trigger list <words>, the triggers whose name, category or words hold them.
• .trigger on <name> and .trigger off <name>: a trigger, or a whole category.
• .trigger remove <name>: take a trigger away.
• .trigger import <file>: bring in Wrayth’s or Vellum’s highlights; see Bring your setup.

.highlight is another name for .trigger. Triggers are kept in highlights.toml, in Hydra’s data folder.

Finding the line

Find it says what a trigger looks for in each line the game sends, and when it may act.

Words

Choose Words and type what to look for, as the game writes it: Speaking to Nisugi. It is found anywhere in a line.

• Several, with | between them: Tevye | Zelas finds either.
• Capitals count: off, nisugi finds Nisugi too; on, only as written.
• Whole words only: on, Bob finds Bob waves but not Bobby waves.

To look for a | itself, use a pattern: \|.

A pattern

Choose A pattern to look for a shape rather than words: any number, any name. A pattern is a regular expression. The few marks most triggers need:

You are stunned for (\d+) rounds?! finds You are stunned for 2 rounds!, and keeps 2 as $1.

What a group keeps fills in Write instead, Send, and a timer’s Up message says: $1 is the first group, $2 the second.

Try it

Paste a line from the game into Try it, and see at once what the trigger makes of it: the line as it would show, what the pattern caught, and everything it would do.

When it says It does not match this line, change the words or the pattern until it does. A trigger with a condition under When is tried as if the condition held.

Characters

Empty, a trigger is every character’s. To keep it to some, name them, with commas: Ashryn, Nisugi. A name alone is that character on any game; GS3:Ashryn is Ashryn on Prime alone, GSF:Ashryn on Shattered.

When

When keeps a trigger to times your character is so: a line found at any other time is left as it is. Open it and add a condition:

• vital: health, mana, stamina or spirit, above or below a number or a percent.
• roundtime or casttime: under way.
• stance: offensive, defensive, and those between.
• indicator: standing, kneeling, stunned, hidden, webbed, and the rest the game shows; a status a trigger lights reads here too.
• effect up, effect not up, effect time left: a spell or an effect on you.
• injury, hand empty, hand holds, spell prepared, spell affordable, time of day, room, creature status.
• flag: a flag a trigger set (see Flag).

not turns a condition over. + group gathers conditions: Every one of holds when they all do, Any one of when one does.

A condition alone

Leave the words empty and the trigger watches your character alone: it acts each time its condition comes to hold. Health falling under half is one; see Watch your health.

Again only once it has not held for keeps a condition that flickers from acting over and over: it acts again only once the condition has been gone that long. 3 seconds unless you change it.

What a trigger does

A trigger does whatever its sections hold, all at once, each time it finds its line. Leave a part empty and it does not do that.

Show it

What happens to the line itself.

• Colour and Background: tick to colour what the trigger found, then click the swatch to choose the colour.
• Colour the whole line, not only the words: the colours go on every word of the line.
• Hide the line: the line is not shown. Its sound, banner and notification still come.
• Write instead: what the trigger found is written as these words. The rest of the line stays. $1, $2 put in what a pattern’s groups caught: $2 to $1: "$3" turns a long line of speech into a short one.
• Move to: a line goes to another window by a stream rule, not a trigger; the link opens the Streams page.

Tell me

How the trigger gets your attention.

• Sound: a sound file’s name, a .wav, .mp3, .ogg or .flac in the sounds folder in Hydra’s data folder. The file name alone: ding.wav.
• Volume: how loud, a percent of the window’s volume. It shows once a sound is named.
• Banner: a banner under the play window’s top bar for a few seconds: The line, or These words of your own.
• Notification: a notification from your computer, as other programs send: the line, or your own words.
• Push to phone: a banner on each phone paired with Hydra in the HydraFE app, even with the app closed: the line, or your own words. Tapping it opens HydraFE on that character (Push to phone). .push lists the phones, .push test sends one to try it, and .push forget <name> stops one.
• Speech: your computer’s voice reads the line, or your own words.
• Rumble: the game controller rumbles: short, long, double, or a pattern of your own from the controller’s file.
• Picture: a picture placed in the story after the line: an https:// address, or a file in the pictures folder set on the Hydra’s General page of Settings.

Several characters hearing the same line within a second, a shout in a room they share, make one sound, one notification and one voice, not one each.

Do something

What the trigger does beyond the line.

Send

Game commands, one a line, sent as if you typed them. A pattern’s $1 can fill a command’s words: target $1. Some care is built in:

• $1 fills a command’s words, never the command itself.
• Only game commands: never Hydra’s own or Lich’s.
• Only once the character is in the game and ready: nothing while it logs in or reconnects.
• The trigger’s Cooldown is the pace of its sends: at 0 it sends for every line it finds.
• A send that an import brought waits until you read it and press Approve this send.

Timer

A countdown of your own, which the Timers widget shows.

• Timer: its name. The words the trigger finds start it. .timer <name> starts it too.
• Default duration: how long it runs.
• Up message says: when the line says how long, $1 with a pattern’s first group, times a number: $1 times 5 for a line that counts rounds of five seconds. The default duration is used when the line says none.
• Down message: words that end it early, such as a spell’s message that it has worn off.
• Shows in: which list it counts down in, Active spells, Buffs, Debuffs, Cooldowns, or Custom. The Timers widget gathers every list.

Flag

A flag is a name a trigger sets and other triggers read: it shows nowhere. Under When, the condition flag holds while it is set.

Name it, and choose how long it lasts: set for some seconds, or 0 until something clears it. Tick clears it to make a trigger that puts the flag down instead.

Status

A status is like a flag, but it shows: the Custom statuses widget lights it while it is set, and under When the condition indicator reads it as it reads the game’s own. Set and clear it as you would a flag.

Cooldown

Under the sections, when the trigger has something to hold back: Cooldown is how long before its sound, banner, notification, push, speech, rumble, picture, timer and commands come again. 3 seconds unless you change it. A line the trigger finds while it cools down is still coloured, hidden, rewritten and moved, and its flag and status are still set.

Examples

Each example is a trigger made from New, shown with a line from the game pasted into Try it, so you can see what it does before it ever meets the game. Change the names and words to your own.

Colour your friends’ names

New → Colour words. Look for the names, with | between them, and tick Whole words only, so Tevye does not light up inside another word. Choose the colour under Show it.

Hide lines you never want to see

New → Hide lines. Look for words every such line holds. Lich’s LNet chat starts each of its lines with [LNet].

To keep the chat, but out of the story, move it instead: see Give a chat its own window.

Know when someone speaks to you

New → Alert me. The game writes speech meant for you as Speaking to <you>, <them> says, so look for Speaking to and your name. Under Tell me: a sound, a banner of the line, and a notification, so it reaches you with Hydra behind other windows. A cooldown of 10 seconds keeps a long talk from ringing on every line.

Count down a stun

New → Start a timer. The game says how many rounds: You are stunned for 2 rounds!. A pattern keeps the number, (\d+), and the timer runs $1 times 5 seconds. Under Tell me, speech says Stunned, for when you are looking elsewhere.

It counts down in the Debuffs list, and in the Timers widget, which gathers every list.

Time a spell

New → Start a timer. Look for the spell’s message as it comes up, A light blue glow surrounds you., and give the timer as long as your casting lasts. Down message ends it when the spell wears off early: The light blue glow leaves you.

Shorten a long line

New → Anything. A pattern takes the line apart into groups, and Write instead puts it back together, shorter:

Give a chat its own window

That is a stream rule, not a trigger: right-click an [LNet] line, choose Send lines like this to… and A stream of your own…, and name it lnet. Once the rule is saved, the play window’s Menu › Layout › Add a widget offers an lnet window, under Streams.

Answer the game

New → Send a command. When your spell is ready, cast it:

A trigger sends only once the character is in the game and ready, never while it logs in. Its Cooldown, 3 seconds unless you change it, is the pace of its sends: at 0 it sends for every line it finds.

Watch your health

New → Watch my character. There are no words to look for: under When, the condition vital health < 50 % is the whole trigger. It plays a sound and shows Health is low each time your health falls under half. Try it has no line to try: the sentence at the top says what it does.

Light a status while a spell lasts

Two triggers: one lights a status, one puts it out. New → Mark a flag or status, look for the spell coming up, and name the Status: Warded.

Then a second, looking for The light blue glow leaves you., with the same status and clears it ticked. The Custom statuses widget shows Warded while the spell lasts, and any trigger can ask for it under When: indicator Warded. A flag works the same way, but shows nowhere: it is for other triggers alone.

Streams

The game sends each line to a stream: most to the story, some to Thoughts, Speech, Arrivals and the rest, each a window you can add. Stream rules change where a line goes: a line the game puts in the story that belongs with the ambients, or lines you want in a window of their own, such as your fights.

A rule finds its lines and sends them to a stream. It moves them, out of where the game sent them, or copies them, so they show in both. The rules are one list for every character, kept in stream_rules.toml in Hydra’s data folder, and tried in order: the first that matches a line sorts it.

The log follows the rules too: a line a rule moved is written as main/ambients, where the game sent it, then where it went.

What a Lich script writes, its own words beside the game’s, is sorted by the same rules: a rule that finds a script’s line moves or copies it like the game’s. A rule that asks for fighting, a search or a skin, or the combat reader’s mark is passed over for a script’s line, which comes in no chunk of the game’s that could say.

Fights in a window of their own

One rule is built in: Combat copies every line of the story that comes while you fight to a stream named combat. Add its window from the play window’s Menu › Layout › Add a widget, under Streams; the story keeps the lines too. Edit the rule, or switch it off, on the Streams page. To take fights out of the story, untick Keep fights in the story on the combat window’s right-click menu.

A script’s attacks go with their fight: bigshot’s fire, cman or incant, as Lich echoes them, when the answer was a fight. Each command goes with the answer it got, however long that took: two sent at once are answered one after the other, and each goes with its own. A gemstone list or a cman that answers with no fight stays in the story. A stance or a target, yours or a script’s, goes to combat with its answer while a hostile creature is in the room. Your own typed attacks stay where you typed them. The rule lists the words it goes by: Script attacks and Setting up, shown while there is fighting is ticked.

A fear that makes you flee comes in one piece with the room you fled to. The fight goes where fights go; the room always stays in the story, so it still says where you are.

Searches and skins in a window of their own

A second rule is built in: Loot copies every line of a search or a skin to a stream named loot, the creature fading away and the prompt with it, and the loot, search or skin that asked for it, yours or a script’s. Nothing leaves the story. The weapon swaps around a skin are no search or skin, and stay where they are. A rules file made before the Loot rule was built in is given it once; delete it on the Streams page and it stays gone. Its condition, a creature is searched or skinned, is one any rule can ask for.

Fights in the story

Each fight can be shown in the story as the game said it, told briefly, or left out, chosen apart for your own attacks, your other characters’, other players’ and creatures’. Told briefly, a fight is the attack’s first line, then for each target its rolls and its flares, the damage it took on the line that ended its turn, and how it was left:

One line tells each attack on a line of its own, one for each target of a spell that reaches several: You fire at a troll: +76 = +466, hit, 71 dmg, puncture R8 chest.

The combat window always has every line as the game said it. By default your own attacks and creatures’ are shown in full, and your other characters’ and other players’ are told briefly.

Choose on the Fights pages of the settings menu. Fights for every character sets them for everyone; a character’s own Fights page shows each as it is for that character, and a choice made there is that character’s alone until you put it back. Both pages also say whether fights and searches stay in the story as well as their windows: for every character that is the Combat and Loot rules’ own choice, and a character can choose otherwise for itself. Show the rolls and Show the flares leave a brief fight’s roll lines or flare lines out; Show the roundtime, off at first, puts its roundtime lines in.

Lines no reader knows

Hydra knows a fight from the attacks and their rolls, a search or a skin from what it found. Some lines come with neither: a briar lashing a creature, a hail of arrows still falling. Hydra learns these from the fights it does know. Each sentence the game says is counted under what it came with, a fight, a search or skin, or something else known, such as the answer to a look. A line seen often enough only with fights takes its lines to combat when it comes alone; seen with fights most of the time, it is copied there and stays in the story too. A line seen with anything else keeps its lines where they are.

When Hydra gets one wrong, right-click the line in the story or the combat window and choose Part of this fight or Not part of this fight. Lines like it go that way from then on, whatever was counted. Each choice is kept in chunk_marks.toml in Hydra’s data folder, with the line, the character, its player log and the time.

What Hydra counted is kept in chunk_kinds_prime.bin (one for each game) beside it. To count afresh from every recording in the logs folder, shut Hydra down and run hydra chunks learn. Your choices are kept.

Send a line somewhere else

Right-click the line, in a play window or in the log, and choose Send lines like this to…, then the stream, or A stream of your own…. The Streams page opens with a rule made from the line: its words as they are, but the names in it and its numbers loosened, so it takes the lines like it. A grey warg howls 3 times. becomes a rule for any creature howling any number of times.

The rule is not kept until you Save it. Look it over first: Try it holds the line, and says whether the rule’s words find it.

The Streams page

Open Menu › Editors › Streams.

On the left, every rule in the order they are tried. The tick switches a rule on or off. A rule Hydra cannot use says not used; point at it to read why.

On the right, the rule chosen, or a new one from New:

• Lines from: the stream its lines come from: the story, one of the game’s, or any.
• Holding: Words anywhere in the line, whatever their case, with | between words any of which will do; or A regex, a regular expression, where capitals count unless it starts (?i).
• Only when: there is fighting, or the combat reader marked the line: a flare, a status landing on you, a killing blow.
• A creature’s: a creature’s own messages of the kinds ticked, its ambient flavour, its arrival, its death and the rest, as the bestiary has them.
• Put in: the stream: one of the game’s, or a name of your own. A stream of your own is offered in Add a widget, on the chat card and on the phone page as soon as a rule names it.
• Keep it where the game sent it too: the line is copied, not moved.

A rule needs everything it asks for to hold. Move up and Move down change the order. A new rule goes first, so it comes before the broad ones.

Past days in the log

The log keeps each line as it was written. A line written before a rule that takes it was made shows in the log window in the rule’s stream all the same, in a search and an export too: the rules sort it again by its words as it is read. A rule that asks whether there was fighting, or for the combat reader’s mark, cannot be tried on a past line, and is passed over.

The log window shows a past day as the story showed it: each line coloured by your highlights as they are now, a line a highlight hides left out, and the game’s blank lines between. Nothing sounds and no banner shows for a line read back. Show has a Highlights tick to see every line plain. A blank line is not a line of the file: the next line with words carries it, so a day’s file stays as short as before.

Triggers that moved lines

A trigger does not move its line: the stream rules do. A trigger that did, from Hydra before or brought from Vellum, is made a stream rule when Hydra reads it, under its own name, and the Streams page tells you so. Its other parts stay with the trigger, and a trigger that did nothing but move its line goes. A rule made this way is every character’s, whoever the trigger was for.

Travel

Hydra walks a character anywhere its built-in map reaches: .go2 bank takes the nearest bank, .go2 228 a room by number, .go2 to Ashryn the room one of your other characters stands in. The way is priced for this character: an exit that needs a spell it cannot cast, a society it is not in, or a setting it has not turned on is shut, and the route goes round it. The walk stops with .go2 stop, or with .stop, which stops everything.

Every travel command may be shortened to its first two letters or more: .go is .go2, .ro is .route2, .sa is .sail.

Going somewhere

Before the first step Hydra asks the game what the map needs to know and nothing has said yet – the spells you know, what is in your hands, where your ship lies – quietly, and once. A walk that cannot start says why in the story.

Names of your own

Names are kept in travel.json in the data folder: everyone’s at the top, each character’s under its own entry, with the room it was last known in and what earlier crossings taught it (which town it entered Duskruin from, for instance). A character’s own name is looked for first. A file Hydra cannot read, or that a newer Hydra wrote, is left alone rather than written over: what is in it the game never teaches again.

Seeing the way first

.route2 bank shows the way and sends nothing: room by room, what would be taken, each scripted crossing as its steps, and at every room what was not taken and why – a fact the game has not told yet, a setting that says no, a crossing Hydra does not walk yet. The same route is drawn on the minimap; .route2 clear takes it off. --brief gives it in a line, which is what a click on a minimap room asks; a click on the route’s goal walks it.

Sailing

A character with a ship of its own sails it. .sail kraken makes the ship ready and takes it to that port; .sail 7143382 to a room of the ocean, anchor dropped; .sail help lists the ports and how far each is.

Making ready is read off the ship each time, never run as a script: the white flag from the crow’s nest, the gangplank in, the sail let out and wind called into it by a character who can, the anchor up, and DEPART. Start it anywhere aboard or on the pier, with any of it already done, and it does what is still undone. At sea the wheel is touched only where the course bends; between rooms the character is free to walk the ship, and is given a moment to come to the wheel or the anchor itself before Hydra walks it there. A swell that drops the anchor, a sail come loose, a wheel spun free are each seen and set right.

.sail route kraken shows the course on the chart as you sail it yourself and sends nothing.

The ships a character owns and the port each is docked at are kept in travel.json once seen, so a route by sea needs no ship info asked again at the next login. A route that may take the ship asks for it quietly the first time, when nothing has said where it lies.

Portals

.portal lists the ways out of this room that are no compass direction – a gate, a rope, a hole in the wall – and goes through at once when there is one. .portal 2 or .portal gate takes that one. The controller’s portals wheel is the same list on a stick.

The Travel page

Each setting the map asks about is on the character’s Travel page of the settings menu. A setting never set is simply off, and the map’s questions about it always have an answer.

• Ice: Auto waits on ice when a slip is likely, Run never waits, Wait always does.
• Use the urchin guides, while the game says they are paid for; Use the portmasters; Use your own ship, and Call wind into the sail.
• Use Voln’s symbol of seeking; Vaalor shortcut, the rocky trail into Ta’Vaalor; Allow Vornavis; the caravan to and from the Sanctum of Scales.
• Day passes: use them, the sack they are kept in, and whether to buy one when none held serves, or only for some routes (imt,wl).
• Mist Harbor trinket, by its name; the rogue guild password.
• House key and its sack, for a private property’s door; and each property you may pass through, by name.
• Send the familiar home once it has opened the Vaalorn ring doors.

What is not walked yet

Hydra walks every crossing the map holds that it has been taught; .go2 coverage counts the rest, down to none. A crossing not yet walked is shut to every route and said so under the room it leaves in .route2’s table, so a route never promises a step Hydra cannot take.

Typed casting

With a character’s caster on, a spell number typed is a cast. 901 sends incant 901; 901 kobold prepares 901 and casts it at the kobold; zap kobold does the same when zap is an alias of 901. The caster is off until you turn it on, with .ec on.

901                  incant 901
901 kobold           prepare 901, then cast kobold
901 second kobold 3  prepare 901, then cast second kobold 3
zap kobold           the same, with zap an alias of 901

A target is found as the game finds it: kobold the last that fits, second kobold or other kobold the second, two words the first then anything then the second (great kobold). A count after the target is sent on.

What it checks first

In order; a refusal is said in the story and nothing is sent:

1. The spell is known. Refused only when the game’s own list of your spells says it is not; a society power is not on that list and is never refused here.
2. Conserve, when on: mana enough for every cast asked for (Mana Leech, 516, needs only one), and an attack spell’s target a live one in the room.
3. Safety, when on: an attack spell only with a live target in the room.

A live target is one the game lists here and not dead, leaving out an animated one (but for animated slush) and a creature’s limb (but for a kraken’s named tentacle). An attack spell is any whose roles include attack, attack/area and attack/utility as well.

How it is cast

• The verb: the spell’s own, or its alias’s, else cast. With the channel option on, a spell that can be channeled is channeled.
• The stance: the spell’s own, or its alias’s; else offensive for an aimed spell while the stance option is on, back to guarded after; else none.
• Hide: with the option on, a spell on the hide list is followed by hide.

A spell that is never incanted (410) is prepared and cast instead. A society power sends the line the game knows it by, its target after.

The caster waits where the game says to: a ...wait is waited out and the cast sent again, and the cast roundtime is watched before the stance comes back.

The commands

.ecaster is the same command. Everything is kept in the character’s settings file, read again whenever it changes.

The sorter

A look into a container lists everything in one long line. The sorter shows it by kind instead:

In the mahogany box you see a bright gold ingot, some silver coins, a smooth
amber wand, a piece of brown jade, a steel lockpick, a pinch of electrum dust
and a tar black tourmaline.

becomes

In the mahogany box:
valuable (1): a bright gold ingot
other (1): some silver coins
wand (1): a smooth amber wand
gem (3): a pinch of electrum dust, a piece of brown jade, a tar black tourmaline
lockpick (1): a steel lockpick

Every item keeps its link, so a click or a right-click on it works as it did in the long line. Given a width, each kind’s label sits on a line of its own and its items under it in columns that fit.

What is sorted

A look that starts In the, On the or Peering into and lists its items whole: the container, you see, the items with , and and between, and a full stop. Anything of another shape is shown as it came – the herb kit’s look goes on past its list to say how many doses each herb holds, and sorting it would lose them. What the game says after an item’s name stays with it: a leather journal embossed with a peacock feather.

• The kind is every type the item’s noun and name belong to, joined by commas, or other.
• Names are each item whole, as the game’s inventory lines say it: its article, its name, and what follows; with long names off, its name alone. An item holding something says so in brackets, a glass vial (some red liquid); a crystalline flask is named by what it holds.
• Order: kinds as first seen; within one, items by the last word of the name; the same item twice is one, with its count.

Turning it on

The choice is this character’s, kept in its settings file and on its General page.

The lookout

A script check is something out of the ordinary that asks you to answer: proof that someone is at the keyboard. Mid-hunt it is one line among hundreds, and no trigger can be written for it, since nobody knows its words before it comes.

The lookout learns what is ordinary instead. Every line your characters read is noted, and a line it has seen five times is learned and shown no more. Everything it has not learned goes to a stream of its own, lookout. Once the routine is learned the stream is almost silent, and a line that has never come before stands out in it.

Nothing is ever sent to the game.

Watching it

Add the stream’s window from the play window’s Menu › Layout › Add a widget, under Streams, or a tab of it beside another window. The story keeps every line as it was; the lookout’s window gets a copy.

The Lookout trigger comes with it, switched off: a sound and a banner for each line that reaches the stream, at most one every ten seconds. Switch it on with Sound and banner on the lookout’s settings page, once the lookout has learned your routine; its sound and words are changed in Menu › Editors › Triggers. Any trigger can do the same: give it the stream lookout and no words to look for, and it acts on every line put there.

How a line is judged

• The sentence. Each thing the game links in the line – a creature, a person, an item – stands as a placeholder, and your own characters’ names are taken out, so Nisugi picks up a gold coin and Dicate picks up a bronze ring are one sentence, learned together.
• Each thing in it. The words the game named it by are learned too, apart. A sentence learned long ago still shows when what is in it has never been seen: You pick up a softly glowing token comes through.
• The same moment. A line every character of a group hears at once is one occasion, not five: the group does not learn a line the first time it comes.
• Left out. A room’s description, channels, and the lines the ignore list takes: the exits, room titles, what a merchant says to a sale.
• The stat floor. A combat line giving an AS, DS, CS, TD, UAF, UDF, AvD or CvA of 1500 or more is always shown, however often its line has come, and marked in the lookout’s colour: no character reaches it, and a check can hide in one.
• Quiet after login. For the first minute a character is in the game its lines are learned and not shown: the login’s lines come once a day.

Teaching it your routine

A new lookout shows nearly everything for its first days. Teach it from the player logs Hydra has already kept: shut Hydra down, then run

hydra lookout seed

in Hydra’s folder. Every day of every character’s log is read, in the order the lines came, and learned; today is left for next time, being still played. Run it again later and it starts after the last day it read: no day is learned twice. Three weeks of a seven-character group’s logs is about fifteen seconds’ work.

Its settings

Menu › Settings › Lookout.

• Paused: nothing is read, learned or shown.
• Sound and banner: the Lookout trigger, on or off. Off unless you switch it on.
• Mark in the story: each new line is coloured in the story as well, where it came, in the theme’s lookout colour. Best left off while the lookout is still learning most lines.
• Characters not read: names, apart by commas.
• Occasions to learn a line: 5 unless you change it.
• Same moment: the seconds in which one line heard by several of your characters is one occasion.
• Forget one still learning after: a line seen once or twice and never again is dropped after this many days, which keeps the file small.
• Quiet after login and Stat floor, as above.

The lines it leaves out are Menu › Editors › Lookout: one pattern a line, the commonest first. The built-in list brings back the one Hydra comes with.

A line you do not want, or one you always do

Right-click a line in the lookout’s window:

• Forget this line: learned now, never shown again.
• Always show this line: shown however often it comes.

Or type it, with words from the line:

.lookout forget squirrel
.lookout always town crier

.lookout alone says how much it has learned; .lookout help lists the rest, including .lookout clear yes, which forgets everything and starts again.

Where it is kept

What it has learned is in Hydra’s data folder, one file a game: lookout_prime.bin. It holds a fingerprint of each learned line, not the lines: about 200 KB after three weeks. Its choices are lookout.toml, beside it, for every game.

Work mode

Hydra in a terminal can look like a terminal at work. Type .work on a character’s screen and the whole screen becomes a shell running a job: repositories cloned, a build compiling, a log scrolling by. Nothing of the game is drawn, the terminal’s title is the shell’s, no sound plays and no notification shows, and the tray icon goes away. Type .work again and your screen is back as it was, with every line you missed in it.

The game plays on underneath. Your characters stay logged in, your triggers fire, Lich runs, and what you type still goes to the game: the prompt at the foot of the fake shell is your real command line in disguise. Keybinds and macros work as always.

PS C:\src> git clone https://github.com/lindqvist/shardlog.git
Cloning into 'shardlog'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 4281, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (612/612), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (288/288), done.
Receiving objects: 100% (4281/4281), 28.70 MiB | 3.05 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (2130/2130), done.
PS C:\src> cd shardlog
PS C:\src\shardlog> git log --oneline -8
3f9a1c2 Fix retry logic
8be04d7 Bump dependency pins
PS C:\src\shardlog> 

The command

• .work covers the screen, or lifts the cover.
• .work on and .work off do one or the other, for a key bound to each.
• .work curl, .work build, .work tail or .work ssh cover the screen with that scene and keep to it. Bare .work plays one at random each time a scene ends.
• .work help says all of this.

Bind a key to any of these in Menu › Editors › Keys, as you would bind any command.

The scenes

A scene is a shell’s job, line by line, at a believable pace, with its names drawn afresh each time round. Four come with Hydra:

• curl: repositories fetched and cloned, their files listed and their README read. Dense and long, and anything odd in it looks like part of the download.
• build: a Rust workspace compiled, a test failing, the file opened, the test run again.
• tail: a web server’s access log followed, with bursts and the odd error.
• ssh: a remote host’s journal followed, a service looked at, the disk checked.

Nothing is fetched from anywhere. A progress meter is a formula; the names are lists in the scene’s file; the addresses are the documentation ranges that belong to nobody. The clock in a log line is the real one, running on from when the cover went up.

The four are written to global/work/ in your data folder the first time the cover goes up, as curl.toml and so on. Change one there and your version is used; add a file of your own and .work <its name> plays it. Hydra never writes over a file that is there, so delete one to get the shipped version back.

Writing a scene

title = "curl"                 # the terminal's title while this plays
prompt = "PS C:\\src{dir}> "   # {dir}: where the scene has gone
rest = 20                      # seconds idle at the prompt before it plays again

[names]                        # {repo}, {user}: one picked each time round
repo = ["fast-json-rs", "kube-rollout"]
user = ["mkdev", "lindqvist"]

[[lines]]
text = "git clone https://github.com/{user}/{repo}.git"
wait = 1.5                     # seconds after the line before
jitter = 1                     # at most this much more or less
color = "plain"                # plain, dim, green, yellow, red, cyan, magenta

[[lines]]
meter = "git"                  # a progress meter, redrawn in place: git or curl
lasts = 8                      # seconds to reach the end

[[lines]]
text = "cd {repo}"
dir = "\\{repo}"               # the prompt's {dir} from here

[[lines]]
text = "{date} {clock} {n:100-999} {hash}"
times = 40                     # the line again this many times, names drawn afresh

The slots: {name} for any list under [names], kept the same all the way round; {n:a-b} a number from a to b, fresh every use; {hash} seven hex digits; {clock} the time of day as 14:36:10, {date} today as 28/Oct/2026, {day} as Oct 28; {dir} where the scene has gone. A line with clear = true empties the screen first.

The one thing that gets through

A script check is the reason to be at the keyboard, and the cover would hide it. So one thing passes: any line the lookout has not learned is written into the scene as its next line of output, plain, with no mark, in the scene’s own colour. To someone looking over your shoulder it is one odd line in a wall of output. To you, who know to look, it is the warning. Answer by typing, as always; the prompt is your command line.

Keep the lookout learning before you rely on this. A lookout that has not learned your routine passes most of your story through the cover.

Covering itself

The Work mode rows of Hydra’s General settings page:

• Work mode prompt: what your command line is drawn after, over each scene’s own. PS C:\src{dir}> or ops@web-03:~{dir}$, with {dir} where the scene has gone. A space is put after it.
• Work mode scene: the scene to play and keep to. Empty, one at random each time round.
• Cover on focus lost: the screen covers itself when the terminal’s window loses the focus, as you click away to something else. A click back does not lift it: .work does.
• Cover after idle: seconds without a key before the screen covers itself. 0 never.

What it cannot hide

• Mid-word. The prompt shows what you are typing. attack is attack until you press Enter. Give the telling commands an alias.
• The terminal program. The taskbar, a hover, and a task manager still show the terminal program by its own name, and hydra-tui as a process. Over SSH from another computer, none of that is there.
• Hydra’s windows. Sounds, notifications and the tray icon are held back only while no Hydra window is open on the same computer. A play window open beside the terminal plays its sounds, and shows the game.
• The clock in a log. It is the real one. A log that says 14:36 at nine in the morning is a log of somewhere else.

Push to phone

A trigger can put a banner on your iPhone, even with HydraFE closed and the phone in your pocket. Tap the banner and HydraFE opens on that computer, with that character in front of you.

Setting it up

1. On the computer, turn on Hydra’s web page (the hub’s Web page setting) and pair HydraFE with it, as for playing from the phone.
2. Open that connection in HydraFE. The first time, iOS asks whether Hydra may send notifications: Allow.
3. The page says Push: iPhone is paired. That’s all: the phone pairs again by itself each time it connects, so a phone that gets a new address from Apple is never lost.

Then give a trigger Push to phone, beside its sound, banner and notification (see What a trigger does): the line it found, or words of your own. Whenever the trigger fires, every phone paired with this computer gets the banner, titled with the character’s name. Like the trigger’s other actions, a push comes at most once every cooldown.

A phone paired with several computers gets each one’s pushes, and a tap opens the computer the push came from.

.push

What leaves your computer

Apple only delivers a push to an app from a server holding the app’s key, so Hydra hands each push to a small relay run for HydraFE, and the relay hands it to Apple.

• Each push is sealed on your computer with a key only your phone holds, made by the phone when it first paired. The relay and Apple see “Hydra: A trigger fired.” and sealed bytes; the phone opens it and shows the real words.
• The relay keeps nothing but a fingerprint of each computer’s own token, so that strangers cannot send through it. It never writes a push down.
• What is paired is kept in push.json in Hydra’s data folder.

When it doesn’t come

• .push says no phone is paired: open the connection in HydraFE once more; it pairs as it connects. In iOS Settings › Hydra › Notifications, check notifications are allowed.
• .push test says the relay could not be reached: the computer has no internet, or the relay is down for a moment; the next push tries again.
• .push test says a phone no longer takes pushes: HydraFE was removed from that phone. It has been forgotten; install and open it again to pair.
• The banner says “A trigger fired.” instead of the words: the phone could not open it, usually a phone that was restarted and not yet unlocked. Tapping it still opens the character.
• A tap opens the list instead of the character: the push came from a computer this phone has no saved connection for, or its address changed. Open that computer’s connection once and later taps find it.

Themes

A theme is how Hydra looks: its colours, the shape of its windows and controls, its fonts, and a frame round its windows if you want one. Hydra comes with two, Despana, dark, and Light. A theme you make is kept in the themes folder in Hydra’s data folder, and says only what it changes from the theme it is laid over.

This chapter goes through the editor, then making the colours, pinning a colour, shape, frame and type, and examples.

Wearing a theme

• Settings › Hydra › Hub › Theme: the theme Hydra wears: the hub, Settings, the Editors, and every play window whose character has no theme of its own. Tick Follow the computer’s dark or light mode and Hydra wears the Light theme chosen below it while the computer is in light mode.
• Settings, a character, its Theme page: that character’s window can wear a theme of its own, and an Accent of its own over it: the colour of what is chosen, a guide while arranging, a find’s hit. Edit this theme… under them opens the editor on the theme the character wears.
• From a play window: .theme list lists them, .theme mine <name> (or off) chooses the character’s own, and .theme accent <#rrggbb> (or off) its accent.

The editor

Open Menu › Editors › Themes, on the hub or on any play window’s title bar: the Editors window opens at it, its draft the theme Hydra wears. Edit this theme… on a character’s Theme page in Settings opens it on that character’s theme instead.

Along the top:

• Start from: the theme the draft begins as. A built-in theme starts a new one laid over it, called My Despana or My Light; one of yours opens as it is, to change.
• Name: what the theme is called.
• over: the theme it is laid over, which it takes everything it does not say from; nothing for none.
• Wear while editing: every window wears the draft as you change it, while the page is open. Leave the page and Hydra wears its own theme again.
• Save: writes the theme to the themes folder. A built-in theme is never written over: save under another name.

Down the left, the sections: How to, a short version of this chapter; Generate; Pins; Shape; Frame; Type; and Import from Wrayth. On the right, the draft as it comes out: a room, story text, the bars, a button, a switch, a field and a choice, and under them every colour as a swatch, a row to a group. Point at a swatch for its name and value.

The theme file

A saved theme is a short TOML file, holding only what differs from its base:

base = "Despana"

[recipe]
seed = "#c9733a"

[pins]
health = "#112233"
fatal_crit = "#d03a3a"
creature_death = "none"

[shape]
bar_thickness = 14

[shape.corners]
bars = 0

[type]
story_font = "Iosevka"

The editor writes it for you; you can write one by hand too.

Making the colours

Generate makes every colour of the theme from two you choose, so they belong together: the links, the creatures, the speech and the channels all from one seed, each readable on the ground.

• Seed: a colour whose hue the theme is built round. Its lightness and strength set how bright every colour is. Click the swatch to choose one.

• Seeds from: the vivid colours of the theme you started from, offered as seeds. A click makes one the seed.

• Background: what every colour must read against. A light one makes a light theme.

• Scheme: how the colours spread round the colour wheel from the seed:

  Scheme
  monochrome	one hue, varied lightness and strength
  analogous	neighbours: calm, low contrast
  complementary	opposites: a strong pairing
  split	softer than complementary
  triadic	even thirds: vivid, balanced
  tetradic	two complementary pairs
  golden	the golden angle: the most separation
  compound	an analogous pair, and its opposite

• Spread: how far the scheme’s colours sit from the seed’s: 0.7 close, 1.4 far.

• Contrast: how readable every colour must be on the background: 3 is low, 4.5 the usual floor, 7 high.

• Separation: how different two colours of one group must be, so two channels, or health and stamina, never look alike: 0.04 low, 0.09 medium, 0.15 high.

• Room plate: the room name’s contrast on the plate under it: 2.5 subtle, 7 hard.

Some colours mean something by their hue, and keep it whatever the seed: health is red, mana blue, a warning amber, a creature’s spell coming orange. The generator moves only their lightness, to suit the background.

Over Despana the dials do nothing

Despana pins every colour as it is, and a theme laid over Despana takes its pins: the dials change nothing there. To make a theme from a seed, set over to nothing, or Start from Light, which is generated. Every colour you have not pinned is then made by the generator.

Pins

A pin keeps a colour exactly as you set it; everything else is made by the generator round it. Open Pins: every colour Hydra draws, by group.

Each row is a colour’s box, its swatch and its name, and for many, a row of small swatches:

• Tick the box to pin the colour as it is now; untick it to let the generator make it again.
• Click the swatch to choose a colour: that pins it.
• The small swatches are other hues the generator could give it. A click pins one.

The groups

Colours of one group are kept apart from each other, by Separation; colours of different groups may be alike, since they are never side by side.

None

A kind of line can be None: drawn as the story’s own text, with no colour of its own. The kinds are a creature’s death, a fatal crit, a creature preparing a spell, about to land a special, or recovering, a flare, a status landing on you, and each channel. Tick None beside it.

A fatal crit starts at None in every theme. A creature that cannot be crit to death dies by its death message, which is coloured as a death; the crit that killed one that can is a line of its own. Untick its None to give fatal crits a colour: it starts at the theme’s red, to change.

Each flare, each status, by name

Under flare and status_you, Each flare by name and Each status on you by name list every name the combat reader knows. Filter narrows the list. Tick a name to give it a colour of its own over its kind’s, or None to draw it plain; the count in the heading says how many have one. An acid flare can be green and a fire flare red, while the rest stay the flare colour.

Shape, frame and type

Shape

• Corners, each from 0, square, to 32:
  • Controls: buttons, fields, checkboxes, dropdowns and tabs.
  • Windows: windows, menus and popups.
  • Bars: the vitals and every other bar.
  • In panes: indicators, the compass’s cells, a find’s hits, and the outline of the window in use.
• Edges: an edge’s width on controls and windows.
• Density: how close controls sit and how much room is inside them: tight, normal or roomy.
• Buttons: how a button looks at rest: flat, its words alone until you point at it; outlined; or filled. Every style fills under the pointer.
• Scrollbar: its width.
• Windows and menus cast shadows.
• Gap between cells: between the cells of a custom window.
• Room inside a pane: round each widget, inside its pane.
• Bar thickness: the most a bar is thick, centred in its pane; 0 fills the pane.
• Title bars: a window’s title bar’s height, and a cell’s tabs’; 0 is the usual.
• Title text: where a window’s title sits: left, center or right.
• Tabs: how a cell’s tabs are drawn: plain, their words alone; separated, a line between each two; boxed, an edge round each, the shown one filled; or filled, each on the tab ground. A theme’s tabs are boxed unless it says otherwise. A cell can choose its own, under Tab look on any of its tabs’ pages in Settings. The grounds are the tab and tab_shown pins.

Frame

Frame draws a picture frame round every window and card: a frame kit from an installed pack, named by its pack and style. Frame kits come from Packs in the Editors window, under Frame kits. The base’s keeps the frame of the theme it is laid over; none draws none.

Thickness is how far in from a window’s edge its title and content keep; the whole frame is drawn at that scale. The frame is each window’s border, in place of its own edge, flush with it. Some kits’ decoration reaches further in, over the content – honey drips, thorns – but only in a window’s top half: below its middle nothing is drawn deeper than the thickness.

Type

• UI font and UI size: everything but the game’s words.
• Story font and Story size: the story, its streams and the room.
• Story line spacing: room added between two lines of the story and its streams.
• Fixed-width font and Fixed-width size: the tables the game lines up, Hydra’s tables, and the log window.
• Fallbacks: fonts tried in turn for a character a font lacks, a symbol or an accented letter. Add a fallback adds one; Take out removes it.
• Give a kind its own…: a kind of widget with a font or size of its own, Thoughts smaller or the Room in another font. One widget can have its own too, on its page in Settings.

A font is one in the fonts folder of Hydra’s data folder, a .ttf or .otf put there, or any font installed on the computer: open the list and type part of its name. A font takes a moment to load the first time; the window redraws once it has.

Examples

Each starts from Editors › Themes. Tick Wear while editing to see every window change as you go, and Save when it is right; then choose it on Settings › Hydra › Hub › Theme, or on one character’s Theme page.

A theme from one colour

Start from Despana, and set over to nothing, so every colour is generated. Click one of the Seeds from Despana, or the Seed swatch to choose your own colour, and try the Schemes: triadic for three hues round the wheel, analogous for a calm one. Name it and save.

A light theme

Start from Light: a warm white ground and its blue seed, every colour generated to read on it. Change the Seed for another accent, or the Background for another ground. To wear it only by day, tick Follow the computer’s dark or light mode on Settings › Hydra › Hub and choose it as the Light theme.

Each channel its own colour

Open Pins › Channels. Each channel colours its lines whole, the [Merchant] tag and all; click a channel’s swatch and choose. Tick None for a channel you would rather read as plain text.

Make fatal crits stand out

Open Pins › The story and the room. fatal_crit is at None: untick it, and choose its colour. A creature’s death message keeps the creature_death colour, so a kill by a crit and a kill by damage read apart.

A square, tight look

Open Shape. Set every Corner to 0, Density to tight, Buttons to outlined, and Tabs to filled, so every tab sits on a ground of its own.

Bring a Wrayth skin over

Open Import from Wrayth. Paste the path of a Wrayth skin (.skn) or settings file (.xml), give it a Name if you like, and press Import. Its preset colours, the room names, creatures, speech, whispers, thoughts, watching and links, become a theme over Despana. A skin’s pictures and fonts are not brought, only its colours.

From a play window, the same: .theme import <file>, or .theme import <file> as <name>.

One character in its own colours

On Settings, choose the character, and its Theme page: choose a Theme for its window alone, and an Accent over it. Two characters side by side are told apart at a glance. From its play window: .theme mine <name> and .theme accent <#rrggbb>.

Keybinds, macros and hotbars

One thing with three faces. A macro is a chain of commands with the logic: it waits for the roundtime, it puts you in a stance only when you are not in it, it keeps a reserve back. A keybind is a key for your hands. A hotbar is buttons for your eyes. Both run macros, and a macro also answers to a word of its own on the command line. Nothing is written twice: the macro holds the chain, and the key, the button and the word all point at it.

Macros are made on the Macros page of the Editors window, in an editor with every field explained on hover. This chapter goes through the chain language, macros and what they keep, keybinds and hotbars, the faces, and countdowns, what a button counts on its face.

Aliases

An alias is the plainest of the words: a trigger typed in place of one or more commands, with no logic. ls for look; s for get \1 from my \2, sell \1, stow all, typed as s sword back. Its target is the chain language below, less the behaviour words: commands, waits, rt and ct, with \? for everything typed after the trigger and \1, \2… for its first, second… word. An alias runs typed with Hydra’s symbol too, .s sword back, when the word is not one of Hydra’s commands.

Aliases are kept for everyone and for each character over that, in aliases.json. The Aliases page of the Editors window lists both, with a search; an alias opens as its steps on lines, with a Try with box that shows what a line would send without sending it, Save, a switch between the character’s own and everyone’s, and Take away. .alias edit <trigger> opens the page at a trigger, and .alias on the command line adds, removes and lists without the window.

The chain language

A chain is pieces with a comma between them. Each piece is one of:

stance off, rt, barrage

reads as stance offensive, then wait for roundtime, then barrage. Hydra sends nothing for the stance when you already stand in it, and waits out any roundtime before the stance and before the attack.

A comma inside quotes or brackets is kept, so a Lich command keeps its Ruby: ;e cast(901, "a rat"), look is two pieces. A comma in speech is cut, so write it 'Hello\, friend. A line break or \r cuts as a comma does, as the files Wrayth wrote them did.

Hydra waits on its own clock, which the game keeps: rt ends when the roundtime the game stated does, not after a guess. A wait is at most a minute. .stop stops a chain wherever it is.

The behaviour words

A behaviour word is a command Hydra carries out by reading the game first and the game’s answer after, in a chain: a macro, an alias, a key. A line typed and sent goes to the game as it is. The first behaviour word is stance.

stance <x> takes any of the six stances, or the first letters of one: stance off, stance def, stance gua.

1. Already in the stance asked for: nothing is sent.
2. In roundtime: it is waited for, since the game takes no command then.
3. Otherwise it is sent at once. Asked for defensive in a cast roundtime, the game sets guarded and says why, and that is taken as the answer.
4. Sent, the stance bar is the truth. The step is done when the bar shows the stance. If the game does not show it within a few seconds, the chain stops and the story says why.

Assaults

barrage, flurry, fury, gthrusts, pummel and thrash, with a target or without, are behaviour words too: Hydra sends weapon barrage and the rest. An assault strikes a few times a round over several seconds, so the chain waits for the assault to end, not for it to begin.

1. Not one of your techniques, not enough stamina, cooling down, or overexerted: nothing is sent, the chain stops and the story says why. What Hydra does not know yet stops nothing.
2. Roundtime and cast roundtime are waited out, then the assault sent.
3. The chain goes on when the game says the assault is over: its own last line, or a line that ends any assault (You complete your assault, Distracted, you hesitate, the target already dead). The roundtime after each round of strikes ends nothing.
4. A refusal, such as Barrage is still in cooldown. or You are still stunned., stops the chain with the game’s words.
5. With no end in 20 seconds, the chain stops and says so.

Only the chain waits. Anything else you type, click or run goes to the game as ever, and the game decides whether it ends the assault.

Written with weapon, as weapon barrage, an assault goes to the game as written: nothing is checked and the chain does not wait.

A ...wait

When the game answers a behaviour word with ...wait 1 seconds., Hydra waits it out and sends the word again, at most three times.

Macros

A macro has a name, its commands, and what it keeps: a key that runs it, a word that runs it from the command line, and the condition it runs under.

The editor

Open the Editors window at Macros: Menu › Editors › Macros. Every macro is listed on the left, everyone’s and this character’s own; the one chosen is in the form on the right. Every field says what it is for when you rest the pointer on it.

Save macro keeps it where Kept for says. Try runs the commands on the character now, as the form has them, before you save. Remove macro takes it out of its file.

To take several away at once, pick them in the list: Ctrl and a click adds a macro to the picked, Shift and a click picks every one from the last clicked to it. Remove at the top of the list takes the picked ones away, asked first, and the Delete key does the same while no field is being typed in. Every editor’s list works this way: aliases, hotbars, highlights and stream rules too.

The condition

A macro runs only when its condition holds. Not holding, the macro is unavailable: its button greys, and a press, its key or its word sends nothing and the story says why. The condition is built as a trigger’s When is: tests, any one or every one of which must hold, each marked red or green as it holds on the character right now.

The tests are the triggers’ tests, and the ones a hunting script checks before a command. Against a bigshot command check:

The target is the first creature in the room the character may attack. With no creature, every target test reads false.

A reserve is one test: stamina >= 60 points keeps sixty stamina back for something else. Put it in Runs only when and the macro greys under it. The manoeuvre’s own cost is the floor underneath: an assault word never sends with less than it costs, whatever the condition.

How often it runs

Under Advanced, Again after holds the macro for so many seconds after it ran: pressed sooner, it runs nothing and the story says so. Once per room runs it once in a room: pressed again there, it runs nothing until the character has moved. These are bigshot’s repeatdelay and once.

States

Also under Advanced, for the few who want them: more logic, the first state whose condition holds deciding. A state can make the macro unavailable, run other commands instead of its own, count down something else, and give its button a look of its own: other words, other colours, dimmed, another icon. Each state is said as a sentence, starred while it decides, and warned when a state above it holds whenever it does, so it never decides. + State offers the states the macro’s commands suggest, a spell’s mana or roundtime, and one of your own. The condition above is enough for most macros.

In the file

[[macros]]
name = "barrage"
commands = """
stance off
rt
barrage
"""
key = "F5"
set = 1
alias = "wb"
when = { type = "vital", vital = "stamina", cmp = ">=", value = 60, unit = "absolute" }
repeat_after = 3.0

[[macros.states]]
when = { type = "indicator", id = "stunned" }
chain = "stance def"

From the command line

A Lich script can run a macro the same way, since a .macro line typed by a script is a line typed.

Examples

The stance dance. Two macros on two keys. F5: stance off, rt, barrage. F6: stance def. Press F6 straight after F5 and Hydra waits the attack’s roundtime out before it asks for defensive.

A cast chain. stance off, prep 901, cast, rt, stance def: the prep and the cast go at once, the cast’s roundtime is waited for, then the stance comes back.

A finisher. barrage that runs only when the target’s health is at or under 20%: the button greys until the creature is nearly down.

A reserve. barrage that runs only when stamina is at least 60 keeps enough for a second manoeuvre you may need more.

Keybinds and hotbars

The faces of a macro: a key for the hands, a button for the eyes.

Keybinds

Open the Editors window and choose Keybinds; a play window’s Keys menu opens it too, working for that character. For at the top picks every character’s keys or one character’s own. Every key in effect is listed, with what it does and where that came from. A key is bound to one of:

Keys come in sets, 0 to 9, and a key switches which set is in use. A macro’s own key, set on the Macros page, is listed among the keybinds as macro: <name> in the set it names, or in every set when it names none, so a key two things claim is seen. A keybind in the keys file wins over a macro’s key on the same chord.

A send keybind’s text is a chain, as a macro’s commands are: its waits, rt, ct and behaviour words are carried out. For a condition, a countdown or a button, make a macro and bind the key to it.

Hotbars

A hotbar is a grid of slots, and each slot holds a macro. The macro is the button: its label, its icon, its colours, what it counts down, the looks its states give it, and what a press sends are all set on the Macros page. The bar is only the layout: its grid, the size of its buttons, and which macro sits in which slot. A macro looks and works the same on every bar it is on. A press runs the macro when its condition holds. While it does not, the button is drawn dim, and a press sends nothing.

Open the Editors window and choose Hotbars: Menu › Editors › Hotbars. Every bar is listed on the left, the character’s own and everyone’s; the bar chosen is drawn on the right as its widget draws it, and under that its slots. Click a slot and pick the macro it holds, or empty; drag a slot onto another to move it there. Macros page opens the macros, to make one or change how it looks. Pictures for buttons are kept on the Icons page of the same window.

A bar need not be on the screen for its keys to work: a macro’s key is the macro’s. The Hotbar widget on a play window shows the bars you choose to see.

Bars made before, by an earlier Hydra or brought from Vellum, had buttons with commands and looks of their own. The first time Hydra starts, each such button becomes a macro, named after its label, in the macros file beside the bar’s file, and its slot holds that macro. A button that already ran a macro gives the macro its label, icon, colours and states, where the macro had none. Both files as they were are kept beside them, ending .before-macros.

The controller

A controller’s binds are keybinds too, and may press a button or run a macro. The Controller page of the Editors window holds them.

From the command line

Countdowns

A button counts something down on its face: the seconds left of a roundtime, a cast roundtime, an effect, or a spell laid on the room. The countdown is the macro’s, set under Advanced › Counts down on the Macros page, so every button that runs the macro shows the same seconds, in the window, on the web page and in the terminal alike.

What can be counted

Timers in order

A macro may count several things, in order: the first that is running is shown. A buff’s time while it is up, then its cooldown’s once it has gone, is the usual pair. Each timer has a colour of its own, so the seconds say which they are at a glance – green while the buff holds, red while it cools; with none, the theme’s. + then on the Macros page adds the next timer.

[[macros]]
name = "barrage"
commands = "barrage"
countdown = [
  { source = "effect", category = "Buffs", name = "Enh. Dexterity", colour = "#4caf50" },
  { source = "effect", category = "Cooldowns", name = "Barrage", colour = "#c0392b" },
]

One timer is written as a table, countdown = { source = "roundtime" }; more than one as a list.

A state’s own countdown

A state may count down something else while it holds – Counts down instead under the state – so a button can show a spell’s time while it is up and the roundtime once it is not.

Spells laid on a room

Some spells stay in the room they were cast in and cannot be cast there again until they end. Hydra knows these by a table, data/room_spells.tsv: for each, the line that lays it, the line said while it lasts, the line that ends it, the refusal when you cast it where one already lies, and how long it lasts by its caster’s level. Breeze is the first row: a level 100’s blows for 297 seconds, in nine-second beats, and ends on the last beat inside its time.

The time left is known for a spell you laid yourself; one laid by someone else, or only heard by its beats, lasts until its stop line, or at most what a level 100’s would. The countdown uses it, and so does the trigger and macro condition room spell, so a button greys while Breeze already blows here, and a trigger can say when it is about to stop.

A spell not yet in the table is added from the lines seen in play.

A game controller

A controller plugged in works on the character whose play window has the keyboard. Its buttons do what a key does: send commands, fill the command input, or do one of Hydra’s own actions. One stick walks, the other scrolls, and a wheel of commands opens under a held button. The pad is read while it is connected, and the story says when one is connected or gone.

What a button does

Binds are written in controller.toml: one in the data folder for every character, and <game>_<name>.controller.toml beside a character’s layout for that one, whose binds are taken over everyone’s button by button. With no file at all Hydra’s own binds are used, and a file written for Vellum works as it is.

[controller]
start = "interact_mode"                  # Interact mode, begun or left
dpad_up = { macro_text = "up\r" }
south = { macro_text = "look\r" }
l2 = "controller_modifier"               # Held: chords another button
r2 = "controller_wheel"                  # Held: the command wheel
r3 = "controller_wheel:portals"          # Held: the room's ways out
select = "controller_overlay"            # The legend, shown or put away

"l2+south" = { macro_text = "stand\r" }  # a chord

The buttons are south, east, north, west, the four dpad_ directions, l1, r1, l2, r2, l3, r3, select, start and guide. A value is an action’s name, or { macro_text = "..." } for commands sent as typed. A macro naming <target_id> or <target_noun> acts on the thing interact mode has in focus, and is not sent with none.

A chord is a button pressed while modifiers are held. A button bound to controller_modifier does nothing on its own; held, it makes another button’s chord, l2+south. Only the bind with exactly the modifiers held is done, so holding l2 and pressing South never does South’s own bind.

The sticks

One stick walks, a step each time it is pushed a new way, in eight directions. The other scrolls the window in use, faster the further it is pushed. Which is which is set under Tuning. A push has to be firm and the return fair, so a stick wobbling at the edge of a direction does not step twice.

While a menu is open, the d-pad moves in it, South chooses and East closes, and no stick walks.

Interact mode

The interact_mode button begins it. The d-pad steps a focus through the things in the room and on you – up and down within a kind, left and right from kind to kind – and the scrolling stick does the same. South acts on the thing in focus, East leaves. The mode’s line shows at the window’s foot, and the thing in focus is marked wherever it is drawn.

The wheel

A button bound to controller_wheel holds a ring of commands open. Aim at a slice with the stick that does not walk, hold it there, and let go to fire. A slice with slices of its own is a folder: hold on it to open it, and on Back to come out. An analog trigger opens the wheel once pulled far enough and lets it go only when well released, so one resting near the point does not flicker it.

[[controller_wheel]]
label = "stance"

  [[controller_wheel.slices]]
  label = "offensive"
  command = "stance offensive"
  color = "#b03030"

A wheel of your own is controller_wheel:<name>. The portals wheel, controller_wheel:portals, is made from the room as it opens: every way out that is not a compass direction, and its doors and gates by their nouns; a crossing Hydra walks itself is fired as its go2.

Rumble and the legend

The pad rumbles when roundtime ends, when you are stunned, when you die, and for a highlight that asks for it. controller_overlay shows the legend down the play window’s right edge: the binds the file lists, a chord’s drawn strong while its modifiers are held.

The Controller page

Menu › Settings › Controller is tabs. Bindings lists every bind in effect, whose it is, what it does, and whether the legend lists it; a bind is added or changed in a form, its button picked from a list or captured by pressing it, up to two modifiers held with it, and what it does. Rumble picks the pattern for each moment, each tried on the pad with Test. Tuning is every field of [controller_tuning], written as it is let go. Wheels picks a wheel, the button that opens it, the stick that aims it and the angle of its first slice, and lays its slices out as a tree beside a drawing of the ring, where a slice is dragged, split with a right click or joined with its neighbour.

On Hydra’s own settings the page changes every character’s file; on a character’s, that character’s own.

On Windows a pad’s buttons reach a program only while one of its windows has the focus, so click the play window once after plugging in.

The web page on a phone has a wheel of its own, drawn for a thumb; it is kept with the phone’s buttons and copied to this computer and back on the page’s own terms.

Reports

Hydra keeps a ledger of what each character does: every experience pulse as the mind-state bar states it, and every hunt the combat reader saw, with its attacks, flares, hits and statuses. The ledger is one file for every character, hydra.db in the data folder, and nothing is ever sent to the game to fill it. Each kind is recorded unless the character’s Logs settings page switches it off: experience, login rewards, silver and bounty points, loot, combat and enhancives each have a row under Ledger, beside the player log’s own switch, which takes effect the next time the character logs in.

The enhancive items are in it too: every charge lost and every charged-until time as inventory enhancive list states them. Hydra asks for that list quietly as a character is seated, as it quits, and every five minutes while the benefits are on, each ask held back while a fight is on, a hostile creature is in the room or roundtime runs. The interval and the two warning thresholds are on the General page under Enhancives; an item at or under the charges, or charged until within the days, is warned of in the story once a list is seen. .enhancives lists each item with its charges, how long a charge takes while the benefits are on, and the day it runs out; .enhancives <item> lists one item’s charges lost with the gap between each; .enhancives together the readings where several items lost a charge at once; .enhancives scan asks for the list now. The Enhancive timers widget, among the Character widgets, draws each time-charged item as a bar counting down to its time, full until the end is within the minutes its page sets, then draining in a warning colour; items further off than its hours are left out, so a year’s potion sits out of the way of a half-hour one.

The reports read that ledger. There are two ways to them.

The Reports window

Menu → Reports opens the window, from the hub or from a play window’s title bar. From a play window it opens at that character; the picker at the top left chooses any character the ledger holds.

Down the left is the list, by family: Experience, Combat, and Flares, which opens to every flare recorded for the character, by name. The box above it finds a report by its name or by what it shows: type barrier and Intercepts is left, pulses and Mind. Enter runs the first that fits. A click on a report runs it.

The strip along the top sets what a report runs over:

• Latest hunt, Every hunt, Last n hunts or One hunt by id, for the combat reports that take a scope.
• Between, with a from and a to: two hunt ids for the combat reports, or two times for the experience report over a span. A time is 13:05 for today, 07-20 13:05 for this year, or 2026-07-20 13:05:52.
• Name, for the reports that take one: a creature’s noun.

Attacks and Creatures list every one over the scope, by damage, a page at a time. The row above them turns Recent on, newest first, with a number for only the last so many; sets the rows a page; and walks the pages.

The pane shows the report with its links live. A link runs that report in the pane: Intercepts links each barrier to its flare report, a hunt’s report links its creatures and attacks. Back and Forward walk what has been run, Refresh runs the report shown again, and Export writes it to a file under the data folder’s reports.

A hunt closing runs the report shown again on its own, so a hunt’s numbers are current without a click.

Experience

Every absorption pulse is a row: what the bar said was gained, in experience and in ascension, the field pool against its cap, the mind’s state and the bonuses on. The reports read those rows; the ones across time draw a bar a row, so a day or a week is seen at a glance. Each counts in whichever gain moved more over its span, which is ascension once a character is capped, and says which in its title. The time absorbing is the pulses’ own: a break longer than a pulse and a half counts as one pulse, so an hour away does not drag a rate down.

• Hours is the last 24, a bar an hour, newest last, with the mind state the hour mostly sat in and how long of it went idle. exp hours 12 is the last twelve.
• Week is seven days, a bar each, with each day’s rate and time absorbing, against the seven days before, and the best and worst day.
• Clock is the average for each hour of the day over fourteen days: when the gains come. exp clock 30 averages over thirty.
• Mind is where the time went: each state’s share of it and what a pulse absorbed there, how long the pool sat at its cap (a kill past the cap absorbs nothing) or empty, and how far apart the pulses came. exp mind week, or two times, widens it.
• Hunts is one row a hunt, newest first: its length, its kills, what was absorbed while it ran and the rate, the creature seen most, and its id linked to its combat report. exp hunts 20, exp hunts week.
• Bonus is each bonus on against off, a pulse’s worth either way, and where the span’s gains came from: absorbed, bounties, the brooch.
• Everyone is every character today on one table, with each one’s mind state and last pulse.
• Level is the level reached and when the next comes at today’s pace, this week’s, and the best day’s; at the cap, the pace in what still moves.

Session, Today, Daily, Last pulses, Instant and Between times add a span up, as before.

Flares

A flare’s report says how often it fired over every attack it rode, by attack, by the weapon in hand and, for a bow, by volley round; then what it did when it fired. The weapon table folds an item’s ids into one row, with by item opening every id; effects opens its rate with each effect up and without it, the ten widest gaps among effects up and down for a hundred swings each; fires alongside lists the flares that fire with it.

The Effects report lists what was up over the hunts, each effect under its name: the dialog writes a value or the time left into the text (“Empowered (+29)”, “Hypothermia (4) 9 mins”), and those are one row, with a link to the effect’s values, each as it was written, how many times it went up and for how long.

Gemstones

A hunt is recorded with the gemstones equipped as it opened, since a set cannot change in combat. A hunt’s report lists them with their ranks, and a gemstone flare’s report (mirror image, hunter’s afterimage, the shroud) says the property it belongs to and its rate at each rank it ran at. The set comes from gem list all, read when it passes and kept in the character’s file; equipping or unequipping a gemstone keeps it current.

Barriers

Wall of Thorns blocks an attack before any roll, so a block says nothing of whether it would have hit; Barkskin absorbs the next hit, so every absorb would have. The reports keep the two apart: Intercepts counts the attacks blocked before any roll, then of those past the barriers, the ones that would have hit, absorbed or landed. The hunt keeps when each barrier was up (see Effects), so the thorns’ report gives blocks over the attacks that came while the wall was up, beside the one in five the spell says, and the lash that poisons over the blocks, beside its one in four; the bark’s, absorbs over what would have hit while it was up.

Gear

Every swing of yours is recorded with what the hands held as it was made, by the item’s own id, so two bows of one noun are two bows to the reports. A volley’s arrows carry their round. A flare the gauntlets lent, told by “You feel drained.” before it, is the gauntlets’ and not the bow’s. The items worn are kept per hunt as spans: from the second an item was first seen worn to the second it was seen gone, so a swap during a hunt is a closed span and an open one. An item is one name across logins, where the game’s own id for it changes with each. A flare’s report then shows its rate by the weapon in hand, by round, and by source; a flare that fires on a first flight only leaves a volley’s later rounds out of its base. Gear lists each item held with the flares seen on it, the gauntlets’ flares, and the items worn over the hunts.

Effects

Every spell, buff, debuff and cooldown the game lists is kept over a hunt the same way, as a span from the second it was seen up to the second it was seen down; Barkskin, which shows no bar while up, is read off its lines. Nothing is copied per attack: an attack’s active set is whatever spans cover its time. Effects lists what was up over a scope, in how many hunts and for how long against the hunting time. A hunt’s report says what was up as it opened. A flare’s report ends with the effects that were up for some of its swings and not the rest, with the rate each side, which is where a buff or a gemstone property shows whether it changes anything. Names are kept once, in one table, so the file does not repeat them: a flare, a spell, a property, a piece of gear is a number in the rows and a name in the table.

Syncing

The first time a character is seated with nothing stored, Hydra sends the reports that teach its facts once: info full, skills full, the PSM lists, inventory enhancive totals, gem list all, society and the rest. They are asked quietly, one at a time: their long answers stay out of the story, which says only each stage (Sync 2/12: skills full) and when all are done. After that, play keeps them current and nothing is sent at login. .sync sends them all again, .sync <group> one of them, and .sync reset drops what is stored first.

Typed

The same reports answer on the command line, in a character’s play window: .exp for the experience reports and .cstats for combat. .exp help and .cstats help list every one. Three words change the ledger and are only ever typed: .exp addgain <n> for a gain the bar did not state, .exp clean to drop pulses with no gain, and .exp reset to drop every row of that character’s, which asks first.

Filling the ledger from recordings

A session Hydra recorded (its .bytes files, when recording is on) can be read back into the ledger with Hydra closed:

hydra import logs

Each session is replayed as it was played, and every hunt and pulse it holds is recorded. A file is never read twice, a session that overlaps hunts or pulses already on file is refused, and a pulse already on file is skipped.

Lich’s own logs read back the same way: point hydra import at a Lich logs folder, or any folder under a GSIV-<Name> one, and its .xml files are read (the plain .log files beside them hold nothing a report can use). The folder names the character and its game; the files Lich cut a login into are read as one session, so a hunt across a cut stays whole. A log older than the game’s experience numbers on the mind bar brings its hunts but no experience.

hydra import "E:\Gemstone\data\log archive\GSIV-Nisugi\2026\01\xml"

Login rewards and store Simucoins

The game gives a free reward the first time a character logs in each day, and the store gives each account free Simucoins once a month. Hydra keeps track of both, and can collect them for you.

The daily login reward

The game’s day turns at midnight Eastern. On a character’s first login of that day the game says two lines: it thanks you for logging in, with the streak of consecutive days, and it names the reward. Hydra reads them whenever a character logs in through it and keeps one row a character a day in the ledger: the reward, the streak, any login bridge the game spent, and both lines whole. Nothing is ever sent to the game to learn this.

Ask for it on the command line:

• .rewards says whether today’s reward is in for this character, at what time, and lists the last ten.
• .rewards all shows every character’s latest reward and whether today’s is in.
• .rewards store shows each account’s store Simucoins (below).

The same three are in Menu → Reports, under Login rewards. hydra import also reads rewards out of old recordings, so the history fills in from the days you played before.

A day marked given before Hydra saw it is one where the character had already logged in somewhere else, so the reward came earlier and Hydra did not hear it.

Claiming it for you

Turn on Claim the login reward in Settings → Rewards, and pick the time. Hydra then logs in for the reward alone, for every character on the roster whose account has a kept password, and no more than that: it connects, hears the reward and disconnects. Nothing is played.

It is careful about when:

• Only once the time you set has passed today, by your own clock.
• Only if Hydra was running when that time came. A Hydra started later waits until nothing has been connected through it for ten minutes, so starting Hydra to play is never met by a login of its own.
• Never on an account that has a character connected through Hydra. That account is left alone and tried again every few minutes until the reward is in or the game’s day turns.
• Only for a character whose reward for today is not already in.

Hydra cannot see a character played in another program, such as Wrayth. A scheduled login on the same account can log that character out. Choose a time you are not playing, or list the character under Never log in for.

Each login ends with quit, as you would leave, so the character is not left standing in the game. A character the game hangs up on before it says is tried three times a day at most.

A login the game refuses, a wrong password, is not tried again for hours, so a bad password cannot lock the account.

The setting is the file rewards.toml in the data folder, which the page writes. The login reward and the store are separate switches: the login reward is on when time is set, the store when store = true, and either works without the other. With neither there is no file and nothing is claimed.

time = "19:07"                     # your local time of day
skip = ["GS3:Dicate", "Nerten"]    # never log in for these
store = true                       # the month's store Simucoins (its own switch)

The store’s monthly Simucoins

With store = true (Claim the store’s Simucoins on the Rewards page, off until you turn it on, and independent of the login reward) Hydra signs in to the store at store.play.net and claims the month’s Simucoins for each account. Signing in to the store does not disturb a character playing, so it does not wait for anyone to be idle.

The store says when the next one comes, as a countdown on its page: Next Subscription Bonus in 3d, 20h. Hydra adds that to the time of its visit, and an hour for what the store leaves off, keeps the result in the ledger and goes back when it arrives; it does not look every day. If the store says nothing Hydra can read, or offers no bonus (an account with no subscription), it looks again after a day. The log line [store] ... says what was claimed, and .rewards store shows the last claim, the balance and the next date for each account.

Silver and bounty points

Hydra keeps what the game says about your silver and bounty points, one row a line in the ledger: silver found on your own searches, by the fossil charm, out of a box or with a bounty’s reward; silver a shop paid you, with the shop named; silver you paid a shop or handed to someone; a locksmith’s fee and tip; every deposit and withdrawal and a note’s surcharge; and the bounty points a task earned. Nothing is ever sent to the game to learn this; the rows come from the lines you would have read anyway.

A note withdrawal is the one line that never states its amount. Hydra takes it from the withdraw you typed just before, so a note written for a withdrawal typed elsewhere (by a script behind Hydra, say) records only its surcharge.

Because of that, a note you deposit by name while standing in a bank (deposit note, deposit scrip, deposit chit) is sent as deposit all. Coins deposited by amount, and anything typed outside a bank, go as typed. A bank is a room the map knows as one.

Ask for it on the command line:

• .silver shows today’s sums for this character: silver in (found and sold), out (bought, paid, fees and tips), the net, what was banked (deposits less withdrawals), then each kind, picked up from a companion among them, and the last ten lines.
• .silver all shows every character’s sums today.

The game’s day turns at midnight Eastern. Both are in Menu → Reports, under Silver and bounty points.

Silver found is credited to whoever found it. When one of your characters searches or mugs, the game tells only that character what the pile holds, and the pile on the ground gets one id everyone sees. Hydra follows the pile by that id: when another of your characters picks it up, by hand or by the fossil charm, that is recorded as picked, with the finder named, and not as new silver, so a household’s total counts it once. A pile nobody of yours dropped counts for what the charm says it held, and for nothing when picked up by hand, since that line states no amount. Two finds that land on one pile, a search and a mug in the same breath, stay one pile, and the pile is the first finder’s; each find is still credited to whoever made it. The coins your own search gathers as it ends are the same silver the search stated, counted once.

Loot

Hydra keeps what the game says of loot, one row an event in the ledger: a creature searched, with its silver and every item it had; a creature mugged, with the silver rifled; a box opened, with what it held, and the coins gathered out of it; an item appraised at a shop, with what was said and offered; an item sold, with what it fetched. Nothing is ever sent to the game to learn this.

An item is one thing throughout. The game names it by an id that lasts one session, so Hydra keeps the item as its own row and the ids it has worn, and the ruby found on a berserker, appraised at the jeweler’s and sold there is one item with three events. Items are shared across your characters by those ids: the game names one thing by one id for everyone in the room, so what Zoleta found and Nisugi sold is one item, found by her and sold by him.

Ask for it on the command line:

• .loot shows today for this character: searches, mugs and boxes, the silver and items found, what was sold, and the last ten items with their paths (found on what, appraised for how much, sold for how much where, and by whom when it was another of your characters).
• .loot all shows every character today: items found and sold, and for each seller, how many of the items were found by someone else and what those fetched.
• .loot creatures shows this month’s creatures by what they carried: searches, silver, items, and what the items sold for.
• .loot cap shows this month’s items as appraised against what they sold for.
• .loot types shows this month’s items by type: gem, wand, jewelry, skin, box and the rest, each with how many were found, what the shops said they were worth, how many sold and for how much. The type is one word from the item’s name and noun, by rules Hydra carries; an item no rule knows is other.
• .loot boxes shows the last twenty boxes you found: what they came off, who opened them, what was inside, the coins, what the contents fetched, and the locksmith pool’s fee and tip. .loot box <number> opens one.
• .loot cap shows this month’s loot cap for your account. The game thins loot per account by who searches, whoever sells, so every item is credited to its finder and counted with every character played on the finder’s account. The account is never named in a report: it goes by its characters. It shows what the month’s finds are worth before any bonus (estimated) against what they sold for (realised), by type and day by day. An item’s own value is its loresong, the gem shop’s word, a refusal as too valuable (the pawn cap, 25,000), or an appraisal or sale with your bonus divided out; an item with none of those takes the price book’s figure for its name, and a box not yet opened the book’s figure for boxes of its noun. .loot cap last is the month before, .loot cap all every account.
• .loot book shows the price book: what each name has been worth before the bonus, on average, learned from every appraisal, sale, loresong and opened box in the household. .loot book wand, or any words, narrows it. A skin’s figure is rough: the furrier’s price falls with your cap and with the sell pressure on that creature’s skin.
• .loot pace shows this week’s yield by searches into the week, a looter at a time, so you can tell when the juice is no longer worth the squeeze and swap looters. It reads a signal a window of a hundred searches: silver a search (the default), the share of searches that found nothing (.loot pace empty), or silver and the items’ estimated value a search (.loot pace value). Each looter is set against their own week’s start, so every looter is on one axis and the knee, the first window under half the start, is marked. .loot pace last is the week before. The last eight weeks’ totals a looter are drawn beside it.
• .loot gems shows your ascension gemstones against the searches it took: this week’s and this month’s searches and finds, the searches since the last gemstone, the average a gemstone, whether you may still find one (the game allows one a week and three a month; the week turns Sunday midnight Eastern, the month on the first), everyone’s standing, and the last ten found, each with the creature it came off and the searches before it.
• .loot dust shows gemstone dust the same way.
• .loot keys shows keys and locks found, and .loot legendary legendary treasures, each against every creature searched.

For gemstones and dust only a creature of the ascension hunting grounds counts as a search, by the list Hydra carries; the Empyrean Onslaught’s invaders are counted beside it, (+12 onslaught), since whether they count is not settled. A creature sent fleeing by an evil eye counts as searched. A gemstone at a companion’s feet is recorded as seen, not found; it is theirs, and their own Hydra records it as found.

The game’s day and month are Eastern. All of these are in Menu → Reports, under Loot.

Beside every event Hydra keeps the room it happened in, and beside a sale or an appraisal the town, the kind of shop (pawn, gem, furrier) and the trading and racial bonus you sold under: a twelfth of your influence and trading bonuses together, at most 28 percent, and 5 percent more in a town that favours your race. The bonus is kept with the sale so what an item was worth before it can always be told from what it fetched, whatever your skills are later. Your account, level, race, profession and trading figures are kept as a row of their own whenever they change: the loot cap is an account’s, counted by who searches, so every find is credited to its finder and grouped by the finder’s account, whoever sells it.

An item that comes back from the locksmith pool, or that you carry through a logout, is a new id to the game and the same item to Hydra. A box handed back is the box dropped, by its name and the order the boxes went in. For the logout, Hydra asks the game for your whole inventory once you are in and again when you type quit or exit, quietly, and matches the two: the same thing in the same container keeps its history. A session that ends without a quit keeps the inventory from its login, so what you found in it starts afresh next time.

The value lines only some characters produce are read the same way, with nothing asked of the characters who never produce them: a loresong’s worth and quality for the gem in hand; a purify song’s outcome (improved, perfect, or shattered); a skin or a bundle appraised by hand; a skin made into a bundle or added to one; the furrier’s sale; the gem shop refusing an item as too valuable today (the pawn cap applies); the pawnbroker calling one worthless; a whole bag sold at once; a wand duplicated; and a ring given up to the Chronomage’s agent for a discount. A shop is known by the shape of its line: the pawnbroker glances, the jeweler examines, the furrier appraises and pays. A skinning that failed is kept too, with what it ruined.

Not yet read: what a mug scatters to the ground beyond its silver.

The Uberbar

One panel of what a hunter glances at, beside the injury doll: the day’s numbers on the right, the bars under them. Add it as any widget, from Layout → Add a widget, under Character.

The labels beside the doll:

Under the labels, still beside the doll, the four vitals, each saying its numbers alone. The favor sits under the doll. Across the whole panel below, the bars, each with the words the Lich uberbar gave it:

Every row is a switch on the widget’s own page, so the panel shows what you want and no more. Under the switches, a colour a bar: each bar is filled in the theme’s colour until you pick one there, the four vitals each their own, and an emptied colour is the theme’s again. The day’s numbers come from the ledger, read every ten seconds off the window’s thread; the rest is the game’s, live. The doll wears the picture of your first Injuries widget, when you have one.

The panel follows uberbar_eo’s layout, so a Lich window can go. What it does not have: the script’s debug lines, and its loud experience report.

For developers

Hydra is written in Rust, as a workspace of crates from the game connection up to the windows. Every crate’s public items are documented, and the API reference is that documentation, rebuilt with the guide from the source each release.

Hydra’s source is kept in a private repository. The public repository holds what players reach: the releases and this site.

HydraFE Privacy Policy

HydraFE is a player-made app for playing GemStone IV, a game run by Simutronics. It is not made by or affiliated with Simutronics. This policy says what HydraFE does with what you give it.

What HydraFE collects

Nothing. HydraFE has no account of its own, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking. It sends nothing about you to its maker or to anyone else, beyond the push relay described below, if you use push.

What stays on your phone

• Your GemStone IV account name and password, when you log in on the phone and ask HydraFE to keep the password. They are kept in the iPhone’s Keychain, on this device only, and are not included in backups.
• The computers you pair with: each one’s name, address, port and pairing code, kept in the Keychain on this device only.
• What your characters play: the game’s text, your settings and Hydra’s logs, kept in the app’s own folder on the phone. Deleting the app deletes them.

Where your information goes

• To Simutronics, when you log in on the phone: your account name and password go to Simutronics’ login service, and your play goes to and from its game servers, as with any GemStone IV client. Simutronics’ own terms and privacy policy cover what it does with them.
• To your own computer, when you play through Hydra running on a computer on your home network: the app shows that computer’s page, and what you type goes to it. Nothing passes through anyone else.

Push notifications

Push is optional: it is on only if you allow notifications and give a trigger in Hydra a push action. Then your computer’s Hydra sends each alert, sealed so that only your phone can read it, to a relay run for HydraFE, which hands it to Apple. While it passes an alert along, the relay sees your phone’s Apple push address; it stores neither that address nor the alert. It keeps only a one-way fingerprint of each computer’s own access token. The relay’s web server keeps the usual request log (time, network address, and which page was asked for) for about two weeks. Apple’s own privacy policy covers what Apple does when it delivers the alert.

What the app asks permission for

• Local network: to find Hydra running on your computers at home, and to connect to it.
• Camera: only to scan the pairing code your computer’s Hydra shows. No picture is kept or sent anywhere.

Children

HydraFE is not directed at children under 13 and collects nothing from anyone.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version is posted at the same address, with the date below.

Contact

Questions about this policy: nisugi.gs4@gmail.com

Last updated: 25 October 2026.