On screen you see a bazaar, an oasis or a mountain pass. What the engine sees is a graph: nodes, and the edges that join them. Every rule in the game is defined on that graph, not on free geometry.
The distinction matters because it decides what model you can build in your own head. You measure distance not in pixels but in how many edges away something is.
Nodes
Nodes are the places you can stand. Each one may carry tags:
start— where the caravan sets out.exit— where you finish the level. With more than one character, each may have an exit of their own.hide— a hiding spot. Anyone standing here is invisible to the sight check, and enemies never step onto it.toll— a toll node. Entering costs coins from your inventory.blocker— a sight blocker. A stall, a wall. No line of sight passes over it.
A level holds between 18 and 30 nodes. The number is deliberately small: the board has to be readable at a glance.
Edges
Edges are the paths joining two nodes, and they normally work both ways. There are two exceptions:
- One-way edge — a ladder, a chute. Passable in one direction only. At most thirty percent of a level's edges are one-way; the sound of a bell stone crosses them in both directions, and only walking is restricted.
- Door — it has an id, and it stays shut in both directions until the matching key is collected. A closed door also breaks lines of sight; once opened it stays open permanently and no longer blocks them.
Items
Items sit on nodes and are collected automatically when you arrive:
- key — bound to a door's id, and yours for the rest of the level.
- coin — for paying tolls.
- bell stone — throw it and the noise pulls threats towards the sound.
- relic — an object belonging to the story. It is found only in two levels per act; in those levels it is the target of the third star and the key to the hidden levels.
Enemies taken off the board
When an enemy is taken down, it leaves the board: it no longer stands on its node, does not act in the enemy phase, builds no line of sight, and contact with it produces no capture. Downed figures are counted off the board, in a tray. There is no separate command for this: the takedown is the result of an ordinary move.
What sits on top of this
The graph alone is not a puzzle; the threats make it one. How the chains are computed is on Sight, which situations end the road is on Capture, and each of the nine rules is covered in the rule catalogue.