Every quest is a real command.
Your first job in Node City is finding out who you are. Then where you are. Then what the last tenant of Room 14 left behind. Every quest teaches a real Linux command, and you solve it by typing it. Hints point the way. The typing is yours.
nc_48213@civos:~$ whoami
nc_48213
Practice makes it muscle memory.
Short runs on a fresh machine every time. No time limit, just a stopwatch and your best record. Come back, beat yourself, earn medals.
Round 3 of 5 · You are in: /srv/archive · 0:21
A city that runs on one OS.
Walk real streets on a live map. Check in at Dot's hostel, drop by Vic's pawnshop, find the radio club in the University basement. Everyone here has a name. And a system name CivOS gave them.
CivOS: resident nc_48213 registered.
One person's junk is Vic's inventory.
Search Sea Halt. Dig through the pawnshop bin. Dead phones, tangled cables, a router that gave up. Take them apart, sell the parts. Vic counts everything twice.
Vic: "That's from my bin. ...I'll still pay."
Build it. Then make it work.
Kit has run the University radio club for fifty years. He'll give you a board and watch. Find the parts, match the numbers, put it together. That's half of it. The other half is in the terminal.
Kit: "I don't fix things. I watch people fix things. Cheaper."
Some finds have a life on them.
Every now and then you'll pick up someone's lost drive. Mount it. Look around. Nobody will tell you the story. You'll have to read it yourself.
$ ls /media/usb
A letter. A host. A deadline.
Letters come in the dark: find a file, add a line to a list, bring back what a script wrote. Nobody tells you how. You take the job, open the terminal and do it.
- From mira_k
Put me on the night pass list before 06:00. Kovacs M., room 317, same as the others. Send it back.
$45 · 3 Nerve · 35 min - nc_48213@dark:~$ grep 31 passes/night.txt | sort
Horvat T. 312 23:00-06:00 Lindqvist A. 314 23:00-06:00
nc_48213@dark:~$ echo "Kovacs M. 317 23:00-06:00" >> passes/night.txt - From mira_k
got it. thanks.
+$45 · +2 reputation
CivOS is looking for you.
In the dark, every second and every command burns your cover. Run out and the connection is traced: you're back in the light, and the job is still waiting. Nerve pays for the job itself. Both come back only in the light.
This page is burning it too. Look up.
Broadcast message from civos@node (NCT 02:14):
Unregistered device near Sea Halt.
Fast hands last longer here. That's what drills in the light are for.
The same city, after dark.
Birches through the concrete. No trains stop here. The camera on the pole is on.
The same city, after dark.
Room 14 with the lights off. Nobody knocks here.
The same city, after dark.
The pawnshop's back room. Dead routers on the shelves, one amber bulb.
He looks at you. He says nothing.
The dark goes deeper.
No level gets you through.
Your level counts what you've learned. Here it counts for nothing. The dark remembers only what you did: clean jobs open better letters, late ones cost you.