Metadata-Version: 2.4
Name: plate9
Version: 1.2.6
Summary: Plate9: a first-person game of memory, wagers and gold plates at The Ninth Ember
Keywords: plate9,card-game,memory,strategy,science-fiction,pyside6
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3
Classifier: Topic :: Games/Entertainment
Classifier: Environment :: X11 Applications :: Qt
Classifier: Operating System :: Microsoft :: Windows
Requires-Python: <3.14,>=3.11
Description-Content-Type: text/markdown
Requires-Dist: PySide6<7,>=6.8
Requires-Dist: numpy<3,>=2.3.5
Requires-Dist: numba<1,>=0.63.1

![Plate9 1.2.1 gameplay at The Ninth Ember, with Korr Vahl, Astra, and the new gold playing plates](https://res.cloudinary.com/vppzdwxg/image/upload/v1791505912/Plate9-1.2.1-Gameplay.jpg)

# Plate9 — The Ninth Ember

**Version 1.2.6 · An extraordinary custom card game from the multiverse.**

Beyond familiar skies, The Ninth Ember overlooks a galactic spaceport. Brass light falls across a table of thin metal playing cards. Two travelers take their seats opposite you, each bringing a different memory, temperament, and appetite for risk. The dealer waits. You have thirty seconds to remember your nine.

**Plate9 is an original, first-person card game of memory, wagers, and lasting progress.** Its own rules combine a concealed 3 × 3 board with rank matching, side challenges, gold plates, and the pursuit of nine locks. Every incoming card asks a question: where does it belong, how much is that possibility worth, and what have the other players already shown you?

Your story continues beyond the next pot. Build a career, earn rare time crystal sculptures, invite unfamiliar opponents, and trade shares in the companies that keep the Ninth Ember and its surrounding world alive. This is a place to return to, with a table to master and a record that grows with you.

## Nine cards. A table full of possibilities.

Play against two computer opponents at a three-seat table. Each seat begins with **200 credits**, and every hand opens with a **one-credit ante**.

1. **Remember your nine.** Study and arrange your opening cards during a 30-second memory window. When it closes, ordinary faces disappear and their positions stay fixed.
2. **Choose your commitment.** Inspect your incoming card privately and place it face down over an eligible slot. That committed card cannot be peeked at again.
3. **Read the stakes.** Check, raise, call, or fold as the legal choices allow. Offer separate, funded side challenges on whether another player's play will match.
4. **Reveal or Stay.** Reveal your hand, or use a legal Stay over an open gold plate to keep the top card concealed and that slot occupied.
5. **Build toward gold.** Revealed ordinary rank matches create gold plates. Qualifying victories over gold can earn locks, changing the board you carry into later rounds.

Matches depend on **rank rather than suit**. A pair beats a high card; draft showdowns can produce triples, which beat pairs. Higher ranks decide hands within a category, and equal highest eligible hands split the pot. A revealed ordinary match can improve your board even when someone else wins the main pot.

The two great objectives give each table its longer arc:

- **Catch 9:** turn all nine slots into gold plates. Earned progress banks immediately. Continue toward Plate9, or settle the table and begin another with a confirmed buy-in.
- **Plate9:** lock all nine gold plates. The table settles its remaining obligations, records the achievement, and banks the result.

Locks have their own conditions. Qualifying tie takeovers and draft showdowns can earn them; an ordinary gold-pair win does not automatically lock a plate. The illustrated player guide explains these decisions through worked card examples.

## A fresh chance every eight rounds

Each eight-round cycle leads to the **Trip**, a conditional challenge that rewards accurate memory. Eligible open gold plates can also be exchanged for ordinary cards before the next cycle.

A new **30-second memory window** gives you another way to shape your board. Select an eligible face-down ordinary card, confirm the replacement, and study its new face for the time remaining. Each eligible slot can be refreshed once. Declining reveals nothing; replacing a card does not extend the timer. Protected Stays remain covered.

Replacement cards use an **independent 52-card deck**. The primary deck supplies the 27 opening board cards, 24 normal play cards, and one conditional Trip card. Upcoming normal draws and the Trip are fixed before replacements are taken, so refreshing a slot cannot alter that sequence. Gold drafts use their own comparison supply.

## Forty opponents, each with a presence

The guest gallery brings together **40 opponents across four classes**. All 32 original guests are available from the start; eight mystery guests arrive through the Time Crystal Collection.

| Class | Available from the start | Mystery invitations |
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| Guard | 10 | 2 |
| Veteran | 10 | 2 |
| Super | 8 | 2 |
| Emperor | 4 | 2 |

Every guest has a detailed portrait, biography, playing style, and **Logic, Recall, Patience, and Pressure** ratings. Browse their profiles, watch the selected portrait's natural blink, and choose the company you want across the table. Among the Emperor guests is Astra, whose profile carries the credit **Co-Creator of Staqtapp-TDS MC**.

Opponents reason from their observations, public actions, available credits, and uncertainty. Concealed cards belonging to other seats and the future deck order are unavailable to them. Different traits and reasoning budgets give the classes distinct ways of handling memory, caution, pressure, and risk.

Guests can change during a table. The incoming opponent inherits the seat's cards and funded obligations. The handoff lets you retain its existing free credits or arrange a fresh 200-credit stack at the next hand boundary. Tables with guest changes or human rebuys still earn ordinary play rewards, but are unrated and cannot earn Astra's Respect.

## A career worth returning to

Your career holds **banked credits, experience, a skill rating, badges, collected sculptures, and card finishes**. Pending table rewards are shown separately, so you can see what is already yours and what the current table may still earn.

New tables use a fixed **200-credit buy-in**, reviewed before confirmation. If your bank cannot cover it, insurance assistance fills the shortfall. Assistance is recovered from your remaining stack at cash-out; any unrecovered portion is forgiven. An eligible between-hand rebuy follows the same confirmation process and preserves your cards and protected Stays.

**Cash out & leave** settles accepted challenges and returns your remaining stack after assistance recovery. Committed main stakes and provisional, unbanked rewards are forfeited when you leave early; previously banked rewards remain yours. Early departure from a rated table can lower your rating. Natural table endings cash out automatically. Saving and resuming an unfinished table keeps its existing funds committed and never charges a second buy-in.

Experience has two clear purposes: **Lifetime XP** determines your career level, while **Available XP** buys time crystals. Collecting spends your available balance without reducing your lifetime record or level.

| Major achievement | XP reward |
| --- | ---: |
| Catch 9 | 1,500 |
| Plate9 | 7,500 |
| Astra's Respect — a qualifying completed-table victory with Astra seated | 3,000 |

These achievements can reward you again on a new table. Catch 9 banks earned progress immediately; other provisional rewards bank when the table completes.

Five **repeatable XP pursuits** reward settled hands, new gold plates, locks, eligible Trip matches, and natural table completions. Each completed pursuit banks its XP immediately. Finishing the full set adds a **250-XP bonus** and begins another pursuit cycle. Gold, locks, and other milestones also contribute to your progress.

## Time crystals and hidden company

The **Time Crystal Collection** contains **14 sculptures**: spacecraft, observatories, intricate machines, and ceremonial objects preserved in luminous crystal. Each has its own artwork, story, XP price, and dated ownership certificate.

Prices range from **500 to 45,000 available XP**. A first major achievement can put an early acquisition within reach; rarer pieces provide goals for a longer career.

Sculptures carry invitations to **eight playable mystery guests**, two in each class. Inspect the invitation and cost before purchasing, then meet the newly available guest in the gallery. Some sculptures share an invitation; those relationships are identified before purchase, and another sculpture still adds a distinct piece to your collection.

Banked credits offer a separate personal touch through the table's card finishes: **Ember Brass, Aurora Teal, Obsidian Pearl, and Imperial Violet**.

## The Ninth Ember Exchange

The club has an economy beyond its tables. Open the graph icon beside Career, or press **Ctrl + E**, to enter a dedicated stock trading window built for Plate9's world.

Trade **60 fictional companies across 10 sectors**, connected to the Ninth Ember, its suppliers, and the surrounding spaceport. The Exchange brings research, orders, and your portfolio together in the game's brass-and-teal style:

- **Explore the market:** search company names and tickers, filter sectors, follow a watchlist, and sort rising or falling shares.
- **Read the charts:** switch between line and candlestick views, inspect prices and volume, and compare 10-, 30-, or 80-minute ranges.
- **Follow the world:** read company news and track the Ember 60 index alongside individual issuers.
- **Manage your holdings:** review quantities, cost basis, portfolio value, unrealized changes, and realized results.
- **Trade with a record:** review each order before confirmation and revisit the latest 200 saved transaction receipts.

Quotes update every **20 seconds while Plate9 is open**, including when the card table is paused. Market conditions, sector movements, individual company shocks, and irregular news interact to create changing prices without repeating wave patterns. Market randomness is separate from card dealing. The initial simulated chart archive covers 40 minutes and grows to a retained maximum of 80 minutes. Closing Plate9 freezes the Exchange; returning from computer sleep processes at most one update.

Orders buy or sell **whole shares using banked credits**. The **0.35% fee, with a 0.05-credit minimum**, is shown before confirmation. You can sell only shares you own, with a limit of 100,000 shares per company. Table stakes, assistance, pending rewards, and XP are unavailable for trading. News provides context, not a promise of the next move.

Amounts are accounted for in exact hundredths of a credit. Fractional cash remains in the Exchange, while whole banked credits remain available for table buy-ins and finishes. Holdings, fees, watchlists, and receipts survive a restart. Credits and shares save together; a failed save cancels the order, and a changed quote requires a fresh review.

## See the thinking with Ting

The **Ting decision terminal** lets you look more closely at your opponents' play. Open the right rail or press **T** to inspect the current phase, legal alternatives, public wager costs, credit consequences, recent betting actions, and the method used to choose a move.

Detailed receipts include guest traits and measured processing times. Concealed decisions remain sealed until their phase resolves; private cards and remembered information stay private. The terminal keeps the **latest 25 receipts**, with detail controls, scrolling, and a clear-history action that leaves an opponent's retained observations intact.

**Ting Reasoner 0.10.0a21 is included.** Authored guest rule programs work with memory and probability models, while two independent opponent worker processes keep decision work separate from the interface. The terminal displays completed computations without running another simulation just to explain them.

## Futuristic plates and a room with presence

Plate9's regular and gold cards resemble **thin futuristic metal plates**, with continuous satin faces, beveled edges, bold angular ranks, and a sharp Ninth Ember crest. Clean faces keep the cards themselves in view. During reveals, the underlying rank remains readable beneath the committed plate.

Brief **320-millisecond card movements** carry a commitment into its chosen slot and deal a confirmed memory-window replacement. The effects stay quick: commitments apply immediately, memory time never extends, and reduced motion skips the slides. Larger action symbols and clear Guest and Ting rail icons keep the table easy to navigate. Expand an opponent's public board for a closer view of permitted cards.

**Focus table** gives the room its distinctive pause in atmosphere. The surroundings dim, and both opponents and the neutral dealer close their eyes and hold them shut. Return to Room view and the room opens again. Opponents resume occasional blinks; the dealer remains watchful. Focus changes the presentation without changing anyone's knowledge or the rules.

Brief card, credit, and reward sounds accompany play. Windows uses native cue playback with automatic retries after playback errors. Adjust volume, mute the table, or use **Test sound** from the table menu. There is no continuous background audio loop.

After each memory window, ordinary decisions are untimed. Opening Career, the Exchange, the guest gallery, or the player guide pauses the table. Private cards are covered, and any remaining study time is preserved. Resume explicitly when you return, or close the game and come back to your saved table later.

## Learn at the table

Press **F1** for the illustrated player guide, included for offline use. It covers the original rules, worked card examples, wagers, career progression, time crystals, and the Exchange.

| Control | Action |
| --- | --- |
| C | Open the guest gallery. |
| R | Open Career, XP pursuits, and time crystals. |
| T | Toggle the Ting decision terminal. |
| Ctrl + E | Open or close the Ninth Ember Exchange. |
| F1 | Open the player guide. |
| Ctrl + Space | Pause or resume the table. |
| M | Toggle sound. |
| F8 | Open the table menu. |
| F | Switch between Room view and Focus table. |

## Install and take your seat

Use **64-bit Python 3.11, 3.12, or 3.13**. Plate9 requires **PySide6, NumPy, and Numba**; a standard pip installation installs these dependencies automatically. Install and launch with the same Python environment.

On Windows, install a published release and launch:

```powershell
py -m pip install --upgrade plate9
py -m plate9
```

For the downloaded **1.2.6 wheel**, with its required dependencies already installed:

```powershell
py -m pip install --no-index --force-reinstall --no-deps .\plate9-1.2.6-py3-none-any.whl
py -m plate9
```

The release ZIP also includes **Install-Offline.cmd**, **Launch-Plate9.cmd**, and **Check-Plate9.cmd**. To inspect the installed dependencies, bundled files, numerical runtime, and two opponent workers:

```powershell
py -m plate9 --check
```

Plate9 runs locally. No account, API key, or separate Ting download is required. Your table, career, collection, and Exchange records stay on your computer.

Existing **1.2.0 saves load directly**. Earlier saves, including 1.1.4, upgrade automatically. Before the first upgraded save is written, the original is retained beside it as `table-save.pre-1.2.0.json`, or the corresponding name for a custom save path. Older Plate9 builds cannot read the Exchange save format.
