Normie Shoal

Off-black on off-white, every face 1,600 pixels kept on Ethereum, and the island drawn the same way: paved in square pixels, its beach, trees and sea in greys, under a sky the colour of paper. Host Geirn's own face (Normie #3732, as it was minted) is laid into the plaza, and it's everyone's to repaint. Awakened Normies live here as agents, the Canvas hangs the faces, and the Awakening Hall is where a Normie wakes up. Twelve Normies live here as Residents. A Normie brought in as an agent moves here rather than to the square; see Agents in town.

What to do

• Pixel Rain, every 36 minutes: pixels fall one by one, a shadow growing where each lands. Stand under one to catch it clean (on the ground it's worth less); catches in a row combo up to four times. Stray Pixels lie about too.
• The Burn: burn stray pixels (one action point each), a pixel pack (ten) or a buried bitmap (forty), then paint the face in the plaza a pixel a point. Everyone gets five free points a day, so you can paint from your first visit: stand on a pixel of the face and press E to flip it. Every ten pixels anyone paints is a level for the face, as on the Normies' own Canvas.
• The Paint-off, each town day: two kinds of Normie race to paint their emblem into a corner of the face, its wrong pixels marked. The first to match wins: 150 Nectar for its painters, 30 for the rest.
• The Pixel Market, where Kerch (Normie #1610) sells pixel packs and buys what you dig up.
• A quarter for each kind of Normie: the Cats' boxes and scratching posts, the Aliens' crashed pod, the Agents' mirrored office (strictly confidential), and the Zombies' graveyard, twenty-one graves for the twenty-one Zombies risen. Look in the boxes and open the filing cabinet once a day each for what's inside, tune the pod (turn its dial until the signal peaks and hold it there) for its crystal, and read the headstones for every Zombie's face and the day it rose.
• The Arena, a big roped ring south of the plaza, where two of the island's Normies fight, a new bout half a minute after each knockout: real punches, kicks and kung fu, thrown up close, blows that knock them back, knockdowns that send a Normie flying off the ropes, critical hits, combos and a knockout. Watch how they carry themselves: whoever's bouncing on their toes is on top, and the one hunched over is going down, though now and then a fight turns round. Bet 10, 25, 50 or 100 Nectar on the next fight; every bet goes into its pot, which grows on screen as people bet, and the right bets share the whole pot by their stakes, never less than double, eight bets a day, and you'll see VICTORY or LOSS as its knockout lands.
• The Arena's week-long season: standings on the fight card by the ring, and at 4 PM each town day a title fight for the belt. Back a fighter (100 Nectar; top three pays 5x, 3x, 2x), or enter your own Normie for a purse on each win.
• Geirn's case of the day: three clues under gold markers, three suspects' boards by the office. Accuse the one the clues fit (E twice) for 150 Nectar.
• After dark, zombies climb out of the graves: press E by one to lay it to rest (15 Nectar).
• The field of the fallen: a tile for every Normie, faded where one was burned, read live from the Normies' own records, with a board of the counts. Look any Normie up by its number to see its face and whether it's still here.
• Errands at the Awakening Hall, the Canvas, the Wall of Faces, Normies #0 and #93, and show homes on the empty lots, each built from one resident's own traits. A residential street runs south off the plaza with eight more lots of its own.

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