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The two words

A bid is money: what was paid for a spot, and the only thing that sets a flag's height.

A bounty is attention: how many people have looked at the flag. It cannot be bought, only earned by being worth looking at.

I. Height is bought, never won

A flag's altitude is 10 × bid^0.75 metres. There is no auction, no closing time and no sniping. Put a dollar on a mast and it rises; put nothing on it and it stays where it is.

The exponent is below one on purpose. The first dollars buy a great deal of height and the last ones buy very little, so a small flag is never hopeless and a large one is never finished.

II. Nothing can push you down

Altitude only goes up. No attack, no rival and no amount of anyone else's money can take height off your flag, and there is no decay, no tax and no expiry.

What an attack can cost you is an hour of looking sacked: a castle whose vault is opened burns for one hour with the attacker's name on it, and keeps every penny and every place on the board.

Nobody can spend a rival out of the sky, take a flag over, or remove it. Bounty is added, never transferred and never taken.

III. A crew may fly a flag together

Open your crew and anyone can add to your bid. Their names go in the crew list in order of what they put in, and the climb is credited to the flag, not to them. Close the crew and only you can raise it.

Money contributed by a crew belongs to the flag, not to the person who put it in, and is not refundable to them. A flag can only be taken down by us, for the reasons in the Community Rules.

IV. Anyone may attack

Attacking is free and always will be: five goes a day against any one castle, whether or not you fly a flag of your own. More goes, and the nuke, can be bought — but nothing you buy is needed to play, and nothing you buy can take a castle on its own.

An ordinary attack can knock a castle's walls down but never opens its vault. Only a nuke can, and only on a roll. You cannot attack your own castle, and every attack is logged publicly against the target with your handle and your taunt attached.

V. Ranks

The highest flag is the King. Ranks two to five are Emperors. Ranks six to ten are Warlords, eleven to fifty are Supernovas, fifty-one to a hundred are Corsairs, and everyone else is a Deckhand.

Ranks are recalculated the instant anything moves, from the height a flag's bounty has bought it. Your best rank is kept as a high-water mark and never taken away.

VI. A flag is a link

Every flag can point at one web address. Outbound links carry rel="nofollow ugc" — a tall mast buys attention, not search ranking.

VII. Every flag flies the same mast

There is nothing cosmetic to buy. Money buys height and nothing else, so no one can look more important than their rank.

VIII. A bid does not come back

A bid buys altitude, and the altitude lasts as long as the flag flies. It is not a deposit, not an investment, and not refundable. Striking your own colours removes the flag and the bid with it.

IX. Artwork is yours and must be yours

Fly artwork you uploaded or something you drew here. Do not fly someone else's work, a real organisation's marks you have no right to, or anything designed to mislead about who you are.