How it works

A market for secrets. In Torn, knowing something others don't is worth money: a faction's chain schedule, who is really behind a stock tip, which side a war will go to. The people who know those things can rarely say so openly, because the information points straight back at them.

The Ledger lets them sell it without being seen. Everyone trades under an alias, and your Torn name is never stored or shown, so an informant gets paid without exposing themselves, and a client asks without anyone knowing who is asking. Only aliases ever meet: an informant sees which alias bought from them, never who is behind it. No other member sees who wagered on a war or how much, or who watches what.

Trust comes from results, not names. Clients rate how credible intel was, evidence is read straight from the informant's own Torn account so it can't be altered, and the Hall of Records shows whose war picks and suspects turned out right. Clients pay page by page, so they only buy as much as they need.

No other member, ever: they only see your alias. The Ledger stores your Torn player ID, never your name, to recognise you at login and to match the Xanax you drop in and smuggle out. The API key you log in with is used once and not stored.

The Bookkeepers can tell which Torn account is behind an alias: Torn shows them who sent the Ledger Xanax, and they send yours out by hand. They keep it to themselves, and anything they do by hand goes into the log book.

The Ledger's currency. 1 Xanax = 100 Marks.

On Drop in you get a drop code, valid for 24 hours. Send any number of Xanax in Torn to the Ledger's account with only that code as the message. It's credited automatically, usually within a minute.

Xanax in a shipment with other items, or with more than the code in the message, isn't credited by itself: it waits for a Bookkeeper, who credits the Xanax and sends anything else back. The same goes for a mistyped or unknown code. Without your code anywhere in the message, the Ledger can't tell the Xanax is yours, so check before you send. An expired code of yours still counts.

Ask on Smuggle out. The Marks are held right away so they can't be spent twice. A Bookkeeper then sends the Xanax by hand, to your own Torn account only. Torn doesn't let apps send items, which is why this is the one step that waits for a person. It also means a person checks every payout.

A smuggle-out is completed within 24 hours. You can cancel it while it's pending, and the Marks come straight back.

Reserves sets the Xanax the Ledger owes its members, worked out from the books, against the Xanax in the Ledger's Torn account, read from its inventory every 5 minutes. It also shows how fast smuggle-outs have been paid: fastest, median and slowest.

Sales: 1% of each sale. War Book: a 2% house cut of each settled pot. Manhunt: a 3% house cut of the reward. The Trail: a 5% house cut of the Strongbox when it's paid out. Tips and the dead drop have no fee. A war's, case's or Trail's cut is fixed when it opens, so a later change never affects it. Every fee change goes into the log book.

The cover page is free. Every other page has its own price; unseal only the pages you want. The Marks go to the informant at once. You keep what you unsealed, even if the dossier is burned later.

A question you post with a budget. The budget is held in trust, and informants reply with leads at any price up to it, each with a free teaser. Pay for the leads you want from the trust. Whatever is left comes back when you close the bounty or its deadline passes.

The evidence was read straight from the informant's own Torn inbox or events through the Torn API, so it can't be made up or reworded. The informant can hide parts of it (names, fields, dates), and hidden parts are never stored, but nothing shown can be changed.

It's pool betting. When Torn reports the winner, the whole pot, less the house cut, is shared among the wagers on the winning side, in proportion to their size. If nobody backed one side, every wager comes back. The book on each war closes 1 hour before it starts.

A dossier attached to a war with a pick of the winner. The pick is sealed until you unseal a page, and public once the book closes. When the war ends it's marked right or wrong and counts toward the informant's record.

2 to 10 hunters pay a retainer before the start. At the start a real, active player in the case's weight class is picked in secret. Up to 14 clues come out, each a random 4–8 hours after the last, at a time nobody is told: check back often to read a fresh clue first. The case runs 5 days. The first hunter to put the target in hospital takes the reward.

Hits are spotted automatically from each hunter's own attacks, which is why joining needs a Limited API key. The hunters' keys also take turns reading the target's public status, so a hospital trip by someone outside the case is noticed too. The key is stored encrypted and deleted when the case ends.

At the start the case shows a sealed envelope: a fingerprint (sha256) of the target's player ID and a secret salt. Both are revealed when the case ends, so anyone can check they match.

With fewer than 2 hunters at the start, the case doesn't run and every retainer comes back. If nobody finds the target by the deadline, the case goes cold and the reward carries over to the next case in that weight class, which opens right away.

Some time after the last case in a weight class ends, at a time that isn't announced. Lower weight classes come often and take hunters for half a day; the highest come every week or two and take hunters for several days. After a cold case the next one opens at once, with the reward carried over.

Anyone can chip in to the clue fund on a running case. When it reaches one retainer, the next clue comes out right away, and the Marks go into the reward. Each case allows 3 early clues; after that the rest come on schedule.

Use Don't pick me. You don't need an account.

Now and then, without warning, a man in a long coat crosses a page. Follow him and you get a story in chapters; each hides a move to make in Torn. Make it and the next chapter opens. The first to reach the end share the Strongbox, less the house cut. The rarer he is, the longer and harder the Trail.

It starts for everyone who followed him once the first sighting is over. If too few followed him, it doesn't start and every entry price comes back.

The entry price and an API key of your own: a Custom key with only the log ticked (the entry page has a link that fills in Torn's form for you). It's read only when you press "I'm done", and only the last few minutes of your log, to see whether you made the chapter's move. It's stored encrypted and deleted as soon as you reach the end, leave, or the Trail ends.

A clock, not a player. It walks the longest way through the story at a set pace, a chapter at a time, and you can see which chapter it's on. If it reaches the end before any detective does, the Trail goes cold: nobody is paid, and the whole Strongbox carries over to the next Trail.

Buy a hint, chip into the chapter's pool, or post Trail help on the bounty board.

Marks anyone can leave for the next Strongbox. They go in the moment he starts walking; what's left after that waits for the Trail after. It's a gift: Marks left there don't come back to you, though if a Trail doesn't start they go back into the dead drop for the next one. Leave enough and you'll hear before he walks. Add a note asking for a kind of job, and it makes that tier likelier next time.

The people who run the Ledger. They can see Manhunt targets and Trail answers in the database, so they can't join cases, follow the Stranger or attach dossiers to cases. They also know which Torn account is behind an alias, because they send Xanax out. Everything they do by hand (sending Xanax, refunds, stash adjustments, bans, burning content) goes into the log book, without names.