The Free Use Track

Content note

This is an anonymous-use track: the encounters are with strangers who are never named, never given faces, and never turn into characters. It is off by default for every player and only exists if you switch the Free Use track on under Content Preferences, in the character creator or in Settings. The track is free; only its fourth tier is Patreon.

There is no per-scene safeword. The exit is built into the fiction instead: the anklet is the switch. Take it off and every Free Use choice in the game disappears with no prose, no penalty and no comment. Put it back on and the track resumes exactly where it was. That is deliberate, the pause button is a thing you wear.

For the step-by-step unlock, see Starting Free Use.

The premise

The anklet is a thin chrome band with a small ring worked into the front. It is not a lock and it is not a leash; it is a sign. The people who recognise it know what it means, and the ones who do not simply see jewellery. Nothing about your run changes except that certain rooms now contain someone who has read it.

The track feeds the exhibition axis, so it compounds with the Cabaret rather than competing with it.

Getting in

The invite is a morning text, and it will not send until three things are true: Submissiveness 50 or higher, the track not already started, and at least one of the following already behind you:

• the park glory hole,
• the Cabaret (stage 1 or later),
• or the BNWO arc (stage 1 or later).

That last condition is the design’s real gate. Submissiveness alone does not open it; the game wants you to have already crossed one anonymous or owned line somewhere else first.

The text points you at Kitten & Chrome in the Red Light District. Ask about the anklet from the message, pay $60, and the clerk fits it there in the store. It equips itself, and it carries a small stat load while worn: +2 Submissiveness, +1 Allure, -1 Comfort.

The four tiers

Tiers 1 to 3 are driven purely by how many encounters you have had, not by days or by stats (with one exception at the top of tier 3). Tier 4 is driven by Reputation instead.

The tier-1 restriction is the single most misread thing about this track: the Gym and the Park do nothing until tier 2, so wearing the anklet around them early looks identical to the track being broken. Five encounters at one per day means roughly five evenings before they wake up.

Each tier-up has its own beat. Tier 2 opens with the recognition that word got around, that the sign works in daylight now, and that the anklet has a reputation that walks in ahead of you. Tier 3 is the standing arrangement.

The encounters

At any unlocked venue, arriving with the anklet on surfaces a choice along the lines of “Someone’s noticed the anklet”. Taking it runs one of eight rotating beats, keyed loosely to where you are: a restroom, a dim corner, a service corridor, a back room, a car in a lot, a yard behind the building, a VIP nook, an alley. The rotation means repeat visits to the same venue do not repeat the same scene.

Every encounter is anonymous by construction. Nobody introduces themselves, nobody comes back as a recurring character, and the prose stays on what happens rather than on who it is with.

One encounter per day, across the entire game. The cap is global, not per venue, and it resets overnight.

The Velvet back room

Tier 3 adds a standing room in the back of the Velvet Lounge. Vivienne meets you at the rope and skips the menu entirely: “Your room, mon chou. They know the rules. You keep the anklet on, they keep their manners off.”

It is a longer, heavier scene than the venue beats and runs on its own seven-day cooldown, independent of the daily cap.

Tier 3 also pays off a thread left dangling by the bully texts. One of them ends with “Next time I’ll bring a sign”, and at tier 3 someone is waiting by the park benches with exactly that.

Tier 4: Common Knowledge (0.3.2, Patreon)

The top of the track works differently. It does not count encounters; it reads your Reputation, a derived score of everything the town could actually have heard about you (Free Use encounters weigh heaviest, but streaming fame, the glory-hole regular, public cage reveals, the Cabaret, the Velvet back room and the BNWO arc all feed it, see the stats guide). At House Rules + Reputation 60 the tier-up beat fires on its own.

What changes:

• The people who already know you stop asking. Five named regulars skip the polite setup once you are familiar enough with them: Dominic at the spa, the man from the park wall, Marco at the club, Jake at the beach, and Dante at the resort. Strangers still ask; that is deliberate. Their existing scenes get new openings rather than new endings, the address arrives before you decided anything, the room key crosses the desk without a word.
• Two daylight scenes appear at the Mall where nothing used to happen: a fitting-room cubicle a shop assistant holds open, and a stairwell off the street mid-errand. Neither needs the anklet or a time of day, that is the point of the tier. They share the global one-per-day cap.
• The anklet changes meaning. Below tier 4 it is the on/off switch. At tier 4 word does not come off with it: taking it off makes everyone who knows you back off for three days (“laying low”), then the regulars resume. The strangers-and-venues half of the track still needs it worn. The full stop remains the Content Preferences toggle.

A free player can technically reach the tier (the storyline card completes and the beat plays), but the five regulars, the Mall scenes, and the Reputation bar stay Patreon.

Achievements

Four, all hidden. The first three are free with the track; only the tier-4 one is Patreon:

Related

• Starting Free Use, the step-by-step unlock and the troubleshooting table.
• Fetish Store, where the anklet comes from.
• Lounge, the Velvet Lounge.
• Bnwo, the other opt-in track, and one of the three ways to qualify for this one.
• Patreon Vs Free, what supporter status covers.