Linked Accounts

What Linking Does

It puts two or more of your own accounts on one keyring. That is all it does to the accounts themselves: nothing is merged, nothing is shared, and each student keeps their own House, gold, pets, mail and opinions. What changes is the Settings menu, which gains one row per linked student, so you can change who you are without signing out, remembering a password, or standing in the corridor looking thoughtful.

Linking is optional. Nobody is required to do it, and nothing in the game gets harder if you do not. A keyring holds four accounts at most, the main account and three others. The fifth student has to wait outside, as is traditional.

How to Link

1. Sign in to the account you want to be the main one and open Preferences.
2. Find the Linked Accounts block. Type the sign-in name and the password of the other account. The sign-in name is the one you type on the sign-in page, which is not always the name you play under.
3. Press the button. If the pair is eligible, both accounts get an owl saying so, and the Settings menu grows a row.

The password is the proof. The school will not link an account to someone who cannot show they own it, so a wrong password, a missing account and an account that does not exist all get the same polite refusal and tell you nothing else. Several wrong guesses in an hour pause the form for a while.

An account that only ever signed in with Discord has no password to type. Sign in to it, open its own Preferences, set a password there, and then link it from the main account.

Staff accounts cannot be linked, and neither can a locked account, nor one that already sits on somebody else's keyring.

Switching

The Settings menu (the gold button with the gear) lists your linked students. Pick one and you are signed in as them. The row is there in the village, on the news page and in the Shades, which are the places where changing identity does not leave a fight half finished. It never appears mid-fight, because a battle with two owners is a legal question the school has declined to answer.

You land where that account last left off, the same page it would open on if you had signed in to it the usual way. A student who was in the middle of something resumes the something.

Only one linked account plays at a time. Switching signs the others out, and so does signing in to any of them directly. A window still open on a student who has just been signed out says so the next time it is clicked, naming the account that took over, instead of simply failing to load.

Signing In With Discord

If your Discord login belongs to a linked account, the school asks which student you meant to be today. A short list of portraits and names appears, with the one you played most recently marked Last played, and you pick. The choice is good for a few minutes and one use, so a page left open overnight asks again. A student locked by staff appears as a greyed-out button that says why, and cannot be picked. If the student you played last is the locked one, the gold tag moves to the next in line and reads Suggested instead.

What Linked Accounts Cannot Do

Linked accounts cannot trade, fight, vote for or message each other. The school will not let gold, pets or owls pass between them, and will not let them duel or vote for each other. Every one of those refusals says the same sentence, so you will know it when you see it.

They remain visible to each other in public chat, because the commons is public and the school has never found a way to make it otherwise.

What was already true stays true. Friendships, marriages and keys to dwellings that two of your accounts shared before linking are left alone. The keyring forbids new dealings; it does not go back and undo old ones.

Leaving a Keyring

An alt can leave on its own, from its own Preferences. The main can remove any alt from the main account's Preferences. The main has no leave button of its own. The keyring ends when the main removes its last alt (a keyring of one is a key), when staff remove the main, or when the main account is deleted, which takes the whole keyring with it.

Every unlinking sends an owl to the accounts it touches, and an email as well, because it is the one message that matters most to a student whose password has just been used by somebody else. If you get that message and did not do the unlinking, change your passwords and petition staff.

A Roommate Is Not a Linked Account

A brother, a sister, a roommate or anyone else who plays from your house, your device or your Internet connection is a household, not a linked account. They are a different person and they should have their own account, their own password and no keyring with you. Do not link them. The Referrals desk takes household declarations for exactly this, and a declaration does not touch your linked accounts, only the way the school reads two different people sharing a router.

If you do own more than one account, say so by linking them. The school notices accounts that look related, and a keyring tells it, plainly and in writing, that they are yours.

What Staff Can See

Staff can see which accounts are linked and can unlink them. The school keeps a short log of links, unlinks and switches for about six months, then lets it go. When staff unlink accounts, each of them gets an owl and an email.

For the rest of the rules about more than one account, see the FAQ: Rules. For the settings themselves, see Preferences.