Short answers. Honest meters.

Because the costs are per-minute: server compute ticks while the shard is live, load follows actual bytes moved, and the host's hourly rental prorates per minute. Per-minute metering means a 10-minute drop-in costs a sixth of an hour-long siege — and a stopped shard bills nothing further.

100 coins is exactly $1.00 (1 coin = $0.01, 1 coin = 100 centicentcoins). Every figure already includes the 25% platform cut — never added on top. Money math runs in integer centicentcoins, so split shares land dust-free.

Insufficient coins for this session. The billing check compares your quoted share against your live ledger balance (SUM over coin_ledger, read-only) before anything moves — short balance answers 402 and nothing is billed. Top up, confirm the shown total again, and retry.

Band-blocked, not broke. Your band may not enter that shard's band (kids→kids-only, teens→kids+teens, adults→all), or the room sits below its game's minimum band. The reason names both bands. Coins are untouched — fix the room choice, not the wallet.

Quote mismatch: the accepted total must equal the quoted player total exactly. Prices move as players join and leave, so re-read the fresh quote and confirm that figure. Malformed input and unknown servers also answer 400 — never a charge.

Fail-closed, same as players: the short side answers 402 and nothing bills — nobody is half-charged and no phantom session is written. Until the guarded ledger settlement lands, both rent and billing return quotes only (charged: false), so past quotes are never back-billed.

Kids rooms (0 coins per player per minute) and any room whose host flips hostFree — the host pays server + load + rental, players pay 0. Your receipt is /my/usage/; your balance is always SUM(delta) over your ledger rows.

Never stored. Game-play gates check it in memory on your device only. MMO shard entry sends it once to same-origin POST /api/age-verify, used in memory to mint a signed band pass and then dropped — never written, logged, forwarded, or echoed back. The shard gate itself compares bands only.

No. The band locks when the server is rented and stays locked for the whole shard life. A teens night that outgrows its room needs a new adults server, not an edit. Hosts: announce the band up front so nobody plans around a door that cannot move.

No. Server plus load meters per minute while the shard is live, and the rental prorates per minute of life. End the shard and the meter stops with it. Past quotes are never back-billed once the guarded ledger settlement lands.

Every session lands on /my/usage/ with the shard, the minutes, and the exact share that was quoted. Your balance is always the live SUM over your coin_ledger rows: no parallel balance column, no hidden math. Screenshot the receipt row before writing support.

Never. Quote previews are auth-optional reads that write nothing: no session, no ledger row, no hold. Only a confirm with the exact total can move coins, and short funds answer 402 with zero billed.