Characters grow between arcs — not mid-arc, not session by session. An arc is the time you spend in a single world, from arrival to departure. When it ends, each player earns one Advance if they contributed at least one qualifying act during the arc.
Earning Your Advance
Two ways to qualify, depending on how your campaign operates:
Guide Entries (if you're working with or for Solace): Filing a qualifying entry earns your Advance. Qualifying entries represent real fieldwork — a world, Path, faction, or anomaly you documented that wasn't already fully known. A stub ("we were here, it was cold") doesn't qualify. A real entry does: what it is, one surprising thing, one thing useful to future surveyors.
Milestones (any campaign, including non-Solace play): A meaningful achievement that changed your character through experience. Qualifying milestones include:
- First traversal of an unknown Path
- Surviving a world that actively resisted you
- Resolving a significant faction conflict (not just fighting through it)
- Your Hook advancing in a real way (GM calls this)
- Losing something significant and continuing anyway
- Making genuine first contact across a cultural or reality gap
The GM is the judge. The bar is: did this arc change you in a way that would be visible to someone who knew you before?
Spending Your Advance
Choose one of four options:
1. +1 Domain Tier — always available. Increase one domain by one tier. Cannot exceed Proficient through normal advancement (Expert is a separate long-term achievement). The increase should make narrative sense — you should be able to justify it in one sentence.
2. New Spirit Ability — available only if your Spirit is Trained or higher. Unlock one ability from the Spirit list. Second-tier abilities (Speak with a Place, Bend Local Reality, etc.) require at least three standard abilities already.
3. Signature Item Development — either add one tag to your signature item (if it hasn't reached its rarity's tag maximum), or upgrade its rarity one tier (Common → Uncommon → Rare), gaining new tag slots.
4. Background Perk Upgrade — available once per character. Your Background perk either broadens (applies in more situations) or deepens (becomes more powerful). Work it out with your GM.
Expert Tier
Expert is the campaign's long-term ceiling. To advance a domain to Expert, all three must be true:
- The domain is already at Proficient
- You've spent at least three arcs engaging that domain as your primary tool
- You've had a defining moment in that domain — a scene the table would remember as the moment you became exceptional
The GM declares it when it happens. It can't be engineered. It supersedes your normal Advance for that arc.