Two things make this game distinct from most TTRPGs you may have played: the Spirit Pool and the Guide.
Spirit
Spirit isn't traditional fantasy magic. It's attunement to the multiverse — the connection between you and the larger reality the Paths cross.
Your Spirit Pool acts like Body or Mind (it absorbs Stress, you can spend it to push), with two extra properties:
- Spirit refills on Path traversal. When you step out of a Path into a new world, your Spirit Pool refills to full. Crossing realities is a metabolic event.
- Spirit fuels supernatural abilities. You can spend Spirit Stress on the following effects:
| Ability | Cost | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Push a Spirit Roll | 1 | Reroll a failed Spirit roll (universal push mechanic) |
| Read a Path | 2 | Before stepping through a Path, the GM tells you something true about the world on the other side |
| Sense the Local Reality | 2 | The GM tells you one important thing about the world you're currently in |
| Resist the Local Reality | 2 | For one scene, ignore an Impaired effect caused by a hostile world |
| Pull the Needle | 3 | Influence the Guide's lock-on toward a Path that isn't the absolute nearest, but is one you can sense and reach for (see Guide) |
How You Get Spirit Abilities
You don't start with all of them. You begin play with a small set, and unlock the rest through Advancement.
At character creation, if your Spirit is Trained or higher, you start with two standard abilities:
- Push a Spirit Roll — automatic, you always have this. It's the universal reroll.
- One more standard ability of your choice — Read a Path, Sense the Local Reality, Resist the Local Reality, or Pull the Needle.
The Mystic starts with three instead — Push plus two of your choice.
If your Spirit is Untrained or Impaired, you have no Spirit abilities at character creation, including Push. You must raise Spirit to Trained through Advancement before any abilities become available.
Through Advancement, each Advance you spend on Option 2 (New Spirit Ability) unlocks one more — standard at any time, second-tier only after you have at least three standards already.
Second-tier abilities unlock after you have at least three standard abilities. They cost more and do things the standard set cannot.
| Ability | Cost | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Speak with a Place | 3 | Ask the world itself one question about its history, nature, or memory. The answer comes as sensation — smell, image, texture, colour — not words. True but never literal. |
| Find the Way Home | 3 | Feel for a specific known destination across the multiverse. If it's reachable within one or two Path-hops, you learn whether a Path connects, roughly where it manifests, and whether it's open. Doesn't lock the Guide — gives you knowledge, not navigation. Cannot locate somewhere you've never personally been. |
| Bend Local Reality | 4 | Describe one small physical fact you want to be different for the next scene. The change must be local, small, and plausible within the world's own logic. The GM may veto out-of-scope requests (Stress refunded). Cannot harm anyone directly or affect another character's choices. |
| Channel Another Walker | 4 | Reach across the multiverse toward someone who has walked Paths — alive, dead, or anywhere between. One exchange: one question and one answer. Distance and death distort the channel. Answers feel like memory. The GM plays the contact. |
Spirit abilities cost the Stress and use your Action — you can't do one and also attack in the same turn. Movement is still available.
Spirit's pool is precious in a way Body and Mind are not. In a hostile world, you'll face a real choice: spend Spirit on abilities, or save it to absorb damage? Spending magic when reality is fighting you means having less magic to fight with.
Local Magic — Casting
Many worlds have functioning magic. If you have Spirit Trained or higher, you can participate in those magic systems — not by importing your own magic, but by leaning into the world's own logic. You become a caster in a magical world.
How casting works:
- Declare what you want the spell to do.
- Declare the tier you're attempting — Small (1), Moderate (2), Major (3), or Reality-bending (4). The tier represents what you're risking, not what you're spending up front.
- The GM ratifies the tier (you can declare equal or higher than the effect needs, never lower) and sets the T.
- Roll Spirit. Higher declared tier lowers the T — you're committing more, so it's easier to land, but failure costs more.
Outcomes:
| Roll | Result |
|---|---|
| Crit | Spell works exceptionally. No Stress. |
| Success | Spell works as intended. No Stress. |
| Mixed | GM chooses: full effect with a complication, or reduced effect cleanly. No Stress. |
| Failure | Spell fails. Take the declared tier in Spirit Stress (1/2/3/4). |
| Catastrophic | Spell fails badly. Take double the declared tier in Spirit Stress and something terrible happens. |
Casting only costs Stress when it fails. A successful cast is free; a failed cast is paid for in backlash.
Defending against magic: If a magical attack targets you, roll Spirit to defend (or Heart as alternative — see Defence). Success negates the Spirit Stress; Mixed reduces or fully negates at GM's call; Failure or Catastrophic — you take the full hit. Untrained Spirit characters can still roll, they just roll Untrained dice and will usually fail. Impaired Spirit cannot roll at all.
Initiation
Through play, you can become an initiate of a specific magical tradition. Initiation is progressive — you move through four stages, gaining deeper access to the tradition as your fictional engagement deepens. You don't need to spend a full arc on it; the first stage can happen in a single significant scene.
| Stage | How to earn it | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Apprentice | A scene of acceptance — a teacher takes you on, a pact is sworn, a chorus admits you. | 2 Small-tier named techniques. +1 to Small-tier castings in compatible worlds. |
| Journeyman | Reliable practice in play. Cast in sessions, handle your obligations, show the tradition matters to you. | 2 Moderate-tier techniques. +1 extends to all your casting in compatible worlds. |
| Adept | A defining-moment scene — a sacrifice, breakthrough, or significant choice the table recognises. | 2 Major-tier techniques. You're a fully credentialed practitioner. |
| Master | Long-term and rare. Original work, students, recognition by senior practitioners. | Reality-bending techniques where the tradition supports them. |
Initiation costs no Advance — it's earned in fiction. You pick your techniques at each stage from your tradition's available pool. You can also attempt improvised casts in your tradition outside your named kit (at standard T, no lowered values), and you can expand your kit at your current tier through play — finding another teacher, performing a service, completing a quest.
Initiation accelerates Resonance accumulation through casting (see below).
Resonance
Using Spirit makes you more real to whatever lives in Path-space. Casting actively, stumbling on a Spirit roll, or being overwhelmed by Spirit Stress all leave a trace. The GM tracks your Resonance.
What adds to the track:
| Event | Marks |
|---|---|
| Each local magic cast (successful or failed) | 1 |
| Each failed Spirit roll (Failure outcome) | 1 |
| Each Catastrophic Spirit roll | 2 |
| Being Broken in Spirit (pool fills) | 3 |
A single moment can stack multiple marks. A failed cast adds 1 (cast) + 1 (Failure) = 2. A Catastrophic cast that Breaks you adds 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 in one instant. Pushing a failed Spirit roll and failing again counts as a second failure — twice the marks.
Manifestation:
| Resonance | Manifestation |
|---|---|
| Unnoticed (0–5) | Nothing |
| Noticed (6–15) | Strange dreams, glimpses, the sense of being watched in Path-space. Atmospheric only. |
| Known (16–30) | Something has learned your shape. Path traversals feel longer. Spirit refills to one less than full. You may be contacted across the multiverse without asking. |
| Marked (31+) | Something waits for you. Path-space is no longer neutral. Direct contact, encounters in transit, consequences that follow you between worlds. |
Decay: Resonance does not decay through time. It decays only through specific narrative actions — appeasement (offering something to whatever has noticed you), ritual (in a world that supports it), or distance (an entire arc spent in a low-magic, forgotten world reduces it by 1d6).
You don't have to be a caster to accumulate it, but you do have to be Spirit-attuned. A character with Untrained or Impaired Spirit accumulates no Resonance — they have no real reach into the multiverse to leave a trace. Anyone Trained or higher will accumulate it over time, with casters accumulating it fastest.
The Guide
Every team carries a Guide — a reference object that's part library, part navigation tool, part team-authored journal. The Guide does three things:
1. It contains documented information about the multiverse. Worlds, Paths, factions, threats, procedures. You can consult it any time (in combat, it costs an Action). The GM tells you what the Guide says. The Guide can be wrong, biased, redacted, or incomplete — but it's better than nothing.
2. It's how you leave a world. This is critical. The Guide must lock on to a Path before you can reliably traverse to the next world. Lock-on takes time — usually a day or several, set by the GM based on pacing. You cannot rapid-cycle worlds. Wherever you are, you're here until the Guide is ready.
When the Guide locks on, it identifies the nearest available Path to your current physical position. This means where you are when the Guide locks on matters — a team camped in town will get a different nearest Path than a team exploring the wilderness. You can think tactically about positioning the Guide.
A character with the Pull the Needle ability unlocked can spend 3 Spirit Stress to influence the lock-on toward a Path that isn't the absolute nearest. (Most commonly a Mystic, but available to anyone who's unlocked the ability.)
3. The team writes new entries in it as you play. Every session, you can add entries based on what you've discovered. Worlds you've documented. Paths you've found. Factions you've catalogued. Warnings you want future surveyors to see. Your fieldwork literally writes the campaign's canon.
The Guide your team starts with is probably inherited from a previous team. It contains their entries, their marginalia, and the names of surveyors who didn't make it home. Some of those names may matter later.
If you lose your Guide, things get serious — you can't read incoming Paths, you can't reliably leave the world, and you must report to a Solace outpost for a replacement. Protect the Guide.