Talents & Equipment

Talents are specialized abilities that define what makes your character unique: divine-granted powers, combat techniques, and advanced training that go beyond basic action rolls.

Talent Types

Passive talents are permanent augmentations. They're always active and modify your character or their equipment without requiring any action or cost. Examples include enhanced senses, natural armor, or a permanent bonus to a capacity score.

Active talents are specialized techniques that require a dice roll to execute. They follow the normal action roll procedure but have pre-written outcomes for success and failure, making resolution faster and more specific than a freeform action.

Instant talents are quick abilities that often have a cost or limited uses for an immediate effect. They're used during the instant window of the core loop, the moment before the spotlight player rolls. Instant talents let you contribute meaningfully to another player's turn or set up your own next action.

Key rules for instant talents:

• Each non-spotlight player may use one instant talent per turn.
• The spotlight player may either cross one zone edge or use an instant talent, not both.
• Characters who are Exhausted (Vigor at minimum) cannot use instant talents.

Reaction talents are reflexive abilities triggered by specific events, such as taking a hit, witnessing an ally fall, or entering a hazardous zone. Unlike instants, reactions are not limited to the instant window. They fire whenever their trigger condition is met, regardless of whose turn it is. Each reaction specifies its trigger and cost in its description.

Talent Sources

Talents come from five sources, each representing a different aspect of your character:

Lineage talents reflect your genetic heritage or supernatural nature. Granted automatically by your lineage choice.

Calling talents reflect your fundamental approach to life. Granted by your calling.

Domain talents represent specialized expertise in areas like Grit (toughness and weapons), Glass (investigation and hidden truths), or Shrine (devotion and divine connection). Granted by your calling's two domains.

Weapon talents represent training with a specific weapon handling style. Chosen based on your weapon's handling type.

Boon talents are divine abilities granted by gods. They require a minimum favor level as a prerequisite. Some scale with your favor level, growing more powerful as your relationship with the god deepens. See Favor & Boons.

Prerequisites

Some talents require specific conditions before you can learn them: a minimum capacity score, a certain favor level, or another talent as a foundation. During character creation, if one talent you're selecting grants a prerequisite for another, you can pick both simultaneously.

Talent Reference

Full talent lists are maintained as separate reference documents:

• Lineage Talents
• Calling Talents
• Domain Talents
• Weapon Talents
• Boon Talents

Weapons

Every weapon has two properties: handling (how the weapon is used) and range (where it can reach).

Handling

Handling determines which actions you can use with the weapon and which weapon talents you can equip. Each handling pairs two actions:

You can carry as many weapons as makes narrative sense. Weapons can gain additional handling through training cutscenes during intermissions.

Range

Here: Targets anything in your current zone. Indirect line of sight means you can target around cover and obstacles through close-quarters maneuvering.

There: Targets anything in adjacent zones. Requires direct line of sight, as obstacles between zones or within the target zone can block attacks entirely. There weapons cannot attack targets in your own zone.

Armor

Armor provides defensive benefits while constraining capabilities. You can wear one piece of each type simultaneously (one traditional, one clockwork, one aetherial armor).

Traditional Armor

Metal plates, hardened leather, chainmail, and whatever else mortals have bolted together to stop sharp things since before the gods cared enough to notice. Coverage scales from minimal (a breastplate and prayers) to full (head-to-toe plating that turns the wearer into a walking fortress). The cost is physical: every added layer demands more from the body beneath it. Full traditional armor requires the conditioning to fight while carrying half your weight in steel, and the stamina to keep doing it when the battle runs long.

Clockwork Armor

Exoskeletal frames powered by Link-driven pneumatics, fitted with spring-loaded joints and pressure-regulated pistons that amplify the wearer's reaction speed. The trade-off is mental: every additional system demands attention. Partial rigs require monitoring a few pressure gauges mid-combat; full coverage means managing an entire network of valves, pistons, and release timers while someone's trying to kill you. Wearers describe it as "playing an instrument that hits back."

Aetherial Armor

Blessed items, ancestral tokens, and divine artifacts worn as spiritual protection. Aetherial armor doesn't deflect attacks so much as absorb their impact through the wearer's connection to forces beyond the physical: a god's fleeting attention, an ancestor's hand steadying your shoulder, a covenant honored in the wearing. The cost is spiritual. Each piece demands sustained devotion, and the more you carry, the more of yourself you've pledged. Full aetherial coverage marks someone whose life is woven deeply into obligations beyond the mortal, walking shrines who've traded spiritual freedom for divine resilience.

Equipping restriction: You cannot equip armor that would push any capacity minimum above its maximum.

Broken Equipment

Weapons and armor can become Broken through certain gameplay events. Broken weapons cannot be used. Broken armor provides no benefits.

Aetherial armor becomes Broken when it absorbs wounds equal to its soak capacity.

Broken equipment can be repaired during intermissions through the Repair cutscene (see Intermissions).