Ether
mastery of astral projection & spiritual communion
The Astral Plane hums beneath reality like a second heartbeat, and Ether specialists have learned to slip between the two. They project their souls into a watercolor world of drifting shades and rushing silence, reading the living and conversing with the dead. Mastery demands a price: the deeper you go, the harder it becomes to remember which plane you belong to.
Domain Talents
Astral Projection
Instant: You project your soul into the Astral Plane. While projected, your body becomes inert. You can sense shades and other projected souls within your zone, and you can communicate with shades. Shades are generally willing to share information about their deaths, their unfinished business, and events they witnessed. The DM determines what a shade knows and how coherent it is. You may end this effect as an Instant.
You project your soul into the Astral Plane, where the physical world dissolves into watercolor abstractions and countless shades drift through rushing silence.
Astral Anchor
Prerequisites: One talent from Ether
Reaction: When you suffer a hit while astrally projected, you may spend 1 Zeal to immediately end your projection and gain 2 Protection before the hit is applied.
Soul sailing pilots call it "the snap." When something threatens your body, your spirit doesn't argue. It just comes home.
Astral Sight
There · 1 friend or foe
Prerequisites: One talent from Ether
Action (judge):
Success: Learn one significant truth about the target's current emotional state or immediate intentions. The target senses they have been read.
Crit Success: Learn three significant truths about the target's emotional state or intentions. The target is none the wiser.
In the astral plane, mortals appear as swirling tapestries of color and texture. Every choice, every fear, every hidden desire woven into patterns the trained eye can read.
Spectral Assault
There
Prerequisites: Two talents from Ether
Action (assert):
Success: Deal 1 light hit to up to 3 foes in the target zone.
Crit Success: Deal 1 hard hit to up to 3 foes in the target zone.
You channel your will through nearby shades, borrowing their grief and rage to move the physical world. Objects lift, scatter, and strike.
Spectral Counsel
There · 1 friend
Prerequisites: Two talents from Ether
Instant: After a friend declares a safe roll while you are astrally projected, spend 1 Zeal. The target number for that roll becomes 8 if 8 is higher than their action proficiency.
From the astral plane, you whisper guidance that reaches your allies as sudden clarity, a hunch, a moment of perfect intuition they cannot quite explain.
Dual Existence
Prerequisites: Three talents from Ether
Passive: While astrally projected, your body is no longer inert. You may move and take actions normally. However, all action rolls you make while astrally projected must be risky rolls.
Behemoths exist in both planes at once. So do you, now. The cost is that every action becomes a gamble, your attention forever split between what is and what lies beneath.
Forge
mastery of technology & creativity
Every piece of wreckage is a solution waiting to be assembled. Forge is the domain of jury-rigged brilliance, turning scrap into tools and tools into advantages under the kind of pressure that makes most people forget how screws work. The results are rarely elegant, but in a firefight, "works" beats "pretty" every time.
Domain Talents
Improvised Tools
Cutscene (craft, 2 segments):
Failure: Gain 1 charge of Improvised Tools.
Success: Gain 2 charges of Improvised Tools.
Crit Success: Gain 4 charges of Improvised Tools.
Passive: Maximum Improvised Tools charges equal to your Wit maximum.
Reaction: When you fail a safe action roll, you may spend 1 charge of Improvised Tools to immediately attempt the action roll again as a risky roll with 1 additional die.
Where others see debris, you see potential. A handful of scrap, some jury-rigged connections, and suddenly you have something that works well enough.
Quick Fix
Here
Prerequisites: One talent from Forge
Cutscene (craft, 1 segments):
Failure: You may spend 2 Wit or 2 charges of Improvised Tools. If you do, repair a Broken weapon or piece of armor, a damaged object or device. The repair lasts until the next intermission or the item is deliberately broken again.
Success: Repair a Broken weapon or piece of armor, a damaged object or device. The repair lasts until the next intermission or the item is deliberately broken again.
Crit Success: Repair a Broken weapon or piece of armor, a damaged object or device.
You can jury-rig temporary solutions to mechanical problems faster than most people can diagnose them. It won't last forever, but "forever" is someone else's problem.
Technobabble
Prerequisites: One talent from Forge
Instant: After declaring a Seduce or Cultivate risky roll, you may spend 1 Zeal or 1 charge of Improvised Tools to add 2 dice.
Most people stop asking questions when you start talking about reverse-polarized Link harmonics and differential steam pressure ratios. Their loss.
Field Modification
Here · self or 1 friend
Prerequisites: Two talents from Forge
Cutscene (craft, 2 segments):
Failure: You may spend 3 charges of Improvised Tools. If you do, the target chooses a weapon talent. They can use the chosen weapon talent with one of their weapons until the next intermission, ignoring any handling restrictions.
Success: You may spend 2 charges of Improvised Tools. If you do, the target chooses a weapon talent. They can use the chosen weapon talent with one of their weapons until the next intermission, ignoring any handling restrictions.
Crit Success: The target chooses a weapon talent. They can use the chosen weapon talent with one of their weapons until the next intermission, ignoring any handling restrictions.
A bit of wire, a counterweight here, some grip tape there. Suddenly that blade moves like it was designed for techniques its smith never imagined.
Structural Vulnerability
Prerequisites: Two talents from Forge
Instant: After declaring a weapon talent roll, spend 1 Vigor or 1 charge of Improvised Tools. No matter the outcome of this roll, deal 1 hard hit to the target.
Everything has stress points. The gap in the armor. The hairline fracture in the hull. The place where it was welded just a little too fast. You've trained yourself to see them.
Adaptive Engineering
Prerequisites: Three talents from Forge
Passive: You may spend 1 charge of Improvised Tools instead of 1 balance token.
You've reached the point where the boundaries between tools dissolve. Screwdriver becomes lever becomes pry bar becomes weapon. The material doesn't matter. Only the problem and your solution.
Glass
mastery of investigation & hidden truths
Every crime has a thread. Every lie leaves a seam. Pull at either long enough, and the whole tapestry unravels. Glass rewards careful attention and patient accumulation of knowledge, the slow construction of certainty from a thousand scattered fragments that nobody else thought to pick up.
Domain Talents
Keen Observation
Passive: When you succeed on a safe Augur or Judge roll, gain 1 Wit.
Most people look. You observe. Every glance catalogs details others miss: the dust pattern on an untouched shelf, the weight shift before a lie, the one thread that doesn't match the tapestry.
Environmental Assessment
Here · 1 zone
Prerequisites: One talent from Glass
Instant: Spend 1 Wit to learn one hidden detail, threat, or opportunity in your current zone.
You read a room the way others read faces. The scuff marks by the door, the too-clean corner, the angle of light that catches what shouldn't be there.
Read the Signs
Here · 1 friend or foe
Prerequisites: One talent from Glass
Action (judge):
Success: Learn whether the target has lied to you or withheld significant information during this conversation. If they have, learn the general topic of the deception.
Crit Success: Learn all lies the target has told you and the truth behind each one. Gain insight into their underlying motivations.
You've cataloged thousands of tells. The nervous tic, the too-steady gaze, the carefully constructed story with one detail that doesn't fit. Lies have a shape, and you've learned to see it.
Calculated Certainty
Prerequisites: Two talents from Glass
Instant: After declaring a safe roll, spend 1 Wit and name a number between 2 and 11. If your roll result equals that number, treat it as a critical success.
Where others see chaos, you see patterns. Where they see chance, you see certainty waiting to be claimed. Your mind traces probability paths until the improbable becomes foregone conclusion.
Methodical Assessment
Prerequisites: Two talents from Glass
Instant: After declaring a safe roll, you may spend 2 Wit to make it stacked. If you succeed on the roll, gain Wit equal to the dice remaining in your stack.
Every angle considered, every contingency mapped, every variable accounted for. The extra preparation looks excessive until the moment it saves your life. Then it just looks like foresight.
Pattern Recognition
Anywhere
Prerequisites: Three talents from Glass
Action (augur):
Success: Add or remove 1 segment to a game clock of your choice, recognizing patterns that speed up a solution or impede an obstacle's progress. Once you succeed, you cannot use this talent again until the next intermission.
Crit Success: Add or remove segments to game clocks twice. You may affect the same clock twice or two different clocks. Once you succeed, you cannot use this talent again until the next intermission.
The threads of cause and effect become visible to you. You see where they converge, where they fray, and precisely where to pull to make the whole tapestry shift.
Grit
mastery of endurance under pressure & weapons
When the divine gifts run dry and the weapons break, something more fundamental remains: the refusal to stop. Grit is built on the oldest survival mechanism in the Kosmos, the ability to keep fighting when your body screams to quit. Spend everything. Burn it all down. Your lowest moment is also your most dangerous.
Domain Talents
Cornered Beast
Passive: While your Vigor is at its minimum, add 1 die to any risky Clash, Overwhelm, or Maneuver action roll you make.
Most fighters get sloppy when exhausted. You get precise. There's a clarity that comes when you've burned through everything else, a focus that only the desperate ever find.
Practiced Grip
Prerequisites: One talent from Grit
Instant: After declaring a weapon talent risky roll, you may spend 1 Vigor to add 2 dice.
Your weapon becomes an extension of your will. When you commit to a strike, you commit completely.
Second Wind
Prerequisites: One talent from Grit
Passive: When Vigor is at minimum, successful outcomes grant Vigor instead of Protection.
Action (overwhelm):
Success: Gain 2 Protection. If your Vigor is at minimum, you may gain 1 Vigor instead.
Crit Success: Gain 4 Protection. If your Vigor is at minimum, you may gain 2 Vigor instead.
Your body screams that you're finished. Your body is wrong.
Adrenaline Surge
Prerequisites: Two talents from Grit
Passive: Whenever you become Exhausted, gain 2 Protection.
The moment everything goes wrong, something primal kicks in. Your instructors had a clinical term for it. You just call it not dying.
Desperate Strike
Here · 1 foe
Prerequisites: Two talents from Grit
Passive: You may use this talent while Exhausted.
Instant: Spend 2 Protection to deal 1 light hit to target foe. If your Vigor is at minimum, deal 1 hard hit instead.
Empty tanks, full commitment. The pit fighters on Calliope have a saying: "The dying don't pull punches."
Relentless Assault
Here · 1 foe
Prerequisites: Three talents from Grit
Action (clash):
Success: Deal 1 light hit. You may spend 2 Vigor to immediately use a weapon talent you know (roll separately).
Crit Success: Deal 1 hard hit. You may spend 2 Vigor to immediately use a weapon talent you know (roll separately).
You don't stop when you're tired. You don't stop when you're hurt. You stop when they're down.
Honey
mastery of influence & social manipulation
Words are weapons, and Honey is the art of wielding them with surgical precision. Reading desires, exploiting insecurities, turning conversations into conquests. The right phrase at the right moment can accomplish what armies cannot, and it leaves far less mess to clean up afterward.
Domain Talents
The Right Words
Here · 1 friend
Instant: Spend 1 Zeal. Target friend gains 1 Wit or 1 Zeal.
You always know exactly what someone needs to hear. Whether it's encouragement or a sharp reminder of what's at stake, your words land where they matter.
Center Stage
Anywhere · 1 foe that can see or hear you
Prerequisites: One talent from Honey
Action (seduce / assert):
Success: Target foe becomes Fixated (1).
Crit Success: Target foe becomes Fixated (3).
Fixated: The foe can only use abilities that target you or move closer to you. This ends when the DM spends Interruption Tokens equal to the number in parentheses or you suffer a hard hit.
You make yourself impossible to ignore. A cutting remark, a knowing smile, or just the way you carry yourself demands their full attention.
Silver Tongue
Prerequisites: One talent from Honey
Passive: Safe rolls you make to persuade, lie, or gain assistance from someone use the chosen action's proficiency or 8, whichever is greater.
People believe you even when they probably shouldn't. Your voice carries a natural authority that makes even the most outrageous claims sound reasonable.
Better Than That
Here · 1 friend
Prerequisites: Two talents from Honey
Reaction: When a friend critically fails a risky roll, spend 1 Zeal. They may immediately reroll any dice that showed a result greater than your current Zeal score.
Some people offer comfort when others stumble. You offer expectations. A look, a phrase, a quiet reminder that you didn't put your faith in someone who folds this easily.
Disarming Presence
Here
Prerequisites: Two talents from Honey
Action (seduce):
Success: Choose 1 foe. It becomes Dazzled.
Crit Success: Choose up to 3 foes. Each becomes Dazzled.
Dazzled: When the foe deals a hard hit, the DM must spend an Interruption Token, otherwise the hard hit becomes a light hit. Then Dazzled ends.
Your presence is captivating in a way that throws people off their game. Even enemies who want to hurt you find their focus slipping at critical moments.
Unguarded
Prerequisites: Three talents from Honey
Passive: Whenever you become Demoralized, the DM loses 1 Interruption Token.
When you've exhausted every charming deflection and clever misdirection, what remains is raw and genuine. People don't know what to do with someone who has nothing left to hide.
Salt
mastery of preparation & self-reliance
The only reliable constant in the Kosmos is yourself. Salt is the philosophy of radical self-reliance: plan for the worst, prepare for worse than that, and when both plans fail, improvise from whatever's left. It attracts the kind of person who packs three backup options and considers that optimistic.
Domain Talents
Survivor's Instinct
Passive: Whenever you become Reckless, gain 1 balance token.
When you've pushed yourself past thinking, past planning, past doubt, something older takes over. Call it instinct. Call it desperation. Whatever it is, it keeps you moving.
I Planned For This
Prerequisites: One talent from Salt
Passive: At the start of each intermission, roll d12s equal to half your Wit maximum (rounded up) and record each result as a separate Preparation roll. All Preparation rolls are discarded at the start of the next intermission.
Instant: After declaring a safe roll, spend 1 Wit to use one of your Preparation rolls as your result instead of rolling. Discard that Preparation roll and explain how you prepared for this scenario.
You always seem to have exactly what you need, because you thought ahead when others were still hoping things would work out.
Triage
Here · self or friends in your zone
Prerequisites: One talent from Salt
Cutscene (judge, 1 segments):
Failure: Target heals 1 wound segment.
Success: Up to 2 targets heal 1 wound segment.
Crit Success: Up to 4 targets heal 1 wound segment.
You've learned to assess damage quickly and treat what can be treated. No wasted motion, no wishful thinking. Just the wound in front of you and what you have to work with.
Contingency Protocol
Prerequisites: Two talents from Salt
Reaction: Once per intermission, when you fail or critically fail an action roll, you may take another turn in the spotlight instead of the DM taking the spotlight. The DM still gains an Interruption Token on a critical failure and they gain the spotlight at the end of your turn (even if you succeed).
You never bet everything on a single plan. When Plan A falls apart, Plan B is already in motion.
Resourceful
Prerequisites: Two talents from Salt
Action (augur):
Success: Restore 1 use of a talent that has limited uses or a charge for a talent that generates charges. You may spend 2 Wit to repeat this outcome. Once you succeed, you cannot use this talent again until the next intermission.
Crit Success: Restore 1 use of a talent that has limited uses or a charge for a talent that generates charges. You may spend any amount of Wit, repeating this outcome for each Wit spent. Once you succeed, you cannot use this talent again until the next intermission.
Your knack for conservation lets you recover resources others would consider spent. A second wind, a forgotten trick, a reserve you've been saving for this foretold moment.
Clarity of Exhaustion
Prerequisites: Three talents from Salt
Passive: While your Wit is at its minimum, when you spend a balance token to reduce a die result, reduce it by 2 instead of 1.
There's a strange clarity that comes when you've spent everything. No second-guessing, no overthinking. Just pure reaction honed to an edge.
Shrine
mastery of devotion & divine connection
The gods don't owe you anything. But they do keep track. Shrine is the art of making that ledger work in your favor, learning which rituals catch divine attention, which offerings please, and how to stretch every scrap of celestial goodwill into something meaningful. You won't wield divine power yourself. You'll just make sure it's always within arm's reach.
Domain Talents
Devout Prayer
Cutscene (cultivate, 2 segments):
Failure: Gain 1 charge of Divine Grace.
Success: Gain 2 charges of Divine Grace.
Crit Success: Gain 4 charges of Divine Grace.
Passive: Maximum Divine Grace charges equal to your Zeal maximum.
Instant: Spend 1 charge of Divine Grace. Gain 1 to a capacity score of your choice.
The gods notice mortals who take the time to ask properly. Your prayers carve deeper channels through the astral plane, and divine grace pools in the hollow places of your spirit.
Faith's Armor
Prerequisites: One talent from Shrine
Reaction: When you suffer a hard hit, you may spend 1 Zeal or 1 charge of Divine Grace to roll under your Zeal score instead of your Protection score. If you succeed, advance any god's favor clock by 1.
When the body fails, faith can hold. Your conviction becomes armor, your devotion a shield the gods themselves seem to honor.
Rites of Address
Prerequisites: One talent from Shrine
Cutscene (cultivate, 2 segments):
Failure: Advance any god's favor clock by 1.
Success: Advance any god's favor clock by 2.
Crit Success: Advance any god's favor clock by 4.
Every god has preferred forms of address. You've learned them all, from Athena's precise invocations to Dionysus's wilder offerings. The divine appreciate mortals who do their homework.
Conviction's Edge
Here · 1 friend
Prerequisites: Two talents from Shrine
Instant: After declaring a risky weapon talent roll, you may spend 1 Vigor or 1 charge of Divine Grace to add 1 die. If the roll succeeds, advance any god's favor clock by 1.
There's a particular clarity that comes from absolute belief. Your strikes carry that certainty, each blow landing with the weight of conviction behind it.
Stubborn Faith
Prerequisites: Two talents from Shrine
Instant: After declaring a risky action roll, you may spend 1 Wit or 1 charge of Divine Grace to dedicate this action to a god. If the roll fails, re-roll it and use the new result. If the roll succeeds, advance any god's favor clock by 2.
Most mortals curse the gods when fortune turns against them. You've learned to pray harder instead. Sometimes, the divine reward that stubbornness.
Favored Thread
Prerequisites: Three talents from Shrine
Passive: Choose a god with whom you have at least 1 Favor. You are considered to have +2 Favor with the god (maximum 5). During an intermission, you may switch this effect to a different god with whom you have at least 1 Favor.
The gods don't have favorites. Officially. But your spiritual tapestry has caught someone's attention, and they've decided to invest.
Silk
mastery of evasion & mobility
Why take a hit when you can simply not be there? Silk treats the battlefield as a dance floor, trading armor and divine favor for pure kinetic grace. Every dodge is a repositioning, every retreat an advance from a different angle, and every enemy swing connects with the space you occupied half a second ago.
Domain Talents
Quick Feet
Instant: Spend 1 Vigor to cross an edge, ignoring any difficult terrain. Or, spend 2 Protection to cross an edge, ignoring hazardous terrain.
You vault debris, slide under obstacles, and spring off walls without breaking stride. Efficient locomotion, according to the textbooks. Survival, according to everyone who's ever had to outrun something with more teeth than mercy.
Harrying Strikes
Here · up to 3 foes
Prerequisites: One talent from Silk
Action (maneuver):
Success: Affected foes become Harried.
Crit Success: Affected foes become Harried and each suffers 1 light hit.
Harried: This foe cannot cross an edge unless it first suffers 2 light hits. Harried ends when you leave the zone or when the foe crosses an edge.
You circle your targets with quick, harassing strikes, making any escape attempt painful. They can run, but they'll bleed.
Unarmored Agility
Prerequisites: One talent from Silk
Passive: +2 Protection maximum and +1 Reflex. If you are not wearing any armor, gain an additional +2 Protection maximum and +1 Reflex.
Steel slows the body and dulls the instincts. You've shed that weight, trading protection for something better: the clean certainty of empty space where the blade passes through.
Blur of Motion
Prerequisites: Two talents from Silk
Passive: The first time you cross an edge each turn, gain 1 Protection.
Your constant motion makes you a nightmare to track. Opponents swing where you were, not where you are, and every step carries you further from harm.
Flowing Steps
Prerequisites: Two talents from Silk
Action (maneuver):
Success: Cross up to 2 edges, ignoring difficult terrain.
Crit Success: Cross up to 2 edges, ignoring difficult and hazardous terrain.
Rubble, wreckage, the desperate hands of the fallen. None of it slows you. Your feet find the clear path as if the ground itself were guiding you through.
Untouchable
Prerequisites: Three talents from Silk
Reaction: When you would suffer a hard hit, spend 2 Protection to negate it and immediately cross one edge that does not have a terrain effect.
The moment danger crystallizes, you're already moving. By the time they realize you were the target, you're somewhere else entirely.
Tower
mastery of defense & protection
Kill counts are for glory hounds. Tower measures success in allies still breathing at the end of the fight. Bodyguard, battlefield commander, living wall: whatever the role, the job is the same. Nobody gets past you to reach the people you've sworn to protect.
Domain Talents
Bulwark Reserves
Cutscene (overwhelm, 2 segments):
Failure: Gain 1 charge of Bulwark.
Success: Gain 2 charges of Bulwark.
Crit Success: Gain 4 charges of Bulwark.
Passive: Maximum Bulwark charges equal to your Vigor maximum.
Instant: Spend 1 charge of Bulwark to gain 2 Protection.
You reinforce armor joints, adjust shield angles, check every strap and buckle. The ritual looks obsessive until the first ambush, when everyone else is scrambling while you're already braced.
Iron Constitution
Prerequisites: One talent from Tower
Passive: While wearing any armor, reduce that armor's capacity minimum penalties by 1 (to a minimum of 0).
Most warriors complain about the weight. You've forgotten there's weight to complain about.
Warden's Word
Anywhere · 1 friend you can see and who can hear you
Prerequisites: One talent from Tower
Instant: Spend 1 Wit or 1 charge of Bulwark to grant the target 2 Protection. Describe how you coordinate their defense.
A shouted word, a pointed finger, and your ally shifts just enough to turn a killing blow into a glancing one.
Break Through
There
Prerequisites: Two talents from Tower
Instant: Spend 1 Vigor or 1 charge of Bulwark to cross one edge, ignoring any hazardous terrain. You may then spend 1 Vigor or 1 charge of Bulwark to deal 1 hard hit to a foe in your new zone.
Some fighters go around obstacles. You go through them.
Rally the Troops
Here · up to 3 friends
Prerequisites: Two talents from Tower
Action (assert):
Success: Choose up to 3 friends in your zone. Each gains 1 Protection.
Crit Success: Choose up to 3 friends in your zone. Each gains 3 Protection.
Your voice cuts through the chaos, and suddenly your allies remember they're not fighting alone.
Unbreakable Resolve
Prerequisites: Three talents from Tower
Reaction: When you would suffer a wound, you may spend 2 Zeal or 2 charges of Bulwark to prevent that wound entirely.
Your body says stop. Your spirit says no.