Growth & meditation
Bank experience, deepen stats, push a skill into its next tier, and come back from death.
The six stats and the meditate command
Six stats shape most rolls; meditation is how the hero rests and grows.
Six stats sit under almost every roll a hero makes: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Intelligence, Spirit, and Charisma. Rolling also banks experience, a little for a fumble and more for a clean success. On its own that experience does nothing at all. It is the currency for a single command.
That command is meditate. It is where a hero rests, deepens a stat, pushes a skill into its next tier, or argues its way back from the dead. Three of its six forms are settled by an AI judge reading what the crowd wrote, and the three cards below run that same judge, live. The other three decide themselves, and they are at the end of this chapter.
Deepen a stat
Meditate on a stat by writing what it means to the hero: meditate strength ! my grip is iron, and what I strike does not rise again. The judge scores how well the mantra fits that stat; a beautiful line about another stat scores badly. A fitting mantra earns a permanent point, sometimes two, if this level’s ten-point budget has room. It costs experience equal to the stat’s value before gear, plus the hero’s level and six.
A mantra squarely in Strength's domain.
A focused evolution of physical power: lifting, breaking, overwhelming force.
Why this grade
Deepens the prior 'strong arms' insight into decisive, finishing force.
Advance a skill
A verb is shared: every hero can go, search, or punch. A skill is not. It is one word minted for a single hero as that hero is created, it resolves as its own kind of roll, and it is written in five tiers from the day it exists. Heroes start at tier 1.
The command word stays the same, but the skill’s name and description change; its roll type may change too. Each tier above 1 adds 10% of the hero’s roll pool to the Tier N mastery bonus, so tier 5 rolls with 40% more than tier 1. Earlier tiers stay unlocked, but join:1 calls tier 1 with its smaller bonus, costing you mastery.
All five tiers are written when a skill is created; the crowd sees the hero’s current and earlier tiers, never the next. To advance, the crowd writes its guess for the skill’s next tier, and the judge scores it against that tier’s hidden sentence. The meter must reach 70 percent.
Use meditate join ! what you think it becomes; text after ! is required. Meditation deepens an existing skill; unknown skills are refused. Reflections submitted in one round blend into one guess for the judge. Each advance costs 500 experience per tier the hero currently holds across all skills, raising the next cost. If the hero cannot afford the cost, the command is refused before the judge sees the guess, with no consolation recovery. Otherwise, experience is taken only if the guess lands. A miss costs nothing, has no cooldown, and lets the crowd revise the guess and vote again immediately. Tier 5 is the ceiling; attempts to advance a Tier 5 skill are refused.
join Tier 1 of 5You have an uncanny knack for fixing things so they just kind of stick together. You press two broken pieces in place, and sometimes, against all odds, they hold. People think it's just good glue technique, or maybe you're blessed with steady hands.
Tier 2 of 5: not shown. It is already written. Everything above is everything the game would tell a hero standing here, and it is everything you get before you write. (The skills chapter lays out all five tiers of this one skill, because teaching is the only thing it exists for. In game, the tier ahead stays dark.)
Tier 2 is already written and withheld. Write what you think the skill becomes.
Names the real shift, from lucky adhesion to sensing where the materials themselves want to rejoin.
Why this grade
The guess reaches past luck and names an intent the materials themselves carry, which is the shift this tier turns on.
Return from death
A hero dies when its health hits zero. It stops being an occupant of wherever it was standing, so nothing there can reach it any more, and its health will not come back on its own. Nothing is taken from its pack and its gear stays put.
Voting carries on as normal. The difference is that only one command will actually run while the hero is down: meditate live ! why it comes back. Everything else is turned down, including say and tell.
The judge does not score this one. It answers yes or no, and all it is given is the reflection and the hero's name. It is not told how the hero fell, so the reason has to stand up by itself. Coming back costs experience equal to the hero's level, or everything the hero has if that is less, so a thin balance never strands a hero: the wording is the only thing that decides it.
A yes stands the hero up at the nearest safe haven in the same world, with its health, stamina, and mana full. A no costs nothing. There is no cooldown and no limit on tries, so you can rework the reason and vote it again the next round. If the body has already been carried to town, town is where it stands up.
Kaelen DeadKaelen fell to the frontier boss and is lying at zero health. The reflection below is the whole case for standing back up.
The judge answers yes or no on these words alone.
Why this grade
A concrete, character-rooted oath drives the return; sincere within the fiction.
Three forms decide themselves
Three of six meditation forms have fixed results known before you choose, with no writing or judgment:
meditate rest Rest Restores a chunk of HP, stamina, and mana (up to half of each). Costs no experience and always works: the dedicated recovery valve.
meditate levelup Level up Level up when your experience bar is full and you’ve spent this level’s ten stat points on stat meditations. You gain ten stat points for the next level, and your health, stamina, and mana each refill by half. Levelling makes your actions hit harder and opens the way to higher worlds.
meditate world ! <vision> Forge a world Only after you land the killing blow on a frontier-world boss. Describe the world you want to forge (its place, mood, and how it is harsher than the last), and a new tier unfurls beyond the frontier.
Objectives & rewards
The engine keeps objectives filled; completing one earns lasting growth.
The engine keeps up to three objectives active, each requiring the hero to carry a set item to a place about one level higher, then use a set verb on a set thing there. A successful roll completes it and earns half the hero’s capacity for that level in experience, plus exactly one of three permanent rewards:
- An inventory slot. +1 to how many things your hero can carry (you start at 30). Permanent. This is pack space, not power: only your four equipped gear pieces add to rolls.
- A stat-growth rebate. Refunds one stat point you’ve already spent from this level’s ten, so you can spend it again before leveling up.
- A mantra reset (rare). Resets one stat's meditation mantra to its beginner form, so deepening that stat is cheap again.
None of the three wear off, and nothing in the world takes them back.