Rules in brief
Enough to start a match. The finer points you'll pick up at the board.
The goal
When the Memory closes, the storyteller with the higher Score wins. You score for the spirits left standing on the board and for the Impressions you hold. It is a contest of presence — you win by what you keep on the board, not only by what you take off it.
Your turn
A turn runs Flow → Main → Fade. In Flow your income arrives and you draw; Main is where you act (as far as your Anima reaches — there's no fixed action count); and the Fade comes at the end, where a spirit you couldn't save dissolves and a Parting fires as it leaves. In Main you can:
- Play a spirit from your hand, paying its cost in Anima.
- Move a spirit, or engage an enemy within reach (combat).
- Evolve or recede a spirit — see Becoming & receding.
- Glimpse — burn a hand card, then peek your deck and keep or bottom the top for Anima.
- Cast from your spellbook — rituals, bonds, landmarks, fabrications.
Combat & Impressions
Spirits have reach, attack, and defense; engagements resolve as momentum exchanges, and a defender may intercept. A defeated spirit is banished — returned to the board, never destroyed — and the banisher leaves its Impression on that ground.
Overwrite. You can also play a spirit from your hand onto a tile an enemy holds — siege as arrival. The target must be face-up and within your reach; you pay full cost and resolve one exchange against it. Win and your spirit takes the tile (your Impression beneath it); lose and your spirit dissolves, leaving no Impression, though the damage you dealt stays. You may never Overwrite your own side.
Throughlines
Line up three or more of your spirits sharing one Imprint in a connected, side-by-side run and a Throughline completes: the spirit that closes it gains +10 Attack / +10 Defense and a full heal, and any "on Throughline complete" riders fire. The reward is once per spirit — a body that has earned it won't earn it again … unless its story turns over:
- Fading clears it. If the spirit is banished and stands Faded, the slate is wiped — a rescued or re-formed body can earn its Throughline anew.
- Becoming a Primal clears it. A Primal form (which grows from a Fading base) arrives free to complete the Throughline afresh.
- Devolving clears it — and can re-earn it on the spot. Receding a Faded form back to its base hands that base a clean slate. And because a recede is an arrival (just like an evolution), a base that recedes straight into a standing three-in-a-row re-completes the Throughline immediately — the +10/+10 and full heal land then and there, the same swing as a Primal stepping into a line.
- Becoming a Fabled keeps it. A Fabled form (which grows from a healthy base) carries the same story forward: if the base had already earned the buff, the Fabled stays locked and can't earn it twice.
So the rule of thumb is simple: Fabled keeps; everything else (fading, Primal, devolving) resets.
Becoming & receding
A spirit can become more than it was — and, in a pinch, step back to what it was. Both are cards you play in Main.
- Evolve. A form card (a Primal or a Fabled) is drawn to hand like any spirit; play it onto a matching base you already hold and the base ascends to the form at full strength. A Primal lands on a Fading base (its last becoming); a Fabled lands on a healthy one.
- Recede (devolution) — the rescue. When a Primal or Fabled form is banished in combat, it doesn't vanish at once: it stands Faded for a turn, lit in a failing light. On your turn you may play a base card from your hand onto it to recede it a tier back to that base — restored to full, the form saved by stepping down. It costs half the lost form's Anima, and the rescued base needs a turn to gather itself before it can act again. A recede is an arrival, just like an evolution: it strikes no one (there is no engage), but it can complete a Throughline on the spot if the base steps into a standing line.
Because a spirit can recede and then climb again, the two make a cycle: base → form → (banished, Faded) → recede to base → form once more — for as long as you hold the forms and bases to feed it. The Lorekeepers call the stepping-down a revert; the Solace call it a recede.
Strays & the wild
Now and then the Memory stirs and a Stray — a wild spirit — surfaces on an inner tile, scoring for no one until someone claims it. You can befriend it (it joins you, and your collection, for good) or banish it like any spirit. Some Strays surface in the open; a Wary one surfaces veiled — present, but not yet shown by name.
A Stray stands on a real tile, so an Overwrite reaches it — but what happens depends on whether you can see it:
- A revealed Stray is fought. If it's face-up to you, an Overwrite resolves a full exchange against it: defeat it and your spirit takes the tile (your Impression beneath, exactly as a banish leaves one); survive it and your spirit dissolves, the damage persisting on the wild.
- A hidden Stray is denied entry, not fought. A veiled Wary — or any Stray not yet shown to you — isn't face-up, and you can't Overwrite what you can't see by name. Aim an Overwrite at its tile and the hidden thing is simply turned away: it leaves with no Impression and no reveal (its identity never surfaces), and your spirit takes the now-empty tile as an ordinary arrival — there was nothing face-up to contest.
The Dusk
The board is a fading Memory, and it closes from the edges in. The Dusk falls late in the game and the empty rim goes dark; Nightfall ends it. What still stands when the Memory closes is what you keep. (The Dusk is its own moment, not the turn-end Fade — it sweeps the empty rim all at once.)
The two readings
The Lorekeepers fight to keep the memory written. The Solace unwrite it: they take a spirit off the board gently, leave no Impression, and deny the keeper their proof.
The two even become differently. Where a Lorekeeper spirit ascends toward legend — a Primal, then perhaps a Fabled — an Unwritten deepens: its forms (the Solace Deepenings) are Primal only, never Fabled, the erasure sharpening rather than rising. Some Solace bases even offer a choice of temperament — a gentle deepening or a malign one (a kinder erasure, or a crueler) — two Primals from the one base, and you pick which the moment calls for.