Favor represents the providence that accompanies those who remain on the side of good. A fortunate turn of events, unexpected protection, a second chance when failure seems certain, or an opportunity appearing at precisely the right moment may all be manifestations of Favor.
Favor is also a strategic resource. A character may burn Favor to improve a failed roll, attempt the roll again, or call upon providence through 🙏Prayer. Once Favor is burned, it is gone and must be earned again through play. Choosing when to spend Favor—and when to save it for greater dangers ahead—is an important part of Kingsmark.
A character can normally possess no more than 3 🕊Favor at one time. Certain magic, including 🙏Prayer of Oneness, can temporarily raise a character above this limit.
🕊 Earning Favor
At the conclusion of a completed mission, every character who remained on the side of good earns +1 🕊Favor, up to the normal maximum of 3.
This is deliberately a broad standard. Favor is not earned one good deed at a time, and the Game Master should not keep a moral ledger of everything a character does during an adventure. Instead, consider the character’s conduct during the mission as a whole.
God favors justice, courage, compassion, mercy, charity, faithfulness, protection of the innocent, righteous obligations, opposition to evil, and resistance to the Gloom. Deliberate cruelty, oppression, treachery, exploitation, murder of the innocent, corruption, and service to the Gloom stand against these things. Heroes, however, do not have to be perfect.
A character can become angry, tell a lie, act selfishly, make a terrible mistake, commit a sin, or make a morally questionable decision without suddenly ceasing to be one of the heroes. The question is not whether the character behaved perfectly. The question is whether, taken as a whole, the character remained on the side of good. When the answer is genuinely uncertain, award the 🕊Favor. Favor should only be withheld when the character’s conduct clearly warrants it.
🎬Example — Remaining on the Side of Good
Three days after marauders carried off a dozen villagers from Willowcreek, the party finds their camp hidden among the wooded hills. The captives are still alive, but armed sentries guard the only easy approach. Alaric walks openly toward the camp and tells a sentry that he carries an urgent message from the marauders’ allies. It is a complete lie, but it gets him through the gate and gives the others an opportunity to slip inside. While searching for the prisoners, Corvin discovers a jeweled dagger in the marauder captain’s quarters. It has nothing to do with rescuing the villagers, and nobody would mistake taking it for an act of charity. He pockets it anyway. Later, the rescue turns violent. One of the marauders wounds Edric’s brother, and Edric loses his temper. He kills the man with considerably more brutality than was necessary. By sunrise, however, the prisoners are free. The party has risked their lives to save innocent people from violent captors and bring them safely home. Alaric lied. Corvin stole. Edric allowed anger to overcome him. They were imperfect heroes, but they remained on the side of good. When the mission ends, each earns +1 🕊Favor. The judgment would be very different if Corvin had murdered one of the rescued villagers because she witnessed him stealing the dagger. Killing an innocent person to conceal his own wrongdoing would place his conduct during the mission in an entirely different light. The others could still earn Favor, while the Game Master could reasonably determine that Corvin does not.
The Yoke is Easy, The Burden is Light
🕊Favor is awarded for the character’s relationship to good, not the player’s performance at the table. Players do not earn additional Favor for delivering impressive speeches, being funny, knowing the rules, inventing particularly clever plans, performing convincing voices, or commanding the attention of the table. A quiet newcomer and an experienced actor use exactly the same rule.
The Game Master does not need to find a special reason to reward every player. If their characters completed the mission on the side of good, they have already earned their Favor.
🔥Burning Favor
Favor becomes especially important when the dice turn against a character. After failing a roll, a player may burn Favor in either of two ways.
Raise the Result: Burn 1 🕊Favor to add +1 to the die result. Multiple Favor may be burned on the same roll.
Reroll: Burn 1 🕊Favor to discard the failed result and roll the d12 again.
Favor is burned after the player knows the result of the roll and knows that it has failed. Once burned, the Favor is gone regardless of the ultimate outcome.
The choice between increasing a result and rerolling creates an important strategic decision. A small failure may be worth correcting directly, while a terrible roll may make another throw of the die more attractive. Favor is therefore more than protection from unlucky dice. Because a character can normally hold only three points, every use competes with dangers that may arise later in the mission.
🎬 Example — Guarantee Success or Take the Chance?
Roderick attempts an action with a Target Number of 9 and rolls a 7. He currently possesses 3 🕊Favor. Roderick could burn 2 🕊Favor, increasing the 7 to a 9 and guaranteeing success. He would then have only 1 Favor remaining. Instead, he could burn 1 🕊Favor and reroll the d12. A successful reroll would leave him with 2 Favor for later, but the second roll might fail as well. Roderick’s player must decide how important this particular action is and how much Favor he is willing to risk or spend. There is no universally correct choice.
🙏Prayer
Prayer allows Favor to accomplish something fundamentally different from changing a die roll. Instead of improving an action the character is already capable of attempting, Prayer allows a character to ask for providential help when circumstances have moved beyond what the character can reasonably control. Prayer does not earn Favor. Prayer is one way of burning Favor.
Characters may, of course, pray whenever they wish without invoking any game mechanic. A frightened warrior might pray before battle, a grieving father might pray over his child, or a traveler might offer thanks after returning safely home. No Favor needs to change hands simply because a character prays. The 🙏Prayer spell becomes relevant when the character asks providence to materially change the circumstances confronting him. The character may burn 1, 2, or 3 🕊Favor, with greater expenditures allowing progressively greater providential intervention. Prayer is one of a small number of Spells and magical effects available to every character, including characters who are not otherwise spellcasters. The complete list of universally available magic appears in Chapter 15, 📜Magic System.
🙏Prayer requires no Spellcasting Test and causes no 🧠Mental Drain. When invoked for mechanical effect, Prayer costs 🟠🟠 2 Action Points. The Game Master determines whether an appropriate providential intervention is possible before the player burns the chosen 🕊Favor; the Favor expenditure then resolves the Prayer according to the rules below.
Faith and Prayer in Sylva
Sylva was created by a supreme Creator, but the people who inhabit the world do not necessarily understand that reality correctly or in the same way. Different peoples may worship different gods, follow different religions, disagree about the nature of the divine, or deny that any god exists at all. A character does not need to profess a particular religion to earn 🕊Favor, nor must the character correctly understand its source. What matters is whether the character remains on the side of good. The outward form of 🙏Prayer should therefore reflect the character. A devout monotheist might kneel and directly petition the Creator. Another character might call upon the god he believes protects his people. An atheist facing an apparently hopeless situation might close his eyes, cross his fingers, whisper please, or simply hope desperately that something breaks his way. The rules are the same.
Like other magic in Kingsmark, 🙏Prayer should be understood as something that actually happens in the 🎬Scene. The player should consider what the character does, says, or expresses and what that moment would look like if the adventure were being portrayed in a film or novel.
Prayer is not a shortcut for avoiding ordinary challenges. A character cannot simply burn Favor because escaping a prison, crossing hostile territory, defeating a group of enemies, or accomplishing some other difficult objective would otherwise require several actions and several rolls. If reasonable courses of action remain available, the character is expected to confront the situation normally. Prayer is for the moment when the character genuinely needs help beyond what he can reasonably accomplish for himself. The character petitions. Providence may answer. How powerful that answer can be depends upon how much 🕊Favor the character is willing to burn—and whether the requested intervention can occur within the circumstances and purposes of the unfolding story.
🙏Levels of Providential Intervention
When a character invokes Prayer for mechanical effect, the player may burn 1, 2, or 3 🕊Favor. The amount burned establishes the general magnitude of the providential intervention that may occur. Prayer does not command God or guarantee that events will unfold exactly as the character requests. The intervention must be consistent with God’s purposes and with the circumstances and direction of the adventure, as determined by the Game Master. The Game Master should understand what the character is asking for and determine whether an appropriate intervention is possible before the Favor is burned. Most importantly, providential intervention is intended to give a character help when ordinary action is no longer reasonably sufficient. It should not be used simply to bypass challenges, avoid danger, or eliminate a series of rolls that the character could otherwise attempt.
🕊 1 Favor — Modest Intervention
Burning 1 🕊Favor can produce a modest but meaningful change in circumstances: fortunate timing, a useful discovery, a warning, an unexpected opportunity, or some other plausible occurrence that gives the character help he did not previously possess.
🎬Example — Lost in the Hills
Edric has become separated from his companions in unfamiliar hills after nightfall. His lantern is nearly exhausted, his compass was lost while crossing a river, and thick fog has concealed the landmarks. He has already attempted to retrace his route but can no longer determine which direction he came from. Edric stops beneath a tree and prays for help, burning 1 🕊Favor. A cold wind rises several minutes later and briefly tears open the fog. Across the valley, Edric sees the distant glow of a campfire. He cannot know with certainty that it belongs to his companions, and he must still make his way across the dark countryside, but he now has something he desperately lacked: a direction to follow.
🕊🕊 2 Favor — Substantial Intervention
Burning 2 🕊Favor can substantially change a desperate situation. Providence may introduce unexpected assistance, remove a serious obstacle, create an unlikely opportunity, or otherwise alter circumstances enough to provide a realistic path forward.
🎬Example — Awaiting Execution
Gideon has been captured and chained in a cellar beneath an enemy stronghold. His hands cannot reach the lock, he possesses no tools, the guards have ignored his attempts at conversation, and his companions do not know where he has been taken. At dawn, he is to be executed. There is no meaningful escape attempt left for Gideon to make. He prays for deliverance and burns 2 🕊Favor. Hours later, the cellar door quietly opens. A frightened servant enters carrying a stolen key. She overheard the soldiers discussing Gideon’s execution and, for reasons of her own, has decided that she cannot allow an innocent man to die. Gideon has not been magically transported to safety. He is still inside an enemy stronghold, and escape may be dangerous. Providence has instead changed his circumstances substantially enough to make escape possible.
🕊🕊🕊 3 Favor — Extraordinary Intervention
Burning 3 🕊Favor permits an extraordinary providential intervention when circumstances have become truly desperate. Events may align in a remarkable manner, an apparently hopeless situation may suddenly present a way forward, or assistance may arrive when there appeared to be no possibility of rescue. Even extraordinary intervention does not mean that the player dictates the outcome or automatically completes the mission.
🎬Example — No Way Out
The surviving adventurers are trapped inside a burning fortress. The stairway behind them has collapsed. Enemy soldiers control the courtyard below, smoke has filled the upper chambers, and the roof is beginning to fail. The party has searched desperately for another exit and found none. Realizing that they may have reached the end, Miriam drops to her knees and asks God to deliver them. She burns 3 🕊Favor. Moments later, part of the burning roof collapses—but outward rather than inward. The falling timbers smash through an adjoining wooden gallery and expose the entrance to an old drainage tower concealed behind later construction. The heroes have not escaped. They have been given one extraordinary opportunity to escape. They must still reach the tower before the building collapses, descend it, and survive whatever waits below. Providence changed what appeared to be an impossible situation into one in which courageous action can matter again. This distinction is fundamental to Prayer. Providence creates possibilities; it does not exist to play the adventure for the characters.
🙏Prayer of Oneness
Prayer of Oneness is a Power 1 Spell and a specific universal exception to the ordinary Class, School, religious-allegiance, magical-training, and known-Spell requirements of 🕯Holy Magic. Any character may perform Prayer of Oneness regardless of Character Class, religion, ordinary access to 🕯Holy Magic, or 🌬Spirit rating. In an Action Scene, Prayer of Oneness costs only 🟡1 Action Point rather than the normal 4 Action Points for a Power 1 Spell. Unless another rule states otherwise, make the normal Power 1 Spellcasting Test against TN 8 and resolve 🧠Mental Drain normally.
Unlike ordinary 🙏Prayer, 🙏Prayer of Oneness does not ask Providence to alter external circumstances. Instead, the character gives some of his own 🕊Favor to another person. The character may transfer one or more of his existing 🕊Favor to the recipient. Each transferred Favor is removed from the character’s pool and added to the recipient’s. Favor received through Prayer of Oneness may exceed the normal maximum of 3, allowing the recipient to possess as many as 5 🕊Favor. Multiple characters may perform Prayer of Oneness for the same person, but the recipient can never possess more than 5 Favor through this Spell.
The outward form reflects the person performing it. A character may pray to God, invoke another sincerely held religious tradition, offer a blessing, embrace a companion, place a hand upon his shoulder, speak words of confidence, silently focus upon his safety, or simply say, “Come back alive.” The supernatural effect is the sincere transfer of the character’s own Favor toward another person.
🎬Example — One of Us Has to Make It
The party has reached a ruined chasm beneath an ancient fortress. The bridge has collapsed, and enemies are approaching from behind. Across the chasm is the mechanism that can lower another bridge and allow everyone to escape. Only Darius has the agility and climbing experience to have a reasonable chance of crossing the broken structure. Before he leaves, his companions gather around him. The priest places a hand upon Darius and prays for his protection. The northern warrior grips his shoulder and invokes the powers he believes watch over courageous men. Another companion, who professes no belief in any god, embraces Darius and quietly tells him, “Come back.” Through 🙏Prayer of Oneness, the characters transfer their Favor to Darius, raising his total above the ordinary limit to 5 🕊Favor. They have not guaranteed his success. Instead, they have sacrificed resources that could have protected them so that the person upon whom everyone now depends has the greatest possible chance of succeeding. What might otherwise have existed only as manipulation of points has become a scene of trust, fear, friendship, and sacrifice.
👎The Unfavorable
Heroes are fallible. Doing something wrong is not the same thing as becoming evil, and becoming evil is not automatically the same thing as knowingly serving the 🪱Gloom.
A character who lies, steals, loses his temper, acts selfishly, commits a sin, or makes a terrible moral decision does not automatically acquire an Evil Point, lose existing Favor, or change allegiance. Kingsmark does not use a morality meter that the Game Master must continually adjust.
If a character’s conduct during a mission clearly places him outside the side of good, the immediate consequence is much simpler: He does not earn the +1 🕊Favor when that mission ends.
Existing Favor is not automatically taken away. There is no corresponding pool of Evil Favor.
Something more significant happens when a character knowingly chooses to 🍎Respond to the Gloom and serve it by performing a 🍎Soul Offering. This is a deliberate change in allegiance rather than the accumulation of enough individual sins to cross an invisible numerical threshold.
A character who serves the Gloom:
- Soul Offering immediately sets existing 🕊Favor to 0.
- The character cannot earn, receive, or otherwise possess 🕊Favor.
- The character cannot spend 🕊Favor.
- 🕯Holy, ❤Love, and ❤🩹Healing Spells become inaccessible.
- The initial Soul Offering grants three ❌Forbidden 🪱Gloom Spells immediately.
- Magical characters thereafter get additional ❌Forbidden choices alongside ordinary choices when the GM declares the character has a 📖Spell Learning Opportunity.
- Nonmagical characters can receive separate Gloom-only 📖Spell Learning Opportunities.
Serving the Gloom does not increase how frequently the character receives spell-learning opportunities. Instead, the Gloom expands what is offered during those opportunities. If an opportunity would normally allow the character to learn two ordinary spells, a servant of the Gloom is also presented with two Evil spells that may be learned. If another opportunity later presents one ordinary spell, it also presents one Evil spell.
The character therefore gains access to forbidden knowledge without gaining additional opportunities for advancement.
This path exists because Kingsmark allows characters to make meaningful choices, including terrible ones. But Kingsmark remains a game of heroic fantasy. A hero who deliberately enters the service of the Gloom has begun a different kind of story—one of corruption, secrecy, betrayal, confrontation, and perhaps, eventually, return.
😈Playing a Fallen Hero
Kingsmark is a game of heroic fantasy. Its characters are expected to be the people who confront the monsters, rescue the innocent, oppose the Gloom, and enter dangerous places because somebody must. They may be violent, flawed, selfish, troubled, or morally complicated, but the central fantasy remains one of heroes standing against evil.
Nevertheless, a hero can fall.
Allowing a Player Character to serve the Gloom makes stories of corruption, temptation, secrecy, betrayal, tragedy, and ↩️Teshuvah possible from inside the experience of the fallen character. It can also create memorable Player-versus-Player conflicts when the group has agreed that such conflicts belong in their game.
Playing an evil character is not permission to become vindictive toward the other players or to deliberately ruin their enjoyment of the game. The objective remains collaborative storytelling. The fallen character should make the story more interesting, not provide his player with an excuse to sabotage the game itself.
A useful standard applies to the fallen hero just as it does to every other character in Kingsmark: consider what these events would look like as scenes in a movie or chapters in a novel. Betrayal should produce a story worth watching, reading, and retelling.
🎭Player Knowledge and Character Knowledge
A player may know something that his character does not.
This distinction becomes especially important when one of the heroes secretly begins serving the 🪱Gloom. Complete secrecy between the players is not necessary for secrecy between the characters.
Suppose everyone at the table knows that Severin secretly stole twenty gold pieces from Marcus while Marcus slept. Marcus’s player may have watched the entire scene occur. Marcus still does not know that Severin stole his gold. Until Marcus discovers the theft, witnesses suspicious behavior, finds evidence, or otherwise gains a reason to suspect Severin, his player must portray Marcus according to what Marcus actually knows.
The same principle applies when the stakes become much greater. A player may know that another character has 🍎Responded to the Gloom, performed a 🍎Soul Offering, murdered someone in secret, betrayed the party, or begun preparing an attack against his companions. Unless that player’s character possesses the same information, he cannot act upon it.
Players should continually consider two questions: What does my character actually know, and what would my character reasonably do with that knowledge?
Groups that enjoy genuine secrecy can use written notes, private messages, phones, separate conversations with the Game Master, or private channels when playing through a virtual tabletop. Other groups may conduct many secret actions openly and trust the players to separate their knowledge from their characters’ knowledge. Either method works if everyone remains committed to the story.
⚔️Betrayal and Player-versus-Player Conflict
Before a campaign in which betrayal may become possible, the group should establish how far Player-versus-Player conflict is permitted to go. This does not require an elaborate set of additional rules. The Game Master can simply establish which of two approaches the group wishes to use.
🩸Limited PvP: Betrayal, theft, sabotage, capture, fighting, and serious injury between Player Characters are possible, but the group establishes limits on permanent character death. A defeated character might be knocked unconscious, captured, grievously wounded, left barely alive, or otherwise removed from the confrontation instead of being killed.
💀Full PvP: The ordinary rules determine what happens. The fallen character may kill one or more of his former companions. The heroes may kill the fallen character. Several characters may die, and even a total party wipe is possible. No character receives special protection merely because he is controlled by a player. The betrayer may even kill the entire party.
PvP should arise from the fiction rather than from hostility between the people playing the game. Once opposing characters begin secretly maneuvering against one another, private communication with the Game Master can make the resulting scenes particularly interesting. Detailed advice for Game Masters on handling divided parties, secret actions, betrayal, and PvP appears in The Tavern.
👁️When the Traitor Is Revealed
A servant of the 🪱Gloom may remain concealed among the heroes for as long as the fiction reasonably allows. His companions may become suspicious, discover pieces of evidence, accuse the wrong person, or remain completely unaware of what is happening among them. Once the characters themselves discover that their companion knowingly serves the 🪱Gloom, however, the situation must move toward resolution. Heroes cannot knowingly accept an active servant of the Gloom as an ordinary member of their party indefinitely. They must oppose what he has become.
Opposition does not require a predetermined ending. The fallen character might be killed, captured, driven away, brought to justice, abandoned, or forced to flee. He might escape and return later as an NPC antagonist. His companions might attempt to save him from what he has become. The fallen character himself might seek to return to good.
Normally, the fallen character’s status as a Player Character should be resolved within three game sessions after his allegiance to the 🪱Gloom becomes known to the other Player Characters.
This is not a supernatural countdown. It is a storytelling boundary. Kingsmark permits the story of a hero becoming a villain without allowing the normal campaign to gradually become a permanent party of heroes knowingly adventuring alongside servants of the Gloom.
↩️Teshuvah — Return
↩️Teshuvah (Hebrew) means return and is typically understood in English as ↩Repentance. A character who has turned away from good and entered the service of the Gloom is not necessarily beyond return. Teshuvah should arise from the story rather than from accumulating points or satisfying a mechanical checklist. The circumstances will depend upon the character and what he has done. He might recognize the horror of what he has become, reject the 🪱Gloom at a decisive moment, seek forgiveness from those he betrayed, attempt to repair what he damaged, or sacrifice something important to prevent further evil. The important thing is that the return is genuine within the fiction.
Teshuvah is not an advancement path or a reward for having played an evil character. He simply returns to the side of good. Once the character has genuinely rejected the 🪱Gloom, he no longer receives the additional opportunities to learn evil spells that were offered through his service to the Gloom. Opportunities to learn 🕯Holy, ❤🩹Healing, and ❤Love Magic may once again become available to him, and he may once again earn Favor in the ordinary way. His Favor does not immediately refill. If he completes his next mission while remaining on the side of good, he earns the same +1 🕊️ Favor that any other hero would earn. ↩️Teshuvah therefore merely restores what the character abandoned and may make excellent storytelling.
🎬Example — 🍎Responding to the Gloom
Brother Matthias had begun the campaign as a Priest. For four ⭐Action Star Levels—or about 9 months of playing the game once a week, for about 3 – 4 hours each game session—he had traveled beside the same adventuring party, healed their injuries, stood beside them against the 🪱Gloom, and called upon 🕯Holy Magic when his companions needed him. But during an expedition beneath the ruined Abbey of Saint Veyron, Matthias’s player decided that his character’s story was about to take a very different direction. The party had descended into a buried crypt beneath the abbey in search of three villagers who had disappeared while exploring the ruins. After discovering evidence that something had been living beneath the monastery for centuries, Matthias’s player announced in front of everyone at the table, “Matthias is going to cast 🍎Respond to the Gloom.”
Everyone sitting around the table playing Kingsmark heard him—their characters did not.
Several chambers deeper into the dungeon, the GM described Matthias beginning to hear a voice that seemed to come from somewhere behind the stone walls. Matthias could not tell what was speaking or where it actually was, only that something within the ruined abbey had answered his willingness to listen. The unseen speaker promised nothing yet. It merely asked for proof that Matthias was willing to cooperate. Ahead stood an ancient shrine containing a silver lamp whose flame had supposedly burned continuously since the abbey’s founding.
Whatever was speaking wanted Matthias to extinguish it.
The other players understood that some supernatural agent participating in the 🪱Gloom was tempting Matthias, but their characters had no reason to suspect their longtime companion.
When the party discovered two passages beyond the shrine, the Ranger and Man-at-Arms investigated one while the Thief examined a locked door in the other. Matthias remained behind for only a few moments. His player described him waiting until everyone was out of sight, closing his holy book, approaching the silver lamp, and pinching its tiny flame between his fingers. “It goes dark,” the GM said.
When Matthias caught up with the others, nobody interrogated him. Nobody suddenly decided to search his possessions or watch him suspiciously. The players knew Matthias had 🍎Responded to the Gloom and deliberately extinguished the lamp, but their characters did not. The Man-at-Arms even handed Matthias the lantern and asked him to carry it while he helped the Thief force open the next door. Matthias took it without a word. Later, the unseen voice returned. Matthias still did not know whether it belonged to a demon, corrupted spirit, or some other supernatural presence within the abbey. This time the entity offered something more valuable than promises: magical power supplied through the 🪱Gloom. Matthias’s player accepted and performed the 🍎Soul Offering spell.
🍎Respond to the Gloom Spell #127
Responding to the 🪱Gloom is the spiritual act of answering whispers in the dark because one is lonely, bitter, jealous, curious, ambitious, or foolish. The 🪱Gloom rarely appears as a monster demanding obedience. It tempts, flatters, excuses, and bargains. It offers shortcuts, revenge, forbidden knowledge, and selfish rewards. The first step into darkness is rarely monstrous evil. More often, it is simply responding: listening to corrupt counsel, entertaining bitterness, keeping wicked company, or laughing with evil until it no longer seems evil. To communicate with the 🪱Gloom is considered profoundly reckless, like opening one’s door during a plague because something outside promised gifts. Unlike most Spells, however, anyone can do it.
🍎 Respond to the Gloom 127 ❌Forbidden
Respond to the Gloom represents the deliberate progression from temptation to obedience and finally to formal allegiance.
The Gloom itself does not normally converse with mortals as a literal voice inside the mind. Its influence arrives through desire, opportunity, resentment, fear, dreams, corrupted places and objects, demons, evil spirits, cultists, Sorcerers, supernatural agents, and circumstances that make wrongdoing appear useful. If a being actually speaks words to the character, that voice belongs to an entity serving or participating in the Gloom rather than to the Gloom itself.
Anyone may perform this Spell regardless of Character Class, 🌬Spirit, magical training, School access, or previous ability to cast Spells. No Spellcasting Test is required for either manifestation because these are voluntary spiritual decisions rather than attempts to overcome supernatural resistance.
0️⃣ Respond to the Gloom — Miracle: 502 🌑Dark Magic ❌Forbidden
This spell does not require a dice roll to cast, and it can be cast by anyone. You knowingly make yourself receptive to corrupt supernatural influence and seek an opportunity, direction, or advantage from it. The GM privately presents a 🍎Temptation appropriate to your character and circumstances. The Temptation should normally exploit something the character already wants, fears, resents, envies, or feels justified in pursuing rather than immediately demanding senseless atrocity. Responding grants no supernatural benefit by itself. You may reject the Temptation without entering a Gloom Pact. If you knowingly accept the Temptation, you must perform the requested act before Soul Offering becomes available. When the deed occurs privately and no meaningful uncertainty or opposition exists, accepting the Temptation is sufficient to establish that the character follows through; no Test is required merely to determine whether the character does what the player knowingly agreed to do. Genuine resistance, direct observation, another character’s defenses, or another meaningful obstacle is resolved normally. Completing the act represents the first deliberate obedience to the Gloom. It does not yet constitute formal allegiance.
0️⃣ Soul Offering — Miracle: 503 🌑Dark Magic ❌Forbidden 🪱Serves the Gloom
This spell does not require a dice roll to cast, and it can be cast by anyone. After completing a 🍎Temptation accepted through Respond to the Gloom, you may knowingly offer yourself in allegiance to the Gloom. Soul Offering creates an immediate metaphysical change. Your own 🌬Spirit collapses to 0 and corrupt supernatural power immediately floods the resulting emptiness. The collapse and surge are instantaneous. Your final 🌬Spirit becomes +3. If you already possessed 🌬Spirit +4, your Spirit instead returns to +4. This Spirit Rating does not represent a healthier or more complete Ruach. It represents supernatural power supplied through the Gloom. Your current 🕊Favor immediately becomes 0. While serving the Gloom, you cannot earn, receive, hold, or spend Favor. You can no longer cast 🕯Holy Magic, ❤️Love Magic, or ❤️🩹Healing Magic while the Pact remains. You become an Evil Sorcerer without changing Character Class. Immediately receive a special 📖Spell Learning Opportunity involving 🌑Dark Magic, 🩸Blood Magic, and ☠Necromancy. The GM normally presents two or three appropriate ❌Forbidden Spell choices from each of those Schools. Choose and learn exactly one Spell from 🌑Dark Magic, one from 🩸Blood Magic, and one from ☠Necromancy. These are Gloom-granted Spells. They ignore the School restrictions of your Character Class and do not count against normal magical capacity. Available manifestations remain limited normally by ⭐Action Star Level.
A Gloom-granted Spell may be a Spell marked entirely ❌Forbidden or a Spell containing an explicitly ❌Forbidden manifestation when that corrupt capability is the reason the Spell is being offered. Later magical development follows the Gloom Pact rules. A magical Character Class continues receiving ordinary Spell Learning Opportunities but receives an equal number of additional Forbidden choices from the Gloom. A nonmagical Character Class instead becomes eligible for Gloom Spell Learning Opportunities containing only Forbidden choices.
Soul Offering is not merely consultation with something dangerous. It is deliberate allegiance.
The GM described Matthias experiencing a sudden vision. For an instant the dungeon disappeared. Matthias saw his own hands holding the holy book he had carried since the beginning of his priesthood. Verses he had recited hundreds of times seemed to rearrange themselves before his eyes. By changing only a few words, reversing a sacred invocation here and corrupting a holy name there, Matthias suddenly understood how prayers he had known all his life could call upon something entirely different. The GM announced that Matthias had received a Spell Learning Opportunity. He could learn the normal Ward Area spell from the school of 🛡Abjuration, or he could accept the knowledge offered by the 🪱Gloom and learn Shadow Creature from the school of 🌑Dark Magic.
Matthias’s player chose Shadow Creature.
Shadow Creature Spell #135
👐 Shaping Required: You must deliberately shape or direct existing darkness through gesture, movement, or another visible act. Powers 0–2 manipulate darkness without inherently invoking the 🪱Gloom and are not automatically ❌Forbidden. Supreme Shadow Creature is fundamentally different because it deliberately draws living Gloom into the world.
0️⃣ Coincidental Shadow Creature — 👐 Miracle: 532 🌑Dark Magic
You briefly shape existing darkness into a vague creature, such as an 🐺Animal silhouette, crouched figure, grasping hand, or impossible face. It lasts only seconds and cannot act independently. Skeptics blame moving light, imagination, or nerves.
1️⃣ Lesser Shadow Creature — 👐 Miracle: 533 🌑Dark Magic
For 1d12 minutes, you animate a shadow-creature of any imagined shape within the immediate area. It may carry small objects, tug clothing, obscure a light, crawl along surfaces, or make distracting sounds but cannot attack or exert substantial force. A creature directly confronted by it suffers +1 Disadvantage on its next composure-related test.
2️⃣ Greater Shadow Creature — 🗣️👐 Miracle: 534 🌑Dark Magic
You create a semi-autonomous shadow-creature for 1d12 × 5 minutes. When created, choose one of three attack manifestations. Physical Predation causes the creature to develop claws, teeth, horns, crushing limbs, or another physical means of attack; successful attacks inflict 🩸Minor Physical Trauma using 🗡Blades & Spikes or 🪨Concussive Damage according to its form. Radiological Touch causes the creature to attack by passing dark energy into living tissue; successful attacks inflict 🩸Minor Physical Trauma from 🌑Darkness Damage, and the victim may experience metallic taste, reddened or blackened skin, nausea, sudden weakness, darkened veins, or localized hair loss without any ordinary wound explaining the injury. Psychological Horror causes the creature to attack through impossible, intimate, or terrifying behavior rather than physical injury; successful attacks inflict 🧠Impaired Mental Trauma. Choose the manifestation when the creature is created; it retains that attack form for the duration. The creature may move and pursue simple objectives independently, but attacks made in bright light suffer +1 Disadvantage.
3️⃣ Supreme Shadow Creature — 🗣️👐🪄 Miracle: 535 🌑Dark Magic ❌Forbidden 🪱Serves the Gloom
You tear a fragment of living 🪱Gloom into the world and shape it into a predatory shadow entity for the 🎬Scene. When created, choose one of three attack manifestations. Physical Predation causes the creature to attack with claws, teeth, horns, crushing limbs, or another physical form; successful attacks inflict 🩸Moderate Physical Trauma using 🗡Blades & Spikes or 🪨Concussive Damage according to the creature’s form. Radiological Corruption causes successful attacks to inflict 🩸Moderate Physical Trauma from 🌑Darkness Damage; a victim may blister without heat, bleed beneath the skin, develop blackened veins, vomit, lose hair, experience distorted vision, or show other signs of severe supernatural radiation exposure. Instruments or supernatural senses capable of detecting ☢Radiation can identify the contamination for 1d12 minutes afterward even when no visible external wound remains. Spiritual Terror causes successful attacks to inflict 🧠Unstable Mental Trauma as the creature attacks through impossible movement, invasive proximity, distorted identity, whispered knowledge, or another manifestation that makes the victim feel directly confronted by something that should not exist. Choose the manifestation when the creature is created. The creature moves independently, hunts according to the directive given when summoned, and visibly behaves less like an illusion than darkness that has learned hunger.
The spell itself was not entirely ❌Forbidden. Matthias could perform its Coincidental, Lesser, and Greater manifestations without crossing that particular boundary. Only the level 3️⃣Supreme Shadow Creature was ❌Forbidden. As a Level 4 character, however, Matthias was capable of attempting spells through their maximum Power Level of 3. The forbidden manifestation was therefore available to him if he chose to use it. The consequences of Matthias’s decision became apparent before the party escaped the crypt. In a burial chamber below the abbey, something enormous burst through one of the sealed tombs and attacked. During the fighting, the Man-at-Arms was badly wounded. He stumbled against a sarcophagus and called to the Priest who had saved his life more than once before.
“Matthias! I need you!”
Matthias did nothing.
His companions still did not understand. The Ranger shouted for him to use his Healing Magic. Matthias could not. Having given himself to the 🪱Gloom, he could no longer perform magic from the schools of 🕯Holy Magic, ❤🩹Healing Magic, or ❤Love Magic.
The other characters stared at their Priest in disbelief. Was something preventing his magic? Was he frightened? Had the dungeon done something to him? Then Matthias’s player described his character looking at the wounded Man-at-Arms and giving him a slow, sinister grin.
At last, the characters knew what their players had known for some time.
Matthias reached beneath his tunic and withdrew a small black relic suspended from a chain. It was an evil magical item he had acquired in secret, granting him -2 Advantage when casting Shadow Creature. He raised both arms and began deliberately drawing the darkness around him into shape. “I’m casting 3️⃣Supreme Shadow Creature.” Power 3 magic normally has a Target Number of 12, but Matthias’s magical item grants -2 Advantage, reducing the Target Number to TN 10. Performing Power 3 magic costs 🔴🔴🔴🔴 4 Action Points, a Starring Action. Matthias makes his Spellcasting Test:
1d12 + Spirituality PRISM + Spiritual Practices
Matthias has 🌈Spirituality PRISM +3 and Spiritual Practices +3. His player rolls the 1d12 and gets a 5. His modified dice result is therefore 5 + 3 + 3 = 11. His Hand is 11, exceeding the modified TN 10. The miracle succeeds!
The grin vanished from Matthias’s face as he spread his hands. Every shadow in the burial chamber seemed to pull toward him at once. Darkness peeled from beneath the sarcophagi, crawled down the walls, and streamed between his fingers like black smoke. Then something inside that darkness moved. Matthias tore a fragment of living 🪱Gloom into the world. The thing unfolded behind him until its shoulders nearly brushed the vaulted ceiling. It had the suggestion of a man but none of the proportions of one: arms too long, fingers dragging across the stones, and a head crowned with crooked antlers whose edges dissolved continuously into smoke. No eyes appeared in its face. There were only two deeper places in the darkness where eyes should have been.
The 3️⃣Supreme Shadow Creature would remain for the rest of the 🎬Scene, moving independently and striking from the darkness. Matthias chose a manifestation capable of inflicting 🩸Moderate Physical Wounds.
The wounded Man-at-Arms stared at the Priest who had once healed him. The Ranger slowly raised her bow. The Thief backed toward the doorway.
Now the PvP (player-versus-player combat) began.
Everyone at the table had agreed 9-months ago, before the campaign began, that Full PvP would be permitted if any characters decided to turn evil and serve the 🪱Gloom. Matthias’s player understood exactly what that meant. His former companions could kill him. He could kill them. The dice would decide what happened next. In fact, Matthias’s player already expected the fallen Priest to die and had prepared a second character to enter the campaign after Matthias’s story was finished. He was not trying to “win” against his friends. He was playing the villain in a story they were creating together, hoping that what happened at the table would become the kind of fantasy story they would still be talking about years later.
The fact that everyone understood they were constructing the story together was what allowed the betrayal to work. The players had known that Matthias was turning against them almost from the beginning, yet they had carefully separated Player Knowledge from Character Knowledge. Their characters had continued trusting Matthias because they had no reason not to. Nobody invented suspicions because of something heard across the gaming table. When the Man-at-Arms had needed help carrying equipment, he had handed it to Matthias as he always had. When the party divided responsibilities, they continued treating their Priest as a trusted companion. Only when Matthias refused to use the magic they believed he possessed—and then summoned a forbidden creature of living 🪱Gloom before their eyes—did their characters finally understand the betrayal.
What had begun as an ordinary heroic expedition had become something resembling the final act of a dark fantasy film. A trusted Priest had secretly fallen to evil. His own holy book had become the instrument through which he discovered 🌑Dark Magic. A Spell Learning Opportunity had transformed that corruption into a meaningful character choice. The escalating Power Levels of Shadow Creature had given him several possible manifestations of his new magic, culminating in the ❌Forbidden Power 3 miracle that finally exposed him. And a straightforward Spellcasting Test—1d12 + Spirituality PRISM + Spiritual Practices against a Target Number determined by Power Level—had decided whether the horrifying climax actually occurred.
What happened next was no longer predetermined. Perhaps Matthias would be killed by the friends he betrayed. Perhaps the Shadow Creature would slaughter one of them first. Perhaps they would capture him, or perhaps some unexpected opportunity for ↩️Teshuvah (Repentance) would emerge before the final blow. That would be decided through play.
The players knew Matthias had betrayed them long before their characters did. They played the difference, remained faithful to what their characters actually knew, and allowed a normal heroic fantasy adventure to become a story of corruption, betrayal, forbidden magic, and PvP that none of them were likely to forget.
