The Time to Heal
Kingsmark does not treat 🩸Physical Trauma as a resource expected to rise and fall throughout every adventure. A competent adventurer may complete many dangerous missions without suffering a significant physical wound. This is intentional. Professional soldiers, guards, hunters, and other people who routinely face danger learn to avoid injury because even a relatively small wound can interfere with their work for days or weeks. Player characters are expected to approach danger with the same intelligence. Reconnaissance, surprise, armor, concealment, positioning, teamwork, retreat, and avoiding unnecessary combat are not merely tactical advantages; they are how professionals remain alive and capable of working. A character who routinely accumulates 🩸Physical Trauma is either facing extraordinary circumstances, accepting extreme risks, or doing something wrong.
This does not mean that the Game Master should protect characters from injury. An appropriately dangerous mission should provide intelligent opportunities for the adventuring party to improve its chances, but those opportunities must still be recognized and exploited. Characters who charge blindly into an ambush, neglect their armor, refuse to retreat from overwhelming opposition, or knowingly venture somewhere far beyond their abilities may suffer accordingly. Kingsmark assumes that adventurers learn to treat bodily injury with the seriousness that people facing real danger would give it.
🩸Physical and 🧠Mental Trauma therefore play somewhat different roles. 🩸Physical Trauma should generally be less frequent but more consequential. A sword thrust, broken bone, serious burn, or crushed hand can affect a character for weeks or months. 🧠Mental Trauma is more likely to rise and fall during the ordinary course of adventuring. Exhaustion, terror, grief, supernatural encounters, magic, the Twelve Horrors, and the accumulated strain of dangerous journeys can repeatedly test the mind even when the body remains intact. An adventurer might return from a mission without a single physical wound while nevertheless being exhausted, 🧠Shaken, and badly in need of a few peaceful days.
When 🩸Physical Trauma does occur, the time required to recover should reinforce its seriousness. 🩸Minor wounds commonly require days of recovery. 🩸Moderate wounds can require weeks. 🩸Severe wounds can require months and may leave Permanent Injury. 💀Critical wounds are catastrophic injuries from which survival itself is uncertain; those who live may require months of recovery and remain permanently changed. The Damage Level records the overall seriousness of the injury, while the description written on the Medical Record establishes what actually happened to the character.
Kingsmark deliberately standardizes Recovery Time according to Damage Level and the Healing Scene being used. A broken arm and a deep sword wound are not biologically identical injuries, but requiring the Game Master to research a different medical timetable for every possible wound would add work without improving the game. The named injury remains important because it determines what the character is experiencing, what actions may be difficult or impossible, whether circumstances such as Bleeding apply, and what Permanent Injury might remain. The Healing Scene tells the players how long the active Trauma requires to heal. This approach also preserves cinematic continuity. If a character is badly wounded in one scene, that wound remains part of the character’s story afterward. Bandages, limping, convalescence, medicinal treatment, scars, and time spent away from dangerous work can all become visible parts of the narrative. Even powerful Healing Potions generally accelerate this process rather than causing grievous wounds to disappear before everyone’s eyes. Truly miraculous magic may accomplish more, but only when its rules explicitly say so.
Recovery is therefore not something that happens invisibly between adventures merely because the game session ended. Time must pass, and the character must have circumstances in which healing can occur. Those circumstances are represented by Healing Scenes.
A Healing Scene is a specific event or period of recovery that removes Trauma. It might consist of resting safely at home, receiving treatment from an apothecary or barber-surgeon, spending months under a physician’s care, drinking a rare Healing Potion, praying in solitude, sharing an evening with someone the character loves, or withdrawing from adventuring for an extended convalescence. Some Healing Scenes cost money. Others require time, relationships, equipment, skill, or a safe place to recover.
The purpose of the system is simple: when Trauma appears on the Medical Record, the rules should provide a clear answer to the question, “How do I remove this?”
How Healing Works
Healing Physical Trauma follows one basic procedure:
Choose a Healing Scene capable of treating the Trauma → obtain or pay for the Healing Scene → complete its Recovery Time → erase the Trauma.
The Healing Scene menu provides the necessary information. Players do not calculate percentages, divide recovery periods, or determine their own medical timetables. If a treatment heals a Moderate wound in four weeks, the rules simply say four weeks.
Record the Wound
When a character suffers Physical Trauma, record both its Damage Level and the actual injury. For example:
🩸Moderate — Sword wound through the left shoulder
The Damage Level determines which Healing Scenes are capable of treating the wound. The description establishes what has actually happened in the story. A wounded shoulder, broken ankle, burned hand, and concussion may all belong to the same Damage Level while creating very different circumstances for the character.
Choose a Healing Scene
Consult the Healing Scene menu and choose an option capable of treating the wound. Each Physical Healing Scene states exactly which Damage Levels it can treat, what it costs, what circumstances or supplies it requires, and how long recovery takes. Players are not expected to determine the medical procedure themselves. If Apothecary & Barber-Surgeon Care can treat a 🩸Moderate wound, purchasing that Healing Scene establishes that the character receives whatever competent period-appropriate treatment the injury reasonably requires. The players may describe the details when they are interesting, but they do not need to decide whether a particular wound requires a certain herb, dressing, splint, stitch, or surgical procedure.
Pay for or Provide the Healing Scene
Medical Healing Scenes distinguish between the Professional Fee and the cost of Medicines & Supplies. A character who hires a professional pays both. A sufficiently skilled character using Medicine may be able to provide the professional care personally, eliminating the Professional Fee, but the necessary medicines, supplies, equipment, facilities, and living expenses must still be available. Free Healing Scenes require no payment but still require their listed circumstances and time.
Record Recovery Time
Once recovery begins, record the amount of time required beside the wound. A Severe injury requiring twelve weeks might be written:
🩸Severe — Broken leg — Recovery 0/12 weeks
After five weeks of qualifying recovery:
🩸Severe — Broken leg — Recovery 5/12 weeks
No percentage needs to be calculated. The character has recovered for five of the twelve required weeks.
Interrupted Recovery
Recovery already completed is never lost merely because recovery is interrupted. If the character leaves convalescence after five weeks, when he needs a total of twelve weeks to heal, those five weeks remain completed. Recovery stops advancing while the character no longer has the circumstances required by the Healing Scene and resumes when appropriate recovery begins again. Returning to adventure does not automatically worsen a wound or erase previous healing. Only events that actually aggravate or reinjure the character can create additional consequences. If a character later obtains a faster Healing Scene, begin using that Healing Scene’s listed Recovery Time when the new treatment begins while retaining the recovery already completed. A Healing Scene cannot retroactively heal a character before it was actually obtained; the treatment itself must occur in the story.
Completing Recovery
When the required Recovery Time has been completed, erase the active Trauma from the Medical Record. The wound has healed sufficiently that it no longer occupies its Trauma box or contributes to the character’s Pain Modifier. Erasing the active Trauma does not necessarily erase everything the injury did. A Severe or Critical wound may leave a scar, disability, lost body part, damaged organ, chronic pain, or other Permanent Injury. Active Trauma represents the wound from which the character is presently recovering. Permanent Injury represents what remains after that recovery is complete. For example, suppose a character suffers a Moderate sword wound through the left shoulder. The player purchases Apothecary & Barber-Surgeon Care, which heals Moderate Physical Trauma in four weeks. The character receives the treatment, the required Professional Fee and Medicines & Supplies are paid, and Recovery 0/4 weeks is recorded beside the wound. After four weeks of qualifying recovery, the Moderate Trauma is erased. The sword wound happened, the treatment happened, and the recovery happened; the Medical Record simply no longer carries an active wound once that process is complete.
Purchasing a Healing Scene
A Healing Scene establishes the circumstances through which a character recovers from Trauma. Purchasing one does more than remove a mark from the Medical Record: it establishes something that actually happens in the story. A wounded adventurer may spend several weeks under the care of an apothecary, retire to a monastery for convalescence, obtain rare medicinal bandages, or drink a Healing Potion before beginning an unnaturally rapid recovery. Mental Healing Scenes likewise establish periods of companionship, prayer, rest, comfort, or other experiences through which the character recovers.
A Healing Scene may also create new relationships, obligations, and story opportunities. A healer may become a trusted ally, a monastery may expect a future favor, an apothecary may know where rare ingredients can be found, or a noble physician may insist that the character remain under observation. Recovery can therefore become part of the larger campaign rather than existing only between adventures. The Game Master should use these details when they naturally matter, but purchasing a Healing Scene does not automatically create complications unless the circumstances support them.
A player does not need to perform an extended role-playing scene every time one is purchased. Important moments can be played in detail, while routine recovery can be established with a sentence of narration. Purchasing Apothecary & Barber-Surgeon Care, for example, is enough to establish that competent treatment occurs. The important principle is that the Healing Scene becomes part of the character’s history rather than functioning as an invisible mechanical reset.
Physical Healing Scenes list a Professional Fee and Medicines & Supplies separately whenever both are involved. The Professional Fee pays for the knowledge and labor of the person providing treatment. Medicines & Supplies pay for the substances and materials consumed during treatment. A character capable of providing the necessary professional care through the Medicine skill can avoid the Professional Fee, but cannot thereby create medicines, bandages, food, instruments, or other necessary resources from nothing.
The prices given here represent ordinary costs in Sylva and may vary somewhat according to location, scarcity, reputation, war, famine, or unusual circumstances. The Game Master may make reasonable adjustments, but the listed prices should normally be used without further calculation.
Recovery Time Does Not Stack
A character may receive more than one kind of medical care at the same time, but the same period of recovery cannot be counted more than once toward the same Physical Trauma. If a wound requires two weeks of recovery, spending one week simultaneously under the care of two physicians does not count as two weeks.
When more than one Healing Scene applies to the same injury during the same period, use the best applicable Recovery Time. Do not add their recovery rates together unless a particular Healing Scene, medicine, spell, or other rule specifically says that it accelerates another form of treatment.
A character may change to a better Healing Scene during recovery. Time already completed still counts; it is never lost simply because the character changes treatment. The new treatment applies from that point forward using its own Recovery Time and requirements.
🏠Rest & Basic Care — Standard of Living
Many wounds require little more than time and healthy conditions. Rest & Basic Care represents safe shelter, adequate food and water, sleep, cleanliness, ordinary wound care, protection from the elements, and freedom from strenuous activity. A character may recover at home, with family, at an inn, in employer-provided quarters, or anywhere else providing these conditions. No Medicine Test is required. Moderate wounds that clearly require professional intervention must first receive appropriate treatment, but the Game Master should not invent additional medical requirements merely to complicate ordinary recovery.
Professional Fee: None
Medicines & Supplies: Included in Standard of Living
🩸Minor Trauma: Healed in 7 days
🩸Moderate Trauma: Healed in 6 weeks
🩸Severe Trauma: Insufficient
💀Critical Trauma: Insufficient
🌿Apothecary or 💈Barber-Surgeon Care — Labor 3 Silver, Medicines 2 Silver
Apothecaries, herbalists, healers, barber-surgeons, midwives, monks, and similar practitioners preserve broad medical traditions throughout Sylva. Treatment may include herbs, tinctures, poultices, salves, medicinal foods, bathing, massage, splints, dressings, wound cleaning, setting bones, stitching wounds, removing damaged tissue, or surgery when necessary. The rules make no distinction based merely on whether a treatment would now be called medicine, traditional medicine, natural medicine, or holistic medicine. What matters is whether the practitioner has the knowledge, materials, and circumstances required for effective treatment. The listed price covers treatment of one wound, rather than charging separately for every visit, dressing, preparation, or dose. Food and lodging are not included.
🩸Minor Trauma: Healed in 4 days
🩸Moderate Trauma: Healed in 4 weeks
🩸Severe Trauma: Healed in 10 weeks
💀Critical Trauma: Insufficient
🧑⚕Physician or Hospital Care — Labor 1 Gold, Medicines 1 Gold
Serious injuries may require an accomplished physician, surgeon, or similarly capable healer working in an equipped infirmary, monastery, hospital, noble household, temple, or comparable facility. Treatment may include surgery, medicines, specialized instruments, careful diet, nursing, cleanliness, frequent observation, and other measures appropriate to the injury. Critical Trauma begins ordinary recovery only after the character survives its immediate consequences. This care does not cancel a R.A.D. result, and healing a Critical wound does not remove any Permanent Injury it caused. The listed price covers treatment of one wound. Food, lodging, and other living expenses during convalescence are paid separately unless provided by someone else.
🩸Minor Trauma: Healed in 3 days
🩸Moderate Trauma: Healed in 3 weeks
🩸Severe Trauma: Healed in 8 weeks
💀Critical Trauma: Healed in 6 months
🤕Medicinal Bandages — 5 Silver per wound
Medicinal Bandages are costly prepared dressings intended to improve the conditions under which wounds heal. Depending upon the culture that produced them, they may incorporate medicinal herbs, oils, resins, honey, mineral preparations, antiseptic substances, rare plants, or other compounds valued by healers. Particularly renowned varieties may contain ingredients possessing subtle magical properties. When Medicinal Bandages are used as part of an otherwise appropriate Healing Scene, use the following Recovery Times instead of the treatment’s ordinary Recovery Time:
🩸Minor Trauma: Healed in 3 days
🩸Moderate Trauma: Healed in 3 weeks
🩸Severe Trauma: Healed in 8 weeks
💀Critical Trauma: Healed in 4 months
Medicinal Bandages do not allow inadequate care to treat a wound beyond its capabilities. A Critical wound still requires Physician or Hospital Care. The bandages simply replace that Healing Scene’s ordinary Recovery Time with the faster time listed above. There is no percentage to calculate and no modifier to apply. If Medicinal Bandages heal a Severe wound in eight weeks, record Recovery 0/8 weeks.
🏡Extended Retreat or Convalescence — 1 Gold per month
Extended Retreat or Convalescence does not replace medical treatment. Instead, it provides the circumstances in which qualifying Physical Healing Scenes can proceed. A character recovering from several wounds may accumulate Recovery Time for all of them simultaneously, provided each wound has received whatever treatment it requires. This Healing Scene also benefits Mental Trauma, as described under Healing Mental Trauma.
A character only pays for the period of convalescence actually required. Use the weekly rate when the required recovery period is shorter than one month. Longer periods are purchased by the month, with any remaining partial month purchased by the week.
A character does not necessarily have to pay for convalescence. Family, friends, religious institutions, military organizations, patrons, employers, or grateful communities may provide equivalent circumstances without charge. The mechanical requirement is the circumstance, not the exchange of coins. Includes: Modest living conditions and ordinary necessities of convalescence. Cost: 1 Gold per month, or 3 Silver per week when less than a full month is required.
🫙Healing Potions
Healing Potions occupy the boundary between extraordinary medicine and overt magic. Their recipes combine concentrated medicinal preparations with rare ingredients whose properties cannot be explained by ordinary herbalism alone. Some traditions attribute their effects to magical plants, sacred waters, unusual minerals, alchemical processes, blessings, or substances gathered from supernatural creatures. Different cultures may understand their manufacture in very different ways. Healing Potions are therefore not commonplace bottles of instant recovery. Even the least powerful examples are enormously expensive compared with ordinary medical care. Adventurers do not normally consume several during every expedition, and finding one should be meaningful. Drinking a Healing Potion is itself a Healing Scene. Purchasing one establishes that the character obtains the potion and drinks it. Its effect is to accelerate the body’s recovery dramatically. The wound remains the wound that was suffered, but a process that ordinarily requires weeks or months may occur in days or weeks instead. Unless a potion specifically says otherwise, Healing Potions accelerate healing but do not regenerate destroyed or missing anatomy.
🫙Healing Potion — 5 Gold
A Healing Potion is a rare and powerful medicinal preparation capable of accelerating recovery far beyond what ordinary treatment can accomplish. A Healing Potion can accelerate recovery from Severe or Critical Trauma, but it does not eliminate the need for professional treatment when the nature of the wound requires it. A character with a catastrophic internal injury cannot simply drink a potion and refuse the surgery or other care necessary to survive.
🩸Minor Trauma: Healed in 1 day
🩸Moderate Trauma: Healed in 1 week
🩸Severe Trauma: Healed in 4 weeks
💀Critical Trauma: Healed in 3 months
🫙Greater Healing Potion — 20 Gold
A Greater Healing Potion requires extraordinarily rare medicinal and magical ingredients. Such potions may be the work of master herbalists, alchemists, witches, healers, priests, wizards, or traditions whose methods are closely guarded. At this level the body’s recovery is visibly unnatural. Swelling subsides rapidly, damaged tissue repairs itself with remarkable speed, and injuries that should remove someone from ordinary life for months may permit a return within weeks. The process is nevertheless still healing rather than regeneration.
🩸Minor Trauma: Healed in 4 hours
🩸Moderate Trauma: Healed in 3 days
🩸Severe Trauma: Healed in 2 weeks
💀Critical Trauma: Healed in 6 weeks
🫙Miraculous Healing Potion — 100 Gold
A Miraculous Healing Potion is among the most valuable medicinal substances that can exist in Sylva. Its manufacture requires ingredients, knowledge, circumstances, or magical power unavailable to ordinary healers. Such a potion may be guarded as royal treasure, preserved by an ancient religious order, brewed only from a plant that flowers once in a generation, or obtainable solely through an extraordinary adventure. A Miraculous Healing Potion approaches the boundary between accelerated natural healing and a genuine miracle. A Critical injury that might ordinarily require half a year or longer can recover in approximately a month. Even so, Permanent Injury remains unless the potion explicitly possesses regenerative properties. A severed hand does not reappear merely because the wound where it was severed has healed. A destroyed eye does not reconstruct itself simply because the surrounding injury closes. Restoring missing limbs, destroyed organs, or other permanently lost anatomy requires Regeneration or another effect that specifically says it can accomplish such a feat. This item is an extremely rare find.
🩸Minor Trauma: Healed in 1 hour
🩸Moderate Trauma: Healed in 1 day
🩸Severe Trauma: Healed in 3 days
💀Critical Trauma: Healed in 1 month
Changing Healing Scenes
A character may obtain better treatment after recovery begins. Completed recovery still counts, but the new Healing Scene cannot act retroactively. When changing to a faster Healing Scene, apply its listed Recovery Time from the moment treatment is obtained and subtract time already completed. For example, a character has completed five weeks of a ten-week Severe Trauma recovery under Apothecary & Barber-Surgeon Care, then obtains Medicinal Bandages with an eight-week Recovery Time. The five completed weeks count, leaving three weeks. If the same character instead drinks a Greater Healing Potion with a two-week Recovery Time, the five completed weeks already exceed that requirement. The wound heals when the potion is consumed and its Healing Scene occurs—not several weeks earlier. The principle is simple: completed recovery counts, better treatment can shorten what remains, and no Healing Scene changes the past.
Medicine, Field Care & Bleeding
The Medicine skill represents practical knowledge of injury, illness, anatomy, medicinal substances, emergency treatment, and long-term care. A skilled practitioner may keep a badly wounded adventurer alive in the field or personally provide care that would otherwise require hiring a professional. Medicine has two principal uses: Field Medicine and Recovery Medicine. When Medicine is tested, roll: 1d12 + Mental Performance PRISM + Medicine. The Target Number depends on the Physical Trauma being treated:
🩸Minor Trauma: TN 6
🩸Moderate Trauma: TN 8
🩸Severe Trauma: TN 10
💀Critical Trauma: TN 12
Field Medicine
Field Medicine is emergency care given while adventuring or before proper long-term treatment is available. During an Action Scene, it is the 🔴🔴🔴🔴 Combat First Aid (Medicine) action described under 🎬Example Actions. It may be performed on a battlefield, roadside, ship, wilderness trail, dungeon, or anywhere immediate treatment is needed. Field Medicine normally requires a Medical Bag or equivalent supplies. The Game Master may allow improvised treatment when suitable materials are available, but Medicine skill alone does not provide sophisticated medical equipment. A successful Field Medicine Test does the following:
🩸Minor — TN 6: Cleans, dresses, binds, splints, or otherwise provides ordinary field care.
🩸Moderate — TN 8: Provides competent emergency treatment, stops Bleeding caused by the wound, and prepares the injury for continued recovery or transportation.
🩸Severe — TN 10: Stabilizes the injury, stops Bleeding caused by the wound, and prepares the character for transportation to further treatment.
💀Critical — TN 12: Provides emergency stabilization after the character survives R.A.D. when immediate medical intervention is required, and stops ordinary Bleeding caused by the wound. Fatal Bleeding follows its own rules and cannot be permanently ended by ordinary Field Medicine.
Field Medicine does not erase Physical Trauma or improve Recovery Time. It addresses the immediate danger. A Severe sword wound remains Severe after successful Field Medicine; the character has simply received competent emergency care and may survive long enough to obtain a Healing Scene that can actually heal it. Failure does not automatically cause additional Trauma. It means the intended treatment failed. Any Bleeding, instability, or other untreated condition continues to have its normal consequences.
Recovery Medicine
Recovery Medicine allows a skilled character to personally provide the professional care required by a Physical Healing Scene. This can save a considerable amount of money, but Medicine does not eliminate the need for medicines, supplies, equipment, facilities, food, shelter, or Recovery Time. A character providing Recovery Medicine makes the Medicine Test appropriate to the wound:
🩸Minor — TN 6
🩸Moderate — TN 8
🩸Severe — TN 10
💀Critical — TN 12
On a success, the practitioner provides the professional labor of an appropriate Healing Scene. The patient pays only for the Medicines & Supplies and any necessary living expenses. For example, Apothecary & Barber-Surgeon Care normally costs 5 Silver: 3 Silver for the Professional Fee and 2 Silver for Medicines & Supplies. A character who successfully provides that care through Medicine eliminates the 3-Silver Professional Fee. The necessary Medicines & Supplies still cost 2 Silver, and the wound still requires its listed Recovery Time.
Critical Recovery Medicine is considerably more demanding. A successful TN 12 Medicine Test can replace the professional labor of Physician or Hospital Care, but only when the practitioner also possesses access to the equipment, supplies, assistance, and facility necessary to provide such treatment. A Medicine skill of extraordinary quality does not transform a bedroll on a dungeon floor into an infirmary. The Game Master should judge these requirements broadly rather than turning them into an inventory puzzle. The important distinction is straightforward: field equipment permits field treatment; an appropriate place of recovery permits ordinary medical care; serious surgery and Critical care require appropriate facilities.
👜Medical Bag — 2 Gold, Refill 5 Silver
A Medical Bag contains the portable instruments and supplies needed to perform Field Medicine. Its contents vary by culture and practitioner but may include clean cloth, bandages, medicinal preparations, needles and thread, small instruments, splints, salves, oils, alcohol or other cleansing substances, and whatever else is appropriate to the medical tradition. The bag’s reusable instruments remain after its consumable supplies are exhausted. A refill restores it to six available treatments. A Medical Bag is intended for emergency work during an adventure. The Medicines & Supplies required for weeks or months of Recovery Medicine are purchased separately through the appropriate Healing Scene. Capacity: 6 Field Medicine treatments
🩸Bleeding
Not every cut, stab, projectile wound, or other injury requires a separate Bleeding rule. Ordinary blood loss is already included in the wound itself. The 🩸Bleeding condition is used only when an injury involves dangerous continuing blood loss that must be stopped. The Game Master applies Bleeding when the described injury logically causes serious continuing blood loss or when a rule specifically states that the injury causes Bleeding. Record BLEEDING beside the wound and record when the Bleeding began. A character suffering ordinary Bleeding must receive successful Field Medicine before the Bleeding produces additional Trauma. The Field Medicine Target Number is determined by the Damage Level of the wound causing the Bleeding. Ordinary Bleeding produces its first additional wound ten minutes after the Bleeding begins. Continuing Bleeding produces the same consequence once every additional ten minutes until successfully treated. Beginning or ending a Scene does not cause an additional wound and does not reset the timer.
After the first consequence occurs, continuing Bleeding produces the same consequence once every additional ten minutes until successfully treated.
Changing rooms, beginning a conversation, changing caregivers, attempting Field Medicine, or declaring a new Scene does not restart or accelerate this ten-minute interval. The Game Master should track the passage of time approximately; second-by-second bookkeeping is unnecessary.
The additional wound is one Damage Level below the wound causing the Bleeding:
- Moderate Bleeding causes one Minor Wound.
- Severe Bleeding causes one Moderate Wound.
- Critical Bleeding causes one Severe Wound.
If every box of the resulting Damage Level is already filled, the additional wound escalates normally. Minor Wounds do not ordinarily cause Bleeding. If an unusual Minor Wound involves meaningful blood loss, the Game Master may require TN 6 Field Medicine, but that Bleeding does not inflict additional Physical Trauma unless a specific rule says otherwise. Successful Field Medicine ends the Bleeding condition. Erase BLEEDING and its time record, but do not erase the wound that caused it.
Ordinary Bleeding uses an approximate ten-minute interval rather than a round-by-round countdown. Fatal Bleeding remains a separate condition and follows its own Combat Round countdown.
🩸Fatal Bleeding
Fatal Bleeding represents catastrophic external or internal blood loss that will cause death within several Combat Rounds. It may result from a successful Cut Throat, a devastating injury through the heart or another major vessel, or another wound specifically designated by the rules or Game Master. It is different from ordinary Bleeding and uses the following procedure.
When Fatal Bleeding begins, record FATAL BLEEDING and place three countdown marks beside the injury. The character suffers a Critical Wound but does not perform R.A.D. At the end of each of the wounded character’s Turns, remove one countdown mark. After the first mark is removed, the character falls unconscious. When the final mark is removed, the character dies.
If Fatal Bleeding begins after the wounded character has already completed their Turn, the first mark is removed at the end of their next Turn. An unconscious character continues to possess a place in the Turn Order for purposes of the countdown.
A character adjacent to the victim may spend 4 Action Points and attempt TN 12 Field Medicine using a Medical Bag or other physically suitable materials. Success pauses the countdown before its next mark is removed. The practitioner must continue spending 4 Action Points during every subsequent Turn to maintain pressure, packing, positioning, or whatever immediate treatment is keeping the victim alive. No additional test is required while the treatment remains uninterrupted. If the practitioner stops, is displaced, becomes unable to continue, or uses those Action Points for something else, the countdown resumes with however many marks remain.
Ordinary Field Medicine cannot permanently repair a completely severed major vessel, a catastrophically injured heart, or comparable internal destruction. It can preserve the victim for additional rounds while appropriate help is obtained. Healing Magic, miraculous intervention, or immediate physician-level surgery may end Fatal Bleeding only when the specific treatment is capable of repairing the actual injury. Ending Fatal Bleeding does not erase the Critical Wound or its required recovery.
If no available treatment could possibly repair the described destruction, the Game Master must say so. Field Medicine may still permit final words or briefly delay death, but it cannot make an anatomically impossible recovery possible.
Fatal Bleeding is almost always fatal when it occurs far from powerful Healing Magic or immediate surgical care. Its short countdown exists to permit a desperate rescue, not to turn a severed major vessel into an ordinary treatable wound.
R.A.D.💀 and Emergency Medicine
When a character suffers a Critical Physical Wound and survival remains uncertain, resolve R.A.D. immediately as described under Damage & Defense. Medicine does not replace that roll. R.A.D. determines whether the uncertain catastrophic injury has already killed the character, left the character Marked for Death, or permitted survival.
Certain Death and Fatal Bleeding are explicit exceptions. Certain Death does not permit R.A.D. because survival is no longer reasonably possible. Fatal Bleeding does not permit R.A.D. because the condition supplies its own countdown and opportunity for emergency intervention.
Survival through R.A.D. does not necessarily mean that the character is medically safe. A surviving character whose Critical injury causes ordinary Bleeding or whose R.A.D. result requires stabilization must receive TN 12 Field Medicine. Successful treatment stabilizes the character but does not erase the Critical Trauma; long-term recovery still requires an appropriate Healing Scene.
A character who is Marked for Death cannot have that result canceled by Medicine. Companions may treat wounds, stop ordinary Bleeding, provide comfort, carry the character to safety, or otherwise influence how the character’s remaining time unfolds, but Marked for Death represents a mortal outcome already determined by R.A.D.
The responsibilities of these rules remain distinct. R.A.D. resolves uncertain survival after a Critical Wound. Certain Death resolves an unsurvivable completed injury. Fatal Bleeding resolves a mortal injury whose final consequence may still be delayed or prevented through extraordinary immediate intervention. Field Medicine addresses immediate medical danger. Healing Scenes determine how surviving Trauma eventually heals.
Relief Without Healing
Not every treatment heals Trauma. Sometimes an injured or distressed character needs to remain functional despite what they are experiencing.
Pain Relief temporarily suppresses the Pain Modifier caused by 🩸Physical Trauma without healing the underlying wounds. Mental Relief similarly suppresses the Distress Modifier caused by 🧠Mental Trauma without removing the Trauma itself. These treatments can be particularly valuable during an Action Scene, while traveling to safety, or when circumstances force a wounded or distressed character to continue functioning before genuine recovery is possible.
A character with a +3 Pain Modifier who receives 2 points of Pain Relief temporarily reduces the Pain Modifier to +1. A character with only a +1 Pain Modifier who receives 2 points of Pain Relief reduces it to 0. Relief can never reduce a modifier below 0 or become an Advantage.
Multiple sources of Pain Relief do not stack with one another, and multiple sources of Mental Relief do not stack with one another. If more than one source applies, use only the greatest amount of Relief.
Because Pain Modifiers and Distress Modifiers also reduce ⏳Initiative, Relief suppresses the corresponding ⏳Initiative penalty by the same amount. If 2 points of Pain Relief reduce a +3 Pain Modifier to +1, the character also suffers only −1 ⏳Initiative from that Pain Modifier while the relief remains active. When the relief ends, both the Target Number modifier and its corresponding ⏳Initiative penalty return. Trauma itself remains unchanged. When the treatment ends, the suppressed modifier returns according to the Trauma still recorded on the Medical Record.
Temporary Side Effects
Powerful relief often comes at the cost of alertness, coordination, speed, judgment, or some other capability. Each treatment states its side effects directly.
If a treatment says -1 Perception and -1 Reflexes PRISM, apply those modifiers exactly as written for the listed duration. Temporary changes caused by medicines and drugs never require recalculating PRISMs, Trauma Thresholds, or other derived statistics unless the effect specifically modifies that statistic. The only exception is Relief itself: because Pain Modifiers and Distress Modifiers directly affect ⏳Initiative, reducing either modifier also reduces its corresponding ⏳Initiative penalty for the duration. Thus, a temporary -1 Speed changes Speed by -1 but does not require recalculating the Reflexes PRISM. If the treatment also imposes -1 Reflexes PRISM, that penalty is listed separately.
Physical Pain Relief
Physical Pain Relief reduces the Pain Modifier but does not restore physical capabilities actually lost to injury. A character may dull the agony of a mangled leg enough to think and act more effectively, but medication does not make the damaged leg structurally sound. A severed hand remains absent, a broken limb remains broken, and actions that are physically impossible remain impossible.
🍺 Strong Drink — 1–3 Copper
Wine, ale, spirits, or another intoxicating drink can dull pain cheaply, although intoxication creates problems of its own.
Pain Relief: 1
Duration: 2 hours
Side Effects: -1 Reflexes PRISM and -1 Mental Performance PRISM
Strong Drink reduces the character’s Pain Modifier by 1 for the duration.
🌿 Analgesic Herbal Preparation — 5 Copper
A medicinal tea, tincture, resin, extract, powder, or other preparation made from plants valued for their ability to relieve pain. Different cultures of Sylva use different plants and preparations, ranging from relatively mild remedies to medicines derived from powerful medicinal herbs.
Pain Relief: 1
Duration: 4 hours
Side Effect: -1 Perception
🌺 Potent Analgesic — 2 Silver
A stronger narcotic or sedating medicinal preparation used when ordinary remedies are insufficient.
Pain Relief: 2
Duration: 4 hours
Side Effects: -1 Perception, -1 Agility, -1 Reflexes PRISM
A character with a +2 Pain Modifier therefore temporarily functions without a Pain Modifier, while a character with a +3 Pain Modifier functions at +1.
🧪 Warrior’s Draught — 1 Gold
A costly medicinal preparation developed for warriors, hunters, adventurers, and others who may need to remain functional despite serious pain. Its ingredients suppress pain without producing the degree of immediate sedation associated with powerful ordinary analgesics. A Warrior’s Draught effectively borrows performance from later. The character remains alert while the medicine is active, but pays for that artificial endurance when its effects subside.
Pain Relief: 2
Duration: 4 hours
Side Effect: Suffer 1 Shaken Mental Trauma when the effect ends.
⚗️ Numbing Elixir — 5 Gold
A rare medicinal and magical preparation capable of suppressing extraordinary amounts of pain. The character’s Pain Modifier becomes 0 for the duration, regardless of its previous value. Physical limitations created by the wounds themselves remain.
Pain Relief: All
Duration: 2 hours
Side Effects: -1 Perception and -1 Dexterity while active; suffer 1 Shaken Mental Trauma when the effect ends.
Mental Relief
Mental Relief temporarily reduces the Distress Modifier created by Mental Trauma. It does not erase Shaken, Impaired, Unstable, or Broken Trauma and does not remove a Permanent Psychological Condition. Mental Relief can represent reassurance and grounding from another person, calming medicines, sedatives, or rare preparations designed to suppress terror and psychological distress.
🤝 Reassurance & Grounding — FREE
Another character deliberately helps the distressed character regain immediate control through reassurance, firm direction, conversation, prayer, physical reassurance, breathing, or another response appropriate to the circumstances. Reassurance & Grounding requires meaningful interaction with the distressed character. It does not erase Trauma; it helps the character function despite it.
Mental Relief: 1
Duration: Remainder of the Scene
🌿 Calming Herbal Preparation — 5 Copper
A medicinal tea, tincture, extract, or similar preparation intended to reduce anxiety, agitation, fear, and psychological distress.
Mental Relief: 1
Duration: 4 hours
Side Effects: -1 Speed and -1 Reflexes PRISM
🌺 Powerful Sedative — 2 Silver
A strong medicinal preparation capable of suppressing substantial agitation, terror, or psychological distress at the cost of alertness and physical responsiveness.
Mental Relief: 2
Duration: 4 hours
Side Effects: -1 Perception, -1 Speed, -1 Reflexes PRISM
🧪 Courage Draught — 1 Gold
A rare medicinal preparation that preserves composure during terrifying circumstances without heavy sedation. It does not make the character fearless or erase what happened; it temporarily suppresses enough distress to function more effectively when courage is desperately needed.
Mental Relief: 2
Duration: One Scene
Side Effect: Suffer 1 Shaken Mental Trauma when the effect ends.
✨ Elixir of Serenity — 5 Gold
A rare magical and medicinal preparation producing unnatural calm even during profound psychological distress. The character’s Distress Modifier becomes 0 for the duration.
Mental Relief: All
Duration: One Scene
Side Effect: -1 Mental Performance PRISM for 4 hours after the effect ends.
Relief Does Not Erase Consequences
Pain Relief and Mental Relief suppress modifiers. They do not suppress the fiction that produced them. Pain Relief cannot make a physically impossible action possible. Mental Relief does not erase hallucinations, compulsions, memories, fears, Permanent Psychological Conditions, or other consequences established by Trauma. The Game Master continues to portray those circumstances according to what occurred.
Mental Relief also cannot reverse R.A.D. — Roll Against Dissolution. If Broken Mental Trauma has already triggered R.A.D., a sedative or Elixir of Serenity does not undo the result. Treatment may help the surviving character function afterward, but the event has already occurred.
The distinction is simple: Healing removes Trauma. Relief temporarily suppresses the modifier caused by Trauma. When relief ends, remaining Trauma again imposes its full Pain or Distress Modifier.
Healing Mental Trauma
Mental Trauma is generally more active than Physical Trauma. An adventurer may avoid serious bodily injury yet return home exhausted, frightened, grieving, disturbed by supernatural experiences, or psychologically strained. Travel, deprivation, magic, violence, the Twelve Horrors, and other hardships can all affect the mind.
Mental Healing Scenes represent ordinary recovery through rest, companionship, affection, food, prayer, meditation, physical comfort, time away from danger, and longer convalescence. These scenes allow Shaken and Impaired Trauma to move on and off the Medical Record naturally while preserving the seriousness of Unstable and Broken Trauma.
Ordinary Mental Healing Scenes
A character may receive the mechanical benefit of one ordinary Mental Healing Scene per day. This includes Friends & Confidants, Personal Comfort, Food & Grounding, Meditation or Prayer, and Bath, Massage & Holistic Care. The limit does not prevent several restorative activities in one day. An adventurer might share dinner with friends, spend private time with a spouse, take a hot bath, and pray before sleeping. All of these occur, and may be narrated together as one evening of recovery. They simply do not erase four separate Mental Trauma boxes. The player chooses whichever Healing Scene best represents the character’s recovery.
🌼Friends & Confidants Scene — FREE
The character spends meaningful time with a trusted friend, relative, mentor, companion, or other confidant. Conversation may concern what happened, or the characters may deliberately talk about something else. Laughter, shared grief, storytelling, reassurance, ordinary companionship, or simply sitting together can provide the necessary grounding.
Time: 1 hour
Effect: Erase 1 🧠Shaken Mental Trauma
🥰Personal Comfort — Spouse or Lover — FREE
The character spends meaningful private time with a spouse or established lover. The scene may involve affection, intimacy, conversation, reassurance, shared sleep, physical closeness, or whatever naturally belongs to the relationship. The relationship itself is the requirement. No monetary cost is assigned to receiving comfort from someone who genuinely shares the character’s life.
Time: 1 hour
Effect: Erase 1 🧠Shaken Mental Trauma
💋Personal Comfort — Paid Companionship — 3 Copper
The character purchases private companionship or personal attention appropriate to the culture and circumstances. This might include intimate companionship, massage, bathing, entertainment, conversation, or simply the temporary comfort of another person’s undivided attention.
Time: 2 hours
Effect: Erase 1 🧠Shaken Mental Trauma
🥗Food & Grounding Scene — 2 Copper
The character deliberately steps away from hardship and spends time enjoying a substantial meal in peaceful surroundings. Warm food, drink, a hearth, conversation, music, a garden, a riverbank, or another comfortable environment may all contribute to the scene. Eating ordinary traveling rations does not constitute a Food & Grounding Scene. The character is purchasing or otherwise receiving a period of genuine comfort and respite, not merely consuming enough food to remain alive.
Time: 2 hours
Effect: Erase 1 🧠Shaken Mental Trauma
🧘Meditation or Prayer Scene — FREE
The character withdraws from immediate demands for sincere prayer, meditation, contemplation, devotional reading, ritual observance, or another spiritual practice meaningful to the character. The character must actually have an uninterrupted opportunity for reflection. A hurried prayer shouted while running from enemies may be spiritually meaningful, but it is not a Healing Scene.
Time: 1 hour
Effect: Erase 1 🧠Shaken Mental Trauma
⛲Bath, Massage & Holistic Care — 5 Copper
The character spends several hours receiving or practicing restorative physical care. The scene may involve bathing, massage, herbal oils, medicinal teas, heat, stretching, aromatics, breathing practices, quiet surroundings, sunlight, time in nature, or other traditional and holistic methods appropriate to the character’s culture. The precise practices are intentionally left broad. Sylva contains many peoples and traditions, and their approaches to restoring the relationship between body, mind, and spirit need not be identical.
Time: 3 hours
Effect: Erase 1 🧠Shaken Mental Trauma
🌞Day of Rest — Standard of Living
Sometimes an adventurer does not need another hour of coping. The character needs a day in which nothing is demanded of them. A Day of Rest requires a full day free from adventuring, strenuous travel, combat, dangerous work, and other major obligations. The character may sleep, eat well, visit friends or family, pray, bathe, exercise gently, enjoy music, spend time outdoors, pursue a hobby, or simply do very little. A Day of Rest is not subject to the one-ordinary-Mental-Healing-Scene-per-day limit because it occupies the day itself. Other restorative activities can naturally occur during that day, but they provide no additional Trauma removal.
Time: 1 full day
Effect: Erase all 🧠Shaken Mental Trauma
🏡Extended Retreat or Convalescence — 1 Gold per month
Shaken Trauma represents relatively immediate psychological strain. More serious Mental Trauma requires more than a pleasant evening. Extended Retreat or Convalescence represents sustained withdrawal from adventuring and the circumstances that produced the Trauma. The character lives somewhere safe and restorative and has sufficient time for sleep, nutrition, reflection, relationships, spiritual practice, recreation, physical recovery, and whatever other forms of care are appropriate.
During Extended Retreat or Convalescence:
🧠Shaken: Erase all Shaken Trauma after 1 day.
🧠Impaired: Erase 1 Impaired Mental Trauma after 7 days.
🧠Unstable: Erase 1 active Unstable Mental Trauma after 1 month.
💀Broken: After surviving R.A.D. — Roll Against Dissolution, erase the active Broken Mental Trauma after 3 months of genuine recovery, provided the character remains capable of psychological recovery under the result of that roll.
Several periods of Mental recovery may occur during a sufficiently long retreat. For example, a character carrying two Impaired Trauma boxes could erase the first after seven days and the second after another seven days. As with Physical recovery, completed time is not lost merely because the retreat is interrupted. Record the progress and resume it when qualifying recovery continues.
Permanent Psychological Conditions
Healing active Mental Trauma is not necessarily the same thing as becoming the person one was before the experience. As described under Strengthening the Mind, suffering Unstable or Broken Trauma from one of the Twelve Horrors before earning its Immunity Badge can produce a Permanent Psychological Condition. That condition is separate from the active Mental Trauma that caused it. A character can therefore eventually erase an Unstable or Broken Trauma box while retaining the psychological scar left behind. The character may no longer be in immediate psychological crisis, but the experience has permanently affected fears, behavior, relationships, beliefs, habits, or reactions.
Permanent Psychological Conditions cannot ordinarily be erased by purchasing another week at an inn or repeatedly selecting Mental Healing Scenes. Their resolution belongs to the character’s continuing story. A condition may change through confronting its source, meaningful relationships, reconciliation, spiritual development, redemption, major victories, overcoming fear, or another substantial character arc appropriate to what caused it. Some conditions may never completely disappear. This distinction allows Mental Trauma to recover without making severe psychological experiences trivial. The active Trauma describes what the character is presently enduring; a Permanent Psychological Condition describes how the experience may have changed the character.
Healing Scenes provide the mind with opportunities to recover. They do not require the character to forget what happened.
Returning to Adventure
A character does not have to be completely healed before returning to adventure. Recovery Time describes how long it takes to erase the active Trauma, not a period during which the character is forbidden from participating in the game. A wounded adventurer may decide that a mission is too important to miss, that circumstances leave no alternative, or simply that the risk of returning early is worth taking. The consequences are already recorded on the character’s Medical Record. A character who returns while carrying 🩸Physical Trauma or 🧠Mental Trauma retains those Trauma boxes and any Pain Modifiers or Distress Modifiers they impose. A Severe wound remains Severe until its Healing Scene is completed. The character must therefore decide whether returning to danger while already impaired is worth the risk.
Interrupted Recovery
Recovery already completed is never lost merely because a character returns to adventure. If a Severe wound requires twelve weeks of recovery and the character has completed five, record:
🩸 Severe — Broken leg — Recovery 5/12 weeks
If the character leaves convalescence, the five completed weeks remain. Recovery simply stops advancing while the character no longer has the circumstances required by the Healing Scene. When appropriate recovery resumes, the character continues from five weeks rather than beginning again.
Returning to activity also does not automatically worsen a wound. The Game Master should impose additional consequences only when something actually happens that could aggravate or reinjure it. Running on a badly injured leg, suffering another blow to the same location, going without necessary care, or exposing a wound to dangerous conditions may create consequences when appropriate. Merely participating in another adventure does not erase the healing that has already occurred.
Other Characters
Realistic recovery periods can remove a wounded adventurer from dangerous work for weeks or months. They should not remove the player from the game.
Players are therefore encouraged to create and maintain more than one character over the course of a campaign. A player normally controls one active character at a time, but may have several characters available. When one requires extended recovery, another can join the adventuring party while the injured character remains at home, in an infirmary, at a monastery, with family, or wherever the Healing Scene is taking place.
The campaign calendar continues to matter. If the adventuring party undertakes another mission lasting three weeks, a character left behind in qualifying recovery can accumulate those same three weeks toward healing. When enough time has passed, the recovered character can return to active play. The same practice helps campaigns survive other changes in a character’s circumstances. An adventurer may retire temporarily, pursue personal responsibilities, undertake training, remain behind for reasons established by the story, or die. Having other established characters available allows the campaign to continue without requiring every adventurer to remain perpetually healthy, available, and alive merely because their player needs someone to play.
Characters should not be treated as interchangeable pieces. Each remains an individual with relationships, history, possessions, injuries, responsibilities, and a place in the world. Switching characters simply allows time and consequences to remain meaningful without sidelining the player.
Recovery Is Part of the Story
Healing Scenes exist because wounds should have consequences beyond the moment in which they are inflicted. The sword wound happened. The desperate Field Medicine happened. The journey home happened. The physician’s treatment happened. The weeks spent recovering happened. Perhaps another adventurer stepped forward while the wounded character was absent. Perhaps relationships changed during the convalescence. Perhaps a Permanent Injury remained when the wound finally healed. When the character returns to adventure, those events are part of the character’s history. Healing does not reset the story. It continues it.
🎬 Example — A Mission Gone Bad
The expedition to Blackwater Mill was supposed to be simple: find the missing tax collector, frighten off a few bandits, and return before dark. Instead, Tomas kicked open the wrong door, Mara stepped directly into a concealed snare, and Brother Aldren discovered—approximately three seconds too late—that the “bandit chief” was an ogre. The escape was ugly.
Tomas suffered a 🩸Severe axe wound to the thigh with 🩸Bleeding. Mara escaped with a 🩸Moderate shoulder wound, while Aldren returned 🧠Shaken after watching the ogre crush an innocent prisoner against a wall.
Once the party reached cover, Mara opened her 👜Medical Bag and treated Tomas. Severe Trauma requires TN 10 Field Medicine. Mara rolls:
1d12 + Mental Performance PRISM + Medicine
Her bonuses total +3. She rolls an 8 for 11 and succeeds. Tomas’s Bleeding stops before the ten-minute interval produces an additional Moderate Wound. His Severe Trauma remains; Field Medicine stabilizes him but does not heal the injury or shorten its Recovery Time.
Tomas, still suffering a substantial Pain Modifier, buys 🍺Strong Drink at the first roadside inn. It provides Pain Relief 1 for two hours, reducing his Pain Modifier by 1, but also gives -1 Reflexes PRISM and -1 Mental Performance PRISM. The drink dulls the pain; it does not repair his leg.
Aldren tries a different approach. He sits beside the fire with Mara and finally talks about the prisoner. They spend an hour together, qualifying for a 🌼Friends & Confidants Scene. Aldren erases 1 🧠Shaken Mental Trauma. Tomas’s drinking, by contrast, does not erase Mental Trauma merely because he is trying to forget the mission.
Back in town, Tomas purchases 🌿Apothecary or 💈Barber-Surgeon Care for his Severe wound. Ordinarily this costs 3 Silver labor + 2 Silver medicines and requires 10 weeks of recovery. Mara has Medicine, however, and attempts to provide the professional care herself. Severe Recovery Medicine is TN 10. She succeeds, eliminating the 3-Silver Professional Fee, though Tomas still pays 2 Silver for Medicines & Supplies.
Five weeks later, the party acquires 🤕Medicinal Bandages, which reduce Severe recovery to 8 weeks. Tomas keeps the five weeks already completed, leaving only three more weeks.
Nobody forgets Blackwater Mill. Tomas keeps the scar, Aldren remembers the prisoner, and Mara begins checking every door for traps.
But the Trauma heals.
The mission remains part of their history.
