Core Rules
The player characters are Agents bound to Powers that transcend them.
The Power can; the Agent acts.
This is the very definition of an Agent: a Power becomes present in the world through its Agents. It gives what is possible; they bring it into act. Three things follow, for the whole game:
- a Power never enters a resolution itself: what acts for it is resolved in its place;
- two Powers never confront each other directly: the Thunder does not confront Technology, but a child of the god can confront an Artificer;
- one only stands before a Power during a moment of Presence, where nothing is acted: there are neither dice nor Bets.
A Power does not need to be a person, command its Agents, or even possess an intelligible will: to be able is not to will. An Agent is an Agent because a Bond lets something of the Power pass through them. The exact nature of that Bond depends on the Horizon and the Power: service, lineage, incarnation, pact, creation, debt, possession, inheritance, or any other relationship established by the game world.
An Agent normally serves a single Power. The game does not forbid serving two, but it must be justified in the fiction, and hidden from each of them, which is no easy matter during moments of Presence.
An Agent is how their Power becomes present. But they are not entirely determined by it: through contact with the world, they become other.
The game calls Becoming the part of a being or the world that is not entirely determined by what it already is. For an Agent, it includes what they acquire beyond what their Power determines: relationships, experiences, knowledge, wounds, encounters, and transformations. Humanity is often a major source of Becoming, but other Agents, other forms of life, environments, events, or chance may transform them just as deeply.
Horizons give these elements a concrete form. Each one defines the Powers that are its forms, the Agents that can be played, their Bonds, the forms of Becoming that may transform them, and the situations that set them in motion.
On the Horizon of Death, a Power might be the Passage, which carries the living over to the dead, or the Eldest Blood, origin of a vampire lineage. On that of the Divine, it might be an Archangel or a Demon Prince. On that of the Collective, a recent Power such as Money or Communication. On that of the Unknown, an entity whose very nature is difficult to interpret.
These examples belong to their Horizons. They do not form a shared cosmology for the whole game.
A Power's Portrait
A Power is not simply “something very powerful.”
Its portrait contains a small number of distinct Attributes that state what it is: its reason for being, nature, agency, limits, relationships, or other fundamental properties useful to the Horizon.
These Attributes are not a list of bonuses. They describe a relatively stable whole. Changing an Attribute of a Power means that the Power itself has been transformed.
A Power never enters a resolution itself: it can, its Agents act. Its Attributes help establish what passes through them.
Only a being already bound to a Power can find themselves face to face with that whole, during a moment of Presence.
An Agent's Portrait
An Agent's portrait has two sides, like their condition: what binds them to their Power, and what holds them in the world.
The Bond
The Bond is the relationship itself: kinship through blood, an office, an oath, a tree. An Agent has one Bond with their Power, and that Bond can widen during play, from a tree to a whole forest.
The Bond carries traits: what the Power gives the Agent, or what they are through it. A Bond trait comes either from the relationship itself or from an Attribute that passes through it. The Attribute says what the Power is; the trait says how that shows in this particular Agent. Feeds on the living is what the Eldest Blood is; Feeds on blood is what each of its vampires lives.
These traits are not fixed. The GM may grant new ones, to reward an Agent or to hold them back, and an Agent may bring some to their Power (see Extending a Power).
Anchors
Anchors are what hold the Agent in the world: a trade, a relationship, a place, a wound, a skill; what they have become through contact with Humans, other Agents, other forms of life, an environment, or an event. Humans have Anchors too: their portrait has only that side.
Each Anchor is made of traits. There is no need to write them all down: a few examples are enough, and an implicit trait can still become a Bet. As soon as it is used, it is revealed and written into the portrait, of which it is now part. A trait also gets written down once it matters, especially when it contradicts the Power or interests it.
A Sylvan is bound to the old oak by the ford. Their Bond carries Dies if the oak dies and Remembers what the oak has seen, which come from the relationship itself, and The forest hides them, which comes from the Wild's Attribute Has no paths.
Their Anchor Grew up near the village carries Knows the woodcutters by name and Keeps a path open for the children. That last trait contradicts Has no paths: sooner or later, the Wild will notice.
Avatars
An avatar is a Power incarnate: an Agent with no Anchor. Their portrait has only the Bond side; the Bond is the incarnation itself, and its traits come from the Attributes.
Nothing holds them in the world, and nothing in them becomes: all their Bets are Bond Bets. Against humans, they have the full certainty of their Power. Against an Agent who commits their Bond, they lose it entirely, while the Agent keeps the Becoming of their Anchors: it is through what they have become in contact with the world that Agents can prevail over a Power incarnate.
An avatar can be defeated, even killed. The Power cannot: it endures, and can take flesh again.
An avatar knows no moment of Presence: they are the Power. If they acquire an Anchor, they cease to be an avatar and become an Agent, since something now holds them in the world.
Playing
The game uses a traditional tabletop role-playing structure.
One person is the Game Master (GM). They present the world, play its inhabitants and forces, describe their reactions, and establish the important consequences of choices. Situations help them prepare what sets the Agents in motion.
The other participants are the players. Each usually plays an Agent and decides what they attempt, what they say, and how they act.
Conversation is enough whenever the fiction already makes the outcome clear. Resolution rules come into play when an important outcome remains genuinely uncertain.
Resolving a Situation
A resolution always begins with the fiction.
The player first states their Intention: what they are actually trying to achieve.
I want to stop the priest from completing the ritual.
The table then defines the Focus: the exact question the resolution must answer.
Is the ritual interrupted before the entity responds?
The Focus places two possible outcomes in the balance. It does not describe everything that may happen; it only states what the dice need to decide.
The Zoom sets the scale of that question. A resolution can concern a single act, an entire sequence, or something much broader. The wider the Zoom, the more distinct elements of the fiction may become relevant.
What is Possible
Before looking for Bets, the fiction determines what the acting character can actually do.
An ordinary Human cannot simply decide to fly. An Angel with wings can spread them and fly. If nothing makes that flight uncertain, no roll is needed: the Angel flies.
Likewise, a Power may grant its Agents possibilities that Humans — or Agents of other Powers — simply do not have.
These possibilities are written into the Agent's portrait as traits: nature, abilities, gifts, relationships, states, or other elements that define them.
A trait does not automatically grant a die. It first establishes what is true and what is possible in the fiction.
A trait can also forbid: an Angel cannot lie, cold iron burns a fairy. The player can override it, but at their own risk. What it costs depends on the trait and the Power, and grows heavier if they do it again: first the body, a pain or a mark; then a debt to their Power; finally one of their Bond traits, which their Power may take away during a moment of Presence.
Bets: What Matters Here
Once the action is possible, the table looks at what genuinely matters to the Focus, at this Zoom.
A relevant element becomes a Bet.
It may come from the character's portrait, their Power, relationships, past, the situation, environment, an injury, an object, preparation, or any other relevant element.
The same trait may simply make an action possible in one scene, then become a Bet in another if the Focus gives it real weight.
Each Bet favors one of the two outcomes.
The same reason only counts once. Exceptional warrior, trained since childhood, and veteran of a hundred battles do not automatically form three Bets if, for this resolution, all three simply mean the same thing.
A reason to act is not a Bet. Being on a mission explains why an Agent acts; it does not weigh on the outcome. Voice of the Archangel counts toward making someone yield, not because the Archangel sent the Agent.
When nobody immediately sees anything else that matters without repeating what is already in play, resolve.
An Agent wants to stop a group of occultists from opening a seal.
In the Agent's favor, the table might retain Knows forbidden rites and Bears the mark of their Archangel. In favor of the ritual, it might retain The circle is almost complete, Three occultists maintain the chant, and The site has been prepared for weeks.
These elements are the Bets of the resolution.
An outcome may have zero Bets: it then starts with zero dice or zero Successes before any special rule is applied. If neither side has any Bet, however, there is probably nothing to resolve. The table returns to the fiction and asks what actually makes the situation uncertain.
The Realization Scale
Each Bet normally contributes one D6.
How those dice become Successes depends on the nature of what is acting. The game distinguishes three prisms.
| Prism | Resolution |
|---|---|
| Neutral | Each even result produces 1 Success. |
| Becoming | Each even result produces 1 Success. Each 6 adds a new die. |
| Power | No roll: each Bet directly produces 1 Success. |
Agents have no prism of their own. They stand between Becoming and their Power, and each of their Bets belongs to one or the other depending on where it comes from.
This scale is common to the whole game. A Horizon may then specify particular features of its Powers and Agents.
Neutral
Neutral resolution applies to what is not alive or is abstract, with no possibility of becoming: matter, the environment, and forces whose action belongs neither to Becoming nor to Power. It also replaces the certainty of the Bond when two revealed Agents oppose each other (see Against Another Agent).
Roll one D6 per Bet.
Each even result produces one Success. Each odd result produces none.
4 Bets → 4 dice → 2, 3, 4, 5 → 2 Successes.
Becoming
The Becoming prism applies to any actor capable of acquiring something it was not already determined to be: Humans first of all, but also an animal, a community, or any other form of life the fiction makes capable of becoming.
Becoming remains close to Neutral resolution, but the 6 carries what the simple repetition of what already exists cannot produce: the possibility of recovering, branching, and surprising.
Roll one D6 per Bet.
Each even result produces one Success. Each 6 also adds one new die.
Added dice are resolved in the same way: a new 6 adds another die in turn. A 2 or a 4 produces only a Success.
2, 3, 5, 6 first gives 2 Successes. The 6 adds a die, which shows a 6: 3 Successes. That new 6 adds a die, which also shows a 6: 4 Successes. This last 6 adds yet another die, which shows a 4. Result: 5 Successes from 4 Bets.
Recovering, then surprising. A table may also roll the 6 another way: it first rerolls an odd result, and adds a die only when no odd result is left to reroll. The Successes obtained are exactly the same, since an odd result produced none. But it is not the same experience. Rerolling an odd result is recovering: going back to what had failed and giving it another chance. Adding a die is surprising: going beyond what was given, once there is nothing left to recover. Becoming does the one first, then the other.
A Becoming roll can therefore, rarely, produce more Successes than Bets. Becoming is not stronger: it is the possibility that something may arise beyond what was already given.
Power
A Power does not roll dice for its own Bets.
Each Bet directly produces one Success.
4 Bets → 4 Successes.
A Power is perfectly reliable, but it never exceeds its number of Bets: it already is what it is.
An Agent's Bets
An Agent is how their Power becomes present. But they are not entirely determined by it: through contact with the world, they become other. Their Bets carry the mark of this tension: they are torn between Bets that come from the world, from what they have become in it, and Bets that come from their Power.
Each trait in an Agent's portrait has an origin, which is the side of the portrait it sits on:
- a Bond trait comes from the Power: what it gives them or what they are through it (nature, gifts, mark, authority…);
- an Anchor trait comes from the Agent themselves, whatever its source: their relationships, experiences, knowledge, attachments, wounds; what they have become.
If the Power is what makes the thing possible, the trait belongs to the Bond; otherwise, it belongs to an Anchor. The origin is set with the trait and may change if the fiction transforms it.
The same action can often pass through either side: barring a door by one's mere presence, or by the light of one's Archangel. The player then chooses which way it goes, including for a Bet drawn from the situation rather than from a trait. A Bond Bet gets noticed: it is the Power passing through, and those who witness it remember. This also holds for a perception: the Angel who senses evil goes straight to where it hides, and people see them do it.
Bets drawn from these traits are Bond Bets or Anchor Bets. Dice in two colors help tell them apart.
- Anchor Bets use the Becoming prism. They belong to the Agent, but lack the certainty of the Bond.
- Through Bond Bets, the Power itself acts. As long as the opposing side does not commit Bond Bets of its own, they use the Power prism: each one directly produces 1 Success.
The Bond is therefore the safe choice as long as no other Power becomes present in opposition. It does not guarantee victory: Becoming may exceptionally produce more Successes than Bets.
An Agent can also draw on an Attribute of their Power, even if none of their Bond traits comes from it. It is a Bond Bet, and the Power is the one acting: the GM therefore decides what the Attribute allows here and the manner in which the Power achieves it. An Attribute is not an all-purpose power. If the Agent keeps coming back to it, a moment of Presence can draw a new Bond trait from it.
The Cost of the Bond
What succeeds through the Bond is the Power succeeding.
Successes from Bond Bets are interpreted according to the nature of the Power, not that of the Agent: whatever is achieved is achieved the way the Power would achieve it. An Agent of a Seraph of Fire who prevails through the Bond burns something, whether they want to or not. The GM describes that manner, or the table if it plays more collaboratively; it is one of the ways the Power is made heard in the scene.
Calling on the Bond remains the player's choice, but it is made in the fiction: the player decides how their Agent acts, and the table draws the Bets from that. An Agent can therefore act without letting their Power pass through them, even when a Bond trait would be relevant.
That choice is made knowingly. Before the roll, the GM points out the significant consequences that the Power's manner makes foreseeable, or at least reminds the player that, if the Agent prevails, the Power will carry part of the result.
The Agent's tension arises from this choice, without a gauge or a morality:
The Bond is reliable, but it is not theirs. What anchors them in the world is uncertain, but it belongs to them.
Against Another Agent
Two Powers never confront one another directly. When an Agent's Bond Bets meet those of another Agent, they lose their certainty.
If the opposing side commits Bond Bets, all Bond Bets on both sides are rolled with the Neutral prism. Anchor Bets keep the Becoming prism.
Bond Bets are declared. When one side commits them, the other may answer with its own, and then the roll is resolved. A Bond Bet committed in answer meets the same requirements as any other: it must genuinely matter for the Focus, at this Zoom. Being an Agent is not enough to strip the other of their certainty.
An Agent who commits no Bond Bet does not reveal themselves: they act as a human would, and their opponent keeps the certainty of their Bond. That is the price of staying hidden.
Two Agents of the same Power follow the same rule: facing itself, the Power is no longer certain either.
A clash between Agents is therefore decided at least as much by what they have become through contact with the world as by what their Powers give them.
An Angel protects a witness from a manipulated crowd. They commit Wings of Light and Voice of the Archangel (Bond), as well as Holds firm under fire, a trait of their Anchor Former Wartime Nurse. Against the crowd, their two Bond Bets directly produce 2 Successes; they roll one Becoming die for the third. If the crowd falls back, it is the Archangel's light that drove it away: witnesses will talk about it, and some will keep burned eyes.
Later, a Demon steps in and also commits Bond Bets. This time, both Agents' Bond Bets are rolled with the Neutral prism; only their Anchor Bets keep the drive of the 6.
Powers Do Not Confront One Another Directly
The Power can; the Agent acts: two Powers are never the two direct opponents of the same resolution.
When Powers enter into conflict, their opposition must become present in the world: through their Agents and their avatars, but also through beings bound to them, places, signs, institutions, or other forms of mediation established by the Horizon.
If the characters believe they are directly confronting a Power outside their own Bond, they are actually confronting whatever makes it present at that place and moment. Whatever acts receives the appropriate nature — most often Agent, and an avatar is one — and is resolved normally. Even defeated, it leaves the Power intact.
Different Natures in the Same Resolution
Actors of different natures may act together.
Each resolves their own Bets according to their prism — an Agent according to the origin of each of their Bets — then the Successes favoring the same outcome are added together before the final comparison.
Humans, Agents, and other actors may therefore act together, including when several Agents serve different Powers, without requiring everyone to use the same rule.
A Power never enters a resolution itself: whatever acts for it is resolved according to the nature of its manifestation. It is met directly only during a moment of Presence.
Comparing Successes
Once both sides have been resolved, compare their Successes.
If one side has more, its outcome prevails in the fiction.
On a tie, neither outcome clearly prevails: the situation remains in a status quo, or the actors may push the confrontation further if the fiction allows it.
A result is dominated when the difference is strictly greater than 1 Success and the winning side has strictly more than twice as many Successes as the other. Victory or Defeat may then be amplified: Yes, and... for an Exploit, No, and... for a Fiasco, when that fits the fiction.
Thus 2–0 and 3–1 are dominated; 4–2 is not.
Interpreting the Result
The Bets return to the fiction after the roll.
They already tell the table what mattered in the situation and therefore provide the material for the result. An injury may worsen, a relationship may save a character, preparation may finally pay off, a place may become dangerous, or a manifestation of a Power may leave a mark.
The result does not replace the fiction: it lets the table decide in which direction it continues.
Developing an Agent
An Agent's portrait changes with what happens to them.
A lasting consequence may add, modify, or remove a trait, or even an Anchor. The Agent may gain a new gift, lose an ability, transform a relationship, carry an injury, change status, or become something else.
These changes directly alter what becomes possible for them and what may become a Bet in future situations.
Encountering the world feeds those transformations. An Agent may discover, learn, desire, or become something their Power did not determine. This may come from Humanity, other Agents, other forms of life, a place, an event, or a relationship. This possibility is one way an Agent becomes more than a simple expression of its source.
Extending a Power
A Power is a relatively stable whole, but it is not necessarily immutable.
An Agent may extend their Power when they make something that did not previously belong to its domain become a lasting part of it.
It is not enough to rename something the Power already possessed. The extension must introduce a real difference: a practice, relationship, institution, technique, symbolic territory, way of acting, or any other novelty that the fiction now recognizes as belonging to the Power.
If that novelty already belongs to another Power, it cannot simply be declared acquired. Because Powers do not confront one another directly, that competition becomes present in the world through their Agents, manifestations, and the situations that set them against one another.
Becoming is the structural source of novelty. Humanity is often a particularly fertile form of it: Humans invent uses, relationships, techniques, institutions, stories, and ways of living that are not necessarily already integrated into a Power's domain. But other Agents, other forms of life, non-Human societies, environments, events, or chance may play exactly the same role.
When an extension becomes genuinely established in the fiction:
- the Power's portrait changes: an Attribute may appear, be reformulated, or have its domain widened;
- the world changes: the novelty may now become a place, means, or reason through which the Power manifests;
- the Agent who made the extension possible is transformed in return by their relationship with the Power.
That transformation of the Agent is their reward. Depending on the Horizon and the fiction, it may take the form of a new gift, status, authority, possibility, mission, mark, or change in the Bond.
What the Power could not make present before this act may now pass through the Agent who brought it.
This reward is not automatically exclusive or permanent. What matters is that the Agent's act changed both what the Power can become and what can now pass through their Bond.
From Anchor to Bond
One of the strongest forms of this reward concerns the very origin of traits.
When what an Agent brings to their Power corresponded to one of the traits of their Anchors, that trait may pass into the Bond. It takes its place under the Attribute it extends, or under the new Attribute the extension brings forth. What belonged to them alone, with the uncertainty of Becoming, is now recognized by the Power and passes through it with its certainty. The Anchor itself stays in the world: it is the trait that passes.
This recognition does not necessarily concern them alone. What now belongs to the Power's domain can often pass through all of its Agents: depending on the Horizon and the Power, other Agents may receive that Bond trait. A single Agent can thus change what all the others are.
The cost remains that of the Bond: what now succeeds through this trait is the Power succeeding.
It is often during a moment of Presence that the Power asks the Agent to cede a trait.
The Angel from the previous example learned to care for the wounded on battlefields: their Anchor Former Wartime Nurse carries the trait Tends the wounded. They manage to have the care of bodies recognized as part of their Archangel's domain, which until then knew only protection and judgment.
The trait passes into the Bond and becomes Hands of the Archangel. From now on, their healing succeeds with the Power's certainty — but it is the Archangel's light that closes the wounds. And other Angels of this Archangel begin to heal as well. The Anchor remains: they are still a former wartime nurse, and whatever else they learned at the front still belongs to them.
In a long campaign, an old extension may eventually seem as though it had always belonged to the Power. Present Attributes describe what the Power is now, not necessarily everything it has always been.
Declining
A Power can also fade. It does not die all at once: it declines as its Attributes lose their meaning and their hold on the real. On the day there were no more trees, a Power of the forest would have little reason left to be.
No rule measures this decline: the fiction shows it. It can become the subject of a campaign.
Presence
A Power never enters a resolution itself. But an Agent can find themselves face to face with it: this is a moment of Presence.
Only a being already bound to a Power can stand before it. The Bond is precisely what makes the encounter possible: creation, lineage, pact, faith, possession, debt, inheritance, or any other relationship recognized by the Horizon.
A moment of Presence can be played regularly: at the end of a session, during a lull, or at the player's request. Each table finds its own rhythm, but a moment of Presence always answers something in the fiction, brought about by the Agent or by the GM. A Power disturbed for no reason makes it known. Its form depends on the Horizon and the Power: a prayer, a report, a dream, a summons, the blood speaking.
The Power may also manifest on its own, at any time: it summons its Agent to give them a mission, call them to account, or judge them. Conversely, an Agent may seek Presence and get no answer from their Power. That silence may be a punishment, or a problem in the fiction: a place the Power cannot reach, a hindered Bond, a Power busy elsewhere.
Face to Face
On one side, the Power and all of its Attributes. On the other, the Agent, with their Bond and their Anchors, and all their traits.
There are no dice and no Bets. The GM lets the Power be heard; the player answers for their Agent. What is at play is what the Power sees in them, and what each side is willing to give.
Three cases can arise.
Nothing to Report
Nothing the Agent has become concerns their Power. It reacts according to its nature: "Why do you disturb me?", or on the contrary, comfort.
The scene does not stay hollow for all that: the Power gives the Agent a mission, a new Bond trait, or a constraint, something that moves them forward. What it gives them can become the starting point of the next Situation.
A Trait That Interests the Power
One of the Agent's Anchor traits brings something their Power does not yet contain. The Power asks the Agent to cede it.
The player chooses.
- If they cede it, the trait passes into the Bond and the Power extends. The Agent gains the certainty of the Bond, but loses control of what was theirs: from now on, the Power is the one succeeding.
- If they refuse, they keep their trait. But the relationship bears the mark: a consequence, immediate or deferred, which the GM notes or reveals.
A Trait in Contradiction
One of the Agent's Anchor traits contradicts an Attribute of their Power, in its letter or in its spirit: Tells the truth without telling all never lies, but contradicts the spirit of Cannot lie. If several traits do, the GM chooses one.
The Power questions the Agent. The player may lie to hide that trait. The lie may hold, but it may also come back later, heavier. If one of their Bond traits forbids them to lie, the contradiction is revealed at once, unless they override it before their Power itself.
A truth that covers a lie does not protect from it. A true sentence of which the other could only understand the false meaning, a mental reservation: that is already overriding. The Agent may plead it before their Power; depending on what the Power is, it sees through it or not, and if it does, it is the lie beneath that it sees.
If the contradiction is revealed, the Agent has three paths:
- give up that trait, of their own free will;
- keep it: the Power may allow it, but takes away one of their Bond traits;
- ask the Power to change.
Transforming an Attribute
The Agent pleads their case before their Power.
The Power is fully entitled to refuse to change: it already is what it is. But if the world already carries what the Agent has acquired, that is a weighty argument. The Power may refuse to change; the world has already changed.
The world carries a novelty once the Vector of its Situation has come about, or once a human Force has institutionalized it: it is no longer only one Agent's experience, it is a fact of the world. The same benchmark applies to losing one's Bond.
The transformation succeeds if the player finds how the Power can change without denying itself:
- its other Attributes remain true;
- the new wording still protects what the old one protected.
This is not a contest of eloquence but a puzzle, and the whole table can help solve it. These are often the strongest moments of a campaign.
To look for it, the table can try a few forms and see which one passes both criteria, rather than inventing from scratch:
- Narrow the scope: the Attribute remains true, but reaches less far. Cannot lie becomes My Voice cannot lie: what passes through the Archangel's Voice is always true, what the Agent says as a human is their own.
- Change the manner: the Power protects the same thing in another way. Neither dies nor lives becomes The lineage does not die, it is passed on: keeping becomes passing on (see the example below).
- Add a condition: the Attribute holds, except in a specific case. Can create nothing new becomes Creates nothing the dead have not lived: the Memory of the Dead can carry a new lament, as long as it comes from what has been.
- Shift the subject: what the Attribute said of the Power passes to what it touches. Decides alone becomes Nothing is decided without it: the Crown allows deliberation, but keeps the last word.
Other forms exist; these are often enough to get the table moving again.
If the transformation succeeds, the Attribute is rewritten, and the change affects all of the Power's Agents. The Agent's trait may then pass into the Bond, as with an extension.
If the world does not yet carry the novelty, the Power may still accept, but not without a price: the Agent answers for what the change brings about, until the world has caught up with it. An Archangel who consents to its angels lying to humans holds its Agent responsible: they will answer for those angels' first lies.
Otherwise, the request most often ends with the loss of a Bond trait.
A vampire has grown old alongside a human he loved, without ageing himself. She has died, and she has passed over. He cannot follow her: the sun can destroy him, but a destroyed vampire does not pass over to the dead. Others have already chosen the sun, and none of them found those they loved. A trait of his Anchors, Loved a mortal until her death, contradicts one of the Eldest Blood's Attributes: Neither dies nor lives. He wants to be able to truly die, and join her.
Refusing death is everything the Eldest Blood is: every child who leaves weakens the lineage, and it defends the lineage at all costs. The table searches for a long time. The compromise comes from a human who knows what he is: she freely chooses to become a vampire in his place. The Eldest Blood loses nothing, since the lineage keeps a child, and this time a child who wanted it. The vampire, for his part, can at last die and pass over.
The Attribute becomes The lineage does not die, it is passed on. The other three remain true, and what the old one protected endures: the lineage does not die out, and its vampires still do not live, since they feed on the living. The Eldest Blood has changed without denying itself. From now on, each of its vampires can truly die, if someone agrees to take their place.
Losing One's Bond
A Bond can be lost in two ways.
Little by little. Bond traits are lost during moments of Presence, one by one. An Agent may suffer this loss, or choose it: breaking away, one moment of Presence after another.
All at once. The Bond itself can become what a Situation is about: the tree is felled, the oath broken, the name erased. If it is lost, all its traits fall with it. Those traits often say what the loss costs: a Sylvan who dies if the oak dies does not outlive their tree.
When they lose their last Bond trait, or the Bond itself, they cease to be an Agent. For Diotima, the daimon stands between god and mortal; the Agent can leave that in-between by either end.
Becoming human again. If the world does not yet carry what they have become, the Agent becomes human again. They return to the human condition, with what it means for them: a vampire, already dead, finally dies. If they survive it, they keep their Anchors: what they know, whom they know, what they have lived. The player can go on playing them: a human set apart, who knows a great deal, who likely has allies among the Agents, and who can organize humans against the forces of the Powers. Alone against an Agent, they suffer the certainty of the Bond; but if an allied Agent commits Bond Bets at their side, the opponent's Bond Bets lose their certainty (see Against Another Agent).
Becoming a Power. If the world already carries what they have become, and if the player accepts the burden, the Agent becomes a Power themselves. A new Power appears on the Horizon, born of the campaign; the table writes its Attributes from what the Agent had become. It is a burden, for a Power no longer becomes: it already is what it is. The player can then play an Agent of this new Power, and voice it during moments of Presence.
The 6
The 6 belongs to Becoming.
It has its own effect only on dice rolled with the Becoming prism: those of beings that use this prism and the Anchor Bets of Agents. For matter and for Bond Bets rolled with the Neutral prism, a 6 is only an ordinary Success.
The 6 is not where the Power manifests: what passes from the Power into the world passes through its Agents, and in particular through their Bond Bets.