Edit each starting Bond in Unfinished stories. Adventure Journal records Beginning, Middle and End progression without repeating the starting description. A relationship need not be resolved or fully planned before play.
Bonds are the people who matter to a Hero.
They represent relationships that continue to shape a Hero's choices, emotions, loyalties, fears, and identity. A Bond might be a loved one, mentor, rival, enemy, lost companion, or someone whose importance has not yet been fully understood.
A Bond does not need to be positive. Some Bonds inspire. Others create obligation, grief, resentment, rivalry, or guilt.
What defines a Bond is simply that the relationship matters.
At Character Creation, a Hero begins with seven Bonds. Unlike Chronicles, which focus on significant events and experiences, Bonds focus on the people connected to the Hero's story.
BOND THEMES Copy link
The seven Bond spaces provide broad themes to inspire important relationships.
# | Bond Theme | Core Prompt |
|---|---|---|
1 | The Origin | Who shaped you before you understood the world? |
2 | The Anchor | Who makes you feel real? |
3 | The Wound | Who did you lose, betray, or fail? |
4 | The Shadow | Who knows something about you that no one else does? |
5 | The Promise | Who are you trying to become worthy of? |
6 | The Guide | Who shows you the way, even if they are gone? |
7 | The Unknown | Who is tied to your fate but not yet revealed? |
These are prompts, not restrictions. Players should interpret them in whatever way best fits their Hero.
BONDS & DESTINY Copy link
A Bond can return through the developing story. A Birth Sign does not automatically place a Token in the Boon area or trigger an event.
Use the general Favor rules when Favor is called upon. There is no additional Birth Sign procedure.
Fortune and Fate provide narrative directions for personal events: an opportunity, return, or restoration may feel fortunate; an obligation, loss, or hidden truth may feel adverse.
The Hero’s recorded Destinies help the WorldKeeper shape a Bond event that connects with the current story.
A Bond does not need to physically appear. It may enter through a message, memory, rumor, request, revelation, obligation, shared object, unexpected encounter, or consequence connected to that person.
The goal is not to force the Bond into the Scene. It is to make that relationship meaningful again.
Fortune & Fate BOND EVENTS Copy link
A Fortune Bond Event moves the relationship through the nature of the Hero's chosen Destiny — Fortune. It may create opportunity, connection, revelation, restoration, or another favorable turn.
An Fate Bond Event follows the Hero's chosen Destiny — Fate. It may introduce conflict, concealment, obligation, loss, fracture, danger, or another adverse turn.
Fortune does not necessarily mean happy, and Fate does not necessarily mean tragic.
A Fortune event might reveal a painful truth because that truth ultimately opens the relationship forward. An Fate event might reunite the Hero with someone they love, only for that reunion to introduce a serious complication.
Destiny determines the direction of fate, not the Hero's emotional reaction to it.
EVOLVING BONDS Copy link
Each Bond has a Beginning, Middle, and End, representing the progression of that relationship's current story.
The Beginning brings the relationship into focus. The Middle changes, complicates, or deepens it. The End brings that particular arc to a meaningful resolution or transformation.
Whenever the Bond advances, use the Fortune or Fate Destiny that triggered that event and follow its corresponding Beginning, Middle, or End path.
A Bond does not permanently belong to Fortune or Fate. One relationship might begin through Fortune, develop through Fate, and finally resolve through Fortune again.
When the End is reached, the relationship itself does not necessarily disappear. The Bond may remain as part of the Hero's life, transform to reflect what has changed, or eventually be replaced by someone newly important.
The Bond tells you who matters. The stage tells you where their story stands. Destiny tells you what happens next.