Hero Tokens represent the changing state of an individual Hero throughout play. Together, they form a living record of the Hero's nature, capability, physicality, training, history, motivation, resources, burdens, and experiences.
Some Hero Tokens live within the Hero Bag, becoming part of what the Hero brings into moments of uncertainty. Others remain outside the Bag, where they may be held, spent, exchanged, tracked, or placed on the Hero Sheet until their effects are resolved.
Not every Hero Token contributes Control, Impulse, or Versatility. Some provide direct Performance values, while others represent Potential, specialized qualities, accumulated resources, injuries, advantages, complications, or lasting changes.
As the Hero develops, the tokens associated with them may change as well. Potential becomes Active Reserve, Embers develop through mastery, Motivation evolves, hardship enters the Bag, and the consequences of the Hero's story accumulate around them.
The Hero Sheet describes who the Hero is. Their tokens show who they are becoming.
CORE Copy link
Core Tokens form the foundational capability of every Hero Bag, representing both what the Hero can already bring to the world and the potential from which they may continue to develop.
Core includes the Hero's Ember Tokens, which express Control, Impulse, and Versatility. Embers represent developing capability and identity. They are malleable foundations that may later be forged into specific physical or mental capabilities. Pathway mastery uses the matching Pathway Ember upgrades; it does not automatically convert inheritance Embers into MATRI Tokens.
Core also includes Potential Tokens. Each Potential Token contributes 1 Versatility [V], representing capability that has not yet been directed toward a particular resource or opportunity. When the Hero generates Reserve, an appropriate Potential Token may become Active Reserve, allowing that same capability to gain greater value when used through its associated Pathway.
Core therefore represents both what the Hero can already bring to the world and what they still have the potential to become.
ORIGIN Copy link
Origin represents the Hero's fundamental nature and cosmological beginning.
Every Hero carries an Origin Seed belonging to the Astralkin, Vathian, Nuhlrin, or Orvah, regardless of the culture, Kind, or community with which they later identify.
When drawn, the Origin Token immediately adds the highest eligible total as Versatility to the current Performance, with a minimum bonus of 1V: Sanction for Astralkin, Thread Color for Vathians, Aspect for Nuhlrin, or the highest single total among those categories for Orvah. It does not generate Reserve Tokens.
Origin is not learned.
It is carried.
WEIGHT Copy link
Weight Tokens represent the Hero's physical mass, scale, and the force their body carries through the world.
Every Hero possesses three Weight Tokens within their Hero Bag. Weight contributes 0 Power when WEIGHT is OFF or not relevant to the check based on the action or narrative. When WEIGHT is ON or matters to the story, the applicable action, Keyword, or narrative circumstance may allow it to contribute 1V, contribute 0V, or reduce the current Performance by 1V. ON never grants an automatic or guaranteed minimum of 1V. The printed 0, 1, or 2 is the token’s Weight value, not a default Power value. Apply specific LIGHT or MASS rules only when relevant.
A heavier Hero does not possess more Weight Tokens.
Weight changes their value, not their frequency.
DESTINY Copy link
Destiny Tokens represent the forces that draw a Hero's personal story back into play.
Every Hero carries Fortune and Fate Destiny Tokens, allowing unresolved history, meaningful relationships, Chronicles, Bonds, and unexpected turns to emerge through the course of an adventure.
Destiny ensures that a Hero's past and future are not separate from what happens at the table.
What matters to the Hero can return when fate calls for it.
PATHWAY Copy link
Pathway Tokens represent knowledge, discipline, practice, and mastery.
Each trained Pathway is represented within the Hero Bag by an Ember aligned with the Hero's chosen approach to that discipline. Training determines how reliably the Hero may draw upon that Pathway, developing through Trained, Adept, Master, and Exemplar.
At greater levels of mastery, the physical Ember representing that Pathway may itself transform, reflecting capability that has become increasingly fundamental to the Hero.
Where Origin reflects what a Hero inherently is, Pathway asks:
What have they learned to become?
RESERVE Copy link
Reserve represents capability made available through action, preparation, connection, and opportunity.
Each of a Hero's starting Pathways carries Potential within the Hero Bag. A Potential Token contributes 1 Versatility when drawn and represents flexible capability that has not yet been committed to a particular resource.
When the Hero generates Reserve, an appropriate Potential Token may become Active Reserve. Active Reserve contributes 1 Versatility normally, or 2 Versatility when drawn during a Performance using its associated Pathway.
Reserve may represent Aspects, Sanctions, or Threads, depending upon what the Hero has brought into play.
When that Reserve is spent, lost, exhausted, released, or otherwise returned, the token becomes Potential again.
Potential is what could be. Reserve is what the Hero has made available.
MOTIVATION Copy link
Motivation represents why the Hero acts.
Every Hero possesses one Gray Motivation Token within their Hero Bag. It represents the purpose, relationship, responsibility, ambition, belief, fear, promise, or desire currently exerting the strongest influence upon the Hero's actions.
The Motivation Token contributes 1 Versatility [V] when drawn during a Performance.
A Hero's Motivation may change as their circumstances, priorities, relationships, and experiences change.
Capability tells us what a Hero can do. Motivation tells us why it matters.
SPEND Copy link
Spend Tokens represent limited opportunities accumulated during play that the Hero may deliberately use.
Unlike tokens within the Hero Bag, Spend Tokens remain outside the Bag until the Hero chooses to use them. These may include Favor, Redraw, and Project Tokens, each with its own method of acquisition and use.
Favor allows the Hero to call upon forces beyond themselves. Redraw allows the Hero to challenge uncertainty and reconsider a result. Project Tokens represent productive capacity committed toward longer-term goals.
Spend Tokens are not drawn. They are chosen.
SENSES Copy link
Sense Tokens represent heightened perception and the ways a Hero experiences and interprets the world.
They may contribute Versatility, reveal otherwise hidden information, strengthen awareness, or interact with abilities involving ordinary or supernatural perception.
As a Hero develops their Senses, those tokens may become increasingly specialized, reflecting not merely sharper perception but greater understanding of what that perception reveals.
Senses make observation an active part of play.
What a Hero notices can be as important as what they do.
HEALTH Copy link
Health represents the accumulating physical and mental cost of hardship through Fatigue, Strain, and Wounds.
Fatigue accumulates outside the Hero Bag, representing temporary exhaustion and pressure. When hardship becomes more persistent, Strain may enter the Hero Bag and interfere directly with future Performances. Wounds represent more serious injury and reduce the Hero's ability to draw upon their full capability.
Health therefore changes more than a number.
The Bag remembers what the Hero has endured.
STATE Copy link
State Tokens represent temporary changes in the Hero's emotional, social, tactical, positional, or narrative condition.
States remain outside the Hero Bag and change as circumstances shift. They may record Confidence or Uncertainty, social standing, positioning within a conflict, Comfort or Discomfort, or another temporary condition that affects how the Hero interacts with the current Moment.
State asks:
Where is the Hero right now?
BOONS Copy link
Boons represent beneficial circumstances or effects that remain with a Hero until used, triggered, exhausted, or removed.
They may represent protection, preparation, inspiration, assistance, favorable positioning, heightened awareness, recovery, or another advantage created through the fiction.
Unlike permanent Hero Bag Tokens, Boons allow a Hero to carry an advantage forward without making that advantage part of their enduring identity.
BANES Copy link
Banes represent conditions, environmental hazards, combat disruptions, and other complications that remain until resolved, removed, or replaced.
They may restrict options, worsen future circumstances, expose vulnerabilities, alter how a Hero may approach a Moment, or preserve the consequences of previous events without immediately converting those consequences into Health.
Banes allow the world to push back and remember.
MARKS Copy link
Marks represent lasting narrative states that need to be remembered.
They may record obligations, affiliations, supernatural influences, transformations, relationships, conditions, or other circumstances that continue beyond a single Performance or Scene.
A Mark does not inherently help or harm the Hero.
It simply declares:
This now matters.
WITHER Copy link
Wither represents corruption, decay, and the unraveling of what should remain whole.
Unlike ordinary exhaustion or injury, Wither may threaten the Hero's body, mind, identity, environment, relationship with the Threads, or the integrity of something around them.
Because Wither represents fundamental instability rather than ordinary harm, it cannot always be addressed through the same methods used to recover from Fatigue, Strain, or Wounds.
Wither is not simply damage.
It is something becoming fundamentally wrong.