8. Storylines

8.1 What a Storyline Is#

A Storyline is the game's engine, not a side objective. Completing one ends the Act, and the first player to complete two wins the game (§15). Combat, Liberation, capture and movement are the verbs a player uses to satisfy a Storyline's clauses; none of them wins on its own.

A Storyline has two faces.

• The front is the arc as attempted: three Chapters, each with an End condition and usually a static effect that runs while it is the active Chapter (§8.5).
• The Reversal (§8.11) is the aftermath, reached when the bound Character Falls. It prints three paths — Redeem, Selfless Sacrifice and Conviction — of which exactly one is active.

Vocabulary. These terms appear on cards and mean the following throughout:

8.2 Faction Independence#

Storylines are not faction-locked. Any deck may include any Storyline. Drives listed on the Storyline's type line are affinities, not requirements, BUT any Character bound to a Storyline that does not match one of their Drives does not receive that Storyline's Chapter rewards (§8.4). The arc can still be walked and still completes — it simply pays the wrong protagonist nothing along the way.

8.3 Every Storyline Is Bound#

Design rule: every Storyline binds a Character when it enters the Map. There are no unbound Storylines. A Storyline is the story of one person, and its Reversal (§8.11) is what happens to that person; a card with no Bound would have no one to turn.

This is a rule for designing cards, not a rule of play. Earlier revisions defined a Player Storyline that stayed in play without a Bound; that category is retired, and no card in the pool uses it.

8.4 Aligned#

A Character is Aligned with a Storyline if they share at least one Drive with the Storyline's printed Drives. If a Character is not Aligned to the Storyline, its Chapter rewards are ignored. Some Chapter rewards scale by alignment (e.g., '+2 CP if Aligned, else +1 CP'). The Aligned status is checked at the moment the relevant Chapter effect resolves.

Alignment is checked against the Character's current face. A Character who Falls carries different Drives (§7.7), so an arc that suited them on their Prime face may not on their Fallen one — and a Reversal path is frequently aligned where the front face was not.

8.5 Chapters#

A Storyline has 3 Chapters. Each Chapter has:

• An End condition — when met, the chapter is completed and the next chapter activates. Chapter rewards (if any) are gained only when the End condition is met naturally. On a Crisis Storyline the End condition is written as a number of Time counters (§22.4).
• A static effect — an ongoing ability that runs for as long as that Chapter is active. A static is not an End condition and does not complete the Chapter. A later Chapter may state that an earlier Chapter's static effects continue. See §8.10. A Chapter is a scene, and the static is what happens in it. A Chapter whose only content is its End condition asks a player to wait rather than to act, and reads as a checkbox rather than a story. Statics are the expected case, not decoration. A Chapter's static should arm whoever is trying to stop it. Where a Chapter's End is an objective one player drives, its static typically hands the other side a tool that answers it. This keeps an arc contested without any number needing tuning, and it is why a Storyline is interactive rather than solitaire.
• A reward (optional) — gained when the chapter completes naturally. Reward design is per-card; rewards are not awarded when chapters are skipped.
• A Skip cost (optional) — any player may pay this cost to advance the chapter without satisfying the End condition. Climactic chapters (Chapter 3) typically cannot be skipped.

Once completed, a Chapter's effect occurs and cannot be undone.

8.6 Skip Mechanics#

Any player may pay a Chapter's Skip cost to advance the storyline. Skip costs are typically severe and thematically aligned with the Chapter's nature. Skipping does NOT trigger the chapter's reward.

Skip costs and Skip conditions are distinguished in card text:

• "Skip: Pay X" — a real cost (Currency, CP, SP, sacrifice, etc.) paid to advance.
• "Skip: When [condition]" — a free skip available when the condition is true.

For Cursed Storylines, opponents may skip-advance chapters to harm the controller. For Aspirational Storylines, the controller may skip chapters they cannot satisfy. The Skip ability of a Storyline is played as a Slow Maneuver.

8.7 Act Restrictions#

Storyline cards may be played on the Acts (I, II, or III) specified on the card.

8.8 No Voluntary Discard#

Once a Storyline is played, the controller cannot voluntarily discard it. The Storyline must complete naturally, complete via Skip, or be removed by an expensive disruption Maneuver. If at any time a Storyline leaves play, any bound Characters to that Storyline flip to their Fallen face.

8.9 Completing a Storyline#

Completing a Storyline ends the Act, and the card is Burned.

A Storyline is completed when either its front face's final Chapter ends or an active Reversal path ends (§8.11). When it does:

1. The Act ends immediately (§9.4). 2. Its printed reward is awarded to the player it names, toward that Act (§15.1). The front's final Chapter, and each Reversal path, prints its own reward and who receives it — e.g. "Gain +3" for the controller, or "That opponent gains +3". 3. The card is placed in the Burned Pile (§18.27). Its story is over; it does not return, and it does not appear in later Acts.

Completing a Storyline is a timing weapon as much as a score. Because it ends the Act, the player who completes one decides when every other player's position is measured (§15.2). The printed reward is a modest award next to the board score; choosing the moment the galaxy is photographed is not. That power belongs to whoever completes the face, which on half of every Storyline is an opponent.

Burning a completed Storyline is what opens the sideboard. Between Acts a player may swap freely between deck and sideboard (§17.4), and a finished arc leaving the game permanently is what makes room for the next one. It also lets a player re-plan around what their Characters have become: a Character who Fell in the previous Act carries different Drives (§8.4), so the arcs that suited them no longer do.

Storylines still in progress when an Act ends carry over. Only the completed Storyline is Burned. An arc partway through its Chapters stays on the Map with its progress intact.

Back-face types. A Storyline's back face is normally its Reversal (§8.11). A card may instead print a back face of another type — a Spacecraft, a Device, a Location, or in principle any other permanent type — in which case the new face is treated as a permanent of its new type and follows that type's rules. A card doing so prints its own flip instruction and is an explicit exception to §8.11.

8.10 Bind#

A Storyline Binds a Character when it enters the Map. Every Storyline prints the Bind keyword (§18.21): "Bind: When this card enters the Map, bind a Character you control to this card." That Character becomes the Bound.

• Only a Character on its Prime face may be Bound. A Fallen Character cannot be bound to a Storyline. An existing bind survives the Fall. The restriction bars entering a bind, not holding one. A Bound Character who Falls stays bound — the Reversal face is about that person, and unbinding on the Fall would leave nothing to resolve (§8.11). This makes a Prime Character the scarce resource of the game. Every Storyline needs a Bound Character, and finishing an arc spends one: Redeem hands it back, Conviction leaves a board piece that can never anchor another arc, and Selfless Sacrifice leaves nothing. It is also why a Fallen face may be printed stronger than its Prime without creating power creep — strength is not what twisting costs, bindability is.
• A Storyline cannot be played without a legal Bind. If its controller controls no Prime Character that is not already Bound, the Storyline cannot be played. The same applies to any other target its entry text requires, such as a Partner.
• Binding does not activate the Character unless the entry text says so.
• A Character may be bound to only one Storyline at a time. Storylines cannot be transferred between Characters. Players cannot choose to "unbind" Characters from Storylines. Characters become unbound only under the following conditions:
• The bound Character is removed from play.
• The Storyline is destroyed or removed from play.
• The Storyline completes and is Burned.

The standard entry text. Every Storyline opens the same way:

Bind. [Turning point.]

The turning point (§8.11) is printed here, on entry, so both players can see from the first turn what would turn the story. Chapter 1 is then a real scene with its own static and End condition, not a binding step.

Anything else a Storyline does on entry follows as its own sentence: "Bind. Create a Contested Planetary Location Drone called 'Xil' … If at any time Xil is not on the Map, flip the Bound." Earlier wordings chained it onto the bind ("Bind a Character you control and create …"), which reads the same.

Storylines don't Foreshadow. Earlier revisions ended every entry with Foreshadow 2. That was removed from all Storylines on 2026-10-22; Foreshadow remains a keyword for the other cards that print it (§18.61).

Earlier revisions bound through an activated, Slow-timed ability that completed Chapter 1, and let a controller delay binding indefinitely. Both are retired.

A Chapter's End condition and its static effects are separate. A Chapter may carry a static ability that runs for as long as that Chapter is active, in addition to its End condition. The static is not the End condition and does not complete the Chapter, and a later Chapter may state that an earlier Chapter's static effects continue.

8.11 The Reversal Face#

When a Character bound to a Storyline Falls, that Storyline flips to its Reversal face. The two turn over together; the Character's face and the Storyline's face always agree. This holds whatever caused the Fall (§7.7).

Every Storyline prints its own turning point: the condition on its front that flips it. When the turning point is met, the Bound Falls and the Storyline flips to its Reversal. Climb to Power prints "If the Bound is Liberated at any time, instead of destroying it, flip the Bound and this Storyline." A turning point is the Storyline's own text, so a Fall it causes is never charged under §8.12. It is not the only way to the Reversal: any Fall of the Bound flips the Storyline too.

Term: "turning point" is used here because "exit clause" already names the Redeem, Selfless Sacrifice and Conviction lines printed on a Character's Fallen face (§7.8).

A Reversal prints three paths — Redeem, Selfless Sacrifice and Conviction — each with its own static and End condition.

Exactly one path is active: the one matching the exit clause printed on the Bound's Fallen face (§7.8). The other two are inert and are read as though they were not on the card. A Character whose Fallen face prints no exit clause can never complete a Reversal.

Completing an active path completes the Storyline (§8.9) — the Act ends, the path's printed reward goes to the player it names, and the card is Burned. What becomes of the Bound depends on which path was active:

If the Bound is destroyed, the Storyline is destroyed — on either face. An arc cannot continue without its protagonist.

Exception. A Selfless Sacrifice completion destroys the Bound as the completion itself. That is the Storyline completing under §8.9, not the Bound being lost, so the Storyline completes and is Burned rather than destroyed. Dying in the wrong scene ends the story; dying in the right scene is the ending.

The Reversal reverses who is trying to win it. Every Storyline is one of exactly two kinds:

No Storyline rewards the same side on both faces. The same card is played in opposite directions by both players, and the Bound's face says whose turn it is to be the aggressor. Where a face rewards an opponent, it names which one — typically the opponent whose action met the End condition.

When the Reversal is the opponent's, the Bound becomes its target. On a Kind A Storyline the Bound is the protagonist of the front and the object of the Reversal: its paths are things an opponent does to the Bound — winning them back (Redeem), bringing them down (Selfless Sacrifice), or breaking their power and leaving them in disgrace (Conviction). Kind B runs the other way, as Escape the Hegemony does: the Bound is carried through the front by an opponent's Partner and becomes the protagonist once the card turns.

Reversal is a state label on the type line, alongside Prime, Fallen, Contested and Completed (§18.24, §19.5).

8.12 Causing Your Own Character to Fall or Be Destroyed#

If you cause a Character you control to Fall, or to be destroyed, the next opponent in turn order gains 1 Story Point.

You cause it when it results from anything you do as that Character's controller: a card you play, an ability you activate, an attack you make on your own card (§11.1), a cost or Penalty you pay, or a choice you make. The most direct routes are playing Character Actions against a Character's Morality until the Penalties take them to 0 CP — a Prime Character Falls (§7.4), a Fallen one is destroyed — and attacking your own Character. A Fall or destruction caused by an opponent's card or ability awards nothing, including combat damage an opponent's card deals to a Character you sent to attack.

The rule applies to every Character you control, Bound or not. It matters most for a Bound Character. A Fall flips their Storyline to its Reversal and hands its controller a new objective (§8.11); a destruction destroys the Storyline, which scores nothing — and so can deny an opponent a reward they were about to complete. Both routes stay open, and this is their price. The Storyline is not conceded: a Bound destroyed by its own controller destroys its Storyline, and no face completes for anyone (ruled 2026-10-17). The 1 Story Point is the whole cost.

Displacement. A Character destroyed for want of a legal Position (§14.12) counts as one you destroyed only if the displacement was caused by something you did — for example, destroying your own Location while your Character stands on it. Displacement caused by an opponent's card awards nothing.

Two carve-outs, or the rule would fire on the game working as intended:

1. Completing a Storyline never triggers it. A Redeem completion flips the Bound to Prime and a Selfless Sacrifice completion destroys them; both are the intended endings (§8.11). 2. A Storyline's own text never triggers it. A Storyline that prints "If the Partner leaves the Map, Fall the Bound", or that grants its Bound a keyword which displaces it, is the arc working, not sabotage.

A Character's own abilities are not carved out. An ability printed on a Character that Falls or destroys it — an optional Twist worded "you may flip this card", for example — triggers this rule like anything else you do. A card meant to be exempt must say so in its own text:

Using this ability does not award any .

Without that line, the award is made.

One award per Character per event. A Character who Falls and is then destroyed by the same action awards 1 Story Point, not 2.

This is a state-based award (§10.6), made the moment the Character Falls or is destroyed. Like the Empty Treasury award (§16), it is scored during the Act and counted with the board score when the Act ends (§15).

Ruled 2026-10-16: "any effect or action that a player takes that destroys a Character they control grants a story point to the next turn order opponent." Earlier wording covered Falls only, which let a player destroy their own Bound at no cost to deny an opponent's Storyline reward.