A Pilgrim's
Field Manual

Open the Player Console and connect. Before the gate opens you must pass through the Rite of Naming— the game's character creation. There are no shortcuts and no pre-built avatars: a pilgrim must be made before they can walk.

The rite walks you through six choices, in order. At each step you can type the bare word to inspect the options, then repeat it with a choice to commit.

1. 1

   Name — Write name Saru Ash. Three to twenty-four letters, spaces, hyphens, apostrophes. It must be your own — names already walking the March are refused.

2. 2

   Bloodline — Type race to read the eight bloodlines, then race elf to choose. Each nudges your attributes.

3. 3

   Discipline — Type class to compare, then class ranger. Your class sets your hit/mana dice, primary stats, opening skills, and starting gear.

4. 4

   Origin — Type background, then background debt-runner. Your past adds a small attribute lean and your first items.

5. 5

   Focus (optional) — Type focus then focus dexterity to add +2 to one attribute. Skip it with review if you prefer the rounded build.

6. 6

   Review & confirm — Type review to see the exact sheet the gate will record, then confirm to make the pilgrim real.

When the dust settles you wake at the South Gate. Your first instinct should always be the same one a veteran has: type look.

Bloodlines

Disciplines

Origins

Six attributes drive everything. They are set at creation and grow through equipment, sockets, and a deity's favor:

• STR — carrying capacity and raw stamina; the muscle behind a blow.
• DEX — armor, accuracy, evasion, and who moves first.
• CON — the size of your health pool; staying upright.
• INT — the bite of arcane fire and scholarly ruin.
• WIS — your mana pool, ward strength, and initiative.
• CHA — presence; the leverage behind certain pacts and hexes.

From these the gate derives your vitals: health (how much harm you survive), stamina (spent on strikes and skills), mana (spent on spells), and armor (how often blows miss). Vitals refill slowly each tick while you are not bleeding them.

Read yourself any time with score (also char, sheet) for the main sheet, skills for learned and trainable abilities, equipment for what you wear, inventory for what you carry, and devotion (also faith) for where you stand with the gods. Shape how others see you with describe ash-streaked and watchful, and wipe it with describe clear.

look is the verb you will type most: it reads the room, its exits, and anything in it. Aim it at a thing — look gate — to study that thing closer. Travel through any visible exit with a direction: north, s, east, up, down, in, out. Stop to listenand the room's authored voice surfaces when the ambience is awake.

You only see the bigger picture if you carry the right chart. With a region map in your pack, map opens the local area; atlas (also world) opens the wider world — known regions, cross-map links, and where one place spills into the next. Maps are bought from merchants like Mirela; an unmapped region simply will not chart.

Pick things up with get lantern and set them down with drop ash dagger. Your carry capacity is real (it scales with Strength), so the pack is a budget, not a void — containers help. Stow a carried item inside a carried container with put field ration in weathered pack, and draw it back with take field ration from weathered pack. Hand goods to another pilgrim in the room with give field ration mirela.

Wear gear with equip rusted sword; each piece fills a slot and changes your derived numbers instantly. Inspect it all with equipment, or one piece with equipment sword. Gear with an open socket can be upgraded: socket cinder eye into charcoal ring, and reverse it with unsocket charcoal ring. Filter a crowded pack with inventory lantern.

Coin comes in four weights, each ten of the last: 10 copper (c) = 1 silver (s), 10s = 1 gold (g), 10g = 1 platinum (p). Amounts can be written naturally, like deposit 1s 5c.

In a room with a vendor, shop (or list) shows the wares and prices. buy field ration 2 purchases; sell grave ash offloads loot. Each merchant has their own margins — a smith buys weapons back fairly and mends them cheaply, while an apothecary pays little for steel and charges dearly to repair it. Keep damaged gear alive with repair rusted sword, repair body (a slot), or repair all.

Carried coin can be lost when you fall — so use the banks. At a room with a vault, bank (or balance) shows your purse and ledger, deposit all tucks coin away, and withdraw 1s draws it back.

The March rewards the patient. Where a room holds a resource node, gather (or harvest) pulls raw materials from it — name the source, like gather sluice slag, when several are present. Nodes cool down after a haul, so a worked seam is not an endless well.

Where a room holds a workbench, craft on its own lists what you can make from the materials in your pack; craft sump chain link builds a specific recipe. Gathering and crafting together turn a walk through dead ground into a supply line.

Open a fight with attack ash rat (also kill, k, slay). Strikes spend stamina; the foe strikes back, and the exchange repeats as you keep acting. Reach past the basic swing with your abilities: use measured slash ash rat for a learned skill, cast ember ash rat for a spell (spells spend mana), and use shield oath for a self-buff. use also drinks consumables — quaff field ration. Powerful abilities carry a cooldown before they can be used again.

While locked in combat you cannot simply walk away — a foe bars the exit. To escape, flee (or name a direction, flee north); every engaged enemy gets one parting swing as you turn, and some will give chase into the next room.

Death in the March is soft by design — a setback, not an erasure. When you fall you wake at the South Gate with half your vitals, and the March takes its tithe: a marker of XP debt (roughly a tenth of your next level) is pinned where your body dropped.

You pay that debt back by returning to the spot where you fell — simply being there, where your corpse lies, forgives a share of it. So the loop is: die, walk back, kneel at the place of your falling, and reclaim what the road took. It is meant to sting and send you somewhere, not to end you.

“You fall. The March takes its tithe.”

Should you ever want a clean break, a shrine offers despair: a deliberate surrender of progress that wakes you again at the South Gate with your first kit. It is guarded behind despair confirm / despair cancel so no one resets a life by accident.

Vatra, Keeper of the Last Ember, watches over the slow fire. The March burns slow so the world can keep walking. Vatra keeps the slowness honest, and counts what is given back to the fire.

At a shrine you can sacrifice (also offer) fallen remains — a mob's corpse or a relic — to earn favor: sacrifice ash rat corpse. Favor is counted even when you are unsworn, but its boons sleep until you make a patron's Vow. At the listening altar, write vow to swear that deity as patron, then read the whole ledger with devotion (also faith).

While sworn, reached ranks grant their titles and their small boons. Favor banked before the Vow is not lost; the titles you had already earned wake when you pledge. A clean break is possible with forsake, guarded by forsake confirm / forsake cancel, but a broken Vow costs favor and leaves a short penance before another can be sworn.

The March is full of people with problems. talk mirela (also speak) opens dialogue with a visible NPC and resolves whatever it carries — a story, a quest offered, or a task turned in. Track what you have taken on with quests (your journal), and inspect a single thread's objectives with quest first ash.

The world keeps its own time. A shared clock turns the day through its phases, and each region carries its own weather drawn from authored patterns — some places sheltered, some open to the ash-wind. You will feel it in the room's mood as you move and pause.

listenis your way in: where the soundscape is awake, it surfaces the room's authored voice — the kettle, the chain, the bell no one admits to hearing at night. It costs nothing and rewards the patient traveller with the texture the prose alone holds back.

You are not alone out here. Speak to the room with say gates are clear and act in it with emote checks the lantern. See who shares your room with who, or everyone online with who all.

Three world-wide channels reach every pilgrim online — gossip for the open chatter of the March, ooc for out-of-character talk, and newbie for asking and answering questions without shame. For one ear only, tell mirela on my way sends a private line anywhere, and reply answers the last person who told you. Mute a nuisance with ignore borin (manage the list with ignore list / ignore remove borin).

Travel together with a party: party invite borin, party accept, party leave, and speak to it alone with gtell heal up wherever its members roam. Charter something lasting as a guild — guild create Ember Vow, guild invite borin, guild who — and rally it on its own channel with gchat raid forming. Finally, leave word for anyone, online or not, with mail send mirela the coin is yours, and read your letters with mail / mail read 1.

Beyond say and emote, the March keeps a whole vocabulary of ready-made gestures. Each works alone, or aimed at someone visible — bow versus bow mirela, glare versus glare ash rat. They carry no mechanics; they are pure theatre, and the soul of a lived-in room. All 60 of them:

Every live command in the world, grouped by purpose and drawn straight from the game so nothing is missed. Words in brackets are the same verb's aliases — type whichever is faster.