Exposure & Perks

Contact with the anomaly is not a resource you spend. It is a poison that accumulates, and it is the closest thing this game has to a doom meter.

Exposure

You start at zero. Every time you touch the source of the power — use a wonder weapon, read the wall-writings too closely, take the offer a voice makes you — you gain exposure. Your sheet tracks it, and your sheet is honest about what it is doing to you.

Exposure does two things, and it does them in an order that defines the tone of a run. It eats your perk slots and it gnaws at your composure.

Perk slots

Under the default rule set you have room for four perks. Every 20 points of exposure burns one of those slots. Not your perks — your capacity. You can hold four perks at zero exposure, three at 20, two at 40, and so on, down to nothing. The Aether runs the crew out of perks before it runs them out of life, and that ordering is the point. Losing a perk slot is the cheapest, most gut-punch way a room gets dangerous again.

Composure

Your composure is base (3 by default) plus your Nerve, less a point for every chunk of exposure. Composure is the standing of your mind — how much room you have before the sky stops being overhead. When composure runs out, so does your grip.

Perks

A perk is a machine you drink from, and each one does exactly one thing. Read the rule text on the perk — it tells the GM what it modifies and by how much. Juggernog raises your wound threshold by 2. Others move the other numbers. Perks are lost on death and lost the moment the slot that held them burns out.

Perks cost points, which the crew earns in the field and holds in common — a party resource, not a personal one. Nobody gets a private wallet, so the question of who drinks first is an argument the system makes you have. Losing a perk to exposure refunds nothing.

A perk also has a side effect the jingle leaves out. The confidence is chemical. Taking it makes you stronger and makes you overestimate exactly how much room you have.

Wonder weapons

A wonder weapon is a set-piece, not a gun. It has charges and a recharge rule, possibly build parts to assemble first, and a side effect that tells you what firing it does to the wielder, the site, or the walls between things. It also carries exposure risk — using it costs exposure every single time. The most powerful thing you can hold is the thing that is slowly killing you to use.

The offer

The voice in your head is a genuine offer, not a trick, and it works. Taking it is the fastest route to power and it costs exposure every single time. That is the bargain the system keeps offering and letting you make. You will make it, probably more than once.

Pack-a-Punch

Turns a weapon into its upgraded form — the version of itself that matters. Plan for it, budget for it, and remember what it does to your exposure when the site asks you to pay for it.