Before you start the game, you must create a character! You will first choose a species for your character:

Character Species:

• Ardus (Birds) - Mythic form: Phoenix

• Squamus (Snakes and Lizards) - Mythic form: Dragon

• Canus (Foxes) - Mythic form: Kitsune

• Felus (Cats - Domestic) - Mythic form: Yokai(Bakeneko/Nekomata)

Next, you will fill out your character sheet with the starting stats for your character. You can find example character sheets in Game Resources: Record Keeping or you can create your own! 

The stats you are determining are the Explore Points (EP), Health Points (HP), and Carrying Capacity (CC). 

Explore Points determine how much travel and exploring you are able to do in a day. Your Health Points are your lifeline, and are lost during certain explore encounters and during combat.  Your Carrying Capacity determines how many objects you can carry with you and also how much you can pick up on your journey.

Your species determines your starting stats, and the background you choose adds a buff to one of the categories. You can also create your own background and choose where your extra points go!

Species Starting Stats:
Ardus: 28 HP, 12 EP, 5 CC
Squamus: 25 HP, 15 EP, 4 CC
Canus: 25 HP, 15 EP, 6 CC
Felus: 28 HP, 12 EP, 5 CC

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Background Options

Grandpa’s Favorite

• You spent your childhood listening to your grandfather’s stories of wondrous quests and exciting adventures. You never strayed far from his side as he taught you all about the greatest Legends Torana had to offer - from the courageous Vinra to the treacherous Ergo. You learned all there was to know about the adventurer’s guild and the explorations they used to sponsor, and when your grandfather died you vowed to embark on one of those adventures that he always dreamed of having.

• Your knowledge of the adventurers and their great quests has prepared you for your own journey. +3 EP

Grandma’s Favorite

• You grew up on your grandmother's cooking, and you started trying to help her as soon as you were tall enough to reach the counters. Try as you might, you weren’t very good at making the food, but you were excellent at eating it! You were also great at coming up with new flavor combinations, though you never really knew if it was your ideas or your grandmother's execution that made the food so great. As you got older you spent half of your time helping her come up with new recipes for her diner, and the other half you spent talking to her regulars. The diner wasn’t very busy, but a few older patrons would come in like clockwork. You would bring them out whatever new dish your grandmother had made, and they would tell you stories about the way the world used to be. It was there you found another interest - adventuring.

• You were so well fed in your youth that your health has naturally increased! (+3 HP)

Nobody’s Favorite

• You are an orphan, raised by the Mylar Home for Abandoned Children. You spent your life working in various locations - an inn, mill, a mine, and more. You never had much free time, but when you did you spent it at the local library. Mylar has the oldest catalog in Torana, and while the library was often busy you tended to visit the less popular sections. The books that caught your eye were in the “exploration” section. You spent a lot of time reading about the golden ages of Torana when adventuring was the boldest profession and when the quest for knowledge was the greatest cause. While cleaning at the inn, you imagined yourself serving adventurers who were passing through on their travels. While chopping wood for the mill you imagined you were fighting your way through the wilds. While toiling in the mins you imagined you had found some mystical new cave system where you were searching for the next great discovery. Once you were old enough to leave the orphanage, you set out on your own with a goal of making a name for yourself, just like the mythics in the books you used to read.

• Your childhood of labor has made you stronger than most. (+3 CC)

Custom Background

• Create your own back story - add 3 points to any base stat or spread the points around as you wish!

After deciding on a species and background, all that you have left is to design your character - you can draw your own or use one of the art bases provided to create your character! You can see character sheet examples at the bottom of this page. Once your character is ready, you can move on to exploring!

The only way to learn more about the mythics of legend is to explore your world and find answers for yourself. During your adventures, you may encounter many different things - creatures which wish to impede your progress and keep the status quo will be your biggest obstacles. However, if you succeed in your attempt to learn more about your past, you may secure a much more  interesting  future for yourself along the way.

How exploring works:

• In order to explore you must spend Explore points (EP) - these tell you how long you can adventure for. Starting and adventure cost 2 EP, and each path you choose uses 1 EP. Events that occur on your travels and some actions you take may also take away explore points. The amount of EP you start with is determined by the character you create, and you gain more as you level up. Your points reset daily (see “day cycle” section below) and you can replenish them with potions and some other items. 
• To explore you always start with one path, and always draw 2 branching paths to the left and right. Each time you draw the branching paths, you will choose one direction to go in - choose wisely because you can only backtrack under certain circumstances. Once you choose a direction, you lose 1 EP and roll an “Explore Encounter” (hit the “explore now” button at the bottom left of the town you are in). If you run out of EP or hit a dead end you can’t get away from, you must start a whole new adventure.  
• Each adventure takes off from the town you are in, and each town has different things for you to encounter. To travel between towns, you must use EP.
• If you run out of EP on your adventure the exploration ends - however you still remain in the town near where the exploration took place. You may use items to refill EP, or if you don’t have anything helpful you have a few other options. You can rest to end the day cycle using a bedroll, or you can sleep in your own home or at Mitsies Inn in Dyne. If you are not able to get to any of these places (remember, traveling takes EP!) you will still need to sleep - it just won’t be very comfortable! You will pass out on the trail and would not be able to regenerate EP for the night. Don’t worry though - there is a strange Felus who wanders around the wilderness, and he is very helpful - for a fee. He will take you back to the Inn in Dyne anytime you run out of EP and pass out on the ground! The Inn keeper is pretty sympathetic though! If you get dragged in to Mitsie’s she will let you stay for free - you do still have to pay the Felus. If paying him takes all of your money, don’t worry! Debt does exist in this dystopia, and your money will just go into the negatives. Just remember the negative balance before you try to sell or buy - you must make up the difference before you take anything for yourself!

Explore Encounters:

• You must always stop and complete an explore encounter on the path you are on before you choose a new path!
• If you find any items during your travels you may add them to your inventory as long as you have space (see “inventory” section).
• You may also roll an “end of the road” encounter - if you do this, you are able to immediately go back to the other direction you didn’t choose, but you are NOT able to back track farther than the most recent path. If this also leads to a dead end, you must use an item to backtrack or end your adventure. There are also “backtrack” options that you can roll, which allow you to go back as far as you want - just remember that each path you take costs 1EP, no matter what direction you go in!
• If you encounter an enemy, you will begin combat - you are not able to avoid combat unless you have certain items or abilities that allow you to. To see how combat works, see the “combat” section. 
• Once you have resolved your encounter roll, you may continue on your adventure. To do this, you simply draw 2 new branching paths and choose a direction to continue along your journey. As long as you don’t run out of EP or HP (see “Health” section) you can explore as much as you want.

It would be helpful to record your adventures in case you wish to backtrack to any paths that you missed - Below you can see an example of an explore chart - the lines are each path you can take, and the circles show where event encounters were rolled. The stars show paths that had options to travel but were not explored, and the red “X” means you rolled the “end of the road” encounter .