Faith

Characters who retire after 19th level may receive an out-of-play vote to ascend to immortality (see "The End" for more details). Those who do become special characters who influence the game world indirectly through their followers. Players of immortals will typically play a normal character alongside their immortal, since immortals are not physically present in play and playing one is not a full-time job.

Generating Faith

Immortals receive and expend faith, a number similar to a gold total, in order to exert influence in mortal affairs. Faith can be generated in the following ways.

• Initial. Immortals start with zero faith. However, the immortal’s player may choose to convert all or part of the fortune they receive after retirement into faith for their new immortal.
• Automatic. Immortals automatically generate 0.05 faith per day. Even without other sources of faith, an immortal’s influence can be reduced but never completely extinguished.
• Followers. Every character can choose a single immortal as their patron. When that character is played at an event, their patron receives 0.1 faith per character level (e,g., a 12th-level character generates 1.2 faith per event for their patron). Note that players may not choose their own immortals as patrons.
• Offerings. Followers may sacrifice treasure in honor of their patron. The treasure is destroyed and the patron receives one quarter of the treasure's value as faith.
• Shrines. Every sanctum can be devoted to a single immortal. If the sanctum has the Shrine ability, the patron receives 0.01 faith per level of the shrine each day. Note that players may not own sanctums devoted to their own immortals.

Using Faith

Immortals can perform a number of miraculous feats, but they are not omnipotent and have difficulty influencing mortal affairs that do not occur at one of their shrines or in the presence of one of their ordained followers.

• Blessing. Immortals may bestow or remove a prestige or stigma strongly related to their dogma. For example, an immortal of nature might bestow the Greenwarden prestige while an immortal of death might bestow the Lich or Vampire stigma. The character affected must be a willing follower. This costs an amount of faith equal to the character's level, to a minimum of 10, and cannot be performed more than three times per year by a given immortal.
• Consultation. Immortals may provide story-related guidance to a character who uses a Consult narrative ability. The narrator for the story determines the guidance provided, if any, but may defer to the immortal's player if that player is available. Consulting costs no faith, but the question must be specific and the response must be simple, often no more than one word. For extended conversations, see Revelation below.
• Miracles. With their patron’s permission, ordained followers may use faith instead of gold to cover all or part of a ritual’s cost (e.g., resurrecting a character).
• Ordination. An immortal may ordain a follower as their chosen emissary. Ordinations cost an amount of faith equal to 10 times the current number of ordained followers (i.e., free for the first ordination, 10 for the second, 20 for the third, etc.). Immortals may give ordained followers revelations freely, resurrect them with faith alone, and intervene on their behalf. If an ordained follower ever displeases their patron, however, their patron can rescind their ordination and optionally kill the follower for no faith cost.
• Protection. An immortal may prevent a sanctum with a shrine devoted to them from being damaged by monsters. This costs an amount of faith equal to the level of the sanctum minus the level of its shrine, to a minimum of 1.
• Relics. An immortal may create treasure for a follower. This works just like fortune, costing an amount of faith equal to the treasure’s value. The immortal’s fortune cap when creating treasure in this way is equal to 10 times the level of their largest shrine, so an immortal must have a shrine in order to create relics.
• Resurrection. An immortal may spend faith to resurrect an ordained follower who has died. This works like the Resurrect narrative ability except the ritual is instantaneous, cannot be interrupted, and costs faith instead of gold (see "Fate" for more details). If one of the immortal’s shrines is in play, the immortal may choose for the resurrected follower to reappear there instead of the Dragon’s Den.
• Revelation. Immortals may converse with each other freely, but have difficulty communicating with mortals. An immortal may speak to a single character at a cost of 1 faith, or any number of characters at a cost of 5. Revelations are free if only the immortal's ordained followers are present. Unlike consultation, revelations may be full conversations that last for any length of time, including forum threads.

Intervention

In addition to the applications of faith described above, which may be used freely, immortals are able to intervene in mortal events. Interventions obey the following rules.

• Narrative. Interventions are narrative in nature. As such, they may only be used in the context of a story and their usefulness is decided by the story's narrator. Unlike normal narrative abilities, they may be permitted in combat at the narrator's discretion. If the narrator rules that intervention is impossible or ineffective, it costs no faith.
• Invoked. An immortal can only intervene at the request of one of their ordained followers. The immortal is never required to intervene, however, and may choose the form of the intervention.
• Increasing Cost. Interventions become more difficult, and more costly, the more they are used in a short time. Multiply the base cost of the intervention by the number of times the immortal has intervened during the event to get the actual faith cost (i.e., the second intervention costs twice the base cost, the third costs three times, etc.).
• Martyrdom. The ordained character who requests the intervention must sacrifice themself and be left to their fate. When the character is left to their fate, multiply the base cost by one less when determining the actual cost. This reduces the cost of an immortal's first intervention during an event to zero. As above, if the narrator rules that the intervention does not work, the ordained character is not martyred. If the character who uses Intervention draws the Death card from the Fate deck, the immortal may use faith to resurrect them as normal.

Interventions can take one of several forms, as described below.

• Guidance. The immortal reveals some vital information to the ordained follower. This typically involves leading the follower toward an objective or uncovering some hidden truth. The base cost for guidance is 1 faith.
• Salvation. The immortal prevents or undoes catastrophic harm against one or more characters. This typically saves a party from a dire situation by restoring them to vitality or transporting them out of danger. Salvation costs an amount of faith equal to the karma awarded for the story's format (e.g., 4 for an adventure, 10 for a field battle).
• Wrath. The immortal smites something in a thematically appropriate manner. This typically destroys an obstacle or structure, wipes out a group of normal monsters, or hinders a single epic monster. The base cost for wrath is 3 faith.

Note that interventions and other actions taken by an immortal that are written as part of a story do not generally cost faith.

Faith Elsewhere

Only immortal characters played at the game utilize faith as described above, and only with regard to other characters in play. It can be assumed that NPC immortals have followers and shrines in much the same way as ordinary NPCs own treasure. However, their resources are devoted elsewhere, so they will not typically work on behalf of players except for purely narrative purposes. Likewise, it can be assumed that immortal characters have followers and shrines elsewhere, but that the faith produced elsewhere is used for other purposes.