THE PLAYER'S HANDBOOK
Playing tonight?
Welcome. You don't need to know any rules — your Game Master brings those. Antiphon is about giant war-machines sung awake from stone, and the people who wake them. 4 quick things before you sit down, about 25 minutes in total. The chapters and reference sections below are here whenever you want them.
In this handbook
A WORKED EXAMPLE
A turn, start to finish →
One Cantor's whole turn, narrated beat by beat with every die shown. The clearest way to see how a turn flows.
ON YOUR TURN
What you can do on your turn →
Your own options, in plain language: your move, the two Quicks, the free things, your Song-Moves, Resonance and the Bond Move. Keep this one open while you play.
IN THE VOID
Space combat →
What changes off the ground: light guns cycle twice, capital ships have firing arcs, torpedoes lock on, fleets warp in and out.
LOOK IT UP
How it resolves — the rules lookup →
The one you open when a question comes up mid-fight: how an attack resolves, what adds accuracy or difficulty, damage in detail, and every condition.
YOUR KIT
The Cantor's toolkit →
Song-Moves, the Bond Tokens you earn by walking through a Fracture, and the companion Spirit that rides your frame.
ADVANCEMENT
The Oath ladder →
Your Stone's full nine-rung ladder over the campaign: the two universal rungs, the anchors, the invoke economy, the Burden, the Wheel, and the Choir Rule.
WHO YOU BECOME
Ideals →
The career-scale ladder: four convictions you live before you may swear them, one per Stone. The fourth you discover through play.
THE WORDS
Glossary →
Every term the game will throw at you, defined once, with pronunciations where the word is odd.
Read the World (5–10 min)
Skim The World and How it plays. That's all the orientation you need — the setting, and what a session feels like.Browse the Hangar (2–5 min)
Seven Stones, seven Colossi. Scan the Hangar and see which one you keep coming back to. That instinct is usually right.Build your Cantor (~10 min)
Go to the builder and make your character. Pick the Colossus that calls to you — by what it does and how it sounds, not by the cost it carries. When you finish, Copy or Download your sheet and paste it into our Discord. It saves as you go; you can come back to it on any device with the same email.Bring one honest line
One thing your character wants badly enough to fight for. That's the only homework. Everything deeper, we find at the table.Your Cantors, between sessions (optional)
Your characters live in the Refrain — sheet, Colossus and Bond Move, shareable by link, on any device you sign in from. And if you want to know what you actually do in a fight, What you can do on your turn puts it on one page.
What the game is about
Two games at once: a tactical Colossus fight, and a personal one — your machine grows stronger the more honestly your character faces who they are. Every Stone carries three faces:
- FractureWhat turns against you when you push too hard; face it and it becomes where your power comes out.
- TransformationThe gift you channel through song: what flows through you and changes what you can do.
- OathEarned strength, sworn and lived. Grace rather than a stat boost, and leaned on too long it becomes a cage.
You don't get the Oath by avoiding the Fracture. You get it by walking through it. That is the whole game.