THE CAREER-SCALE LADDER

Ideals

The Oath ladder is what your Colossus does in a fight. Your Idealsare who your Cantor becomes over the whole campaign: four sworn convictions, one Stone's worth, that you must live before you may speak.

Ideals vs the Bond Move — not the same thing

Both exist, and they feed each other. Your Bond Moveis the in-scene beat — one honest line, under fire, that clears a Fracture right now. Your Ideal is the career ladder those beats add up to. The Bond Move is how you live your current rung under fire; repeated, witnessed Bond Moves are the main evidence the table uses to say you've earned the next Ideal.

How you climb — lived, then sworn

  • You swear an Ideal you have genuinely lived.Not a power you pick: a conviction the table agrees your play earned. The GM may offer it (“I think you just lived rung 2 — want to swear it?”), or you can claim it and the table confirms.
  • Realizing a rung is not swearing it. You might seea later Ideal sessions before you're ready to speak it. The seeing is a quiet beat; the swearing is the earned one, and only the swearing lands the strength. Hold the gap — that gap is where the arc lives.
  • The Zeroth Ideal is the bonding itself: the moment you and your Colossus first agree to carry each other. Rung 1 is sworn there; the rest you earn.
  • The fourth rung is discovered, never printed.Each Stone's ladder ends on a rung you find through play, in your own words, at the moment you live it. That's why the tables below stop at three.

Your Colossus is climbing too

The ladder isn't only your growth. A frame wakes amnesiac and off-key, wearing its Fracture, not yet itself. Every Ideal you genuinely live tunes it one step back toward its true voice. The tell (the Fracture stirring) is the frame slipping off-key; the Oath state is the frame returned to true; your Spirit waking is how far home it has come. Pilot and Colossus walk each other home.

THE SEVEN LADDERS

Rungs one through three. The fourth is yours to find.

Granite

  1. 1“I will stand despite my fear — for those who cannot stand for themselves.”
  2. 2“I will hold the line, even for those I do not like.”
  3. 3“I will stand for those who would not stand for me — because the innocent, the weak, and the undeserving are worth protecting all the same.”
  4. 4Discovered through play.

Carnelian

  1. 1“I will keep moving, even when the guilt says stand still and answer for it.”
  2. 2“I will let it flow through me — even the weight I was never meant to carry, and the weight I chose.”
  3. 3“I will let them carry me when I cannot carry myself, even believing I deserve to sink.”
  4. 4Discovered through play.

Pyrite

  1. 1“I will act, despite the shame that says I am not enough to.”
  2. 2“I will choose the strike, even when I am not certain I have earned the right.”
  3. 3“I will stand in the fire I have caused and not look away — and not flinch from being seen.”
  4. 4Discovered through play.

Malachite

  1. 1“I will not close the door to my own heart, even though it hurts.”
  2. 2“I will let them in, even when letting them in costs me what little I have left.”
  3. 3“I will hold the space between us open — for the saint with a past and the sinner with a future alike.”
  4. 4Discovered through play.

Lapis

  1. 1“I will speak, even when silence would keep me safe.”
  2. 2“I will let my voice ring true, even when the lie is the easier note to hold.”
  3. 3“I will speak the truth I have hidden from myself, and let it cost what it costs.”
  4. 4Discovered through play.

Obsidian

  1. 1“I will look, even when I do not want to see.”
  2. 2“I will take the time to see what is, even when I have loved what isn't.”
  3. 3“I will let go of the illusion I have loved, and name the truth aloud.”
  4. 4Discovered through play.

Quartz

  1. 1“I will be here, even when I would rather not be.”
  2. 2“I will act without needing to be the one who acts.”
  3. 3“I will let go of the outcome I wanted — even when it was right — without letting go of the love.”
  4. 4Discovered through play.
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