A WORKED EXAMPLE
A turn, start to finish
The fastest way to understand a turn is to watch one. Here is a single Cantor's whole turn, narrated beat by beat, with every die shown. Nothing here is special-case: this is what most turns look like.
Our Cantor
Bex, piloting the Menhir— a Granite Colossus. Granite holds the line: it builds Resonance by standing its ground and shielding others. Bex's sheet says Speed 3, +2 to hit, and a Menhir-Hammer that deals 1d6+1 Kinetic with Reliable 1 and Knockback 1. Her Resonance band sits at 2 going into this turn. A Hollow fighter is three hexes away.
Her turn, in order
MOVE — free to use, up to Speed
Bex closes to the fighter
She spends her Moveto cross all three hexes of her Speed, ending adjacent to the Hollow fighter and between it and her wounded squadmate. That's her one Move for the turn (she could have split it, but she wants to stand here). On the board this is a drag; the ring around her shows how far she can still go.
QUICK 1 of 2
Lock On — no roll, just a mark
Bex spends her first Quick to Lock Onthe fighter. No dice: it just paints the target. The next attack against it — hers or any ally's — gets a bonus +1d6to hit, and it's consumed when used.
QUICK 2 of 2
Attack with the hammer — the dice, shown
Her second Quick is an attack. To hit, she rolls 1d20, adds her +2, and adds the Lock On die (roll 1d6, keep it as accuracy). She needs to beat the fighter's Evasion 8.
to-hit 16 (d20 11 +3 acc +2 grit) vs Evasion 8 → HIT
The board writes that line for her: the raw d20, the accuracy die from the Lock On, her grit, and the defense it cleared. She rolled an 11, the Lock On d6 came up 3, plus her 2 — 16 against 8, a clean hit. Now damage: the hammer is 1d6+1, and the d6 comes up a 6.
damage 1d6+1 = 7, minus Armor 1 → 6 to the fighter
The fighter has 6 HP. Six is exactly enough: it's gone. Had she rolled low, Reliable 1 guarantees the hammer bites at all, and Knockback 1 would have shoved the fighter a hex back. And because Bex held the lineto make that hit — stood her ground and covered her squadmate — her Resonance ticks from 2 to 3. That is Granite's way of filling the band; a plain attack from open ground would not have.
FREE
A word to the squad
Free actions cost nothing and don't use up her Quick or Full. Bex calls out a target for the next Cantor, marks her facing, maybe drops a quick line in character. No dice, no pips.
Free is not unlimited, though. A Free Song-Move carries its own limit in its own text: either once per turn, or a Resonance price your band has to cover. If it says neither, take it as often as the fiction stands up. The board enforces both limits for you.
LATER — REACTION (once per round, on anyone's turn)
A runner slips past, and Bex braces instead
Her turn ends, but she still has her Reaction. Two turns later a second fighter tries to dart past her to reach the wounded squadmate. She has Overwatch marked, which is the declaration that she is watching for exactly this.
The swing itself is the Graze, and it is deliberately hard to get: the reactor needs Speed 4 or better, the runner has to cross the reactor's front arc within 3 spaces, and the runner must not have Disengaged. It lands half damage. The Menhir is a Speed 3 mountain, so the board never offers her the Graze. Fast frames catch runners; Granite does not.
So Bex spends the Reaction on Brace instead, halving the next hit that comes into her front arc. The Reaction refreshes at the top of the next round.
What she spent
- ✔ 1 Move — three hexes, her whole Speed.
- ✔ 2 Quicks — Lock On, then the attack. (She could have taken one Full instead of the two Quicks, not both. A Bond Move costs more still: the entire activation, Move included.)
- ✔ Free things — as many as make sense.
- ✔ 1 Reaction — saved, then spent on Brace on a later turn.
Resonance climbed one, toward the top of her band. Push it over the top on a future turn and her Fracture flares — which is the doorway to her Oath. That larger loop is on the How it plays page.
The decision the game is actually about
Notice that those two sentences describe the same fact. You build Resonance by playing your Stone honestly, and the reward for building it well is that you approach Overcharge, where your Fracture manifests at the start of your next turn unless you clear it. The thing you are rewarded for doing is the thing that will break you.
So the skill is not get more Resonance. It is knowing when to stop — and knowing when to push over on purpose, because walking through the Fracture is how the Oath unlocks in the first place. You don't get the Oath by avoiding the Fracture. You get it by walking through it, at a moment you chose. Every turn Bex takes is a small bet on which of those two she is doing.
What fills the band — by Stone
Every Stone fills its Resonance band differently. This is the single thing that makes each Stone play differently: not the damage numbers, but what you spend the fight trying to do.
| Stone | What fills your band |
|---|---|
| Granite | Being targeted — hit or miss — and standing your ground while adjacent allies take fire. You build Resonance by being shot at and missed, which is the most counter-intuitive rule in the economy. Bex's turn above is this in action. |
| Carnelian | Moving toward an ally, objective, or threat. Purposeful motion only — the rule is written to exclude circling the field to farm ticks. |
| Pyrite | Damaging the declared target. Bonus when that target dies. The Sparkthrower generates on hit regardless of declaration. |
| Malachite | SING once per turn (Free). Also parasitically: when the ally you are Holding generates Resonance in their own band, Malachite generates too. |
| Lapis | COMMAND (Quick). Builds by leading — targeting an ally, not the enemy. A Lapis Cantor who spends the fight attacking is doing it wrong. |
| Obsidian | WATCH once per turn (Free). Study the field; learn a truth; build the band. |
| Quartz | Cannot accumulate directly at all. Quartz is fuelled only by Ascension — spending Granite Resonance to push a band upward. This is a structural fact, not a gap: Granite Resonance is the toll for the whole ladder. |