Two or three centuries from now, the solar system is settled and owned. The corporations own the rock, the ring, the water, the air. The syndicates own whatever the corporations can’t keep on the books. The air bill comes on the first of the month whether the scrubbers work or not. And down in the outer rings, in the back rooms of bars with shutters and greenhouses the corp wrote off, are the people the Change made: wolves and foxes and bears and hyenas and a cat who won’t say where she lives.

You have three shapes. The human one you wear to work. The animal one you curl into when you’ve had enough of standing up. And the one in between that you cook in, argue in, fuck in, grieve in. That one is home. This game is about how hard it is to find home, and what you’ll do to stay there.

There is a fourth shape. It comes when you push too hard or when the world does. Your pack may have to bring you back from it, then find a way to sit across from you at dinner.

Your pack holds one district of one ring of one city. You keep the air on, the people fed, and one bar open where a wolf can let his tail out. Against you: the lease, the corp that holds it, the syndicate that holds the corp, and the thing on the other side of the wall that’s been growing in the maintenance layer for two years. Help is months away, and wouldn’t come if it were close.

But your pack has seen you at your worst and saved you a seat anyway. They gave you a name maybe a dozen people will ever say. They set a chair for the ones who didn’t come back, and one day it’ll be set for you.

Fights last seconds, and everybody walks away different or not at all. The dead leave places you can visit on the other side, and they remember what you owe them. At home, someone falls asleep on you and you let the dishes wait.

Nobody out here is the chosen one, and nobody is fighting a sacred war. There’s rent, and friends, and a place that needs you to keep the lights on: a bar, a greenhouse, or a tug with one good engine.

If your ears went up somewhere in there, you already know.

Come in. You’re letting all the moisture out.

Safety

This game goes places: into bodies that change and bodies that want, into violence that ends in seconds and grief that doesn’t. One scene can be risqué, horrifying, and devastating. What makes that possible is that anyone can stop it, at any time, without a reason. Kink communities have known this for a long time: you can go further because you can stop. The Safeword is the coolest rule in this book.

The Safeword

Pick one word. Anyone can say it at any time. When they do:

• The scene stops.

• The World asks “back up, skip, or done for tonight?” and the person who said it answers:

  • Back up: rewind to before the moment and play on differently.

  • Skip: the scene resolves off-screen; play moves on.

  • Done: the session ends.

• Nobody asks why, then or later. Saying it is never a failure; whoever says it is doing the table a favor.

Lines and Veils

Lines are things that don’t happen in this game. Veils happen off-screen: we know it occurred, we don’t play it out. Collect them at session zero. Anyone can give theirs privately: write them on slips of paper and draw them from a hat, or, playing online, send them to the World in a message. Anyone can add or tighten a boundary at any time, without explaining why. Relaxing one takes everyone’s agreement, and not mid-scene.

The World asks about these specifically:

• Sex. On-screen or off, between whom, how close, and in which bodies: the human one, the animal, or the furred one in between.

• Ownership and consent. Characters holding leverage over each other, companies that lease parts of people’s bodies, and collars and devices that stop trap someone in a shape.

• Gore and body horror. Wounds and death, losing control and hurting someone you love, implants torn out of flesh.

• Animal harm. Characters spend time as animals, and some players will care a lot about what happens to them.

• Real-world identity. The game is about a marginalized population, and players from marginalized groups may want some real-world experiences kept out of the game.

After the session

When the session ends, after the end-of-session questions, the World asks everyone: “Was anything more or less than you wanted?” Take two minutes. No follow-up unless someone asks for it. Anyone can add or tighten a line or veil now or later, privately if they’d rather.

Part OneThe Basics

Rolling Dice

Who rolls?

Players roll. The World never does.

One person at the table plays everything that isn’t the pack: the neighbors, the corp, the barge crew, the thing crawling through the maintenance layer. They are the World.

When do players roll?

Describe what you do. If it is a move, you make that move. If it calls for a roll, do so. If it isn’t a move, don’t roll; the World says what happens.

When the World says an enforcer levels a gun, describe your response: dodge for cover, disarm them, or protect someone in the line of fire. If that response is a move, make it. If it isn’t clear whether the response is a move or which move it is, clarify the action until it is.

Examples

• “I instinctively leap for cover behind the ice hauler.” That’s Act Under Pressure.

• “I don’t stop. I slam into him shoulder-first.” That’s Unleash.

• “I grab the gun’s muzzle to point it away from the rest of the pack.” That’s Stand Between.

• “I casually raise my hands, put on a winning smile, and say, ‘Relax. No one has to get hurt here.’” That’s Act Under Pressure, +Sly: you’re keeping them from shooting for the next few seconds, not changing their mind.

Many moves, including those above, require rolling to determine whether you achieve your goal, what it costs, or both. Players also make shared rolls as part of moves like Howl and Take the Pulse.

Doing it again. Repeating the same action when nothing has changed doesn’t earn another roll or another benefit. Try something different, or let the situation change first.

How do players roll?

Say what you do and which move it is, agree on the stat and any bonuses or penalties, roll 2d6 and add them. Then apply Claims and Tide (Claims and Tide) and follow the move’s result.

What does the result mean?

Follow the result written in the move. A hit is any final result of 7 or more.

On a miss, mark 1 XP unless the move says otherwise.

Bonuses and penalties

Your stat

When rolling, add the stat named by the move.

Your form

Your form changes what you’re good at.

• In Skin: −1 to Fierce; −1 to Keen; +1 to Wired.

• In Fur: no modifier; this is the baseline.

• In Beast: +1 to Keen; −1 to Sly; −1 to Wired.

Harm

Wounded gives −1 when the injury gets in the way, and Broken gives −1 to all rolls (Harm and Death).

Moves

Some Moon and Anima moves give a bonus, let you roll a different stat, or let you ask an extra question. Do what the move says.

Circumstances

The World can give +1 for an advantage or −1 for an obstacle, and says so before the roll. However many apply, use one bonus and one penalty at most. A condition that gets in the way is an obstacle.

• +1: you’re on the gantry above them. The guard is drunk. You have an accurate map of the maintenance tunnels.

• −1: the corridor is slick with coolant. The console labels are worn away. They know you’re coming.

• −1: you’re Hunted, and this needs you not to be found.

• +1: a terminal built for paws, which offsets Beast’s −1 Wired.

• A few obstacles impose larger penalties, such as crossing into a deliberately concealed place.

Packmates

One packmate can help with a roll by Taking the Flank.

Claims and Tide

After the dice land:

1. The World commits any NPC, faction, or Territory Claims.

2. The player may Ride the Tide.

3. Players, including the roller, may spend Claims, then resolve the final total.

Talk it over as you go, but once a step is done, it’s done.

Opposed player characters

When your action works against another player’s character, say what you intend and what it looks like. Their player chooses:

• Concede. It happens as you described, and they say how their character takes it.

• Resist. You make the move once, and its result settles the exchange. The resisting player doesn’t roll against it; the move says what part they play in the outcome.

To get another PC to do something, don’t roll (Sway).

Worked examples

Pip, Moonless rat, Fierce −1, wants to shove a Halcyon clerk through a doorway. Pip is in Fur (no modifier), and Dagny takes the flank by bodily blocking the clerk’s colleague (+1). Roll 2d6 −1 +1 = 2d6 + 0. Pip rolls a 4 and a 3 for a total of 7, a costly hit. Pip gets the clerk through the doorway and chooses one protection: no harm. The World looks at what’s left in the scene. The stun baton is covered. The panic strip within reach is not, and nobody protected against evidence or noise. “He goes through the door. His hand hits the strip on the way. Security is coming.” Dagny took the flank, so the cost reaches her too: “And the colleague you’re pinning has your lanyard in his fist.”

Sable, Europa cat, Keen +1, wants to Read the Room in a dockside bar from Skin. Skin gives −1 to Keen, so her total modifier is 0. Her dice total 8: a costly hit. Marcus holds a Claim over her for trusting him with her escape route. Spending it for +1 would make 9, still a costly hit, so he keeps it. Sable asks one question: who’s in control? The World answers honestly.

Ilse, Luna wolf, True +1, keeps a pressure door open while six civilians escape a Halcyon drone. She is Wounded (−1; the injured shoulder makes holding on harder) and has 4 Tide on her five-box track. Ilse Stands Between the civilians and the drone: 2d6 +1 −1. Her dice total 6. She chooses not to Ride, and nobody spends a Claim: a miss. The World makes a hard move: the drone pins her against the hatch, and she marks 1 Tide. The fifth box fills, and she goes Red. Ilse marks 1 XP for the miss.

Odds

These odds use the total modifier, not just your stat, and assume no Tide rerolls or Claims after rolling. Percentages are rounded.

A costly hit is the most likely result at +1. Even at +3, about four rolls in ten are costly hits or misses, and at −1 more than half are misses. Help, form and circumstances make a substantial difference before anyone spends a Claim or Rides the Tide.

An example of play

The pack is in the maintenance layer under Ring Four. A Halcyon inspection team is between them and the pressure door home.

World: There are three of them. Two in Halcyon gray with sidearms, one in a suit with a tablet, and he’s the one who’s been reading meters and frowning. They haven’t seen you. The door you need is behind them. What do you do?

Pip’s player: I’m in Beast. I’m going to go through the cable trunk over their heads and hit the door release from the other side.

World: That’s Act Under Pressure. Something threatens you: if they hear you, they turn around, and there are two guns in this corridor and one of them is loaded with silver, because Halcyon has read the same risk assessment everyone has. Which stat fits your approach?

Pip’s player: Keen. I’m listening to where they are while I move. And I’m in Beast, that’s instinct.

World: Sure. +1 for Beast.

Pip’s player: Keen +1, Beast +1. (rolls) 5 and 3, that’s 8, plus 2. 10.

World: Strong hit. You’re through the trunk, you drop, the door cycles. The inspection team turns to look at an open pressure door with nobody in it. Dagny, where are you?

Dagny’s player: Um. I went through the trunk after Pip? So I’m in the doorway. In Fur, arms crossed. “Look, you’re in my basement. (laughs) Sorry. It’s not mine. But.”

World: The suit lowers his tablet. What do you want him to do?

Dagny’s player: Take his inspectors back upstairs. I tell him the shift supervisor is waiting up there to approve their access. I’m bluffing.

World: That’s Sway. He’s under orders to inspect this level, so he has a reason to resist. Roll +Sly to find out what would convince him.

Notice what didn’t happen: Pip rolled once for the whole action, not separately to climb, hide, and open the door, and the World didn’t stop to list what a 7–9 or a miss would look like. The World mentioned the silver because Pip would know it was there. Had Pip’s total been 8, the World would have said what it cost then. Dagny’s new action triggers the next move.

Stats

Each character has five stats, rated from −1 to +3 (up to +2 at the start; advances can raise them to +3). When a move calls for a stat, add its rating to your roll. See Rolling Dice for the full procedure.

What each one is for

Fierce is force brought to bear: breaking a lock, wrestling someone off their feet, making room with your body. Unleash uses it.

Keen is noticing and interpreting: a scent through a crowded hab, fear beneath someone’s words, a place where the wall feels thin on the other side. Read the Room and Hunt use it.

Sly is making yourself understood and getting through to someone. Words help; so can a gesture, a familiar scent, or a song. Sway uses it.

Wired is working with machines, from a sticking valve to the systems that keep the ring breathing. Jack In uses it to hack, subvert, or coax a system. See Cyberware for the equipment you carry inside you.

True is sustaining effort, caring for someone, and holding a connection when it would be easier to let go. Stand Between and Tend use it. Fierce brings force to bear; True keeps you going.

Starting arrays

Start with +2, +1, +1, 0, −1, one rating per stat. Each drafted Moon suggests an arrangement, but you may rearrange those five numbers. For example: Fierce +2, Keen +1, Sly 0, Wired -1, True +1.

Form modifiers affect rolls without changing the ratings on your sheet.

Basic Moves

Every player character has all the basic moves below. When what you’re doing matches a move’s trigger (the italic line), you’re making that move, whether you meant to or not. When it matches none, you don’t roll (When do players roll?). What the results mean is in Rolling Dice.

Consequences

When a move hands the outcome to the World, the World says what happens next, following from what’s already in the scene: on a costly hit, a soft move, something you can still answer; on a miss, a hard move, something that has already happened. When a move names its own costs, those are the costs.

What a World move can cost you:

• Harm. You take 1 or 2 harm after armor (Harm and Death). The World describes the injury.

• Tide. Mark 1 Tide. The World says why: fear, pain, humiliation, the Moon.

• Claim. Someone gains a Claim over you. They saw something, or you owe them.

• Exposure. Someone learns what you didn’t want known: what you are, where you live, who you love. If someone specific can use it, they gain a Claim; if it’s out there for anyone, take Exposed.

• Cost. It takes a resource: money, a piece of gear, a Territory asset.

• Time. Someone arrives, an opportunity passes, or a clock advances.

• Position. You end up somewhere worse: cornered, separated, in the wrong form.

• Collateral. Someone or something else gets hurt.

If your character would know what an action is likely to cost, ask; the World tells you. Otherwise the World doesn’t name costs before the roll.

This is the catch-all; if another move fits better, use that. Roll when what you’re doing is hard, something threatens you, and failing would change the scene. Name an action, not a goal: “I walk up to the guards with my badge out and my tail tucked,” not “I get past the guards.” No roll makes the impossible possible.

Choosing the stat. Name the stat that fits your approach; the World confirms it or names a better fit:

• Fierce: Force a jammed hatch open before the compartment vents.

• Keen: Listen for a guard’s footsteps to time your dash across a corridor.

• Sly: Keep your voice steady while explaining your badge to an inspector.

• Wired: Reroute power by hand while water rises around the junction box.

• True: Hold on to a ladder through an emergency spin change.

Name what you want. “I attack the guard” isn’t an objective. Get past him, stop him reaching the alarm, make him surrender: those are. Killing him is a different objective. A hit gets you what you named; what you left unprotected changes what it cost, not whether you got it.

Choose after the roll. Whatever you don’t protect against, the World can use, but only what the scene holds. An unarmed clerk can’t hurt you. An empty compartment has nobody to hear. Harm follows Harm and Death.

Against a player character. If they resist (Opposed player characters), they describe the consequences you left unprotected, from their side.

Each roll settles an objective and what it cost. Most fights take one or two.

Choose after the dice land, and say what it looks like: the hatch slams into your shoulder instead of the kid’s; you’re on the wrong side of the door when it seals; you drop the case to catch her. The World fills in the rest.

What a hit protects. The immediate threat to what you protected, not its source or whatever happens next.

Stand Between or Unleash? Driving the soldiers out is Unleash; holding them back while the residents get behind a pressure door is Stand Between. Use one, not both. Stand Between acts before a threat lands; it can’t undo a consequence another move already resolved.

Taking a moment. Not mid-leap. The half-second before you step into the bar, while pretending to check your handheld, or sitting down and having a drink.

“What does ___ want?” If the World’s answer gives you something new you could use against that person, gain a Claim over them. The World says whether it does. That the clerk wants lunch is not enough; that he needs you to hide who visited his office might be.

From the other side. When you Read the Room in The Between, you may also ask: What is this place for?

A reason to resist. If the NPC has none, don’t roll. The bartender pours you a drink. Sway is for the clerk who’s been told not to, the guard afraid of his supervisor, the councilwoman with a re-election to think about.

Right now. Getting someone to hold off for the next few seconds isn’t Sway. That’s Act Under Pressure, usually +Sly. Sway is for when they have time to decide.

Paying the price. Agree what you’ll do and by when. Do it, and they hold up their end. Don’t, and they gain a Claim over you: they know what your word is worth.

Hands and form. Jack In needs hands or a direct interface. In Beast, a bone-wired interface or a move such as Thin Walls can provide access. In Fur, your interface must be Fur-rated or bone-wired.

“It works” means the effect you named, and no more: the door opens, the file downloads, the optics go dark, but you don’t have the run of the system.

What Tending looks like. Setting a bone. Sitting with someone in the dark. Feeding them. Working a comb through the fur they cannot reach. Talking them down. Sex, if that’s what care is between you.

Roll only when the outcome is uncertain. When treatment will certainly help, follow Recovery without rolling.

The Claim. The person tended chooses which way it went: they let the carer see them (the carer gains a Claim over them), or the care showed them who the carer is (they gain a Claim over the carer). They name what was revealed or owed.

The price. Everything has one: money you have, a favor, a job, a Claim the seller gains or one you spend. The World names it before you pay, and you can walk away.

People. Source It is asking around. When there’s a trail to follow, it’s Hunt. Finding where someone is doesn’t get you in the room; that’s a scene, and maybe a Sway.

Trails. A scent through a hab, a face through a crowd, a signal through the district’s systems if you have a way to follow it.

When you don’t roll. If it’s openly for sale, buy it. If they’d answer a message, send one. If nobody you could reach has one, no roll makes it exist; finding who does is a job. Restock is for the Territory’s needs; Source It is for yours.

Moves that live elsewhere

• Peripheral moves, for particular situations (Take the Flank, Draw Blood, Ride the Tide, Lean, Shift, Call Back, Howl, Cross Over): see Peripheral Moves.

• Take the Pulse at the start of a session: see The Territory.

• Make It Last, for lasting repairs and improvements: see Make It Last.

• Dying: see Dying.

• End of Session questions and XP: see End of session.

• World moves, and what they can cost you: see Consequences.

Harm and Death

When you suffer harm, the World describes the injury and you mark harm on your harm clock. The harm measures how badly you’re hurt; the injury says what that means in the fiction.

Combat

Like everything else, combat uses moves, often Unleash. Name what you want: disarm the guard, free your packmate, get everyone through the hatch. Harm follows what happens in the fight; record its severity on the harm clock (below). Both sides are lethal, the silver-loaded rifle and the Changed alike, so fights usually end quickly.

The harm clock

Harm is a clock, not hit points. Each character has a four-segment harm clock. Harm accumulates, up to 4. Record each injury next to its harm. A severity level adds no injury of its own: reaching Broken does not mean you have lost a limb.

A harm penalty adds to a condition’s penalty (Bonuses and penalties).

Suffering harm

When a blow lands, the World says what it did, and you mark the harm. “The entire frame comes down on your shoulder: 3 harm, reduced to 2 by your Fur.”

Harm follows what’s established: the raised baton, the rifle, the failing seal. If your character would know how bad it could be, ask before you act.

How much is it? Examples of incoming harm, before armor:

• 1 harm: a hard punch, a bad landing.

• 2 harm: a knife wound, a gunshot, one of the Changed who chose not to hold back.

• 3 harm: a severed hand, a crushing industrial accident, a grenade.

These are what a danger does when it lands squarely. The World can adjust the harm to match what happened: a bullet that grazes, a knife turned by a strap, a fall broken by a railing. The Red has no fixed damage rating; describe what it does, and the harm follows from that.

Armor

Armor reduces incoming harm.

Use your best armor, form or gear; they don’t add together unless a move says so. Cyberware armor counts only if it works in your current form. Silver ignores form armor, and armor never reduces a wound you take on as the price of a move or gift.

Conditions

Conditions are short tags for troubles beyond the harm clock: Ashamed, Hunted, Owned, Caged, Exposed, Alone, Feral. When one interferes with an action, it’s an obstacle: −1, as a circumstance. The World decides when that is. Hunted is −1 to anything that requires you not to be found. Ashamed is −1 to facing the person you’re ashamed in front of. Exposed is −1 to passing unrecognized, not to biting the enforcer.

Give one condition per underlying problem: an implant broadcasting your location is one problem, not three conditions called Hunted, Exposed, and Owned.

Record each condition and its cause. Clear it when play resolves the trouble; update it when the trouble changes. The player decides when an emotional condition no longer holds; the World decides whether an outside obstacle remains.

These are examples, not fixed cures. No roll is needed unless an action triggers a move. Tend, rest, and rites clear a condition when they provide the care or change it needs. A meal can help someone feel less alone; it cannot void their lease.

Recovery

When the World says that treatment will certainly help, it clears 1 harm, with no roll and no Claim. When care is uncertain, use Tend or another applicable move.

Resting during downtime clears 1 harm.

When harm clears, describe what heals, how you adapt, and what scars remain. Clearing harm does not replace a missing hand; reattachment, regrowth, or a prosthetic takes medical treatment or Cyberware.

Scars

A scar is anything your body keeps: a scar, a limp, a hand that shakes in the cold, a regrown ear that never sat right, a knee that has climbed ring stairs for sixty years. Write each one on your sheet with where it came from: left knee, the Deck Nine stairwell; burn down the flank, the torch, dyed red; a hand that won’t close in the cold, the press on Io.

Take a scar:

• when you clear the 3rd harm box (Broken);

• when the Red leaves a reminder;

• when time does: at an advance, you may add one that age or work has given you.

A scar has no penalty. It changes what’s true: the knee hurts on stairs, people notice the hand, the fur grows back a different color. Say how it shows in Skin and in Fur, and whether you cover it.

It gets in the way. Once per session, when a scar would trouble you and you let it (the knee goes on a long climb, the hand won’t hold steady), say how. The World responds as it would to any complication, and you mark 1 XP.

Scars stay. Recovery, care, and rites can change how a scar feels, never whether it’s there. A replaced or regrown part is a scar of its own.

In the Between. The other side shows what a scar means to you. One you haven’t made peace with may still be an open wound; one you’re proud of may glow faintly; one that has become simply part of you may not show at all. Say how each of yours looks when you cross over.

Your choice. On any result, the player chooses life or death.

If you live. Clear 1 harm and say how the danger ends: someone pulls you out, the fire goes out, or you return later in a different body. You roll again only if something new fills the clock.

Example. Ilse reaches 4 harm. Her Dying result is 8. She accepts a life debt to the technician who drags her into a sealed compartment; the technician gains 3 Claims.

Final act. If you choose death, say what it bought. If it’s a move, don’t roll; it’s a strong hit. Make it matter.

The wake. When a player character dies, open the next session with the pack’s mourning rite, in place of the opening quiet scene and before Take the Pulse. The dead character’s player says what their place in the Between is like.

Coming back wrong

A return changes your circumstances and may change your body. It does not automatically replace your Moon. When you choose death, the World may offer you a way back; you can take it or refuse it.

Other returns

• Something crossed back from The Between wearing you.

• A cult raised you, like a puppet with its strings replaced.

• You’re a ghost in the Territory’s systems, present in The Between and through machines.

• Your consciousness was copied to an artificial brain.

Each of these is a new playbook.

Tide

Your Moon pulls at you from however far away it is, and the Tide of some strange ocean rises within you. Your gums ache. Smells arrive before the people wearing them. Skin starts to feel like a coat in a warm room, and the urge to claw it off grows. Packmates learn to read it in each other: the held breath, the hands kept in pockets, the laugh that comes a beat too late.

Your Tide track does two things: you mark 1 Tide to reroll a die (Ride the Tide), and when the track fills you go Red.

The track

Start with five boxes; an Anima move or advance may add more. When it fills, follow The Red. You can also call the Red voluntarily, as described there.

The Tide rises

Mark 1 Tide when a move or a World move calls for it. A condition causing fresh trouble is a good reason for a World move that marks 1 Tide.

Playing the Tide

Keep your Tide track where the other players can see it. The pack can read it in your body anyway. The higher the track, the harder it is to hide, and with one box left, anyone who knows you knows.

Everyone carries it differently. One gets quiet and short-tempered, and a hand on the shoulder raises their hackles. Another starts the fight at the Kettle that nobody else wanted. Some need to get out: they run the outer deck all the way round the ring and round again, until they can’t run any more. Some brood in a bunk with the curtain pulled and growl at whoever opens it.

For many of the Changed, the Tide brings heat as well as teeth. Clothes chafe, then come off. Every scent is too loud, and some are impossible to ignore: a packmate’s neck, the stranger pressed beside you in a crowded lift. You want flesh and fur, to pin someone or be pinned, to bite and not to hurt. Some call it a heat and some call it a rut, but most just say they’re running hot. Some go looking for someone to burn it off with. Others lock the door, turn the air recycler up, and wait it out alone.

The Tide goes out

• Go Red. When your time in the Red ends, clear all Tide (The Red).

• Be an animal. Spend a scene in Beast doing something animal: running, sleeping in a pile, eating whatever you want. Clear 1 Tide.

• Be Tended. The result of Tend can let you clear 1 Tide.

• Come home. The homecoming clears 1 Tide, or a condition instead.

• Moon moves. Luna’s The Old Words can clear Tide through rites away from home.

Claim

A Claim is leverage one character holds over another, rooted in something between them: a debt, a secret, an obligation, a moment of trust. Record who holds it, over whom, and what gives it weight: “Marcus over Sable: she trusted him with her escape route.” If one event grants multiple Claims, record that event once, with that many Claims.

Claims are not consent, not love, not ownership. They’re leverage.

Claims never take a player character’s choices. A Claim can make a PC’s roll harder or a bargain easier, but the player decides what their character does and feels. When a move asks how an NPC reacts, the World says; when it asks how a PC reacts, their player does.

How many Claims can you hold?

Nobody holds more than 3 Claims over the same person. Anything that would give you a fourth gives you nothing, unless a move says otherwise.

How do you gain a Claim?

You gain a Claim when someone gives you leverage: they accept a real favor, show you something they’d rather hide, or owe you after a moment that mattered. Moves that grant Claims say so. Anyone can propose that a scene created a Claim; name what it revealed or created. The World agrees for an NPC, the player for their PC. Sex on its own doesn’t make a Claim; a night where somebody was seen might. Your Moon gives you starting Claims.

How do you spend a Claim?

Name the Claim, say how you bring its leverage into play, and cross it off. You can spend one to:

• Lean on a roll that affects the person you hold it over.

• Pay a price in a bargain, such as Sway or Source It, by forgiving it.

Some moves give Claims other uses; they say so.

Do packmates hold Claims over each other?

Packmates start with Claims over each other: those your Moon grants, plus 1 held by whichever packmate knows the worst thing about you, named at session zero.

Claims don’t cancel out. Two people can hold Claims over each other. Packmates usually do. That can be friendship or love, rivalry or resentment.

Can factions and the Territory hold Claims?

Factions and the Territory hold and spend Claims like people. The pack holds its Claims over the Territory together and decides together how to spend them, including to Lean on Take the Pulse. Record them on the shared sheet.

When does a Claim clear?

• Spending a Claim crosses it off. You still know what you know, and the relationship remains.

• Paying a debt or removing its leverage clears every Claim it supported. Agree which Claims the settlement resolves.

• Death doesn’t erase Claims. The World decides who inherits a dead holder’s debts, and the dead may still come to collect (The Between).

Claims in bargains. When a bargain involves a Claim (paying with one, forgiving one, or giving one), say so before anyone agrees.

One Claim, three ways

The same Claim can be reassurance, a bargain, or a threat. Say which you mean.

Marcus holds a Claim over Sable: she trusted him with her escape route. He can tell her it’s still safe with him. He can ask what keeping it is worth to her. He can mention, once, over a drink, that he still remembers which lift she’d take.

Peripheral Moves

These moves come up in particular situations: helping a packmate, hurting one, rerolling with Tide, using leverage, changing shape under pressure, bringing someone back from the Red, calling the pack, crossing to the other side, finding what isn’t for sale. Every player character has them, and they work like the Basic Moves.

Other situational moves live with the rules they belong to: Dying, Take the Pulse, Make It Last, downtime, the rites, the end of the session, and rolls between packmates.

Only one packmate can Take the Flank on a roll.

It doesn’t matter whether you meant it.

Follow Claims and Tide for timing. If a reroll fills your track, finish the roll, then go Red.

Only one Claim can help a roll, and only one can hinder it. Follow Claims and Tide for timing.

Example. Marcus Sways a dock clerk and rolls 6. Marcus kept the clerk’s unauthorized shift swap quiet last month, so he holds a Claim over him. He mentions the swap, spends the Claim, and the 6 becomes a 7.

On a 7–9, name the lost moment or the item left behind and what losing it means.

What changes with you. Clothes and equipment don’t transform. Describe how they fit, fall away, or are carried. For implants, see Shifting with it. Shift never takes you into or out of the Red.

Reaching them. A word, a scent, a song, a hand on the neck: anything they can perceive. Speech isn’t required. If staying with them risks nothing, they come back without a roll.

Apply the aftermath in The Red once it ends.

Who answers. Answering is a free choice. If nobody answers, nobody rolls; the caller knows no one is coming.

What a Howl is. In a hab it’s a text, a pinged location, a sound through the vents, or an actual howl if you don’t care who hears. On the other side it’s a howl, and everyone who holds a Claim over you hears it, whether you wanted them to or not.

One boundary at a time. Say where you mean to arrive on the other side. Travel within the Between happens between entry and exit; describe the route and use other moves if dangers trigger them. See Distance is similarity.

Thin and thick places. Before you roll, the World says how the place on this side (where you leave from, or where you come out) affects it: +1 where people remember, grieve, or fear (a wolf’s grave, anywhere someone went Red); −1 where nobody feels anything or someone wants it hidden (a new hab, a corp lobby). Somewhere deliberately hidden can be worse.

What crosses. Your body and implants. Things with a person or a story in them usually do. Anything generic, issued, or borrowed is the first thing the other side keeps.

Staying too long. Your first scene on the other side costs nothing extra. After that, the World can show the Between wearing at you with soft moves. If you ignore that warning, the World can make a hard move that gives you Alone or Feral, or marks 1 Tide.

Crossing together. One of you leads and rolls for the group, and the result applies to everyone. The leader makes the move’s choices and marks any XP.

Baring souls. When a pack crosses together, each packmate may say one true thing about themselves that the others didn’t know. Each truth gives the crossing +1; these add together. It must expose something that matters to the speaker, and everyone who heard it gains 1 Claim over them.

Part TwoThe Changed

Nobody can tell you why it happened to you. One night, in a cargo bunk or a yard dormitory or a locked washroom on a research deck, your ears went up and forward before you’d agreed to anything, and the rest of you followed. When it was over you were something no corp form has a box for. You were one of the Changed.

Now you have a face for work and an animal to run in, and between them a body with fur and hands that is more you than either. Some moon was over you that first night, or none was, and other Changed will ask about it before they ask your name. It will pull at something just underneath your skin that you’ll spend your life learning to hold back, and at the far end of it is a night the Changed don’t like to talk about.

Sooner or later, most of the Changed find others: people who know about the bad night and still keep a bunk made up for you. That’s a pack. This part is about making one of the Changed, and the pack they come home to.

Making a Character

Your character is one of the Changed. Two choices make them: a Moon, the moon they were under when they first Changed, and an Anima, the animal they became. The Moon is your playbook; the Anima is your body.

The table makes characters together at session zero, after choosing the setting and before building The Territory, so the district can be built around the people who live in it.

Your character

1. Choose a Moon. It gives you a suggested stat line, your moves, your starting Claims, your Red, and your crossroads. For this draft, choose Luna, Io, Europa, or Callisto (Moons). Your crossroads is a choice your character will face in play, so don’t settle it now (End of session). Your Red’s questions can wait until it first comes.

2. Choose an Anima. Take its move, its tells, and its question (Anima). Answer the question now, out loud, or leave it open for play.

3. Assign your stats. Put +2, +1, +1, 0, and −1 on Fierce, Keen, Sly, Wired, and True, in any order. Your Moon suggests one (Starting arrays).

4. Choose your moves. Take your Moon’s gift and two of its other moves. You also have every basic move and peripheral move.

5. Describe your Fur. What color are you, really? What’s on your fur that you chose? What do you wear in it? (Fur)

6. Write your two names: the one on your corp ID and the one you use with the pack (Fur).

7. Say where you Changed, and how you got here. Where were you the night you first Changed, and who was there? What brought you to this city (Setting Sketch)?

8. Say what life you carry. Who outside the pack depends on you, and what do they think you are? What scar do you already have, and where did it come from? Write the scar on your sheet (Scars).

9. Take an implant, if you want one. Build it or take a sample, and choose its terms (Starting with cyberware).

You start unhurt, with five empty Tide boxes and no XP.

Your pack

Answer these together, out loud:

• How did this pack form? Who named whom?

• Who knows the worst thing about you? That packmate gains 1 Claim over you (Do packmates hold Claims over each other?).

• What brings you back? Write it on your sheet and tell the pack. That’s your leash (The Red).

Record the Claims your Moon gives you, and say what gives each one weight.

Once the Territory is built, choose the pack’s rites: a homecoming, a mourning, and one more.

Forms

Three forms you wear. One that wears you.

In the morning it’s Skin: the face on your corp ID, the hands the door panels were built for, a collar that buttons. At night, behind a door that locks, it’s Fur, your animal standing up with ears and a tail and the smell of you and maybe a different kind of collar. When you need to run or hide or stop being a person for a while, it’s Beast, on four feet, with no thumbs and no words and nobody asking for the rent. Mostly you move between them the way other people change clothes.

The fourth one you don’t choose. It’s bigger than your Fur and faster than your Beast and all teeth, and it comes when you’ve held on too long or the world has pushed too hard. The Changed call it a bad night. This book calls it the Red, and much of what a pack does is make sure its people come back from it.

Shifting

You can change between Skin, Fur, and Beast whenever you like; see Shift. The Red has its own procedure.

Skin

Human-passing. The form the corps issued you an ID in. The form your landlord expects.

• You pass for human unless equipment or someone who knows your tells gives you away.

• All Cyberware works as designed.

• −1 to Fierce; −1 to Keen; +1 to Wired. Human strength and senses, but the panels, the ports, and the tools were built for human hands.

• 0 armor.

Skin is safety, and it is a lie.

Fur

Anthropomorphic. The animal you are, standing up, with hands, wearing whatever you want. This is home: the default among the pack, in private, and in The Territory where you’re known.

• Full senses. Full strength. You are unmistakably not human.

• Cyberware works if it is rated for Fur. Incompatible implants can pull, tear, or shut down.

• No roll modifiers. Fur is the baseline the other forms are measured against.

• 1 armor.

Some habs are Fur-friendly and some will shoot you on sight; that difference is much of what makes a Territory worth holding.

Your Fur is yours. Choose your natural color, the marks you have added, and what you wear. Dagny dyes the fur around her burn scar bright red. Someone else covers theirs. Your Anima supplies the body; you decide how you live in it. Some Changed recognize themselves the first time they stand in Fur. Others take years to feel at home, and can love the body while still struggling with parts of it.

The body speaks. Ears flatten, tails stiffen, hackles rise. Say what your character gives away for those who know how to listen.

Two names. Write your name on the corp ID and the name you use with the pack. They may be the same. Say who chose the second, who knows it, who may use it, and what it means when someone outside the pack does.

Beast

Four legs (or wings, or whatever your Anima has). No opposable thumbs, no human speech.

• Every Anima has a physical advantage: a rat slips into a duct, a bird reaches an overhead gantry, a bear brings weight and strength. Your animal body can make some actions possible, or certain enough not to need a roll; the World says which. People underestimate you. Some people feed you.

• Only bone-wired Cyberware in the skull or spine works in this form.

• +1 to Keen; −1 to Sly; −1 to Wired. Sharp senses, no hands, no words.

• 0 armor.

Beast is the form of running away and finding things.

Being understood. Packmates understand simple signals. Anything precise needs another channel. You can still threaten, reassure, and Call Back with Sly.

Example. Pip scratches at the service hatch, then looks at Ilse. She understands: through here. Explaining that the passage leads into Halcyon’s accounting office needs another channel: a sketch in the dust, or a packmate in Fur who can follow the gestures.

The Red

The Changed call it a bad night. Every Red is a monster: bigger than your Fur, faster than your Beast, all teeth, and dangerous to anyone near it. Your Anima gives the monster its shape; your Moon decides whom it hunts and what it does with them. Io’s is starving; Europa’s stocks a larder; Ganymede’s hunts for the table. Use this procedure whenever it comes.

1. Enter. When your Tide track fills, you go Red. You can also choose to go Red at 3 Tide or more. While Red, Tide doesn’t move.

2. Choose protections. Say what your Red looks like and how your Anima hunts. If you called it, choose 3; if it came for you, choose 2.

• It does not touch ___ (name one person).

• It does not kill.

• It does not leave this place (name its boundaries).

• It ends before anyone who isn’t pack sees it.

• You remember all of it.

• Your cyberware survives.

• It does not cross over.

• Your Moon’s protection (on your playbook).

Protections bind what the Red does, even when the World directs it.

3. Play it. You play the Red within its Moon’s want and your protections. The World responds. Once per episode, the World can name something the Red wants and send you after it. Uncertain actions use the usual moves; when one offers Tide as a cost, choose another. The Red has 2 armor; silver bypasses it. The Red is strong, not magic: walls, doors, distance, and air still matter.

4. End it. Someone Calls you Back, or the Red gets what it wanted (it has eaten; the larder is full). Locking it up only buys time. If it isn’t over when the session ends, it isn’t over.

5. Face the aftermath. When it ends:

• First, before anyone tells you anything: narrate where you come to and what you sense when you do.

• Clear all Tide.

• Take one condition that follows from what happened.

• Everyone who saw it gains 1 Claim over you. Say what they saw. A recording works the same way once someone watches it and knows it’s you.

• Unless you protected your cyberware, the Red damages at least one implant. The World chooses which, and whether it was destroyed instead (Ratings).

• Unless you protected your memory, your character cannot recall the episode. The pack decides what to tell them; the player still knows what happened.

Your leash. At character creation, answer: what helps bring you back? A name, a song, a kitchen smell, a hand on yours. Write it down and tell the pack. Using it gives +1 to Call Back, not automatic recovery. If it changes through play, update the sheet and tell the pack how they discover the change.

Stuck

A character can be stuck in a form: an inhibitor collar, a broken implant, something from the other side. While stuck, you cannot Shift out of that form. Tide and the Red work as usual; when the Red ends, you return to the stuck form. Being stuck ends when its cause is removed or broken. Stuck in Skin is a slow horror. Stuck in Beast is a fast one. Stuck in Fur, in the wrong district, is the most common way the Changed die. Each is worth building a front around.

A lost form. A character who loses a form (Dying) can’t take it again, by Shift or any other way, unless a move says otherwise. Losing Skin means never passing. Losing Fur means losing home.

Moons

Every Moon is a place, and the people who Changed under it carry the place with them. Io’s Changed in the foundry yards, with the floor moving under them and sulfur coming through the mask, and they’ve never been still since. Europa’s Changed somewhere sealed, where whatever mattered was kept under the surface. Luna’s carry old words up from Earth, or say they do. Callisto’s have buried one pack already and are deciding, slowly, whether to risk another.

A Moon is the moon someone was under when they first Changed. It’s not a bloodline and it’s not a job. It’s the shape the Change took, which turns out to be the shape the person takes: whom they protect, what they want, what they do on a bad night. People argue about whether the moon causes it or names it; this book won’t settle it.

Some places have no moon to be under. Ceres is one. Most of the Changed on Ceres are Moonless, or first Changed elsewhere: most often on Ganymede, where most outer-system kids are born, or on Phobos or Deimos.

A player picks one Moon and one Anima. The Moon is your playbook: your stat line, your moves, your starting Claims, your crossroads, and, for the named Moons, your place in The Between. Your crossroads is a choice your character keeps coming back to in play; making it earns XP (End of session). The Anima is your body.

Starting moves. For this draft, choose Luna, Io, Europa, or Callisto. Take its gift and two other moves from that Moon, plus the one move from your Anima. You also have every basic move. Later advances buy one more move at a time. The remaining Moons are sketches, not complete starting playbooks.

Each Moon has its own Red (The Red). Each drafted Moon describes its Red’s want, what it can do, questions for the player, and one extra protection; the remaining Reds are sketches.

Each Moon also has a gift: Luna grows things. Io heats them. Europa cools them. Callisto makes them hold. Unless a gift’s own text says otherwise, use this move:

When to roll. Follow When do players roll?. Against another player, follow Opposed player characters. Warming a drink or coaxing a harmless flower open needs no roll; an uncertain, consequential outcome uses the gift move above.

Luna

The old moon. You Changed on Earth, or under the Earth’s moon, or in a family that still keeps the rites from there. You remember, or you carry the ones who did.

The keeper. The elder even if you’re twenty-two. Luna characters are the pack’s continuity: the litany, the old names, the sense that the Changed were something before the corps had a line item for them.

Stats: Keen +2, True +1, Sly +1, Fierce 0, Wired −1

Moves

• Deep Roots (gift, +Keen). When you touch something alive, you can make it grow. A seed in a hydroponics tray; a vine through a lock; a wound, closing. Healing yourself or someone else clears 1 harm on a hit, or without a roll when the treatment is certain (Recovery). Repeating the gift on an unchanged injury heals nothing more; another attempt needs meaningful new treatment or changed circumstances.

• The Old Words. When you lead one of the pack’s rites for something that just happened, anywhere and with whoever is there, say who it welcomes and what you keep or change of the old custom; roll +True. On a 10+, everyone taking part also clears 1 Tide or a condition the rite could ease. On a 7–9, they do, but you don’t, and you mark 1 Tide. On a 6−, the rite does only what it always does, and the World says what heard your words.

• Long Memory. Once per session, when you meet someone for the first time, you may say how you already know of them: their family, their pack, who made them, a story told about them on a ship a long time ago. It’s true. Gain 1 Claim over them. If you tell them what you know, they gain 1 over you.

• The Forest That Isn’t There. When you lead a crossing into the Between, you may take everyone crossing with you straight to Luna’s forest without rolling. Everything you carry crosses with you. Staying too long follows Cross Over. The World says whether anything already on your heels follows. When you leave, roll Cross Over as usual; you come out where you went in. Leaving the forest for somewhere else is a journey through the Between.

The Forest in play. Inspectors are at the door. Ilse’s player says, “Everyone, hands on me,” and Ilse leads the pack into the forest without a roll; everything they carry comes with them. The World describes wet bark and birdsong, then asks, “How long do you wait?” Pip’s player: “Till they’ve gone. Not one minute longer.” To return, Ilse leads a Cross Over roll and gets 8. She chooses to have something notice them; they emerge where they entered, with whatever now waits there.

Claim hook: You start with a Claim over every packmate. For each of them, say why.

Your Red: The wolf in the story. It is the wolf from every story your grandmother told. The corridors are forest to it: it smells rain through the extractor and hears wind in the ducts. Everyone in that forest is prey, and the ones it wants are the ones who strayed from the path: whoever is alone, lost, or a stranger here.

It hunts the way the stories said it would. It follows at a distance and lets them hear it. It howls, and every Changed within earshot hears it and knows what it is. Its shoulders can wrench a bolted panel from its frame; its claws can open a partition your ordinary body could not. Pipes, bedrooms, and pressure seals remain real, however certain it is that they are trees.

It ends when it has caught someone, or when the pack leads it somewhere with enough rooted growth to lie down in, such as a hydroponics bay or a park deck. A single plant only pauses it.

Your fur is wet with rain that has not fallen here. There is soil under your claws. Which story is it from, and who told it to you? What does it do to the ones it catches? Whose voice calls it home?

Protection: it stops for growing things. When it reaches rooted, living growth, it stops and settles beside it, long enough for someone to try Call Back. You say how it behaves there.

On the other side: A forest that doesn’t exist anywhere in the solar system any more. It holds what you left behind and told the pack you’d never had.

Your crossroads: The old ways have no place for someone you love. What do you change: the ways, or what you ask of them?

Io

The moon that is always on fire. You Changed in the yards, the foundries, the tidal-stressed mining habs where the ground doesn’t stop moving. Neither do you.

The rager, the punk, the one who goes Red on purpose. Io is for people who want to drift in the Tide and revel in the Red. You know what it can accomplish. You’re a danger to the pack. They know it, and they keep you anyway.

Stats: Fierce +2, True +1, Keen +1, Sly 0, Wired −1

Moves

• Furnace Heart (gift). You can warm anything you touch, or set it alight: thaw a valve; ignite the fuel in a cutting torch; keep someone alive in a cold module for one more hour. When you heat something and the outcome is uncertain, say what you want and roll +True. Resolve it with What a gift takes, above. When something nearby pays, it usually takes the air; in The Territory, the World may tick Air.

• Hand on the Leash. You may call the Red at any Tide. When you go Red, choose one more protection than you otherwise would.

• Burn Hotter. When you Ride the Tide, you may reroll both dice instead of one. Keep both new results, even if worse.

• Somebody Has To. When you take harm while Standing Between someone and a threat, you can mark 1 Tide to take 1 less harm.

Claim hook: Anyone who has seen you go Red holds 1 Claim over you. Start with two such people, and say who.

Your Red: Starving. It is starving, and the room is full of meat. It has been hungry your whole life; now it doesn’t have to pretend it isn’t. Heat pours off it like a furnace with nothing in the firebox. Its jaws burn, and whatever it holds long enough blackens and catches.

When it comes, say what it’s starving for:

• A fight. It tears into the strongest thing in reach and doesn’t let go.

• What matters. It goes for whatever someone here loves most: the dog, the shrine, the person.

• A way out. It rips through whatever holds things in place: the cage, the door, the guard.

It carries flame across a room as it moves, setting exposed fuel alight; a metal latch softens in its grip. Its own fire does not consume its body.

It ends when it has eaten, or when someone feeds it something that will do. Nothing that will do is cheap: the week’s meat ration from the cold store, a packmate who offers it a real fight, something someone loved, given up.

What were you always hungry for in the yards? What’s the first thing you eat after? Who has watched you eat and stayed?

Protection: it won’t foul the den. It won’t burn or breach anything keeping the air in.

On the other side: Volcanoes piled at impossible angles, fields of black glass, lava running uphill and out across the sky. Every eruption answers another. A bright flow follows the route you used to walk to work, turning at a corner where you still expect to see someone waiting. Beneath the glass are handprints. Some are small enough to fit inside yours.

Your crossroads: Will you protect someone on their terms when they are afraid of you? When there’s a moment, ask the person you’re protecting what they need. What you do with the answer is yours.

Europa

The moon with an ocean under the ice. You Changed in a place where the thing that mattered was always beneath the surface: a data haven, a sealed lab, a family that didn’t say things out loud.

The secret-keeper, the spy. Europa is for people who know things and use them, and no Moon talks more directly to the city’s systems.

Stats: Wired +2, Keen +1, Sly +1, Fierce −1, True 0

Moves

• Permafrost Preserves (gift). You can cool anything you touch, or freeze it solid: stop a bleed; seize a motor; keep a body from spoiling until Kestrel can get there. When you cool something and the outcome is uncertain, say what you want and roll +Wired. Resolve it with What a gift takes, above. When something nearby pays, something else freezes or cracks: a seal, a pipe, a pane. The World says what.

• Under the Ice. Add “What here has been arranged to conceal something, and how can I tell?” to your Read the Room questions. On a 10+, ask one extra question. Follow Read the Room’s answer rules, including on a miss.

• Cold Storage. You can hold 3 more Claims over any one person than the cap allows. When you spend a Claim over an NPC to Ask, their answer also gives away something they meant to keep hidden.

• Thin Walls. You can Jack In with no interface, in any form, by touching the thing. Roll +Wired as usual. On a 7–9, if the World chooses to leave a trace or wake something in the system, it may make the system notice you, specifically.

Under the Ice in play. Sable studies the clinic’s delivery records and rolls 8 on Read the Room. Her player asks, “What here has been arranged to keep something out of sight, and how can I tell?” The World answers, “One shift’s entries are gone. The timestamps jump from fourteen hundred to twenty-two.” Later, Sable spends a Claim to Ask the clerk what happened. Cold Storage brings out the secret they meant to keep: the supplies went to their sister’s hab.

Claim hook: Start with 2 Claims over someone who doesn’t know you exist. Say what you found.

Cyberware: You may start with two implants instead of one (Starting with cyberware). You may leave one of them unwritten. When it would matter, reveal it: build it, choose its terms, and say why nobody noticed.

Your Red: The larder. It hunts from under things: the ducts, the crawlspace, the dark behind the wall panels. Frost spreads across the ceiling where it passes, and the lights die. It can smell a lie as fear-sweat, and it takes whoever is hiding something. It drags them away into the cold and stores them for later.

The cold is its weapon and its larder. Its touch can freeze a door mechanism or make a lock’s casing brittle enough to break; it can drain a room’s warmth until people shiver beside a dead heater. Nothing it stores spoils. It knows that someone is hiding something, never what.

It ends when the larder is full. Unless you protected your memory, you don’t remember where the larder is, and the people in it are slowly freezing.

What becomes clear or translucent in your body? Where does it make its larder? Whom does the pack dread finding in it?

Protection: it keeps what it takes alive. Whoever it stores is cold, hurt, and terrified, but alive when the Red ends.

On the other side: Under the ice. Dark, warm, and full of things that have never seen light, including the secret you fear would cost you the pack.

Your crossroads: When a secret would get you what you need, whose trust will you spend, and whose will you keep? Cold Storage gives you something worth making that choice about.

Callisto

The moon that never resurfaced. Callisto’s ground keeps every crater it was ever given. You Changed on the tower crews, in the old quarters, or in a pack that isn’t there any more. You kept the scars. You kept going.

The survivor, the outcast, the last one standing. Callisto is for people who have already lost a pack and are deciding, slowly, whether to have another. Your body remembers what you’d rather not, and the pack can read it like a map if you let them.

Stats: True +2, Fierce +1, Wired +1, Keen 0, Sly −1

Moves

• Load-Bearing (gift). You can make something hold that should give: a cracked strut takes the weight; a failing seal keeps its pressure; a body stays on its feet. It holds while you touch it and for a little after. When you make something hold and the outcome is uncertain, say what you want and how long, and roll +True. Resolve it with What a gift takes, above. When something nearby pays, the strain goes somewhere else: another strut cracks, a seal down the corridor starts to weep, your own knee goes. The World says where.

• Still Standing. When your Tide track would fill, you can refuse the Red. Leave the last box empty, take 1 harm that armor doesn’t reduce, and say what holding it in does to your body: teeth cracking, nails through your palms, a vessel bursting in your eye.

• Where It Came From. When someone noticed one of your scars and asks where it came from, you may tell them the truth. If you do, you each clear 1 Tide or a condition the telling could ease, and they gain 1 Claim over you.

• Seen Worse. When the pack is about to do something terrible and you say you’ve seen worse, tell them about it in a sentence or two. Each packmate who goes ahead anyway takes +1 on their first roll doing it. Even if your story was obviously made up, it still counts.

Where It Came From in play. Late, in the Kettle’s back room, Dagny runs her thumb along the old burn across Oriol’s hand and asks. Oriol’s player tells it: the night the Drift left the ring, a hatch that wouldn’t open, how long he kept at it after the others had stopped. Both of them clear 1 Tide. Dagny’s player writes down her Claim: he told me about the hatch.

Claim hook: Start with 1 Claim over someone who was there the night your old pack ended, and say whether they know you survived. A packmate who has seen your worst scar holds 1 Claim over you.

Scars: Start with two scars. One is from the night your old pack ended.

Your Red: It won’t stay down. It’s the night your old pack died, and it is still fighting. It sees the ones who came in every uniform, every stranger at the door, every corridor that looks like that corridor. It doesn’t hunt. It holds ground: it plants itself between what it thinks is left of the old pack and everything else, and it does not fall.

Wounds don’t stop it. Record the harm it takes, after its armor, beside your harm clock; when the Red ends, mark all of it at once. Its weight can hold a buckling bulkhead or a door against a crowd. It isn’t fast. It never needs to be.

It ends when nobody is left to fight, or when someone makes it understand that the night is over: names the dead to it, or shows it that the pack it’s standing over is alive.

What does it smell, that the old night smelled of? Who came that night, and what were they wearing? Which of the old pack does it think it’s still protecting? What did you fail to do that night that it keeps trying to do now?

Protection: it never mistakes the pack for the ones who came.

On the other side: The place the old pack died, exactly as it was that night. The lights are still on. Someone is still in there, and you don’t know whether they’re waiting for you or for the ones who came.

Your crossroads: Someone new wants the place the old pack left in you. Do you let them have it?

The sketches

Phobos

Fear. The enforcer, the one people are afraid of before you’ve done anything. Fierce and Sly. Moves about intimidation without violence, about being the reason a fight doesn’t happen, and about what it costs to be that. Other side: a small, close, fast-moving room; you can hear something orbiting.

Your Red: The charge. It wants everyone to run. Whatever doesn’t run, it breaks. Protection: it doesn’t chase anyone who runs.

Deimos

Dread. The stalker, the patient one. Keen and True. Moves about waiting, following, and arriving already there. The hunter playbook. Other side: a long way from everything; you can see the whole pack from here and they can’t see you.

Your Red: The stalk. It’s in the vents, and its quarry hears it breathing for an hour before it comes. It hunts the one who hurt you, and stops only when they’re dead or the pack stands between them. Protection: it lets its quarry know it’s coming.

Ganymede

The cupbearer. The largest moon, and the one that serves. The fixer, the host, the one who knows a person for every problem. Sly and True. Moves about favors, seduction, hospitality, and the debts those create. Other side: a table that’s always set. The question is who’s missing.

Your Red: It feeds the pack. It hunts, drags the kills home, and sets the table with whatever it caught. Protection: it never hunts anyone who has eaten at your table.

Titan

The veiled. Thick atmosphere; you can’t see the surface from orbit. The one who passes. Corp-adjacent, Skin-comfortable, the pack’s inside person. Sly and Wired. Moves about lying, about living in Skin without it eating you, and about what you owe the people who think you’re one of them. Other side: fog; you can hear people but never see them.

Your Red: The face. It walks in Skin, smiling, and leads people somewhere quiet, one at a time. Protection: it leaves a trail someone who loves you can follow.

Enceladus

The one that feeds the ring. Geysers, water, the moon that gives things away. The healer, the ritualist, the one who Tends. True and Keen. Moves about clearing Tide for others, about the cost of carrying it, and about The Between as a place of healing rather than horror. Other side: a spring in the dark, and everything that’s ever drunk from it.

Your Red: The mother. It drags the hurt and the small into its den, takes their wounds into its own body, and tears apart anything that comes near: medics, family, anyone. Protection: it doesn’t take a wound that would kill you.

Triton

The captured moon. Retrograde, dragged in from outside. The stranger, the convert, the one who was made rather than born, or who came from another pack, another body, another kind of thing entirely. Whatever stat the player wants. Moves about not belonging and being needed anyway. Other side: a road that arrives from nowhere.

Your Red: The challenge. It came from outside, and it takes the ground: it tears down other packs’ marks and goes for whoever leads here. Protection: it spares anyone who bares their throat.

Charon

The ferryman. The one who walks the dead. Deals with ghosts, with The Between, with coming back wrong. Keen and True. Moves about the other side as a place to live, not visit. Anyone can meet the dead’s echoes in The Between; talking with the dead themselves is Charon’s. Other side: the river Styx, the Duat, Helheim.

Your Red: The jackal. It smells death coming. It goes for the dying and drags them, and anyone who smells of death, across into the Between. Protection: it comes back through the same door it left by.

The Moonless

You Changed between moons: in transit, or on a world with no moon to be under. No Moon named the Change for you. The customs you keep are the ones you have chosen, borrowed, or made with your pack. You can have a home without becoming something else.

Your Red, still a sketch: The animal. Your Anima, starving and the size of a car, with no Moon to give it a reason. Each time it comes, the World names the one need it’s after: food, ground, a den, a way out. Protection: name one thing it will not pursue during this episode.

Walking between moons

You can learn another Moon’s moves through Walking between moons. Advancement gives the costs and the rite that marks the change.

Anima

The Change doesn’t ask what you’d like to be. It gives you a wolf, or a rat, or a bear too broad for the hatchways, and you learn to live in it. Whatever it gave you, it’s you in every form: the shape of your Fur, the body you take on in Beast, and the habits that give you away in Skin to anyone who knows what to look for.

At the table, you choose it. That animal is your Anima. You don’t pick a race; you pick what you are.

The rule

Your Anima gives you one move, one or two tells (how people can spot you in Skin, if they know what to look for), and a question. It does not change your stat ratings or restrict your Moon. Its move may grant bonuses or change how harm works. A fox Io and a bear Io are both Io; the fox does it differently.

Sample Anima

The finished list will be long. Build your own; the shape is below.

Wolf. The classic. Move: Pack Tactics. When you take the flank for a packmate and the roll ends in a costly hit or a miss, the costs and harm land on you instead of them, and you aren’t exposed on top of that. If a cost can only touch them, the World makes a soft move against you or puts one concrete cost on you instead. Tells: you stand too close; you eat too fast. Question: what did the pack do before you, and what changed when you came?

Fox. Move: Somebody Else’s Problem. When you’re caught doing something you shouldn’t, you may spend 1 Claim over anyone present. The people watching believe it was them. Tells: your ears move when you lie. Question: who have you never been able to fool?

Bear. Move: Slow to Anger. Your Tide track has six boxes. Tells: you sleep through things people don’t sleep through. Question: what’s the one thing that gets you from zero to Red in a sentence?

Cat (any size). Move: Nine Lives. Once per session, when you’d take harm, you take a condition instead; the World chooses one that fits (often Ashamed: you landed badly). Tells: you don’t blink enough. Question: who do you actually belong to?

Rat. Move: Ways In. In Beast form, take an additional +1 to Hunt when finding a way into an area. Tells: you know where the food is. Question: what’s living in the walls that you’ve never told anyone about?

Hyena. Move: Laughing. When you Unleash and have a protection to choose, you may spend that choice on a display of menace instead: everyone watching sees what you can do. Gain 1 Claim over up to two of them who aren’t pack. The World says how their fear shows. Tells: your laugh. Question: why does the pack keep you around?

Coyote. Move: Better Story. When you Sway someone with a story that’s better than the truth, take +1. On a costly hit or miss, the World may make the story true and explain how. Tells: you grin at funerals; you can’t stop. Question: which lie have you told so often it’s started coming true?

Otter. Move: Breathe. Add 2 to your applicable armor against harm from water, vacuum, and thin atmosphere. Tells: your hands can’t stay still; you hold someone’s hand when you sleep. Question: what did you let go of to stay afloat?

Deer. Move: Prey Knows. When you Read the Room, always ask “who here is a predator?” for free. Tells: you freeze before you run. Question: what did you see the night you Changed that made you decide to stop running?

Corvid. Move: Carrion. When someone dies in your presence, take something from them: a last word, a keepsake, the truth of how they went. Gain 2 Claims over someone who cared about them, and name what you have that they’ll want. Tells: you collect things. Question: what did you take from the dead, and who wants it back?

Dragon. Because someone will ask. Move: Hoard. Name a thing you own. As long as you hold it, the first time you Ride the Tide each session, don’t mark it. Tells: people think you’re rich. Question: what is it, and who knows?

Building an Anima

Three lines: a move that does something specific and small; one or two tells; one question. If the move is bigger than an option on a basic move, it’s too big. If the question has an obvious answer, it’s a bad question.

Other night-folk

Not everything that changes grows fur, and not everything in the dark changed at all. Other night-folk are built as Anima. A vampire is an Anima (Bat, Leech, or plain Vampire) with a move about blood and a tell about sunlight, on any Moon. A ghost is an Anima whose move is about The Between. A construct is an Anima whose move is about Cyberware.

Leech. Move: Drink. When you feed on someone willing, they take 1 harm and you clear 1 harm, and you gain 1 Claim over them. If they’re scared, hurt, or not sure, roll Tend for it instead. Tells: you’re cold to the touch; you don’t eat. Question: who fed you first, and are they still alive?

Ghost. Move: Already There. You may Cross Over without rolling, but coming back always rolls, and takes −1. Tells: rooms get cold; recordings don’t show you right. Question: what’s unfinished?

Construct. Move: Rated for Everything. Your Cyberware works in every form, and the Red never damages it. Tells: you were built for something and haven’t stopped standing like it. Question: who holds the lease on you, and do they know you’ve changed?

Artificial Brain. Move: Daemon. You can be installed in different physical forms. Tells: your reaction time is sometimes strangely slow, sometimes weirdly fast. Question: who owns your brain?

Cyberware

Everyone out here has something in them. A lung lining that lets you breathe the bad air on the dock for more than ten minutes. Eyes that see in the dark of a maintenance crawl. A chip in the wrist that draws your water ration and opens the doors your grade allows. Most of it is leased, and the company that leased it to you can see where you take it.

Implants are built for bodies that stay the same shape. The Changed don’t. Go to Fur with the wrong implant in your spine and it tears; drop to four legs and your good eyes go dark. The kind that works in every body you have is black-market or corp-exclusive, and either way someone else probably monitoring it.

What cyberware does

An implant makes something possible: seeing in the dark, breathing bad air, talking in Beast, plugging into a door. It never adds to a stat or a roll. If you have it and it works, you can do the thing, and the fiction changes. Doing it can still trigger a move.

A few major implants also carry one adjustment: a small change to a move, written on the implant. An implant never has more than one.

Every implant is described by tags:

• Rating says which forms it works in.

• Terms say who else has a hand on it.

• Flaws say how it goes wrong. When the World makes a move, it can use one of your implant’s flaws.

• Strengths and tells are description. They change what’s possible and what people notice, not the dice.

Ratings

• Skin-rated is the cheap, common stuff, built for human bodies.

• Fur-rated is expensive, black-market, or corp-exclusive.

• Bone-wired sits in the skull or spine. It’s the only kind that works in Beast, and the hardest to get out.

Offline means it stops working until you shift back to a form it’s rated for. Tears means it’s damaged: a seizure, a light that won’t stop blinking under your fur, a wound (Shifting with it).

The Red uses the Fur rating, but every implant is at risk in it. Unless you chose the protection your cyberware survives, the Red damages at least one implant; the World chooses which, and whether what the Red did destroyed it instead (The Red).

Damaged implants stop working until repaired. Destroyed ones have to be replaced or grown back. Unless the maker does it under the lease, finding someone to do either is Source It.

Terms

Every implant has one of three terms. They say who else has a hand on it, and who holds a Claim over you because of it.

• Leased. Corp cyberware is leased, not sold. It reports to its maker whenever it’s on a network they can reach. Offline, it reports nothing, but the maker sees where it went dark and where it came back. The maker can shut it off or change its settings remotely. The maker holds 1 Claim over you for the lease, and will repair the implant, because that’s what the lease is for. They’ll also want to know how it got damaged.

• Owned. Paid off, inherited, or never anyone else’s. Repairs are your problem. Nobody holds a Claim through it, but how it came to you can still cost something:

  • Someone else paid for it. Name them; they hold 1 Claim over you. It might be a packmate.

  • Secondhand. It takes one more flaw. Say who had it first.

  • Stolen. Someone wants it back: you’re Hunted. Say by whom.

• Unlocked. Jailbroken or black-market. It doesn’t report home, and nobody can shut it off from a desk. Whoever did the work holds 1 Claim over you, or the implant takes one more flaw: who knows what else they did to it?

A maker’s Claims follow the usual cap: three, however many of their implants you carry.

Building an implant

Choose or write each part. The samples below were built this way.

What it’s for. Where it sits and what it lets you do: eyes, ears, voice, lungs, hands, skin, spine, skull, blood, a port. Say the permission in one line.

Rating. Skin-rated, Fur-rated, or bone-wired.

Terms. Leased (name the maker), owned (say how it came to you), or unlocked (name who did the work). See Terms.

Strengths (choose 1 or 2): discreet, hardened, fine-tuned, fast, quiet, wireless, self-repairing, easily serviced, integrated with the meat.

Tells (choose 1 or 2): a port behind the ear, seam lines, a status light under the skin, irises that ring when it’s working, a click, a whine, coolant smell, fur that won’t grow over it, a scar the shape of a barcode.

Flaws (choose 1 or 2):

• Reports home: it logs where you are and what it sees, even if you own it.

• Needs a fix: a dose, a key, or a service every ninth day.

• Overheats: the longer you use it without rest, the more the World can make it fail or cause harm.

• Loud: every network you touch knows the model.

• Twitchy: it reacts to threats that aren’t there.

• Itches: your body is still arguing with it.

• Backdoor: someone else can get in.

• Kill switch: someone else can turn it off.

• Recall: the maker wants it back.

Adjustment (major implants only; at most one): counts as (an interface, 1 armor, a light, a key at a given grade); one more choice (one more benefit, protection, or question on a hit with a named move, when the implant applies); or a new question for Read the Room when the implant applies.

A question. Who else has this model, and why did they get it? Who installed it, and what did it cost them? What did it replace?

Starting with cyberware

You may start with one implant. Build it, or take one of the samples, and choose its terms; a sample’s listed terms are a suggestion. Your Moon may change this.

Shifting with it

Before you shift, the World says what your incompatible implants will do. With time, you power them down and they go offline safely. In a hurry, they tear unless you get a 10+ on Shift, or a packmate gets them offline first with a hit on Jack In. A torn implant hurts only if it sits somewhere that matters, such as lungs or spine, or a flaw says so (itches, overheats). The World says how much before you shift; armor doesn’t reduce it.

Getting it out

To tear out an implant before someone else triggers it (a kill switch, a backdoor, a recall), Act Under Pressure with +Fierce or +Wired. On a 7–9, the worse outcome can be harm, a condition, or the implant triggering anyway at reduced effect.

Removing a leased implant clears the Claim its lease supports. Other debts stay.

Cyberware and the Between

Implants that are part of you cross with you (Distance is similarity). A leased implant can’t report from the other side. It reports where you went in, and where you came out.

Sample implants

Breather lining (lungs). Skin-rated; leased (Halcyon Atmospherics). You can breathe smoke and thin or sour air for a few minutes, long enough to reach a door when the pressure goes. Flaw: reports home; it logs every breath you take and where. Tell: a whistle when you breathe hard. Question: what did Halcyon do with the last district’s logs?

Compliance optics (eyes). Fur-rated; leased (Ostrander-Kell Bio). You see in the dark, zoom, and record what you see. Adjustment: a new Read the Room question when you’re looking: “What here has changed since I last recorded it?” Flaws: backdoor; updates install themselves. Tell: your irises ring gold while recording. Question: who did they test it on?

Neural jack (skull). Bone-wired; leased or unlocked. A port for a cable. Adjustment: counts as a direct interface for Jack In, in any form. Flaw: loud. Tell: the fur parts around it. Question: who installed it, and what did they copy while they were in there?

Dock-crew brace (spine). Bone-wired; owned. The Ledger issues them to dock crews and doesn’t ask for them back. You lift what a loader lifts and take a fall in low spin without folding. Flaw: locks up in the cold. Tell: you stand like a crane. Question: who paid it off for you?

Weave (skin). Fur-rated; owned or unlocked. Fibers under the skin. Adjustment: counts as 1 armor. Flaw: fur won’t grow over the seams, so in Fur it shows. Tell: a crosshatch where the fur should be. Question: who sold it to you, and what else did they sell that week?

Voice box (throat). Bone-wired; unlocked (Quiet Hands). You can speak precisely in Beast. Flaw: backdoor. Tell: it isn’t quite your voice. Question: whose voice was it tuned on?

Reflex wiring (spine). Fur-rated; leased (Meridian Security). You react before you know why. Adjustment: when you Unleash and get a hit, choose 1 more protection. Flaws: twitchy; kill switch. Tell: you’re facing the door before it opens. Question: who did Meridian issue it to before you, and why did they stop?

Med pump (chest). Skin-rated; leased (a clinic). It doses you when you’re hurt. Adjustment: counts as treatment that will certainly help (Recovery), once until it’s refilled. Flaw: needs a fix. Tell: a bump under the collarbone that you press without thinking. Question: what happens to the clinic if you stop paying?

Ration chip (wrist). Skin-rated; leased (the Ledger). Draws your water allotment and opens Ledger doors at your grade. Flaws: reports home; recall. Tell: a blue square under the skin. Question: whose allotment was cut to make room for yours?

Inhibitor (spine or collar). Bone-wired; leased by whoever put it there. Nobody chooses this one. While it’s active you can’t shift, and you’re Caged (Conditions). Flaw: kill switch, and someone else is holding it. Tell: the collar, or the scar where the collar used to be. Question: who has the key?

Rites

A rite is a recurring observance the pack performs together, recorded on the Territory sheet. Not a spell. A meal nobody’s allowed to miss. A name said over a body. A song sung in the wrong key because the first person who taught it to you sang it that way. Standing in Fur on the ring’s outer deck when the sun comes around, every ninth day, because that’s what you do.

Some rites came from Earth; others began with a shift-change or a meal someone made after a bad crossing. A Luna may know old words for them. The players decide which words the pack still says, and who gets to change them.

At session zero the pack writes three on the Territory sheet. A rite has its effects only when it’s played out on-screen. Rites in a character’s past, like the naming that gave you your pack name, have none. Rites grow in play: when the pack does something twice, someone can say “that’s a rite now,” and if nobody objects, it is.

The homecoming

What you do when someone comes back: a drink waiting, a berth made up, someone taking the next watch. When you perform it somewhere safe, everyone taking part, including whoever came back, clears 1 Tide or a condition the welcome can resolve. Count it whenever the absence felt like one.

The mourning

What you do when someone doesn’t return. At the Kettle it is a chair, a cup, and the name. Choose your own observance; each mourner offers one true thing about the person. The Territory gains a place in The Between where the dead one can be seen, heard, felt, smelled. The mourners, and the dead character’s player if there is one, say what it’s like. It can be visited, and it stays on the Territory sheet until the players choose to remove it. The ones who mourn clear 1 Tide or a condition the mourning can resolve, their choice.

The third rite

The third rite is the pack’s own. If it is a naming, the person named chooses or accepts the name and says who witnesses it. They and that witness each gain 1 Claim over the other. The witness says what they saw in the named one that made the name right; the named one says what it meant to hear it from them. Some packs have a different third rite: a first-shift breakfast, a dance, a circuit of the outer deck. Write what yours means and how you perform it.

Advancement

Characters change by living. Most of that happens in the fiction, and nobody writes it down. This is the part that goes on the sheet.

XP

Your sheet has five XP boxes. Mark one:

• When you miss a roll: your final result, after rerolls and Claims, is 6−.

• For end-of-session questions (below).

• When a scar gets in your way, once per session.

When all five boxes are marked, clear them and take an advance, now or later. Keep count of the advances you’ve earned; some options need five.

End of session

When the session ends, the World asks these questions. For each one the players agree is a yes, everyone marks 1 XP, to a maximum of 2.

• Did the pack hold to each other? Perform a rite, hold a Revelry, eat a meal nobody was allowed to miss.

• Did someone show themselves? Did a character let someone see something true about them, and not take it back?

• Did someone want something, and let it show? A look held too long, a hand taken, a night that changed something, a refusal that cost.

• Did the Territory get something it needed, or keep something it was about to lose?

• Did someone cross to the other side and come back different?

Then each player answers one question alone: Did you make a consequential choice at your crossroads? (It’s on your playbook.) Name the choice and what it changed or put at risk. A choice either way earns 1 XP; repeating your backstory does not.

Advances

Spend 1 advance on an option below unless it lists another cost. Each can be taken once unless it says otherwise.

• +1 to a stat, to a maximum of +3. You can take this up to three times.

• A new move from your Moon. Repeatable, with a different move each time.

• For 2 advances (1 for Moonless), a move from another Moon (see Walking Between Moons, below). Repeatable, one move from each other Moon.

• A second move for your Anima, written with the World using Building an Anima.

• One more box on your Tide track.

• Give The Territory a new asset. Say what you built, won, or brought home.

After earning five advances, these options also become available for 1 advance each:

• Change your Moon. You walked to another Moon’s place in The Between and stayed. Take its gift, its Red, and its crossroads. Swap your old Moon’s moves for up to two of the new Moon’s, keeping up to two of the old. Everything else stays. With the World, play out the scene where the pack first sees you changed.

• Settle. Your character stops taking the risks and becomes someone the pack goes to: the one behind the bar, the one with the old words. They’re an NPC now. Make a new character.

• Stay on the other side. Your character goes into The Between for good, and the Territory gains a place where they are, the same as a mourning. Make a new character. Your old character becomes an NPC in the Between, played by the World.

Walking Between Moons

When you take a move from another Moon, play or narrate how you walked to that Moon’s place in The Between, or how you were changed again, as a rite with the pack present. It counts as performing a rite for the end-of-session question.

Part ThreeThe Territory

Setting Sketch

A starting position, not a canon. The solar system below has enough detail to pick a Territory in and enough gaps to own it.

When

Two or three centuries out. Far enough that the solar system is settled and cities on other bodies are old enough to have slums; near enough that there’s no faster-than-light travel, no aliens, and Earth still matters. Distance is measured in months and delta-v, and politics follows distance.

The big picture

Earth is rich, old, and mostly somebody else’s problem. Luna is Earth’s suburb and its garrison; everyone else calls its people Lunies. Mars is the second power and is terraforming itself into something nobody asked for. The Belt (Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and a thousand rocks) is where the work gets done and the water comes from. The Jovian moons are the frontier that’s stopped being a frontier: Ganymede has a magnetic field and every maternity ward in the outer system, and the queues to match. Callisto builds its cities tall because it sits outside the worst of Jupiter’s radiation; Io’s mines sit on ground that never stops shaking, in air that stinks of sulfur through the filters; Europa’s ice is studded with sealed labs everyone can see from orbit and nobody gets into. Saturn’s moons are the new frontier: Titan has domes and the beginnings of a culture; Enceladus has a research station and a cult. Beyond that, Triton and Charon are stories people tell.

Every one of those is a Moon a character can have Changed under.

How the monsters got here

When humanity spread to other bodies of the solar system, the worst of the monsters went with them. The corps went first, because someone had to pay for it. The cults went because space is a great place to be unreachable. The syndicates went because the corps needed someone to do the things they couldn’t put on a ledger. The politicians went last, to take credit.

The Changed went as workers, passengers, and families. Some left packs behind; others Changed for the first time far from anyone who could explain it. They carried what traditions they knew and made others with the people they found.

The Changed here have no ancient purpose. They’re a marginalized population that has spent two centuries building new traditions in bad conditions, and the Moons are those traditions. Some packs think there was something before, and Luna characters are the ones who remember it, or claim to.

The Changed and the world

• Are they known? Yes, the way any marginalized group is known: officially a rumor, unofficially a line in every corp’s risk assessment. Some cities have laws. Most have policies. See the “Quiet” and “Room” needs on the Territory sheet.

• How many? Rare enough that a pack of six is the whole Changed population of a district; common enough that every city has some.

• What do they call themselves? The Changed, once they’ve had their first Change. Friendly humans say it too. “Werewolf” is what outsiders and old stories say. The slang is Two-skin in the inner system and Zyg in the outer. Some Luna wolves remember older names from other times and places: Walkers, Versipelles, Fylgja, Benandanti, Táltos, Hamrammr, Lobisomem.

• What do others call them? The slurs are Morphs, from Halcyon’s designation; Two-Faced; Dogs; Strays, for the unregistered; and Animals, which most of the Changed don’t mind. Institutions have their own words. Ostrander-Kell’s studies call them “the experimental group.” The Return calls them the First. The Martian Meritocracy files them as “atypical candidates,” and Quiet Hands inventories them as “livestock.”

• Who else is out there? Other night-folk, per Other night-folk. Something in The Between. Things the corps have made. Ghosts, because a lot of people have died badly out here.

How the Changed live

Packs brought family customs, work songs, arguments, and habits from wherever they came from. In cramped ships and rented rooms they changed them. Some still argue over which words are old and which somebody invented last year.

Gathering. The Kettle holds its Ninth Night behind shutters (Ninth Night). A tug crew might gather for breakfast whenever the off-watch wakes, passing the same bowl until everyone has eaten. In a Titan dome, the pack might rent the public baths after closing; whoever arrives first scrubs the tiles. Ask what your Revelry offers that the rest of the district does not.

Names. One pack gives a new member a name together. Another waits for them to choose, however long that takes. A dock worker may keep the name their grandmother gave them in every form and resent being asked for another. At a naming, ask whose approval matters, and whether anyone was asked before the name was announced.

Closeness. Some packs sleep together in a pile on the floor, and nobody can tell whose leg is whose. Humans think it’s about sex. Sometimes it is. Mostly it’s about being an animal in a heap of animals for six hours in a hab where you have to be a person all day. Other packs keep separate bunks and knock even when a door is open. On a long haul, grooming can be the quiet task two people share without ever becoming lovers. Ask what company your character wants, and what space the pack has learned to leave them.

Desire. A borrowed shirt still smells of the person who left it. Someone stays awake until a tug docks, then pretends they happened to be passing. The Changed want and are wanted; they get jealous, reckless, and tender. Some packmates fuck; some never want to; neither owes an explanation. Say out loud what your character wants, and whom, even when they’d never admit it. A night that changes something between two people can create a Claim (A shared experience, in How do you gain a Claim?).

Decide together how explicitly desire is shown, using lines and veils.

Mourning. Kestrel sets a chair and a cup at the Kettle. A barge crew might stitch the dead person’s name inside a pressure suit that still goes on watch. Another pack deletes their access code together, then spends the evening telling stories about the doors they used to open. The rite gives the dead a place in the Between; the pack decides how it says goodbye here.

Neighbors. The human who brings the guitar has opinions about the noise. The clinic needs volunteers even when nobody in the pack is hurt. The vampire on Six wants the bathhouse to change its opening hours. These people have lives beyond liking or fearing the Changed. Ask what the pack does for them, and what they refuse to let the pack decide.

Default Territory: the Hive, Ceres

If the group doesn’t want to build from scratch, take this one: a mid-level ring of the Hive, Ceres’ spun-up city, where dock families, water-haulers, and a Martian expat block share a ring with too many people and a contract with a Belt water cartel. It’s Fur-friendly at night in three bars and not anywhere else. The maintenance layer is enormous and nobody has mapped it. On the other side it’s a hive, literally, and something in it is waking up.

Every ring of the Hive keeps its own clock, so the week is the same length everywhere and the number of days in it isn’t. On Ring Four that means a nine-day week, which is why its Revelry is the Ninth Night. A mother two rings down calls while her son is asleep; he listens to her message on the way to work. People with lovers on another ring keep two clocks beside the bunk.

Ceres has no moon. Most of the Changed in the Hive are Moonless, or first Changed somewhere else and came for the water (Moons).

Other starting districts

• A Luna arcology sublevel. Old money above, old debts below, Earth on the horizon every day like a reminder.

• A Martian dome edge. Terraforming means the dome will be obsolete in thirty years; the corp has already stopped maintaining it.

• A Titan dome. New culture, thin population, everybody knows everybody, and the only way out is a six-month burn.

• Ganymede’s old quarter. The first real city on a moon other than Luna, and the one with the most ghosts.

The Territory

A campaign is organized around a territory within a megacity. One district, a few thousand people, a handful of habs, a maintenance layer, an atmosphere contract, and a pack that has decided this is theirs. The Territory is a shared character with its own sheet, and every faction in the city wants a piece of it.

The Territory sheet

Built at session zero, updated at the start of every session.

Name. What the residents call it, not what the corp map says.

Body. Which world, which city, which layer. See Setting Sketch. Default: a mid-level district of the Hive on Ceres, but the group chooses.

Population. A number and a character: “about four thousand; mostly Belter dock families, a Martian expat block, and whoever the corp forgot to evict.”

What it’s known for. One thing. The good noodles. The only Fur-friendly bar in the ring. The place the syndicate doesn’t go.

Heart. +1. Take the Pulse rolls +Heart.

Needs. Three to five, each with a four-segment clock. Needs are what the Territory consumes: Air, Water, Power, Food, Quiet (nobody looking too closely), Room (space to be Fur without being shot). When a clock fills, the need is unmet and the World gets a hard move against the Territory. Refilling a Need is Restock.

Revelry. When does the district gather on its own terms? Name the occasion, where it happens, and something people come for. The Kettle’s Ninth Night is one answer. Yours might be a communal bath after the long shift, a dockside dance, or a breakfast that lasts until everyone has arrived. Decide which rites belong there.

Assets. What the Territory has that others want: a clinic, a fabber, a dock slot, a person. Each asset is also a reason for a faction to show up.

Fronts. The two or three factions pressing on it. Each front’s clock goes on this sheet, where everyone can see how full it is. The World decides how much its label says about what it’s counting toward.

The other side. What the Territory looks like in The Between. Everyone answers at session zero; the World combines the answers into one place.

Claims. When the World decides the pack has done a real favor for the district, the pack gains a shared Claim over the Territory. When the World decides the pack has let it down, the Territory gains a Claim over the pack. Factions hold Claims over the district too: an air contract, a water debt, a lease. Record every holder and what gives its Claim weight.

Rites. The pack’s rites, and the places in The Between its mournings have made.

Lines and veils. The table’s lines and veils live on this sheet, where everyone can see them.

Notes. Anything else the table has established about the district: who knows what the pack is and hasn’t said, what nobody talks about, where you go to be in Beast for a day.

Setting up the Territory

At session zero, after the characters are made, the World asks five or six of the questions below and the table fills in the sheet from the answers. When a field is the players’ to decide, anyone can answer, and an answer stands once the table accepts it.

• Body: the setting the table chose.

• Name, Population, What it’s known for, Revelry: the players decide.

• Heart: +1.

• Needs: the players say what the district can’t do without and what’s already running short. The World turns their answers into three to five Needs. Every clock starts empty except one: the players choose the Need that’s already strained, and the World marks 1 segment on it.

• Assets: each player names one place, thing, or person the district has that someone else would want.

• Claims: the players say who else holds Claims over the district and what gives them weight. Each holder they name starts with 1. If the players say what the district owes the pack, and the World agrees it’s a real debt, the pack starts with 1 Claim over the Territory.

• Rites, the other side, lines and veils: from their own steps of session zero.

• Fronts: the World chooses them after session zero.

• Notes: answers that don’t fit a field.

After session zero, the sheet changes through the pack’s moves (Take the Pulse, Make It Last, downtime, advances) and through the World’s moves, which the World says out loud. Whoever changes a field writes it on the sheet.

Examples of “something needs doing”:

• The Water clock ticks: the Ledger’s barge is late again, and the book-keeper wants to talk.

• The Quiet clock ticks: a Halcyon inspection team has requested access to Ring Four’s maintenance layer. Routine, the notice says.

• The Room clock ticks: someone spray-painted a silver bullet on the Kettle’s door overnight.

• A front clock ticks: Meridian Holdings has posted a notice of lease review.

Examples of “something already went wrong”:

• Halcyon has “reviewed” the contract; the ring’s pressure is being stepped down by two percent a day until someone signs the new one.

• A resident went missing between one door and the next, and the district has decided not to talk about it.

Example. The pack wants the clinic to survive Halcyon cutting its air. The World says it will take a scrubber, access to the sealed service duct, and a night to install it, and they agree the finished scrubber gives the clinic twelve hours of its own air. Once they have all three, the clinic has its backup.

Downtime

The World calls for downtime between jobs. Downtime is one night, usually spent in a warm pile in the back room. Each character picks one:

• Rest. Spend downtime somewhere safe, with the care your injuries need. Clear 1 harm (Recovery).

• Restock. Put something toward a Need: a favor, supplies, a Territory asset. The World clears a segment, or tells you what the job is.

• Work a lead. Ask the World one question about a front. The answer is honest.

• Make It Last. Work on what an agreed repair or improvement takes (above).

A homecoming doesn’t cost anyone their downtime.

Questions the World asks at session zero

Pick five or six.

• What did the corp build this district for, and what is it actually used for?

• Who was here before the pack, and what happened to them?

• What does the pack owe to the district, and what does the district owe the pack?

• Where can you be in Fur without anyone looking twice? Where can’t you?

• What’s the atmosphere contract, and who holds it?

• What does the maintenance layer smell like?

• Which neighbor would you go to war for, and which would you sell?

• Who in the district knows what you are and hasn’t said?

• Who else holds a Claim over the district, and what gives it weight?

• What’s the one thing the district has agreed not to talk about?

• What’s good here? Not useful. Good.

• What is your Revelry? Who comes to it who’d never come otherwise? What happened at the last one that nobody’s mentioned since? Who went home with someone, and who wishes they had?

• Who does everyone’s ink? Who cuts hair in Fur? Where do you go when you need to be in Beast for a day and not be looked at?

Losing the Territory

When the pack loses its Territory, each player says one thing their character carries out and one thing they leave behind. The Territory’s places in The Between stay where they were; visiting them now means crossing into somewhere that isn’t yours. The pack is Nomadic until it finds or takes another home, and the campaign goes on.

The Between

You walk between moons, between forms, and between worlds. The last of those is the Between.

What it is

The other side is made of meaning. It’s what places, people, and things are about, rendered as terrain. A corp tower is a mouth on the other side. A hab where nobody talks to their neighbors is a hallway that doesn’t end. A hydroponics bay tended by someone who loves it is a real forest, the only one in a hundred million kilometers.

The Changed can go there. Most humans can’t, and the ones who can are very old, very augmented, or very strange.

Distance is similarity

Two places that are alike are close on the other side, whatever the physical distance. Every corp lobby in the solar system is, on the other side, roughly the same lobby. Every airlock is the same door. This means:

• The Between is the only fast way to move between celestial bodies. Empty space is thin there; a competent walker can cross from Ceres to Mars in a night, if they can find the right lobby to leave from.

• You cross with your body, including integrated implants and an artificial body if that is what you are. What’s yours comes with you: what you wear in your Fur, your grandmother’s ring, the knife Dagny gave you. The issued tablet, the borrowed pistol, and the cargo are what the other side keeps (Cross Over). Corp gear is leased, never yours, which is why the corps are so interested in anything that can be grown into a body instead of carried.

• Getting lost means ending up somewhere similar to where you meant to be (Cross Over).

• Corps know this. Some build deliberately unique spaces to be unreachable, and deliberately generic ones to be reachable.

Dangers

• It’s cold. Not physically. Stay too long and a packmate’s name takes a moment to come back, and your own hands smell like a stranger’s. Past the first scene, it costs (Cross Over).

• Things live there. Rule of thumb: things on the other side are made of what people feel about places. A hab that’s been afraid for a year has grown something.

• It remembers. The dead leave marks. So does the Red. A place where someone went Red is, on the other side, still burning with it.

• It keeps them. When the pack mourns someone properly (the mourning), the other side gives them a place, and the place stays. A chair at the end of a bar that’s always set. A yard with one torch still lit. A forest, for the ones who remember one. You can go there. Their echo will be glad to see you, mostly, and they’ll remember what you promised at the wake, and the longer you stay the harder it is to remember which side of the wall you live on. Packs that have been in a Territory a long time have a lot of these places, and walking the Territory on the other side is walking through everyone it lost.

• It’s watched. Some corps have found a way to put something on the other side. Whether it’s a person, a machine, or a deal with something already there is for the World to decide.

Uses in play

• Travel, obviously.

• Reading a place: Read the Room from the other side can ask what a place is for.

• Visiting the dead. Anyone can cross to where the pack mourned someone and meet their echo (It keeps them, above). Talking with the dead themselves is Charon’s (Charon).

• Hiding. Pursuers need their own way across.

• Coming back wrong (Coming back wrong).

The Between and the Moons

Each Moon has a place on the other side. Luna’s is a forest that isn’t there any more. Io’s is on fire. Titan’s you can’t see through. A character who walks to their own Moon’s place learns something about themselves. Each fully written Moon in Moons pairs its place with a crossroads. Visiting the place can change which way you lean; what you do afterward decides the choice.

Questions for the table

• What does your Territory look like on the other side? (Everyone answers; the World combines the answers into one place.)

• Many of the Changed never cross. Why do they fear the Between?

• What crossed over the night you first Changed?

• What’s the thing everyone in the district has agreed not to talk about, and what has it grown into?