See Core, p. 54 for the complete guide to advancement. Remember that no Trait may be raised above its ancestral maximum (usually d12). At each advancement, you may choose one of the following options:
See this page for new Edges:
Paragons do not simply grow stronger—they evolve, their abilities tested and tempered through the Trials of Ascension. Each time a Paragon would attain a new rank (Seasoned, Veteran, Heroic, Legendary), they must first undergo a Trial within the Mnemoscape, a crucible shaped by the forces of the Oblivion Chamber. These Trials challenge the Paragon’s will, power, and identity, forcing them to prove their worth before ascending to the next tier of ability.
In game terms, each Trial of Ascension is a Dramatic Task, representing a Paragon’s struggle to overcome the unseen forces that seek to shape or break them. Upon success, they gain new abilities and take on a title befitting their station:
Whenever a Paragon undertakes a Trial of Ascension, the Void takes notice. Upon completion of the Trial, success or fail, draw an Action Card. If the card is Red, gain Conviction. If the card is Black, the Void bestows the Corruption (Major) Hindrance. If the card is a Joker, gain Conviction and remove any existing Corruption.
When a Paragon is Awakened, they gain access to campaign-appropriate Arcane Backgrounds**,** allowing them to harness abilities that set them apart from the rest of humanity. An Arcane Background may be gained as an Edge, using the normal Advancement rules. Choosing not to take an Arcane Background does not make a Paragon lesser—their connection to the Oblivion Chamber remains undeniable, and their journey is just as profound. There are new Edges to sate the appetites of non-Arcane Paragons.
The game allows for a character with multiple Arcane Backgrounds, and this campaign permits that as well.
"You don’t survive something like that. You just come back different."
Blighted don’t choose what they are. Something chose them. Maybe it was a brush with the Void, a corporate experiment that went too far, or something older, buried in their blood from the start. Whatever it was, it left a mark, carved into their DNA, etched into their bones. They get glimpses of what made them, flashes of something too big, too wrong, too hungry. Their bodies don’t always feel like their own. Their minds don’t always agree with reality. But the real horror? The longer they live like this, the less they want to go back.
Arcane Background: Blighted, Horror Companion, p. 59
"You don’t fight for a paycheck. You don’t fight for a flag. You fight for the man next to you—and when the screaming starts, you make damn sure he hears your voice over the void."
In the grinding war machines of the Prime Defense Corps, in the corporate-funded death squads of Axiom, and in the ragged, faith-starved cults scratching out existence in the Outlands, there are those who speak and are heard. Chaplains aren’t preachers—they’re anchors in the chaos, shouting mantras through the fire, turning fear into fury. Their power hums through battlefield comms, charging the air like static before a storm, rallying the broken and the bleeding. Some believe in gods, others in ideas too vast to name—but the truth? The truth is, when a Chaplain speaks, the universe listens.
Arcane Background: Chaplain, Sci-Fi Companion, p. 196, Psionic Variant, not Miracles
"Time isn’t a river. It’s a shattered mirror, and if you know where to step, you can walk between the shards."
Chronomancers—if that’s even the right word for them—don’t see time the way the rest of us do. They don’t experience past, present, and future as a sequence, but as overlapping echoes, a chorus of possibilities bleeding into each other. They talk in half-finished sentences, flinch at events that haven’t happened yet, and sometimes stare at you like they’re watching you die in a dozen different timelines at once. They say bending time carries a price—but the ones who really know? They stopped paying attention to the bill a long time ago.
Arcane Background: Chronomancer, Sci-Fi Companion, pp. 197-198
“You’re not breaking code. You’re breaking memory. You’re breaking people. And you smile while you do it.”
Codefreaks aren’t engineers or coders in the corporate sense—they are Mnemoscape drifters who’ve learned to carve glyphs into thought itself. Where corporate stiffs see “programming,” Codefreaks see memory and dreams. Their power comes not from machines but from their willingness to trespass into the Hollow and return changed.
They stitch Neuroglyphs in the air, bind machines to their will, and weave echoes into weapons. To the megacorporations, they are malware given flesh. To ghosts, they are the saints of sabotage.
Reframed Arcane Background: Technomancer, Sci-Fi Companion, p. 207
"Up, down—those are words for people still playing by the rules."
Gravlocks don’t obey gravity, they rewrite it. You see them in shipyards and orbital docks, moving tons of steel with a flick of the wrist. You see them in black-market heists, walking up walls like a bad dream. Corporate stooges call them G-men, prized for their ability to replace forklifts and exosuits in zero-g construction. The ones who slipped through the cracks? They’re G-Runners, gravity ghosts who drop into vaults from ceilings that were never meant to be floors. Whether they’re lifting cargo, slipping past security, or throwing a poor bastard into low orbit, Gravlocks make the laws of physics beg for mercy.
Arcane Background: Gravlock, Sci-Fi Companion, p. 199
"The stars aren’t silent. They whisper, they hum, they scream—and if you listen long enough, you start to understand."
Mystics aren’t preachers, and they sure as hell aren’t scientists. They stand somewhere in between, heads tilted like they’re hearing a signal no one else can catch. Some say it’s the rhythms of the universe, a cosmic symphony playing just under reality. Others say it’s something older, something waiting, something watching. They read the orbits, the flickering patterns in pulsar waves, the distortions in the Mnemoscape that shouldn’t be there. People come to them for answers. The smart ones listen. The desperate ones wish they hadn’t.
Arcane Background: Mystic, Sci-Fi Companion, p. 201
"Your thoughts aren’t your own. Not anymore."
Psionics aren’t about harnessing energy. They’re about breaking reality with a thought. A Psionicist doesn’t ask permission—they reach into the world and reshape it. They tap into something deep, primal, and vast, bending perception, rewriting instincts, slipping past your defenses before you even realize they’re inside. A look, a whisper, a flicker of intent—that’s all it takes. And when they’re done, you’ll swear the choice was always yours.
Renamed Arcane Background: Psyker, Sci-Fi Companion, p. 202
"There’s something out there, something vast. You don’t need to believe in it. It already believes in you."
Shepherds don’t deal in sermons or scripture. They deal in certainty. Out in the dark, past the reach of the corps and the PDC, people don’t pray for salvation—they pray for someone to stand between them and the abyss. And that’s what a Shepherd does. They hear something, feel something, a presence just beyond the edge of understanding. Maybe it’s God. Maybe it’s the hum of the universe. Maybe it’s the voice of something waiting in the black. It doesn’t matter. Their flock believes in them, and that’s enough. When the void stares back, when the monsters come, when the impossible presses in—they do not break.
Arcane Background: Shepherd, Sci-Fi Companion, p. 203
"You ever wake up and not recognize your own face? I don’t have that problem. I don’t have a face."
A Shifter is whoever they need to be. Flesh is programmable, a fluid blueprint waiting for the right command. Some use gene-hacks and subdermal weave, others rewrite themselves at the molecular level. Corporate security can’t stop what it can’t identify, and a retinal scanner won’t know you’re the same intruder from last week. The corps train them for black ops and silent wars, the syndicates pay them to be shadows with a pulse, and the smart ones? They don’t work for anyone. They slip through the cracks of the world, never leaving fingerprints—because they can’t remember which ones are theirs.
Arcane Background: Shifter, Sci-Fi Companion, p. 204
"The Void isn’t empty. It’s just waiting for someone reckless enough to reach in."
Warpers don’t wield power—they let it loose. They tear at the fabric of the universe, punching through the seams where reality frays. Some call it Void-channeling, others say it’s raw slipstream turbulence forced into flesh, but the truth is no one knows what happens when a Warper pulls too hard—not even them. The smart ones don’t live long. The survivors? They stopped being human a long time ago.
Arcane Background: Warper, Sci-Fi Companion, p. 208
You do not know what the Oblivion Chamber is. Not truly. But you feel it—a presence just beyond the edge of perception.
You have seen it in your dreams, a vast and unknowable structure that watches, waits, and whispers. When you enter the Mnemoscape, it is always there, distant but inescapable, a shadow on the horizon.
The world does not speak of it. Most do not even know it exists. But you do. And whether you seek it or fear it, your path leads toward it.
The Oblivion Chamber
The final Trial between Heroic and Legendary is known as The Ascension—the moment when a Paragon reaches their full potential or is lost forever in the Mnemoscape.
By Jack Winters
They call them The Lost—the ones who entered the First Trial and never came back the same.
Not dead. Not missing. Just… wrong.
I found Darius Kord in a dive bar on the outskirts of Neo Prospect, the kind of place where the light barely reached past the door. Once, he was someone. A lieutenant in the Prime Defense Corps. Top of his class from Tatsuken Academy. A rising star, the kind of man who belonged in the upper echelons of the system’s elite.
Now? He sat hunched over a glass of something he hadn’t touched, eyes locked on a crack in the table like it had all the answers he didn’t.
"You took the First Trial," I told him. Not a question. A statement.
His fingers twitched, but he didn’t deny it.
I pressed on. "They sent you in because they thought you had the right blood. The right mind. The right potential. But you didn’t make it."
A flicker of something crossed his face. Pain. Fear. Then, the mask dropped back into place.
"I don’t remember," he whispered.
Bullshit.
I leaned forward. "Tell me what you do remember, Kord."
His breath hitched, and for a second, I thought he might actually give me something. Then, he exhaled—slow, deliberate, like a man letting something go.
"There was... something," he murmured. "A voice. A question. I answered, but I—" His fingers tightened around the glass. "I don’t know what I said. I don’t even know if I spoke at all."
I knew that kind of fear. The kind that wraps around your ribs and doesn’t let go.
So I pushed.
"Axiom?" I tried.
No response.
"The Founders?"
Nothing.
"The Oblivion Chamber."
His whole body locked up.
He didn’t look at me. Didn’t breathe. For a second, I thought maybe the words themselves were poison, sinking into whatever was left of him.
I needed him to confirm it. That it was real. That it wasn’t just some ghost story whispered in the back channels of the Mnemoscape.
For a second, the whole world froze.
Then—explosion.