• Via Bestiae - The Road of the Beast

• Via Ossium - The Road of Bones

• Via Caeli / Tariq el-Sama - The Road of Heaven

• Via Humanitas - The Road of Humanity

• Via Regalis - The Road of Kings

Tenets

A Tenet is a guiding principle, a statement that explains a moral line that the character must adhere to. A Road will have one core Tenet that is shared by all adherents to that Road, and additional Tenets from which the player will choose more for their character. Typically a character will have one core and two additional Tenets, there are Merits and Flaws to adjust this number.

Selecting Tenets

The Primary Tenet represents the core of the Road, shared by all adherents. Where a player feels that the precise wording does not fit their character, they may ask to use a slightly different wording that strongly expresses the same core concept.

The additional tenets listed in under the core one for each road represent common moral strictures adopted by adherents to the Road; however, as additional Tenets represent an individual character’s conception of their morality, players may suggest one or more of their own of equal strictness and relevance to the Road’s philosophies.

Each Tenet must be supported with an action which positively upholds the Tenet in question. For example, if the Tenet is Always act with compassion, for it is the only true shield against the Beast, the supporting action might be I will donate to charitable causes, or perhaps I will defend the weak with my sword and shield. This must be a specific, active action, something that the character will do, rather than a passive or vague one such as I will help the poor - this does not explicitly say what the character will do to help.

Sinning

To sin is to act against your Road. When a character betrays their Tenets, there is a good chance that they may slip more towards the control of their Beast. 

Some sins are also worse than others, wearing down a character’s morality and granting more power to their Beast. Each sin has a stain rating, determined by the Storyteller Team. The more drastic the sin and more in conflict with the Tenet your character broke, the greater the chance for loss of Road.

As an example, if a character on the Road of Kings holds the Tenet ‘I will uphold justice and not allow unjust acts to go unpunished’ then willingly and knowingly turns their gaze away from an unjust act without seeking to punish the offender, that would be considered sinning against that Tenet. Committing an unjust act themselves would be a greater sin against the same.

As a more casual regard for morality is easier for the Beast to exploit, if an action breaches more than one Tenet of a Road, the Storyteller Team is likely to grant it a stain rating much higher than one that breaches a single Tenet.

Losses in Road Rating

At the end of each downtime, the Storyteller team will check each character’s Road Rating. If the character commits any sins during session or in a downtime action, then they cannot gain Road Rating and are in danger of losing a point in Road Rating. This will be determined by calculating the total stain value of any sins that the character has committed, and comparing it to the number of their Tenets that they upheld in that period.

If the value of those stains is greater than the number of Tenets upheld, a test will be made. If the stain value of all sins committed is greater than (10 - Current Road Rating), then they automatically fail. 

The test will be (10 - Current Road Rating - net sins) d10 and requires at least 1 to roll 6+ otherwise their Road Rating will decrease by 1. 

Gains in Road Rating 

To gain in Road Rating, the character must not have committed any sins since the last calculation was done. If they have then please consult the section on Losses in Road Rating. 

If they have not committed any sins, then the Storyteller team will check how many of their Tenets they have demonstrated or upheld, and compare that with their current road rating as in the Table below:

If a character has demonstrated a number of their Tenets equal to the minimum in the table above, a test will be made to see if they gain in Road Rating.

The test will be (10 - Current Road Rating)d10 and will require 1 success with a difficulty of their Current Road Rating or 6, whichever is higher. This creates a natural increase in the difficulty as the character grows past a Road Rating of 6.

Note: Road is capped at 10 and to increase your character’s Road Rating to 10, they will need to demonstrate all 3 Tenets AND get a 9 or a 10 on a single d10.

Should a character end up on Road Rating of 1 and lose that final point taking them to 0, they have succumbed to Wassail and become a Wight. This is their final frenzy, one which signals the complete takeover of the Beast, destroying whatever restraint or capacity for logic that the character had. 

A character who has succumbed to Wassail becomes no more than a very skilled, very dangerous predator driven by instinct alone, and is no longer playable. It is likely that such creatures will be hunted down very quickly on the order of the nearest sensible Prince. 

Changing Roads

In order to change Roads, a character must dedicate downtime actions towards studying the new Road and trying to internalise it. Mechanically, the character will make a skill check for each such action, and will need to accumulate a total number of successes equal to their Road Rating in their current Road.

If the character has a teacher on the desired Road who also spends a downtime action during the same downtime period to guide their study, the teacher will also make a test and their successes will contribute to this check. The particular attribute and skill for the test is based on which Road the character is changing to. See the individual Road descriptions for the details of these.

It is only possible for a character to use one downtime action in a given downtime period for this purpose. Similarly, a character cannot teach their current path whilst studying how to abandon it.

Changing Roads is never easy, and not a task undertaken lightly. Based on how different the new Road is from the old one as shown on the table below, they will lose a portion of their existing Road Rating. Where relevant, all losses are rounded down. So if a character has a Road Rating of 7 and loses half, they will lose 3.

• S - Similar represents a relatively close Road, the character will lose a third of their current Road rating

• D - Dissimilar represents a more distant Road, the character will lose half of their current Road rating

• A - Alien represents a completely opposite or foreign Road, the character will lose two thirds of their current Road rating

Changing Tenets

Some actions make us question the philosophies we hold dear. Though many seek to mould themselves to their beliefs, others mould their beliefs to themselves. 

Once during your character’s time on a Road, you may alter one of their non-core Tenets. This can represent a moment of revelation or your character’s belief in that Tenet crumbling; either way it should have appropriate story significance. While your character is remaining on the same Road, they are still making a significant change to their sense of self; therefore each test to change a Tenet requires a downtime action to accomplish.

The Benefits of a Road

Many things that stalk the nights will try to lure or corrupt your character. The largest benefit of Road is that it can be a defence against many tricks and deceptions. 

Road may be used to defend against attacks on your character’s will, if failure would cause them to violate their Tenets. In this instance you may choose to use your character’s Road Rating instead of the normal defensive pool. However if your character calls upon this benefit and fails, this counts as a greater Sin against their Road, as they were convinced to act against their Tenets despite defending with all their will.

Some powers and situations also directly test against Road. Failing these does not incur the above penalty.