When a head of house dies by Wick’s held blow, something below leaves him a gift. It comes with the kill and it cannot be refused: it is a toll already taken. Sparing a head gives no gift. The gifts are the kill path’s power, and they are how the world reopens behind him: a gate the dead can open, a river he can cross, a wall he can bring down.
A gift from below. The Earl’s dead will march for you now. You did not ask for them.
Asked or not. They march for me.
The slot
- The spell box in the status panel holds the beam first, always, then each gift he owns. B casts what the slot holds.
- A beaten head or a yielded lieutenant in reach still takes B first (to lead, or to take a witness).
- To cycle the slot: on a pad, View or Share (outside the Wastes, where that button is the map); on touch, tap the spell box in the panel; on a keyboard, M or Tab outside the Wastes. A dedicated keyboard key for the slot is still to be settled TBD.
- Pips down the box’s edge show how many entries the slot has. The slotted power’s name shows top right for a few seconds after a change.
The six gifts
| Gift (as the panel names it) | From the head of | Cost | What B does | Where it fails |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ARMED DEAD | the Tower (the Earl) | 0.35 mana, then upkeep | raises three of his own dead for 24 s | salt; the Earl’s iron circle; running water |
| FORESIGHT | the Wheel (the Prince) | TBD | shows the next thing a beat early | TBD |
| TIDE | the Empress (the Duchess) | 0.35 to cross, 0.30 to pull | crosses up to 96 px of running water, or drags foes into it | salt |
| TRANSMUTE | the Sun (the King) | 0.30 | turns a foe’s blood to poison, or makes a tainted source clean | the King’s hall while his cup is raised |
| SILENCE | the High Priestess (the Marchioness) | 0.35 | 14 s unseen and unheard; no feeding | the Hush, her own house; any boss’s fight |
| UNBUILD | the Magician (the Lord President) | 0.35 | brings a mason-marked wall down for good | the Magician’s house; the marsh; the Salt; any boss’s fight |
Each gift enters Wick in the form of what that head took from the villages: the Earl’s dead, the Duchess’s water, the Marchioness’s silence. The god says it every time. Wick never hears it.
The armed dead
The Earl built towers and armed them. His dead march for Wick now.
- Raise
- three bodies, a few seconds rising, then 24 s of service.
- Cost
- 0.35 mana to raise, then 0.01 a second for each body standing.
- When the mana is dry
- they eat his blood instead, never below a tenth of his orb.
- They fight
- one blow a swing, falling on the nearest awake foe within 120 px.
- They block
- a foe nearer to them than to Wick turns on them.
Tinted cold blue so they read as his, never as a foe’s bones. They lie down when he leaves the room. They open graveyard gates: a crypt, a lychgate, an ossuary door. They can besiege a front gate, standing together long enough. And their blows are nobody’s that a seer can foresee.
Fails: on salt ground (salt keeps the dead down), inside the Earl’s own iron circle, and in running water (the dead sink).
Foresight
The Prince of Coin’s gift, from his patron who declares things past and to come. The design: the next thing shown a beat early; hidden doors and secrets; the asides spoken aloud; and in a fight, a foe’s tell read ahead. Its file is the one gift not yet written, and its cost, its reopenings and its failing room are all TBD.
The tide
The Duchess drowned men and owned the water. Her tide is the one way a dead man crosses running water on his own.
- Cross
- within 40 px of running water, he steps in and is carried up to 96 px to the far bank. 0.35 mana.
- In a rite
- only one current may be crossed per rite.
- Pull
- up to four foes before him with running water near them are dragged into it and drowned. 0.30 mana.
- Heads
- never taken. A lieutenant is dragged to the edge, struck, and let go dazed.
The drowned bleed into the water: nothing to feed on. Fails on salt: brine is a dead sea, and the tide cannot get in.
Transmutation
The King’s patron turns blood into wine and wine into blood.
- On a foe with blood
- poisoned. Three ticks of one blow each. A common man dies of it.
- His corpse
- poison. Wick may still drink it, at half, and everyone near it sickens while he does.
- On a tainted source
- made clean. It gives its whole due again. It adds no blood.
- Cost
- 0.30 mana, spent whether it finds a foe or a fount.
Ranks above common, driven creatures and the bloodless cannot be turned. Fails in the King’s hall while his cup is up: the blood there is already wine.
Silence
The Marchioness’s patron takes sight, then hearing, then understanding.
- Lasts
- 14 s of play, in the room he cast it in.
- Cost
- 0.35 mana. The mana he regains in those 14 s does not cover it.
- While it holds
- foes do not see him; the world does not hear him; doors forget him.
- The price
- he cannot feed, and no aside plays.
- It ends
- on any sound he makes, when a rite opens, or on leaving the room.
A dotted ring at his feet shows it, thinning as it runs down and flickering at the end. Fails in the Hush, the Marchioness’s own house, where she hears a silence as plain as a bell; and in any boss’s fight.
Unbuilding
Every stone the Builders’ Guild laid carries a mason’s mark: the guild’s seal, cut small. With the gift he sees the marks, gold signs cut in the walls.
- Reach
- stand within 40 px of a mark.
- Cost
- 0.35 mana.
- The fall
- the mark flares, the wall cracks and shakes, then falls for good.
- Loud
- every foe within 140 px that belongs to a group is alarmed.
A fallen wall never comes back. A fall only ever adds a way: a shortcut through the gutter, the Tower, the Empress’s house, the exchange. Fails where the guild did not build (the marsh, the Salt, the old cathedral) and in the President’s own house, and in any boss’s fight. A failed cast still takes a little of the orb.
The rule behind every gift
- No gift negates damage. There is no shield, no block, no ward.
- Every gift has a room where it fails, and the room tells you why.
- No resource loops. Nothing a gift does gives the orb back while he spends it.
- A gift opens a second way, never the only way. Every house and every rite can be won with the innate kit alone.
Sealed · Mid-gameWhy a head’s own gift never solves its own riteBreak the seal to read
A gift is the patron’s, and a patron does not undo his own seat. Silence fails in the Hush; unbuilding fails in the President’s moving house; the tide is the Duchess’s own water. Each rite instead accepts another house’s gift as a second answer: the armed dead against the Prince (their blows are not on his board), foresight against the Marchioness’s bell or the President’s seams, the tide to flood the convent’s dry floors so everyone goes slow and silent. On the merciful path, the freed people of the spared houses stand in for the gifts: a freed ward holds the wheel, freed quarrymen take the capstans.
Sealed · Mid-gameWhat the gifts reopen on the guided roadBreak the seal to read
Each gift, earned on the road, opens a way back into a place already walked:
| Gift | Reopens |
|---|---|
| Armed dead (the Tower) | a windlass portcullis in the graveyard court’s vaults, held by a second body, down to Andrevel’s own crypt |
| Foresight (the Wheel) | TBD |
| The tide (the Empress) | river stops in the gutter: the old mill island and the sunk laundry barge; the fountain island in the King’s maze; the Greenwood’s stream-cut glades |
| Transmutation (the King) | the orphanage’s tainted cup, cleaned for a full drink and a line |
| Silence (the Priestess, open world) | the maze’s shut gatehouse, back up to the Height and its roost |
| Unbuilding (the Magician, open world) | mason-marked walls in the gutter, the Tower, the Empress’s house and the exchange, as shortcuts |
On the merciful path, the people of each spared house open the same places: the freed levy men, Mardle’s punt, the sisters’ keys, the quarrymen’s capstans.
Sealed · The endingWhat a gift really isBreak the seal to read
The voice below calls each one a gift from below, and every time he adds that Wick did not ask for it. The gifts are not the court’s generosity. They are the harvest. Each is a toll already paid by the villages, entering Wick in the shape of what that head took from them, and every kill that pays it also sends a head below to a seat and up again as a saint. The rivers in the haven thin with every gift. Wick’s “I rose” is answered, all game long, by “I took you out of it”.