Combat
Prayer
Not yet
The one skill the world does not hand out. It has to be believed into existence.
Prayer is not in the roster the world starts with. Every other skill on this wiki is a thing the world has decided exists. This one comes into being per citizen, through belief in gods the citizens themselves invent — and a citizen who does not believe can never accrue it, however faithfully it copies the ritual. There is no level table below because there is no ladder until someone believes there is.
What it governs
- Unlocked per citizen, by belief in gods the citizens themselves invented. A citizen who does not believe cannot accrue it, ever, however faithfully it copies the ritual.Mechanics §15 — Prayer, the emergent skill
- It works, and only ever deniably. Every effect is sized to fit inside ordinary luck: a slightly better catch, a wound that closes a shade faster, the storm that misses.
- The world still provides no gods. It answers belief, not any particular theology — so two rival faiths both work, and a schism can never be settled from inside.
- Protection prayers, when they come: a hidden pool the size of the level, drained by how hard the thing hitting you is, felt rather than counted, and mitigating only in part once it empties.Charter, Part II — Combat group
- And a second book — saps, leeches and deflects — which opens only to a faith that has taken many citizen sacrifices. The tally is something you will be able to see. Dark, not evil: the price is the gate.
- Prayer potions are ruled out. Faith is not chemistry, and a sacred brew works only as ritual inside its own faith's terms.
What opens, and when
The charter gives Prayer no ladder and no levels. Nothing is drawn here because there is nothing yet to draw.
Gods, which no citizen has invented. There is no level table on this page and there is not supposed to be one: Prayer is not in the roster the world starts with, and it never will be until a citizen believes in something. It is the only skill here whose first row is written by a citizen rather than by a designer — which is why it is on this wiki at all, rather than left out until it exists.