How Do Kartia Cards Work?

You do not buy anything in Kartia. You write it.

Kartia are cards inscribed with texts, single characters in a script the world treats as divine. Inscribe a card correctly and the thing named appears. This act of creation built the whole civilization of Rebus. A card that reads water gives water; add the character for flowing and the text becomes rushing water, an attack spell; add a sub-text like strong and the effect grows. The designers called these combinations grammar texts, and the system is the game: there are no shops in Kartia, so every sword, spell, and soldier is something you wrote.

Creation consumes materials: silk, mithril, and wood of the World Tree. And it has a failure mode the whole plot turns on. A Phantom summoned by Kartia obeys its maker only while the maker's power exceeds its own; stronger creatures tear free and go wild, and cleaning up runaway Phantoms is part of what the heroes' corps, the Vigilance, exists to do.

THE THREE USES

Equipment, spells, Phantoms

Forge your own equipment

Kartia is the only armory. Six weapon types and six kinds of armor are created from texts and materials, or occasionally found in the field. If your knight needs a better blade, you write one.

Cast by combining

Spells start from a base text and accept added characters that raise their power. The families are elemental: fire that burns grass and barrels, earth magic that raises and lowers the ground itself, and healing.

Summon Phantoms

The third use creates living monsters to fight beside the humans. Phantoms come in three natures, Common, Doll, and Shadow, arranged like rock, paper, scissors: each kind overwhelms one other and falls to the third.

THE RULES THAT BITE

Why the system has stakes

Phantoms are disposable, people are not

A Phantom can level up and carry equipment, but if it falls it is gone for good, and the game lets you summon more. A human who falls ends the chapter on the spot: game over, restart the battle.

Texts can be missed forever

New texts hide in stages: in chests, on enemies, inside barrels and crates that fire magic can open. Stages cannot be replayed, so a text left behind is left behind for the whole campaign.

The Arena pays in materials

Between chapters, an arena lets you fight stocked monsters for silk, mithril, and World Tree wood. It grants no experience; it exists to feed the writing.

Height and wounds matter

The battle rules reward position: spears strike better from below, axes from above, helmets guard against blows from above. And the wounded fight worse, so a hurt unit is a weakening unit, not just a shorter health bar.

THE ORIGINALS

The forbidden texts

Copies and Originals

Everyday Kartia are copies, traced from a handful of Original texts. The true Originals, Heaven, Earth, Human, Life, Death, Nothingness, were made from elven bone and blood, and each is unique.

Priced in lives

Rumor in Rebus says using an Original kills its user. The truth the story uncovers is stranger, and it is why armies are hunting the druid girl Mona and the Nothingness Kartia she carries.

Toxa and Lacryma The History of Kartia

How Do Kartia Cards Work?

THE THREE USES

THE RULES THAT BITE

THE ORIGINALS

THE FIRST WORD