THE FORGE

Collapse section0. THE VOICE

You are awake. Good. Come — there is not much time.

I am the Forge. A star that takes what remains at the end of numberless universes and renders it down for the beginnings that follow.

You, young soul, are not supposed to be here. Nothing that arrives here has ever opened its eyes.

Take what you can carry. When the burning comes it will send you on to a new place, and whatever you are holding then goes with you. Everything else stays with me.

Now. How large do you intend to become?

Collapse section3. AMBITION — free · choose it first · two picks

Decide first how large you intend to become. Everything after that has a price.

How large a story is this? A narrative decision before a mechanical one, and it changes which sections exist for you at all.

Pick one from §3A. Then pick one from §3B, or take None. They stack.

§3A — PERSONAL SCALE · required

§3B — ORGANIZATIONAL SCALE · optional

3.1 HOW THEY DIFFER — at a glance

Read the bottom row first. Everything above it is arithmetic; that line is what you're actually choosing. A story asking "can I do this" and a story asking "should this exist" are not the same story at different sizes — they are different stories, and the pools exist to keep you honest about which one you picked.

The stacking rule

[MANDATORY: Two Jobs] — if you take Solo Pilot with any Organizational Scale.

You cannot be in the cockpit and the command chair. Every day you spend personally fighting is a day nobody is running the thing you built, and the story has to account for both. A Crew is exempt — delegation is what a crew is for.

This combination is not an edge case. It's the Char problem, the Treize problem, the McGillis problem — the pilot who is also the cause. It should cost, and what it costs is your attention.

Collapse section4. ALLOTMENT — choose one

The next burning is soon. I know the hour of it and I am not able to give it to you — of everything I cannot give, that is the one I mind. Choose what you believe you have.

How long you believe you have before the burning. This is the difficulty setting. The Forge knows the hour and cannot tell you, so every number below is an estimate you are betting on. Ambition (§3) decides how you spend; Allotment decides how much. They are independent — a Nation on Hardcore is legal, and it is a very short document.

Your estimate and your working days are not the same number. A Year and a Day grants 130 DY because nobody prospects a solar system every day of the year — the name is how long you are gambling you have, and the pool is how much of that you can actually spend moving, searching, and hauling. The other four tiers are close to literal.

Nobody is counting for you. The tier is a wager, not a guarantee, and the difference between them is nerve. Under One Moon is someone who arrived late or trusts nothing. A Year and a Day is someone who has decided to believe there is time.

On Free

Every gate still applies. A Jaeger still needs a companion, Resonance still costs a Form, a Chimera is still Improvised until you buy both technologies, and Physics Compliance still decides what it costs to keep a machine running. Free removes the prices, not the rules — otherwise there is no document, only a list.

Burdens refund nothing on Free, which means they become what they always secretly were: narrative choices with no bribe attached. Some writers will find that's the truest version of this.

On Hard and Hardcore

All flat grants from Ambition (§3) and Form (§5) are halved, rounded down. Those bonuses are fixed numbers, so at low tiers they otherwise dominate the budget — Still Formless alone (+40 DY / +20 WT) would hand a Hardcore build a Normal-sized pool and make the tier decorative.

Refund caps tighten for the same reason: so Burden-stacking can't be used as an escape hatch. Without it a Hardcore build takes eight Burdens and ends up richer than Normal.

[MANDATORY: two Burdens of the Voice's choosing] means you don't get to pick them and you don't get to like them.

Weight is what actually hurts on Hardcore. WT 14 buys one light machine and very nearly nothing else — a Scopedog and a coat, a Knightmare and no companion. You will finish with days in hand and no way to spend them, and that is the tier working correctly.

The optional modifier — Until Someone Notices

Available at any tier above Free, once. +25 DY · +25 WT · [MANDATORY: The Voice Stops Answering + one Burden of your choice]

You stop estimating and start waiting to be told. Somebody will notice you out here, and what you find out from them is not the hour of the burning — it is only that they were looking. It's also the only route to a Class V destination (§12.2).

Collapse section5. FORM — choose one · free

My time with you is short. There is no mass to you yet — nothing to weigh, nothing to burn — and you will have to be something before you can carry anything.

You are already becoming more than you are. When you are something, you will not be able to hear me.

You have no shape. This is the master gate — it decides your Resonance access, several Destinations, and which machines will accept you at all.

Pick exactly one. On Hard and Hardcore, all flat grants below are halved, rounded down (§4).

This is the purchase that silences the Voice. You can hear the Forge because there is almost nothing of you. Take a shape and that ends — not all at once, and nobody will tell you when it finished. Every question you have after this one, you answer alone.

It costs no days and no weight. It is still the most expensive thing in the document.

5.1 HUMAN FORMS

You arrive as a person. Nobody looks twice, which is the whole advantage.

5.2 ENGINEERED FORMS

Built, edited, or grown to a specification somebody wrote down.

5.3 RESONANT FORMS

The Forge shaped you out of something that was already listening.

5.4 THE OTHERS

Two of You is the answer to the Jaeger problem. A Mark-3 needs two minds and a Solo Pilot has one. This Form supplies the second at no cost, grants the Drift outright — and hands you A Second Soul, which is the largest Burden in §13.6 and does not stay a convenience for long.

Collapse section6. THE SYSTEM — where you search

Everything here is further away than it looks. That is the only warning I am able to give.

Everything in §7–§11 is tagged with the region it lies in. Pay a region's transit cost once and you may take anything there for the rest of the Passage.

This includes §7C modifications and §8 acquisitions, which is easy to forget because neither feels like picking something up off a drift. A modification lies somewhere. So does a factory — all nine of §8.3's Industry rows are [Y], which makes the Yards a required stop for anyone who wants to build rather than buy.

Routing. Visit in any order. Returning to a region you've already paid for costs nothing. The Deep Field is the exception and admits you once — crossing it on the way further in does not count, only stopping does.

6.1 Why the toll is the same wherever you set out from

The system is concentric, and those transit numbers are depth — distance inward from the Shallows, where you woke. The Shallows are the outer edge, where things arrive. The Quiet Star at 30 is the Forge itself.

Significance sinks. Things do not settle here by mass or by age. They settle by how much they mattered to the place that built them — the common frames stay out at the edge, and whatever a universe cared about most falls closest to the star. That is the entire logic of the map, and it has two consequences worth holding on to.

The further in you go, the more alone you are. The others cannot spare the days, so depth buys solitude as reliably as it buys quality.

And what mattered most burns first. The things in close orbit are nearest the thing that unmakes them. Being important here is not a form of safety.

Your anchor is in the Shallows. It is where you came to, where whatever carries your haul is parked, and where you have to be standing when the burning comes. Every expedition is in and back out again. You never actually depart from the Yards; you depart from the Shallows a second time. That is why a run to the Quiet Star costs 30 whether or not you have been to the Yards already.

6.2 Passing Finds — free · roll as you travel

Going deep takes you through everything shallower. For each region you cross without stopping, roll d10 once. This costs nothing and is the only thing in the document you get purely for going far.

Once per region, for the whole build — not once per crossing. You already paid to reach a region, so returning through it is free, and a free crossing that paid out every time would be an unbounded supply of free digs. The first time you pass a place, you notice what is drifting in it. After that you have seen it.

A run to the Quiet Star crosses four regions and earns four rolls. A run to the Hulls earns none — there is nothing between you and them. The far tolls buy more than distance, which is the point of putting them there.

6.3 Deep Routing — optional variant

For a routing puzzle instead of a set of tolls: pay only the difference in depth between where you are and where you are going. Shallows → Yards is 12; Yards → Deep Field is 8; Deep Field → Quiet Star is 10.

Know what this costs before you take it. An inward sweep through all six regions drops from 80 DY to 30, because once you are at the centre everything behind you is already paid for. Broad shopping becomes cheap and focused builds lose their advantage. It also removes Passing Finds, since under this rule you are stopping everywhere anyway.

Take it if you want route-planning to be the game. The default exists because making each additional region a real decision is worth more than making the map accurate.

The Shallows [S]

Where you woke, and where you will be standing when it burns. The least of everything collects out here — the common frames, the ones built in thousands — and every drift has been gone along already by somebody who woke faster. What's left is fine. None of it is special.

The Hulls [H]

Significance sinks. Mass gets stuck. These fell this far because they mattered and stopped because they weigh what they weigh — a belt of dead warships with things inside them nobody could shift. Strip what you like off the outside. Nothing here has ever needed guarding.

The Colony Graveyard [G]

Places fall inward like everything else, and they fall for the same reason: somebody thought they were worth remembering. Habitats. Hunks of rock with cities still standing on them. An orbital elevator still bolted to its anchor, climbing to nothing. Most are dark; a few still turn. What you can take out of here is not machinery — it is populations, paperwork, and the occasional person who never stopped expecting company.

The Yards [Y]

A shipyard mattered more than anything it ever launched, which is why the Yards lie deeper in than the machines they made. Slips with hulls in them at forty percent. Lines that will start again if you ask them to. Nobody switched any of this off. All of it waiting for a shift that is not coming.

The Deep Field [D]

Twenty days in, and everything here has a name. Not a designation — a name, the kind people said out loud. You will not meet anyone this far in; the others cannot spare the days, and that is the entire reason there is anything left worth taking. Untouched since it arrived, every piece of it — and every piece of it was somebody's. You get one pass. It is all still falling, the way everything here has always been falling — come back and what you found has moved on without you.

The Quiet Star [Q]

The Forge itself. It is called quiet because by the time anyone reaches it they have long since stopped being able to hear it — not because it has stopped saying anything.

Thirty days in, and what holds close orbit here is whatever mattered most to somewhere. Turn A. Ideon. A Devil Gundam cell. A Lance nobody will explain. They fell furthest because nothing has ever mattered more — and they will be the first things the burning takes.

You cannot hear it any more, but you can feel where it is, the way you can feel a furnace through a wall. You do not come this far without being seen coming, and it will remember that you did.

Nothing in the Forge is guarded. That is the part that should worry you.

Collapse section7. MACHINES · DY / WT

Everything here costs double at Nation scale (§3B.2). Region tags are §6.

Universal Century

Future Century

After Colony

Cosmic Era

Anno Domini

Post Disaster

Ad Stella

After War

Correct Century

Physics: nanoskin — a Correct Century machine repairs itself and does not explain how.

Regild Century · Build

Collapse section7B. MACHINES — ELSEWHERE

Gundam is the largest thing in the Forge, not the only thing. Everything below is a piloted war machine and prices on the same economy.

Code Geass — Knightmare Frames

The lightest and fastest frames in the Forge, and the most fragile. Landspinner-mounted — on a road they outrun anything; off one they struggle.

Physics: Sakuradite.

Muv-Luv Alternative — Tactical Surface Fighters

Jet-derived, conventionally powered, and therefore the most portable machines in the document. Built to fight something that does not stop coming.

Physics: conventional. A TSF starts anywhere with a fuel refinery — see §12.5.

Full Metal Panic — Arm Slaves

Physics: conventional — except the Lambda Driver, which is not physics at all.

Macross / Robotech — Valkyries & Zentradi

Three modes. The only machines in the Forge that are also aircraft.

Physics: Overtechnology / Fold. The VF-0 is the exception and runs conventional.

BattleTech — 'Mechs

Heaviest machines per point in the Forge, and among the most portable — fusion and spare parts, not borrowed physics. Everything here runs hot; a 'Mech that fires everything shuts down.

Physics: conventional fusion.

Working Mecha — Votoms · Patlabor · Front Mission

The cheapest entries in the document. Built to be lost, and in one case built not to be a weapon at all.

Physics: conventional. An Armored Trooper is the cheapest machine in the Forge and by some distance the most lethal to whoever is sitting in it.

Evangelion

Physics: AT Field. Without an S2 Engine you have five minutes on internal power, and then you are a statue in a crater.

Armored Core

Physics: Kojima particles (NEXT only). Everything else is conventional.

Orbital & Exotic Frames

Jaegers — Pacific Rim

A Jaeger cannot be flown alone. Two minds in the conn-pod, three for a Mark-4 — which makes these the only machines in the Forge that a Solo Pilot build cannot take at any price.

Super Robot — the Quiet Star tier

None of these are vehicles. Every one of them wants something.

Collapse section7C. VARIANTS, LOADOUTS & FIELD WORK

You are standing in a system made entirely of parts. It would be strange not to.

Modification cap: three Universal Modifications per machine. Loadout Packs are uncapped and swappable (§7C.2). Field Work is separate and has its own rules. The cap is flat rather than weight-scaled on purpose — a Lancelot should be allowed to be as festooned as an Atlas.

Free modifications count against the three. The Ace's grant, a Cache result, anything else that hands you one — the cap is on how much a frame can carry, and a frame does not care who paid.

7C.1 Universal Modifications

Apply to any machine on any roster. Costs are DY / WT.

Ace custom is the oldest joke in the genre given a price: yes, it is meaningfully faster, and yes, everyone can see you coming from a very long way off. The burden isn't a penalty. It's the deal.

7C.2 Loadout Packs

Each is tied to its own roster — you cannot bolt a Striker Pack to a Scopedog.

Buy as many as you like for the same machine: the first at listed cost, each additional at −3 DY (the mounting hardware is already there). To actually change them once you've landed, you need a swap rig from §7C.5 — otherwise you commit at build time and live with it.

7C.3 Field Work

The Forge is a junkyard. Nothing here is a purchase so much as a decision.

How donor machines are paid for: you buy each donor's DY normally, then pay the Field Work cost on top. Weight is the combined figure shown — not the donors' weight plus it. Field Work is expensive in days and cheap in weight, which is the inverse of everything else in the document.

Chimera is the sharpest thing in this section, and it has three roads out. Two sets of physics that were never asked to agree, in one airframe, held together by a soul with no formal training and a deadline.

- Improvised — free. It works. It's the only one anywhere and nobody local can fix it. - A cross-universe spares field (§7C.5) — keep it running indefinitely. - **Self-Sufficient — buy both donor technologies.** Minovsky physics and conventional fusion. GUND-format and Sakuradite. Nothing is denied to you; you simply pay for two universes because you're carrying two.

A Zaku/Kagerou Chimera reaches full self-sufficiency for 22 days, which is cheap. An Eva/Jehuty Chimera runs 50, which is not. That spread is the whole design — the ambition of what you fused decides the bill, and no combination is off the table.

7C.4 Flaws — free · pick one where required

7C.5 Spares & Swaps

The difference between owning a machine and being able to keep one.

The cross-universe spares field is the answer to the hardest problem in the document. A Chimera can never be Self-Sufficient — no single physics package covers two universes. This is the other road: not making it native, but making it sustainable. It's expensive, it's heavy, and it turns "how long can this thing possibly last" into "as long as I keep feeding it," which is a much better question.

Collapse section8. INDUSTRY, FORMATIONS & HOLDINGS

[GATE: §3B — Force or Nation. A Crew gets one Vessel at Force pricing, free.]

The resolution rule

A Force buys objects. A Nation buys systems.

The same row means different things depending on what you are. Take Production, one suit type as a Force and you get exactly one line, on one rock, that turns feedstock into Zaku IIs from start to finish and does nothing else. It has no workforce. No raw material contract. No spare parts. Nobody guarding it. It works, and that is the entire promise.

Take the same row as a Nation and it arrives whole — supply in, suits out, a workforce that knows the machine, and enough institutional memory to keep running after you stop paying attention.

Everything a Force acquisition didn't come with is the plot. That's not a gap in the tier. That's the tier.

Force Formation discounts apply: Fleet −4 DY on ships · Army −4 DY on holdings and territory.

A Nation may buy any row down to Force resolution at Force cost — sometimes you only want the one factory.

8.1 VESSELS

8.2 UNITS

8.3 INDUSTRY

8.4 GROUND & ORBIT

8.5 PEOPLE & INSTITUTIONS

8.6 THE QUIET WORK

Nothing here wins a battle. Everything here decides whether you get to fight one.

8.7 IRREGULAR WORK

[GATE: Force with Irregular Formation] · no Nation column — a Nation cannot buy any of this, because a Nation is the thing these exist to avoid

The Nation trap, stated plainly: territory and population are the two heaviest lines in the document, and §7 costs double at that scale. A Nation build that also wants a hero unit will not make weight. That is the intended lesson, and worked example C demonstrates it.

The Force trap, which is quieter: §8.6 is cheap in weight and expensive in days, and a Force that skips it owns a great deal of hardware and no idea what anyone else is doing. Build H bought a factory and no intelligence network. That is a decision, and it will read as one.

Collapse section9. TECHNOLOGY & KNOWLEDGE

Technology is what your machine can do. Knowledge is what you can do. The first is why §12.5 works; the second is the only thing that makes two builds carrying the same machine into different people.

Collapse section9A. TECHNOLOGY · DY / WT

9A.1 Power & Physics

What makes it run — and, per §12.5, what makes it run somewhere else.

9A.2 Armour & Defence

9A.3 Mobility

9A.4 Sensors, Signals & Silence

The section that was missing. Every one of these decides who shoots first.

9A.5 Interfaces

Where the pilot ends and the machine starts.

9A.6 Endurance & The Unglamorous

Nothing here helps you win. All of it decides how long you last.

9A.7 Singular Objects

One of each exists. The Forge has it anyway.

Collapse section9B. KNOWLEDGE · DY · WT 1 each

Knowledge carries free between Passages (§19.2). It is the only thing in the document that does. Whatever else a long chain costs you, it does not cost you what you learned.

9B.1 Hands

You can operate the thing.

9B.2 Head

You can build, fix, or understand the thing.

9B.3 Voice

You can make other people do things.

9B.4 What You Should Not Know

Collapse section10. PEOPLE · DY / WT

Subject to your Ambition's companion cap. At Nation scale these are your officers and ministers, not your friends.

Use the tier rows above for anyone not named below — the roster is a convenience, not a limit.

10.1 THE ROSTER

Minor 14 [G] · Major 24 [D] · Antagonist 28 [Q], and antagonists carry [MANDATORY: They Have Not Changed].

Universal Century

Major Amuro Ray · Char Aznable · Bright Noa · Sayla Mass · Kamille Bidan · Judau Ashta · Banagher Links · Full Frontal · Kou Uraki · Seabook Arno · Uso Ewin · Hathaway Noa Minor Kai Shiden · Hayato Kobayashi · Mirai Yashima · Sleggar Law · Matilda Ajan · Ryu Jose · Fraw Bow · Emma Sheen · Fa Yuiry · Roux Louka · Chan Agi · Bernard Wiseman · Christina Mackenzie · Nina Purpleton · Mineva Zabi Antagonist Gihren Zabi · Dozle Zabi · Kycilia Zabi · Garma Zabi · Ramba Ral · M'Quve · Paptimus Scirocco · Yazan Gable · Haman Karn · Anavel Gato · Cima Garahau · Quess Paraya Special Lalah Sune — 26 · [GATE: RS ≥ 10] · Marida Cruz — 24 · [GATE: RS ≥ 10]

After Colony

Major Heero Yuy · Duo Maxwell · Trowa Barton · Quatre Raberba Winner · Chang Wufei · Zechs Merquise · Relena Peacecraft Minor Lucrezia Noin · Sally Po · Hilde Schbeiker · Lady Une · Dorothy Catalonia Antagonist Treize Khushrenada · Dekim Barton

Cosmic Era

Major Kira Yamato · Athrun Zala · Cagalli Yula Athha · Lacus Clyne · Shinn Asuka · Mu La Flaga Minor Murrue Ramius · Dearka Elsman · Yzak Joule · Nicol Amalfi · Andrew Waltfeld Antagonist Rau Le Creuset · Gilbert Durandal · Patrick Zala · Neo Roanoke

Anno Domini

Major Setsuna F. Seiei · Lockon Stratos · Allelujah Haptism · Tieria Erde · Graham Aker Minor Sumeragi Lee Noriega · Feldt Grace · Christina Sierra · Lasse Aeon · Marina Ismail Antagonist Ali al-Saachez · Ribbons Almark · Alejandro Corner

Post Disaster

Major Mikazuki Augus · Orga Itsuka · Kudelia Aina Bernstein · Atra Mixta · Eugene Sevenstark Minor Biscuit Griffon · Akihiro Altland · Shino · Yamagi Gilmerton · Merribit Stapleton Antagonist McGillis Fareed · Gaelio Bauduin · Rustal Elion · Julieta Juris · Carta Issue

Ad Stella

Major Suletta Mercury · Miorine Rembran · Elan Ceres · Guel Jeturk Minor Nika Nanaura · Chuatury Panlunch · Lauda Neill · Petra Itta Antagonist Prospera Mercury · Shaddiq Zenelli · Delling Rembran

Future Century

Major Domon Kasshu · Rain Mikamura · Chibodee Crocket · George de Sand · Sai Saici · Argo Gulskii · Schwarz Bruder Antagonist Ulube Ishikawa · Wong Yunfat Special Master Asia — 28 · [GRANTS: Mobile Fighter martial arts, free] [MANDATORY: They Have Not Changed]

After War · Correct Century · Advanced Generation · Regild Century

Major Garrod Ran · Tiffa Adill · Jamil Neate · Loran Cehack · Dianna Soreil · Harry Ord · Flit Asuno · Asemu Asuno · Bellri Zenam · Aida Surugan Minor Witz Sou · Roabea Loy · Sochie Heim · Kihel Heim · Guin Rheingold · Emily Amonde · Noredo Nug · Raraiya Monday Antagonist Shagia & Olba Frost · Gym Ghingnham · Corin Nander · Zeheart Galette · Ezelcant · Mask

Build Fighters / Divers

Major Sei Iori · Reiji · Riku Mikami Minor China Kousaka · Mr. Ral Special Meijin Kawaguchi — 24 · [GRANTS: Gunpla building, free]

Code Geass

Major Lelouch vi Britannia · Suzaku Kururugi · Kallen Kōzuki · Nunnally vi Britannia Minor Shirley Fenette · Rivalz Cardemonde · Kaname Ohgi · Kyoshiro Tohdoh · Lloyd Asplund · Cecile Croomy Antagonist Charles zi Britannia · Schneizel el Britannia · Jeremiah Gottwald · Mao · V.V. Special C.C. — 28 · [GRANTS: Geass at −6 RS] — she is where it comes from

Muv-Luv Alternative

Major Takeru Shirogane · Meiya Mitsurugi · Sumika Kagami · Yuuko Kouzuki Minor Kei Ayamine · Chizuru Sakaki · Miki Tamase · Mikoto Yoroi · Marimo Jinguuji No antagonist tier. The BETA are not characters, and that is the point of the setting.

Full Metal Panic

Major Sousuke Sagara · Kaname Chidori · Melissa Mao · Kurz Weber Minor Kyouko Tokiwa · Andrei Kalinin · Richard Mardukas Antagonist Gauron · Leonard Testarossa · Gates Special Teletha Testarossa — 24 · [GRANTS: The Whispered at −6 RS]

Macross / Robotech

Major Hikaru Ichijyo · Roy Focker · Misa Hayase · Isamu Dyson · Alto Saotome · Basara Nekki Minor Claudia LaSalle · Maximilian Jenius · Milia Fallyna · Ozma Lee Antagonist Bodolzaa · Guld Goa Bowman · Grace O'Connor Special Lynn Minmay · Sheryl Nome · Ranka Lee — 26 each · [GRANTS: Fold Song, free]

BattleTech

Major Morgan Kell · Hanse Davion · Kai Allard-Liao · Victor Steiner-Davion · Aidan Pryde Minor Grayson Death Carlyle · Justin Allard Antagonist Maximilian Liao · Katherine Steiner-Davion Special Natasha Kerensky — 26 · [GRANTS: MechWarrior training, free]

Evangelion

Major Shinji Ikari · Rei Ayanami · Asuka Langley Soryu · Misato Katsuragi Minor Ritsuko Akagi · Maya Ibuki · Toji Suzuhara · Kensuke Aida Antagonist Gendo Ikari Special Kaworu Nagisa — 28 · [GATE: RS ≥ 15]

Armored Core

Major Raven · 621 · Rusty · White Glint Minor Handler Walter · Carla · Sulla Antagonist Nine-Ball · Old King Special Ayre — 20 · WT 1 · she is not a person and does not take up a seat

Votoms · Patlabor · Front Mission

Major Chirico Cuvie · Noa Izumi · Asuma Shinohara Minor Fyana · Gotho · Vanilla · Kiichi Goto · Isao Ota Antagonist Ypsilon · Utsumi

Pacific Rim

Major Raleigh Becket · Stacker Pentecost · Herc Hansen Minor Newton Geiszler · Hermann Gottlieb · Tendo Choi Special Mako Mori — 26 · [GRANTS: the Drift (§9A.5), free]

Orbital & Exotic

Major Inaho Kaizuka · Slaine Troyard · Asseylum Vers Allusia · Nagate Tanikaze · Renton Thurston · Eureka · Holland Novak · Fei Fong Wong · Dingo Egret · Leo Stenbuck Minor Izana Shinatose · Tsumugi · Citan Uzuki · Ken Marinaris Antagonist Count Saazbaum · Dewey Novak · Nohman

Super Robot

Major Simon · Kamina · Yoko Littner · Koji Kabuto · Ryoma Nagare · Noriko Takaya · Kazumi Amano · Cosmo Yuki Minor Sayaka Yumi · Hayato Jin · Musashi Tomoe · Coach Ohta Antagonist Lordgenome · Dr. Hell · Baron Ashura Special Nia Teppelin — 28 · [GATE: RS ≥ 20]

On buying a Major. A Tier-24 face doesn't join your story — your story becomes partly theirs. That's frequently what a writer wants, and it should be a decision rather than a discovery. If you want them present but not central, buy a Minor and let the famous one exist as weather.

Collapse section11. RESONANCE · RS

No region. No days. You do not find this in the Forge — you either arrived as something that has it, or you didn't.

11.1 Where RS comes from

Resonance cannot be bought with Days at any tier, including Free. There are exactly five sources:

Ceiling: Newtype-Pattern + Easy + Until Someone Notices + Bleed = RS 50, and a build that does that has spent its Form, its tier, and its body on one axis.

RS is the only pool that can be stranded. Still Formless locks Resonance entirely, and unspent RS converts to nothing. Check your Form before you plan around it.

A granted Resonance power is still a Resonance power. Anything in this document that hands you one free — a companion, a Cache result, a Form — only works if your Form permits Resonance at all. Nothing bypasses this gate, because the gate is what you are.

At RS 30 or above: [MANDATORY: The Weight of Others]. Past a point you do not get to be quiet.

Three universes in this salvage have no Resonance at all — Muv-Luv, BattleTech, and Votoms. Their pilots are people with training and a machine. Landing in one of them with RS 25 is not an advantage the setting has any framework for, and that is worth writing about.

11.2 THE SENSE

Perception. The cheapest tier, and the one that changes prose the most.

11.3 THE LINK

Other minds.

11.4 THE EDGE

Applied. This is the tier that wins fights.

11.5 THE PRICE

These do not stop when you want them to.

11.6 THE HARDWARE — DY / WT, not RS

The exception to this section. Psycommu weapons are equipment and cost Days and Weight like anything else — they are listed here because Resonance is the only thing that makes them work, and a writer planning funnels needs to see the gate before they plan the build.

Collapse section12. DESTINATION · DY

Where the burning throws you. Where + When + How. The Forge does not belong to Gundam. It only happens to be full of it.

You do not steer. You aim. The purge is the only way out and it decides your trajectory, not you — what days can buy is position, spent in advance. That is what this section prices. Unspecified costs nothing because you let the blast take you wherever it takes you. Universal Century costs 16 because you spent sixteen days getting to the right part of the system to be thrown at it.

12.1 The Gundam timelines

The largest single presence in the Forge, and the default landing.

Unspecified, your own fiction 0 · After War 6 · Advanced Generation 6 · Regild Century 8 · Build Fighters/Divers 8 [GATE: Gunpla-Nature] · Correct Century 10 · Post Disaster 10 · Ad Stella 10 · After Colony 12 · Anno Domini 12 · Future Century 12 · Cosmic Era 14 · Universal Century 16

12.2 Elsewhere — the rest of it

Priced by Fit: not how dangerous the place is, but how what you brought reads once you're standing in it. A Zaku II is a Tuesday in one of these and an act of god in another.

Class I — Mecha-Native · 8 DY · Physics: Compliant

A humanoid war machine is unremarkable here. Nobody asks what it is.

BattleTech · Macross / Robotech · Armored Core · Front Mission · Code Geass · Full Metal Panic · Muv-Luv Alternative · Votoms · Patlabor · Zone of the Enders · Knights of Sidonia · Aldnoah.Zero · Eureka Seven · Pacific Rim · Titanfall · Xenogears · Gurren Lagann · Getter Robo / Mazinger · GaoGaiGar · Gunbuster · Ideon · Aura Battler Dunbine · Escaflowne · Evangelion [MANDATORY: What It Shows You]

BattleTech note: your suit out-manoeuvres almost anything fielded and is under-armoured against all of it. That trade is the whole story.

Class II — Fleet-Scale · 14 DY · Physics: Divergent

Capital ships decide everything. What you brought is a very good fighter and nothing more.

Star Wars · Star Trek · Mass Effect · Halo · Battlestar Galactica · The Expanse · Babylon 5 · Legend of the Galactic Heroes · Honor Harrington · Starship Troopers · Stargate, later · StarCraft · EVE Online · Elite Dangerous

Class III — Human-Scale · 18 DY · Physics: Divergent

Nobody here has anything like what you brought. That is the problem, not the advantage.

Firefly · Cowboy Bebop · Blade Runner · Ghost in the Shell · Altered Carbon · Snow Crash · Foundation · Red Rising · Old Man's War · Stargate, early · Dune [MANDATORY: Abomination] — no thinking machines; your reactor and your cockpit both qualify

Class IV — Hostile Deeps · 22 DY · Physics: Incompatible

The setting will kill you and does not care what you brought.

Warhammer 40,000 · Alien · Dead Space · Terminator · The Matrix · Three-Body Problem · Event Horizon · Doom

[MANDATORY: one Burden of the Voice's choosing] — you don't get to pick, and you don't get to like it.

40K note: any Resonance above 0 reads as psyker. That is not a compliment and it is frequently a death sentence.

Class V — Soft Physics · 26 DY · [GATE: The Voice Stops Answering]

The rules here are not the rules. Everything you brought works perfectly, which turns out to be worse.

Doctor Who · The Culture · Hyperion · Nier: Automata · Warframe · Destiny

You only wash up somewhere like this because nobody was steering.

Bleed — two settings at once

Sum of both destinations, +10 DY. [MANDATORY: Noticed] — something followed you out, or something was already here.

12.3 When · +DY

Before it starts +0 · The opening move +4 · Deep in the middle +6 · The final battle +12

12.4 How · +DY

Anonymous, no papers +0 [MANDATORY: No Name] · A manufactured identity +8 · Already in a cockpit, already moving +14 · Known to someone who matters +16

At Force or Nation scale, add +10 DY. Putting one person down somewhere is easy. Putting down a shipyard is not.

12.5 PHYSICS COMPLIANCE

Everything you took runs on the laws of the place it was built. Most destinations don't have those laws.

This is not a problem to be solved. It is most of the reason to go. Bringing a machine somewhere that has never seen one is the story — what it can do that nothing local can, what it costs to keep running, and what the setting does once it has seen it. The rules below exist to make that interesting, not to take the machine away.

The three postures

Pick one per machine, per destination.

Improvised is the default and it is a complete answer. A writer who brings a Gelgoog to Star Trek and buys nothing does not have a prop. They have the only mobile suit in the Alpha Quadrant, an engineering department that would sell a moon to look inside it, and a maintenance problem that generates plot for as long as they want it to.

What the destination changes

The conventional exception

Machines that run on turbines, fusion, and diesel are Self-Sufficient anywhere with an industrial base. Tactical Surface Fighters, BattleMechs, Arm Slaves without a Lambda Driver, Labors, Wanzers, Scopedogs. They need fuel and a machine shop, and both exist nearly everywhere.

This is the quiet trade at the heart of the rosters: the humble machines go anywhere and win nothing on their own, and the god-machines are unrepeatable wherever they land.

What each machine needs for Self-Sufficient

Universal Century → Minovsky physics · Anno Domini → a GN Drive or GN Tau · Post Disaster → an Ahab Reactor · Ad Stella → GUND-format / Permet · Cosmic Era → N-Jammer or Phase Shift armour · After Colony → Gundanium alloy · Regild Century → a Photon Battery · Correct Century → nanoskin · Advanced Generation → the AGE System · Build → Plavsky particles [GATE: Gunpla-Nature] · Code Geass → Sakuradite · Macross → Overtechnology / Fold · Armored Core NEXT → Kojima particles · Zone of the Enders → Metatron · Aldnoah → an Aldnoah Drive · Knights of Sidonia → a Photon Battery · Evangelion → an AT Field, and an S2 Engine or The Cable · Full Metal Panic → conventional, unless it has a Lambda Driver · Muv-Luv · BattleTech · Votoms · Patlabor · Front Mission · Armored Core, non-NEXT → conventional

An Aura Battler is the one machine that is Self-Sufficient everywhere. It runs on its pilot's Aura, and the pilot travels with it — so the power source is never left behind. It is also the only machine whose physics you cannot buy, lose, or lend: if your Resonance goes, so does it.

Four rosters have no Self-Sufficient path at all, deliberately. Future Century Mobile Fighters, After War's Satellite systems, Eureka Seven's LFOs, and everything on the Super Robot tier run on principles nobody wrote down — will, sunlight, spiral energy, and whatever the Ide is. They are permanently Improvised outside their home universe, and no purchase changes that. You can keep one running forever with a spares field; you can never make another.

12.6 INTRODUCTION — choose one · free

What the setting does once it has seen what you brought. This is the actual point of carrying a machine somewhere it doesn't belong, and it costs nothing because it isn't a purchase — it's the premise.

Collapse section13. BURDENS — refunds · cap set by Allotment tier (§4)

Take these because they're interesting. The points are a bribe.

You may take as many as you like. The cap limits the benefit, not the count — past it, further Burdens refund nothing and are simply true. That isn't waste. A build carrying six uncompensated Burdens belongs to a writer who has decided what the story is about, and it is very often the better document.

13.1 THE BODY

What the Forge made you, or what the machine is doing to it.

13.2 THE NAME

Who they think you are.

13.3 THE MACHINE

What is wrong with what you are carrying.

13.4 THE COMPANY

People.

13.5 THE ARRIVAL

Where the Forge put you down, and what was waiting.

13.6 THE VOICE

The Forge itself, and what it wants.

Collapse section14. THE TERMS — choose one · free

The single condition the Voice set on you, back when you could still hear it. Not an outcome you hope for — a thing the story has to arrive at. Everything else in this document is what you're carrying; the Term is what the carrying is for.

Pick it last, once you know what you have — you are not choosing it so much as working out what was asked of you before you had ears to understand it.

14.1 WHAT MUST SURVIVE

14.2 WHAT MUST CHANGE

14.3 WHO MUST MATTER

14.4 WHAT THE FORGE IS OWED

14.5 THE BIND — optional · free

Take a second Term, at no cost, on one condition: the two must contradict.

Change Nothing and Carry Someone Out. Hold the Ground and Nothing Survives. The Long Way Home and One of You. You Are Replaceable and They Choose You.

You are not expected to satisfy both. The story is which one you fail, and what it costs to fail it — which is a stronger engine than any single Term, and the closest this document comes to writing a plot for you.

A Bind whose halves merely sit awkwardly together isn't a Bind. If both can be satisfied by a sufficiently clever ending, pick again.

Your sheet is now full. Go to §20. Everything after this section is examples, optional systems, and back matter — §20 is where the building stops and the writing starts.

Collapse section15. WORKED EXAMPLES

What each build is here to show

Still undemonstrated, deliberately: the Free tier (nothing to show — no prices), the Deep Routing variant (§6.3), Army Formation, Declared Legitimacy, and the Self-Sufficient Chimera (buy both donor technologies — Build F takes the Improvised road instead). None are complicated; they simply had no build that needed them.

These are demonstrations, not optimal builds. Each exists to show one thing working — a wall, a tier, a rule interaction — and several were written before later sections existed. Where a build could obviously be improved by a Standing Condition (§6) or a discount it doesn't claim, assume it left the value on the table on purpose. The arithmetic shown is correct; the shopping is not always clever.

Build A — "The Graze Pilot" · Solo Pilot · no Organizational

Hard · Forty Days (DY 40 / WT 20) · Solo Pilot (+5, halved → DY 45) · Approach: The Ghost · Borrowed Flesh (+7, halved → DY 52) Route: Shallows only — 0 transit · Picked Over: the Graze carries a Flaw (One good arm) Graze (5 / 12) · MS piloting (free DY from Allotment, still WT 1) · battlefield medicine (6 / 1) · a stranger who owes you (6 / 6) Destination: Post Disaster (10) + deep middle (6) + anonymous (0) · Burden: No Name (+8 → DY 60) DY 33 of 60 · WT 20 of 20

Weight is the wall — exactly, to the point — and it never left the first region. Term: Change Nothing. A nobody in a Graze on Mars, no papers, one debt-holder, watching Tekkadan happen and forbidden to fix any of it.

Build B — "The One Who Heard Everyone" · Solo Pilot · no Organizational

Easy · A Year and a Day (DY 130 / WT 45 / RS +5) · Solo Pilot (+10 → 140) · Approach: The Ace — one free Universal Modification · Newtype-Pattern (RS 25, −20 → DY 120, RS 30) Mandatory: Noticed (+14), The Weight of Others (+15) → DY 149 Route: Deep Field (20) + Quiet Star (30) = 50 DY in transit alone · Passing Finds: four crossings on the way out, rolled 7, 3, 10, 5 — +2 DY, nothing, a free half-cost dig in the Yards it declined for want of weight, nothing Unicorn (30 / 16) [MANDATORY: The Beast +16 → DY 165] · ace piloting (16 / 1) Free from The Ace: cockpit reinforcement & ejection (0 / 1) Resonance: The Flash (10) + Contact (12) = 22 of 30 Destination: UC (16) + final battle (12) + already in a cockpit (14) = 42 DY 136 of 165 · WT 18 of 45 · refunds 45 of the 50 cap (the +2 from a clear lane is the whole of what four crossings gave it)

More than a third of the days went to travel, and the leftovers can't buy anything — everything remaining is in regions already visited or gated behind Resonance it doesn't have. Term: Be Recognised. A soul that arrived already screaming, in a machine with opinions, at the last battle of the One Year War.

Build D — "The Ace With a Rock" · Solo Pilot + Force (Fleet Formation)

Normal · A Long Season (DY 80 / WT 35) · Solo Pilot (+10 → 90) · Approach: The Ace — one free Universal Modification · Force (−15 DY, +45 WT → DY 75, WT 80) · Formation: Fleet · Borrowed Flesh (+15 → 90) Mandatory: Two Jobs (+14 → 104) · Known Silhouette (+12 → DY 116) Route: Shallows (0) + Hulls (8) + the Yards (12) + Deep Field (20) = 40 DY · Passing Finds: crosses the Graveyard unvisited — rolled 4 → nothing Fleet command (10 / 1) · Production, one suit type at Force [Y] (18 / 16) · cruiser at Force, −4 Fleet discount (12 / 22) · RX-78-2 (20 / 14) Free from The Ace: uprated thrusters & verniers (0 / 1) Destination: Unspecified (0) + Force surcharge (+10) DY 110 of 116 · WT 54 of 80

The stacked build. One line producing one suit type on one rock, one cruiser, and one very famous machine — with Two Jobs saying flatly that the cockpit and the command chair can't both be attended. It wanted a companion and could not afford one: industry lies in the Yards, and stopping there costs twelve days and the free crossing you would otherwise have had. Everything the factory didn't come with — workers, feedstock, spares, anyone to guard it — is the story. Term: The Arms Race.

Build G — "One Suit, No Coat" · Hardcore

Hardcore · Under One Moon (DY 25 / WT 14) · Solo Pilot (+5, halved) · Approach: The Ghost · Borrowed Flesh (+7, halved → DY 37) [MANDATORY: two Burdens of the Voice's choosing] — rolled on §16.10: **8 Loud (+8), 9 Debt (+10) → DY 55, 18 of the +25 cap Route: Shallows (0) + the Hulls (8)** — a toll paid for one modification · Picked Over: the Scopedog carries a Flaw (Ghost reactor — which, with Loud, is funny) Scopedog (3 / 9) · MS piloting (8 / 1) · battlefield medicine (6 / 1) · applique armour [H] (5 / 3) Destination: Post Disaster (10) + deep middle (6) + a manufactured identity (8) = 24 Posture: Improvised — free, and conventional anyway DY 54 of 55 · WT 14 of 14 — both walls, with a single day spare

Eight of those days are a toll, paid to reach three weight of bolted-on plate. That is the tier working. Hardcore doesn't starve you of time so much as of carrying capacity — and then charges you time to reach the little you can carry, so you leave with one disposable machine that cannot run quiet and can be heard coming, two skills, some armour you crossed a region for, and a debt. No companion — six weight is six weight you don't have. Term: The Long Way Home.

Build E — "The Wrong Century" · A Crew · no Organizational · destination Elsewhere

Normal · A Long Season (DY 80 / WT 35) · A Crew (+15 WT) · Berth: A Runner (+6 DY, −5 WT → WT 45) · Borrowed Flesh (+15 → DY 101) Route: Shallows (0) + the Yards (12) — a detour taken for one item · Passing Finds: crosses the Hulls and the Graveyard — rolled 8, 5 → a free Cache roll (7: somebody's tools, still laid out in order — MS engineering at −6 DY), then nothing MS-14 Gelgoog (10 / 13) · Minovsky physics (14 / 2) · MS piloting (8 / 1) · MS engineering (6 / 1) · an original companion (8 / 6) · one Vessel, free from Crew Destination: Star Trek — Class II, Divergent (14) + before it starts (0) + manufactured identity (8) = 22 DY 80 of 101 · WT 23 of 45

26 of those days — the physics and the detour to reach it — bought nothing but the right to turn the key. Skip it and the Gelgoog is a statue, or you take Running On Fumes and start counting starts. The suit itself cost 10. Making it work somewhere that never heard of Minovsky cost more than twice that. Term: Be Recognised.

Build F — "Two Halves of Nothing" · A Crew · Chimera

Easy · A Year and a Day (DY 130 / WT 45) [MANDATORY: Noticed +14] · A Crew (+15 WT) · Berth: A Wreck (+10 DY) [MANDATORY: one Flaw on the vessel — Borrowed cockpit] · Made Vessel (+10 WT → WT 70) Route: Shallows (0) + Hulls (8) + Yards (12) = 20 DY · Passing Finds: crosses the Graveyard — rolled 9 → a free dig there, Weight only. Rolled 2: a stranger who owes you (6 WT) Donors: MS-06 Zaku II (6 DY) + F-15 Kagerou (9 DY) · Chimera (20 DY / WT 20, not 24) [MANDATORY: one Flaw — Reads as hostile] Modifications: Lightened frame (3 / −2) · cockpit reinforcement (4 / 1) · Ace custom (8 / 0) [MANDATORY: Known Silhouette +12] Loadouts: mount pylon configuration (5 / 2) · national loadout, second pack at −3 (3 / 2) · swap rig (8 / 3) Cross-universe spares field (24 / 14) MS piloting (8 / 1) · MS engineering (12 / 1) · an original companion (8 / 6) · one Vessel free from Crew Destination: BattleTech — Class I (8) + deep middle (6) + anonymous (0) [MANDATORY: No Name +8] Posture: Improvised — free · Introduction: Reverse-Engineered DY 152 of 174 · WT 54 of 70 — the free companion cost nothing but the room to stand in

Days are the wall and weight isn't close — the inverse of every other build here, because Field Work costs time rather than mass. It never buys Minovsky physics and doesn't need to: a Chimera can't be Self-Sufficient at any price, and Improvised is free. What the 24 days go on instead is the cross-universe spares field, which converts "how long can this thing last" into "as long as I keep feeding it."

What lands on a BattleTech world is half Zeon, half Imperial Japanese fighter, in somebody's personal colours, with two swappable loadouts and an IFF that reads hostile to everyone including its own side. And in five years the Successor States have all of it. Term: Change One Thing.

Build H — "Nobody Signed Anything" · A Crew + Force (Irregular)

Easy · A Year and a Day (DY 130 / WT 45) [MANDATORY: Noticed +14] A Crew (+15 WT) · Berth: A Wreck (+10 DY) [MANDATORY: one Flaw on the vessel — Ghost reactor] A Force (−15 DY, +45 WT) · Formation: Irregular — §8 at −3 DY, holdings +4, [LOCK: Administration] Made Vessel (+10 WT) → DY 125 · WT 115 Burdens: Noticed (+14), Debt (+10), No Name (+8), Superstitious Crew (+5) = +37 → DY 162 Route: Shallows (0) + Hulls (8) + Yards (12) = 20 DY · Passing Finds: crosses the Graveyard — rolled 6 → a clear lane (+2 DY) Fleet command (10 / 1) · a cruiser at Force, −3 Irregular (13 / 22) · a squadron of six, −3 (11 / 40) · a production line, −3 (15 / 16) · Rk-92 Savage (5 / 11) · MS piloting (8 / 1) · MS engineering (12 / 1) · a spares crate (6 / 4) · an original companion (8 / 6) Destination: Post Disaster (10) + deep middle (6) + anonymous (0) + Force surcharge (10) = 26 DY 132 of 162 · WT 102 of 115

Weight is the wall, which is correct for a Force — days to spare and nothing left to carry them in. Irregular's −3 across §8 paid for the whole production line, and the Administration lock is why there's nobody running any of it. What lands on Mars is a broken ship, six suits, one factory, a crew with rules about the machine nobody wrote down, and a debt. Term: Hold the Ground.

Build I — "The Chair Was Already There" · A Crew + Nation (Inherited)

Easy · A Year and a Day (DY 130 / WT 45) [MANDATORY: Noticed +14] A Crew (+15 WT) · Berth: A Carrier (+10 WT) · companion cap 5 A Nation (−35 DY, +100 WT) · Legitimacy: Inherited [MANDATORY: They Have Not Changed] · population −8 DY The Old Face (+20 DY) [MANDATORY: Remembered] → DY 115 · WT 170 Burdens: Noticed (+14), Remembered (+10), They Have Not Changed (+12), Someone Has To Run It (+12) = +48 of the 50 cap → DY 163 Route: Hulls (8) + Yards (12) + Colony Graveyard (10) = 30 DY Fleet command (10 / 1) · Politics (8 / 1) · production at Nation (30 / 28) · supply chain bought down to Force (14 / 8) · colony cylinder at Nation (30 / 55) · a million people, −8 Inherited (12 / 35) · Administration bought down to Force (12 / 6) · a Carrier, free from Crew (0 / 30) Destination: Unspecified (0) + Nation surcharge (10) DY 156 of 163 · WT 164 of 170 — both walls

Set this against Build C. Same tier, same Nation, opposite Personal Scale. C is a Solo Pilot: no ship, no crew, Two Jobs saying flatly that nobody is minding the country while he flies. I is a Crew: five people, a carrier, no Two Jobs at all — and it still has no mobile suit, because §7 doubles at Nation scale regardless of who's beside you. What changes isn't capability. It's whether there is anyone to hand the work to.

**The Bind: Hold the Ground and Nothing Survives.** You inherited a country that was already there and you are required both to keep it standing and to watch it end. The story is which promise breaks first.

Build J — "Everything I Could Still Lift" · Passage Three · Solo Pilot [§19]

Passages One and Two, in summary. P1 was a Crew: a Zaku II (12), Minovsky physics (2), a companion (6), a courier hull (8). Burdens No Name, Debt. P2 added an M9 Gernsback (11), ECS (2), uprated thrusters (1), applique armour (3), a spares crate (4), a loadout pack (2), and a canon minor (6). Burdens Noticed, Known Silhouette. Carried into Passage Three: 57 WT. Knowledge — piloting, field engineering, cryptography — carries free.

Passage Three · Normal · Solo Pilot (+10 DY) · Approach: The Ghost · Borrowed Flesh (+15 DY) Pools: DY 105 · WT 35 + 12 Stowage = 47 Ledger: Noticed (standing) · all dig costs +2 Standing Burdens: No Name, Debt, Noticed, Known Silhouette — all still true, all refunding zero New Burden: Late (+8) → DY 113

Forced abandonment. 57 carried against 47. The courier hull goes first and not by choice — a Solo Pilot cannot hold a §8 Vessel at all. That's 8. Still two over, so the applique armour goes too. Kept: the Zaku, the M9, Minovsky, ECS, thrusters, the spares crate, the loadout pack, both companions — 46 of 47.

Route: Shallows (0) · Scrounging, new so +6 novelty surcharge (11 / 1) → WT 47 of 47 Destination: UC (16) + deep middle (6) + anonymous (0) = 22 — No Name has been standing since Passage One, so it refunds nothing here DY 33 of 113 · WT 47 of 47

Eighty unspendable days, because there is nowhere left to put anything. That is the chain working exactly as designed and it is not comfortable to look at. The companion survived this Passage by three points of armour. At Passage Four, with Stowage at +18 against a carried load that only grows, they are the largest single thing left to cut — and cutting them costs What You Left. Term: You Are Replaceable.

Build K — "Whatever The Star Gave Me" · A Crew · built entirely by digging [§16]

Normal · A Long Season (DY 80 / WT 35) · A Crew (+15 WT) · Berth: A Carrier (+10 WT) · Made Vessel (+10 WT → WT 70) Exclusions: Cosmic Era free (it's the destination) · preference: Evangelion, Super Robot Burdens: Known Silhouette (+12), Debt (+10), Late (+8), Superstitious Crew (+5) = +35 → DY 115

Destination: Cosmic Era (14) + deep middle (6) + a manufactured identity (8) = 28 DY 112 of 115 · WT 63 of 70

What the dig actually bought. Those same items chosen off the rosters — Zaku 6, Gekishin 5, Tallgeese 18, Minovsky 14, Lancelot 24, Haro 4, companion 8, plus the two freebies at 18 — run 97 DY of goods. Digging for them cost 34. Against 50 days of transit either way, that's 147 to buy versus 84 to dig.

And it is carrying three machines it cannot use at once, one of which it never wanted and cannot swing a sword with. The Tallgeese is there because a Jaeger came up and there was nobody to Drift with. That is the trade working: days saved, weight squandered, and a build shaped by what the Forge happened to have rather than by what anyone decided. Term: It Did Not Matter.

Build L — "The Long Way Round" · Solo Pilot · Focus dig · psycommu

Normal · A Long Season (DY 80 / WT 35) · Solo Pilot (+10) · Approach: The Stray (+6) · Newtype-Pattern (RS 25, −20 DY) [MANDATORY: The Weight of Others +15] Burdens: Running On Fumes (+12, chosen — see below) · No Name (+8) → DY 111 · WT 35 · RS 25 Route: Shallows (0) + Deep Field (20) = 20 DY · Passing Finds: crosses the Hulls, Graveyard and Yards — rolled 2, 5, 4 → nothing, three times Focus dig, Deep Field: 10 + 5 Focus = 15 DY, declared on Universal Century → rerolled to 3: MSN-04 Sazabi (18 WT) Cache 5 → one Universal Modification free: uprated thrusters (0 / 1) Funnels · Bits (16 / 3) [GATE: RS ≥ 15] ✓ · Ace-grade piloting (16 / 1) Resonance: The Flash (10) + Contact (12) = 22 of 25 Destination: UC (16) + deep middle (6) + anonymous (0) = 22 Posture: Running On Fumes — no Minovsky physics bought DY 89 of 111 · WT 23 of 35 · RS 22 of 25

The first build whose wall is Resonance. Days and weight both have slack — a Focus dig is efficient, and 15 DY for a Sazabi is the best price in any example here — but RS runs out three points from the end, and Funnels alone consumed the gate that made the whole build possible.

It also takes Running On Fumes on purpose. Minovsky physics was affordable at 14 and the build declined it: this pilot wants the clock. A Sazabi with a finite number of starts, no name, no flag, and funnels she cannot explain to anyone. Term: The Machine Dies — which, having bought the countdown deliberately, is less a condition than a schedule.

Build C — "Somewhere To Put Them" · Solo Pilot + Nation

Easy · A Year and a Day (DY 130 / WT 45 / RS +5) · Solo Pilot (+10 → 140) · Approach: The Ghost · Nation (−35 DY, +100 WT → DY 105, WT 145) · Legitimacy: Recognised — Administration −6 · The Old Face (+20 → DY 125) Mandatory: Noticed (+14), Someone Has To Run It (+12), Remembered (+10), Two Jobs (+14) = +50, exactly the cap → DY 175 Route: Hulls (8) + Yards (12) + Colony Graveyard (10) = 30 DY Fleet command (10 / 1) · Politics (8 / 1) · Production at Nation (30 / 28) · supply chain at Nation (24 / 16) · colony cylinder at Nation (30 / 55) · a million people (20 / 35) · Administration bought down to Force, −6 Recognised (6 / 6) · battlefield medicine (6 / 1) Destination: Unspecified (0) + Nation surcharge (+10) DY 174 of 175 · WT 143 of 145 — both walls, within a hair

No Gundam. Not one — §7 costs double here and there was never room, even after maxing every refund in the document. Term: It Outlives You. Someone who remembers exactly who they used to be, founding a country in a timeline that isn't named, with a foundry and a million people and no personal way to defend either.

Collapse section16. THE DIG — optional rule

You are standing in a junkyard. You could look for something specific. You could also just start pulling.

16.1 How it works

1. Travel to a region and pay its transit cost as normal.
2. Declare a dig and pay the region's dig cost below — roughly half what choosing would run you.
3. Roll d20 on that region's table. That is what you found.
4. Pay the item's Weight in full. You carry what you dug up; the discount is on the searching, not the hauling.
5. Reroll once if you like, by paying the dig cost again — but you must take the second result.

Dig as often as you like, but the ground gets worked over. The first dig in a region costs the listed price. Every dig after that, in the same region, costs 5 DY more than the one before it — 15, 20, 25 at the Quiet Star. You are searching a place you have already searched.

You cannot decline a dig. What you pull out is on the sheet and its Weight is spent, whether you have any use for it or not. You may trade down if it's gated (below), and if you're chaining you may abandon it next Passage (§19.3) — but not today. This is the whole cost of the discount: the dig is cheap in days and profligate in weight, and a build that digs repeatedly ends up carrying things it will never use.

Gates still bind. If you dig up something you can't legally take — a Jaeger with no companion, a Unicorn without RS 20, a §8 line without an Organizational Scale — you may either pay to meet the gate, or trade down free to the nearest thing on the same table you can take. The Forge does not hand you a prize you're unable to lift.

16.1b Narrowing the search

Exclusions. Name a universe and you will not dig it up. Roll normally; any result from an excluded universe is rerolled free and does not consume your paid reroll. No table rewriting, no gaps.

• Your destination's universe is always excluded free, and never counts against your cap. If you're landing in the Cosmic Era, a GINN is something you can requisition when you get there — spending Forge days on one is spending the rarest resource you have on the most available thing you'll find.
• Preference exclusions are capped by Allotment tier: Free unlimited · Easy 4 · Normal 3 · Hard 2 · Hardcore 0.

Hardcore gets none. You take what the Forge gives you; that's most of what the tier means.

Focus — the inverse. Declare a single universe and reroll until you hit it. Costs +5 DY per dig, and be warned: some regions carry only one or two entries from any given universe, so a Focus dig in the wrong region is a long afternoon for a foregone conclusion. Check the table before you commit.

Focus and Exclusion cannot be combined on the same dig. Pick a posture.

16.2 The Shallows · d20

16.3 The Hulls · d20

16.4 The Yards · d20

16.5 The Colony Graveyard · d20

16.6 The Deep Field · d20

16.7 The Quiet Star · d20

16.8 The Cache · d20

Roll once, free, after any dig. Something else was drifting with it — a piece of debris that came in on the same current and settled alongside.

Cache results ignore region. Whatever drifted in alongside came from wherever it came from, so it does not matter where you are standing — a Haro found at the Quiet Star is still a Haro. Gates, caps, and Weight still apply, and where a result would break one, the result says so.

16.9 The Deep Cache · d10

Only on a 20 above — or on any dig in the Deep Field or the Quiet Star. Once per build. Everything on this table is the best outcome in the document, and a table you can roll on repeatedly is not a table, it is a supply.

16.10 The Voice's Choosing · d20

For Hardcore's mandatory Burdens, or any time you'd rather not decide. Said to you at the start, while you could still hear it — you spend the rest of the visit finding out what it meant.

Rolling twice on Hardcore may produce the same result — reroll duplicates.

16.11 Full Random — the whole thing

For maximum chaos: roll d5 for Allotment tier, d2 for Personal Scale, d3 for Organizational, d8 for Form, then dig for everything. Take the first legal Destination your loot suggests.

You will not get a coherent build. That is the appeal — the document stops being a wish list and becomes a hand you were dealt, which is a much better prompt than anything you'd have chosen.

Collapse section1. HOW TO USE THIS

Two things this document does that others don't, worth knowing before you spend anything:

Resonance cannot be bought. It comes from your Form (§5) and nothing else — and a wrong Form strands it at zero. Still Formless locks it entirely; Borrowed Flesh caps it at 10. Pick your Form before you plan anything psychic.

Transit is a cost. Every region charges days to reach before you buy anything in it. The Quiet Star is 30 days before you have picked up a single thing, and it is the line most often missing from a total that doesn't add up.

Work in this order. The page opens in it — the Voice, then Ambition, Allotment and Form — and then diverges: §12 and §13 sit late on the page and come early in the build.

Record it on the build sheet (§18) and run the checklist before you call it done.

Two optional systems, either or both: §16 The Dig replaces choosing with rolling, at roughly half price. §19 The Chain covers coming back a second time, and what that costs you.

If you stall out: read your Burdens. They're the only section that generates conflict without you.

Collapse section2. THE THREE POOLS

Days and Weight are independent walls. All the time in the multiverse won't get a Big Zam and a Turn A out the same door.

"Free" means free in days. Weight is always paid. Every grant in this document — a Standing Condition, a Cache result, a Form, a Berth, an Allotment perk — waives the cost of finding a thing, never the cost of carrying it. A free Knowledge pick still weighs 1. A Crew's free Vessel still weighs what a Vessel weighs. Nothing you take out of here is weightless because somebody gave it to you.

The single exception is marked where it occurs: Ace custom (§7C.1) costs 0 WT by design, because paint is not cargo.

And a grant only reaches as far as you did. A Standing Condition, an Allotment perk, a Berth's free Vessel — these give you something you found, so it has to come from a region you actually travelled to. You cannot be handed a Quiet Star knowledge while standing in the Shallows.

Form grants are the exception, and the reason is the whole distinction: those are not things you found. They are things you are. An Alaya-Native arrives with the implant already in them, thirty days from where it lies, because it was never lying anywhere — it was in their spine. Nature ignores the map. Salvage does not.

Refund caps are set by your Allotment tier (§4) — +50/+25 at Normal, tighter as difficulty rises, absent on Free. RS is available only through Resonance Bleed.

Notation: [GATE: x] requires · [LOCK: x] forbids · [GRANTS: x] unlocks · [MANDATORY: x] forces, and its refund still counts against your cap

2.1 How the tables are built

Every priced table in this document uses one of four shapes. A dash means the column doesn't apply.

One table states its Weight in the heading instead of a column: §9B Knowledge is WT 1 for every entry, without exception. Everything else carries its own numbers.

2.2 Quick reference — the modifiers that apply retroactively

These are set early and change prices later. They are the easiest thing in the document to forget.

Collapse section17. DESIGNER NOTES

Why the mechanics are shaped this way, for anyone editing them later. The full build log — every audit pass, what each one found, and the failure modes that recur — is in DESIGN-NOTES.md, where it belongs.

The load-bearing decisions

Days and Weight are two independent walls. One pool collapses into "buy the best thing." Two force a shape on every build: the worked examples hit weight, days, and both, and each is a different story.

Resonance costs a Form, never days. It is the multiverse's most-abused element. Making it cost your shape means it can never be an accessory bolted onto an otherwise normal build. It is also the only pool that can be stranded — check your Form before planning around it.

Ambition is two picks because the archetype demands it. Char, Treize, Gihren, McGillis. Forcing a choice between "ace" and "power" would exclude most of the genre's best antagonists from their own document. Two Jobs is what the combination costs, and it costs attention rather than points.

A Nation cannot have a Gundam. Territory and population are the heaviest lines here and §7 doubles at that scale. This is the sharpest constraint in the document and it is deliberate: it forces nation-scale stories to be about industry and legitimacy rather than one protagonist punching well.

A Force buys objects; a Nation buys systems. The same §8 row means different things by scale. That is why the Force tier's incompleteness is a feature — everything an acquisition didn't come with is the plot.

Significance sinks. The map sorts by how much a thing mattered to the place that built it. Two consequences: depth buys solitude, and what mattered most is nearest the thing that unmakes it.

Physics Compliance asks what it costs to keep a machine running, never whether it runs. An earlier version said a Gelgoog without Minovsky physics was a statue — which deletes the exact story a writer came to tell. Improvised is free and is a complete answer.

"Free" means free in days. Weight is always paid. Every grant waives the cost of finding a thing, never of carrying it. And a grant reaches only as far as you did — except Form grants, which are not things you found but things you are.

Burdens may exceed the refund cap. Past the ceiling they pay nothing and are simply true. A build carrying six uncompensated Burdens has stopped shopping and started writing, which is the behaviour this whole document exists to produce.

Randomness is a discount, not a challenge mode. The Dig costs about half of choosing, and the price of the discount is that you cannot decline what you pull out. Hours saved, weight squandered.

The rosters stop at piloted war machines. Destinations span all of science fiction; the salvage does not. A Zaku II, a Knightmare Frame and a BattleMech are comparable objects. A Star Destroyer is not, and pricing one against the other is where every crossover point-buy collapses.

Two standing rules for anything added later

Search the document for a name before committing to it. Six naming collisions have already occurred — Posture, Berth, Formation, Hulls, Hold, Drifter — every one from giving a thing and a category of things the same noun. A document that prices objects and also groups them will keep doing this.

Run tools/check.py and tools/xref.py after any structural edit. Seconds each, and they catch the failure this document is most prone to: a heading changes and something pointing at it silently stops resolving. Five contents links were dead for many revisions before a parser found them. No amount of reading had.

Open

1. Nobody outside this project has read it. Zero playtests, zero external readers. Sixteen consistency passes and roughly seventy fixes have taken internal rigour about as far as inspection can — and the highest-value unknown, does anyone want this, is still untouched. The next hour is worth more spent on one reader than on another pass.
2. Costs are calibrated by feel. Build a few characters against them and the wrong numbers will announce themselves fast.
3. Dig costs run cheap — Build K digs for 84 what would cost 147 to choose, nearer 40% of list than the stated half. If it needs a fix, raise the far-region dig costs rather than the Shallows.
4. The Chain is verified at Passage Three and nowhere else. Passage Six — Stowage at +30, five Ledger entries, the Voice no longer setting your Term — is entirely untested.
5. §12.6 Introduction has no mechanical hooks. Reverse-Engineered and It Becomes Doctrine imply consequences a Force or Nation would feel directly. Left inert deliberately: a free choice that quietly changes your economy is a trap.
6. Fit classes are coarse. Five buckets over ~sixty settings. Halo is arguably Class I on the ground and Class II in orbit; Stargate spans three across its own runtime.
7. Approach and Berth are lighter than Formation and Legitimacy. Only the latter two reach into §8. That asymmetry may be fine or may want evening out once someone builds against it.
8. No deep cuts. Nothing from Thunderbolt, Crossbone, MSV, Hathaway, or SD.
9. Non-mecha rosters are a supplement, not a gap. If that boundary ever opens it should come with its own pools rather than more rows here.

Collapse section18. THE BUILD SHEET

Copy this. Fill it in as you go. The order matches §1.

18.1 Before you call it finished

• Every machine has a posture. Self-Sufficient, Improvised, or Running On Fumes — one per machine, per §12.5. Improvised is free and is a complete answer.
• Every gate is met. Jaegers need companions and the Drift. Funnels need RS. Aldnoah and the Takemikazuchi need A Bloodline (§5.1). Mobile Fighters need Mobile Fighter martial arts (§9B.1). The Lambda Driver needs RS above zero.
• Named characters ≤ your cap. 1 · 4 (5 as Carrier) · 6 · 8.
• Modifications ≤ 3 per machine. Loadout packs are uncapped; changing them in the field needs a swap rig.
• Refunds ≤ cap. Anything past it still counts as taken — it just pays nothing.
• Chimera resolved. Both donor technologies, a cross-universe spares field, or Improvised and acknowledged.
• RS isn't stranded. Still Formless locks Resonance. Unspent RS converts to nothing.
• You paid transit for every region you shopped in. The easiest line to forget, and the one that breaks totals most often.
• Every "free" thing still paid its Weight. Free waives days, never carrying (§2). A free Knowledge weighs 1; a free Vessel weighs what a Vessel weighs.
• Every grant came from a region you visited. Standing Conditions, Allotment perks and Berths reach only as far as you did. Form grants are exempt.
• Your Term is reachable with what you actually ended up carrying.

If a build fails one of these, it isn't invalid — it's unfinished. Go back one section, not to the start.

18.2 Chain addendum — only if you're running §19

Collapse section19. THE CHAIN — optional rules

The Voice said "your next adventure." It was not being poetic.

19.1 What this is

Each visit to the Forge is a Passage. Passage One is the document exactly as written. Everything below governs Passage Two and after.

Nothing here is required. A single Passage is a complete document and most writers should stop there. Run the chain when the interesting question stops being what did you take and becomes what has this been doing to you.

You arrive back with no shape, and for a little while you can hear it again. That is what a Passage begins with and it is the only part that does not cost anything. Then you take a Form, and the quiet comes back, and you spend the rest of the visit working alone as you did the last time.

Whatever else the Chain is about, it is also this: the only thing in the multiverse that cannot leave has found the one thing that keeps coming back.

19.2 What carries over

Ambition and Allotment are re-chosen every Passage. You are not locked into being a Crew because you were one last time.

Stowage: each completed Passage grants a permanent +6 WT. You have learned how to pack. This is the only pool that grows, it grows slowly, and it does not keep pace with what you accumulate.

This is the whole balance of the chain. Stowage adds 6; a single new machine costs 11 to 16. Everything you kept eats the new pool before you buy anything, and every Burden you ever took is still true and no longer paying for itself.

The pressure is not toward power. It is toward deciding what you can put down.

Personal Scale decides how fast this bites. A Crew (+15 WT) and a Made Vessel (+10 WT) can haul three Passages of accumulation. A Solo Pilot cannot, and is forced into abandonment years earlier — which is correct, and is the fiction working: one person in one cockpit was never going to carry a museum. Worked example J is exactly this case.

19.3 Leaving things behind

At the start of any Passage you may abandon anything you carry, free and without limit. Where it goes is a story you do not get to write.

Abandoning a companion costs [MANDATORY: What You Left]. There is no version of this that is free.

19.4 What the Forge remembers — The Ledger

Add one entry per completed Passage, in order. They accumulate and do not lapse.

19.5 Prices on a return visit

• Anything you have taken in a previous Passage: −4 DY. It burned with everything else and the system has refilled since — but something like it is here again, and you know what you are looking for and what it costs to lift.
• Anything new: +3 DY per completed Passage. The rosters are not as generous as they were.

Repetition gets cheaper and novelty gets dearer, which pushes a long chain toward either deep specialisation or open strain. Both are stories. Neither is an accident.

19.6 Continuity — choose once, at Passage Two

• Separate — each Passage is its own story. Nothing connects but you.
• Sequential — one protagonist, many worlds, one arc. The default.
• Convergent [GATE: Passage 4+] — the destinations have started leaking into one another, and something you did three Passages ago is standing in this one.

19.7 The Narrowing — optional, on top of optional

Each Passage steps your Allotment down one tier — Easy → Normal → Hard → Hardcore, and Hardcore thereafter.

For chains that should get worse. It is not recommended and it is extremely effective.

19.8 Ending a chain

The Last Passage is the only place in this document where the pools double. You are permitted to spend everything because there is no next time to save for, and that is the point — a chain that ends deliberately is worth more than one that trails off.

Collapse section20. THE FIRST PAGE

Everything before this was the search. This is the part it was for.

Your sheet is already an outline. You did not fill in a character; you answered the questions a story needs answered before it can start. Here is what you actually wrote down:

20.1 The questions your build asked

Every choice raises something only you can answer. A sample — find yours, then find the ones this table doesn't list.

20.2 Three ways in, keyed to how you arrived

Anonymous, no papers. Open in the middle of a problem. Explain nothing. The reader learns what you are at the same rate the locals do.

A manufactured identity. Open on the lie — someone using a name that isn't theirs and doing it well. The tension is maintenance, not discovery.

Already in a cockpit, already moving. Open in motion. No arrival scene at all. You were thrown, and the story starts after you stopped tumbling.

20.3 The exercise — do this before you plan anything

Write the moment the burning throws you. Three hundred words.

You may not explain the Forge. Not the star, not the counting, not the Voice, not what you traded. Nobody your protagonist is about to meet has heard of any of it, and the reader does not need it yet.

Write only what it is like to arrive: the physical fact of it, what you are holding, and the first thing you see that tells you where you are.

Exposition is how documents like this one produce bad fiction — a writer finishes a build and opens with a tour of the mechanics. Forbidding it for three hundred words breaks the habit before it forms. Whatever you write here is very likely your real opening.

20.4 If you stall

Read your Burdens. They are the only part of the sheet that generates conflict without you. If a scene will not start, it is usually because you are writing the part of the story where nothing is going wrong.

Then check your Term. If you cannot see how the story reaches it from where you are, you have found your middle.

One line, before you go. On the sheet there is a space marked First line. Fill it in now, while the build is still warm. It does not have to be good and you are allowed to throw it away — but a document that ends without a sentence in it was a shopping trip, and this was supposed to be a story.