Palettes — Genre Reading Layers

A palette tells you what a Lens result looks like in your genre. It changes flavour, never mechanics — except the Dial, which says when to reach for the d12. Keep one open beside the tables, or set it in the play tool to see its notes as you roll.

Heroic Fantasy · Cosmic Horror · Science Fiction · Cyberpunk · Crime & Modern · Norse Mythic

Lens Palette

Heroic Fantasy — Genre Palette

A player-facing lookup. Keep it open beside the table you are rolling. It does not add rules; it tells you what a Lens result looks like in this genre.

High and heroic fantasy as a reading layer — sword and spell, dungeon and court, the long road and the doomed stand. It runs under any fantasy-adventure game, or under emergent play with no scenario.

This genre’s clocks fill mostly with Threat and Clue, and the Uncanny is never far. Most commits arrive on-screen; Reputation and the Uncanny settle away from you.

1. The Dial

The Dial is the only part of this palette that changes mechanics. Everything else only changes reading.

Grounded (d10). The mortal, dangerous world: steel, road, court, coin, wilderness, the dungeon as a built place. Magic is rare and quiet. L20 covers rare mastery, a captain who bends a battle, a name that lands like a weapon. Entries 11–12 do not fire; L21 is off.

Heightened (d12). Magic is loud and the world acts as more than itself: spells reshape events, the dead walk, gods and great powers attend, the planes press through. L20 and L21 are live; entries 11–12 on every table are live.

Turn the Dial by the moment, roll to roll — reach for d12 the breath the world turns overtly magical (a spell cast, a god’s answer, a dragon waking, a ward flaring), and let it go when the beat is steel and road again. Nothing locks.

2. Tag Reconciliation

Each tag, as it lands, as it builds, and as it commits. The commit face: Convergent arrives where you stand; Divergent was settled away from you and you find the world already changed. Read the dominant tag on the clock to know which face is coming.

Tag	Commit face	When it lands	When it builds	When it commits
Control	Convergent	An order from a lord. A gate barred. A law of the land cited. A debt of fealty called.	The escort becomes a guard. The audience is refused. Your writ stops opening doors.	Outlawed, oath-bound, or geas-laid. Lands attainted. The succession or marriage decided over your head.
Threat	Convergent	A blade half-drawn. A warhorn. A patrol on the road. A challenge thrown down.	More steel. The warband musters. The pass is held against you.	Battle joined — the ambush sprung, the keep stormed, the duel to the last — in front of you.
Exposure	Convergent	You are recognised. A name spoken. A hood pulled back.	Your trail is read, your purpose guessed, the wrong court knows you ride.	The gate is shut when you arrive; the trap is laid; they were waiting.
Cost	Convergent	Coin from the purse. A favour spent. A blade notched, a horse blown.	Supplies thin. The company fewer — fewer swords, fewer friends.	Nothing left to spend; the road has taken its toll; the debt falls due.
Pressure	Convergent	A short temper. A hand that trembles. Fear, grief, or exhaustion showing through.	The party frays. Argument at the fire. The leader is questioned aloud.	It breaks in the open — a rash oath, a desertion, a blow struck among friends — now, watched.
Clue	Convergent	A track. A sigil. A rumour. A page you can read.	The shape comes clear — who betrays, where the vault lies, what the enemy means to do.	The truth lands where you stand: the secret door, the traitor named, the true name spoken.
Reputation	Divergent	Standing shifts. Someone is praised in hall, someone made small.	The court’s favour leans. Who is seated where changes. Alliances tilt a new way.	Settled away from you: the song the bard makes once you have ridden on, the door that will not open next time, your name now said differently in halls you have not reached.
Uncanny	Divergent	Something past nature. A chill with no cause. A carved eye that follows.	The natural rules give way. Steel and courage stop being enough. The world tilts toward the numinous.	It was always so; you only now see it. The ward was already broken. The crown was always cursed. It cannot be unmade.

Reputation and the Uncanny commit divergent because this genre settles them off-stage: a name is made in halls you are not in, and the old powers were always already what they are. The other six arrive in front of you.

3. Translation Guide

For each table: what it usually means here, what to picture first (enough to start a scene cold), and which tags tend to dominate.

#	Table	Usually means here	Picture first	Dominant
L1	Suspicion	A gut yes/no: is he lying, is the bridge sound, is this welcome a trap, does the omen hold.	The smile that doesn’t reach the eyes. The toll set too high. The shrine left strangely untended.	Clue, Pressure
L2	Crossing a Threshold	Passing a gate, a ward-line, a border, the dungeon mouth — or crossing into a realisation. You are judged as you cross.	Who meets you and who stays seated. The arms hung above the door. The air changing as you step through.	Control, Uncanny
L3	Read the Situation	Sizing a hall, a warband, a market, a ruin before you commit — strength, mood, who truly holds it.	What is richer or poorer than it should be. The empty throne. The blade kept close, the door left open.	Clue, Threat
L4	Disposition	Reading one person or court — temper, honour, intent, whether they have already decided about you.	Where the hands rest. The title used or withheld. The question they do not ask.	Reputation, Pressure
L5	Make the Move	Opening contact, raising the stakes, naming the unspoken, the line in a parley meant to land.	The greeting offered or refused. The distance held. The silence before a name is given.	Reputation, Threat
L6	Terms and Leverage	Bargaining over real stakes — gold, passage, a boon, a marriage, a truce, a relic.	The opening price. What is left unsaid. The oath named, the third party invoked.	Cost, Control
L7	Masks and Status	Rank made visible — the seat, the cup, who is named, who bows. To be slighted in hall is no small thing.	Where you are placed. The richness of the welcome. Who fails to rise when you enter.	Reputation, Control
L8	Under Watch	Being weighed — by a rival’s house, a lord’s men, the guild, or something at the wood’s edge unseen.	The question asked twice. The page who lingers. The eyes from the gallery.	Exposure, Pressure
L9	Performance and Spectacle	Feast, boast, oath, song, the rite before the court. Renown is made, tested, and recorded before all.	The hall gone quiet. The weight of who watches. The breath before you speak.	Reputation, Cost
L10	Hidden Knowledge	Reading a tome, a map, a ledger, runes, a warded scroll — the truth lives in the content.	The word that recurs. The seal that is wrong. The line written in a later hand.	Clue, Uncanny
L11	Hidden Mechanism	A trapped chest, a warded door, a rigged span, a pressure-plate — mortal craft or magic ward.	The flagstone that sits proud. The way too convenient. The lock with no dust on it.	Clue, Cost
L12	Hidden Presence and Place	Reading a space for what it hides — a crypt, a throne-room, a ruined hall: is something here, watching, or wrong?	The cold spot. The door that will not stay shut. The silence where birdsong should be.	Threat, Uncanny
L13	Operation and Infiltration	The heist, the night approach, slipping the watch, the plan in motion against a keep or vault.	The guard out of place. The postern barred early. The signal that does not come.	Exposure, Pressure
L14	The Shape of Violence	Melee, duel, ambush, last stand, the thing in the dark. Every blow is felt from inside.	The blade half-drawn. The eyes with no fear in them. The space too narrow to flee.	Threat, Cost
L15	Pursuit and Chases	Horse over moor, flight through forest, the run for the gate, the hunt through ruins. Ground and dark decide it.	The torchlight behind. The path narrowing. The gap opening or closing.	Threat, Pressure
L16	Temptation and the Offer	The cursed gold, the easy pact, the relic unguarded, the patron’s gift. Almost always a test of judgement.	Wealth with no owner near. Ease where there should be a ward. A price not named.	Cost, Control
L17	Sustained Deception	A false name, a hidden bloodline, the disguised exile, the spy at court. A false face costs to wear.	The habit that betrays you. The skill the disguise cannot explain. The lineage that will not bear scrutiny.	Exposure, Pressure
L18	The Waiting Game	The ambush held, the siege endured, the vigil kept, the watch on the wall through a long night.	The fire burning down. The cold settling in. The question of when to move.	Pressure, Cost
L19	Exposure and Hazard	Storm on the moor, the freezing pass, the choking mine, the blighted marsh. The land itself is the enemy.	The sky turning. The cold deepening. The torch guttering, the air gone wrong.	Cost, Pressure
L20	Invoke Power	Casting a spell, working a rite, calling on a god, drawing on a relic. Power costs and is noticed.	The hush before the word. The taste of it on the air. The mark it leaves behind.	Cost, Uncanny
L21	The Unseen Moves	d12 only. The dead walk, a god stirs, a curse bites, the planes bleed through. Old, patient, indifferent to valour.	A beast that behaves wrongly. A name carried on the wind. Being weighed by something with no eyes.	Uncanny
L22	Escalation and Fallout	Consequences land — a feud opened, a debt called, a lord’s wrath, a curse taking root, a realm shifting.	The messenger. The changed greeting. The gate that will not open. Your name said a new way.	Reputation, Cost
L23	Journeys and Travel	The road, the river, the mountain pass, the haunted wood. A journey is its own small world.	Reading the sky. The track underfoot. The growing distance from law and friend.	Cost, Pressure
L24	Rest and Recovery	The inn, the camp, the sanctuary, a winter in hall. Where you rest says whose bread you eat.	The fire. The watch set. Who sleeps easy and who does not.	Pressure, Reputation
L25	Bonds and Trust	Companions, sworn brotherhood, fealty, the fellowship forged on the road. Trust is earned in shared peril.	The shared cup. The unasked-for aid. The moment one risks all for another.	Reputation, Pressure

4. Specialist Notes

Recurring patterns that change how a tag reads in a situation you will hit more than once.

Magic raises the Dial, not the stakes. When a Heightened result Commits the Uncanny, the magic was always real — the ward already broken, the crown always cursed. It reveals the world; it does not inflate the mortal clock. Read an Uncanny commit as a truth uncovered, not a fresh danger added.

The dungeon is a place that watches. In a delve, L8 (Under Watch) and L12 (Hidden Presence) read the ruin itself as attentive — not a watcher with orders, but a place that has been waiting. Threat and the Uncanny dominate; an Exposure result means the place has noticed you, not a person.

Renown spends where you cannot see it. Reputation commits divergent: the bard’s song made after you ride out, the welcome — or the barred gate — at the next hall, the name spoken a new way in courts you have never entered. You meet it later, at the next threshold.

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Lens Palette

Cosmic Horror — Genre Palette

A player-facing lookup. Keep it open beside the table you are rolling. It does not add rules; it tells you what a Lens result looks like in this genre.

This is the reading layer where a person is a soft, brief arrangement of warmth and water set against a dark older than suns. Its furniture is the gas-lamp guttering in fog, the locked cabinet of a dead colleague’s papers, the marginalia in a hand that grows less human page by page, the coastline the new survey draws differently than the old, the dream you wake from already forgetting, the smell of the sea where there is no sea. Here the worst thing is not the monster but the proof — the moment the floor of the world tilts and does not tilt back. It runs under any cosmic-horror-adjacent game, or under emergent play with no scenario.

This genre’s clocks fill mostly with Clue, Pressure, and Uncanny — knowledge accreting toward a truth you cannot un-know, dread tightening like cold around the lungs, and the wrongness that has no rule. Clue and Pressure commit on-screen, in your hands and at your back; Uncanny settles away from you, in the structure of things, having been true all along.

1. The Dial

The Dial is the only part of this palette that changes mechanics. Everything else only changes reading.

Grounded (d10). The fragile ordinary: the researcher’s lamplit notes, the rain-slick street, the failing torch, the doctor’s certainty, the small warm routine of tea and locked doors. The vast is only a chill at the edge of the page. Entries 11–12 do not fire; L21 is off.

Heightened (d12). The indifferent vast is real and present: geometry that folds the wrong way, the thing beneath the floor, the dead that walk and remember you, the text that reads you back and knows your name. The cost is your sanity and your certainty, not your blood. L20 and L21 are live; entries 11–12 on every table are live.

Turn the Dial per roll; reach for d12 the breath the impossible proves real — the angle that cannot exist, the corpse that turns its head — and let it go when the beat is lamplight, paper, and rain again. Nothing locks.

2. Tag Reconciliation

Six tags arrive in front of you; two settle off-stage, having always been so. The commit face is what the tag looks like the instant it lands for good.

Tag	Commit face	When it lands	When it builds	When it commits
Control	Convergent	A steady hand, a planned exit, the lamp still burning.	You hold the room — the door bolted, the notes in order, the witness calm.	You set the terms: the séance you run, the wing you seal, the night you choose to dig.
Threat	Convergent	The footstep above an empty house. The wet thing dragging closer in the dark.	Something has noticed you and is coming nearer, unhurried.	It is upon you — the door bows inward, the hand closes on your sleeve, breath on your neck that is not warm.
Exposure	Convergent	A name spoken that you never gave. Your hiding place, found.	The cult learns your face; the journal you stole is missed; eyes turn your way.	You are seen and known — they have your address, your past, the thing you did, and they will use it.
Cost	Convergent	The tremor that will not stop. A memory you can no longer trust.	The mind frays — sleep won’t come, a fact won’t hold, a name slips.	Something is gone for good: a year of your life blank, a face you loved now strange, a certainty that will never return.
Pressure	Convergent	The clock you can’t read ticking faster. Walls of fog drawing in.	Dread tightens — the deadline nears, the air thins, the way out narrows.	The vise shuts: no time left, no exit, the tide at the door and rising.
Clue	Convergent	A symbol matching one you’ve seen. A date that lines up too neatly.	The pieces gather — a ledger, a photograph, a confession half-heard.	The truth assembles and cannot be un-known: you understand what it is, what it wants, and that it was always coming.
Reputation	Divergent	A colleague stops returning your letters. The word unstable in a file.	Quietly, off-stage, you become the one who saw things — the discredited, the watched.	It is settled in your absence: committed, dismissed, written out — your account no longer believed by anyone who matters.
Uncanny	Divergent	A chill with no source. Shadows that fall the wrong way. A door that was a wall.	The natural law thins; lamplight and reason stop being enough.	It was always so; you only now see it. The angle was always wrong. The thing beneath was always awake. It cannot be unmade.

Reputation and Uncanny are Divergent because neither answers to you in the moment: your standing is decided by others while you are elsewhere, and the wrongness was true before you arrived and remains true after you flee — you do not cause it, you only catch up to it.

3. Translation Guide

What each table covers in this genre, an image to open the scene cold, and the tags that dominate.

#	Table	Usually means here	Picture first	Dominant
L1	Suspicion	A gut read on whether a person, document, or memory is sound.	The signature that doesn’t match. The witness who won’t meet your eye. The clock that ticks at the wrong rate.	Clue
L2	Crossing a Threshold	Stepping into a tainted place, or into a realisation you can’t step back from.	The cellar door swinging in on cold air. The last word of a sentence you wish you hadn’t read.	Uncanny, Pressure
L3	Read the Situation	Sizing up a gathering, a ritual, a room of the seemingly-ordinary.	Faces lit from below by a single lamp. A circle of chairs, one too many. Mud on a parlour rug.	Clue, Threat
L4	Disposition	Reading one person, congregation, or presence — what it wants, how far gone.	Eyes too still in a smiling face. A preacher who never blinks. The way it tracks you without turning.	Clue, Threat
L5	Make the Move	Committing to act — opening the grave, confronting the elder, lighting the match.	The crowbar set to the coffin lid. The question asked aloud at last. The first stair down.	Control, Pressure
L6	Terms and Leverage	Bargaining over papers, silence, passage, or a body — with someone who holds the upper hand.	A sealed envelope slid halfway across a desk. The price named in a voice gone flat.	Exposure, Cost
L7	Masks and Status	Rank made visible — the institute, the order, the family name, who is permitted to know.	A signet ring pressed to wax. A locked floor only the directors enter. The deference of frightened men.	Reputation, Control
L8	Under Watch	Being weighed and surveilled — by a sect, an institution, a thing in the walls.	Curtains that twitch as you pass. A face at the train window that follows. Footsteps that stop when yours do.	Exposure, Threat
L9	Performance and Spectacle	Holding composure before an audience — a lecture, an inquest, a congregation you’ve infiltrated.	A hall of upturned faces awaiting your verdict. Your own hand shaking on the lectern.	Pressure, Exposure
L10	Hidden Knowledge	Examining text or artefact for what it conceals — and what reading it costs.	A page of script that swims when you focus. Diagrams that fold into impossible solids. Ink still wet on a dead man’s book.	Clue, Cost
L11	Hidden Mechanism	Engineered danger — wards, sigils, rigged tombs, devices built to keep something in or out.	A line of salt broken at one point. A lock with no keyhole. A bell wired to ring when the door is touched.	Uncanny, Threat
L12	Hidden Presence and Place	Reading a space for the door behind the door, the room that shouldn’t fit.	A hallway longer than the house. A draught from a sealed wall. A patch of floor that sounds hollow.	Uncanny, Clue
L13	Operation and Infiltration	Executing a plan against a sect or institution that must not catch you.	A stolen key warm in your fist. A guard’s lantern sweeping the corridor. The ledger open to the wrong page.	Control, Exposure
L14	The Shape of Violence	Combat from inside — desperate, brief, against men or the thing that does not bleed right.	The poker raised against a shape that won’t fall. A struggle in the dark by feel alone. Blows that land on something cold.	Threat, Cost
L15	Pursuit and Chases	Flight through fog, tunnels, or streets — or being driven somewhere you must not go.	Footfalls echoing in a stairwell with no bottom. Lantern-light bobbing closer behind. A door that won’t latch.	Pressure, Threat
L16	Temptation and the Offer	An advantage offered — forbidden knowledge, a cure, a pact — and what it asks back.	A book held out, unbidden. A whispered promise to make the dreams stop. A hand extended over an open grave.	Cost, Uncanny
L17	Sustained Deception	Holding a false face over time — inside the cult, the asylum, the family.	A smile worn so long it aches. A secret you mouth in your sleep. The role that’s eating the self beneath it.	Exposure, Cost
L18	The Waiting Game	Active vigil with stakes — the night watch, the stakeout, waiting for the thing to stir.	A candle burning down. A floorboard that creaks once, then again, closer. The long hush before the third hour.	Pressure, Uncanny
L19	Exposure and Hazard	The environment, the body, or the place itself as enemy — cold, decay, the air gone wrong.	Frost climbing the inside of a window. A wound that won’t close. Lungs full of a smell like the sea.	Pressure, Cost
L20	Invoke Power	Using a learned capability that bends local law — a rite, a word, a sigil drawn in earnest.	Chalk lines on bare stone beginning to smoke. A name spoken that the air refuses. The lamp flames bending toward you.	Uncanny, Cost
L21	The Unseen Moves	The vast presses in directly — the rule-breaking thing acts, unbidden and unstoppable (d12).	The corpse turning its head to face you. The horizon tilting that should not move. A second moon where there is one.	Uncanny
L22	Escalation and Fallout	Consequences landing — the truth out, the toll paid, the door that won’t shut now.	A telegram of a death you half-caused. The blank stare of someone who saw what you saw. Doors opening on their own.	Cost, Pressure
L23	Journeys and Travel	Travel as the situation — the night train, the boat to the island, the road that goes too far.	A coast that doesn’t match the map. A village no one will name. Mile-markers counting down to nothing.	Pressure, Uncanny
L24	Rest and Recovery	Downtime, and what the stillness lets in — sleep, dream, the quiet that won’t stay quiet.	Tea going cold in a steady hand. A dream you wake from already forgetting. The clock loud in an empty room.	Cost, Uncanny
L25	Bonds and Trust	A relationship deepened or tested — who you tell, who believes you, who you lose to the truth.	A friend’s face when you finally speak. A hand held in a dark that’s listening. The letter you can’t bring yourself to send.	Cost, Reputation

4. Specialist Notes

Clue is the slow poison. In most genres a Clue that Commits is a reward — the answer, clean and useful. Here it lands as Clue with Cost close behind, because understanding is the wound. When L10 Hidden Knowledge or L1 Suspicion commits the Clue, you have not solved the problem; you have joined it. Read the commit as a door closing behind you: you now know what it is, and knowing has changed what you are. The fact will not leave when you want it to.

Uncanny was always true — it never escalates, it reveals. When a Heightened result commits the Uncanny at L12, L20, or L21, resist reading it as the situation getting worse. The angle was always wrong; the thing beneath was always awake; you have merely arrived where you can no longer pretend otherwise. Picture the commit as a veil pulled from a structure that was complete before you were born. It does not raise the human clock — Pressure and Cost do that. It raises the Dial, and the floor of the world stays tilted.

Reputation is how the world unmakes the witness. Off-stage and out of your hands, your standing decays whenever you act on what you’ve seen — L7 Masks and Status, L9 Performance and Spectacle, L25 Bonds and Trust. When Reputation commits, it settles in rooms you aren’t in: the file marked unreliable, the colleagues who’ve already agreed you’re unwell, the family that has quietly decided. Read it as isolation tightening — not a single insult but a consensus formed in your absence, leaving you correct and alone, which in this genre is the same as doomed.

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Lens Palette

Science Fiction — Genre Palette

A player-facing lookup. Keep it open beside the table you are rolling. It does not add rules; it tells you what a Lens result looks like in this genre.

This is the working frontier read as a register: the hull and the hatch-seal, the patrol’s transponder ping, the contract with its hostile clauses, the recycler chewing scrubber-cartridges down to amber warning lights, the politics of who controls the dock and who pays the berthing fee. Tech is a tool with a maintenance schedule and a failure mode; the crew is a payroll and a set of grudges; the cargo is the reason and the risk. Out past the buoys it gets stranger — minds that wake in the machines, the silence between stars that has a shape, the alien that does not want what you want and may not want at all. It runs under any science-fiction-adjacent game, or under emergent play with no scenario.

This genre’s clocks fill mostly with Clue, Control, Cost, and Threat — the manifest that does not add up, the airlock cycling under someone else’s authority, the fuel and the favours bleeding away, the contact that turns hostile. Those four commit on-screen, in your face: the door opens, the gun comes up, the tank runs dry, the readout flatlines. Reputation and the Uncanny settle away from you — a name spreading through ports you have not reached, a wrongness that resolves where you are not looking.

1. The Dial

The Dial is the only part of this palette that changes mechanics. Everything else only changes reading.

Grounded (d10). The working-SF everyday: pressure hulls and patched seals, the salvage contract and its lawyer-language, the customs patrol matching your registry, life-support running on borrowed time, the long quiet feud over who runs the station. Tech behaves; it is built, it breaks, it gets fixed with the right part and the wrong improvisation. The alien is far off or merely rumoured. Entries 11–12 do not fire; L21 is off.

Heightened (d12). Forces past human scale step in. The truly alien answers in a grammar that is not language. A machine mind crosses from tool to will. Psionics bend the inside of a skull. The deep-dark goes from empty to attending — an anomaly opens and the local rules bend around it. L20 and L21 are live; entries 11–12 on every table are live.

Turn the Dial per roll; reach for d12 the breath the genuinely alien or rule-breaking acts — first contact turns, the AI wakes, the anomaly opens, a power beyond comprehension answers — and let it go when the beat is hull and contract and patrol again. Nothing locks.

2. Tag Reconciliation

How each tag looks when it lands, builds, and commits in the working frontier — and which face it shows on the commit beat. Convergent arrives where you stand; Divergent was settled away from you.

Tag	Commit face	When it lands	When it builds	When it commits
Control	Convergent	A hatch indicator flips to a lock-glyph you did not set. A docking clamp seats with a clang.	More overrides assert. Your codes get downgraded; doors stop answering.	The airlock cycles on someone else’s authority — the bridge stops taking your commands — while you watch.
Threat	Convergent	A weapons rack half-keyed. A patrol cutter altering vector toward you. A safety on, then off.	More guns swing your way. The boarding party stacks at the seam.	The shot comes — the breach charge blows the lock — in front of you.
Exposure	Convergent	A maintenance camera tracking. Your false registry queried twice. A scanner sweeping the hold.	More eyes find you. The query escalates up the chain; a flag attaches to your hull.	The manifest is opened and your cargo is named — your cover scans false at the checkpoint — right there.
Cost	Convergent	The fuel gauge dropping past reserve. A scrubber light going amber. A favour called that you must repay.	The tank bleeds faster. Parts fail two at a time; the debt compounds.	Reserve hits zero — the last scrubber dies — and you feel it in the room.
Pressure	Convergent	A countdown you cannot pause. A decompression klaxon two compartments over. Reactor temp climbing.	Less time. The hull groans louder; the timer sheds digits faster.	The bulkhead has to be sealed now — the burn has to fire this second — with you at the lever.
Clue	Convergent	A serial number filed off but not deep enough. A logged course that contradicts the story.	More pieces fit. A second falsified entry; a sensor ghost that keeps returning.	The truth resolves on the screen — the doctored log decrypts — in front of you.
Reputation	Divergent	A trader who has heard your call-sign. A bounty notice with your old hull-number.	The name travels the relay net. More ports flag you before you arrive.	A welcome or a closed dock waits at the next station — settled in rooms you never entered.
Uncanny	Divergent	Instruments disagreeing with each other. A signal with no source. A door already open.	The wrongness deepens off-axis. Readings drift where you are not looking.	The alien fact is simply true when you turn back to it — the anomaly has already moved — resolved off-stage.

Reputation and the Uncanny are divergent here because the relay net and the deep-dark both work out of sight: your name is decided in ports light-hours ahead of your bow, and the inhuman settles its meaning in the dark between your scans, never on the beat you are watching.

3. Translation Guide

What each table usually reads as in the working frontier, with images to reach for first and the tags that tend to dominate.

#	Table	Usually means here	Picture first	Dominant
L1	Suspicion	A gut yes/no: is the seal holding, is the trader lying, is this berth a setup.	A welder’s bead that runs too clean. A docking fee waived for no reason. A smile under a respirator.	Clue, Threat
L2	Crossing a Threshold	Judged as you pass an airlock, a customs line, the edge of charted space.	The inner hatch hissing equalised. The boundary buoy falling astern. The first breath of someone else’s air-mix.	Exposure, Uncanny
L3	Read the Situation	Sizing up a bay, a bridge crew, a standoff on the dock.	Who stands near the weapons locker. Which consoles are manned. The drink nobody is drinking.	Clue, Threat
L4	Disposition	Reading a person, a faction, a hostile vessel’s intent.	A captain’s knuckles on the throttle. A docking-control voice gone flat. Gun-ports that just opened.	Threat, Control
L5	Make the Move	A deliberate commitment into engagement — a hail, a hard dock, a boarding.	Thrusters firing to close. A grapple line crossing the gap. A hand on the boarding-ramp release.	Pressure, Control
L6	Terms and Leverage	Bargaining over cargo, fuel, passage, prisoners.	A contract slate slid across the table. A fuel price climbing as you talk. The clause you did not read.	Cost, Reputation
L7	Masks and Status	Rank and standing made visible — uniform, clearance, registry.	A captain’s insignia under deck-grime. A diplomatic transponder code. A clearance badge that opens every door.	Reputation, Control
L8	Under Watch	Being weighed by sensors, sentries, station authority.	A scanner arm sweeping your hull. A guard’s eyes following you across the concourse. A logged ping you did not send.	Exposure, Control
L9	Performance and Spectacle	Performing before an audience — a tribunal, a crowd, a comms broadcast.	A courtroom of station officials. A docking-bay crowd. A red recording light on the bridge feed.	Reputation, Pressure
L10	Hidden Knowledge	Examining material for buried information — logs, data-cores, manifests.	A data-core warm in your palm. A manifest with a column that does not sum. An encrypted black-box.	Clue, Exposure
L11	Hidden Mechanism	Engineered danger — security grids, rigged hatches, sabotaged systems.	A pressure door wired to blow. A turret that tracks on motion. A reactor interlock keyed to a heartbeat.	Threat, Pressure
L12	Hidden Presence and Place	Reading a space for what it conceals — a derelict, a smuggler’s hold, a sealed deck.	A void in the deck-plan that has no hatch. Scratch-marks inside an empty locker. Air moving where nothing should breathe.	Uncanny, Clue
L13	Operation and Infiltration	Executing a plan against resistance — a heist, a slice, a quiet boarding.	A spliced cable feeding a fake loop to the cameras. A countdown on a cracked door. A maglock yielding one pin at a time.	Control, Pressure
L14	The Shape of Violence	Combat from inside — boarding actions, ship duels, corridor firefights.	Tracer rounds in a smoke-filled corridor. A hull shuddering under fire. A blade against a vac-suit seam.	Threat, Cost
L15	Pursuit and Chases	Chase or flight — through traffic, asteroid fields, jump windows.	Proximity alarms screaming in a rock field. A pursuer’s lock-tone rising. A jump window closing ahead.	Pressure, Threat
L16	Temptation and the Offer	An offer on the table; whether to take it.	A credit-chit pushed across, more than the job is worth. A berth on a better ship. A coordinate-set marked do-not-share.	Cost, Reputation
L17	Sustained Deception	Maintaining a false registry, cover crew, forged clearance.	A transponder broadcasting a name not yours. A cover story rehearsed over the intercom. A forged seal that must not be scanned twice.	Exposure, Control
L18	The Waiting Game	Active patience — a stakeout, a silent run, a vigil on the scope.	A passive scope held on a dark dock. Engines cold to stay unseen. A clock counting toward a window.	Pressure, Clue
L19	Exposure and Hazard	The environment as enemy — vacuum, radiation, pressure, the failing body.	Frost crawling across a cracking visor. A radiation tab going black. Lungs burning in thinning air.	Cost, Pressure
L20	Invoke Power	Using a capability that bends local rules — psionics, an alien device, a woken system.	A mind reaching across a sealed bulkhead. A relic socket lighting under your hand. A drive doing what physics forbids.	Uncanny, Control
L21	The Unseen Moves	The inhuman or rule-breaking presses in (d12).	A machine voice that learns your name as it speaks. A signal answering in your own thoughts. Stars rearranging in the port.	Uncanny, Threat
L22	Escalation and Fallout	Consequences landing — a bounty posted, a hull impounded, a faction turned.	A warrant attaching to your registry. A fleet vector marked for intercept. A dock sealed against your call-sign.	Cost, Reputation
L23	Journeys and Travel	Travel itself as the situation — the long burn, the jump, the drift.	A countdown to jump with systems redlined. A sleeper-bay of cold crew. A course-correction with no margin.	Pressure, Cost
L24	Rest and Recovery	Downtime — a safe berth, a repair cycle, a watch off.	A patched seal holding overnight. A welder cooling in the rack. The hum of a reactor finally steady.	Cost, Reputation
L25	Bonds and Trust	Crew relationships deepening or tested — loyalty, grudge, mutiny.	A second watch stood without being asked. A locker forced open by a crewmate. A name spoken in the dark of the bridge.	Reputation, Cost

4. Specialist Notes

The hull is always counting. In the working frontier, Cost and Pressure are not abstractions — they are gauges. When a Grounded result builds Cost, read it as a needle moving: a scrubber cartridge spent, a fuel margin narrowed, a part you cannot replace out here. The clock does not loom in the distance; it sits on the console, ticking, and the Commit is the moment the needle touches the red line while you are watching it.

The Dial raises the strange, not the stakes. When a Heightened result Commits the Uncanny, the alien was always there in the dark — the signal had a source before you heard it, the anomaly was already open. The d12 does not inflate the danger of the patrol or the contract; it reveals that the deep-dark was never empty. Read it as recognition, not escalation: the frontier showing you what was always past the buoys.

Reputation runs on the relay net. Out here your name travels faster than your ship and arrives before you do. When a result builds or commits Reputation, picture it settling in a port you have not reached: a dock-master reading your call-sign off a flagged list, a trader who already knows your last job, a closed berth waiting at the next station. You never see it form — you only arrive into its result, the welcome warm or the airlock already locked.

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Lens Palette

Cyberpunk — Genre Palette

A player-facing lookup. Keep it open beside the table you are rolling. It does not add rules; it tells you what a Lens result looks like in this genre.

The world is rain on neon, smoke under a flickering sign, a fixer’s booth in the back of a noodle bar. The corps own the towers, the satellites, the cops, the water. The body is meat you trade up — chrome hands, mirrored eyes, a spinal port slick with conductive gel — and the only treasure worth the run is data, riding a cred-stick or buried behind black ICE. Style is armour; a good coat and a steady stare keep you alive longer than the pistol under it. Everyone is selling, everyone is bought, and the only question that matters is who blinks. It runs under any cyberpunk-adjacent game, or under emergent play with no scenario.

This genre’s clocks fill mostly with Cost, Exposure, and Threat — the body burns out, the wrong faces start remembering yours, and something with a corporate logo turns to look. Cost and Threat commit on-screen — the chrome glitches in your hand, the enforcer steps off the elevator. Exposure and the rest settle away from you: by the time you feel watched, the file already has your face.

1. The Dial

The Dial is the only part of this palette that changes mechanics. Everything else only changes reading.

Grounded (d10). Street level — the deal, the run, the fixer, the cred-stick, the gun and the chrome it hangs on. Tech is a tool: a gun jams, a deck opens a door, a drone watches a corner. Entries 11–12 do not fire; L21 is off.

Heightened (d12). The deep net and the post-human edge — black ICE that stops a heart, an AI that takes an interest in you, chrome that starts driving the hand. The wire reaches back. L20 and L21 are live; entries 11–12 on every table are live.

Turn the Dial per roll; reach for d12 the moment the net, the AI, or the cyberware acts as more than a tool — the ICE bites back, the construct wakes, the chrome twitches on its own. Let it go when the beat is meat and concrete and a deal across a table. Nothing locks.

2. Tag Reconciliation

Six tags converge toward the outcome in front of you; two diverge and settle off-stage. The commit face is the picture when the clock fills.

Tag	Commit face	When it lands	When it builds	When it commits
Control	Convergent	A hand on the lock, the camera blind, the door yours.	The system half-yours; one override, then another.	You hold the room — or the system flips and locks you in.
Threat	Convergent	Enforcers in matte armour off the elevator; a barrel rising.	More chrome on their side, fewer exits on yours.	The guns come up and the count is wrong.
Exposure	Convergent	A lens turns; your face caught and timestamped.	Your alias thins; faces start to match.	The file has you — name, chrome, last known coat.
Cost	Convergent	Cred off the stick. A favour burned. Chrome notched.	Implants thin the wallet; meds run low; nerves fray.	Nothing left to spend; the chrome bills come due in blood.
Pressure	Convergent	The clock on the run tightens; the fixer wants it now.	Less time, less slack, more eyes on the corner.	The window shuts mid-move; you go now or not at all.
Clue	Convergent	A log entry, a routing number, a name behind the shell.	Fragments align; the data starts pointing one way.	The pattern resolves — you see who pulls the strings.
Reputation	Divergent	A nod at the bar; a door opens, or a price drops.	Word travels the net you cannot see.	Across town, a name decides for you — welcomed or marked.
Uncanny	Divergent	A glitch in the periphery; the AI’s cursor blinks back.	The wire hums wrong; the construct learns your habits.	Off-screen the system has already decided what you are to it.

Reputation and Uncanny commit divergent — both settle in rooms you are not in: the rep spreads through chatter you never hear, and the Uncanny resolves in the net’s own time, surfacing only when it is ready to touch you.

3. Translation Guide

What each table usually means once you read it through neon and rain.

#	Table	Usually means here	Picture first	Dominant
L1	Suspicion	Gut read on a deal, a face, a too-clean alley.	The stranger’s eyes flick to your chrome. A price that’s too good. A door left unlocked.	Threat, Clue
L2	Crossing a Threshold	Stepping into a corp lobby, a netspace, a realisation.	Mirrored doors hiss open on cold filtered air. The grid resolving around your icon.	Exposure, Uncanny
L3	Read the Situation	Sizing up a bar, a crew, a trade floor.	Who carries, who watches, where the exits die. The muscle by the back stairs.	Clue, Threat
L4	Disposition	Reading a fixer, a gang, a corp rep.	The smile that does not reach the optics. The hand that never leaves the table.	Clue, Reputation
L5	Make the Move	Committing to the run, the draw, the jack-in.	Your hand finds the deck; you breathe in once. The line laid down across the booth.	Control, Pressure
L6	Terms and Leverage	Haggling cred, data, who walks away owing.	The number on the table; the gun under it. The clause read aloud, slow.	Cost, Reputation
L7	Masks and Status	Corporate rank, gang ink, the cut of the coat.	The platinum cred-tier; the brand on the lapel; who the bouncer waves through.	Reputation, Exposure
L8	Under Watch	Weighed by corp security, a rival crew, the net.	The lens that tracks you across the plaza. The drone holding station overhead.	Exposure, Pressure
L9	Performance and Spectacle	Working a club, a pitch, a broadcast feed.	The crowd’s faces lit by your screen-glow. The pitch landing, or dying, on live feed.	Reputation, Exposure
L10	Hidden Knowledge	Combing a drive, a ledger, an encrypted shard.	Scroll of logs; one timestamp out of place. A shard that bites back when you open it.	Clue, Uncanny
L11	Hidden Mechanism	Security grids, mantraps, rigged chrome, black ICE.	The panel that should not be warm. The lock with no seam. The ICE coiled behind the file.	Threat, Control
L12	Hidden Presence and Place	Reading a warehouse, a server farm, a safehouse.	The cabling thicker than the floorplan allows. A camera angle that covers nothing — or everything.	Clue, Uncanny
L13	Operation and Infiltration	Running the plan against guards, ICE, the clock.	Your route on the overlay; one red node ahead. The loop spliced into the camera feed.	Control, Pressure
L14	The Shape of Violence	The firefight from inside — muzzle flash and chrome.	Tracers, blood on tile, the smell of ozone. The blade-hand out before the mind agrees.	Threat, Cost
L15	Pursuit and Chases	Rooftop run, freeway flight, a trace through the net.	Drone lights swinging across wet alley walls. The trace-bar climbing toward your real address.	Pressure, Threat
L16	Temptation and the Offer	The corp’s contract, the upgrade, the easy betrayal.	The cred figure with one zero too many. The chrome that would make you faster.	Cost, Reputation
L17	Sustained Deception	Holding a false ID, a corp badge, a borrowed face.	The badge scanner’s light, holding green. The cover story you must answer to in the wrong name.	Exposure, Pressure
L18	The Waiting Game	The stakeout, the slow upload, the vigil on a feed.	The progress bar crawling; cold coffee. The mark’s window dark for the sixth hour.	Pressure, Clue
L19	Exposure and Hazard	Toxic rain, a dead zone, the body itself failing.	Acid drizzle eating your collar; a nosebleed you can’t stop. The blackout zone with no signal.	Cost, Threat
L20	Invoke Power	A killer program, military chrome, a bought backdoor.	The icebreaker blooming open like a flower. The reflex-booster slamming the world into slow motion.	Control, Cost
L21	The Unseen Moves	The AI, the black ICE, the chrome presses back (d12).	A cursor moving you never touched. A voice in the wire using your dead friend’s cadence.	Uncanny, Threat
L22	Escalation and Fallout	The corp responds; the body pays; the net remembers.	A clean-up team’s van idling outside. A flag on your ID at every turnstile.	Cost, Exposure
L23	Journeys and Travel	The sprawl crossing, the convoy, the data-haul.	Sodium lights smearing past the windshield. The checkpoint ahead with your plate already flagged.	Pressure, Threat
L24	Rest and Recovery	The clinic cot, the safehouse, ripping out old chrome.	The ripperdoc’s tray; gauze going red. The safehouse window taped over against the glow.	Cost, Uncanny
L25	Bonds and Trust	The crew tested, the fixer’s loyalty, the lover’s wire.	A shared cred-stick passed without a word. The look held a beat too long before the job.	Reputation, Cost

4. Specialist Notes

The corp always wins, so read every offer as a leash. When L6 or L16 turns generous, picture the contract clause you have not read yet — the figure is real, and so is the kill-switch buried in the fine print. A good result here is rarely a clean win; it is a better grip on a chain still around your neck. Ask not what you gained but who now owns the gaining.

The body is the cheapest thing on the table. Cost, L19, and L24 keep circling back to meat — the chrome that bills you in tremors, the immune crash from one upgrade too many, the slow creep of cyber-psychosis behind the eyes. When the dice point at your own flesh, do not picture a wound that heals. Picture the part you will have to replace, and the part of you that goes with it.

The Uncanny settles where you cannot watch. Uncanny commits divergent: the AI does not strike when you roll — it files you away, learns the shape of your runs, and surfaces a session later wearing a face you trusted. When L21 fires on the d12, the net is not reacting to this move. It decided about you some time ago, off-screen, and is only now letting you feel the edge of it.

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Lens Palette

Crime & Modern — Genre Palette

A player-facing lookup. Keep it open beside the table you are rolling. It does not add rules; it tells you what a Lens result looks like in this genre.

This is the world read through smoke and surveillance: a meet in a parked car, a heist mapped on a napkin, a noir where the city itself is guilty, a spy’s dead-drop, a conspiracy whose roots run under the floor you stand on. Every result here arrives as a glance held too long, a phone that should not ring, a debt that comes due — the job, the crew, the score, the law, the family, the heat, the betrayal, the fall. It runs under any modern crime or contemporary-action game, or under emergent play with no scenario.

This genre’s clocks fill mostly with Exposure, Cost, and Pressure — the heat rising, the bill coming, the walls closing. Exposure and Pressure commit on-screen, in your face: the cuffs, the gun raised, the cover blown to a stranger’s eyes. Cost and Reputation settle away from you — the wire transfer that empties tomorrow, the word passed in a room you will never enter.

1. The Dial

The Dial is the only part of this palette that changes mechanics. Everything else only changes reading.

Grounded (d10). The everyday contemporary danger: the meet, the deal, the tail, the wire, the cop on the corner, the burner phone, the cash in the duffel, the gun riding under the jacket. People get hurt, people get caught, people walk away poorer or not at all — but the world stays the size it looked. Entries 11–12 do not fire; L21 is off.

Heightened (d12). The genre at its extremes — not supernatural by default. The conspiracy proves real and vast; the violence tips lethal and irreversible; the noir fate snaps shut; the hidden hand behind it all turns and looks at you; the door closes behind your back and will not open again. L20 and L21 are live; entries 11–12 on every table are live. (Running occult-modern? Read d12 as the supernatural surfacing — but the default is “this is bigger, deeper, and more lethal than it looked.”)

Turn the Dial per roll; reach for d12 the moment a deeper, more dangerous layer reveals itself — the kill-order, the made-man’s true allegiance, the truth under the cover story — and let it go when the beat is just cash, traffic, and a careful conversation again. Nothing locks.

2. Tag Reconciliation

Tags are the colour your clocks fill with; the commit face is the picture when the clock runs out.

Tag	Commit face	When it lands	When it builds	When it commits
Control	Convergent	A hand on the wheel — the room, the deal, the crew bends your way.	You set the meet, name the place, hold the only key.	You own the play; the gun is in your grip, the angle yours, every exit yours to grant.
Threat	Convergent	A coat falls open on a holster. A car idles two doors down.	The muscle drifts closer; the safety clicks off across the room.	It breaks on you now — the first shot, the swung pipe, the door kicked from its frame.
Exposure	Convergent	A face turns. A name said aloud that you never gave.	Your plate is run, your story checked, your cover quietly doubted.	They were waiting — the cuffs out, the trap sprung, the camera that had you the whole time.
Cost	Convergent	A favour called. A debt named with a number.	The price climbs; the marker comes due; someone wants paying.	The bill lands in full — the cash gone, the finger taken, the body you now owe a grave.
Pressure	Convergent	A clock you can hear. The siren two streets over.	Time tightens, options close, the heat builds behind the door.	It crushes down — the raid, the deadline blown, the room with no third exit.
Clue	Convergent	A receipt that shouldn’t exist. A number called twice at 3 a.m.	The trail thickens; the ledger half-reads; the pattern almost names itself.	It resolves — the safehouse address, the rat’s name, the wire that proves it all.
Reputation	Divergent	A nod from a stranger who knows your work.	Word travels the city ahead of you; the name does the talking.	The verdict lands where you cannot see — the door that won’t open, the crew that won’t ride, the bounty quietly placed.
Uncanny	Divergent	A coincidence too clean. A street too empty.	The wrongness accrues; the pieces fit a shape no one should have built.	The hidden hand shows itself — the conspiracy proven, the fate sealed, the thing that was always watching, now seen.

Reputation and Uncanny commit divergent: the first lands its reckoning in rooms you’ve already left, the second in a truth that was waiting under everything all along.

3. Translation Guide

What each table usually means in this genre — what to picture before you read the dice, and which tags tend to drive the beat.

#	Table	Usually means here	Picture first	Dominant
L1	Suspicion	The gut that says this meet is wrong before you know why.	The hand drifting toward the door handle.	Threat, Exposure
L2	Crossing a Threshold	Walking into the club, the precinct, the truth.	The bouncer’s eyes; the lobby camera’s red dot.	Exposure, Pressure
L3	Read the Situation	Casing the room — who’s armed, who’s watching, where the money sits.	The exits, the dead angles, the man not drinking his drink.	Clue, Threat
L4	Disposition	Reading a person, a crew, a precinct’s mood.	The smile that doesn’t reach the eyes; the cold shoulder of a whole table.	Control, Exposure
L5	Make the Move	The deliberate step in — the pitch, the play, the first card laid.	Your hand sliding the envelope across the bar.	Control, Pressure
L6	Terms and Leverage	Bargaining over real stakes — the cut, the territory, the witness.	The opening number; what is left off the table.	Cost, Control
L7	Masks and Status	Rank made visible — who’s boss, who’s a soldier, whose badge outranks whose.	The silent men behind the man who speaks.	Reputation, Control
L8	Under Watch	Being weighed — the surveillance van, the made eye, the wire you can’t see.	The window across the street where the light never changes.	Exposure, Pressure
L9	Performance and Spectacle	Working a crowd, a camera, a courtroom — playing it for the room.	The press at the steps; the marks watching your hands.	Reputation, Exposure
L10	Hidden Knowledge	Working the ledger, the hard drive, the file for what it hides.	The encrypted folder; the second set of books.	Clue, Cost
L11	Hidden Mechanism	Engineered danger — alarms, motion sensors, the rigged door, the trap account.	The keypad, the laser, the dye-pack tucked in the strap.	Threat, Pressure
L12	Hidden Presence and Place	Reading a space for the safe room, the bug, the body behind the drywall.	The freshly painted wall; the rug that doesn’t match the dust.	Clue, Uncanny
L13	Operation and Infiltration	The job in motion — the heist, the breach, the plan meeting resistance.	The countdown on your phone; the guard ahead of schedule.	Pressure, Control
L14	The Shape of Violence	The gunfight, the beating, the knife in the stairwell, from inside it.	Muzzle flash in a dark hall; your own breath gone ragged.	Threat, Cost
L15	Pursuit and Chases	The car chase, the rooftop run, the foot-flight through the market.	Headlights swelling in the mirror; the alley that may not have an end.	Pressure, Threat
L16	Temptation and the Offer	The offer — the bribe, the bigger score, the deal to roll on your crew.	The briefcase opened just enough; the immunity papers slid over.	Cost, Control
L17	Sustained Deception	Holding the cover — the alias, the wire, the long con’s mask.	The phone you must answer in the wrong name; the badge you can’t be caught without.	Exposure, Pressure
L18	The Waiting Game	The stakeout, the vigil, the long sit before it breaks.	Cold coffee; the door that hasn’t opened in six hours.	Pressure, Clue
L19	Exposure and Hazard	The environment as enemy — the wired-up warehouse, the OD, the body failing.	The flooding tunnel; your own hands shaking, the wound seeping through the shirt.	Threat, Cost
L20	Invoke Power	Spending real leverage — the dirty cop on payroll, the wire transfer, the made call, the heavy crew.	The phone lifted to a number that fixes things; the favour cashed in.	Control, Cost
L21	The Unseen Moves	The rule-breaking hand presses in — the conspiracy moves a piece, the order comes from nowhere.	A car you’ve seen three times; a problem solved before you raised it.	Uncanny, Pressure
L22	Escalation and Fallout	Consequences landing — the body found, the warrant issued, the war begun.	The morning headline with your meet in it; the boss’s empty chair.	Cost, Exposure
L23	Journeys and Travel	Travel as the situation — the border run, the drive with cargo, the flight on a watched name.	The trunk you can’t open; the checkpoint lights ahead.	Pressure, Exposure
L24	Rest and Recovery	Lying low — the safehouse, the burner swapped, the heat allowed to cool.	The motel with cash-only; the phone broken into a storm drain.	Cost, Reputation
L25	Bonds and Trust	Loyalty and betrayal — the crew, the family, the partner who might wear a wire.	The look held a beat too long; the friend who won’t meet your eyes.	Reputation, Cost

4. Specialist Notes

The heat is a clock you cannot stop, only outrun. In this genre Pressure rarely lands as a single blow; it accrues — a siren here, a checkpoint there, a deadline you agreed to under better light. Read rising Pressure as the city itself tightening around the job. When it commits, picture the raid already at the door, the window already closed: the time to act was a roll ago.

The bill always comes, and rarely where you spent. Cost in crime is debt with a memory. The bribe paid tonight is the leverage held over you next season; the body dropped is the war that finds your family. When a Cost clock commits off-screen, do not picture the moment — picture the consequence arriving later, unbidden, with interest, in the hands of someone you’d forgotten you owed.

Trust reads as a held breath; betrayal as the exhale. Bonds commit divergent here, like Reputation — the partner’s loyalty is decided in a room you’re not in, the wire taped on under a shirt you won’t see opened until it’s too late. Read warm L25 results as the crew that will take a bullet for you; read cold ones not as an argument now but as the seed of the turn — the friend already deciding, the verdict on you being passed somewhere you cannot follow.

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Lens Palette

Norse Mythic — Genre Palette

A player-facing lookup. Keep it open beside the table you are rolling. It does not add rules; it tells you what a Lens result looks like in this genre.

The mythic‑heroic North as a reading layer — longships, blood‑feud, thing‑law, the old powers real. It runs under any Norse‑adjacent game, or under emergent play with no scenario.

This genre’s clocks fill mostly with Reputation and Cost. Expect most commits on-screen; expect Reputation and the Uncanny to commit away from you.

1. The Dial

The Dial is the only part of this palette that changes mechanics. Everything else only changes reading.

Grounded (d10 default).

Human, social, martial, seasonal pressure: feud, voyage, trade, raid, law, survival. L20 covers rare skill, leadership that bends the odds, a name that works like a weapon. Entries 11–12 do not fire. L21 is off.

Heightened (d12).

The old powers act. Rune-craft reshapes events, the dead walk, the gods attend. L20 and L21 are both live. Entries 11–12 on every table are live.

Switch to Heightened when the world behaves as myth rather than history: a barrow is opened, a prophecy is spoken, a rune answers in a voice not the carver’s, the dead do not stay quiet.

Turn the Dial by the moment, roll to roll — reach for d12 the breath the world acts as myth, and let it go when the beat is human again. Nothing locks.

2. Tag Reconciliation

This is the heart of the palette. It answers the three questions you ask mid-roll: what does this tag look like here, what does it look like as it builds, and what do I see when it commits.

The last column is the face of the commit. Convergent: it arrives where you stand — you see it happen. Divergent: it was settled away from you — you find the world already changed. Read the dominant tag on the clock to know which face is coming.

Tag	Commit face	When it lands	When it builds	When it commits
Control	Convergent	An order is given. A law is cited. A seat is not offered. Passage is refused.	What was asked is now ordered. The bench you were offered is taken back. The law leans away from you.	Outlawry spoken. An oath forced. Property seized. The marriage decided without you.
Threat	Convergent	A horn far off. A blade half-cleared. A strange sail on the water. A challenge said aloud.	More horns. The shield-wall shifts. Allies go quiet. Ground you wanted is taken.	Swords out. The hall attacked, the ship boarded, the feud answered in steel — in front of you.
Exposure	Convergent	You are seen. Named. A face turns that should not have turned.	Your track is in the snow. Your purpose is guessed. The wrong hall knows your name.	The shore is defended when you reach it. The ambush is already set. They were waiting.
Cost	Convergent	Silver leaves the chest. A favour is spent that will not come twice.	The chest is lighter. The bench has empty places. Fewer oars, fewer friends.	Nothing left to bargain with. The stores will not last the winter. The debt is called.
Pressure	Convergent	A short answer. A hand not quite steady. Grief or cold or fear showing through.	Tempers go thin. The crew argues at the fire. The leader is questioned out loud.	It breaks in the open: mutiny, a rash oath sworn, a fight inside the kin-group — now, watched.
Clue	Convergent	A track. An omen. A rumour. A rune you can read.	The shape of it comes clear — who lies, where the gold is, what the enemy means to do.	The truth lands where you stand: the ford named, the traitor pointed at, the barrow placed.
Reputation	Divergent	Standing moves a little. Someone is praised, someone made small.	The hall’s mind shifts. Who sits where changes. Alliances lean a new way.	Settled away from you: the verse the skald makes when you have gone, the door that will not open next time, the name now said differently in halls you have not reached.
Uncanny	Divergent	Something past the natural. Cold with no fire near. An animal that watches too long.	The old rules push back. Courage and rank stop being enough. The world tilts toward myth.	It was always so; you only now see it. The barrow stood open before you came. The binding was already broken. It cannot be put back.

3. Translation Guide

A translation tells you how to read a result, never what to change it to. The dice stand. This only colours them.

For each table: what it usually means here, what to picture first (enough to start a scene cold, for emergent play), and which tags tend to dominate.

#	Table	Usually means here	Picture first	Dominant
L1	Suspicion	A yes/no read made on instinct: is he lying, is the ice sound, is this welcome real, is the omen true.	The oath sworn too smoothly. The gift pressed too eagerly. Ice that rings wrong underfoot.	Clue, Pressure
L2	Crossing a Threshold	Arriving is presenting yourself. A door, a shore, a border — you are being judged as you cross it.	Who rises to meet you and who stays seated. The weapons on the wall. The state of the place.	Control, Reputation
L3	Read the Situation	Sizing a hall, a ship, a war-band before you commit — wealth, strength, mood, who really holds it.	What is poorer or emptier than it should be. The carving, the benches, the kept or rusted blades.	Clue, Threat
L4	Disposition	Reading one person — honour, temper, what they want, whether they have already decided about you.	The speed of the ale. The weapon kept in reach. The question they do not ask.	Reputation, Pressure
L5	Make the Move	First meeting between strangers or rival crews. The greeting is protocol; breaking it is insult or threat.	Hands shown or hidden. The distance held. The silence before a name is given.	Reputation, Threat
L6	Terms and Leverage	Bargaining over real stakes — land, weregild, marriage, passage, tribute. Law settles what talk cannot.	The opening offer. What is left unsaid. The precedent named, the third party invoked.	Cost, Control
L7	Masks and Status	Rank made visible — seat, cup, who is named, who stands. To be ignored is worse than to be insulted.	Where you are placed. The quality of the cup. Who does not rise when you enter.	Reputation, Control
L8	Under Watch	Being weighed — by a rival’s house, a jarl’s men, or something at the tree-line that has not shown itself.	The question asked twice. The servant who listens. The shape at the edge of the firelight.	Exposure, Pressure
L9	Performance and Spectacle	Feast, boast, gift, oath, verse. This is how reputation is made, tested, and recorded in front of all.	The hall waiting. The silence before you speak. The weight of who is watching.	Reputation, Cost
L10	Hidden Knowledge	Reading what the world says — tracks, weather, runes, wounds, the wrong flight of birds.	The broken branch. The changed wind. The mark on stone that nature did not make.	Clue, Uncanny
L11	Hidden Mechanism	Hidden grave-goods, a trapped barrow, a passage too convenient, an ambush on a known road. Heightened: the curse on the gold, the ward on the dead.	The stone that sits wrong. The way that is too easy. A silence that is not empty.	Clue, Cost
L12	Hidden Presence and Place	Reading a space for what it hides — a barrow chamber, a longhouse after dark, a steading that should be empty: is something here, watching, or wrong?	The bench too neatly kept. Breath in the dark that is not the crew’s. A door‑hide that stirs with no wind. The dog that will not go in.	Threat, Uncanny
L13	Operation and Infiltration	Raid plan, night approach, slipping a watch, setting up before a fight. The plan fights weather and loyalty.	The scout’s report that does not fit. The tide turned early. The man not where he said.	Exposure, Pressure
L14	The Shape of Violence	Shield-wall, holmgang, ambush, hall-burning, brawl. Every killing is named and will be answered.	The shield raised. The insult that crossed the line. The blade drawn too slow to be a bluff.	Threat, Cost
L15	Pursuit and Chases	Ship along a coast, horse over open country, flight through forest or ice. Ground and weather decide it.	A sail standing out of the haze astern. The fjord closing to a single channel. The headland that will not come closer.	Threat, Pressure
L16	Temptation and the Offer	The too-rich gift. The alliance that costs nothing. The gold no one has touched. Almost always a test of judgement.	Generosity with no clear reason. Ease where there should be resistance. A price left out.	Cost, Control
L17	Sustained Deception	False name, hidden kin, the returned exile in disguise. To lie about your name is to give up your honour.	The habit that is wrong. The skill that does not fit the story. The lineage that will not check out.	Exposure, Pressure
L18	The Waiting Game	Siege, ambush held, weather waited out, a position kept through winter. Warriors do not wait well.	The fire burning lower. The argument starting. The question of when to move.	Pressure, Cost
L19	Exposure and Hazard	Storm, cold, hunger, shipwreck, ice, fog. The sea and the winter are the real enemies; the sea takes whole crews.	The sky changing. The cold deepening. Supplies lighter than they should be.	Cost, Pressure
L20	Invoke Power	Grounded: rare skill, leadership that bends the odds, a name that works like a weapon. Heightened: rune-craft, prophecy, the fury, the gods attending. Power costs and is noticed.	The stillness before the invoking. The mark it leaves after.	Cost, Uncanny
L21	The Unseen Moves	d12 only. The dead walk. Landspirits angered. A valkyrie above the field. Fate showing its pattern. The uncanny is old, patient, and indifferent to honour.	An animal wrong in its behaviour. A name spoken by the wind. Being weighed by something without eyes.	Uncanny
L22	Escalation and Fallout	Consequences land — feud declared, weregild refused, outlawry, alliance broken, harvest failed, kin split.	The messenger. The changed greeting. The door that does not open. Your name said a new way.	Reputation, Cost
L23	Journeys and Travel	Sea voyage, river route, mountain pass, winter crossing. A voyage is a closed world; the land and sea take part.	Reading the sky. The current changing. The feeling of distance from kin and law.	Cost, Pressure
L24	Rest and Recovery	Hall-rest, shore-camp, winter quarters. Where you rest says whose protection you take and whose food you eat.	The fire. The food. Who watches while you sleep.	Pressure, Reputation
L25	Bonds and Trust	Oath-companions, crew loyalty, kin, blood-brotherhood. Trust is earned in shared danger; breaking an oath is the worst crime.	The shared cup. The unasked-for warning. The moment someone risks their name for yours.	Reputation, Pressure

4. Specialist Notes

Only the recurring patterns that change how a tag reads in a situation you will hit more than once, and that nothing above already covers.

Guest-right binds the host’s Control.

Inside his own hall a host’s authority is near-absolute — but it is constrained by the duty to protect a guest. When a Control tag lands or builds in a hall, read it through that limit: the host commands much, but harming a guest under his roof breaks a bond older than law, and everyone present knows it. A host’s Control rarely commits against a guest directly; it commits by withdrawal — the seat not offered, the protection quietly lifted. L2 and L7 carry this weight at the door.

At sea, Cost means supplies, and there is no resupply.

A voyage is a closed world. When Cost lands or builds at sea it almost always means stores, water, sound timber — things that cannot be replaced without landfall, and landfall needs permission. A Cost commit at sea is therefore total: not ‘poorer’ but ‘nothing left, and no shore that will have us’. Read Exposure and Hazard at sea with no retreat behind it.

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