What This Page Is
Blood and Nerve is the second half of the fight: what happens after the hit lands, and what happens to the people who are still standing. The mechanics of the round are in The Way of the Blade; this page is the cost — the wounds, the fear, the line that holds or breaks, and the difference between a battle and a siege.
The rule is simple and it is not kind: a fight is what it costs. The number that matters is not the damage — it is what the damage does to the next round, and what it does to the person who has to keep going.
Wound States
A wound is not a number. It is a state, and a state has a duration and a cure:
| wound | what it does | duration | the cure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bleeding | loses a little every round | until dressed | time, a healer, a spell — or a choice about who gets carried |
| Broken | loses the move, or the second action | until set and bound | a healer's hands, a splint, and the patience to wait |
| Stunned | loses the round | one round | nothing — the body has to remember it is a body |
| Dying | the argument is over | — | a healer now, a spell now, or it is not a wound anymore |
A wound that kills is a body. The body goes in the ground or on the fire, and the story knows which, and the person who made the wound carries the name of it.
Fear as a Mechanic
Fear is not a mood. It is a threshold, and the threshold has a number: WIS + LUK.
A fighter who has seen enough — a body where a person was, a sound that is not a sound, a shape that is not a shape — breaks: the threshold is crossed, and the fighter is no longer in the fight. The fight goes on without them, and the person who is still in it has to decide, every round, whether the one who broke is coming back or not.
The Lord of Fear does not make fear. Morthane removes the threshold. A wraith, a Plane-of-Fear event, a name spoken in the dark — the threshold drops to zero, and the fight is no longer about who hits first. It is about who is still standing, and who is still willing to stand.
This is why the fear god is the most dangerous god in the pantheon, and why the six argue about it every night by the fire: fear is not a spell. Fear is a condition, and a condition does not require a caster. It requires only that someone has seen it, and that someone else is standing next to them.
Morale in the Mass
A line holds by CHA — the leader's voice, the standard, the person at the front who is not flinching. A line breaks by LUK — the worst day, the one that goes wrong, the one where the ground gives out under the man on the left and the man on the right sees it.
The rule for a writer: the line breaks at the moment the reader stops believing it will hold. The CHA number is the floor; the LUK number is the ceiling; and the space between them is where the scene happens.
Battle and Siege
The difference is not the number of bodies. It is the register:
- A battle is ten against ten — named individuals, named wounds, and the fight is a scene. The round is the unit.
- A siege is a hundred against a hundred — formations, ground, supply, and the fight is a problem. The day is the unit.
In a siege, the individual is a cell: the line holds or breaks as a whole, the ground decides the argument, and the supply — water, arrows, the will to keep standing — is the real stat block. The Scale Anchors tier of the enemy decides the register: a dangerous fight is a scene; a siege tier is a problem; a calamity tier is a world-event, and the story is no longer about the fight. It is about the aftermath, and the aftermath is where the six are, and the aftermath is where the story is.
The Floor, Restated
- Wounds persist. There is no regen in the wild.
- Fear is a mechanic, and the fear god makes it worse.
- A mage in a battle is the first target, and the battle knows it.
- A siege is a problem, not a fight, and the problem is the ground.
- The cost is the point. A fight that costs nothing is not a fight; it is a demonstration, and the world does not do demonstrations.