Battle Basics
A battle in Standing Orders is a clockwork: soldiers act in a fixed order, each follows their writ to the letter, and the outcome was decided the moment both sides' orders were sealed. This page is what the clockwork does.
The turn order
Every living soldier on the field — yours and theirs — takes turns in order of initiative: the quickest act first, every round, in the same order. On a soldier's turn, exactly one thing happens:
- Any statuses they carry tick — poison and burn bite, regen mends.
- Their writ is read, top to bottom, and the first rule with a valid target fires: one skill, one use.
- If no rule can fire, they hold — a turn spent standing ready.
Then the next soldier acts. Rounds repeat until one banner falls, every squad runs dry, or the field goes quiet.
AP — the strength to act
Every skill costs Action Points, and every soldier carries a small pool of them granted at the muster — spent across the whole battle, never refilled mid-fight. A rule whose skill its remaining AP cannot pay for is skipped as if it weren't written. When a soldier's AP runs out entirely, they can only hold.
This is why battles end: a field where everyone is holding is a field that is spent, and the Verdict weighs the blood already drawn.
How a blow lands
When a skill strikes, the field asks three questions, always in the same order:
- Does it hit? The attacker's accuracy, against the target's evasion. A blinded attacker almost never hits; nobody ever hits more than always.
- Is it a crit? A critical blow does double damage.
- Is it guarded? A guarding target — shields help — takes half.
Then armor does its work: the defender's physical and magic defense each soak their kind of harm before it lands. A fully soaked hit still lands — it can carry a poison or a curse with it — it just draws no blood.
Some skills also carry riders: a chance of poison, stun, a broken guard. Riders only matter if the blow itself lands; each rolls its own chance. The status reference lists everything a rider can inflict.
The Verdict
When it ends, the plate tells you plainly:
- The Well Is Held — your banner stands. The Chronicle did not lie.
- The Well Is Lost — the line broke. The Chronicle will remember who held longest.
- The Field Is Spent — both banners still stand, and neither can lift a sword. Remaining strength decides the grade.
Why the Chronicle can be trusted
There are no hidden dice behind the field. The same squads, with the same writs, on the same field, always fight the same battle, blow for blow. That is why the Chronicle can foretell a battle whose every writ is sealed — and why every resolved battle can be re-read, exactly as it happened, as many times as you can bear to watch it.
When a battle goes wrong, nothing "just happened." Some rule fired exactly as written, at exactly the wrong moment. The Chronicle will show you which — and the fix belongs in the writ, not in luck.