“Up” is most likely, but also consider “Us” and “Un”
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Reading the lore of Breath of Darkness Down Your Spine reminded me of the Vashta Nerada from Doctor Who.
I called it! (I guess a connexion betwixt Shadows and Darkness isn’t that hard to guess, but still.)
The back of Breath’s panel lists that it uses 
, which adds to its thematic connexion with Shadow’s Madness Aspect.
Besides that, of course, Darkness and Shadows seem really similar. Mechanically, they both focus heavily on 
and 
, and thematically, they’re both spooky shadow monsters. The only main difference seems to be Breath’s Incarna. Then again, that is a big difference, both thematically and mechanically. Of course, we haven’t seen BoD’s Uniques yet, so it could very well be quite different.
On further reflexion, if Darkness is indeed some sort of alternate version of Shadows Flicker Like Flame, I see their relationship as this. Shadows is the rounded, default Spirit. It can do a variety of effects related to darkness. Darkness, meanwhile, is a specialised form of Shadows. Instead of a Spirit of general darkness, it is a Spirit of being a shadow-monster that can tend and tear and swallow and abduct.
I had an idea for a Spirit which used a similar mechanic as Darky’s Endless Dark, except instead of a shadow-realm it used an alternate timeline, and a spare island board instead of a single card. (It was never more than a rough concept.) (Also, I realise it’s a pretty obvious concept, so I’m not trying to gloat or anything; parallel inspiration happens.)
Despite that, The Endless Dark is very intriguing. It lists itself as a Location Card, which implies there will be other Location Cards? But the Endless Dark seems pretty unique, so I dunno.
I like the rule about how if Invaders would be removed because of Fear Cards, is instead generated. Thematically that says to me that the Invaders try to flee the Island, but can’t, because they’re trapped, and so are all the more terrified.
Also, I like how Invaders there don’t take Actions (because they have no idea what is going on), but 
(presumably) still act from Token events. I.e., bears and tigers don’t really care about all the craziness going on. : )
Wait, so a turn in Spirit Island is supposed be around one or two years, right? So, Invaders trapped in The Dark aren’t just stuck for a little bit, they are in there for a while, maybe even decades. , indeed.
It seems a touch confusing having the rules for the Endless Dark, Abducting, and Escaping being spread out between the Endless Dark’s card and Breath of Darkness’s two special rules, but I guess there’s no other way to do it.
I find it very egregious that Terror Stalks the Land says “When pieces Escape [The Endless Dark], they Move to non-Ocean lands with your 
/[Incarna].” Incarna count as , so why would it not just say “non-Ocean lands with your ?”
(Wait, what is the plural of “Incarna?” Is it “Incarnas” or “Incarna?” The latter sounds more right to me.)
So, Ember-Eyed Behemoth’s Incarna is Empowered by a Growth option, and Breath of Darkness’s is Empowered by its Presence Track. I wonder if each Incarna Spirit will have a unique mechanical way to Empower its Incarna. The remaining options are Special Rules, Innate Powers, and Unique Powers.
The last level of Lost in the Endless Dark adds 1 to the Endless Dark, which to me implies that Breath of Darkness is spawning its own shadow-beasts, which is cool.
So, Terror Stalks the Land says “When your Powers would Damage or directly Destroy the only Invader in a land, instead Abduct it. (Check if it is alone at the start of the Damage/Destroy instruction. [The Endless Dark] is not a land.)” So, say Darkness uses the first two levels of Leave a Trail of Deathly Silence while its Incarna is in a land with 2 (and it opts to not use the Push). So Darkness destroys 1 of the , and then destroys the other one. Would Terror Stalks the Land check before or after the first was destroyed? Since it refers to “Damage/Destroy instruction” rather than Action, I assume it would check after, thus letting it Abduct the second .
Breath of Darkness’s Reach from the Infinite Darkness Power Card looks like a cool idea. With just Darkness’s basic rules, Invaders are really the only pieces you want in the Dark, so it’s cool to have a Power that incentivises putting there too. I hope at least one of Breath’s other Uniques does something similar, like Abducting 
or for some positive benefit.
Eric’s postscript about the Abduct terminology quite surprised me. I don’t think I know anyone like that.
Without the lore, Breath gave a lot of people UFO vibes. It only abducts people when they’re off by themselves with no witnesses. Then it deposits them somewhere else some time later as if no time has passed.
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Fright of the Navigator
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That’s kind of funny, because I think the big mechanical innovation for Breath of Darkness is everything about the Endless Dark! The incarna almost seems superfluous to me…you could totally put together a version of Breath of Darkness that just works as advertised with “move 1 ” in a couple places on its presence tracks.
I never really gravitated toward the -focused spirits in the core game. Shadows Flicker seemed like a basic damage spirit that caused a little extra . Bringer of Dreams felt to me like it almost didn’t care about the board state at all, and instead played its own separate game with tokens and milling Fear Cards. But I think they are really nailing the spirits now! Shroud of Silent Mist really feels fantastic in how it manipulates Invaders on the board to extract from them. And I like the look of Breath of Darkness, and how it pulls things into its private little fear-dimension. The reclaim effect is a fascinating cost to be thinking about, too.
The aspect reveal yesterday was interesting, too. I am not sure how much adding the incarna to Thunderspeaker will really change its play, but oh wow that Hungry Ocean aspect! That looks amazing.
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I 100% agree. I have zero memory of why I wrote that.
There was a time when I was playing a lot of solo Bringer games, and I soon realised that ignoring the board quickly resulted in loss by 
. I found the balancing act of earning enough and not letting the board get too crazy quite fun. Granted, these games were all single-Spirit, so I imagine that multi-Spirit games would be quite different, as the other Spirits could handle the board, letting Bringer focus solely on fear.
Agreed. It seems like the way to go is definitely having be dependent on the game-state.
Me neither. I think it’s something that I’d have to play to get a hang of. Although I think the game of optimising how much extra damage one could get out of it might be interesting. The Presence Track-esque bonuses are certainly a first for Aspects. I wonder if the unrevealed bit of the Aspect will give a way to Enpower the Incarna?
Yes, it certainly looks fun! Slowly eating away the Coast and shrinking the Island, although I think Lure of the Deep Wilderness might not appreciate the shrinking Inland:Coastal ratio in smaller games. Question: What happens to pieces other than Invaders/ when a land is Drowned, such as ///
/
/
/Vitality? Do they remain? Or are they destroyed/removed, or pushed?
Regarding River Surges in Sunlight’s Haven Aspect, it seems like a simple enough way of shifting River’s focus to defence instead of offence.
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Oh. Man, was I wrong. 
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I was not expecting The Years of the Relentless Sun to be explained in this Expansion!
It seems like there might still be bad blood betwixt Relentless Gaze of the Sun and Shadows Flicker Like Flame. Also, I just really like the personality of this spirit. It reminds me of . . . Wait. Did they just make Ra as a Spirit?
Also, I really like the way that they’ve weaved a story into this Spirit’s mechanics! It’s cool how there’s the built-in choice of wether to remain a jerk, or soften up a little.
All in all, Gaze looks like a pretty cool Spirit.
The Blight Card also featured in Gaze’s update also looks neat. I really like the idea that the Spirits are basically losing their sentience, simply degrading into inanimate aspects of the land, yet they remain dangerous, represented by the //.
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I took it as a “hey, we know that Shadow seems underpowered, here is some lore to explain why. He took on the Sun, man, cut him some slack for being tired…”
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Honestly, quite clever.
The one thing that struck me while reading that update is that Gaze’s “everything must burn because it is good” attitude reminded me a lot of Rising Heat from Horizons? I think it’s got the same mindset, more or less, just a different angle of approach.
I know that Shadows being underpowered is a semi-common opinion, but frankly I don’t see it. Yes, I know Concealing Shadows protects only and not the land, and Crops Wither and Fade usually only reduces a problem instead of eliminating it entirely, but Mantle of Dread and Darkness Swallows the Unwary can both completely stop a standard Invader cycle in a land (even at the latter’s first level), and Favors Called Due is one of the best Gathering + effects in the game.
The only real complaint I have with Shadows is that I never seem to use Shadows of the Dahan much, but that’s easily fixed by all those Aspects, like Amorphous, Foreboding, and Reach.
Granted, all my experiences with this Spirit (and, well, all the other Spirits too) are from relatively low-difficulty games; my games average around 1-3 difficulty, and I’ve never played higher than 4, so my experiences and data may very well be quite skewed, and Shadows very well may be underpowered in higher difficulty games.
Despite my rantings above, I agree. This new information definitely adds to Shadow’s Spirit street cred’. : )
Really? I’m not seeing that. The most about Heat’s mindset that I can find is this bit from its panel lore:
Even after centuries, the Spirit remains a bit unclear on why living things get so unhappy about fatal desiccation, but the Dahan make such pleasant patterns across its sands that it’s happy to forbear.
Whereas Gazey’s mindset is described as this:
Relentless Gaze of the Sun is an imperious Spirit, brimming with wrathful power that scorches the land barren beneath its focused regard. For long centuries, it viewed all others as beneath it, unworthy of consideration.
So, how I see it is that Gaze is a self-important jerk who shines and smites stuff to show everyone how powerful and awesome it is, whereas Heat just does its thing because that’s its intrinsic nature, and it simply doesn’t know any better.
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Called it! (I know, this was admittedly a very easy thing to guess, but still.)
The fact that the effect of Vitality is spelt out on Roots’s panel implies that it won’t be in the rulebook, and thus that TRotJ will be the only Spirit that will use them. I feel like this is making them a touch underutilized, but it’s their game, so they likely know best.
So, does this mean that, from now on, the Minor Power deck is basically never going to get new additions? If so, I completely understand why. There can only be so many ideas. And just look at how tall that thing is! Plus, 100 is a nice number to stay at.
The combination of Heart-Tree Guards the Land and Roots’ second Growth choice adding Vitality at its Incarna means that that land will be insanely protected. Then again, it’s probably wise not to pile too many Invaders there, because they’ll become a problem again if you ever move the Incarna.
Shroud of Silent Mist would likely enjoy damaging 
/
and then moving them to Roots’ Incarna to get from them while they can’t do much harm, and it would make an ideal land for Invaders to Escape to from Breath of Darkness Down Your Spine’s Endless Dark. And, of course, Spirits that add or damage — like Heart of the Wildfire, Vengeance as a Burning Plague, or Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds — would likely make good teammates for Roots.
Both of this Spirit’s Innate Powers seem really cool, thematically speaking. At first blush, I couldn’t really figure out have a big tree that just stands there could Gather or Remove anything. But then I read this bit:
it is a Spirit of and with authority, capable of casting Invaders out of its sanctuary. When it does so, those Invaders generally leave the island altogether, as it has been made viscerally clear to them - in a way they cannot rationally explain, they just know - that they are no longer safe here .
I assuming that Roots’ Gathering is a similar effects — Dahan, Invaders, and Beasts just somehow know that they will be safe under the tree’s branches. I find both of these things really neat.
It does seem unusual to me that both of Roots’ Innates require targeting from 
, and that (according to the images on the campaign’s main page) its Incarna does not count as . This means that they can’t be targeted from a land with Incarna alone, there must be Incarna + there (or just a normal , of course).
I can’t pull out my thematic map at the moment, but is there a board/land with pre-printed Vitality that could be used as Roots starting jungle? i.e. is there a start where Roots gets a head start on Empowering her Arcana?
They say there are a few icons on the Northwest island board.
Oh, whew! I was starting to get worried about this, too.
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Dances Up Earthquakes looks super thematic to me. The interplay between Impending cards, Quake tokens, and the two Innate Powers seems just great. Kudos to all the designers and developers. I can definitely tell that playing this Spirit will be a very different experience, what with managing the tempo and all.
It is interesting that the Quake tokens have no intrinsic rules; their effect is entirely dependent upon Dances’ Power(s).
A game with Dances Up Earthquakes, Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island, and Volcano Looming High would likely be interesting.
It feels like a Very High spirit that I’m actually going to enjoy playing. 
Of course, I feel like it’s also safe to accuse it of being a spirit made complicated for complexity’s sake, not that I am complaining. ;D
It’s definitely not that. In fact, complexity was trimmed from it at many points in development. It’s more safe to say that it’s as simple as they could possibly make it and still have the core concept actually work.
That said… yeah, it’s complex. I don’t consider Fractured Days all that bad, and I find Finder hard more because of its constrained resources. Quakes breaks my brain in all the best ways. I’ve played it a bunch and I feel like I still need a bunch more to really get a handle on it.
I love it so much. I normally play most spirits’ bottom tracks, because I prefer to deal with lots of minor problems and then lean on my innates to close games out, so this is easily my favorite major powers spirit—and I’m equally happy to get there on top or bottom track!
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Fractured Days I’m just not a fan of, but Finder is the one spirit I will not play. It breaks my brain in ways that are not fun. D:
My hope is that Dances will do so in the fun way.
Fractured is fun for me because it feels like you’re operating outside of the purview of the Invaders.
This one seems a lot more “get your hands dirty” and I think I’ll like it
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It does seem like we’re reading a lot of team notes that say “Eric gave us this spirit that was way too complicated and we sent him back.” It just seems to be where he likes to operate!
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