Game layer

The game layer (also referred to as the washater or simply the game) is a set of rules superimposed over reality analogous to those found in a tabletop game. The game layer has apparent omniscience and the ability to cause physical effects in the real world, as long as the player (Juniper Smith) completes quests, defeats enemies and makes use of stat points tied to his physical and mental characteristics.

Uther Penndraig might have had a version of the game layer, which he referred to as the "Knack". According to Speculator Masters, he could learn any language, trade or magic in a single day - but Juniper thinks the game layer is something different.

Level ups

The game layer has something like a hidden experience meter that fills up when Juniper defeats enemies or completes quests. Once the meter becomes full, Juniper levels up, with multiple results:

• Juniper is fully healed, from minor damage to illnesses and missing body parts. This healing effect does not extend to soul damage.
• Juniper gets two stat points per level (plus five additional stat points upon reaching level 10). He can spend these points to increase his stats.
• Juniper experiences an addictive burst of pleasure that increases in intensity each level. At higher levels, these can cause him to abandon all rational thought in the sole pursuit of further level ups. This effect can be palliated with soul magic or removed entirely with spirit magic.
• Juniper's body emits a golden burst of light that kicks off some wind. He also hovers a little, maintaining momentum.

The experience needed to level up apparently increases with level (or, possibly, quests and enemies give progressively less points), making it harder and harder to level up with time.

Stats

Stats (also referred to as attributes) determine the physical (PHY), mental (MEN) and social (SOC) abilities of the player.

There are three superstats, each composed of three substats, plus LUK, a stat independent of the rest. The stats are arranged and defined as follows:

• PHY: Physical - Your body and physical existence in the world. Governing stat for all physical skills and the three physical abilities.
  • POW: Power - How much force you can exert. Used to break down doors, bend rebar, or shove someone out of the way.
  • SPD: Speed - How fast you move. Used to juggle knives, race over rooftops, or do cartwheels.
  • END: Endurance - How much you can physically withstand. Used to prevent poisonings, go on forced marches, or tread water.
• MEN: Mental - Your mind and mental existence in the world. Governing stat for all mental skills and all three mental abilities.
  • CUN: Cunning - How smart you are. Used to figure out puzzles, learn new things, or decide which wire to cut.
  • KNO: Knowledge - How much you know. Used to make connections between disparate concepts, dredge up old memories, or memorize a ten digit number.
  • WIS: Wisdom - How much you can mentally withstand. Used to prevent stress reactions, make decisions without emotion, or meditate.
• SOC: Social - Your personality and connection to others. Governing stat for all social skills and the three social abilities.
  • CHA: Charm - How much people like you. Used to convince princesses, barter with barmaids, or plead for your life.
  • INS: Insight - How well you can read people. Used to uncover a princeling's secret, call a bishop's bluff, or avoid being stabbed in the back.
  • POI: Poise - How well you withstand other people. Used to withstand interrogation, keep a blank face during a hearing, or keep dry eyes during a wedding.
• LUK: Luck - How lucky you are. Influences everything, governs nothing.
  —Worth the Candle Chapter 1: "Taking the Fall"

Stats can be increased through points given in level ups. Incresing a superstat takes two points, which increases the superstat and each of the substats by one, or a substat can be increased with a single point; a generalist/specialist trade-off.

Stats are loosely connected to physical reality, being more closely related to the effect the player has on the world (for example, Juniper has strength beyond what his body's muscles should be able to do), though increasing physical stats does have a cosmetic effect on the body.The mental stats work to preserve the player's personality, switching from making the player smarter to simply injecting knowledge into their brain once their MEN goes over a certain threshold.

In addition to the stated description, the LUK stat also grants the player some degree of elf luck, which manifests as a slight precognitive danger-sense accompanied by a concrete path of action to avoid that danger.

Skills

Main article: List of Skills

The game layer immensely boosts the learning speed of anything it considers one of its 256 skills. At the time of Juniper's arrival, 82 of those skills had already been excluded, presumably by Uther Penndraig, and only 40 can be used at a time, swapped in and out with the application of Soul magic. The game conceptualizes skills for companions, presumably for the purpose of symbiosis, but they don't have the same limits Juniper's have. Many of the skills are tied to Aerbian magics (like Wards or Steel Magic) or normal physical skills (like Climbing and Unarmed Combat), but a few are almost exclusively for roleplaying purposes (like Woodworking and Weaving).

Skills can be leveled up through regular use, though they will level up faster when they're used in threatening situations, and to a ludicrous degree when they're needed to survive. Skills can only be leveled up to level 20 through amateur training, which Juniper considers the equivalent to a graduate degree, while he estimates level 40 akin to postdoc.

Skills are tied to their primary and secondary stats, and their levels are capped by them: three times the primary stat or five times the secondary stat, whichever is lower. It is occasionally possible to raise skills past their caps using entads, virtues, afflictions, spells or other special circumstances.

Skills have five or six virtues, which are tied to specific levels (common thresholds are levels 10, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100) and boost certain aspects of the skill, unlock related abilities that could not be easily learned otherwise, or, at higher levels, physically impossible ones. There are also combo virtues that unlock more unique abilities, but they require several skills that work in concert leveled up past specific thresholds.

Character Sheet

The game layer comes with a character sheet that lists Juniper's attributes and skills, seen whenever he closes his eyes for more than three seconds. This is the state of the sheet as of Chapter 196:

PHY 8	7 POW	21 One-Handed Weapons	21 Two-Handed Weapons	21 Parry	21 Dodge
	7 SPD	0 Velocity Magic	21 Unarmored	21 Unarmed Combat	21 Thrown Weapons
	7 END	21 Heavy Armor	21 Athletics	29 Vibrational Magic	0 Revision Magic
MEN 15	14 CUN	28 Ink Magic	22 Air Magic	0 Rune Magic	33 Engineering
	14 KNO	24 Analysis	20 Repair	20 Logistics	20 Logic
	14 WIS	27 Rifles	42 Blood Magic	42 Still Magic	0 Plastic Magic
SOC 4	3 CHA	27 Passion Magic	23 Water Magic	29 Gem Magic	0 Fire Magic
	5 INS	0 Tree Magic	42 Essentialism	42 Bone Magic	0 Star Magic
	3 POI	0 Warding	20 Optics	20 Research	20 Mathematics
	1 LUK	34 Alchemy	4 Language	42 Spirit	0 Gold Magic

Quests

Main article: List of Quests

Quests are tasks given by the game layer which can, when completed, potentially lead to level ups.

The mechanism by which the game creates quests is opaque, but generally they appear when someone tells Juniper something that potentially involves him, or when they ask him to do something. There are some quests that come in parts, with a new quest following a previous quest's completion, as well as meta-quests comprised of subquests. Juniper theorizes that quests don't necessarily need to have reasonable objectives - just possible ones. Quests have historically scaled up to Juniper's power, but there's no hard evidence the pattern will hold.

Companions and Loyalty

Up to seven people (as determined by the game layer) can become companions to Juniper, part of his kharass, an elf term for groups of people cosmologically linked to each other through a theme. Amaryllis, Fenn and Grak theorize that theme might be 'princesses', for a loose application of the term.

Companions only become visible on the game's interface once Juniper increases their loyalty, so there's no way to know about them in advance. Loyalty goes up seemingly when the companion in question changes the way in which they view Juniper - though the specific mechanism is somewhat opaque.

Certain unique game features are unlocked upon reaching specific loyalty thresholds:

• Loyalty lvl 2: The interface now displays a brief but important biography of the companion.
• Loyalty lvl 10: A companion passive is unlocked, usually "Twinned Souls" - this allows Juniper to visualize a link to the companion's soul while using Soul magic. Valencia instead unlocked "Infernal Capture", the Six-Eyed Doe unlocked "Six-Eyed", and Bethel unlocked "Full House".
• Loyalty lvl 20: A second companion passive is unlocked, the default being "Symbiosis". Valencia unlocked "Soul Capture", Grak unlocked "Warded", and the Six-Eyed Doe unlocked "Deer to me"
• Companions sometimes come with a companion quest, an important quest that relates closely to their past and circumstances. Once such a quest is completed, it seems to unlock another passive. Amaryllis and Grak's quests have been completed, unlocking "Wardproof" and "Multitasker".

The companion biographies are as follows:

Amaryllis is the most direct descendant of Uther Penndraig, the Lost King, which gives her special claim-in-fact to a fair number of his estates and heirlooms bound along cognatic or enatic primogeniture, ultimogeniture, and gavelkind rules. She was once a keystone member of a bloc of power within the Lost King’s Court, but now she has been cast out through means both semi-legal and downright nefarious. Her homeland of Anglecynn is forbidden to her now, at least until she’s gathered enough power to wedge open some doors.

Fenn is a half-elf born to an elven father and human mother. Her childhood was spent with alternating months in the Isle of Eversummer and the colony of Rogbottom. While her ears marked her as exotic and dangerous among the humans, her teeth marked her as a hideous disgrace among the elves. She has never felt at home in either world and pretends to understand less than she does in order to highlight her differences before anyone can call her on them. After she reached maturity she held several odd jobs until settling into a dangerous, solitary life entering into the Risen Lands exclusion zone to take whatever wasn’t nailed down. That life ended when she was arrested selling contraband to a fence. When Anglecynn needed a guide through Silmar City, she was pulled from prison and given a second chance.

Grakhuil Leadbraids comes from the largely parthenogenetic clan of dwarves in Darili Irid (loosely, Gold Hole). Due to da nad skill in the game of Ranks and overall empathic nature relative to da nad kin, Grak was selected to leave Darili Irid for the Athenaeum of Barriers with the plan that da would return and become the next master warder of the clanhome. Upon returning home, da was entered into a rare arranged pair-bond with another dwarf, and fled from Darili Irid after refusing the Kiss on da nad bond night. Da has spent da nad time looking to make amends for the damage da nad absence caused to da nad clan.

[I’d closed my eyes and paged through after my little experiment in experiencing awe and wonder, only to find that instead of text, the Six-Eyed Doe had a picture that expanded outside the box it was meant to be set within. This was the first time that the game interface had shown me anything other than text, symbols, or lines to make boxes.

The picture had various scenes, devoid of any clear chronology and bleeding into each other where they met. When I looked at it, the view zoomed in, leaving the rest of the game interface behind and filling my vision with only the pictorial story of the Six-Eyed Doe. Most of it signified little to me, because it was focused on rivers and forests, with the occasional animal. I focused in on people, where I could find them, and ended up looking at a full-on orgy with writhing, naked bodies of a hundred different species. To one side of it, up and to the right, armored men were coming in and slaughtering the people, but toward the bottom there were a handful of pregnant women sitting around, and beneath them various women giving birth, with naked children walking away through the woods, and some donning leather armor of their own to fight off the attackers.

This was the story of the locus, as told by some insane artist who had the ability to paint photorealistically at a yottapixel scale but lacked any idea of how to tell a coherent narrative. It took me some time to find the bottle, which sat all by itself, away from everyone. There was no attempt at being literal; it was only barely big enough to contain Solace, who sat with legs folded and her staff across her lap. It was such a small thing, in comparison to the rest, and that was probably the point.]

Valencia is a nonanima, a humanoid without a soul, created by the essentialist Fallatehr Whiteshell in the Amoureux Penitentiary where she lived for the first seventeen years of her life. Until recently she was subject to repeated possession by demons and devils at random intervals, but now, touched by your magic, she has become something to be feared, for much different reasons than she was before. She is nearly a newborn, in some ways, trying to find her feet.

Bethel is not just an entad, but a meta-entad, capable of taking magical items and adding them to itself. Initially created by Omar Antoun using funds and labor provided by Uther Penndraig, it stood empty for several years until Uther returned. Once he discovered the house’s abilities, he began adding entads to it, eventually raising it to a sort of sentience, and after that, despite its objections and pleas. Five hundred years later, it had sequestered itself partway down the Boundless Pit, until you came along.

Raven was always the weakest of Uther’s Knights, and now she is the last of them. As an Ell, her life has been stretched out to the extremes. As the Head Librarian of the Infinite Library, she has seen thousands of futures. Since she was a young girl though, there has been one constant in her life, Uther Penndraig, who even now, in his absence, defines her.

Full details of the companion passives are as follows:

Twinned Souls: Fenn is a loyal companion, now formally part of your kharass, and will never lag behind you in relative power, so long as she is a member of your party.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 31: "The Loyal Elf"
Infernal Capture: Valencia is a loyal companion, now properly part of your kharass, though she is still without a soul. The non-anima is grasping, reaching, an unnatural construct trying to find its way in the world. Power has, for the first time in her life, found its way into her hands.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 68: "Seeing Red"
Six-Eyed: Any attempt to use any system in a non-standard way will be considered one degree more reasonable than it otherwise would be. Any existing virtues, entads, or effects that specify a degree of reasonableness are increased by one degree of reasonableness in your favor (calculated after all other effects). The Layman will look more favorably on your attempts to argue definition.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 139: "Piece of Mind"
Full House: Bethel knows the location of every entad inside her, even if she wouldn’t otherwise. Bethel can use the powers of any entad inside her, so long as it remains inside her.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 127: "Full House"
Symbiosis: You and Fenn are connected on a deeper level now, with the last vestiges of reluctance stripped away. When together, you may both use either your own skill, or half the skill of the other, rounded down, whichever is higher.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 66: "The Long Night"
Soul Capture: If Valencia has access to a soul, the anima exa, she can imbibe it in order to take whatever power it possesses, similar to the Essentialist practice of Soul Scaphism, but with more breadth and depth. Duration depends largely on how intensively she uses the soul in question.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 86: "Headwater"
Wardproof: Grak can selectively ignore wards that would apply to di, the things da wears and carries, and up to one other person (at a time). This ability activates automatically when the effect of the ward would be undesirable and can be selectively applied to any ward Grak chooses.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 137: "Darili Irid (Chapter)"
Warded: Grak is slowly coming to an understanding of di era and da nad place within the world. Grak can create wards around da nad own body which follow the contours of da nad skin as easily as if it were a cube of equal volume, and anchor them to di era as easily as da can anchor to Aerb. If warding is ever excluded, Grak’s ability to make wards will not be affected. Grak no longer needs a wand to make wards.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 192: "Cooldown"
Multitasker: Amaryllis can split herself into multiple independent clones, with each clone taking eight hours to create, though this takes no real effort on her part. Clones can also be recalled (with or without merge) from any distance with another eight hours each. Given ten minutes of concentration, Amaryllis can integrate with a clone, either merging her essence into a clone, merging a clone’s essence into herself, or doing a bidirectional update. If any clone dies, all clones die. If Amaryllis dies, all clones die. Clones cannot do magic or use entads. Clones automatically roll 0 with a total modifier of 0 for any combat roll. No more than thirty clones at a time can be created in this way.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 195: "Family"

Virtues and Afflictions

Sometimes, depending on Juniper's actions, the game layer decides to reward him with a virtue (not to be confused with skill virtues) or punish him with an affliction. Afflictions can also come from illnesses, emotional states or status effects. Virtues give positive skill or stat boosts, while Afflictions do the opposite. Afflictions can level up, which increases their negative effect.

The mechanism by which the game layer decides when to reward or punish Juniper is unknown, though it seems it punishes passive or unheroic play.

A full list of virtues is as follows:

• Ruthless: Unknown effect. Unlocked when Juniper snapped the rope, letting half of Fireteam Blackheart fall to their deaths. ELEVATOR facts Taken away when he unlocks Conscientious.
• Conscientious: Flattery +5, Romance +5. Unlocked when Juniper gracefully told Clara to leave the room so she wouldn't be caught in a fight between Juniper and Larkspur Prentiss. Don't Split the Party
• Mercy: CHA+1. Unlocked when Juniper mercy killed Superbia Laquis, one of Larkspur's allies. Copse and Robbers

A full list of afflictions is as follows:

• Cowardice: No effect at level 1, WIS -1 and POI -1 at level 2. Unlocked when Juniper makes a particularly unheroic choice and taken away when he does a heroic one. Taking the Fall Thickenings
• Broken Bone: No effect beyond the physical. Unlocked whenever Juniper has a broken bone. Solely Responsible
• Sprained Ankle: SPD -2, Athletics -5, Dodge -5. Unlocked whenever Juniper's ankle is sprained. Goraion
• Rat Rot: END -1, CUN + 1. The only Affliction with a positive effect, unlocked when a rat scratched Juniper at Silmar City. Sewer Rat
• Blood Loss: END -1 at level 1; PHY -1 and END -1 at level 2; PHY -2, END -1, MEN -1 and SOC - 1 at level 3. Unlocked whenever Juniper is in a state of blood loss. Sewer Rat
• Hungry: PHY -1, MEN -1, POI -1 at level 2. Unlocked whenever Juniper is hungry. Sewer Rat
• Drained Bone: Unknown game effects. Bones become brittle. Unlocked whenever Juniper drains his own bones. Rocket Man
• Goodly: Unknown game effects. Nudges Juniper's thoughts and actions in the direction of Good. The Soul of Discretion
• Overcapped: Skill will decay at 1 per 10 minutes until under cap. Applicable when putting skills over the stat cap with soul magic. Rule Zero
• Double Overcapped: Some level of skill decay (greater than Overcapped). Applicable when putting skills over twice the points of the stat cap. Rule Zero
• Overmaxed: Some level of skill decay. Applicable when putting skills over 200 points. To Know One's Onions
• Skilled Trade: Skill will decay at 1 per 10 minutes until returned to baseline. Applicable when putting points in skills with soul magic. Rule Zero
• Scaphism: Skill points from soul scaphism will decay at 1 per 10 minutes. Applicable when draining skills and using the points using soul magic. Rule Zero
• Griefstricken: MEN -1, SOC -2. Unlocked when one of Juniper's Companions died. Depths
• Bad Dreams: Juniper gets nightmares for weeks that fade away with time. A consequence of wearing the Crown of Malingering Thorns. Deceptions

Achievements

Main article: List of Achievements

Achievements are notifications received as part of Juniper Smith's game layer upon completing an optional milestone or performing actions recorded by the game as special or unique. Juniper theorizes they're largely jokes at his expense, reminders from the Dungeon Master that his life isn't truly his own.

It's unknown whether or not Achievements grant any experience points upon completion, or if they're purely cosmetic.

Settings

The settings page is a semi-hidden portion of the game layer that Juniper may access by inputting the beginning of the Konami Code with his eye movements. The function of the majority of the options is to control the degree to which Juniper's life on Aerb plays like a video game or tabletop game rather than a bare, real-life experience. Some options are locked.

Settings

◼ Ironman Mode	◼ Verisimilitude Mode	◼ Quest Logging
◼ Hardcore Ironman Mode	◻ Mini-map	◼ Verbose Quest Logging
◼ Diamond Hardcore Ironman Mode	◻ World map	◼ Achievement Logging
◼ Helldiver	◻ Fast Travel	◼ Hit points
◻ Dead-man's Switch	◻ Quest Markers	◼ Mana points

The current settings for Juniper, as of chapter 10, are such that dying on Aerb is almost as impactful as dying would have been on Earth: he has one and only one 'life' according to the game, he has no opportunity to retry or to do anything over should he die, and death on Aerb means the death of his real life body. These settings cannot be undone. However, there is one key difference - Juniper has checked the Helldiver option, meaning that should he die, he will continue to exist for an indefinite period of time in one of the nine thousand hells.

Juniper is also locked out of the mapping, fast travel, and quest marker features due to Verisimilitude Mode being enabled, a setting that also cannot be undone. However, Juniper has access to numerical representations of his health and mana points, and he also receives information from the game layer's quest logging that, in some cases, he otherwise would not have had.