Death & Consequences¶

"You don't die easy in this town - you wake up poorer, sorer, and a long way from your sword. The dying is for the things you put down. Going down yourself is just an expensive nap." - Harn, of the Old Guard

Most of the time, losing a fight in Ghelmyon does not kill you - it knocks you out. You come to somewhere safe, lighter in the purse, nursing a battered body, with a lesson learned. That's the common case, and most of this article is about it.

This is the reference companion to the onboarding walk-through in Your first death. If you've never gone down before, read that first for the feel of it; come here for the rules - what exactly you lose, why it varies, and what surrender buys you.

At a glance¶


The common case	Knockout, not death - you wake at a healer, you keep going
Where you wake	The nearest heal-tagged place (temple, healer's house)
What you lose	Some coin, sometimes an item or two, a temporary debuff
What scales it	Where you went down - town vs. wilderness vs. deep wilds
What softens it	High Luck, the new-player grace window, Training mode
Surrender	A real option mid-fight - odds of being spared, then a price
Killing enemies	Hostiles you put down leave a lootable corpse
Real death	Reserved for story-flagged moments - you'll be warned
NPC death	Permanent for them; their property passes by inheritance

Knockout vs. death - who actually dies¶

The most important thing to understand: you and your enemies don't follow the same rule.

You go down → knocked out. Drop to zero and the fight ends. You collapse, then come to at a place of safety. It costs you, but the run continues. True player death is a rare, story-flagged thing (below) - not what happens when a wolf gets the better of you.
A plain townsfolk NPC goes down → knocked out too. They collapse unconscious and recover after a while. You haven't killed the baker; you've embarrassed her.
A hostile goes down → it can be killed. Bandits, beasts and the like that you defeat leave a body. That body is lootable - see below.

So the same blow means different things depending on who takes it. This is deliberate: the world is meant to absorb your mistakes, not end your story over a bad alley.

What a knockout costs you¶

When you're knocked out, the engine looks at where you fell and scales the consequences. Three broad bands:

Where you went down	Severity	Roughly what it costs
In a town (tavern, street, temple ground)	Mild	A small bite of coin, wake at decent health, brief debuff
Out in the wilds (roads, forest)	Heavier	More coin, you may lose an item, wake hurt, longer debuff
Deep wilderness (remote dens, far from help)	Worst	The most coin, more items lost, wake badly hurt, heaviest debuff

The logic is simple and fair: go down somewhere with help nearby and kind hands patch you up; go down miles from anyone and scavengers get to you first.

The battered body. However mild the knockout, you wake with a temporary debuff - call it being battered, badly wounded, or mauled, worsening with severity. It dulls your Strength and Dexterity (and, out in the wilds, your Speed), and it lasts a short while before fading on its own. You can fight through it, but you're weaker until it clears. This is separate from lasting wounds - see Wounds, Healing & Infection.

Lost coin and gear. A portion of the coin you were carrying goes missing - picked from your purse while you were out. In the wilds, loose items from your pack can vanish too. Equipped gear is much safer than loose pack items; it's what's rattling around in your bag that scavengers grab first.

The grave marker. Anything you do lose to a knockout is dropped where you fell, not destroyed outright. The game remembers the spot for a short window (about a day). Walk back in time and you can look to find your scattered belongings and pick them up. Wait too long and the world moves on - gone for good. That walk back is the real cost of going down badly. (For the onboarding version of the walk-back, see Your first death.)

Luck, grace, and the gentle landing¶

Three things quietly soften a knockout:

Luck. Your Luck stat shapes how you go down. A lucky character gets the kind passer-by, the untouched purse, the "barely worse for wear" wake-up. An unlucky one gets the scavengers, the slashed coin-purse, the picked-clean pack. At the best end, Luck can wipe the coin penalty entirely and spare your items; at the worst, it piles on extra loss. The narration tells you which way it broke - "a kind healer happened to be passing by" versus "scavengers found you first."
The new-player grace window. For your first few days in the world, a knockout carries no coin or item penalty at all. You still wake somewhere safe and battered, but the game gives you room to learn how combat goes before it starts charging you for losing.
Training mode. If you're in a practice setting, knockouts are gentlest of all - no losses, a fast recovery, and you're patched back up. Spar freely.

The takeaway: build a little Luck, learn the ropes during your grace window, and your early defeats are cheap tuition.

Where you wake up¶

You don't choose your recovery spot - the engine finds the nearest place that can heal you. In practice that's:

A temple or healer's house in your current town, if there is one.
The nearest such place in another town, if your town has none.
A temple fallback if all else fails.

You and any companions following you are moved there together, the location is added to your map, and you wake at a fraction of your health (better in town, worse in the deep wilds). A defeat also dings your standing a touch - the town guard respect a rescued-from-the-dirt adventurer a little less. Build that standing back the usual way.

Every town is meant to have at least one heal-tagged place for exactly this reason. If you're adventuring far from one, you're gambling on a longer, costlier recovery.

Surrender and yielding - bowing out of a fight¶

You don't have to fight to the end. Mid-combat you have two de-escalation moves, and they're genuinely useful:

Yield - you raise your hands and back off. Lower odds of being accepted, but a milder price if it works.
Surrender - you drop your weapon and kneel. Better odds of being accepted, but a steeper price.

Whether it's accepted is a roll. Things in your favor: you weren't the one who struck first, the foe trusts you, you're visibly hurt (badly wounded enemies are likelier to spare you). Against you: a desperate, near-dead enemy is less likely to show mercy. Beasts and mindless creatures never accept - they don't understand the gesture, so against an animal your only outs are winning, fleeing, or going down.

If a surrender or yield is accepted, the fight ends and the price depends on who you bowed to:

Who you yielded to	If accepted
Town guards	A warning and a small fine (yield) → or arrest and jail (surrender)
Bandits / thieves	They rob you - some of your coin (yield) → most of it, plus your weapon (surrender)
A generic foe	They let it go (yield) → or simply disarm you (surrender)

Surrendering to guards routes you into the arrest-and-jail flow - a fine, confiscation of anything stolen, and a stretch in the cells you can wait out or buy your way out of. That overlaps with the crime system; see Crime & Stealth. If a surrender is rejected, you've simply wasted the turn - the fight goes on.

Surrender is the smart play when a fight has gone wrong and a knockout would cost you more than a fine. Read the room.

When you kill something - the corpse it leaves¶

Win a fight against a hostile and it doesn't just vanish. It leaves a corpse on the ground, and that corpse holds what it was carrying - its coin and its gear. You loot it with loot corpse (or loot followed by the creature's name, or search the body). Beasts also leave a skinnable corpse - with the right tool and a steady hand you can take a hide or pelt off it.

This is the reward side of going down not being your only outcome: the things you put down pay out. The full mechanics - looting, skinning, quality, and how corpses decay if you leave them - live in Corpses, Looting & Skinning.

One warning. Finishing off an NPC who is merely knocked out - a townsfolk, a guard, a defenceless person - is murder. It carries a heavy honor penalty, registers as a crime, and can earn you an immediate ban from the town. Putting down a hostile bandit mid-fight is one thing; cutting the throat of an unconscious shopkeeper is another, and the world treats it as such.

Real death - the rare permanent kind¶

Everything above is the survivable loop. A handful of deaths are genuinely permanent:

Story-flagged deaths. Certain late-arc moments put your life truly on the line - losing there resolves the save to an ending rather than a healer's cot. The game makes it unmistakably clear when this is the case. You will not stumble into permanent death from an ordinary fight.

If you're playing the main story and the stakes feel different - a beat that's narrated as final - believe it. The everyday wolf in the woods is not that beat.

When an NPC dies - inheritance and aftermath¶

Your defeats are reversible. An NPC's death is not. A named character who falls in combat (or to misfortune in the living world) is gone from that save - and the world reshuffles around the hole they leave:

The body persists as evidence at the spot, and word of the death spreads to nearby NPCs, who react.
A ghost may linger at the death site for some characters.
Their property changes hands. If the dead NPC owned a home or a business, it passes down a succession line - spouse, then children, then siblings, then a named heir if they'd designated one (a lord might will his estate to his head steward rather than his family). If no one qualifies, the property reverts to the town as public holding. Ownership, rent status, and who can be found living or working there all update to follow the new owner.
Temples can, for a price, bring some NPCs back. Important figures aren't always lost forever - a temple resurrection exists, and the more important the figure, the steeper the fee. Truly essential characters (key trainers, quest-givers and the like) can't be permanently killed at all; they recover on their own.

So killing a property-owning NPC has consequences in the world - their shop closes or reopens under an heir, their family inherits their grudges, and the network of relationships around them re-knits itself. Killing is never free of ripples, even when it's not your own life on the line.

Quick reference - "I just went down, now what?"¶

Situation	What's happening
HP hit 0 in a fight	You're knocked out, not dead - you'll wake safe
Woke at a temple, purse lighter	Standard knockout - small coin loss, brief debuff
Woke in the wilds, an item missing	Wilderness knockout - walk back to the spot to recover it
Stat penalty after waking	The battered debuff - temporary, fades on its own
First few days, no penalty	The new-player grace window is covering you
Fight going badly	Consider yield (mild) or surrender (steeper, better odds)
Surrendered to guards	Arrest + jail - see Crime & Stealth
Killed a hostile	It left a lootable corpse - `loot corpse`
Tempted to finish a KO'd townsfolk	That's murder - crime, honor loss, town ban. Don't
An NPC you knew died	Permanent for them; their property passes by inheritance