How to play
Your bestiary has three lands of five spaces each: the Forest, the Mountains and the Underworld. Five dice lie in the Well. Three creature cards lie on the shelf. Only the order of the decks and your own hand are secret.
- Keep some creatures. At the start you hold 5 creature cards, 2 scholar cards and 1 food of each kind. Keep any of the creatures and give back 1 food for each one. Keep 1 scholar card.
- Take a turn. On your turn, do one thing. Play a creature from your hand, or use one land: the Forest for food, the Mountains for eggs, or the Underworld for cards.
- Play a creature. Put it in a land where it can live, in the first free space. Pay its food. The next spaces also cost eggs: none in the first, 1 egg in the second and third, 2 eggs in the fourth and fifth.
- Use a land. The more creatures in that land, the more you get. Then the creatures of that land wake, one at a time, from right to left, and each uses its power.
- Four rounds. Each round you have one turn fewer: 8, 7, 6, then 5. At the end of a round the seats with the most of the round goal score points.
- The end. After round 4, add your creature points, your scholar cards, your round goals, 1 point for each egg, 1 for each hoarded food and 1 for each card under a creature. The highest total wins. A tie goes to the most food left.
How you score
| Creatures | The points printed on each creature. |
|---|---|
| Scholar cards | The secret card you kept scores for what you built. |
| Round goals | Points for your place in each of the four goals. |
| Eggs, hoards, cards under creatures | 1 point each. |
Why it is fair
Every shuffle and every roll comes from a secret seed. You see its fingerprint at the start of the game. You see the seed itself at the end. So you can check every card and every die. Verify a game.