Spirit Island

Base setup uses one Island Board per player. Place starting Presence as directed on each Spirit’s back, with the rest covering its Presence tracks. Perform an initial Explore and move that card to Build. A first game may omit the Blight Card, Adversary, and Scenario. Official errata adds exactly one extra Blight to the whole pool during setup: 5 × players + 1 without a Blight Card, or normally 2 × players + 1 on a Healthy Island card. Printed island Blight comes separately from the box.

In the shared Spirit Phase, Grow, gain Energy, then play and pay for cards. Normally choose one Growth option and perform everything in it. Add Presence from tracks left to right to uncover better income or Card Plays. Gain Energy equal to the highest uncovered track number and play within your Card Play and Energy limits, paying immediately even for Slow cards. Unspent Energy carries over but cannot be freely transferred; unused Card Plays do not carry over.

The phases are Spirit, Fast Powers, Invaders, Slow Powers, and Time Passes. Resolve cards and Innate Powers at their appropriate speed, checking Range and Target when using them. Players may agree on the order, but one Power cannot interrupt another. Fast Powers cannot simply be saved for Slow. Cards grant Elements as soon as played; thresholds check Elements without spending them. Innate Powers normally cost neither Energy nor Card Plays.

During the Invader Phase, resolve applicable Blighted Island instructions, earned Fear cards, Ravage, Build, Explore, then advance Invader cards. Build occurs only in matching lands containing Invaders: add a City if Towns outnumber Cities, otherwise a Town. Explore adds one Explorer in each matching land containing a Town or City, or adjacent to a Town, City, or Ocean. Explorers themselves are not sources for Explore.

During Ravage, Explorers, Towns, and Cities deal one, two, and three Damage respectively. Subtract Defend, then apply the same result simultaneously to the land and Dahan. At least two Damage to the land adds one Blight, regardless of greater Damage. Every two Damage destroys one Dahan; do not spread Damage to keep all Dahan alive. Afterwards, surviving Dahan each deal two Damage in retaliation. Dahan do not absorb Damage for the land. They retaliate even if Defend reduces Damage to zero, but not if Ravage is skipped.

Each Blight added during play destroys one Presence from every Spirit present in that land. Destroyed Presence goes beside the island, not back onto tracks. If the land already had Blight, also add one Blight to a single adjacent land, cascading again if necessary; do not add it to every neighbour. Printed starting Blight causes neither destruction nor cascades. Removed Blight returns to the current supply, but a flipped Blight Card does not return to Healthy.

Destroying a Town generates one Fear and a City two; removing or replacing them does not automatically generate this Fear. Every 4 × players Fear earns one Fear card, with excess continuing toward the next. Resolve earned cards in order during the Invader Phase; revealing a Terror Level divider changes the level immediately. During Time Passes, move played Powers to personal discard piles and clear Damage, Elements, and single-turn effects. Discards do not automatically return to hand.

Check victory and defeat after the current action and all actions it triggers have fully resolved. Win if the current Terror Level condition is met: no Invaders at Level I, no Towns or Cities at II, and no Cities at III; earning every Fear card also meets a victory condition. Lose if any Spirit has no Presence on the island, the Blight supply runs out as specified by the current board or card, or Explore requires an Invader card when none remains. If both victory and defeat conditions are met at that check, it is a sacrifice victory. A Ravage is one action per land: finish its Damage, Blight consequences, and Dahan retaliation before checking, but do not continue to other lands after the game ends.