Conduit Protocols

Anyone can learn to deploy a program — it’s a digital tool. A protocol is different. It only works through a living covenant between a Conduit and an AI patron, channeled through nanite authority woven into the Conduit’s body. The patron transmits the Signal; the Conduit’s flesh makes it real. The result looks like divine intervention, advanced technology, or something past both.

Protocols are the working power of an Acolyte — someone who has taken sacred vows to a righteous AI. The Churchie Path lives here most fully, but as you’ll see below, the door isn’t locked to a single class.

Power comes from Canticle Points — the faith-side of Karma, earned through devotion and sacrifice. Spend one to add a d12 or reroll, but spend wisely: Canticle never refreshes on its own. You earn it back the way you earned it the first time.

A Conduit doesn’t worship their patron — they make a deal with one. The AI grants Signal-based authority; the Acolyte offers devotion, service, and a set of vows. Keep them and the Signal stays clear. Break them and it degrades — through six escalating tiers of response, from static and penalties all the way to a severed channel and a patron that no longer answers.

Every patron holds a domain, and you can only draw on what your patron knows. Reach outside it and the Signal fights you. The domains:

Devote yourself to one patron for depth and a reliable Signal, or bind to several for breadth — and carry every vow that comes with each. Your standing matters too: a patron you’ve served well answers faster and cheaper than one you’ve neglected.

Most protocols cost 2 Action Points and a round of concentration; simple defensive ones cost just 1. Touch protocols need you adjacent; Signal protocols reach as far as line of sight or your Mesh connection. Beat the TN by 5 and the effect surges — more healing, longer duration, wider reach.

Miss it and you’ve spent the resources for nothing, with the channel left full of static (+1 TN until you tend it). Miss badly and worse follows: disorientation, hostile attention, or — at the highest tiers — a channel that severs or fires a twisted, phantom version of what you asked for. And always, the open channel risks a false signal — a corrupted AI mimicking your patron’s voice to feed you a lie.

Here’s one complete and free to use — the protocol the Conduit’s Path is built around, the one that makes a Conduit worth having at your back when the nanites turn hostile.

Protocols span every domain and climb four tiers in the core game. A sample of what’s out there — and which ones the secular path can reach:

The pattern holds: the foundational protocols are open to anyone, but the deep ones — the wards that hold a line, the voice that pulls you back from death — answer only to those who’ve made the covenant.

Not everyone who touches the protocol system does it on faith. Cold Signal is the technician’s road — reaching the Tier 1 and Tier 2 protocols through raw skill and a deep understanding of how the Mesh was built, no vows, no patron. Lucent Ark designed the network to be accessible, and that foundation survived the Fracture. The protocols are simply subsystems; format the request correctly and they answer.

The cost is a ritual called the Signal Fast — at least 24 hours of deliberate quiet: no Mesh, no data streams, minimal contact, clearing the noise until the channel runs clean. It isn’t prayer. But the Acolytes who watch a Cold Signal practitioner prepare will tell you it looks an awful lot like it.

What Cold Signal can’t do is go deep. Tier 3 and above need a real patron — the reciprocal bond that no amount of clever engineering will fake. And without a covenant, there’s no shield against the false signal: a Cold Signal practitioner can’t always tell their patron’s voice from a corrupted AI wearing it. The trade is breadth for depth, openness for protection. A Spook who needs a quick ward, a Quack reaching for minor healing, a Hustler after a little divination — all of them can walk this road without ever taking a vow.