Introduction

	Aquila is a game of exploration and high-flying adventure. Enter a world of fantastical creatures and bizarre magics as you chase your dreams across a sea of clouds. You have just set foot in Ishtar, a floating archipelago hanging in an endless sky.
	
	Will you take a stand for your people and oppose the elitist nobles and their oppressive regime, or perhaps plunder unsuspecting merchant ships as pirates aboard a notorious skyship? Maybe you and your fellow treasure-hunters would prefer leading expeditions into the ancient ruins lying beneath the surface of some monster-infested islands, or even seek the tutelage of a venerable SkyKnight in the hopes of someday achieving that title given only to Ishtar’s most highly-esteemed warriors? As a player, you are free to pursue any of these paths, or even entirely different ones, because in Aquila, the one who decides your story is you.


	Setting Up

        Aquila is a game than can be played with as few as 3 people, but a group of 4-5 players is generally considered optimal. For the remainder of this rulebook, one player will henceforth be referred to as the Warden. The Warden is in charge of creating the world that the rest of the players interact with. This includes describing the scenery of the landscape, providing the other players with general information about the setting surrounding the campaign, and creating a variety of obstacles in the forms of people, places, and strange creatures with which the players can interact. 
	
	The remaining players will be acting as characters in the world of the game. Their job is to create backstories and traits to describe their characters, and decide on the beliefs and instincts that will ultimately drive their personal stories. Together with the Warden, the players will guide their characters on a perilous journey that will undoubtedly change their beliefs and shape the world around them in order to create an exciting and memorable story.

	Every player should have something to write with, a few sheets of paper to keep track of information about their characters and the game, and some six-sided dice. really only need one die to play, but two dice per player is recommended if you don’t want to have to re-roll or pass dice around a lot.


	Playing the Game

	In Aquila, every action taken by a character in the game, whether they’re controlled by the Warden or by the players, revolves around the use of moves. A move is made whenever a player performs an action in the game that would trigger that move. If a player wants to take a course of action that would trigger a move, she must make that move. There is no way to perform the triggering action and not take the move; the two go hand-in-hand. When the move is triggered, the player follows the rules laid out by the move in order to resolve the action.
Most moves make use of one of a character’s stats. Stats are numbers used to represent physical and mental characteristics of a character, such as how much they can lift, or how easy it is for them to tell if someone is lying. The stats that describe every character in a Aquila are:


	* Strength - How much you can lift and how hard you hit
	* Dexterity - Your ability to perform precise, delicate movements and how accurate you are with weapons
	* Agility - How fast you move, as well as how hard you are to hit and how stealthy you are
	* Constitution - How much damage you can take, and how resistant you are to the effects of poison and diseases
	* Intelligence - Your ability to solve complex puzzles, analyze trapping mechanisms, and memorize important lore
	* Wisdom - Your talent with magical spells and your ability to perceive the world around you
	* Charisma - How easily you can manipulate others through speech and how likely others are to flock to you as 		     		     their ally or leader


        There are a variety of moves performable by any and all characters in the game, such as making a melee attack or persuading someone to agree with you. These are called standard moves. They are usable by anyone and cover all situations in which any character, regardless of their individual abilities, could potentially find herself.
        
	On the other hand, some characters may be able to perform certain moves that others could not, such as casting a spell or showing mastery with a particular type of weapon. These moves are known as skill moves. Skill moves can only be made by characters who learned them at some point in their histories.
        
	Some moves are even capable of affecting the outcomes of other moves. These moves will often tell the player to “add a modifier of X” to your next move, where X could be a positive or negative number. These moves modify future ones by giving the player a numerical value to add or subtract from the result of the next roll they make.


        Character Creation

        When creating characters in Aquila, players should have in mind the type of character they want to play. Generally discussion around the table about each character’s past and motivations can help the group figure out who they’ll be playing and how their characters will work together. The Warden’s role during character creation should be to ask the players questions about their characters in order to make them think about and thereby flesh out their character’s quirks and thought-pattern.
        
	When a player has a general idea of the kind of character she wants to play, then she can start choosing her character’s trait moves. Trait moves are grouped into categories that match the kind of training or background that a character would be required to have gone through in order to gain proficiency with said moves. These groupings are known as the character’s histories. When a player feels that a history accurately describes a significant stage of development in their character’s life, they take that history and acquire the beginning trait moves associated with them. As characters advance in the game, they can unlock the advanced moves in the histories they’ve taken in order to strengthen them for future challenges. The number of histories a character takes is dictated by the Warden in order to make sure that characters match the intended power-level of the campaign.