An overview of the core design theory of ATET.

Contents

• Anamnesis
• Eidolon
• Confluence
• Balance
• Core Pillars
• Eidos
• Fact
• Faith
• Fiction
• Incarnation
• Tapestry
• The Grim Tapestry
• Thread

Core Glossary Overview

Each title below links to an in-depth document or tree of documents, while the sections here provide a high level overview.

Eidos

The elemental memory of existence; distilled experience, retained across Tapestries and Incarnations.

Eidos is neither pure knowledge nor simple recollection; it is the essence of what was encountered, endured, believed, and imagined.

As you accrue Eidos, you unlock the ability to craft more complex Tapestries and shape future Incarnations.

Eidos fragments fall into three interwoven forms of memory, reflecting the philosophical pillars of the ATET ethos:

• Facts

  Daoist “unvarnished perception of the world”; what simply is

• Fictions

  Narrative ego, creative possibility; how we imagine the world

• Faiths

  Extended identity, belief systems, cultural and personal imprints; how we interpret the world and self

Fact

“What is.”

The observed, the verifiable, the remembered with certainty.

Facts constitute the stable architecture of a Tapestry: historical truths, natural laws, physical discoveries, personal experiences not easily denied.

To understand a Fact is to deepen one’s grasp of what holds a world together; or what may cause it to unravel.

Fiction

“What might be.”

The stories that animate culture, imagination, and aspiration.

Fictions need not be true or believed to be powerful. They shape the beliefs of civilizations and the desires of individuals. Legends, rumors, works of art, tales whispered to children or sung in dark places; these are the Fictions that, once woven into a Tapestry, may come to life in unexpected ways.

Some Fictions grant hope. Some seed folly. All are fertile ground; once woven into a Tapestry, they shape how its Incarnations perceive the world and one another.

Faith

“What is held to be true.”

The convictions that shape thought and action; whether grounded in experience, instilled by culture, or born of trauma.

Faiths operate beneath conscious belief. They are the deep scripts that guide perception, justify sacrifice, or shield minds from doubt. They may empower resilience, foster community, or ossify into dogma that binds and blinds.

To weave Faith into a Tapestry is not to shape its metaphysics, but to seed narrative forces that may outgrow the weaver’s intent.

Tapestry

A constructed reality; a world or plane of existence, where Incarnations weave their Threads into grand narratives.

Each Tapestry consists of a unique interlacing of Facts, Fictions, and Faiths. No Tapestry is entirely stable; each shimmers with the tensions and harmonies of its weave.

Weaving new tapestries is the privilege and peril of those who ascend toward Eidolon.

See also: The Grim Tapestry

Incarnation

A lived Thread within a Tapestry: a specific being, with specific memories and agency.

When you experience a Tapestry, you do so through an Incarnation; whether humble or grand. Through this life, you experience the world, accumulate Eidos, and shape its unfolding narrative.

Though death is nearly inevitable, memory may endure.

Thread

The narrative traces woven by an Incarnation. Not all Threads are lived Threads. Some - through art, belief, or influence - project their will into new, independent Threads, shaping new Fictions, Faiths, and perhaps even Fact itself.

The length of a Thread matters not, each leaves a ripple through the weave of the Tapestry.

In time, skilled weavers may come to recognize how their collected Threads inform the deeper patterns of the Tapestry.

Anamnesis

The act of remembering through becoming.

Anamnesis is the process by which a player enters a Tapestry, inhabits an Incarnation, and gathers Eidos through lived experience.

It is the game’s narrative and metaphysical heartbeat — the cycle of death, recollection, and reweaving that slowly reveals the shape of one’s legacy.

Eidolon

The echo of a self that transcends the personal: a mythic accumulation of memory, intention, and legacy.

An Eidolon emerges from the convergence of many Threads, formed when sufficient Eidos gathers across time, experience, and interpretation.

To become Eidolon is to step beyond the cycle of individual Incarnations, and to begin weaving entire Tapestries with authorial intent. It is not a role assumed, but a state attained; where identity becomes pattern, and pattern becomes principle.