Ruling — Spirit Island

You asked

What is an Incarna, and how is it different from a Sacred Site?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Spirit Islandbg-162886-en-1e · Spirit Island: Nature Incarnatebg-365137-en-1e

An Incarna is a special type of Presence characterized by an unusually tangled locus of attention and power.[1] While most Spirits have transient physical forms or embodiments of nature, an Incarna Spirit may exist across a wide stretch of physical space but is more focused around a single fragment of itself than most Spirits of similar size and scope.[1] Incarna are often mobile, moving across the island over long timescales such as weeks to years.[1] An Incarna is a unique form of Presence with other abilities specific to the Spirit.[1]

The difference between an Incarna and a Sacred Site is one of nature rather than magnitude.[1] Using metaphors:

* If Presence is like a pool and a Sacred Site is like a larger lake, an Incarna is like a brook or a deep, deep well.[1]

* If Presence is like a small shack and a Sacred Site is like a larger house, an Incarna is like a power plant or an M1 Abrams tank.[1]

A Spirit's Sacred Sites are any lands where that Spirit has more than one Presence.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate — Rulebook · p.8 · INCARNA VS. SACRED SITE

[2] RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook · p.13 · PRESENCE AND SACRED SITES

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 87 ms · ask 6111 ms · total 6200 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6200 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "An Incarna is a special type of Presence. How is that different from a Sacred Site? It's not a difference of magnitude, but of nature. To draw a comparison, if Presence is like a pool and a Sacred Site like a larger lake, an Incarna is like a brook or a deep, deep well. Or for a more modern Western ", "headingPath": "INCARNA VS. SACRED SITE", "sharpsignalDocId": 862}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.031319, "snippet": "Spirit Presence marks the lands a Spirit occupies. Lands with your Presence are sometimes referred to as 'your lands'. If your Presence is ever destroyed (for example, by Invaders Blighting the land), it is removed and put next to the Island. If any Spirit ever has no Presence left on the Island, th", "headingPath": "PRESENCE AND SACRED SITES", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.030622, "snippet": "Put your Presence close enough to the Invaders that you can use all your Powers on them. Avoid lands where Invaders are about to Ravage and add Blight. It will destroy your Presence. Spread your Presence out across the Island so you can collaborate with other players. Three '1 Damage' Powers can des", "headingPath": "WHERE SHOULD I PUT MY PRESENCE/SACRED SITES?", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.029762, "snippet": "Outnumber: 'where A outnumbers B' can be true in lands where there is no B. (For instance, 'where Dahan outnumber Cities' is true in lands with no Cities, so long as there's 1 or more Dahan.) Permanent Element: An element shown on a Presence Track. While uncovered, it gives an Element of that type. ", "headingPath": "GLOSSARY/INDEX", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.028958, "snippet": "Many generations later came the Second Reckoning, when the Dahan discovered their advisors and protectors had not been entirely candid with them, and the power balance between Dahan and Spirits evened out - but that is another story. Suffice it to say that the Dahan no longer view the Spirits as god", "headingPath": "THE SECOND RECKONING", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.028543, "snippet": "The Island has existed far longer than humans have lived there. But despite the continued existence of first-hand witnesses, assembling a coherent history is virtually impossible. Even among the most trustworthy Spirits, tales of the past are rife with contradictions, all maintained to be true. Did ", "headingPath": "THE ISLAND", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.027652, "snippet": "The world of Spirit Island is roughly similar to our own world's past. Details differ, but the overall trends of society and technology across the globe are broadly the same. Europe is no exception: its politics have taken a different turn, but the customs and attitudes of its people are similar to ", "headingPath": "THE STORY THUS FAR", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.027271, "snippet": "Explorer: A type of Invader. Does 1 Damage, has 1 Health. Town: A type of Invader. Does 2 Damage, has 2 Health. 1 Fear when destroyed. City: A type of Invader. Does 3 Damage, has 3 Health. 2 Fear when destroyed. Dahan: A clan/village of local Islanders. Does 2 Damage, has 2 Health. Fear: Fright done", "headingPath": "ICONOGRAPHY", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "INCARNA VS. SACRED SITE", "sharpsignalDocId": 862}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PRESENCE AND SACRED SITES", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 58 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 58 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.94897 of 823 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 12, 2026 12:11

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate — Rulebook (corpus doc 862)	INCARNA VS. SACRED SITE	p.8	0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	PRESENCE AND SACRED SITES	p.13	0.031319 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	WHERE SHOULD I PUT MY PRESENCE/SACRED SITES?	p.21	0.030622 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	GLOSSARY/INDEX	p.31	0.029762 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	THE SECOND RECKONING	p.24	0.028958 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	THE ISLAND	p.24	0.028543 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	THE STORY THUS FAR	p.24	0.027652 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	ICONOGRAPHY	p.32	0.027271 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 80 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate — Rulebook (corpus doc 862)	INCARNA VS. SACRED SITE	p.8	#1	0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate — Rulebook (corpus doc 862)	DETAILS/FAQS: · THE INCARNA IN THIS EXPANSION	p.8	#11	0.015873 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate — Rulebook (corpus doc 862)	THE INCARNA IN THIS EXPANSION	p.9	#12	0.015625 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	WHERE SHOULD I PUT MY PRESENCE/SACRED SITES?	p.21	#3	0.030622 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	RANGE	p.32	#27	0.011494 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate — Rulebook (corpus doc 862)	INCARNA TACTICS	p.9	#13	0.015385 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	PRESENCE AND SACRED SITES	p.13	#2	0.031319 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate — Rulebook (corpus doc 862)	INCARNA VS. SACRED SITE	p.8	#10	0.016129 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate — Rulebook (corpus doc 862)	INCARNA VS. SACRED SITE	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	PRESENCE AND SACRED SITES	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 87 ms · first delta 4537 ms · total 6200 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 87 ms · ask 6111 ms · gateway work 6200 ms · total 6200 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2140
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 226
tok/sec: 139.2 tok/sec — 226 output tokens in 1.623 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 44s ago)
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 7), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.