Ruling — Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown

← Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown

You asked

How do I play?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknownbg-373600-en-1e

I looked through Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook · p.10 · - Leveling up Skills

Choose an Elder One. From its box, place the Elder One figure on the starting space of the Summoning track. Place the Minions reference card on the Story Board. Set out the 8 Mythos cards and any tokens . Place the Elder One Stage cards in order, faceup, on the Story Board. Stage I goes on top. Choo

RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook · p.23 · ADJUSTING THE DIFFICULTY · - Separating the Unknown Rules · · Unknown Relics: Easier Game · · Unknown Monsters: Harder Game · - Random Elder One Summoning: · Changes to the Additional Setup:

If players want to adjust the difficulty of the game, they can implement some of the following changes: Although the Unknown Relics and Monsters were designed to be played together, players may choose to use them independently if they want an easier or harder game. If players want an easier game of

RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook · p.8 · - Activating Insanities · - Leveling up Skills

Each investigator gets an insanity card at the start of play. Every time their marker on the sanity track reaches a , that insanity activates. Perform the symptoms on the card. If multiple investigators reach a at the same time, they activate clockwise from the current player. When the marker reache

RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook · p.11 · Make a Roll · Enemy Attack · Rolls Against Yourself · TAKING STRESS TO REROLL

Some actions and Discovery cards tell players to 'make a roll'. When players make a roll, they always roll 3 standard black dice (and may also be allowed to add bonus green dice). Enemies roll a specific number and type of dice for their attacks as indicated on their reference card. Some effects and

RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook · p.20 · ENDING THE GAME

Players win the game when they kill the Elder One by defeating its Final Stage. If multiple end-game triggers happen at the same time, winning conditions have precedence. EXAMPLE: The Elder One and the last investigator die at the same time. The players saved the world and win the game. Players lose

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

warm abstain

this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)

corpus profile

live,vps

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 162 ms · ask 4165 ms · total 4329 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 0 ms · generation 4329 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 10, "score": 0.047183, "snippet": "Choose an Elder One. From its box, place the Elder One figure on the starting space of the Summoning track. Place the Minions reference card on the Story Board. Set out the 8 Mythos cards and any tokens . Place the Elder One Stage cards in order, faceup, on the Story Board. Stage I goes on top. Choo", "headingPath": "- Leveling up Skills", "sharpsignalDocId": 701}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "If players want to adjust the difficulty of the game, they can implement some of the following changes: Although the Unknown Relics and Monsters were designed to be played together, players may choose to use them independently if they want an easier or harder game. If players want an easier game of ", "headingPath": "ADJUSTING THE DIFFICULTY · - Separating the Unknown Rules · · Unknown Relics: Easier Game · · Unknown Monsters: Harder Game · - Random Elder One Summoning: · Changes to the Additional Setup:", "sharpsignalDocId": 701}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "Each investigator gets an insanity card at the start of play. Every time their marker on the sanity track reaches a , that insanity activates. Perform the symptoms on the card. If multiple investigators reach a at the same time, they activate clockwise from the current player. When the marker reache", "headingPath": "- Activating Insanities · - Leveling up Skills", "sharpsignalDocId": 701}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Some actions and Discovery cards tell players to 'make a roll'. When players make a roll, they always roll 3 standard black dice (and may also be allowed to add bonus green dice). Enemies roll a specific number and type of dice for their attacks as indicated on their reference card. Some effects and", "headingPath": "Make a Roll · Enemy Attack · Rolls Against Yourself · TAKING STRESS TO REROLL", "sharpsignalDocId": 701}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Players win the game when they kill the Elder One by defeating its Final Stage. If multiple end-game triggers happen at the same time, winning conditions have precedence. EXAMPLE: The Elder One and the last investigator die at the same time. The players saved the world and win the game. Players lose", "headingPath": "ENDING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 701}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Once a player is done using any rerolls, tally the number of each result obtained (note that some die faces contain 2 results). Make sure to apply any symbol changes from abilities (such as counting as successes). NOTE: If an effect counts an icon as another icon (e.g. Arcane Mastery), that icon sto", "headingPath": "APPLYING RESULTS · 1. Use Any Successes: · 2. Resolve Effects: · 3. Apply Any Tentacles:", "sharpsignalDocId": 701}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "After performing the game setup, perform the following additional steps: Place the Unknown Board to the right of the Story Board. Randomly choose 2 Unknown Monsters that are different from the monsters already present in the Episode. Place both cards randomly on the Unknown Board slots and retrieve ", "headingPath": "Additional Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 701}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "This phase varies depending on whether there are enemies in the active investigator's space or not. If the active investigator is in a Safe space, INVESTIGATE the space: Draw the top card of the Discovery deck and read the text in the center box aloud. Some cards have a statement of something the in", "headingPath": "3. INVESTIGATE OR FIGHT!", "sharpsignalDocId": 701}]

citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show

[]

boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)

no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 701 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 701 boosted

answered-before recall

no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough

similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)

debug row retained until

Nov 24, 2026 03:31 UTC

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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	- Leveling up Skills	p.10	0.047183 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	ADJUSTING THE DIFFICULTY · - Separating the Unknown Rules · · Unknown Relics: Easier Game · · Unknown Monsters: Harder Game · - Random Elder One Summoning: · Changes to the Additional Setup:	p.23	0.046898 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	- Activating Insanities · - Leveling up Skills	p.8	0.046635 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	Make a Roll · Enemy Attack · Rolls Against Yourself · TAKING STRESS TO REROLL	p.11	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
#5	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	ENDING THE GAME	p.20	0.031746 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	APPLYING RESULTS · 1. Use Any Successes: · 2. Resolve Effects: · 3. Apply Any Tentacles:	p.12	0.030303 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	Additional Setup	p.22	0.029851 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	3. INVESTIGATE OR FIGHT!	p.16	0.029412 (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 55 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 — not 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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	- Activating Insanities · - Leveling up Skills	p.8	#3	0.046635 (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 doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	Additional Setup	p.22	#7	0.029851 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	SKILL CODEX	p.24	#18	0.013514 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	3. INVESTIGATE OR FIGHT!	p.16	#8	0.029412 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	SUMMON ENEMIES	p.15	#14	0.014493 (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 Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	UNKNOWN RULES · Unknown Board · Unknown Monsters · Unknown Mythos Cards	p.21	#10	0.028893 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	ADJUSTING THE DIFFICULTY · - Separating the Unknown Rules · · Unknown Relics: Easier Game · · Unknown Monsters: Harder Game · - Random Elder One Summoning: · Changes to the Additional Setup:	p.23	#2	0.046898 (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 doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown — Rulebook (corpus doc 701)	- Leveling up Skills	p.10	#1	0.047183 (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 doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 162 ms · first delta 4232 ms · total 4329 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 162 ms · ask 4165 ms · gateway work 4329 ms · total 4329 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2911
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 180.0 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.050 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 1s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 60h, checked 6s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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: ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale: I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped

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 634), 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.