In Tales Unending, time does not pass uniformly.
There is no universal clock shared by all worlds, no absolute present that governs the Storywake. Instead, time is understood through progression, change, and resolution.
Time is not measured by duration.
It is measured by movement of story.
The Storywake itself is atemporal.
There is no meaningful “before” or “after” within the Wake—only direction, momentum, and drift. Wake Ships do not travel through time; they travel between states of narrative coherence.
As a result:
Days, hours, and calendars do not exist in the Wake
Travel duration is contextual, not fixed
Two crews can leave and arrive in different orders without contradiction
The Wake does not care how long something takes.
It cares whether it changes.
Each Story Realm possesses its own internal model of time.
Some realms experience:
Linear time
Cyclical time
Seasonal time
Event-based time
Time that resets, stalls, or accelerates
Anchors experience time as the realm defines it while present there.
Upon leaving, temporal dissonance may occur—but identity persists.
Anchors do not age according to the Storywake.
They age according to:
Personal continuity
Accumulated experience
Identity coherence
An Anchor may:
Spend years in a single realm
Return to Homeward unchanged
Or age rapidly due to narrative strain
Time affects Anchors subjectively, not chronologically.
Time in Tales Unending should be tracked using Narrative Beats, not minutes or days.
A Narrative Beat represents a meaningful shift:
A choice is made
A truth is revealed
A conflict escalates
A story moves closer to ending
Beats replace:
Turns
Days
Downtime blocks
A scene may take one Beat—or several—depending on weight.
Fatigue is not caused by hours awake, but by sustained narrative pressure.
Characters become:
Wake-tired after prolonged instability
Emotionally strained after unresolved tension
Rested after meaningful pauses, not sleep alone
Homeward provides the most reliable rest because it allows narrative decompression.
Travel between Story Realms does not consume measurable time.
Instead, it incurs:
Wake strain
Identity fatigue
Continuance cost
This allows:
Long journeys to feel short
Short journeys to feel exhausting
The GM should describe travel in terms of experience, not duration.
Contradictory timelines are not errors.
If:
Two Anchors experience the same event differently
A realm changes while someone was “away”
An NPC remembers a future that hasn’t happened yet
These are valid outcomes of atemporal travel.
The Storywake accommodates contradiction as long as identity remains coherent.
Time becomes rigid only when:
A Story Realm demands it
A countdown is narratively essential
Denial is actively stalling an ending
In such cases, time pressure should be explicit and meaningful, never arbitrary.
A story reaches a clean ending not when time runs out—but when:
Its central question is answered
Its final choice is made
Its trajectory concludes honestly
At that moment, time within the story releases its hold.
This is why endings feel sudden.
When running Tales Unending:
Track story progression, not elapsed time
Use Narrative Beats to mark change
Allow time to bend, compress, or contradict
Only impose clocks when the story demands urgency
Treat rest as narrative relief, not sleep cycles
If a player asks “How long did that take?”, the correct response is often:
“Long enough for it to matter.”
Time in Tales Unending is not a river.
It is a series of moments
that only exist
once someone chooses
to move them forward.
Stories do not end because time passes.
Time passes
because stories are willing to end.