Ruling — Conspiracy: Abyss Universe

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Conspiracy: Abyss Universebg-276042-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Shuffle the Lord cards and form a deck placed facedown in the center of the table, leaving enough space for 5 different color-coded discard piles.[1]

2. Shuffle the Location cards and form a deck placed facedown next to the Lord deck, then reveal the top card.[1]

3. Place the Pearl Master token and the Pearl track with its marker at 0 in the center of the table.[1]

4. Each player receives a set of 5 tokens (one of each color); any remaining tokens are replaced in the box.[1]

5. A first player is chosen at random to start their turn.[1]

Taking a Turn

Players take turns moving clockwise.[2] During your turn, you must carry out the following steps, in order:

1. Recruit Lords: choose one or more Lords to add to your Senate Chamber.[2] You can do this either by:

* Drawing 1, 2, or 3 cards at the same time from the top of the Lord deck, choosing only one card to add to your Senate Chamber, and discarding the remaining cards faceup into color-coded discard piles.[2]

* Choosing a discard pile of one color and taking all the Lords in it to add to your Senate Chamber.[2]

2. Extend your Senate Chamber: place your chosen Lord(s) in your Senate Chamber, following the placement rules of placing them from left to right and from top to bottom to create an inverted pyramid.[3] If recruiting more than one Lord, you choose the order in which they are placed.[3]

3. Apply the effects of the cards you have just placed, including the powers of your new Lords and updating your Senate Chamber.[3][2]

Taking Control of a Location

When you have either two identical keys or three keys, you must take control of a Location by following these steps:[4]

1. Choose a Location by either:

* Drawing 1, 2, or 3 Location cards at the same time, choosing one, and placing the rest faceup next to the Location deck to be available for later turns.[4]

* Taking 1 of the available faceup Locations.[4]

2. Place your Location on the Lord you have just added to your Senate Chamber, masking the last key revealed; this resets your key count to zero.[5]

3. Apply, where necessary, the power of the Location.[5]

Becoming the Pearl Master

The first player to gain one or several Pearls takes the Pearl Master token and moves the marker on the Pearl track to correspond to their number of Pearls.[5] If an opponent reaches the same number of Pearls as the Pearl Master, they steal the token.[5] If an opponent has more Pearls, they steal the token and move the marker forward to their number of Pearls.[5]

End of the Game

1. The game ends when a player completes their Senate Chamber by placing their 15th and final Lord.[6]

2. Each opponent then gets to play one last turn.[6]

3. Each player calculates their Influence Points from:

* Your Lords: the total Influence Points from the Lords with the Coat of Arms tokens (the most influential Lord of each color in your Senate Chamber).[6]

* Your Locations: the total Influence Points from the Locations you control.[6]

* Your greatest Lords Coalition: the biggest area of adjacent Lords of the same color (3 points are scored for each Lord within it).[6]

* The Pearl Master: a bonus of 5 Influence Points for the player possessing the Pearl Master token.[6]

4. The player with the highest Influence Points wins; in the event of a tie, the player with the most Pearls wins; if a tie persists, the victory is shared.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook · p.3 · Game setup

[2] RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook · p.4 · Game setup · You can recruit one or more Lords:

[3] RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook · p.6 · Extend your Senate Chamber · 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1 2 3 4 5

[4] RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook · p.8 · TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION

[5] RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook · p.9 · TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION · BECOME THE PEARL MASTER

[6] RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook · p.12 · END OF THE GAME

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 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 148 ms · ask 18033 ms · total 75439 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 57256 ms · generation 18183 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "+ = 1 Location 1 Location So, when you have either two identical keys, or three keys, you must take control of a Location by following these steps: 1 Choose a Location. To do this, you can: h h EITHER draw 1, 2 or 3 Location cards at the same time. Choose one of them, then place the rest faceup, nex", "headingPath": "TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "1 Shuffle the Lord cards and form a deck placed facedown in the center of the table. Leave enough space for 5 different discard piles, one of each color. 2 Shuffle the Location cards and form a deck placed facedown next to the Lord deck. Reveal the top card of the Location deck. 3 Place the Pearl Ma", "headingPath": "Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Players take turns, moving clockwise. During your turn, you must carry out the following steps, in order: 1 Recruit Lords: choose one or more Lords to add to your Senate Chamber. 2 Extend your Senate Chamber: place your chosen Lord(s) in your Senate Chamber and apply the effects of the cards you hav", "headingPath": "Game setup · You can recruit one or more Lords:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "2 Place your Location on the Lord you have just added to your Senate Chamber, so as to mask the last key revealed. By doing this, your key count is reset to zero: none of the keys placed before a Location can be used. You can take control of another Location if you succeed in obtaining other keys. 3", "headingPath": "TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION · BECOME THE PEARL MASTER", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030886, "snippet": "The game ends when a player completes their Senate Chamber by placing their 15th and final Lord. Each opponent then gets to play one last turn. Note: if a player chooses to recruit Lords using a discard pile that contains more cards than free spaces in their Senate Chamber, they choose enough cards ", "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Place the chosen Lord(s) in your Senate Chamber, following the placement rules. If you recruit more than one Lord, choose the order in which they are placed. The player must always add the Lord(s) by placing them: from left to right  and from top to bottom  so creating an inverted pyramid, as show", "headingPath": "Extend your Senate Chamber · 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1 2 3 4 5", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "h h If you add a Lord of a color that is not yet present in your Senate Chamber, place the corresponding Coat of Arms token on the new card. h h If you add a Lord of a color already present in your Senate Chamber, check the Influence Points of the new Lord: if these are higher than those of the Lord", "headingPath": "PLACING AND MOVING THE COAT OF ARMS TOKENS · TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Note: The Pearl track marker must always show the number of Pearls owned by the Pearl Master, so that the other players know exactly the goal to reach to steal the title by taking the card. Punchboard_Conspiracy.indd 1 Punchboard_Conspiracy.indd 1 0 ABYSS_Pocket_Cards.indd 62 31/07/2019 14:29:40 3 3", "headingPath": "BECOME THE PEARL MASTER · EXAMPLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game setup · You can recruit one or more Lords:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Extend your Senate Chamber · 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1 2 3 4 5", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION · BECOME THE PEARL MASTER", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1095}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1095 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1095 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 0.91732 of 2806 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:02 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 Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION	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 Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	Game setup	p.3	0.032258 (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 Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	Game setup · You can recruit one or more Lords:	p.4	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
#4	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION · BECOME THE PEARL MASTER	p.9	0.03125 (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 Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	END OF THE GAME	p.12	0.030886 (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 Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	Extend your Senate Chamber · 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1 2 3 4 5	p.6	0.030769 (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 Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	PLACING AND MOVING THE COAT OF ARMS TOKENS · TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION	p.7	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
#8	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	BECOME THE PEARL MASTER · EXAMPLE	p.10	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

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 20 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 Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	Game setup	p.3	#2	0.032258 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION	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 + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	Lords' Powers	p.16	#12	0.013889 (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 Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	Extend your Senate Chamber · 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1 2 3 4 5	p.6	#6	0.030769 (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 Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION · BECOME THE PEARL MASTER	p.9	#4	0.03125 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)		p.16	#11	0.014085 (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 Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	END OF THE GAME	p.12	#5	0.030886 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	Game setup · You can recruit one or more Lords:	p.4	#3	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	Game setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	Game setup · You can recruit one or more Lords:	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	Extend your Senate Chamber · 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1 2 3 4 5	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	TAKING CONTROL OF A LOCATION · BECOME THE PEARL MASTER	p.9	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Conspiracy: Abyss Universe — Rulebook (corpus doc 1095)	END OF THE GAME	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 148 ms · first delta 1826 ms · total 75439 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 57256 ms · retrieval 148 ms · ask 18033 ms · gateway work 18183 ms · total 75439 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2124
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 826
tok/sec: 50.9 tok/sec — 826 output tokens in 16.222 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 25s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 4s 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: 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 1025), 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.