Ascension or Fall: Cinder and Wings

Ascension or Fall: Cinder and Wings

"Deification is neither ascension nor fall. It is an incomplete miracle that burns just before death, and when it ends, only ash remains, neither human nor god. To some, that ash is nothing more than burnt-out residue... but who knows. To someone else, it may become wings that burn again." This is an expansion add-on for Ascension or Fall. It adds new awakenings, equipment, and crafting routes on top of the core mod's ascension, fall, unstable awakening, and halo fragment systems. When you think everything is over in battle, an unstable awakened pawn may burn one last time. When that flame goes out, ash and fragments remain, and your colony can turn that legacy into new halos and wings.

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Features

• Deification Unstable awakened pawns can briefly deify at the edge of death and turn the battle around.
• Cinder Halo By inheriting the fragment left after deification, a pawn can awaken with a cinder halo that grows stronger as it heats up in combat.
• Legacy Equipment Deified fragments and legacy ash can be crafted into the cinder severance blade, cinder exoskeletal resonance wings, and universal halo resonance wings.
• Achromatic Halo Ascended and fallen fragments can be fused into an achromatic halo that shifts between reflection and absorption based on mood.
• Glitch Halo Lost or deliberately erased soul fragments can become glitch halos tied to error rate and reality correction.
• Halo Resonance Equipment Use resonance wings and support equipment whose colors and effects change based on halo lineage.

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Detailed Systems

1. Deification: one last miracle before death

An unstable awakened pawn can enter deification when critically injured or dying. A deified pawn is not meant to survive for long. They gain overwhelming power for a short time, then vanish when the battle ends. What remains is a deified fragment and legacy ash. These fragments are key materials for the next awakened pawn and their equipment. One pawn's final battle can become the colony's next weapon. You can adjust deification chance, enemy deification, enemy caps per map, and deification duration in the mod settings.

2. Cinder Halo: power that becomes dangerous as it burns

By inheriting a deified fragment, a pawn can awaken with a cinder halo. Cinder halos build combat heat while dealing or receiving hostile damage. As heat rises, movement, melee combat, and aiming delay bonuses become stronger. However, 100 heat is not a safe maximum output. If critical heat is maintained for 10 seconds, burns and ember exhaustion begin to accumulate. The stronger the pawn becomes, the more their own body burns with it. Heat begins to cool 10 seconds after the last hostile damage event, so cinder halos shine brightest in short, violent battles.

3. Weapons and wings made from ash

Deified fragments and legacy ash can be used to craft new equipment.

• Cinder Severance Blade A melee weapon whose bonus burn damage increases at higher heat.
• Cinder Exoskeletal Resonance Wings Combat wing equipment that fits cinder halos. It provides mobility and heat visual effects.
• Universal Halo Resonance Wings Universal wings that change color and effects in response to ascension, fall, cinder, achromatic, and glitch lineages.

Ordinary pawns can use this equipment, but halo bearers resonate with it more strongly.

4. Achromatic Halo: between reflection and absorption

An achromatic halo core can be created by fusing one ascended soul fragment and one fallen soul fragment. Achromatic halos shift between three states based on the pawn's mood.

• White: focuses on damage reflection
• Neutral: combines weaker reflection and absorption
• Black: absorbs damage, stores it, and adds armor-ignoring damage to the next melee attack

An achromatic halo is not just a tanking tool. The colonist's mental state becomes part of their combat style. Mood thresholds can be adjusted in the mod settings.

5. Glitch Halo: a broken address of existence

You can create a glitch core by recovering a lost fragment or deliberately erasing an active soul fragment. Glitch halos become more dangerous and unstable as their error rate rises. They can cause attacks to be dropped, delayed damage to echo back, or reality-correction aftereffects to trigger. Glitch halos also have dedicated gizmos.

• Create Rollback Anchor: briefly records the current position and injury state
• Execute Forced Rollback: returns to the recorded point and partially rewinds injuries
• Resynchronize: lowers error rate at the cost of temporary incapacitation

Synchronization stabilizers make glitch effects safer, while error amplifiers are more dangerous but allow stronger effects. "It is as if the universe itself refuses that existence. Fascinating." "Do we really need to install something like that? A little yayo does the same thing."

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Mod Settings

You can adjust the following in-game.

• Player and hostile pawn deification chances
• Enemy deification toggle and per-map cap
• Deification duration
• Cinder combat heat gain and cooling rates
• Core performance factor scaling for add-on equipment bonuses
• Achromatic halo mood thresholds
• Glitch effect intensity and glitch core chance
• Error echo requirement for condensation
• Equipment visual-effect intensity
• Reduced rapid flashing

Settings include hover tooltips.

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Requirements and DLC

Required Mods

• Harmony
• Ascension or Fall

DLC

• This add-on has no required DLC of its own.
• Biotech / Ideology / Anomaly integration from the core mod remains supported.

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Compatibility Notes

• Generally safe to add to an existing save.
• Not recommended to remove after add-on halos, equipment, or fragments have been generated.
• Does not directly patch genes, needs, or hediffs from race or gene mods.
• Includes safeguards to reduce conflicts with death-prevention and death-refusal effects.
• If Melee Animation is active, only the cinder severance blade's heat rendering is hidden. Stats and heat mechanics still work normally.