Fifteen ranks, four ages

The first rank is given for arriving, not for earning it. The Neophyte sees the whole board for the first time — the six zones of a network, from untrusted through to cloud — and learns the only thing needed to start: what is being defended and where the attack comes in. They may not have played a single game yet. The job here is not to get it right; it is to look.

Steps onto the board. Knows the six network zones apart.

Reached by finishing a first scenario, win or lose. The Hoplite has held a line from start to end: watched a wave come in, decided where to spend a budget that never covers everything, and seen for themselves what held and what did not. The score hardly matters yet; what matters is that the game finished and the player saw the consequence of their own decisions.

Holds a first line. Finishes a scenario unaided.

Decisions stop being isolated good calls and start holding each other up: one control covers what another leaves open, and the player notices for the first time that the order of buying matters as much as what is bought. This is the rank where improvising ends.

Locks shields with the man beside him: plays in formation and strings together good calls.

The Sentinel watches the perimeter: recognises the shape of a wave before it has finished forming, and knows which zone will pay for the mistake just made. They stop reacting to what has already happened and start reading what is about to.

Watches the perimeter: recognises the shape of a wave before it has formed.

The Myrmidon no longer stands out for one good game but because nearly all of them are: they replay scenarios to beat their own mark, and their result stops depending on whether that week’s scenario happened to suit them. This is the rank of persistence.

Elite soldier. Persistence, not one lucky game.

The attack stops sitting in one place: it jumps from identity to endpoints and from endpoints to servers within a single game. Defending one zone well is no longer enough. The Argonaut has to decide which zone to give up knowingly — a different decision, and a distinctly less comfortable one, than splitting a budget.

Leaves known waters: defending one zone well is no longer enough.

Here the player stops being someone who plays well and starts standing for something. It is the first rank that is worn, and so the first that says something to whoever sees it, not only to whoever holds it.

Aegis-bearer. The first rank that is worn.

The Hierophant reads what others miss: they spot the vector before it unfolds, from the shape of the first wave and from what the scenario has deliberately left uncovered. They are no longer playing against the attack but against the design of the scenario.

Reads what others miss. Spots the vector before it unfolds.

This is the line between playing well and being a reference for everyone else: the rank stops being a profile field and becomes part of what the player is called.

Half-divine. A reference for everyone else.

The player stops defending and starts answering: holding the wave is no longer enough. It has to be cut off, what is compromised has to be isolated, and the ground lost has to be taken back within the same game — and every minute spent deciding is paid for in the next wave.

No longer defends: answers. Cuts the wave off and takes the ground back.

Facing what is bigger than they are: the budget does not begin to cover the surface that has to be protected. Every game is won by losing something on purpose, and the skill is choosing what to lose before the attacker chooses it.

Faces what is greater than himself. Chooses what to lose before the attacker does.

Keeps the last threshold: the question is no longer how much money the organisation loses but what stops working for other people — water, power, care. There is no room to try something and see, and that is exactly what gets punished.

Keeps the last threshold: what stops working for other people.

Very few get here. Hyperion does not win on any single piece of skill but on having seen nearly everything the catalogue has to teach: they know what a new scenario will do before the first wave starts.

Titan of light. Very few get this far.

The Fire-bearer no longer learns from the catalogue: they feed it. It is the first rank that stops measuring what the player knows and starts measuring what they pass on — and so the first whose effect is felt in everyone else’s game.

Fire-bearer: no longer learns from the catalogue but feeds it.

Terminal rank: there is nothing above it, and the counter keeps rising without that changing anything. It is the place where climbing ends, and the only distinction that means anything to somebody who no longer needs one.

Terminal rank. Where climbing ends.