Signal — Label Shift Targets by Reveal

Reference for GM use during “Who Decides.” Signal’s broadcasts are mechanically “tell them who they are” moves. Each reveal has a primary target and a ripple effect on the rest of the team watching. Apply shifts after the broadcast lands — not during. Let the fiction settle first.

Reveal 1 — Starfall (Early Arc)

Signal’s framing: Kiara Je-rach was engineered as a weapon and sent to Earth to determine whether it should be destroyed. She defected. The Alliance’s cosmic ally was built to kill you. She changed her mind. You’re welcome to trust that.

Primary Target: Kiara / Starfall

Freak up
Savior down

Her heroism becomes suspect. Her nature becomes the story.

Ripple:

PC	Shift	Why
Sterling	Freak up	The parallel is immediate — he was also built for a purpose he rejected. He sees it before anyone says it.
Avi	Mundane down	One of the Alliance’s anchors was engineered to kill them. The ground they were just starting to trust shifts.
Rhys	Savior down	Another institution with a secret underneath it. Expected. Doesn’t make it less corrosive.
Casper	Mundane down	He’s trying to prove himself inside a structure that just got less trustworthy. The work feels less stable.
Jason	No shift	He files it and moves on. That absence is its own character note.

Reveal 2 — Sterling / Darkstar (Early Arc)

Signal’s framing: Cosmic Knight is the biological son of Darkstar — the alien threat currently in the news. Engineered in his lab. Designed for a purpose. The new team’s heavy hitter was built by the enemy. Ask him what he was built to do.

Primary Target: Sterling / Cosmic Knight

Danger up
Savior down

He is reframed publicly as a threat — not a hero, an asset his father planted. The city doesn’t know he defected. They just know what he is.

Ripple:

PC	Shift	Why
Jason	Superior up	Someone on his team had a secret. The instinct to work alone gets reinforced at exactly the wrong moment.
Kiara	Freak up	She’s his mentor and they share the same structural story — two defectors from engineered purpose. Signal just made that story public in the worst possible framing.
Rhys	Mundane down	A planted asset — even a defected one — hits the part of them that doesn’t trust systems. Or people inside them.
Casper	Savior down	He’s already carrying a past that reframes him as a threat. Watching it happen to Sterling is a preview of what’s coming for him.
Avi	No shift	But this is the reveal that makes Avi wonder what else no one said.

Reveal 3 — Paragon Force / Ethan (Mid Arc)

Signal’s framing: The Paragon Force can be consciously released by its host. The previous Paragon chose Ethan Roberts. He has always had the option to put it down. He has not. Ask him why.

Primary Target: The whole team equally. This reveal doesn’t have a single PC target — it strips legitimacy from the structure every PC has been operating inside. Apply ripple to all.

Ripple:

PC	Shift	Why
Avi	Savior down, Superior up	One of the adults who represented what heroism could look like is gone. The gap widens. Under stress, Avi’s instinct is to push through alone — this accelerates it.
Jason	Danger up	He was already treating this like a solo mission with a timer. Strip Paragon out and there’s nothing left but the countdown and the target.
Rhys	Savior down	The people at the top always knew something they didn’t say. Rhys’s mother died because of institutional failure. This is more of the same.
Sterling	Freak up	Ethan was chosen — the Force selected him. Sterling was built. The distinction he has been holding onto gets harder to locate.
Casper	Mundane up, Danger down	He retreats toward ordinary — the person who just does the job, not the symbol. The structure he was trying to earn a place in just destabilized.

Reveal 4 — Half-Life / Decay (Mid Arc)

Signal’s framing: One of your new heroes has a file. Read it. The villain record. The people hurt.

Primary Target: Casper / Half-Life

Mundane down
Danger up

The city sees Decay, not Half-Life. Everything Casper has been building collapses into what he was.

Ripple:

PC	Shift	Why
Avi	Mundane down	Avi’s instinct is to suppress and control. This is what happens when the thing you suppressed gets exposed publicly. It lands personally even though it isn’t about them.
Rhys	Superior up	Working alone doesn’t produce a file Signal can weaponize. The solo framing gets reinforced at exactly the wrong moment.
Sterling	No label shift — inflict Guilty	He kept his own secret from the team. Casper’s exposure is a mirror.
Kiara	Savior down	She vouched implicitly for this team by joining it. Every compromised member is a question about her judgment.
Jason	No shift	He doesn’t care about Casper’s past. He cares about whether Casper is useful now. That indifference is its own character note — and one the team will eventually notice.

GM Notes

Apply label shifts after the broadcast lands in fiction — not mid-scene. Give it a beat.
Players may reject the influence rather than accept the label shift. That’s the system working. Let them. The rejection costs them something too.
Signal never knows which shifts land and which don’t. He doesn’t need to. He is playing the odds across a city of millions. The team is one sample.
The reveals compound. By mid-arc, every PC is carrying at least two shifts from Signal’s campaign. That accumulated weight is the point.
The Riley/Carter tape is held for the endgame and is not mapped here — its label targets will depend on the state of the team when it drops.

Last updated: March 2026