Aspirations
An aspiration represents a specific goal your character wants to accomplish. It must be something they believe they can accomplish. Aspirations are not easy, mundane, or routine tasks and must be something that represents at least something of a challenge or complication or cost to accomplish. Aspirations are split into short-term and long-term. Every character should have at least one of each upon character creation.
Short-Term Aspiration
Short-term aspirations are often something the character wants to accomplish within the next few days that they believe is possible but not necessarily easy. Even if the aspiration is simple or easy for others, it should be something the character struggles with and will face challenges (even if only within their own mind) to accomplish. When you fulfill a short-term aspiration, you gain 1 surge, lose the aspiration, and can come up with a new one to replace it.
Long-Term Aspiration
Long-term aspirations are something the character will need weeks or longer to accomplish. It could be something like, "avenge the death of their father", "achieve the perfect technique", "solve the mystery of their wife's disappearance", or "atone for their sins during the war". Each time a character achieves an accomplishment that moves them significantly closer to achieving their long-term aspiration, you check one of the boxes next to the aspiration and gain a surge. Once a long-term aspiration has all 3 boxes checked, you gain 1 XP, and erase the check marks. Once you finally achieve the long-term aspiration, you lose it and can replace it with a new aspiration. Whether you moved closer to your goal or not is determined by the GM, even if your character is unaware of how it draws you closer.
Abandoning Aspirations
You can spend 1 surge to abandon an aspiration and immediately replace it with a new one. If something happens which makes a long-term aspiration impossible to accomplish, the moment the character realizes this, they lose a surge, lose the long-term aspiration, replace it with a new aspiration, and gain a number of temporary surges equal to half their level that they can only use to seek to fulfill this new aspiration.
End of Sessions
At the end of every session in which you fulfilled at least one short-term aspiration or made at least 1 box of progress with a long-term aspiration, you get +1 XP per aspiration that made progress (max 3).