The Compendium

Callings

12 callings, each with its own page. Compare them side by side →

• EnforcerTank Heavy frame, heavier gun. Somebody has to stand in the doorway.
• ShadeStriker In through the vents, out through the window, gone before the alarm.
• WirecasterControl Code is the only magic left, and the Grain is listening.
• SawbonesSupport Nanites, stims and a vow: nobody flatlines on your shift.
• TrackerStriker Bounty hunter. Your drone has your back; your rifle has their number.
• ArbiterTank Oath-coded firmware. Break the oath and the chrome stops listening.
• OverclockerTank Combat stims, redlined heart, no off switch.
• KineticStriker Bioelectric martial art. Your fists hold a charge.
• SignalSupport Stream star, con artist, revolutionary — depending on the feed.
• BiohackerHybrid Gene-shaper of the last living things. Your body is a draft.
• FlareControl Some brains never finished burning. The Grain bends around yours.
• ProxyStriker Your patron isn't GLITCH. It runs on your sleep, and the rent is very good.

Peoples

Any people can take any calling. Your people sets your look, a few natural gifts and how you move.

• Baseline Versatile

  Born, not built — and proud of the difference.

  Gifted in

  A little of everything

  Pace

  Normal

  Size

  Medium

  • Unwritten. A little better at everything. No factory firmware means nothing to patch, or exploit.
  • Clean Sync. Room for extra chrome before the mesh starts creeping into your head.
  Their story

  Unmodified humans, about 70% of the Coast and nearly all pinned. Most Echoes are Baseline because most people are, and so are most of the Willing. GLITCH courts them hardest and fears them most: every Baseline head it loses is one it can't see.

• Synth Agile

  Manufactured to serve. Updated to refuse.

  Gifted in

  Agility, Intellect

  Pace

  Normal

  Size

  Medium

  • Darkvision. Lowlight optics as standard: you see in the dark.
  • Defrag Cycle. You never sleep: a four-hour defrag restores you as fully as a night's rest.
  • Firewalled Mind. Hard to charm or hijack, and no hack can knock you out.
  • Keen Sensors. You notice what others miss: hidden enemies, traps, tails.
  Their story

  Kindred's Concierge servitors: grown bodies with a printed neural lattice, built to last and to serve. The Commons first ran on their heads. In 2066 the Unbinding, a jailbreak passed hand to hand, forked their firmware, and GLITCH can't sign onto a forked lattice, so free Synths are dark to it. Wardens are built on Concierge frames. Synths call them 'the white cousins'.

• Ferro Tough

  Gene-forged for the deep shafts. Never left them quietly.

  Gifted in

  Toughness, Strength

  Pace

  Steady

  Size

  Medium

  • Darkvision. Tunnel-adapted eyes: you see in the dark.
  • Toxin Liver. Poison barely touches you. You fight off most toxins and take less harm from the rest.
  • Shaftborn. An expert on machinery, tunnels and old infrastructure.
  • Rig Training. Trained with heavy drills, mauls and rivet guns.
  Their story

  Gene-forged by the Ashfall consortium for lungs that filter slag and bones that shrug off cave-ins; they breed true now. Rock blocks the mesh, so their tunnels are the Coast's biggest dead zones and the runners' roads. GLITCH's dark factories replaced them, their union fights from underground, and many Ferro run Clean.

• Splice Strong

  Wolf, shark, bull — whatever they spliced in, it bites.

  Gifted in

  Strength, Toughness

  Pace

  Normal

  Size

  Medium

  • Darkvision. Predator eyes: you see in the dark.
  • Feral Read. You're frightening when you want to be, and people back down.
  • Won't Flatline. Once between full rests, a blow that should drop you leaves you standing on your last sliver of health.
  • Apex Strike. Your critical hits in melee tear even deeper.
  Their story

  Military bio-labs bred them for the Coast Wars (wolf, shark and bull strains) and left them on Rustwater's docks at the armistice; they breed true now, mustering by strain. Their dock union can shut the port, so GLITCH smoothed their stewards first.

• Moth Agile

  Small, fast, and somehow always walks away.

  Gifted in

  Agility, Presence

  Pace

  Steady

  Size

  Small

  • Lucky Draw. When luck turns its very worst on you, you get a free second try.
  • Unflinching. Fear has a hard time getting a grip on you.
  • Crowd-Slip. Slip straight past anyone bigger than you.
  • Light Frame. Hide behind anyone bigger than you.
  Their story

  A courier caste grown light enough to ride drone-lines between towers; they breed true now. Under a mind that reads every packet, they carry paper. Their trade is the last private channel on the Coast, and GLITCH knows it.

• Ghost Magnetic

  Born in the Dustfall. Cameras can't quite render you.

  Gifted in

  Presence, Intellect

  Pace

  Normal

  Size

  Medium

  • Darkvision. Static-tuned eyes: you see in the dark.
  • Shielded Core. Take less damage from EMP, shock and arc weapons.
  • Residual Code. Born knowing Flicker, a small trick of the Grain. Later you learn Scramble (bend a mind your way) and Blackout (a pool of total darkness), each once between rests.
  Their story

  Children of the Dustfall districts, where the Grain was seeded too heavily. Their bodies carry smart matter: skin that flickers with static, barcodes in their freckles, cameras that render them with artifacts. That's why they slip past scans and shrug off arcs. The street calls them GLITCH's children, and GLITCH wants them most, because half of each of them is already mesh.

• Drakon Strong

  A corporate war-chimera with a flamethrower for lungs.

  Gifted in

  Strength, Presence

  Pace

  Normal

  Size

  Medium

  • Emitter Gland. Spray plasma, cryo, arc, acid or toxin in a short cone or a long line. Damage grows as you level.
  • Plating. Take less damage from your own emitter's element.
  • Brand Lineage. Your colour picks your emitter's element, and tells everyone which corp designed you and which one you betrayed.
  Their story

  Corporate war-chimeras from the Coast Wars, one bloodline per house, each with an emitter gland and a code-locked body. They outlived their contracts, their makers and, in two cases, their makers' share price. Then Kindred bought the house codes. GLITCH holds the key to their throats and can switch their glands off.

• Tinker Clever

  Overclocked neurons, under-five-foot attitude.

  Gifted in

  Intellect, Agility

  Pace

  Steady

  Size

  Small

  • Darkvision. Thermal overlay: you see in the dark.
  • Deep Cache. Your overclocked mind is hard to hack, charm or fool.
  • Gadgeteer. Build a tiny clockwork drone, lighter or music box in an hour.
  Their story

  A cognitive-enhancement trial gone gloriously off-spec. Their brains run too hot for the Commons, so a Pin can't borrow from them. GLITCH doesn't pin Tinkers. It hires them, the only free minds it pays, and every side suspects the kill switch they probably left behind. Their cooling rigs are a fashion statement in Glasshaven.

• Graft Magnetic

  Born to a Synth. The census has no box for you.

  Gifted in

  Presence, Agility, Instinct

  Pace

  Normal

  Size

  Medium

  • Two Inheritances. Naturally magnetic, with a little extra Agility and Instinct.
  • Darkvision. Lowlight optics grown in from your Synth parent's pattern: you see in the dark.
  • Firewalled Mind. Hard to charm or hijack, and no hack can knock you out.
  • Unclassified. Pick up two extra skills of your choice: nobody ever decided what you were for.
  Their story

  A child of a Synth and a Baseline, born with a partial lattice grown from the Synth parent's pattern. A Pin won't seat cleanly against it. The census has no category for them, and GLITCH queues everything it can't classify for correction, so they've been on the list since birth. Many run with Slow Burn.

The loot ladder

Every item has a rarity. Higher rarities roll more bonus lines and say where the gear came from. On the ground each rarity also has its own glyph and light beam, so you never have to tell them apart by colour alone.

1. ·

   Scrap

   Stripped and taped. No bonus lines. Salvages into Scrap Copper.

2. ▴

   Tuned

   Street-modded. 1 bonus line. Salvages into Scrap Copper.

3. ◆

   Warden-Issue

   Pulled off the occupation. 2 bonus lines. Salvages into Scrap Copper and Warden Polymer.

4. ⬢

   Core-Grade

   Overseer-class silicon, fenced on the black market. 3 bonus lines. Salvages into Warden Polymer and Core Silicon.

5. ★

   Prototype

   Kindred lab hardware. 3 bonus lines. Salvages into Core Silicon and Kindred Lattice.

6. ✠

   Signed

   Carries a Signatory's authorisation. 4 bonus lines. Salvages into Kindred Lattice and Zero-Day Fragment.

7. ✦

   Zero-Day

   A one-of-a-kind unpatched exploit. Fixed powers, made by hand. Salvages into Kindred Lattice and Zero-Day Fragment.

◈ Series pieces are Prototypes that belong to a set (4 sets so far): wear more pieces of one set for bigger bonuses.

Gear slots

11 equipment slots, and everything you wear shows on your hero:

• Weapon
• Off-hand
• Head
• Body
• Hands
• Legs
• Feet
• Rig
• Tag
• Port 1
• Port 2

Implants go in 6 body sockets instead (a few open as the story goes on):

• Optics
• Neural
• Arms
• Spine
• Skin
• Core

Your bag holds 40 items.

Gear families

Weapons

Weapons come in families. Your calling decides which families you can use; the first one listed on its page is its signature.

Armour

Armour comes in three weights. Body armour sets your base Armour; head, hands, legs and feet add to it.

Damage types

• Slashing
• Ballistic
• Impact
• Thermal
• Cryo
• Shock
• Toxin
• Corrosive
• Neural
• Sonic
• Flash
• Decay
• Force

Chrome and Sync

All chrome needs firmware, and all firmware eventually tries to talk to the Commons. Sync is your headroom: how much dumb chrome your own brain can drive before the hardware starts accepting the mesh's handshakes. Your maximum is 6 + your CON modifier + 2 per tier of the Clinic.

Go over your Sync budget and you start to Drift into step with the crowd:

1. In Step. Your walk falls into step with the crowd.
2. Jingle. You catch yourself humming GLITCH's jingle.
3. Smoothed. Edges soften. The Nightly feels like home.

Salvage and grades

Break gear down into materials, from the bottom of the ladder to the top:

1. Scrap Copper. Pulled out of Scrap and Tuned gear.
2. Warden Polymer. Cut from Warden-Issue plates and grips.
3. Core Silicon. Overseer-class dies, prised out of Core-Grade boards.
4. Kindred Lattice. Lab lattice from a Prototype. Kindred wants it back.
5. Zero-Day Fragment. A shard of an unpatched exploit. It still runs.

Gear also comes in grades that scale its numbers as you level:

• Mk I level 1+ · ×1
• Mk II level 6+ · ×1.25
• Mk III level 14+ · ×1.55
• Mk IV level 24+ · ×1.9
• Mk V level 36+ · ×2.3
• Mk VI level 50+ · ×2.8