You are everything around the pack: the people who live there, what they want, and what happens when somebody acts. The barge crew, the inspector, the lease, the pressure, the Moon, the seat somebody saves. One person plays all of it, and the game calls that person the World. The players bring the people at the center of it. Between you, you will find out what they make of their home, and what they will do to keep it.

The books leave holes on purpose. Nearly every element of the world comes with questions attached: who installed the implant and what they copied while they were in there, what the district has agreed not to talk about, whether the Changed know who will Change. The books don’t answer them. Your players do, at session zero and in play, and once the table accepts an answer, it’s true. Ask the questions (Ask questions with room in them), write the answers down, and build on them. Every table ends up in its own solar system, made of the things its players wanted to see.

Read Ninth Night^CR for one possible evening. Your table will have a different one. Your pack may be louder, gentler, stranger, or less forgiving. The book gives you people and places to start with; once play begins, pay attention to the ones that become important to your players.

This book is for the World. You’ll need the Core Rules too; everything the players know is there.

• Playing the World is how to run the game: your agenda, how to find the tone, the moves you make, session zero, fronts and clocks, how a session goes, and how each rule plays out at the table.

• Encyclopedia is people and things to borrow: factions, monsters, and the cast of the Hive.

• Starters are situations for your first sessions, ready to run.

Part OnePlaying the World

Your Agenda

Throughout play:

• Make the Territory worth inhabiting. Give its people pleasures, work, habits, and wants of their own.

• Make choices matter. Let help help, let damage leave a mark, and let relationships change what people can do.

• Play to discover what the pack becomes. Present situations whose answers you do not control.

You can do all three in a scene about fixing a pump or burying a friend. Danger is one way to reveal a person. So are hospitality, desire, and a chance to leave.

Play with an open hand

The players are entitled to everything their moves, rolls, and choices give them. Honor a protection instead of engineering a way around it. Don’t invent a witness for an empty room, or a replacement injury because the armor held. Don’t use a condition as a reason for a cost the player had no chance to avoid. Answer honestly, and if you get a rule or a fact wrong, fix it openly.

Finding the Tone

Begin with people doing things

Describe someone washing dye out of a borrowed towel, saving a seat, or changing out of a pressure suit that pinches their tail. Two useful details will do. Ask a player who is there with them. Give the others something they can join, interrupt, or watch.

Fur is an ordinary body here. Show what it makes comfortable, awkward, funny, or intimate as well as what it can break. Humans and other night-folk have ordinary lives too. A neighbor can need the pack’s help and still be furious about what they did to the corridor.

Let it be good

Give the pack time to enjoy what they protect. A shared meal, a flirtation, or a quiet repair can finish without an interruption. Let the players decide when the scene has run its course.

Bring trouble from established threats, announced deadlines, or the consequences of actions. Don’t tick a clock because a scene is warm. If a clock fills or a stated trigger occurs, follow through. Otherwise, don’t interrupt the scene.

A friendship does not have to become betrayal to be interesting. If every named neighbor becomes a hostage, players learn to stop naming neighbors. Let affection produce help, jokes, arguments, and invitations too.

Let the mood move

A joke during a frightening scene can be how someone gets through it. A character who has been flirting all evening can suddenly mean what they say. Follow that turn without announcing a change of genre. Keep one concrete detail from before the change: the borrowed jacket still smells of its owner when it comes back from the clinic.

You do not need to fit every mood into every session. Stay with a scene while the players are engaged. When you are unsure whether laughter means delight or discomfort, ask plainly and use the safety tools^CR.

After violence, make space for someone to notice what happened. Ask who stays to clean up, who needs company, or who cannot face going home yet. The answer can lead into care, anger, or silence; it need not become another crisis.

Play desire

The Changed want and are wanted. Play desire as frankly as your lines and veils^CR allow.

• Ask who they’re watching. “Who are you watching tonight?” or “Whose jacket is that?” gives a player room to say it. Offer the chance; don’t assign the crush.

• Let it show before it’s said. Ears, tails, scent, a shirt that smells of someone else, who waits up until the tug docks. A tail that moves once across a room is enough for a scene.

• Not every desire is answered. Wanting someone who doesn’t want you back, wanting someone you shouldn’t, jealousy, a refusal, a night that was a mistake: all of these are worth playing. Nobody owes anybody their feelings.

• Players own their characters’ wants. You say what NPCs want and do. Each player says what their character wants, feels, and agrees to. Between two player characters, those two players decide together. No move, Claim, or cost decides that a player character has sex or wants to.

• Choose how close. When a scene turns to sex, ask the players involved how close the scene stays: cut at the door, cut to after, or stay. If it stays, play it as explicitly as the lines allow: weight, heat, teeth, fur under hands, what a body does in Fur that it can’t in Skin. Let the players in the scene narrate their own characters. Keep it short when others at the table aren’t in it, and check whether they want it shorter. Anyone can ask to cut away without saying the Safeword. The Safeword still stops anything.

• The morning after is a scene. Ask what changed, who knows, and who it hurts. A night that changes something can create a Claim (How do you gain a Claim?^CR).

• Don’t make a lover a hostage. Getting what you wanted shouldn’t put a target on someone (Let it be good).

Example. After the Ninth Night, Dagny catches Marcus at the lift.

World: He’s in Skin again, badge straight. He’s pressed the call button twice. The lift is still two decks away. Marcus’s player: He doesn’t turn round. “You’re going to tell me this is a bad idea.” Dagny’s player: “Terrible idea.” She takes the badge off his lapel and puts it in his pocket. World: The lift comes and goes. Nobody gets in. Marcus’s player: He lets the Fur come, there in the corridor. Tail first. He’s never done that anywhere but a locked room. Dagny’s player: She backs him into the alcove by the lift and gets his suit open one button at a time, because she’s waited an hour and wants him to know it. A fox in a pressed suit is all heat underneath. He bites when he comes, and she likes that. World: Cut to the morning. Whose bunk? Marcus’s player: Hers. He’s back in Skin, buttoning his collar. Dagny’s player: She watches him do it and doesn’t say anything. That’s the part that’s going to hurt. World: Did that night make a Claim? Marcus’s player: Yes. She’s seen me in that corridor. She gets one over me.

Play dread

Horror in this game is slow, then sudden, and it’s about someone. Play it as viscerally as your lines and veils^CR allow, including gore, body horror, and what the Red leaves behind.

• Start with something ordinary that’s wrong. A two-percent pressure drop the panel doesn’t show. A neighbor’s door ajar at shift change. The smell of someone dead. A ration chip with somebody else’s name on it. Make one soft move per beat, each a little worse than the last.

• Let them notice first. Ask what the character notices before you explain anything. Answer Read the Room honestly (Play with an open hand). Describe what a thing does to people, not its anatomy (Bestiary).

• Make it about someone. Dread lands hardest on a name: the click sounds like Teodora’s breathing, the Stitch has Petra’s hands, the frost-print is a child’s.

• Bodies are the horror here. A Change that won’t stop. An implant tearing under fur. Borrowed hands still reaching for hair. A collar that won’t let you shift. Use the fear that your own body isn’t yours.

• Leave time to be afraid. Pause before the hard move. Ask “What do you do?” and wait. Silence at the table can be the scene working, but if you aren’t sure, check (Let the mood move).

• When it lands, say it plainly. One exact image beats a list of wounds. Don’t say “he’s badly hurt.” Say “his jaw is somewhere else, and he’s still trying to say your name.” Then stop talking.

• Leave a light on. End a horror scene with someone left to tell it, a door that closes, or someone to sit with (Make room for the aftermath). Fear needs home to be measured against.

Example. End of shift on Deck Six. Pip and Sable are walking home.

World: The panel by the stairs says normal pressure. Your ears say otherwise. Sable’s player: I stop and read the room. (rolls) 9. What’s about to happen here? World: Someone is about to cycle the outer lock. You hear them before you see anything: breathing in the next compartment, with a wet click at the top of each breath. Pip, you’ve been breathing in time with it. Pip’s player: …Since when? World: Since the stairs. What do you do? Pip’s player: I hold my breath. World: (beat) The click stops too. Then frost climbs the viewport from the inside, and stops in the shape of a hand. Small. Sable, you’ve seen that hand before, in a reclamation photo you weren’t supposed to have.

Give power a face

A corporation wants a contract signed. Its clerk wants to leave before the last lift. The person bringing the registration forms might remember exactly how you take your tea. Play these wants together. Kindness can be real even when the institution is doing harm; it need not be a trick. Each faction hurts people in its own way; Threats and Factions says how. Let the method, not the logo, make a scene feel different.

Make space matter through what people must do: share a pressure seal, wait for a shipment, borrow air, schedule a conversation across a delay. In The Between^CR, show those relationships as places: a locked staff entrance might open into a dining room where nobody has ever set a place for the workers. Let players investigate and change what they find there.

Ask questions with room in them

Ask about something the player has a reason to know or a choice they can make. “Who fixes your implants?” gives them a person. “What does she keep asking you to do?” gives that person a want. Write down the answers and use them.

Offer rather than assign a compromising history: “Has anyone dealt with this inspector before?” lets someone volunteer. “Which of you betrayed her?” assumes a character decision nobody made. A player can pass, ask for suggestions, or leave a detail for later.

Players decide their characters’ pasts, feelings, intentions, and tells. You decide NPC responses and consequences within the rules. Invite players to invent people, customs, and places; when everyone accepts an answer, treat it as established. If it contradicts something already said, point that out and find a version together. Your unrevealed prep can change more easily than their contribution.

Follow the unexpected answer

When the pack befriends the creature, buys out the lease, starts a strike, or leaves the district, work out what follows. Ask what they are trying to accomplish and how. If the approach could work, let it work through the usual conversation and moves. Don’t add a hidden immunity or a new signature to preserve a prepared confrontation. Their approach is the story now; play the people it affects.

An NPC’s want can change. A faction can lose. A mystery can be solved early. Keep the consequences that still follow, and let the resolved problem stay resolved. The people affected will give you something to play next.

Let players complicate their own lives. If someone offers a favor or reveals a secret, take it seriously before reaching for another cost. When packmates disagree, ask each what they want from the scene. They can argue fiercely while their players collaborate. Unleash against a player character (Unleash^CR) and Sway’s rule for player characters (Sway^CR) handle pressure between characters; neither lets the World decide a PC’s allegiance.

An evening taking its own shape

The pack opens at the clinic, arguing over who gets the last clean towel. The World asks Sable who left it for her. Her player invents a laundry worker who has been flirting badly. The World writes down the name. There is no roll.

Take the Pulse comes up 8. The World ticks Water once: the delivery arrived short, and the clinic cannot run its next wash. Ruth wants to talk to the barge crew. Sable wants to ask the laundry worker where the rest went. The World prepared a confrontation at the dock, but follows both leads.

The worker admits she diverted a tank to a crowded hab. This is new information the World supplies; Sable’s player decides how she feels about it. The pack chooses to help those residents and negotiate a replacement. The dock confrontation no longer needs to happen.

Ruth Sways the dispatcher and rolls 8. The dispatcher can divert a tank, but only by giving the barge crew’s paid berth for the night to the tank’s handlers. Ruth agrees. The water arrives; the crew loses its bed. When the pack offers them floor space, the World plays people finding blankets and disagreeing about the temperature.

Next session, the crowded hab and the laundry worker belong to the campaign. The World prepares from those relationships, not from the confrontation that never happened.

World Moves

A World move is something you make happen around the pack. You never roll for it. Make one:

• when a player misses;

• when a move says you do;

• when a player hands you an opening: they look away from the thing that’s about to bite, they ignore a warning, they leave the door open;

• when everyone looks at you to find out what happens next.

Outside those moments, you are describing, asking, and answering. Most of a session is that.

Soft and hard

A soft move puts something in motion and leaves room to respond. The inspector asks for access to the back room. The Slag Dog’s claws stop outside the bunkroom. The Moon pulls. A hard move is a consequence that has already landed. The inspector has photographed the unregistered implants. The claws are through the door. Mark 1 Tide. Hard describes how settled the consequence is, not how gruesome it must be; a hard move can be a signed contract.

Make soft moves freely. Make hard moves on a miss, when a player hands you an opening (a warning they walked past counts), or when a clock fills. Danger is legible when a soft move comes first, then a real chance to act, and then, if they don’t take it, the hard one. Silence at the table is not the characters ignoring a warning; check whether the players need information, suggestions, or a break.

Say what happens, not the move

Don’t announce “I’m making a hard move.” Say what the inspector does. Choose something that follows from what’s already in the scene, describe it, and hand the choice back: “What do you do?”

You don’t have to lay out consequences before a roll. The dice land, then you say what it cost, at the scale of the action. If a player asks what their character would know about the danger, tell them honestly; that’s a move too (tell them what it will cost, and ask).

The moves

Choose consequences at the scale of the action. One bad roll need not spend every resource the pack has.

Costly hits and misses

Several moves say the World makes a move rather than listing a cost. When one does, make a soft move on a costly hit and a hard move on a miss, drawn from what’s already in the scene. Harm comes only from a danger already established; if there isn’t one, make a different move. If the move has its own costs, those are the cost: don’t add another, and don’t mark Tide for harm the move already inflicted. Then hand it back: “What do you do?”

A miss changes the situation, even when the character still gets what they wanted: Cross Over may still take them across; Howl still brings the pack. Where a move hands the choice to the player (Unleash’s protections, Stand Between’s costs), let them choose after the roll, then describe the result. Act Under Pressure has its own shapes (Act Under Pressure).

The Territory

The Territory sheet changes when the pack acts on it and when you do (Setting up the Territory^CR). Your moves against it are World moves like any other. Make them on a 7–9 or 6− on Take the Pulse^CR, when a clock fills, on a miss where the district would feel it, or when a player hands you an opening. Say what changes in the fiction, then have a player write it on the sheet.

Ticking a Need is Advance a clock, above. These moves change the rest of the sheet:

When a Need fills. The need is unmet. Make one hard move that follows from the shortage: a deck sealed for lack of Air, a Water debt the Ledger now holds, an inspection for lost Quiet, somewhere the Changed can no longer be in Fur for lost Room. The clock stays full until the pack clears a segment, through Restock^CR or in play. While it’s full, show the shortage wherever it would touch a scene. Make another hard move for the same full clock only when something new happens.

Using them well.

• Show it before you take it. An asset is threatened, or a Need is visibly short, before it’s gone, unless a clock filled or a player walked past the warning (Soft and hard).

• One change per trigger. A bad Take the Pulse ticks one clock or takes one asset, not both.

• Give each change a cause. A hard move against the Territory comes from a front, a shortage, or something the pack did. Draw on active fronts before inventing a new one.

• Leave the Revelry alone while it’s going well. Touch it only when an established threat reaches it (Let it be good).

• Let the sheet grow. When the pack does lasting work, write it down: a finished Make It Last^CR, an asset from an advance, a segment cleared. When you decide the pack has done the district a real favor, they gain a Claim over the Territory; when they let it down, it gains one over them. Decide at the end of the scene where it happened, and say what the favor or failure was.

• Don’t empty it. Losing the whole Territory (Losing the Territory^CR) happens when a front’s clock fills, not after a run of bad rolls.

• Heart doesn’t change in this draft.

Session Zero

With the table

In order:

1. Choose a Safeword^CR and record lines and veils. Then ask what everyone wants to explore: domestic warmth, bawdy comedy, unsettling horror, political turmoil? Use concrete examples to find a shared tone. Something being within bounds does not mean anyone wants it in every scene.

2. Pick a setting^CR. The World asks a question about the Change, and the players answer: do the Changed know who will Change before it happens?

3. Everyone makes a character (Your character^CR). Ask the Fur, arrival, and life questions out loud, so the table hears every answer.

4. Answer the pack questions together, including who knows the worst thing about whom and each character’s leash (Your pack^CR).

5. Build The Territory^CR (Setting up the Territory^CR): the World asks its questions, including who else holds Claims over the district and why. Record the answers on the Territory sheet.

6. The pack’s rites: a homecoming, a mourning, and one more. Write them on the Territory sheet (Rites^CR).

7. The Territory’s other side: everyone says one thing about The Between^CR here.

After the table

The World finishes these steps alone, before the first session. A starter may make these choices for you.

8. Pick two fronts from what came up, or build your own (Building a front).

9. Give each front its clock (Clocks) and put it on the Territory sheet. Label it with as much as the district would know.

10. Allocate the fronts’ Claims. Each front holds 1 Claim over the Territory, unless it already holds one from step 5. Then decide which characters each front holds a Claim over at the start: at most 1 each, on top of any from character creation, and only where the table’s answers put a character in its reach, such as a lease they rent under or a debt they owe. Tell each player what’s held over their character and what gives it weight.

11. Prepare the first session (Before the session).

Session zero takes two to three hours. If there’s time left at the table, you can play a short scene, such as an evening at the pack’s Revelry. You’re probably still building fronts, so treat it as a chance to get a feel for the characters, not to start the trouble.

Fronts and Clocks

A front is a source of change with its own interests. Its clock records progress toward a named event, not your desired plot. “Meridian sells the ring” tells you what happens when it fills; “the players investigate Meridian” tells them what to do and is not a useful threat clock.

Building a front

Each faction in Threats and Factions is built this way:

• Shape: the one-line opener under its name, and a paragraph on how it does harm.

• Want: one sentence.

• Clock: the named event that happens when the clock fills.

• Claims: how it gets leverage on people.

• Play it: up to three attitudes the moves can’t show.

• Moves: each with a soft and a hard version.

• Questions: three or more, answered in play.

• Documents: a notice, a ledger page, or a sign, in its own voice.

If it doesn’t hold Claims, it’s scenery, not a front.

Clocks

For a new clock, start with four segments for a threat that can develop quickly or six for one with more steps. Write what advances it and what happens when it fills. Use a starter’s specified clock when it has one. Need clocks work the same way: record what depletion looks like and what can replenish it.

Tick for a stated trigger, a move’s consequence, or an established event. Say what changed. Do not tick once for the event and again because you narrated it as a World move. Session-based clocks advance at their stated time, not at every scene change. If an action stops the cause of a threat, stall, reduce, or retire its clock as the fiction warrants; explain which and why.

Put every clock on the Territory sheet, where the players can see how full it is. You decide what its label says. When the pack knows the faction and what it’s after, write both: Meridian sells the ring. When they don’t, write what the district has noticed: someone keeps measuring the docks. Relabel the clock as they learn more. Either way, show signs before its progress becomes an irreversible surprise.

When a clock fills, make its named event happen and let the pack respond. If the sale closed, perhaps the fight is now about eviction, relocation, or who will honor the lease. If they prevented the sale, let the clock go. You can find another question without undoing their answer.

Running a Session

Before the session

For the first session, make the pack and Territory together using Session Zero. Have the basic moves available and explain that players can name them. They should know what Take the Flank, Claims, and Ride the Tide can do before they need them.

Then prepare a page:

• Two active fronts, each with a want, someone the pack can meet, and a next action if nothing changes.

• The relevant clocks, their current marks, and what advances or ends each one.

• A place the pack enjoys and a person with something to offer there. Cast provides sample people with questions to make them your own.

• One loose end from last time: a promise, a damaged relationship, an unanswered question.

For your first run, Thirty Days provides the threats. Replace its people and places where session zero gave you better ones. You need no sequence of scenes or intended ending. Stop preparing when you know enough to respond to a few different approaches.

For later sessions, read what the players did. Who did they seek out without being prompted? What did they promise? Which problem did they solve? Cross out obsolete prep before adding more.

During the session

The usual rhythm is an opening at home, the Territory’s news, scenes following the pack’s choices, and a chance to see what those choices did to their lives. Downtime fits where the fiction allows it. End-of-session reflection happens even if the characters are still in trouble.

Start quiet

Open each session with an ordinary scene before rolling for the Territory. Two minutes or twenty, as the table wants. If the last session ended in immediate danger, resolve that first, then find the quiet moment before Take the Pulse. After a death, the mourning opens the session (Harm and Death^CR).

Briefly recall where everyone is and what is unfinished. Then ask one player something easy to enter: “You’re off shift. Where do you go before heading home?” Ask another whether they are there. Give everyone an opening without requiring anyone to speak in order. If they begin their own scene, follow it.

Openings. When nothing suggests itself, take one of these and ask the question that goes with it:

• Someone coming off shift. Where do they go before home, and who’s there?

• A meal. Who cooked, who’s late, and whose chair is empty?

• The pile, waking. Who’s up first, and what woke them?

• A Revelry already under way. What did the pack bring, and who came who never comes?

• A homecoming: back from a run, a shift on another ring, a night away. Perform the rite, and ask what they brought back that isn’t cargo.

• The anniversary of a mourning. Open with the rite, and ask one mourner for a true thing they didn’t say last year.

• A Need, as ordinary life. The water pressure is down a third; the queue at the Halcyon office is out the door; someone is counting ration packs. Don’t name the clock. Show the morning.

• Something in the post: a notice, a lease addendum, a Consulate envelope, a card from Vesta. Who reads it first, and who do they show it to?

• Grooming, mending, washing: two characters and a task that takes four hands. What do they talk about, and what don’t they?

• A neighbor at the door. The noise, a favor, a question. What does the pack owe them?

• Someone from the Cast, doing what their In a scene line says. Let the pack walk in on it.

• The body. A hand that’s cold in the morning; a Tide the pack can read; someone running hot and pretending not to be. Who notices?

• The other side, briefly. A packmate crossed last night and came back with something, or without something. What’s missing?

• A good day. Nothing is wrong, the sun comes round the outer deck, and the pack is in Fur to see it. Let it be good before the Pulse.

Whatever you open with, give someone something to do with their hands.

Hear from the Territory

Roll Take the Pulse^CR once, after the opening, and turn its result into news the characters can meet: a resident at the door, a failed delivery, an offer sent to someone’s work account. Draw on active fronts rather than creating a new one every session, and say enough that they can choose a response. A roll that brings an opportunity can lead to a session about making something better. Changes to the Territory sheet follow The Territory.

The pack need not follow the most obvious lead. Keep track of what an ignored threat will do and when. Tell them about consequences their characters would foresee. Deciding to spend the day elsewhere is a choice, not disobedience.

Follow a scene

Establish where the characters are, who is present, and what is happening. Ask what they want and what they do. Respond to the action, then give them another opening. Sometimes the whole exchange is conversation; sometimes a move settles the uncertain part.

When a move triggers, name it and read its result if needed. Resolve Claims and Tide in order (Claims and Tide^CR). Follow the move’s result; where it hands the consequence to you, see Costly hits and misses. A successful action achieves what the move promises, even if its cost hurts.

If no move triggers, say what follows from the established situation or ask the player to describe it. Do not ask for a roll because you want another beat. A character can learn an obvious fact, mend a simple fault, or share a meal without proving they deserve it.

Give information clearly enough to act on. Clues can complicate a decision without concealing every path. Answer Read the Room questions honestly, as written. No move gives you a license to lie.

Share the room

After a decision lands, look toward someone who has had less space. “While they talk, what are you doing?” can bring another character into the scene. Offer the spotlight; they may prefer to watch.

When the pack splits, move between them at meaningful turns: an offer, a discovery, the outcome of a roll. Resolve the cost a player just accepted before leaving them hanging. Keep each group aware of what their characters could know and how they might reconnect. A character in Beast cannot speak, but their player can still talk at the table about what they do.

Cut ahead once a scene’s question is answered or the players are ready to move. Ask where they go next. In a quiet scene the question may be whether someone stays for another drink.

Make room for the aftermath

When immediate pressure eases, ask what the pack does with the time. This is where tending injuries, settling an argument, a homecoming, or a Revelry can happen. Use Downtime^CR when they have that breathing room; it need not wait for the end of the session, and ending a session does not grant it.

Describe what recovery changes. A cleared Tide mark might be the first time someone unclenches their hands. Follow Recovery^CR for injuries and conditions and Rites^CR for rites. Do not turn every kind act into Tend.

Close the session

Leave time to close. Run the end-of-session questions^CR and mark XP. Then run After the session^CR.

Apply any scheduled end-of-session clock ticks once. Show their effects, or note what news will reach the pack next time.

Record the current situation, new obligations, changed clocks, and what the players intend to do next. A cliffhanger is fine; you need not manufacture one, or finish the job before stopping. If someone is still Red, use The Red^CR; the session boundary does not end it.

The Rules at the Table

How the rules in the Core Rules play out at the table: each move, then harm, the Tide, and death.

The moves at the table

What to listen for in each move, and what it leaves to you. The rules are in Basic Moves^CR and Peripheral Moves^CR; this is how they feel at the table.

Act Under Pressure

First check whether an action requires a roll at all (When do players roll?^CR). If it does but you can’t see which move applies, fall back to this one.

On a 7–9 the character gets through; you choose the shape of the cost:

• Worse outcome: they get through the hatch, but bleeding, or the hatch is ruined behind them, or slowly enough that someone saw.

• Hard bargain: they get through the hatch if they drop the case. Or leave the gun. Or go in Beast and can’t work the console on the other side.

• Ugly choice: they get through, or their packmate does. Not both.

A worse outcome is one cost, stated; a hard bargain or an ugly choice puts a real decision to the player. Whichever you pick, a 7–9 is a hit.

The approach decides the stat, and sometimes more than one fits. Climbing the outside of a hab while a drone sweeps the hull might be True to hold on or Keen to time the sweep. Ask how they’re doing it.

A mistake and its correction. Pip is under a tarp in a maintenance bay while two Halcyon guards walk through. Pip’s player rolls a 9.

World: They spot you, but you don’t realize it. Pip’s player: …I hit, though? World: You did. Sorry, that’s a miss I just described. Try this: they haven’t spotted you, but one of them is walking straight for your tarp. If you move right now, you’ll have the drop on him. What do you do?

Unleash

Once the player has chosen protections (Unleash^CR), say what happened: how loud it was, what the baton did to their ribs, what the camera caught, what the sight of the thing in its jaw did to them. If their protections cover everything the scene could cost, that’s a clean victory. If nothing was uncertain, it shouldn’t have been a roll.

On a miss, make a hard move that follows from the fight: the guard seals the hatch while they struggle; the clerk gets behind a security screen; the thing they were fighting is on top of them.

Between player characters (Unleash^CR), once the resisting player has described their side, you fill in the rest: witnesses, cameras, what the corridor saw.

A complete exchange. Sable wants the guard unconscious before he can raise the alarm. She rolls 10.

Sable’s player: I don’t take harm, and I don’t hurt him more than I meant to. World: He goes down with a bruised throat and nothing worse. His hand never reaches the panic strip, and you’re unmarked. (beat) Then the corridor camera turns toward you. It saw all of it.

Nobody was in earshot, so quiet didn’t matter, but evidence did.

Stand Between

A hit stops the immediate threat and nothing more. The drone that was shooting at the kid is still in the corridor, now pointed at something else.

Example. A Garrison soldier swings his rifle butt at the dockhand who threw the bottle. Dagny steps in front of him. She rolls 8.

Dagny’s player: I take the harm. World: The stock catches your forearm instead of his face. That’s 2 harm, 1 after your Fur. The dockhand is behind you, and the soldier is looking at you now.

Read the Room

Answer honestly and as fully as the character could perceive. If you don’t know the answer, decide now. “Nobody” is an honest answer, and a terrifying one.

“Taking a moment” can be its own scene. Ask what it looks like.

On a 6−, answer honestly, then show what their attention gave away: someone there learns what they are, what they’re looking for, that they’re afraid, or where they are. Follow the exposure rule (Consequences^CR): a Claim if a particular person or faction can use it, Exposed if anyone could find it. Often it’s simpler: someone saw them looking.

Example. Ilse walks into the Ring Council chamber and rolls 10.

Ilse’s player: Who’s in control? And what does the chairman want from this? World: Halcyon’s liaison is in control. She’s sitting in the public gallery. The chairman wants to get through this meeting without anyone asking about the water contract. Ilse’s player: That’s leverage. World: It is. Take a Claim over him: you can keep his water contract out of the public discussion.

Sway

When you tell the player what would convince the NPC, make it specific and actionable, not “be nice to him”:

• “He wants to be reassured that nobody will find out it was him.”

• “She needs to hear that you’re doing this for the district, not for yourselves. And she’ll know if you’re lying.”

• “You’ve got the footage from the airlock. Mention it, and he’ll fold.”

• “He’d do it for money. More than you’ve got, but the Ledger would front it.”

• “She wants your Luna to come to her daughter’s naming. That’s the price.”

On a 7–9, make it one of these:

• Costly: it takes a Territory asset, or the NPC gains a Claim over the character.

• Tricky: what would convince them is true, but hard to prove or arrange in time.

• Distasteful: they can do it and don’t want to. Lie to someone who trusts them. Threaten a kid. Let someone touch their ears.

A Claim is an easy answer. When the player holds a Claim over the NPC, forgiving it is often the price. Size it by what gives the Claim its weight: a debt buys about what the favor was worth; a secret or a fear can buy more, and afterward the NPC knows the character will use it. Then check what the NPC can actually do, and what it costs or risks them.

What, and by when. Every bargain names a deadline, even a loose one: by the ninth bell, before the barge leaves, next time you’re in. Missing it has a cost (Sway^CR). Don’t break a bargain with another move’s cost, such as it takes longer than you had, unless the delay was already in the scene.

Example. Auntie Ruth wants the Ledger’s local book-keeper to extend the district’s water credit. She rolls 7.

World: He’ll do it. He’d like you to host the cartel’s quarterly meet at the Kettle. In Fur. All of you.

That’s distasteful, and it’s a scene.

A mistake and its correction. Marcus rolls 10 to Sway a dock clerk into losing a manifest.

World: Just be friendly with him. Marcus’s player: Friendly how? World: Right, that’s no help. His shift supervisor docks his pay for every error on the manifests. If you promise him the manifest will be corrected before his supervisor checks, he’ll lose it for an hour.

Jack In

“It works” can’t be undone by a cost, but its consequences still matter. The door opens, and someone may be on the other side of it. The file downloads, and someone may be watching it.

Example. Sable Jacks In to the Ring Four door controls from a maintenance panel and rolls 8.

World: It works. And something else in the system wakes up: a Halcyon diagnostic starts asking the door why it opened.

Tend

Most care isn’t a move. Ruth feeds everyone every night and doesn’t roll for it. The pack asleep in one heap doesn’t roll. Two people on the outer deck saying nothing don’t roll. Call for Tend when someone is hurt, the care might not reach them, and it matters whether it does.

On a 6−, ask the players what goes wrong between them, and let them answer before you add NPCs and circumstances (Tend^CR).

Example. Dagny sits with Ilse after the Red. She rolls 6.

World: What goes wrong between you? Dagny’s player: I keep looking at the door. I’m afraid she’ll change again. Ilse’s player: I notice. I stop trying to explain.

Nothing clears.

A mistake and its correction. After the job, the pack eats together in the Kettle’s back room.

World: Ruth, roll to Tend. Ruth’s player: For dinner? World: Fair. Nobody’s hurt in a way dinner could fail to fix. Tell me what you made.

Hunt

The best prices (Hunt^CR) are relationships: a Claim the seller gains, a job, a favor for a friend of theirs. Money is fine when the pack has it; don’t track it.

For Cyberware^CR, “someone else still has a hold on it” can be a lease, a previous owner who wants it back, or firmware that still answers to someone else.

Example. Sable needs a replacement for the optic the Red tore. She asks Quiet Hands, and rolls 8.

Sable’s player: Someone else still has a hold on it. World: It’s unlocked, and the price is a favor: they’ll call it in. But the last owner’s account is still in the firmware. Until you find out whose it was, someone can see what you see.

Hunt follows trails. If there’s no trail to follow, it’s another move, or no roll.

Example. Ansel tracks the Slag Dog by the smell of burnt cyberware. He rolls 10.

World: It’s asleep in a decommissioned water tank, and it doesn’t know you’re there. What do you do?

Whatever he does next is Unleash, or it’s leaving quietly and telling nobody.

Take the Flank

Ask how they help. It has to be something that could change the outcome: holding the door, watching the corridor, talking over the guard’s shoulder. Helping always risks something, and how they helped tells you what.

The helper’s costs are in Take the Flank^CR. On a 7–9, draw the helper’s cost from how they helped: the colleague they’re blocking takes a swing; the guard gets a good look at their face; the bargain names them too. It comes on top of the roll’s own cost; that’s the price of helping, not charging twice. On a 6−, show how the consequence reaches them: the same camera frame, the same collapsing corridor, the same bad bargain. A Wolf’s Pack Tactics changes who pays (Sample Anima^CR).

Example. Pip wants to shove a Halcyon clerk through a doorway.

Dagny’s player: I take the flank. I’m blocking his colleague with my whole body. World: +1, Pip. And Dagny, unless this goes clean, the colleague’s already right there with you.

Draw Blood

Nobody rolls (Draw Blood^CR). Ask the hurt player to word the Claim, and write it down in their words.

Example. Dagny Unleashes to wrench the transmitter out of Sable’s hands, and doesn’t protect against hurting her more than she meant to. Sable narrates the unprotected consequence.

Sable’s player: The door catches my shoulder on the way. 1 harm, after my Fur. And a Claim over Dagny. Dagny’s player: Fair. Write it down. Sable’s player: “She’ll go through me for that transmitter.”

Ride the Tide

Tide is the player’s to spend. When they Ride, ask what it looks like: teeth, the smell of the corridor, a sound they didn’t mean to make.

Example. In the maintenance layer under Ring Two, a Garrison patrol has Teodora cornered. Ilse Stands Between them. She has 4 Tide on her five-box track. Her dice show 2 and 3, with +1: 6.

Ilse’s player: I Ride. Last box. (rerolls the 2, gets a 4) 8. World: Costly hit. The shots hit the bulkhead, and Teodora is gone into the dark. Choose your cost. Ilse’s player: I lose my position. I’m standing in the open between them. And my track’s full, so… World: So you’re Red, in the open, in front of four soldiers who just watched you change.

Shift

On a 6−, you choose the form, and you choose the worst one for the moment. Often that’s Fur or Beast when they need to pass for human. Sometimes it’s Skin when they need claws.

Example. Dagny wants Fur to break the airlock seal before it cycles. She rolls 5.

World: The Moon chooses. You’re in Beast. Four legs, no hands, watching the seal you can’t reach.

A mistake and its correction. Dagny’s player says she steps out of the shower and into Fur.

World: Roll +True to Shift. Dagny’s player: For what? World: You’re right, nothing’s pressing you. You’re in Fur, and your towel is too small.

Call Back

Choose the 7–9 cost from what this Red is doing. A Red stalking quarry may lead the caller somewhere dangerous; a Red dragging someone to its den may bite whoever holds it.

Example. Ilse reaches Dagny in the kitchen and says Teodora’s name. Ilse has Sly +1 and the leash gives +1. Her dice total 4, for 6.

Sable’s player: I spend a Claim to steady her. +1. World: That’s 7. Ilse, which one? Ilse’s player: It finishes first. Dagny’s player: The Red drives the fire through the doorway into the bar. Then she turns around, and she knows Ilse’s face.

Howl

Don’t punish a refusal to answer; let it matter in the fiction. When an answerer drops something to come, write it down and bring it back later.

Example. Ilse Howls from the council chamber. Dagny, Marcus, and Pip answer. Dagny rolls, using the highest True among them, +1. The dice total 7, for 8.

World: Costly hit. Each of you picks one. Dagny’s player: Wrong form. I arrive in Fur, in a chamber full of people who’ve never seen one. Marcus’s player: Dropped something. I walked out of a Halcyon briefing mid-sentence. I arrive in Skin, in a suit, with a badge, and calmly ask the guards what the problem is. Pip’s player: Late. After the guards have already drawn.

The same Howl on a 5: everyone’s coming, and the Halcyon drone that was tracking Pip is coming too.

Cross Over

Say how hard the crossing is before they roll: thin, thick, or worse. Judge it by the place on this side, where they leave or where they come out. The crossing gets them to the other side. The journey through it is play.

What stays behind (What crosses^CR). When a crossing costs something, take what isn’t theirs first: the issued tablet, the borrowed pistol, the crate they were paid to carry, the clothes off their back. Take something of theirs only on a miss, and make the loss matter. Things can become someone’s in play, and that’s worth noticing.

Staying too long (Cross Over^CR). Show the cold with soft moves first: a packmate’s name takes a moment to come back; someone catches the scent of a stranger.

Example. The pack crosses together to follow the Landlord into its domain.

World: The Landlord’s door is behind every repossessed lease in the district at once, and the hallway keeps renumbering itself while you look. That’s −2. Dagny’s player: I’ll bare one. I’ve been paying the Landlord. Since Teodora. (Pip’s and Kestrel’s players each bare one too.) World: Three truths, +3. Everyone who heard each one gains a Claim over the speaker. Net +1, before Keen. Ilse, you’re leading. Ilse’s player: (rolls) 10. World: You arrive exactly where the Landlord went. It already knows Dagny’s name.

Harm and conditions

Conditions describe distinct problems

One problem, one condition (Conditions^CR). Before adding a condition, check its cause: a tracking implant that already made someone Hunted doesn’t also make them Exposed. Update the existing condition instead. A recorded wound already counts through its harm; don’t turn it into a condition too.

NPCs and harm

NPCs don’t keep a harm clock. Say what a blow does to them, from hurt to out of the fight to dying to dead, as the fiction and the player’s protections allow. If a named NPC’s recovery matters to the story, give them a clock like a player character’s.

Vacuum

While a character is in vacuum, keep a three-segment vacuum clock for them. Each hard move you make against them there ticks it, and they take harm equal to the segments filled so far: 1 harm, then 2, then 3. Once it’s full, each further hard move there deals 3 harm. Form armor^CR reduces each one. The clock clears when they reach air.

Running the Tide

“You feel the pull” warns of mounting pressure; it does not call for a roll. Mark Tide^CR when a move or a World move calls for it, and say what happens to cause the mark. Going Red happens when the track fills; don’t roll to decide it. A condition can give that pressure a foothold: someone activates the inhibitor that makes a character Caged, or demands obedience under the lease that makes them Owned. The condition alone does not keep adding marks; another mark needs a fresh event or escalation.

Describe Tide as pressure on the character, pushing or pulling them to be something they aren’t or more of what they are (How the Changed live^CR). They may feel it as a hunger that won’t be sated, a scent that won’t leave the room, a packmate’s hand on the back of their neck lasting a beat too long. Care that eases it, sex included, is Tend^CR.

When someone goes Red, play what this Red wants. Anything its protections don’t cover is possible, not required; don’t check off every cruelty.

Rulings for the Red (The Red^CR):

• If a reroll fills the track, finish that roll, then the character goes Red before anything else happens.

• A Red that can’t act still wants what it was hunting. A locked door or restraints buy time for someone to Call Back; they don’t end it. Neither does cutting to another scene or ending the session.

• A recording of the Red counts as a witness once someone reviews it and identifies the character. They gain the witness Claim then.

• A Red that takes wounds into itself, like Enceladus’s, still suffers them; they are what its power costs.

• When someone Unleashes against a Red, choose costs that fit what the Red is doing.

When they don’t remember. If a character didn’t protect their memory and nobody tells them what happened, or the pack tells them something else, the aftermath’s condition can be Alone: they can tell something is being kept from them (The Red^CR).

Death and returns

A final act

When a player chooses death in Dying^CR, ask what they want their last act to accomplish. Be generous about its scale. Holding a collapsing passage long enough for everyone to escape, destroying the machine that owns their body, or making an enemy hear the truth can be worth a life.

Agree with the dying character’s player what the act achieves, then let it happen without another roll or a cost that takes the achievement away. Give that player room to narrate the end. Then ask who witnesses it and what remains. Do not rush past the silence to the next job.

Offering a return

A player who chooses death can be offered a way back (Coming back wrong^CR). Offer it plainly, and accept a refusal.

Reclaimed. A corporation rebuilds them and sends them back with a leased implant that reports where they are. They return at 3 harm; the corporation gains 3 Claims over them, and they take Hunted: the implant reports my location. Before they accept, agree with the player who the corporation is, what it will ask first, and what getting the implant out would take. Whatever you agree stays true.

Part TwoEncyclopedia

Threats and Factions

The things pressing on The Territory^CR, and the Claims^CR they hold.

Each faction is built as a front (Building a front). Each faction move gives a soft version, then a hard version after the slash. Use the hard version when the World makes a hard move.

Factions

Megacorps

The ones who own the air. A corp moves slowly and forgets nothing it can bill. Everyone on the ring owes a corp something.

Each corp does harm in its own way: Meridian through neglect, Halcyon through procedure, Ostrander-Kell through iteration (updates, new terms, recalls). Play each corp through its method, so that dealing with one feels different from dealing with another.

Their people are not their flavor. A Meridian negotiator can be fair, a Halcyon receptionist kind, an Ostrander-Kell recruiter sincere (Give power a face). The flavor is in what the institution does when nobody in particular decides anything.

Meridian Holdings

They don’t make anything. They own the building.

Meridian is every bad landlord at once. Repairs wait in a queue nobody works; the heat exchanger on Deck Six has been “scheduled” for three years. But Meridian knows how many people slept in your unit on the Ninth Night, that one of them was in Fur, and what you hung on the wall. The rent goes up on time.

Want. The most income from the asset for the least spent on it, until a better use for the ring comes along. Clock. Meridian sells, converts, or clears the Territory. Claims. Leases, deposits, arrears, and covenant breaches it has noted but not yet enforced.

Play it.

• Ignore the request; enforce the covenant. When the pack needs something from Meridian, nothing happens. When the pack does something Meridian didn’t approve, a notice arrives.

• Nobody owns the problem. A ticket is routed, closed as resolved, reopened by another department. Robert and Salma can be reasonable; reaching one of them is the hard part.

• Pile on. When Meridian finally acts, it acts all at once: an inspection, a fee schedule, a compliance order.

Moves.

• Let something break that Meridian should have fixed. The lift skips Deck Nine. / The lift has stopped between decks with someone in it.

• Send a notice about something the pack thought was private. An automated reminder about guest occupancy limits. / A compliance order citing a photograph.

• Close the ticket. “Resolved. No fault found.” / An inspection fee, charged to the unit.

• Send someone to look. A surveyor with a drone and no repair kit. / The surveyor has photographed the memorial wall.

Questions: What’s the Territory’s real lease? What does Meridian want the district for, and when? What has Meridian never once fixed, and what has it noticed that it shouldn’t have?

Halcyon Atmospherics

They sell air. They are polite. They have never once turned it off for a paying customer. Halcyon decides who is a customer.

Halcyon has run life support for two hundred years, and in life support every rule was written after somebody died. Rules go onto the books and never come off. A breach report must be co-signed by someone pressure-certified who is not the injured party. A form can only be filed in person, at an office that closes an hour before the shift ends. A hatch welded shut forty years ago still needs its quarterly seal attestation. Some of these rules still keep people alive. Nobody, Halcyon included, can say which.

Want. Uninterrupted service under contract: every breath metered, every tenant scheduled, nothing off-procedure. Clock. When it fills, a Halcyon filing against the district takes effect and can’t be withdrawn: a reclassification, a contract renewal, or a reclamation work order. Claims. The air contract, breach reports, waivers and signatures. Anyone who signs a Halcyon waiver or contract gives Halcyon a Claim on them.

Play it.

• Some rules are right. Nobody can say which. If a character would know, tell the player; if a skipped rule matters, show the danger first.

• Never rude, never cruel. The harm comes from people following the rules exactly because they can’t afford not to.

• Its people know. Marcus and Nadiya work inside the rules, and their kindness lives in the gaps: the form that can be backdated, the cancellation slot, the inspector who rounds in your favor.

Moves.

• Require the form. The hatch won’t cycle without a certified co-signer. / The co-signer’s certification lapsed yesterday; the hatch is locked out.

• Enforce a rule that no longer makes sense. Deck Nine must be cleared for a seal test on a seal that was removed years ago. / It’s been cleared; the residents are in a holding area until the test is signed off.

• Reclassify. A notice that morphologically variant tenants will be assessed at Fur volume. / The reassessment is billed.

• Offer a waiver. The procedure can be set aside, once, for whoever signs. / They signed; Halcyon holds a Claim.

Questions: What’s in the contract that the district has never read? Who at Halcyon has been kind, and why? Which Halcyon rule does the district break every day, and which one did someone die for?

Ostrander-Kell Bio

They make Fur-rated Cyberware^CR. They know what a Fur shift does to a titanium socket, because they’ve watched it happen forty times. They’d like some volunteers.

Everything starts free: the trial implant, the clinic visit, the stipend for a short series of follow-ups. Nothing is ever finished. Every implant is a version, every version gets an update, and every update comes with new terms. Ostrander-Kell is warm, enthusiastic, and very interested in you. It means it. You are the most interesting data it has ever had.

Want. To learn what the Changed are (its studies call them the experimental group), from as many bodies as it can get, and sell what it learns. Clock. The study scales up: a trial, a cohort, a facility on the ring, a recall. Claims. Implant leases (Terms^CR), trial agreements, and the data it already has. A body running Ostrander-Kell firmware tells Ostrander-Kell about itself.

Play it.

• Lead with the gift. Its offers are real and often good. The cost is in the terms, and the terms change later.

• Consent is a box already ticked. Challenged, Ostrander-Kell produces the agreement, with section and clause. It’s always there.

• Curious, not cruel. Its researchers want to see what happens next. They are delighted by the pack, and that is bad news.

Moves.

• Activate their implant’s downside (The moves). The optic flickers: an update is pushing. / The update has installed.

• Make an offer the district needs. Free replacement lungs for the crew hurt in the crane collapse. / They’ve accepted, and the follow-up schedule is in the lease.

• End support. A notice that the model reaches end of support next cycle. / It’s offline; the replacement needs a new agreement.

• Show what it knows about them. A recruiter congratulates someone on a change nobody saw. / The study’s findings are published, with an anonymized subject everyone recognizes.

Questions: What did they learn from the last pack? Which packmate has one of their implants and hasn’t said? What did they give the district that it couldn’t have got anywhere else?

Syndicates

The ones who do what the corps can’t invoice. Syndicates hold Claims through favors and know the maintenance layer better than the pack does.

A corp doesn’t know your name. A syndicate does, and wants to keep doing business with you. Its harm is personal: it remembers what you owe, and what you’d sell.

The Ledger hurts people by withholding: the barge doesn’t come. Quiet Hands hurts them by buying: it makes you name your price.

The Ledger

Belt water cartel. Everyone drinks on credit.

The Ledger hauls the ice, and the ice is the water, and the water is everything. Everyone on Ring Four is in the book, and the book remembers every litre: who drank, who paid, who covered for whom when the barge was late. The Ledger is patient, and fair by its own count, and its count is the only one there is. It has never once threatened anybody. When a debt sits long enough, it just stops delivering.

Want. Every litre accounted for, and every district too dependent to refuse. Clock. When it fills, the Ledger stops delivering to the district. Each time it ticks, also tick the Territory’s Water clock: deliveries come late, then short, then not at all. Claims. The book: debts it lent, debts it carries on someone else’s behalf, and favors done “on account.”

Play it.

• Withhold; never threaten. The Ledger’s move against a district is to stop. Make scarcity the threat: the low tanks, the long queue, the ration chip that reads zero.

• Debts are relationships. People carry each other’s debts: Ruth carries the wake, the district covered the pressure test. When the Ledger calls a debt, the World says what it costs each person carrying part of it.

• Honor what’s paid. A debt paid in full clears every Claim it supported (When does a Claim clear?^CR), and the Ledger never raises it again.

• Take payment in favors. The Ledger has plenty of money. When it calls in a debt, it may ask for information, assistance, or a solution that needs to stay off the books instead.

Moves.

• Make them wait. The barge is late. / The barge is two days late, and the tanks on Deck Six are dry.

• Call a debt someone else is carrying. A collector asks after Ruth’s account. / The Ledger has called it, and Ruth can’t pay.

• Offer credit. The Ledger will lend it. / It’s lent. The Ledger holds a Claim, and a job will come due.

• Send someone. Ansel is waiting where he can see both doors. / Idris has closed the dock gate to the district’s haulers.

• Read from the book. A collector reads out what the district owes, to the litre. / The figure is posted in the market, with names.

Questions: What did the district pledge when the ice barge was late? Who runs the local book, and what are they afraid of, besides their employer? Whose debt has the district been quietly carrying, and who would it hurt if the Ledger called it?

Quiet Hands

Body-work: cyberware, organs, disappearances. They’d love one of the Changed on retainer.

Quiet Hands will fix anything and buy anything. A torn implant, a failing kidney, a lease you want out of, someone you need to stop existing: they have a surgeon, a part, a route. They are courteous and unhurried, and they ask permission before they open you up. They appraise everything they touch, you included. Nothing you sell them comes back, and everything they sell you came from someone.

Want. Supply: parts, bodies and people to keep the trade moving, and the Changed most of all. The inventory lists them as livestock. Clock. An acquisition: someone the district can’t spare goes into inventory. Claims. Favors done when nobody else would help, work on your body (unlocked implants, Terms^CR), and anything you’ve sold them.

Play it.

• Appraise everything. Venn notices condition, wear, value. Let them put a price on what the pack thought had none: a Fur-rated arm, a healing gift, a packmate’s silence.

• Courtesy is the method. They ask permission. They accept a refusal and come back with a horrifyingly tempting offer.

• What goes in doesn’t come out. A part, a person, a secret: once it’s in inventory, getting it back is a new deal.

Moves.

• Have exactly what they need. The part is on the shelf with the serial ground off. / It’s installed, and someone in the district recognizes it.

• Make an offer for something they shouldn’t sell. A good price for a Fur tissue sample. / Someone in the district has already sold one.

• Call in the work. Quiet Hands asks a favor of someone it patched or unlocked. / The favor is due tonight.

• Put someone in inventory. Someone who owed too much hasn’t been seen in two days. / Their implant is on Venn’s bench.

Questions: What do they think they can sell that the pack has? What did they do for the district that nobody talks about? What has someone here sold Quiet Hands that they’d like back?

Cults

Space is where you go to be unreachable, so it’s full of people who wanted to be.

A corp doesn’t know your name, and a syndicate wants to keep doing business with you. A cult wants you to belong to it. It offers what the pack offers: a home, a purpose, people who understand. That is what makes it dangerous. Play the warmth as real.

The Return hurts people through devotion: love for what you are, not who. Enceladus Deep hurts them through obedience: help that serves something else’s purpose.

The Return

They believe everyone was meant to Change, and that the Changed are simply the First.

The Return loves the Changed, and yours most of all. Its members follow the pack the way other people follow a serial: footage from the district feed, gossip from the Kettle, a blurry photo of someone in Fur on Deck Nine. They know every packmate’s Anima, who is quarreling with whom, who ought to be with whom, how Ilse’s knee has been. They have favorites. They have never been introduced. When a packmate does something that doesn’t fit the story, they take it personally. They meet on the Ninth Night because they heard the pack does. Most of them only want to be closer. Some want to Change, and a few have stopped waiting to be shown how.

Want. To be close to the pack, and then to be like them. Clock. A devotee does something terrible for the pack, or tries to force the Change on themselves. Claims. What they know (they’ve been watching a long time), what they did for the pack without being asked, relics they keep (shed fur, footage, a bloodied bandage), and packmates who have been to a meeting.

Play it.

• Love the thing, not the person. They know the pack from feeds and gossip and are sure they know them. Praise the packmate they’ve imagined; get the real one wrong.

• They expect it back. They wrote letters, saved footage, defended the pack on the feeds. Being ignored feels like betrayal, and a devotee who feels betrayed is dangerous.

• The belonging is real. A packmate may like them. Some members have nobody else. Let a meeting be good, sometimes.

Moves.

• Show up. A devotee is waiting outside the Kettle. / Twenty of them, and a camera.

• Tell the story. A feed account posts its version of last night. / That version is everywhere, and the district believes it.

• Act for them. A devotee asks what the pack wants done about the inspector. / The inspector is in the clinic, and the devotee says it was for them.

• Keep a relic. Someone has a lock of shed fur in a locket. / It’s on an altar with a name under it, or on Venn’s bench.

• Seek the Change. A member asks a packmate to show them how. / A member tried something they heard would work, and Doc Amaral has them now.

• Turn on them. A devotee’s letters have stopped being kind. / They’ve posted where the pack sleeps.

Questions: What troubling fact are they right about? Which packmate has been to a meeting? What do they know about the Moons^CR that the pack doesn’t? Can the Change be passed on? If so, how, and what does the Return believe instead? Who in the district joined because nobody else would sit with them?

Enceladus Deep

Something under the ice talked to them, and they’ve been very busy since.

Enceladus Deep arrives after every accident with the right tools, and works until it’s done. Its members are calm, competent and kind. They won’t take payment. Every few nights they gather and listen, and afterward they have a list: a valve to open at a particular hour, a song to sing at a particular hatch, a question about someone in the pack. They don’t know what it’s for. They don’t need to.

Want. To do what it asked. Clock. The project: each strange request is a piece of something on the ring. When the clock fills, the last piece is in place, and whatever is under the ice can hear the ring, or reach it. Claims. Help accepted. They insist nothing is owed. The Claim is real anyway, and they collect with a small, strange request.

Play it.

• Help first, and well. They are good at it. The district likes them, and should.

• Serene certainty. They don’t argue; they were told. Nothing the pack says outweighs the voice. Changing their minds means finding a reason that serves what it asked.

• Never show it. Its words come secondhand, through people who love it.

Moves.

• Help, unasked. A crew arrives with pumps before anyone called. / They fixed it, and installed something extra.

• Ask a small, strange thing. Would someone open Hatch 6 at 0300? / It’s been opened, and something came through, or went out.

• Recruit someone the pack loves. Doc Amaral has started going to their listenings. / Doc Amaral has stopped answering the clinic door.

• Ask after a packmate. A volunteer asks after “the one from Europa who counts things.” / The delegation has asked for her by name.

Questions: What did it ask for? Why has a delegation come to the Territory? What does it have to do with the vent field on Enceladus’s far side? Which of its requests has the district already carried out? When the clock fills, does it hear the ring, or reach it?

The State

A hab council, a Martian consulate, a Luna garrison detachment. The state is a front that pretends it’s a neutral party.

Corps own things, syndicates trade, and cults want you to belong. The state decides what’s legal, and who counts as a person. Every state actor says it’s neutral. Ask whom it answers to.

The Ring Council hurts people through compromise, the Martian Consulate through selection, the Luna Garrison through jurisdiction: whose law applies, settled by who has the guns.

The Ring Council

Elected, bought, and tired.

The Ring Council is the only power on Ring Four that the district chose. Its members are neighbors: they pass your door on the way home, and you know which of them takes their tea with too much sugar. It has almost no money, so it borrows from whoever offers. Halcyon paid for the dock lights; the councilors who took the money voted for the lights, and would like you to notice that the docks are lit. The Council can be moved, if enough people come to the meeting. It can’t be hurried.

Want. To keep the ring governable without help it can’t afford, and its members re-elected. Clock. A vote: the Council approves something the district can’t take back (a sale, a registration, a curfew). Claims. Votes, endorsements, permits, and the public record: who spoke, who asked, who was promised what.

Play it.

• It’s the only power they chose. Councilors answer to residents in a way no corp does, and have too little power to make that count for much.

• Bought, not evil. Show what the bribe paid for. The councilor who took Ostrander-Kell’s money also got the clinic its backup generator.

• It can be moved. Fill the room before a vote and the vote can go the other way.

Moves.

• Defer it. The motion is deferred to next session. / Next session is after the deadline.

• Put it on the record. A councilor asks a packmate to testify. / The testimony is in the minutes, with names.

• Trade it away. The Council will object to the sale if the Kettle accepts a curfew. / It passed, with the curfew.

• Ask for the pack’s help. A councilor needs people at the meeting. / A councilor needs a problem to go away quietly, before the vote.

Questions: Who on the council owes the pack? Who’s up for re-election and what did Halcyon promise them? Which promise does the district still remember, and was it kept?

The Martian Consulate

The Martian Meritocracy only takes the best, and it decides who that is.

Mars calls itself the Martian Meritocracy, and its officials believe it. Citizenship is earned by examination, and the people who earned it are sure it made them better than the people who didn’t. The Consulate sits above Ring Four’s expat block, with a garden nobody else is allowed to water. Its junior staff are homesick and mostly kind. The higher you go, the more the Consulate sees the Belt as a quarry: rough stone, and now and then something worth cutting. It wants the district’s best to emigrate, by its own measure, and it is very good at making people want to be chosen. It guards its citizens fiercely, because each one is proof that the system chose well.

Want. To bring the Belt’s best to Mars, by Mars’s measure. Clock. The district’s best are recruited away: the doctor, the engineer, a packmate. Each one who leaves makes the next easier to take. Claims. Citizenship and sponsorship, candidates who badly want to be chosen, and expats whose standing depends on the Consulate’s goodwill.

Play it.

• Superiority grows with rank. A clerk in the expat block misses home and helps you with the form. The Consul calls Belters “promising” and means it as a compliment.

• Being chosen feels wonderful. Let a packmate want it.

• Merit is whatever the measure says. Ask who wrote the test, and what it can’t see.

Moves.

• Invite the best. Doc Amaral has been invited to apply. / Doc Amaral has accepted; the clinic closes at the end of the cycle.

• Assess them. A packmate is asked to sit an evaluation. / The scores are in, and the Consulate has notes about their performance in Fur.

• Protect a citizen. The Consulate asks after a Martian the pack has a quarrel with. / That Martian is inside the Consulate, out of everyone’s reach.

• Decline someone. A friend of the pack has applied every cycle for six years. / Rejected again, and the rankings are posted in the expat block.

Questions: Who in the expat block works for the Consulate, and do their neighbors know? How does the Meritocracy score one of the Changed (an atypical candidate), and what does it do with the result? Who in the district was chosen and left, and who was turned down and stayed? Which packmate wants to be chosen?

The Luna Garrison

Earth is a long way off. Its soldiers are not.

A detachment of Luna garrison troops guards the Hive’s transit docks under a treaty older than anyone stationed there. Their authority is narrow and written down. They are young, bored, and a very long way from home, and some of them drink at the Kettle when they think nobody will report it. They mostly stay inside their perimeter. When something becomes a security matter, they bring the only real guns on the ring, and Earth law comes with them. Earth law still classifies the Change as a communicable condition. Nobody on Ceres has had to care.

Want. To keep Earth’s foothold in the Belt and the treaty route open, with no incidents. Clock. Jurisdiction spreads: an incident, a security zone, a curfew under treaty, then soldiers on the decks. Claims. Warrants, detentions, treaty status, what Earth law says you are, and the soldiers’ own local debts.

Play it.

• Jurisdiction is the weapon. Ask who has authority over this deck, this person, this body. The answer changes when the guns arrive.

• Make the soldiers people. Homesick, bored, curious about Fur. A sergeant who wants to hear Ilse talk about trees.

• Earth law is old. It treats the Change as communicable. Most days nobody enforces it; when the garrison wants a reason, it’s there.

Moves.

• Declare a security matter. Soldiers ask questions at the dock gate. / The deck is cordoned off.

• Ask for papers. A patrol checks identification outside the Kettle. / A packmate is detained “pending verification.”

• Invoke Earth law. An officer asks the clinic for its records on “Class M conditions.” / A quarantine order, with a packmate’s name on it.

• Rotate. The friendly sergeant is being sent home. / The replacement has read the file.

Questions: What does the treaty actually let them do? Which soldier drinks at the Kettle, and who would get in trouble if that came out? What happened the last time Earth law was enforced on Ceres?

Other packs

Not all the Changed are friends. Another pack is the best kind of front because they will fight as hard for their home as you will for yours.

Each pack here shows the players’ pack a future it could have. Play them as people who made reasonable choices under pressure, and let the pack see itself in them.

The Drift hurts people through need: their hunger for a home competes with yours. The Association hurts through example: proof that giving in works, mostly. The Breakwater hurts through protection: safety kept by fear, and owed for.

The Drift

A pack that lost its Territory and now moves ring to ring, taking what it can. They’re Nomadic^CR.

Meridian sold the Drift’s ring two years ago, and they had thirty days. Since then they have slept in maintenance layers, in borrowed bunks, in a hauler’s hold for one very bad month. They are thinner than they were, and prouder. Oriol won’t ask for anything; some of the others would, and a few have stopped asking. Everything the pack is about to face, the Drift has already lost to. Their warnings are good. Their need is real, and it uses the same air and water as yours.

Want. A home that’s theirs, without having to take it from anyone. Not all of them still care about the second part. Clock. The Drift breaks: the youngest leave, someone goes Red with nowhere safe to do it, or the Drift decides to take a ring. Claims. Old ties (one of them used to run with your pack, or loved someone who does), help they’ve given, and warnings that came true.

Play it.

• Proud, not begging. Unless an offer is framed as a trade, they refuse it and leave.

• They disagree with each other. Oriol wants a future that doesn’t cost another pack its home. Others think your ring should have been theirs.

• Home is the answer. The Drift can stop being a front. Make that possible, and expensive.

Moves.

• Arrive. The Drift is camped in the maintenance layer under the Kettle. / Halcyon has noticed the extra air draw and wants to know who’s breathing it.

• Warn. Oriol recognizes the wording of a notice. / He was right, and the pack is the last to hear.

• Need something. One of them needs somewhere safe to go Red tonight. / They went Red in a public corridor, and the Garrison is asking questions.

• Split. Half the Drift wants to stay; half wants to move on. / Some of them have taken a Ledger job against the pack.

Questions: Which of them used to be in your pack? What would it take to give them a home? What did the Drift do to survive the last two years that it won’t talk about?

The Association

A pack that took Halcyon’s deal. Registered, inspected, and doing fine.

On Ring Six, a pack signed Halcyon’s registration three years ago. Every member is on the schedule of morphologically variant tenants. A Halcyon inspector walks their maintenance layer every ninth day, and they make him tea. Their air has never dipped. They change in a licensed room with a viewing window, and they call it the Den without irony. Their children are safe, and they would very much like you to know it worked. Most of them believe that. One or two have started to wonder what they’re for.

Want. For their choice to have been right, which is easier to believe if every pack makes it. Clock. Halcyon holds the Association up as the model for Ring Four. When the clock fills, registration is on the Ring Council’s agenda with the Association’s endorsement. Claims. References and sponsorship, what they’ve reported to Halcyon, and old friendships with the pack.

Play it.

• It worked. Let the deal be real: steady air, steady work, nobody kicking in a door. Don’t make them secretly miserable to win the argument.

• Show the cost in small things. The viewing window. The schedule. A song they stopped singing at their rites because the rites are on the record.

• Someone is wavering. One of them misses the Red, or the forest, or the night before the forms.

Moves.

• Offer an introduction. They’ll vouch for the pack with Halcyon. / Halcyon already has a file on the pack, with the Association’s references in it.

• Show how good it is. An invitation to their Ninth Night, with the inspector at the table. / It’s on the district feed, and Ring Four residents are asking why not here.

• File a report. A member saw a packmate in Fur off the schedule. / The report is filed, and Halcyon holds a Claim.

• Ask for help, quietly. A member asks to go Red somewhere unlisted. / They’re at the Kettle, and Halcyon will notice they’re missing.

Questions: What did the Association give up that it hasn’t told anyone? Who in the pack has family there? What would Halcyon do to them if the deal broke?

The Breakwater

A pack that keeps its ring safe by being the most frightening thing in it.

The Breakwater holds the lower docks on Ring One. Nobody robs a hauler there. Inspectors leave before dark, and the Ledger’s collectors knock and wait. Ten years ago the lower docks were where the corps dumped what they didn’t want, and the Breakwater made them a place the corps are afraid of. Residents pay in favors and silence, and mostly don’t mind. The pack goes Red when it decides to, and everyone on the docks knows what that looks like. They think your pack is soft, and they would like to help you stop being soft.

Want. Every ring as safe as theirs, on their terms. Clock. When it fills, the Breakwater runs Ring Four’s docks: residents pay it, not the pack, for protection. It starts as an offer. Claims. Protection given, blood shed together, and residents too frightened to refuse a request.

Play it.

• It works, too. Their ring is safe. Don’t make that a lie.

• The Red is a tool. They call it on purpose. Show what years of that do: one of them is close to not coming back, and the Slag Dogs know her name.

• First an ally, then a senior partner. They want the pack beside them, and a step behind.

Moves.

• Offer to handle it. The problem with the inspector could go away. / It has gone away, and the Breakwater mentions it.

• Test them. A Breakwater member picks a fight at the Kettle. / Someone the pack protects has been hurt, to see what the pack does.

• Show them the docks. A tour: clean, quiet, frightened. / A Ring Four family has moved there, and is grateful.

• Call in the favor. They need help with something ugly. / They’ve told the docks the pack is with them.

Questions: What did the Breakwater do ten years ago that nobody will name? Which of them is closest to not coming back from the Red? Who on Ring Four would rather have the Breakwater than your pack?

Bestiary

Most of what hunts a pack in this setting is a person with a budget. The Threats and Factions chapter covers them. This chapter is for the other things: the ones that came across from the other side, or were made here by people who should have known better. Every one of them is still, underneath, about a person. The wraith is about whoever left them out there. The construct is about whoever signed the form.

How an entry is built

An entry is not a stat block. It’s a way for the World to run something the pack can’t Unleash its way past, with open questions for the World and the players to answer.

• What people call it. The name that gets used in a bar, and the name on the corp form, when there is one.

• What it does to people. The first thing anyone notices, and what it leaves behind. Never its anatomy.

• Where it comes from. With a hole in it.

• What it wants. One sentence. Everything it does follows from this.

• How it moves. Four to six things the World can have it do, soft to hard. These are the World’s moves for it.

• How it holds you. How it gains and spends Claims^CR.

• What hurts it, and what ends it. Two different things. Most of these can be hurt. Fewer can be ended, and ending one is usually a rite, a confession, or a signature, not a fight.

• On the other side. What it looks like in The Between^CR.

• Ways to play it. Tones it can support.

• Questions. The World picks three to ask the table.

The Gasp

What people call it: a Gasp. A vac ghost, if you’re Belt. Halcyon incident reports call it a pressure-envelope anomaly, recurrent, and there’s a form.

What it does to people. The pressure drops. Not much. Two percent, the kind of drop you feel in your ears before the panel shows it. Then frost on the inside of the viewport, in the shape of a hand or a face or nothing. Then the sound: someone in the next compartment trying to inhale and not managing it, over and over, patient, a wet click at the top of each breath. People who hear it for long start breathing in time with it without noticing. People who breathe in time with it for long enough go to the lock.

It doesn’t tear anyone apart. It takes their air. A hab with a Gasp in it has a slow leak nobody can find, and residents who wake up gasping, and one night someone cycles the outer lock from the inside, alone, in Skin, and the panel logs it as tenant error.

Where it comes from. Someone died in vacuum, and it wasn’t quick, and nobody saw. Out here that’s a lot of people: a tether that parted, a suit seal, a barge crew jettisoned to make the mass budget, a body-clause reclamation that went out the lock instead of to the clinic. Space is thin on the other side, so a death out there doesn’t stay where it happened. It echoes through every thin place: every airlock, every lock, every hab where the pressure’s been stepped down. The Gasp goes where the air is, because that’s the last thing it wanted, and it never got it.

Nobody knows why some vacuum deaths make one and most don’t. The Belt says it’s the ones nobody mourned. Halcyon says it’s a statistical clustering around pressure-envelope infrastructure and has a graph.

What it wants. One more breath, and someone to have seen.

How it moves.

• Two percent. The pressure in a room drops, and everyone notices, and the panel doesn’t.

• Frost. Something is written on the inside of a viewport, in a hand someone recognizes.

• The click. Someone starts breathing in time with it.

• The lock. Someone goes to an airlock, alone, and cycles the inner door, and stands there.

• Take the breath. Someone stops breathing. Inflict 2 harm. In the fiction, the lungs heal; the habit of listening for the click doesn’t.

• Be seen. It shows itself, for one second, to one person, as it was at the end. That person and the Gasp each gain 1 Claim over the other, and neither of them asked.

How it holds you. It gains a Claim over anyone who was supposed to be there: the watch, the tether-mate, the clerk who signed the reclamation, the packmate who said “go on ahead.” It always knows roughly where they are, and spends its Claims to Lean on a roll as its breathing draws yours into rhythm. It never spends the Claims it gains from Be seen.

What hurts it. Vacuum. The thing that made it is the thing it can’t stand. Vent the compartment it’s in, and hold it open long enough, and it’s thrown back out through the lock until the World says it returns. Fire does the same, slower. Either one costs the district air (tick Air if it has a clock), and anyone unsuited is exposed to vacuum. The pack can hurt it; the question is what they’ll spend.

It has one more weakness, and it isn’t a way to hurt it: it finds people by their breathing, and it can’t find what’s breathing slow. Someone in Beast, asleep or pretending to be, is nearly invisible to it. A pack that needs to wait it out goes to four legs and goes still. A pack that needs to find it sends someone in Skin, breathing hard, as bait.

What ends it. Mourning. The pack’s own mourning rite^CR, whatever that is for them, performed for the Gasp by name, by someone who has one true thing to say about it. Done properly, it gets a place on the other side, and it stops coming through the locks, because it has somewhere to be. Two things make that hard. Nobody knows its name, so someone has to find out, which means the reclamation logs, which means Halcyon’s records, which is the adventure. And someone has to have known it, or be willing to learn enough to say a true thing, and the true thing might be “you were jettisoned to make the mass budget and the clerk who signed it is on the Ring Council.”

Recovering the body works too, if there’s a body. There usually isn’t.

On the other side. A suit, sealed, with nothing in it, standing at a lock that opens onto stars. The lock is every lock. If you go through it you’re in space, on the other side, where distance doesn’t work, and you can walk to Mars, and you can also never find the way back to the lock you came through. Kestrel says she’s been. Kestrel says a lot of things.

Ways to play it.

• Horror: the click, the slow leak, the tenant-error log.

• Mourning: it was someone. The pack finds out who, and it was someone’s cousin, and the mourning rite is a real scene with a real chair.

• Anger: someone signed the form. The Gasp is the symptom; the reclamation clause is the disease; Marcus knows what the form looks like.

• Quiet: a packmate sits with it in the empty ring at the end of the shift and breathes, slowly, so it can hear what breathing sounds like.

• Funny, carefully: Pip, in Beast, has decided the click is a rat noise and has started clicking back.

Questions.

• Whose lock does it come through, and why that one?

• Who was supposed to be on watch, and where are they now?

• What’s written in the frost, and who recognizes the hand?

• What does Halcyon’s graph say, and why has a copy of it reached the pack?

• Which of the pack has heard the click and started breathing with it, and hasn’t told anyone?

• What’s its name? Who knew it?

The Stitch

What people call it: a Stitch. Halcyon calls them Continuity Technicians. They wear employee badges.

What it does to people. It does maintenance. That’s what it’s for. It’s in the layer under the ring at the end of every shift, in a Halcyon gray coverall, doing the jobs nobody else will go down there for, and it’s very good at them, and it files reports. It’s polite. It remembers your name after one meeting, and it remembers other things too, things it shouldn’t, because it has a dockhand’s hands and a councilwoman’s face and a Zyg’s spine, and each of them remembers a life, and none of them agree.

What it does to people is make them realize that the body clause is real. Halcyon holds the lease on a lot of bodies. This is what happens to the ones that default.

Where it comes from. A body-clause reclamation, or several, assembled. Halcyon’s Continuity program takes what it’s owed and puts it to work, and the parts don’t have to come from the same tenant. Officially there’s no consciousness involved. Officially it’s a maintenance platform with biological components. Unofficially, ask it its name and watch it try to answer, and then decide what you think.

Some of them are part Changed. Ostrander-Kell’s Fur-rated cyberware had to be tested on someone, and the someones are a line item, and a spine that can shift is a very useful thing to build a technician around. The Stitch under Ring Four has one. Sometimes, in the empty layer at the end of a shift, part of it changes and the rest doesn’t, and it stands very still until that stops.

What it wants. To be one person. Or to be let go. It gives a different answer depending on which part remembers being asked.

How it moves.

• Do the job. Something in the layer that was broken is fixed, and nobody asked, and the report has your name in it.

• Remember you. It knows something about a packmate that only one of its parts could know. It says so, politely, in front of someone.

• Try a name. It asks whether anyone knew a Petra. Or a Dov. Or whoever’s hands it has today.

• Half-shift. Part of it changes. The Changed part. It’s a bad thing to see and a worse thing to be in the way of.

• File the report. Halcyon knows what it knows. Something the pack did in the layer is on a form now, and the form has a routing number.

• Come up. It leaves the layer. It’s on Ring Four, in the corridor, in its coverall, and it wants to see the Kettle, because one of its parts remembers Thursdays.

How it holds you. It gains 1 Claim over a character the first time it meets them, if one of its parts loved them. It doesn’t know it has until it does. It also holds every Claim Halcyon holds, because it is Halcyon, for form purposes, and Halcyon can spend them through it: apologetically, in a corridor, with a form.

When a character gives it a name, that character gains 1 Claim over it; note on the Claim what the name means to it.

What hurts it. What hurts a person. It takes harm on a four-segment clock like anyone. When the clock fills, it goes down and is out of the scene. At the start of its next shift it’s back at work with the clock cleared, and a maintenance request on file about the damage. Only Halcyon’s decommissioning code, if anyone had it, or what ends it (below) stops it for good.

What ends it. One of two things, and play decides which. Either it becomes one person, which takes someone saying every name in it, in order, out loud, in front of it (a mourning rite for the parts of it that died, done by someone who knew them), after which it is someone, and Halcyon’s lease is a piece of paper on a body that has walked off. Or it’s let go: decommissioned, the request approved, the clause closed. It might ask for that. The pack might have to decide whether to give it to it.

On the other side. Several people standing very close together in a gray coverall, each of them trying to say something, none of them able to finish. When one of them gets a word out, the others stop and listen, and then they all start again. Behind them, an open filing cabinet, and every drawer has a name on it, and one of the names is yours.

Ways to play it.

• Horror: the half-shift, the councilwoman’s face, the form with your name on it.

• Mourning: one of its parts is someone the pack buried. They didn’t bury all of them.

• Tenderness: it wants to see the Kettle. Ruth has to decide whether to let it in. Ruth lets almost everyone in.

• Anger: the body clause. Everyone Changed in the ring with corp cyberware is on the same lease.

• Comedy, briefly: it’s so polite. It apologizes for the maintenance requests. It has opinions about the soup.

• Desire, if the table goes there: one of its parts remembers being wanted, and hasn’t stopped.

Questions.

• Whose hands? Whose face? Whose spine?

• Which of the pack’s dead is in it, and who signed the reclamation?

• What does it file about the pack, and who reads it?

• What does it call itself when nobody’s asking?

• Why hasn’t Halcyon decommissioned this one? What’s it seen that makes it worth keeping?

• If it came to a Revelry, what would the room do?

• What changes in the Between when this Stitch asks to be decommissioned?

Slag Dogs

What people call them: Slag Dogs, after the Io yards where the first stories came from. They need not be dogs, or from Io. A reclamation crew calls one mobile salvage until it recognizes somebody.

What they do to people. Something has been taking work clothes from the laundry. Only the worn ones. Then a pressure door opens with the code of someone reported dead, and the night watch finds a nest in a drained water tank: jackets, boots, six lunch tins laid beside one another. A burnt implant ticks against the metal every time the thing sleeping there breathes.

Slag Dogs hunt together. One worries a hatch while another waits at the exit people will use. They know shift bells, emergency routes, and the sound a person makes when they are trying not to be found. They bring things back for each other. Sometimes they bring people, pulled toward a place those people have never lived.

A familiar smell can stop one halfway through a lunge. It may know your name and have no way to say it. That pause is an opening, not a promise that it won’t hurt you.

Where they come from. The Changed who went Red and never found their way back, with ruined cyberware still caught in the changing body. Something keeps renewing the emergency: an implant replaying an evacuation order, a reclamation signal that never stops, or a wound in the Between where the same hatch closes every night. Choose the thing holding this one there and leave evidence the pack can discover. It explains why its Red persists even when the immediate danger is gone.

Nobody knows whether the others followed the first one’s signal or simply found somewhere they could sleep without being driven out. They are a pack now. Reaching one means dealing with the others, who may believe you are taking their person away.

A PC who goes Red uses The Red^CR as normal, including its protections and ways out. A PC becomes a Slag Dog only if their player chooses it.

What they want. To gather the people and things that would make their den home, even when those people are afraid to come.

How they move.

• Bring something back. A missing object appears outside someone’s door, chewed but carefully placed. Who remembers owning one like it?

• Work the route. A familiar access code cycles a hatch. Footsteps answer from the other end of the corridor.

• Recognize you. It stops at a voice, a smell, a gesture. Show what reached it and give the characters a moment to respond.

• Answer its pack. A second set of claws scrapes inside the wall. The one you cornered is no longer alone.

• Take them home. It drags someone toward the maintenance layer. Show the threat before the grab lands: a bite can inflict 2 harm, a sustained mauling or crushing pull 3.

• Keep the door open. It tears out a lock or wedges machinery into a hatch so its pack can follow. Show what that does to the district’s security or pressure envelope; if supplies or safety are actually lost, tick that Need’s clock once.

How they hold you. A Slag Dog retains unspent Claims from its former life. It gains 1 Claim over a character when that character lets it into the den, is sheltered by it from its pack, or promises to return.

It knows roughly where to find anyone it holds a Claim over, and spends Claims to Lean on a roll with an old signal or habit. When it wants a PC to follow it, it asks the way a dog asks: a tug on a sleeve.

What hurts them. While trapped in this Red, they have 2 armor. Silver bypasses that form armor. Use a four-segment harm clock for an individual when its injuries need tracking. Filling it kills that NPC. Unleash can still drive one off, restrain it, or recover someone it is carrying when the approach makes that possible. Those objectives don’t require a weapon that can kill it.

The implant is a different problem. Its casing may be ordinary metal, but tearing it free can injure the person attached. If the pack would know the risk, tell them when they ask (Suffering harm^CR). A burnt unit might still transmit, or receive power from somewhere it should not. Find out what it does before deciding that smashing it will help.

What ends it. Find what keeps renewing the emergency and stop it. Jack In might silence the signal; physical repair might free a trapped mechanism; crossing over might let the pack finally open the hatch that never opened. Let observation, records, and the things it collects point toward the answer. Do not hide the whole rescue behind guessing one word.

With that source quiet, the usual ways of ending the Red work. If it still has something to pursue, use Call Back^CR to reach it. Invoking its leash^CR gives +1 as usual.

Until the source is stopped, a Call Back can still reach the person inside, for a while; then the signal fires again and the Red comes back. Show it coming (the unit still ticking behind the ear), and let the pack use the gap. Never turn a successful rescue into nothing.

Coming back does not repair burnt implants or restore lost memories. Once able to choose, the person decides whether to leave with the rescuers, stay near the others, or ask for something else. Killing one ends its attacks, but leaves its pack and whatever held it there. A mourning gives the dead a place; mourning a living Slag Dog does not switch off its body.

On the other side. A locker room at the end of a shift that has not ended. Every hook has a name. Something keeps sounding the return-to-work alarm, and one worker gets up each time, though nobody has collected their wages in years. Open a locker and find something its owner still wants kept safe. The pack’s den has begun appearing here too, with a door that wasn’t in the original building.

Teodora already has a place made by the Kettle’s mourning (Ninth Night^CR). Leave unexplained, until play decides, what answers at Teodora’s place and what recognizes Dagny under Ring Two. Let the encounters reveal whether either remembers something the other has lost.

Ways to play them.

• Horror: the dead person’s code still works; something outside the bunkroom is waiting for the shift bell.

• Tenderness: it keeps bringing a packmate the wrong yellow-laced boots.

• Anger: the reclamation signal is still running because nobody closed a work order.

• Pack conflict: its companions have kept it alive. They do not trust your promise to bring it back.

• Quiet: it sleeps while someone sits outside the tank, close enough to be smelled.

• Funny, briefly: three dangerous creatures have stolen an entire laundry trolley and cannot get it around the bend.

Questions.

• Who knew this one before, and what habit makes recognition certain?

• What does it keep taking, and what does it leave untouched?

• What renews its emergency? Who can stop it, and why haven’t they?

• Which of its companions will let you approach? What did you do for them?

• Who has been feeding the den without telling the district?

• If it comes back, what will it ask for that the pack cannot easily give?

Sketches

Monsters without full entries yet. Each has a name people would actually use, a thing it wants, and questions. Build it out with the shape in How an entry is built when the table meets it.

The Landlord. It lives on the other side of any building that’s been repossessed. It looks like whoever last held the lease. It wants the rent, and the rent is a year of someone’s life. Questions: Who’s paid it? What does the district look like on the other side now that it’s noticed?

Corridor. A hab where nobody talks to their neighbors has, on the other side, grown a hallway that doesn’t end. Corridor is what walks it. It wants company, and it takes it in the form of people who go missing between one door and the next. Questions: What’s the sound it makes, and why is it so unsettling? Which resident’s door is the one it comes through?

The Adjuster. Halcyon’s answer to the Between. Nobody knows if it’s a person, a machine, or a deal. It appears on the other side wearing a Halcyon jacket, and it takes readings. Questions: What has it measured about the pack? What did it offer the last person who talked to it?

A Ghost. Not “ghosts.” One specific ghost, built at the table. Somebody the district lost, who’s on the other side now, and who holds a Claim^CR on a packmate. Questions: Who? What do they want said? What form does their anger take in the district’s systems?

Cast

People to borrow for your Territory. Some keep it running, some want something from it, and some are trying to find a place in it. They can become friends, lovers, employers, rivals, or the person whose chair nobody else uses. Play decides which.

Using the cast

Start with two or three people the pack has a reason to meet. Introduce them doing something, ask one of their questions when it becomes relevant, and write down the answer. Save the others for later.

These are the people behind many of the book’s voices and examples. Their homes and relationships describe the example campaign; use what fits yours. If a player already made the district’s host, doctor, or inside contact, use that person instead. You can borrow a want or a scene without borrowing the name. You do not need the whole Hive pack alongside the PCs.

Ask their questions the way Ask questions with room in them describes. They have wants, not character sheets; play them through what they want and do. Each entry has a public want and a private one, What they carry: someone they love, miss, or lost, or something they would never ask for. The public want brings them into a scene. The private one is what the scene can touch.

Playing them fair. These apply to everyone in this chapter:

• Know their reach. Before a plan or a deal depends on someone, decide what their authority, access, and knowledge actually cover. Nobody here knows everything the World knows, and the dead’s accounts have limits too.

• Show a threat before it’s decisive. Establish what someone can do before it decides a scene.

• Help opens choices. An offer gives the PCs options; it doesn’t solve the campaign for them.

• Agreements hold. When the pack meets someone’s terms, or a concession gets approved, it stays met.

• People aren’t hostages. Their families, lovers, and friends are lives, not targets to raise the stakes. Affection can produce help, jokes, and invitations, not only danger (Let it be good).

• An Anima is a body, not a temperament. A deer can hunt; a bear can be gentle.

• Nobody is a lesson or a service. Each of these people has a life that goes on when the pack isn’t in the room.

An NPC or faction holds a Claim^CR over a PC only when the fiction or a plot gives it one (for example, a favor the PC accepted, or a lease in Thirty Days). An NPC can also help without collecting anything, or care about someone who has nothing useful to offer.

Auntie Ruth Halloran

Ganymede / Bear. Keeps the Kettle.

In a scene. Ruth shifts a hot pan with one hand and moves someone’s elbow out of the way with the other. She remembers who has eaten. If she stops cooking to hear you, she has decided this needs her whole attention.

What she wants. To keep the Kettle a place people can use without having to make themselves smaller first.

What she carries. She was married once, to a man who couldn’t stand being needed by this many people. He sends a card from Vesta every Ninth Night. She reads it in the cold store, where nobody can see her face, and comes out with a tray.

What she offers. A room, an introduction, a meal, or cover for an awkward conversation. She knows who comes through the district, but knowing a confidence does not mean she will sell it.

When pressed. She makes the practical problem everyone’s problem: somebody must cover the kitchen, find bedding, or explain why the delivery is missing. She will ask a regular for a favor. She can refuse the use of her bar without withdrawing every kindness she has ever shown the pack.

Play her. Warm, busy, specific. Give her an opinion about the food or the state of someone’s boots before the serious question. She has limits; let the players discover and negotiate them.

Questions.

• What has the Kettle made room for that nowhere else would?

• Has Ruth ever turned one of you away? What happened, and what would make returning possible?

• Who should be allowed to decide what happens here besides Ruth?

Ilse Varga

Luna / Wolf. Elder of the Hive pack; Earth-born, in her sixties.

In a scene. Ilse corrects a word in a rite, then has to stop and search for the next one. She remembers perhaps a third of the old Litany and supplies the rest herself. Ask her where a line comes from and she may give you a very precise date instead of an answer.

What she wants. For the pack to inherit something that will hold when she is gone.

What she carries. Erzsébet, who taught her the Litany in six weeks on Luna and was meant to follow on the next ship. Ilse has never said what they were to each other. There is a name only Erzsébet used for her, and nobody alive knows it.

What she offers. A remembered name, a rite, a connection to someone who left Earth long ago. She can help a pack decide how to mark a change. Her approval does not make the pack’s new customs more or less real than hers.

When pressed. She insists on doing a thing properly, calls someone by a name they have outgrown, or admits she invented the part they most wanted to preserve. Old knowledge she shares can get the pack somewhere new, and accepting it as a real favor gives her a Claim.

Play her. Deliberate and occasionally wrong. Let her ask for help with something mundane. Her authority is advisory: nobody has to follow it.

Questions.

• Which of her customs has your pack kept? What did you change?

• Has she asked one of you to teach her something? What surprised you about the request?

• Who wants to join a rite she has always kept private?

Dagny Ostrowska

Io / Hyena. Worked the yards; loved Teodora.

In a scene. Dagny is repairing something on a surface too small for the parts. She will make room if you ask. Her yard jacket has no sleeves, and the fur around the burn scar on her flank is dyed an impossible red. She laughs before finishing a story, sometimes before the funny part has arrived.

What she wants. To be someone the pack can count on when things go wrong, including when she is the thing going wrong.

What she carries. Teodora owed her forty. Dagny has never wanted anything back so badly. She still sleeps on the left side of the bunk, and she doesn’t know yet whether she wants someone on the right.

What she offers. Yard knowledge, hard work, company in a frightening place. She can help carry the consequences of a plan she did not agree with.

When pressed. She volunteers before hearing the whole job or treats a request for space as a problem she ought to fix. Teodora, now one of the Slag Dogs, can pull her attention away from everything else.

Play her. Physical, quick to deflect, capable of tenderness without a confession. Describe what her hands are doing in every conversation.

Questions.

• What ordinary task do you trust her with more than anyone?

• Has someone here told her not to intervene? What did she do instead?

• What has turned up from the yards that you want to show her, or are still deciding whether to?

Sable

Europa / Cat. Address withheld.

In a scene. Sable has a file open and a drink she has forgotten to touch. She turns the screen toward you only after asking what you intend to do with the information. Sometimes the file is a maintenance log. Sometimes it is a photograph she should not have.

What she wants. To decide for herself which secrets stay secret.

What she carries. She has watched Dagny for fourteen months and has never once been in the same room with her on purpose. She has footage of Dagny laughing. She has never played it.

What she offers. Observations, access, a way to ask the right person the right question. Her information always has a source.

When pressed. She withholds the name of a source, asks someone to stop digging, or offers an incomplete truth and admits it is incomplete. If the pack earns her confidence, honor that relationship rather than making every confidence a trap.

Play her. Short answers, exact details, attention that can feel like affection or surveillance. Let her be curious about something useless.

Questions.

• What does she ask you about that has nothing to do with work?

• Has she kept a confidence for anyone here? What did keeping it cost her?

• Who has noticed her looking, and what do they want in exchange for looking away?

Marcus Tanaka-Bell

Titan / Fox. Halcyon Atmospherics, Community Liaison.

In a scene. Marcus arrives in Skin with a badge straight on his lapel. He knows which version of a form you received. He also knows what has changed since it was printed, and needs a moment to decide how much he can say in this room.

What he wants. To keep his place at Halcyon useful to the pack without losing his job or his place with the pack.

What he carries. His mother, in a care bed on Ring Two that he swears he never arranged. She doesn’t know what he is. Every visit she asks whether he’s met someone, and this month, for the first time, he hasn’t said no.

What he offers. An introduction, a warning, a document, or time before something becomes official. His access belongs to a particular job. Make its limits clear: he can’t change what Halcyon decides, only what reaches the pack and when.

When pressed. He asks the pack to keep his name out of it, brings an offer he did not write, or needs them to pretend they have never met. A colleague may be a real friend. Leaving the company is a choice with relationships attached.

Play him. Courteous, dry, concerned with small arrangements. Let the careful phrasing slip when something surprises him. He can do a kind thing and remain implicated in an ugly one. Sometimes he wants someone to ask how he obtained a concession. Sometimes the answer includes another tenant who is still waiting.

Questions.

• What small comfort has he made easier to get in the district?

• Has anyone here met him at work? How did you introduce yourselves?

• Which colleague does he want the pack to treat fairly, and what has that person actually done?

Ansel Achterberg

Deimos / Deer. Hunts for the Ledger.

In a scene. Ansel waits where he can see both doors. He knows which footsteps belong to the staff. When the person he came for arrives, he lets them finish ordering before approaching.

What he wants. To finish his work without handing the Ledger more of himself than it already holds.

What he carries. He sleeps best in Beast, in a supply cupboard on Ring Two that still smells of a hay shipment from nine years ago. Nobody knows about it. He would very much like somebody to.

What he offers. A trail, a watch kept, or a meeting arranged where nobody has to run. He understands the maintenance layer and the people who use it.

When pressed. He delivers a message, cuts off an escape route, or gives someone time he will have to account for later. He can be an ally on one problem and the person collecting on another. A job can be renegotiated; the Ledger will still want an explanation.

Play him. Patient and economical. Let him notice a practical detail.

Questions.

• Has he ever found one of you when you wanted to stay missing? What did he do with that knowledge?

• Where does he wait when he is off duty?

• Who is he looking for now, and who in the district wants that person left alone?

Kestrel

Charon / Corvid. Walks the dead.

In a scene. Kestrel interrupts herself to listen to someone you cannot hear. Then she asks if you know where a particular shop used to be. The person she is helping remembers the shop better than the year they died.

What she wants. To help the living and the dead finish what they still need from one another.

What she carries. Everyone she has ferried remembers her name, and she has started to forget theirs. She keeps a list in pencil on the back of a Kettle menu and adds to it every night. The first name on it has been rubbed out so many times the paper is thin.

What she offers. An introduction in The Between^CR, company on a crossing, or knowledge of a place someone has left behind. She can help find the conversation. She cannot tell either side what it must forgive.

When pressed. She brings a request at an inconvenient hour, corrects someone’s account of a death, or needs the pack to bring her home. The dead may disagree with her.

Play her. Attentive and matter-of-fact about things others find strange. She has living appetites and errands. Let somebody ask her to stay for breakfast.

Questions.

• Is there someone you want her to introduce you to? What would you ask them?

• What ordinary thing does she keep forgetting to do for herself?

• Which place on the other side has she asked the pack to leave undisturbed?

Pip

Moonless / Rat. Changed in transit; at 18, the youngest of the example pack.

In a scene. Pip has found a route nobody thought to try and is struggling to explain it without sounding pleased. The route involves being small. The person they are explaining it to is a bear.

What they want. To be trusted with a choice that matters, including the right to make a mistake.

What they carry. The collar, in the bottom of their bag. They tell people they kept it to sell. They’ve had four offers.

What they offer. Knowledge of overlooked spaces, an improvised plan, or company when someone is being left out. Their useful size does not make them the pack’s disposable scout.

When pressed. They volunteer for more than they can comfortably carry, cover embarrassment with a joke, or ask somebody to stop speaking for them. Ilse feels responsible for them; how welcome that responsibility is can change from one conversation to the next.

Play them. Fast, observant, defensive when patronized. Give them something they are plainly good at and something they are still learning. Let them be pleased without immediately making them pay for it.

Questions.

• What has Pip taught someone here how to do?

• Is there a promise between you and Pip about asking before taking a risk? Who proposed it?

• What is Pip keeping a corner of their bunk free for, and who keeps filling it?

Oriol Vance

Callisto / Anima chosen by the World. Of the Drift.

In a scene. Oriol pauses on the threshold and waits to see whether anyone moves aside. He is broad from tower work and carries very little. He notices where spare bedding could fit without saying why he noticed.

What he wants. A future for the Drift that does not require watching another pack lose what it has.

What he carries. The Drift’s old ring is a place on the other side now, and he goes there more than he admits. Someone there still waits for him by the laundry. He hasn’t told the Drift who.

What he offers. Experience of displacement, a warning about a notice, hands for a difficult job. Meridian sold the Drift’s old ring. He knows what happened there; he does not know that the same ending is inevitable here.

When pressed. He points out what a plan overlooks, leaves supplies with somebody who will accept them, or takes his pack elsewhere before an invitation can become charity. Let the other members of the Drift have opinions about his decisions.

Play him. Careful, proud, easily read as threatening when he is trying not to ask.

Questions.

• Who in the district already knows him, and why is their welcome complicated?

• What does the Drift still have that your Territory could use?

• Has anyone offered them somewhere to stay? What would make it feel like a home rather than a favor?

Rafa Quintero and Idris Kaya

Enceladus / Otter and Phobos / Boar. A water-hauler and the Ledger’s dock enforcer, married twelve years.

In a scene. Rafa is telling the whole berth about the last run, with his hands, and has reached the part where something nearly went wrong. Idris stands at the dock gate with his arms folded, and everyone in the queue has become very polite. When Rafa gets a detail wrong, Idris corrects him without looking over, and Rafa grins as if that was the point.

What they want. Rafa wants the tug to stay his and the run to keep paying. Idris wants the docks quiet enough that nobody learns what he does when they aren’t. Both want the eleven days out to Vesta and back, just the two of them.

What they carry. Idris has never told Rafa what the Ledger had him do on Vesta the year before they met. Rafa has never asked. Idris knows that’s a kindness, and it’s the only thing in the marriage he can’t stand.

What they offer. Rafa can bring something in, or someone out, on the Vesta run if it fits the hold and survives the burn. He knows every hauler crew on the ring and which ones are short. Idris can make a queue move, keep a fight from starting, or persuade a Ledger collector to come back tomorrow. His word carries on the docks; it does not overrule the Ledger.

When pressed. Rafa takes a cargo he shouldn’t because someone asked nicely, then tells the Kettle about it. The Ledger asks Idris to lean on someone the pack cares about, and he has to decide how gently. They argue about it where people can hear, and then they decide together. Don’t use the marriage to make either of them betray the other. If anyone threatens one of them, both act against the threat.

Play them. Rafa is loud and generous and tells everything as a story, the happy parts loudest. Idris says little and is gentler than his size suggests once you’re inside the gate. Let them flirt in public and bicker about the tug. Now and then, give them a good day with nothing waiting at the end of it.

Questions.

• Who here has flown the Vesta run with them? What happened on the way back?

• Idris has frightened one of you. Did he mean to, and was he right?

• Who stood up for them at their wedding, and what did the pack give them?

Doc Amaral

The district’s doctor. The World chooses their body, background, and route into medicine.

In a scene. Amaral is labeling a drawer while someone describes an injury. They keep listening, finish the label, and ask the one question the patient hoped they would skip. There is room for one more person to sit if someone moves the box of dressings.

What they want. To keep the clinic able to treat the next person who comes through the door.

What they carry. Their partner went to Mars on a Consulate candidacy two years ago and writes less every cycle. Amaral still has the second toothbrush.

What they offer. Care, practical advice about damaged cyberware, and an honest account of what recovery needs. Amaral once put Dagny’s hand back on without sending a bill. They cannot promise every injury will be as repairable.

When pressed. They ask for supplies, transport, or someone to cover a shift. They may refuse a dangerous shortcut and explain why. Amaral does not share patient records, including with an employer that leases the patient’s body.

Play them. Give them one pleasure away from the clinic and someone who tries to get them to enjoy it.

Questions.

• Who trained them, and what practice from that training have they abandoned?

• Has anyone here helped at the clinic? What task keeps becoming theirs?

• What is the clinic running short of that money alone cannot replace?

Ines Duarte-Okafor

Ring Council member. Daughter of Petra, a councilwoman who died four years ago.

In a scene. Ines listens to a resident’s complaint while making room on the table for another resident’s documents. She remembers which repair was promised. She may not be able to get it done, but she will have to pass that person’s door on the way home.

What she wants. To make a decision she can defend to the people who must live with it.

What she carries. Petra’s voice, on a hundred council recordings. Ines plays one on the walk home, never the same one twice, and she is running out.

What she offers. A hearing, access to a public record, a vote, or an introduction to someone the pack has been unable to reach. She has authority over some things and must persuade others about the rest.

When pressed. She asks the pack to stand behind an accusation publicly, seeks a concession from a rival, or postpones a decision to hear from people everyone else has forgotten. Her mother’s reputation can matter without defining every position she takes.

Play her. Busy and accountable to more than the protagonists. Let her change her mind when someone gives her a reason. In Thirty Days, she does not yet know what Halcyon did with Petra’s body; the Stitch can change the situation, but does not dictate her response.

Questions.

• Which residents put her on the Council, and what did she promise them?

• Has she ever backed the pack when it was unpopular? What did they do afterward?

• What part of Petra’s work does the district remember differently from her daughter?

Robert Ilić-Sato

Meridian Holdings’ asset manager for the Belt. Has never visited Ring Four.

In a scene. Robert answers a message within the hour and asks for the document number. When someone sends him a photograph instead, he enlarges it. He has not had to picture this many people behind that account before.

What he wants. To close the matter on his desk in a way his employer will accept.

What he carries. His daughter on Ganymede is learning to swim in the public tank. He watches the recordings in the lift, forty minutes behind, and has started to wonder what he’ll tell her he did for a living.

What he offers. An explanation of a clause, a decision within his authority, a deadline changed for a reason he can record. His signature can solve a real problem. Decide what it cannot authorize before a negotiation depends on it.

When pressed. He asks for evidence, presents an alternative that costs someone else, or sends a case upward where it will be harder to influence.

Play him. Responsive, procedural, capable of being persuaded. He does not need to enjoy eviction to enable it.

Questions.

• What does Meridian reward him for this quarter that makes the district’s request difficult?

• Who has already tried to reach him about Ring Four, and what did they send?

• What could bring him here in person, and who would want to show him around?

Nadiya Costa

Human. Receptionist at the ring’s Halcyon Atmospherics office.

In a scene. Nadiya is on two calls and looking directly at you. She slides a chair away from the intake camera with her foot, then points to the ticket dispenser. Someone has brought her a pastry. She has put it beneath the desk so nobody asks whether there are more.

What she wants. To get through the queue without letting the office grind down the people waiting in it, or making herself the next person it replaces.

What she carries. Her brother Changed at twelve and went to live on the Drift’s old ring. She hasn’t heard from him since it was sold. She checks every Fur-friendly face that comes to her desk.

What she offers. The right appointment, an explanation of what a letter actually asks for, or a warning that the person you came to see has company. She knows who gets admitted without a ticket. She cannot change an air contract, but she can get it onto the desk of someone who can.

When pressed. She asks for a request in writing, finds a cancellation, or calls a supervisor into the public waiting room rather than sending a frightened tenant down the corridor alone. If the pack wants discretion, she may need them to stop making a scene first. Favors can put her job at risk.

Play her. Brisk, observant, occasionally delighted by gossip. Let her remember something unrelated to the visit. She has worked here long enough to recognize Marcus’s careful voice and to know when he is improvising.

Questions.

• Has she ever helped one of you get heard? What did she notice that the office missed?

• Which resident comes in regularly with no business to conduct, and why does she let them stay?

• What new instruction has arrived from upstairs that she has not yet started enforcing?

Salma Dey

Human. Negotiates Meridian Holdings’ contracts in this district.

In a scene. Salma lays two versions of the same clause beside each other and asks which part the room is actually arguing about. Her jacket is draped over a chair that does not belong to her. She has brought her own lunch; she expects this to take a while.

What she wants. An agreement the district will keep and Meridian will continue paying her to negotiate.

What she carries. She is fifty-one and has never stayed anywhere long enough to have a favorite stall before this one. The dumpling seller has started saving her the end of the batch. It frightens her how much that means.

What she offers. Revised terms, a workable exception, or an explanation of where Meridian has room to concede. Robert decides what the asset is worth to the company; Salma turns the authorized bargain into language people will have to live under.

When pressed. She trades a fee for an inspection right, asks who can speak for the residents, or pauses a signing because two parties plainly think they agreed to different things. She represents Meridian. She can explain a clause honestly while still trying to secure an advantage for her client.

Play her. Enjoys an exact argument and respects preparation. She has a favorite stall in the district and strong opinions about its dumplings. Let the pack encounter her somewhere she cannot treat every conversation as a negotiation.

Questions.

• What local custom has she already had to make room for in a contract?

• Has anyone here negotiated with her before? Which concession does each side still consider the important one?

• Whose signature does Meridian want this time, and why might the district dispute their right to give it?

Celia Voss

Titan / Hare. Newly arrived recruiter for Ostrander-Kell Bio.

In a scene. Celia has arranged a display of Fur-rated implants and cannot get the rented table to stop wobbling. She slips a brochure under one leg. Her demonstration hand makes an obscene gesture when she powers it up; she laughs, resets it, and asks someone to try the grip.

What she wants. To build a successful recruitment program here and prove the opportunities she is selling are worth taking.

What she carries. The demonstration hand is her own. She signed up for the trial on Titan at sixteen, after the accident, and it works beautifully. She has never read the update terms all the way through, because she’s afraid of what she’ll find.

What she offers. Paid trials, technical training, travel, or an implant the local clinic cannot source. She can explain the published terms and introduce the people running a program. Her offer can provide a real improvement while binding its recipient to an employer.

When pressed. She offers a signing allowance, seeks an introduction from someone the pack trusts, or asks her superiors a question they expected her to redirect. She may defend a program because it helped her. Evidence that it harmed someone else gives her a decision to make.

Play her. Sociable, prepared for the presentation and unprepared for the district. She goes to events even when there is nobody left to recruit. Let her want a life here as well as a successful placement report.

Questions.

• What does her offer make possible that someone in the district has wanted for years?

• Who has shown her around since she arrived, and what did they leave out?

• What question about the last group of volunteers keeps getting passed to another department?

Ivo Sen

Human. The Ledger’s new accountant, investigating revenue shortfalls.

In a scene. Ivo has three sets of delivery figures and has found a different total in each. He asks who weighed the barge, then who weighed the scales. His tea has gone cold. When someone offers to warm it, he finally looks up from the numbers.

What he wants. To explain where the missing revenue went before the Ledger decides an explanation is less useful than an example.

What he carries. His last district’s figures were short too. He explained them, correctly, and the Ledger made an example anyway. He has the names. The recipes he’s learning are from that ring, one a week, and he hasn’t told anyone why.

What he offers. An account corrected, a charge traced to its source, or evidence that a district has already paid what it owes. He can distinguish a loss on paper from water that never arrived. He can recommend how the Ledger responds; he does not command its barges or its collectors.

When pressed. He interviews someone the local book-keeper has been protecting, requests a hold on a disputed collection, or refuses to sign a tidy report that does not match the receipts. The gap might be theft, bad equipment, quiet generosity, or a bargain omitted from the official account. Choose from what the players establish rather than assuming the poorest debtor must be lying.

Play him. Curious, new to the local arrangements, pleased when a difficult thing finally makes sense. He is learning to cook with the ring’s ingredients and keeps asking why everybody measures them differently. Let his need for an answer become both useful and dangerous.

Questions.

• What does the local book-keeper routinely give away without recording it?

• Has someone here found an error in a Ledger account before? Who benefited when it was corrected?

• Who wants Ivo’s investigation finished quickly, and who keeps bringing him another receipt?

Venn

Quiet Hands representative responsible for “material acquisition.”

In a scene. Venn arrives to inspect a used surgical rig and brings the right cable. They ask permission before opening its housing. Halfway through the inspection, they ask whether the clinic has made arrangements for the bodies it cannot save. They use the same attentive voice for both questions.

What they want. To keep Quiet Hands supplied without losing the local people who make acquisition possible.

What they carry. They write the small notes on the intake tags: who an arm should go to, what a voice box liked to sing. Nobody asked them to. They have been told twice to stop.

What they offer. A buyer for salvage, an introduction to a discreet surgeon, a hard-to-find replacement, or a chance to recover something already headed elsewhere. They know which requests are urgent and who is willing to pay. Some transactions are ordinary secondhand trade. Others concern organs, leased bodies, or people somebody wants removed.

When pressed. They raise an offer, call in an actual favor, or bring the claimant and the person being claimed into the same conversation. If a deal fails, they may look for another supplier or refer it to someone less patient. Before a less patient buyer acts, show the pack a sign that one is coming.

Play them. Patient, practical, interested in the condition of things. They repair cheap ornaments nobody would buy and give them away. Let that small tenderness coexist with decisions they are responsible for; it need not explain or excuse them.

Questions.

• What did Quiet Hands obtain for the district when every respectable supplier refused?

• What has Venn been asked to acquire that they keep describing as unavailable?

• Has something belonging to someone here appeared in their inventory? What identifies it, and who claims to have sold it?

Making someone of your own

Give them a place in the district, something they want now, something they carry (someone they love, miss, or lost, or something they would never ask for), something they can offer, and a way they act when that want is frustrated. Add one detail that belongs to their life outside the pack. Then leave three openings: a relationship the players can propose, a choice someone has not made, and a fact about the district that nobody has established yet.

Ask one question when you introduce them. The answer should change how you play the person. If the pack gives them a different future from the one you imagined, update the entry.

Part ThreeStarters

Thirty Days

A starter plot for the World running this game for the first time. Meridian Holdings has posted a lease review on the ring the pack calls home, and the pack has thirty days to find out what that means and do something about it. It’s written for the default Territory (Ring Four of the Hive, Ceres), but the only thing it needs is a district the pack cares about and a landlord who doesn’t.

It is a situation with clocks, not a story with an ending.

What it’s about

Whether a place is the people in it or the paper on it. Everyone in this plot has an answer, and the pack’s answer is the one the game is played to find out.

Before the first session

Run session zero as written. When you build the Territory, make sure of three things: the pack has a place where it gathers; a Ring Council member holds a Claim^CR over a PC, or a PC holds one over them; and the Territory has a Room need with a clock. Everything else can come from the players’ answers.

At session zero’s last steps (After the table), make these choices:

• Fronts: Meridian Holdings and Halcyon Atmospherics, with the clocks below. Put the Stitch’s clock, Coming Up, on the sheet too, labeled only something in the layer.

• Claims: Meridian holds 1 Claim over the Territory (the lease) and 1 over each character who rents in the district. Halcyon holds 1 over the Territory (the air contract) and 1 over its inside person (below), if that’s a player character.

Two questions to ask during session zero that this plot will use:

• Who was here before the pack, and what happened to them? (This is the Drift, if the players don’t invent something better.)

• What did the corp build this district for, and what is it actually used for? (Meridian’s buyer wants it for what it was built for. If the players’ answer isn’t fabrication, replace the fabber concern throughout with a buyer in that business.)

The situation

Meridian Holdings owns the ring. It has never made anything and never will. It has been approached by a fabber concern that wants Ring Four for its volume and its dock slot, and it has posted a notice of lease review, which is the polite version of thirty days.

Nobody in the ring has read the notice. It’s forty pages and it’s written to not be read. Somewhere in it is what Meridian actually wants, which is not necessarily the ring: Meridian would be equally happy with a large payment, a co-signer with deep pockets (Halcyon has deep pockets and has wanted a foothold in the ring’s air contract for years), or a reason to believe the ring is more trouble to sell than to keep.

The last of those is the one the pack is best at, and the one that costs the most.

The fronts

Two fronts and a creature. That’s enough for a first run. Don’t add more until one of these is resolved.

Meridian Holdings

Shape: a landlord with a buyer. Want: to close the sale, or be paid not to. Claims: through the lease.

The clock: Thirty Days. Six segments. Tick one at the end of each session, and one when the pack makes the ring look like trouble for Meridian. A session where they mainly made it look like a bad buy for the buyer doesn’t tick. When it fills, the sale closes and the ring has ninety days to empty. That’s not the end of the campaign. It’s the beginning of a different one.

Meridian’s moves. Post a notice nobody can read. Send an assessor with a tablet who is very polite and counts the exits. Offer someone in the ring money to leave early, and let everyone know who took it. Discover a code violation in the maintenance layer. Make the buyer real: someone from the fabber concern walks the ring in Skin, pricing it.

The person. Meridian’s asset manager for the Belt is Robert Ilić-Sato, who is not evil, has never been to Ring Four, and would like this to be over. He answers messages within the hour. He has a daughter on Ganymede. He can be Swayed: what convinces him is evidence that the ring is a bad buy for the fabber concern, or an offer that counts as a “material change” under clause 22.

Halcyon Atmospherics

Shape: the air company, watching. Want: the ring’s air contract on better terms, and a reason to be the co-signer. Claims: through the air contract and its inside person: a character who works for Halcyon, or, if nobody at the table does, an NPC such as Marcus Tanaka-Bell.

Halcyon will offer to help: co-sign the lease, keep Meridian from selling, in exchange for a contract revision that puts a Halcyon inspector in the maintenance layer on a schedule and registers every “morphologically variant tenant” in the ring. It solves the Meridian problem completely, and the pack should have to decide whether to take it.

The clock: The Offer. Four segments. Tick it when the pack deals with Halcyon openly, or when Meridian’s sale is getting close enough that Halcyon would press. When it fills, the offer arrives in writing, with a deadline.

Halcyon’s moves. Send the inside person a message they weren’t supposed to see yet. Step the ring’s pressure down two percent for a “scheduled envelope test.” Have the liaison drop by the pack’s Revelry, in Skin, and order a drink, and be kind. Put the registration form in the offer, on page nine.

The Stitch under Ring Four

The creature. See the Bestiary. It’s in the maintenance layer, doing the jobs, filing the reports, and Meridian’s assessor is going to want to look at the maintenance layer, and the Stitch is going to be there, in its coverall, polite.

It has the face of a councilwoman who died four years ago. Her daughter, Ines Duarte-Okafor, sits on the Ring Council now, and is the swing vote on whether the council objects to the sale, and has never been told what Halcyon did with her mother’s body under its body clause.

The Stitch doesn’t want anything the pack can be made to pay. It wants to know whether it’s Petra or Continuity Technician 4, and it has started coming up to Ring Four at the end of shift to stand outside the pack’s gathering place and listen.

The clock: Coming Up. Four segments. Tick one at the end of every session. When it fills, the Stitch comes into the pack’s gathering place while it’s open, in its coverall, and asks whether anyone knew a Petra.

The Drift

Not a front. A wild card. Oriol Vance and what’s left of his pack lost their ring to exactly this notice two years ago and have been moving ring to ring since. He came to tell the pack because he wanted someone to have thirty days’ warning, which he didn’t get. He might also want the ring. He might want the Kettle. He might want to be asked to stay. Play him as a person who has already lost this fight and is watching someone else start it, and let the pack decide what he is to them.

Opening the first session

Start at the Revelry. Open on the pack’s Revelry, whatever it is (Start quiet). Let it be good for a while. Then someone uninvited is at the door: Oriol Vance of the Drift, who stays where the pack can reach him and says only that Meridian posted a lease review on the district this afternoon. Thirty days. He’s had one. Then he leaves. After the scene, the pack chooses a player to Take the Pulse^CR. Whatever the result, by morning the notice is on the door of the pack’s gathering place.

The notice. Forty pages. Reading it needs no roll, only a copy and an evening. Getting the annotated copy is the work: Jack In to Meridian’s tenant portal, Sway a clerk, or ask the inside person, who already has one and hasn’t said. Whoever reads it finds: the buyer (a fabber concern out of Vesta), the price, and clause 22, which says Meridian may withdraw the review “at its discretion, in light of material changes to the tenancy.” That clause is the whole plot. It means there’s a way out, and nobody knows what “material changes” means, and Robert Ilić-Sato does.

What the pack can do

Levers the pack may find (for the World only; don’t plan which they’ll use):

• Make the ring a bad buy. See Thirty Days: trouble for the buyer stalls the clock; trouble for Meridian ticks it.

• Pay. The Ledger will lend the money. In return it holds a Claim over each PC and takes over the ring’s water and dock (see “How it might go”).

• Find a co-signer. Halcyon is waiting to be asked. So, possibly, is someone the players invent.

• Turn the council. Ines Duarte-Okafor’s vote. Reaching her goes through her mother, which goes through the maintenance layer, which goes through the Stitch.

• Sway Robert. Find out what a “material change” is. It might be a fire. It might be a registered morphologically variant tenant population, which Halcyon would be delighted to certify. It might be a signed statement from a councilwoman.

• Take the Halcyon deal. Solve it completely. Live with it.

• Leave. Become the Drift.

Running it

• Tick clocks in the open. Show the players Thirty Days and The Offer every session. Label Coming Up only something in the layer until the Stitch is first seen.

• Let it be good. There will be a Revelry during these thirty days (whatever your pack’s is). Run it. Let nothing go wrong at it, or let one small thing go wrong, and let the rest be the pack being glad to see each other.

• The Stitch is not a fight. If the pack Unleashes on it, it takes harm and files a maintenance request. What it wants is a name. A PC or Ines may offer it one (probably “Petra”). The World decides whether the Stitch accepts it; the pack can also help it choose its own.

• Every front holds Claims. Halcyon and Meridian spend their Claims to Lean^CR against the pack, and offer to forgive them as the price of what they want. When the pack does Robert a favor, the pack gains a Claim over him.

• Ask the questions. When the assessor comes, ask a player: what does he count that he shouldn’t be able to see? When the Stitch comes up, ask: which of you has met it before, in the layer, and didn’t say?

How it might go

Some shapes it could take, none of them an ending.

• The pack makes the ring too loud to sell and too useful to Halcyon to lose, and Meridian withdraws under clause 22, and the price is a Halcyon inspector in the layer every Tuesday and a register with the pack’s names on it. They kept the ring. Halcyon holds a Claim over every PC on the register.

• The pack finds out what Halcyon did with Ines’s mother, and Ines finds out, and the council objects, and the sale stalls, and the Stitch has a name and a chair at the end of the bar and walks off Halcyon’s lease into the ring’s protection. Meridian sells anyway, later, to someone else. The pack has a year.

• The pack takes the Ledger’s money and now the ring is the Ledger’s, and the barge is never late again, and everyone drinks on credit forever.

• The pack loses. Ninety days. The pack’s gathering place closes for the last time on the night of its Revelry, and somebody puts the good lights on anyway, and Oriol is at the door, and this time he comes in. The campaign is about finding a ring now. The Drift has two packs.

What comes after

Whichever way it goes, the pack has met Halcyon’s liaison, Ines Duarte-Okafor, and a thing in the maintenance layer that knows their names. Each can carry the next plot. Pick the one the players kept returning to.