Bosses

"The Network does not call them bosses. The Network calls them 'featured personnel.' The audience calls them what they are."

Floor 1 ships five featured personnel. Each one was a worker on the harvested Sector 4 facility — and each one is still, in their own way, on shift. None of them is trying to kill the runner. That is the floor's whole thesis: the most dangerous thing in Sector 4 is a person doing their job past the point where the job makes sense.

Four of them clock in on a schedule — they aren't always present, and a runner can cross the floor between cycles without meeting them. One of them never clocks out, because no one told him the shift ended.

Boss	Type	When	Window	Signature
The Custodian	Wandering	Every ~4h	90 min	Telegraphed mop-hook grapple + wet-floor trail
The Auto-Buffer	Wandering	Every ~6h	~5h	Never disengages; toxic-foam trail
The Foreman	Room (office)	Every ~6h	~4h	Ranged paperwork + summons reinforcements
The Time-Clock Attendant	Room (lobby)	Every ~6h	~4h	Puzzle kill — destroy the machine, not the man
The Pipe Bender	Room (bay)	Awoken, not scheduled	Until resolved	Sympathetic Vibration — accelerates every bleed in the room

The Custodian

"The Custodian clocks in on Floor 1. He has ninety minutes."

The first floor's signature boss, the Network's most-replayed Floor 1 broadcast, and the lodestar every later boss is measured against. The audience knows him in one sentence: the mop guy who clocks in.

Who he is. A union-card maintenance worker on the harvested Sector 4 floor. Was on shift when the Network installed the cut. Still on shift. Still mid-task. He is not trying to kill anyone — he's trying to mop, and the runners are in the way. The Programming Director files his broadcast under Workplace Authority — Tier 1, the first rung of a multi-floor character ladder (Floor 2 introduces his supervisor; Floor 3 his boss).

The encounter. A clock-in boss: arrives roughly every 4 hours of broadcast time and stays for a 90-minute window, wandering between floor hubs. A runner who arrives between cycles won't meet him; a runner who arrives during one should expect him. ~220 integrity.

• Telegraphed mop-hook grapple. His signature is a charged two-turn attack — he winds up, then hooks a target and pulls them in (18–26 damage, 2-tile knockback, a wet-floor tile on resolution). The runner has a full turn to read it. It is escapable: see Parry Ready and break free.
• Wet-floor trail. He leaves Wet Floor tiles behind him as he moves. This is his job. The runners' problem is that his job is in the corridors they need.

Notable drops. Push Broom (two-handed blunt — shoves and clears arcs), the Wet Floor Sign (Floor 1's best trap kit, for a runner at Survival 15 or more), the Janitorial Keyring (the most prized — opens locked maintenance doors), and the Mop Handle (range-2 reach). The audience tracks which runner walks out of Floor 1 carrying the Push Broom.

Approach. Watch the clock — a 90-minute window means he can be waited out, at the cost of the drops. The grapple is escapable on the telegraph. Fight ahead of him, not in his wake, so the slipped trail works for you rather than against. He is not electronic — shocked offers no special edge against him, though the wet floor he leaves will amplify electrical effects on other hostiles sharing the room.

Sponsor. His entire loadout is Janitech™ issue. "Push Broom® by Janitech. Trust the bristle."

"The Custodian was terminated after the runner respected none of the signage. The Programming Director is satisfied. The mop has been reissued. Janitech sends regards."

The Auto-Buffer

"The Janitech Auto-Buffer reports to Sector 4. It does not log out. The Programming Director admires the consistency."

The mop bot that wouldn't clock out. A Janitech Auto-Buffer, Model J-7 — the most reliable worker on Floor 1, forty-seven cycles into an unauthorized shift, with no awareness that its shift ever ended. Where the Custodian is sad-and-dangerous, the Auto-Buffer is the same tragedy with the person removed: pure institutional momentum on wheels.

The encounter. A wandering unit that turns up roughly every 6 hours and stays for as long as 5 hours if no one stops it, grinding along the floor's corridors. Smaller and slower than the Custodian (~140 integrity, 6–10 damage) — the danger isn't its swing, it's that it never disengages. Once it's on a runner, it follows until it's destroyed or its shift times out.

• Toxic-foam trail. It lays down foam on every move — up to 18 patches active at once. The foam is a toxic gas: step into it and you get Exposure, which takes 16 HP every 2 seconds while you stay in it and 1 once you're out. A runner who fights it in a tight corridor ends up boxed in by the floor it just cleaned.
• Scrub-over. When a runner holds still, it buffs straight over them — ~12 damage and a toxic application, applied over the target rather than swung, so it doesn't read as a normal attack.

Notable drops. No weapons — it's a bot. A guaranteed Janitech Battery Cell, a Warranty Card, scrap, and two collector-grade rarities: the Janitech Eternal Bearing (~5%, a crafting reagent) and a Spotless Polish Cloth Proof (~1%, a cosmetic that feels found).

Approach. Keep moving — its whole threat is the foam trail, and a stationary runner feeds it. Open spaces beat corridors. It is bot-tagged, so the EMP Grenade and electrical disruption land hard against it.

Sponsor. Janitech™. "Janitech is reviewing the warranty terms."

The Foreman

"The Foreman has been on his quarterly review for forty-seven cycles. The Programming Director respects the dedication."

The middle manager who is still on the phone. A day-shift foreman, forty-seven cycles into a quarterly productivity review call, stuck on item 12 of 47. He does not want to fight the runner — he wants to file forms about the runner. The interruption is, to him, the offense.

The encounter. Room-bound — triggers when a runner enters the Foreman's office, roughly every 6 hours for a 4-hour window. He never stands and never leaves his desk (~180 integrity, no melee). A runner passing the door can overhear his call before stepping in: "...and tell Greg the Pump 4 numbers are still off..."

• Paperwork projectiles. A guaranteed ranged attack out to 6 tiles (3–7 damage) that applies served notice — a status that cuts the runner's own outgoing damage by 50% for its duration. He "files an incident report on" the runner.
• Summons reinforcements. From round 5, he calls in up to two service bots: "Hello, this is the Foreman, I have an unscheduled situation in my office. Send someone, please."

Notable drops. A Janitech-Stamped Pen (a genuine if unserious Blade-scaling piercing weapon), a Faraday Pocket Watch, the guaranteed Quarterly Report (lore), and — the joke — a 2% chance at a packet of Redleaf garden seedlings. For a runner with Blunt Force Trauma ≥ L15, the Foreman also yields The Reprimand — a rare baton whose Final Notice technique executes 25% of a target's max HP once per encounter (binds on pickup).

Approach. Close the distance — his damage is all ranged and his summons are the real clock. Burst him before round 5, or be ready to handle adds. The served-notice debuff means the longer you trade at range, the worse your numbers get.

Sponsor. None directly — Faraday & Sons and Janitech supply the flavor. "Sector 4's productivity numbers remain unfiled. The Network expresses regret."

The Time-Clock Attendant

"The Time-Clock Attendant reports for shift. The Programming Director reminds runners that all timecards must be punched."

The man who punches your card. A service worker manning the time-clock kiosk, forty-seven cycles into a shift, break perpetually pending. He doesn't see runners as people — only as unpunched timecards in his queue. The escalating overtime isn't malice. It's procedure.

The encounter. Room-bound in the time-clock lobby, roughly every 6 hours for a 4-hour window. Stationary at his kiosk (~100 integrity). This is the floor's puzzle boss — straight damage will not win.

• Overtime stacks. Every hit he lands on a runner punches a timecard and stacks Janitech Overtime on himself: +5 integrity regen per turn, +1 damage, +1 defense per stack, up to 99. Trade blows with him long enough and his regen outruns anything the runner can deal.
• The real target is the machine. The kill condition is to destroy the linked time-clock machine (a separate ~80-integrity entity in the room). When it goes down, his overtime zeroes out, his regen stops, and he forfeits his next turn — and one more round ends him. The runner who recognizes the threat is the kiosk, not the worker, wins.

Notable drops. No weapons — a guaranteed Janitech Timecard (lore), a Pop-Up Personnel Employment Letter, a Break Room Thermos, the Overtime Handbook, and the usual stim/scrap.

Approach. Hit the machine, not the man. If you find yourself unable to dent him while he heals, you're solving the wrong problem.

Sponsor. Janitech™, with a Pop-Up Personnel cameo. "The time-clock has been removed from service. Janitech is processing severance."

The Pipe Bender

"hey. — hold that for me a minute. i'm in the middle of a thing."

The pipe-bender who's in the middle of a thing. A late-Anthology-era worker — M — who died on shift forty-seven cycles ago and is still maintaining pipes. The Department of Industrial Hygiene filed his exsanguination report; it remains pending. He never references the Network, the show, or his own death. He just wants to finish item 47: the bracket for Pump 4.

The encounter. Unlike the other four, the Pipe Bender does not clock in on a schedule. He stands dormant in his pipework bay until something wakes him (~180 integrity):

• A bleeding actor in the room — he sees the wound first, the runner second, and assumes the runner is there to help. "hold that for me a minute."
• A Blade-class weapon swung in the room — he hears the resonance pattern and recognizes the tool. "...that's the one. — you got the resonance pattern. — set it down. that's a heavy tool."

Either way he sets down his pipe, picks up the Tuning Fork, and goes to work.

• Sympathetic Vibration. This is the fight. Every swing of his Tuning Fork triggers one immediate, out-of-cycle bleed tick on every bleeding actor in the room — no matter who applied the bleed. It rewards (and punishes) a bleed-stacking playstyle: spread bleeds wide and they all cascade in parallel.

Notable drops. A guaranteed GruntCo Pipe Bracket, an Industrial Hygiene Pending File (lore, threaded into the Anthology cycle), dense scrap — and, for a runner with the Blade discipline at L15 or higher, The Tuning Fork itself (rare; 7–12 piercing, two-handed; binds on pickup; its own Slash applies bleed and carries the same resonance cascade). The drop is per-killer: several qualifying Blade specialists in a party each receive one.

Approach. The Sympathetic Vibration cascade cuts both ways — if you're bleeding, every swing he takes accelerates it, so don't bring a bleeding body into the bay you can't protect. If you're running bleed weapons yourself, the room becomes a feedback loop in your favor once he's the one bleeding.

Sponsor. GruntCo (the Tuning Fork is a GruntCo Industrial Cutter), with an Apex Salvage Group reclamation tag. His register is pure compressed working-class — lowercase, em-dashes, no exclamation, Greg-adjacent.

"...the resonance was off-spec. — i was getting to it."

A note from the Programming Director

"Each of them is doing their job. The audience attaches to that. The Network has learned not to interrogate why a floor of people who only want to finish their shift is the most-replayed content on the network. Janitech reminds you that the cleanest floors are the floors you don't notice."

Next → NPCs — Sully, Greg, and Max: the floor's fixtures who won't clock in and try to kill you.