Glossary

"The Network maintains a controlled vocabulary. The runner is welcome to learn it, ignore it, or be surprised by it. The Network has logged all three."

The floor talks in shorthand — fixtures, tags, and reactions the other wiki pages name in passing. This page is the lookup. Entries are short on purpose: enough to know what a thing is, with a pointer to the page that covers what it does.

Items and weapons have their own catalogs — see Items and Weapons & Gear. Skills are on Skills; status effects on Status Effects.

Floor fixtures

The objects bolted to, leaking onto, or wired into Floor 1. A runner's skills determine how much each one will tell them.

Breaker Box

A wall-mounted electrical breaker panel — electronic, hackable, and a power source. "The breaker labels are hand-written and vindictive." An Electrical Engineering read keys off it.

Severed Power Conduit

A cut power cable still carrying live current — electrical, dangerous, and hackable. The catalog tags it severed_cable; the runner who reads Electrical Engineering can handle it without a burn.

Transformer

A floor power-distribution unit — an electrical-class fixture that Electrical Engineering and Thermal Dynamics reads both surface state for.

Battery Rack

Rows of salvageable battery cells — a volatile power source. Several still hold charge; the rack is a deconstructable loot source.

Computer

A plant terminal for floor systems — electronic, hackable, and carrying a security level.

Security Camera

A surveillance camera — electronic, alarm-linked, hackable, and fragile. A Cyber Tinkering read reports which way it is pointed.

Warning Beacon

A blinking hazard beacon — alarm-linked and a light source. "The beacon blinks in a rhythm that feels like accusation."

Coolant Tank

A pressurized tank sweating blue coolant — sealed, contaminated, volatile, and destroyable. A Thermal Dynamics read reports its pressure.

Toxic Drum

A sealed drum of toxic liquid — heavy, flammable, pressurized, and not as sealed as the label claims. Broken drums spawn toxic puddles that give Exposure.

Pipe Valve

A maintenance pipe valve — usable, repairable, pressurized. "The valve refuses to turn without being insulted first."

Furnace

An industrial heating unit — a thermal-class fixture. Thermal Dynamics L15 (Furnace Discipline) lets a runner operate one without taking heat damage.

Incinerator

An industrial burn unit, tagged for high heat. Like the furnace, it answers to Thermal Dynamics L15.

Tool Bench

A maintenance work surface and crafting station — "drawers full of useful almost-junk." The Floor 1 Sanctuary's workbench is the runner's own; benches out on the floor belong to whoever was using them.

Ventilation Shaft Cover

A loose vent cover — removable, fragile, and an alternate route through the floor. Vents add optionality; they are never a runner's only way through.

Drain Grate

A removable floor grate that lifts to reveal a vent route — and, often, a little lost metal worth salvaging.

Floor Drain

A chemical floor drain — a liquid, toxic, conductive hazard. "The drain burps up chemical residue."

Chemical Runoff Puddle

A puddle of chemical runoff — a liquid cell that is toxic, conductive, and flammable all at once. The most versatile hazard on the floor, and the least picky about whom it belongs to.

Wet Floor Tile

A hazard cell left behind by mopping — most often the Custodian's. Entering one carries a 40% chance of slipped. The signage is not decorative.

Tags & states

The catalog labels every entity with tags. A tag is a promise about how a thing will behave — and the runner's skills and items read those promises.

Security Level

A numeric resistance rating carried by locked and electronic entities. A Cyber Tinkering splice succeeds when the runner's skill meets or exceeds it; shocked temporarily lowers it by 2.

Electronic Lock

A powered-lock tag. Opened by a Cyber-Splice, a Lock Bypass Spike, or a high-enough skill check. The floor's doors are not all this kind — but the interesting ones are.

Lock Class

A mechanical-lock rating — T1, T2, or T3 — carried by the floor's locked containers, T3 being the heaviest. An Espionage L5 read (Casing) reveals the class before the runner commits; a Lockpick engages it; Espionage L10 opens T1 free-of-pick and L15 unlocks the T2/T3 work. Some locks are alarmed — a failed pick attempt on one is loud, and the floor's residents respond. A Search on a locked container is refused until the lock is dealt with; breaking the container open remains the unsubtle alternative.

Maintenance Door

A door tag for back-of-house maintenance access. The Janitorial Keyring opens any door carrying it.

Custodian Prop

A tag marking gear issued to the Custodian. The Push Broom, Wet Floor Sign, and Janitorial Keyring all carry it — and carrying one out of Floor 1 says something to the audience.

Power Source

A tag for entities carrying live current — breaker boxes, battery racks, severed conduits. Electrical Engineering and Thermal Dynamics reads both key off it.

Electronic

A tag for powered devices. Electronic entities answer to EMP effects, to hacks, and to shocked.

Hackable

A tag for entities a Cyber Tinkering runner can splice — terminals, locks, cameras, beacons.

Conductive

A tag for entities and liquids that carry an electrical charge. Conductive liquid is what lets shocked chain from one entity to the next.

Flammable

A tag for entities and materials that catch fire. Flammable things pass burning to one another — which is the entire Thermal Dynamics plan.

Liquid Cell

A floor cell flooded with liquid. Stepping into one ends burning for a tick; if the liquid is conductive, it instead amplifies and chains shocked.

Deconstructable

A tag marking an entity or item that can be broken down into component parts — the salvage half of the floor's economy. See recipes.

Bot

A tag for the floor's autonomous machine hostiles. EMP Grenades are built specifically for them.

Reactions & actions

When two things meet, the floor sometimes resolves it as a named reaction. Actions are the verbs a runner spends a turn on.

Arc Flash

A reaction: high voltage meeting conductive liquid. "The room remembers." The payoff an Electrical runner is angling for whenever there is a puddle on the floor.

Ignite Flammable

A reaction: an ignition source applied to a flammable target. "Anything flammable can be lit if you've got an ignition source." A Plasma Lighter on a flammable entity is the cleanest example.

Break Free

A runner action that ends the grappled status — pulling loose by force rather than by parry. One of the runner's outs against the Custodian's mop hook. The runner's Defiance decides it: a coin flip with none, certain from Defiance 6.

Examine

The universal read action, available to every runner from the start. Skill milestones deepen what Examine reveals — distance, cover, charge state, time-to-overheat — without the runner ever spending more than a look.

World terms

A handful of words the wiki uses that aren't fixtures, tags, or reactions.

Concourse Chits

The single currency in circulation across the Stack. Sully accepts them at her supply window.

Audience Favor

The audience's running regard for a runner. It accrues when the floor produces good television — kills, boss moments, dramatic survivals — and it is the one training signal the runner does not generate themselves: favor is how the audience trains Luck. The meter is hidden from everyone on the floor except a Luck specialist with the L5 read (Audience Read). The Network does not publish the rates. One small, opt-in source: feeding a well-kept show-cage pet trickles a little favor — but the feed costs chits, so the favor is bought, not farmed, and a runner who keeps no pet loses nothing.

Faction Reputation

A runner's standing with a faction — on Floor 1, that means Janitech. Offers and requisitions raise it. The Network's current rules reset it on a runner's death; the runner who wants standing earns it again.

Integrity

A runner's structural-health pool — what the floor's hazards and hostiles spend down, and what the Sanctuary restores.

Runner vs. runner (PvP)

A runner can attack another runner who is not in their party — the Attack verb and every damaging technique work on a non-party runner the same way they work on a hostile. A snare rigged at a junction, a thrown grenade, a torch: all of it carries between runners who aren't on the same side. The contested floor is, by default, a place where the other party is a threat.

Within a party, friendly fire is off. A runner cannot damage their own party members — a thrown explosive, a swung weapon, a rigged trap will not hurt an ally. (Heals and revives still land on party members; only damage is blocked.) So the danger of PvP is between parties, not inside one — co-op play is protected.

The Survival runner's traps follow the same rule: a runner-placed trap does not damage other runners by default, so trapping is not a grief tool in co-op. The counter to a hostile party's traps is to disarm — spot the rigged trap and neutralize it before it springs.

↑ Back to Overview — Floor overview.