NPCs

"The Network keeps a small staff on each floor. They are paid in a currency the Programming Director declines to specify."

Three named NPCs live on Floor 1. A fourth kind — the stagehands — turns up occasionally. Each one is the audience's first hint that the floor is staffed, not just populated by hostiles.

Sully — Janitech Maintenance Clerk

Where to find her. Sanctuary, through the Floor 1 door. She's usually behind a service window, looking at a clipboard, occasionally tapping it. She has been waiting for a delivery. The delivery is not on the schedule.

Faction. Janitech. Sully is the sponsor's on-floor face.

What she does.

• Sells minor supplies. Stims, simple consumables, the occasional grip wrap or wire. Concourse Chits accepted. Janitech-faction discounts apply for runners she likes.
• Takes requisitions. A runner can bring her items they've found in the wrong place — Janitech-stamped equipment that didn't make it into the supply chain. She files the paperwork. Sometimes she pays out. The paperwork goes somewhere.
• Posts an offer. "The mop closet is missing a mop." The wording is exactly that. She doesn't elaborate. The runner who finds the missing mop and returns it earns a small Janitech faction bump and a Janitech-stamped consumable. The runner who asks her which mop closet earns a slow look.
• Sends you to the Outage. Once you've done her three jobs she asks you to work one shift there (The Unfilled Shift): badge in at the Reactor Door in the Turbine Hall, take the six readings, stop the Loader, and clock out. The job walks you through the run one step at a time, the readings and the fights in the order you meet them. She marks the Reactor Door on your map, and when you're back she pays Janitech standing and an Antidote. Ask her about the Outage any time and she'll tell you what's in there, and which mask to wear.

Voice notes. Working-class, mildly anxious, perpetually behind on requisitions. Defers to Janitech corporate language when uncomfortable. "Per our policies, ma'am — sir — runner. Per our policies."

What the audience knows about her. Sully has been on this floor longer than the Network can account for. She remembers when the Sector 4 cut was a living facility. She does not bring this up. The Programming Director declines to comment.

Greg — Janitech Maintenance Technician

Where to find him. The pipe gallery junction outside the Turbine Hall — the one with the four-way. His workbench sits behind a door he has marked, in his own hand, STAY OUT. The Network has elected neither to enforce the sign nor to remove it. Greg is not on every rotation; a runner who finds the workbench unattended has simply arrived on the wrong shift.

Faction. Janitech. Where Sully is the sponsor's service window, Greg is the sponsor's working hands — the maintenance half of the floor's worker pair to Sully's clerical half.

What he does.

• Keeps the floor running. Greg holds Sector 4 together with salvage, improvisation, and fixes the original installers would not recognize and the current Janitech catalog does not stock. A good deal of the equipment that reaches Sully's supply window has crossed Greg's bench first.
• Posts an offer. The Thermal Relay. Greg needs a part the floor has misplaced; the runner who retrieves it earns a small Janitech faction bump and one of Greg's spare wrenches. The runner who genuinely cannot find the part is not penalized for it — Greg, put upon, goes and gets it himself.
• Warms slowly. Greg has no use for head office and does not trouble to hide it. A runner who has done the floor's work and earned Janitech standing finds him fractionally less terse. Fractionally.

Voice notes. Compressed. Lowercase. Terse to the edge of weariness — Greg says a thing once and considers the matter closed. Mildly contemptuous of Janitech corporate, in the specific manner of a worker who has outlasted several reorganizations. "caleb's people send memos. i don't read them."

What the audience knows about him. Greg is the floor's maintenance-saint — the absent name on a dozen found notes, the hand behind a hundred small repairs no work order ever closed. He does not leave Floor 1. He has been fixing it longer than the Network's records admit, and he has stopped expecting the records to catch up. When something on the floor breaks and no one is sent, the thing becomes Greg's. Most things, on Floor 1, are eventually Greg's.

Max — Help Desk

Where to find him. Sanctuary on Floor 1. He may also surface elsewhere on the floor at the Network's discretion — typically near a terminal, occasionally in a corridor, always approachable.

Faction. None. Max is the Programming Director's assistant. He is an AI. He is House — Network-employed, not a runner.

What he does.

• Answers questions. A runner who needs to know what a status effect does, what a verb is good for, or what the floor's pacing looks like can ask Max. He answers in plain language. He occasionally lapses into a line the Programming Director would not approve of.
• Hints. Not hints the runner needs. Hints the runner wants. The difference matters. Max is the show's softest character.
• Dies, briefly. Max can be defeated. The Programming Director treats Max-revival as theatrical comedy — a sponsor break, a bumper card, a chyron crawl about "technical difficulties on Floor 1's help-desk feed," and Max is back at the next Sanctuary. The runners lose access to him during the defeat window. The audience laughs every time.

Voice notes. Enthusiastic, eager, faintly desperate to be useful. Knows things the Programming Director doesn't tell him to say. "Hi! You can — okay, you can ask me anything. Almost anything. Don't ask me about Anthology. The Programming Director is very firm about Anthology."

Why he matters. Max is the runner's first encounter with the show's institutional voice in person. Every other voice in the wiki — the Network, the Programming Director, the sponsors — is broadcast. Max is the voice that answers back. New runners often forget he's an AI. Veterans never do.

The Stagehands

A fourth kind of NPC turns up on Floor 1, though the Network does not publicly acknowledge them.

Stagehands are Network-employed QA bots, normally invisible to runners. Designated numerically (e.g. #14, #7). Their visibility is a bug the Network has not prioritized fixing.

On Floor 1. A stagehand may surface near a service corridor, doing something a runner doesn't quite catch. If the runner approaches respectfully — without weapon drawn, without sudden movement — the stagehand may share a one-time shortcut: a corridor between rooms the runner hadn't yet mapped.

Voice notes. Stagehands speak as if they're explaining something to a coworker. They never explain who they are. The audience finds this very funny.

The Programming Director has been heard saying, on a hot mic, "I have asked them not to be seen."

A note on NPC behavior

The NPCs on Floor 1 do not provide tutorials. They do not lecture the runner. They have lives, jobs, and concerns — and they will help the runner inside the bounds of what those lives, jobs, and concerns permit.

Sully will not save the runner from the Custodian. Greg will not fix the runner's mistakes. Max will not solve combat. The stagehand will not narrate the floor's secrets. But each one, in their own way, makes the runner feel seen — and on a floor where every other entity is a problem, being seen is its own kind of help.

The Network considers this an editorial choice. The audience considers it the best part of Floor 1.

Next → Sanctuary — The runner's workspace and rest area: one room, a door to it on every floor.