What's Out There
"Advancement is past the docks, and the Frayed Quarter beyond them, which is not a Network-maintained space and not the Network's responsibility. Should you go, go knowing the signage was clearly displayed." — the Visitor's Map Board, second beat
Three things want to hurt you on this floor, plus four with names. Nothing on this page can enter the town.
The Frayed Scavver
The pack. A lean, mange-patched urban canid — jackal-shaped, wire-scarred — working the collapsed annex for anything soft or shiny. It moved into the set the moment the Network stopped dressing it, and it does not like competition.
82 health, defense 2, hits for 13–17, quick but not Lurker-quick — you can disengage from one. Bites carry a mild bleed one hit in five. Light on its feet, so knockback works. Back in 150 seconds.
The pack is the whole point. Turn one hostile and every packmate within two cells joins on the next tick. Three of them committed is over 40 damage a round. The Frayed Quarter holds two picking-grounds — the collapsed annex and the burnt kiosk — spaced so you meet one pack at a time, and it holds three scavvers total, so the two grounds share a single pack between them. A single stray works the Loading Docks with no packmates to call.
Drops nothing better than half the time; otherwise Cloth Scrap, Scrap Metal, or — one kill in ten — a Scavver Pelt.
The Pop-Up Intake Drone
The harasser. A hovering clipboard with a camera, a cheerful two-tone chime, and a compliance prod. It "processes" anything loitering in a work zone. It reads as a market gadget at distance and resolves as the conscription pipeline's front-of-house up close.
64 health, defense 1, shoots for 12–16 from four cells out, needs line of sight, and has the widest eyes on the floor — it exists to find people standing still. Very knockable; swatting it is the melee answer. Back in 240 seconds.
It will not follow you indoors or down a cellar stair. Two work the Loading Docks and two cover the annex loot in the Frayed Quarter. A Cyber runner can hack one — its security is only a courtesy — and turn it into a spotter with a grudge.
Drops Wire, a Flicker Cell one time in five, or a Drone Core a little less often than that.
The Pen-Line Enforcer
The heavy. Pop-Up Personnel's back-of-house: a squat industrial restraint unit on rubberized tracks, riot-plated and patient, built to move conscripts who have stopped cooperating. The machinery defends itself.
248 health, defense 5, hits for 11–14, and it is slow. Defiance 30 — knockback mostly bounces off it. It does not tour; it holds the ground it was posted on.
Its rhythm is the restraint clamp drive: it locks its tracks, levels the clamp, and drives three cells straight down the row for 22–31 damage, one cell of knockback, and a one-in-four chance of leaving you grappled for ten seconds. It broadcasts the warning first. Get off the row. In the tight rooms below, where there is nowhere to step, that lane is the fight.
Back in ten minutes — it's a lock on good loot, not something to farm. A high-Cyber runner can stand one down, which is the designed way past the pens' muscle without a fight.
Drops Riot Plate almost half the time, Dense Scrap Metal often, a Flicker Cell sometimes, and rarely nothing at all. The elite pays.
Where they stand: exactly one in the Frayed Quarter, posted on the toppled annex; one down in the salvage cellar on a repossession detail; two in the conscription pens.
The catchables
Three animals live here, all docile, none of them a threat.
| Where | Catching it | |
|---|---|---|
| Stall Rat | Under the boards on Market Row, and out in the ruin | Snareable from Survival 1. A glossy, well-fed market rat that has never known a lean day |
| Ribbonwing | Guild Row awnings, the dock crane, Market Row | Needs Live Catch (Survival 10). A courier pigeon wearing generations of sponsor ribbon; every stall keeps crumbs for them |
| Dockside Stray | The docks, and asleep against the Commons wall | Needs Live Catch (Survival 10). A wiry mongrel that already acts like it has a job. Attack it and it nips once — 10 to 14 — then leaves |
All three ship pet-grade this time out: name them, dress them, keep them in the show cage at home. They are not field companions yet. Everything you learned about taming still applies, and the Bazaar has no pen — so it's the standing-still tame in the open, or Survival 40, which comes online on this very floor and makes it three seconds and free.
The four with names
Captain Wray — the muster room
The floor's headline fight, and the only one that happens by appointment. She is a non-hostile named figure in town for the whole of Keeping the Peace; the fight is in your own private copy of the Watch muster room, behind the Guild Row door. Lose and the room resets and the door stays usable — the chain is the only thing standing between you and another try.
736 health, defense 6, hits for 15–20, and she moves first. Defiance 45.
- The Duelist (down to 60%) — clean drill-yard melee plus the Shield-Line Drive: a three-cell lane for 23–35 and a cell of knockback, every three rounds. Honest, readable, exactly how the town believes she fights.
- The Watch Answers (at 60%) — she calls it in. Watch Cadet Units pour through the muster door: 166 health, defense 3, hitting for 6–9. Two at a time, every four rounds. Soft, but they're between you and her.
- Mask Off (at 25%) — the parade stance drops. Defense falls to 4, her hits gain 3, and the Shield-Line comes every two rounds. The fight gets faster at the end, not grindier.
Turtling loses. From round 12 the cadets arrive twice as often. If you can't close it in a dozen rounds you are underlevelled, and the door is right there.
She is human. There is no firmware to hack; the counterplay is the fight. Drops her Watch Signet every time, the Watch Riot Maul about a third of the time, and riot plating besides.
Old Smiles — the Frayed Quarter
A matted, grinning costume chassis from a children's programme the Network scrubbed from every archive. It stalks the collapsed annex and performs at what it catches. Its firmware is forty years of static; there is nothing left in there to hack.
Appears on a schedule — roughly one 90-minute shift a day, in the Frayed Quarter and nowhere else. It never leaves that space. When it clocks in, Bebe says so: "Something is singing in the Frayed Quarter. The Programming Director checked the rundown twice. There is no such show."
666 health, defense 5, hits for 15–19 with a bleed rider, and it never disengages. Its move is the Lunging Embrace — it opens its arms and starts to sing, then comes three cells down the row for 27–38 and a 60% chance to hold you. Break free or parry; those are the outs. Kite it and it will burst-reposition at you rather than let you shoot it for free.
Its one gift: the pelt burns and the chassis conducts. Thermal and Electrical builds have a real target here.
It's an open event — everyone who fights it shares the prizes. Animatronic Servo for everyone, a Scrubbed Show Cel two times in five, and The Grin one time in ten.
Marn Bricker — anywhere, and that's the joke
A duel-ring washout who tours the whole floor. In town he is untouchable and so are you — he leans on the crowd, taunts anyone who walks past, and cannot throw a punch where the town cameras would call it assault. "In here I can't touch you and you can't touch me. Feels safe, doesn't it. Enjoy it. It ends at the docks."
Outside the line he is hostile on sight. The grudge kill means catching him out, which means learning the floor's geography by using it.
614 health, defense 4, hits for 14–18, plus a Haymaker: 23–32 and two cells of knockback, every three rounds. In the docks' container lanes and the Frayed Quarter's rubble that knockback is the fight — it doesn't just hurt, it puts you somewhere worse.
He tours on a weekly rhythm, moving every eighteen minutes or so. Drops Bricker's Ledger — the names he shook down — and the takings in his pocket. Take the ledger to Felicia.
Coordinator Pruitt — the conscription pens
See The Undercity. He is optional, and he is a shopkeeper until you decide otherwise.
Next → The Undercity — the floor under the floor.
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