Gadget belt
Jury-Rig
You engineered around the needle.
What it is
Partly built The tree is written into the content. The belt's gadgets do not run in the movement code yet, and the Clinic does not offer the line.
- Kind
- Gear. You build it and wear it, so a Cleanskin can run it.
- Terrain
- Anywhere you can bolt to, and anywhere your crew needs the verb more than you do.
- Opens at
- Not offered at the First Splice yet.
- Cost to master
- 22 points.
Every verb on this belt is borrowed from a line that got it for free, and every one of them is a thing you built, carry, and can lend.
The cost
Borrows every verb, masters none. The zip is short on one charge and slow to respool, so it gets you over a gap and no further. Everything on the belt is a thing: it jams, it runs dry, and a good hit takes it off you. Each gadget does its job worse than the line it copies.
The tree
Partly built The Operator 30 node also asks for this line's story, which is designed.
Seven tiers, from Operator 10 to Operator 50. The choices come at Operator 15 (Zip Reel or Boot Jets) and Operator 40 (Armoury or Union Rates), and taking one closes the other.
- Operator 10
Wake
The Belt. A grapple-zip. It is worn hardware: no needle, no alloy, no registry entry.
- Operator 15
Form fork
Take one. Zip Reel. A longer zip. Boot Jets. A short air dash that cools down slowly.
- Operator 20
Reach
Jump Pad. A deployable pad that anyone may use, including whoever is chasing you.
- Operator 25
Cadence
Glide Chute. A mid-fall chute you can deploy and cut at any point.
- Operator 30
Questline node
Field Requisition. Every belt gadget becomes shareable: the one sanctioned way to lend a verb.
- Operator 40
Apex fork
Take one. Armoury. More gadgets ready at once. Union Rates. A lent gadget stays with the ally for a while.
- Operator 50
Capstone
Nothing In Me Is Theirs. A zip that chains and respools quickly: the Cleanskin's own answer to a swing line.
Two brackets, a spool and a solenoid off a dead Sweep drone. You built it on a workshop bench in an afternoon.
You leave it where you will need it. That is the entire skill.
The only travel power in Catena that can be handed to somebody else.
Nobody on the Scrapline ever gave a tool back on time.
Where it shines
Culture
Exemplar. The Workshop Block, and everyone who ever refused the chair.
Jury-Rig wears a gadget-belt aesthetic borrowed from tradespeople rather than superheroes.