Bestiary | City of Legends

One chassis family, three custodies

Nearly every machine on the street is the same kind of machine. Who holds it makes the difference.

The same machine can be a Chrome Dogs pet, a Meridian Security unit or a Bleedthrough construct, and the silhouette does not tell you which. You tell them apart by who holds them.

Three custodies
Custody	Who holds the machine	How you can tell
Street	Chrome Dogs	A chassis a pack has chopped, collared and pointed at something.
State	Meridian Security	The same class of machine under a writ, maintained, with a job code.
Seal	Bleedthrough	The same machine with nobody driving.

Two kinds of body

Down in the Lattice, ICE is light: holographic bodies with glowing cores, drawn on the grid.

Up on the street nothing is projected. The machines are real, and nothing about them glows like ICE.

Street, state, Seal

Partly built The Wick runs this escalation in the development build. Overpass Fields and Breaker Rows are mapped and have no enemies yet.

As the heat rises a different power answers, and the Fringe's three districts show it in order.

Who holds each district of the Fringe
District	Who holds it	What it says of itself	Status
The Wick	Chrome Dogs	"Nobody's coming. So."	Partly built
Overpass Fields	Meridian Security	"They watch the road. Nobody watches under it."	Mapped
Breaker Rows	Bleedthrough	"Row Six is still Row Six."	Mapped

How the codex reads

Every ICE entry carries two names. The formal name is the job the machine was built for, and the street name is what the people who came back from it called it.

An entry starts from the job the unit was built for. What makes the unit wrong is that the job is still being done correctly, and nobody has told it the work is over.

Many entries end with a habit. Crews knock on a plate, count out loud or let the first one go. These are practices that kept people alive, and the street does not call them beliefs. The entries for the Lattice's units are on ICE.

The families

Each card opens the page that owns the family.

Street machines

Municipal and industrial kit the city built for itself and then stopped maintaining, plus one Habitation Trust contract.

Partly built These five are in the Wick's enemy deck in the development build.

Each entry gives both of its names.

Scrap Ratthe Tithe

It works the low ground and returns what it finds to the melt. Everything you dropped was findable.

Named: On the Wick contract boards, from jobs quoted less the tithe.
In a fight: It steals what you dropped and runs for the nearest drain grate. Catch it and the loot bursts back out. It is the unit that punishes standing still.
Habit: You let the first one go.

HopperPothole

It seats road plate by dropping on it from height. It has stopped checking whether the plate is a plate.

Named: By the Municipals' incident file, which logged the first reports as road defect. A Municipal sergeant has never taken the filing back.
In a fight: A crouch is the tell, then a leap and a landing blast. Look up: Hoppers arrive over cover.
Habit: Street crews call the crouch out loud.

CrawlerWallpaper

It reads a wall by tapping it. It has never cared which way the wall is facing, or that you are on the other side.

Was: A facade inspector that tapped walls block by block and reported to a Habitation Trust address that stopped accepting post around the Turn.
Named: By Wick tenants, because you do not see it until it moves. The Trust says the livery is counterfeit.
In a fight: It climbs facades and ceilings and attacks from them, which makes the buildings themselves hostile ground.
Habit: You knock the ceiling once before you sleep.

StingerFlakjacket

One dive, one strike, back to cruise. It was built to hit a thing that was holding still.

Named: A clerk misfiled a Skybreak flyer's report, and flyers have used the clerk's version ever since.
In a fight: A rising whine and a lock reticle, then the dive. It never catches a Legend who is boosting, so it punishes hovering. See Strain.

Cable Viperthe Lanyard

It takes the far end and brings it home at a rate that will not part the cable. It has never dropped anyone.

Named: By Yards riggers, who say the name is cruel because it is accurate.
In a fight: It tethers a Legend in the air and reels them in. A Legend breaks free by cutting the cable, spending a movement burst or killing it. It is there so that flying is not always the answer on the street.
Habit: Riggers clip a lanyard to nothing before a Wick run.

See also