The units, escalations and stratum bosses a diver meets in the Lattice.
What ICE is
Partly builtSeven of the units below appear in the one dive site in the development build. The Gnat does not: it is in the Wick's street deck as a Bleedthrough swarm. In the build, every Legend fights with SALVO's kit.
ICE is the Lattice's autoimmune response, and it is still running twelve years after the Intrusion. The units are what the works sends at anything it cannot account for. ROOT is the custodian behind them.
White blood cells that have forgotten the body they're defending is supposed to include them.
The units
The units that work a dive. Each entry gives both names, a codex line and the habit crews built around it.
Gnatthe Chorus
Not on the Substation 7 deck. It is in the Wick's street deck as a Bleedthrough swarm.
Eight notes, retired in 2074, meaning the run is clear. The run is clear of everything except this.
Was
An inspection mote that flew a cable run ahead of the crew and sang the all-clear.
Named
By the first Shallownet charter crews out of the Junction in 2082. One is a noise. Twelve is a chord.
In a fight
A flying swarm that orbits, then dives, and dies in one hit. It comes in clouds, and thicker when a scar opens on the street.
Habit
You count the notes. Seven means somebody is already working under it. Nine means you leave the stratum.
Houndthe Kennel
Its order was that nobody works the dark alone. It has not been reassigned, and it has not stopped.
Named
A 2083 charter report logged six contacts and one behaviour. Patch teaches it plainly: you never meet a Hound.
In a fight
Melee packs. Part of the pack loops to flank while the rest press. It is the most common pack on the street as well.
Habit
You count them out loud. The last one of a Kennel is always behind whoever counted quietly.
SpitterSparkthroat
It closes gaps by throwing an arc across them. Anything in the gap is the gap.
Named
In the Yards, by a welder, for the sound of clearing a bead. It is the one unit you hear before you see it.
In a fight
It holds range and fires an arcing bolt you can sidestep. If you close in it backs off, and closing the gap is the answer.
Habit
You thank it, once a dive, out loud, for the noise.
Bulwarkthe Hoarding
A wall that walks, put up around live work to keep the unqualified out. It has looked at you and decided which side of it you are on.
Named
On the Ledger House floor, by a union elder correcting the young crews' word for it, which was shield.
In a fight
A directional shield across its front. It body-blocks for the Surveyor, so flank it.
Habit
You knock the plate going past its back.
Artilleristthe Surveyor
It marks where the work is scheduled so that nobody is standing there. It is still marking. You are still standing there.
Named
By a diver who had done that job topside for eleven years.
In a fight
A mortar into a telegraphed circle that leaves fire on the ground. It moves you, and the arena does the killing. It will shell a Legend who hovers, and it never leads a shot at one who is boosting.
Habit
The circle is called a permit. The first one is free.
Leechthe Chaplain
It attends the fallen one at a time and puts them back on shift. Nothing it reaches is allowed to be finished.
Named
The Yards already called the man who came round the ward with claim forms the chaplain, and the divers kept the name.
In a fight
It heals nearby ICE with a visible beam. The beam is the tell, and cutting it is the lesson: the Chaplain teaches priority targets.
Habit
Crews break formation to kill it before it reaches a downed diver. Every crew does it, though it costs them.
PhantomStatic Ghost
It was built to be at the fault without being sent for. It is still arriving, and something is always the fault.
Named
In Lowline in 2087, after a Ghostware Legend was blamed for three kills the unit had made. Its blink leaves the same shimmer.
In a fight
It blinks to your flank on a cycle and cannot be hit in transit, and it leaves a shimmer where it left. It is the fastest ground unit with the least poise, so you answer it by killing it.
Habit
Blinkers count out loud and will not say what the number is for.
Colossusthe Foreman
It is not fighting you. It is clearing the face, on schedule, and you are what is on the face.
Was
The shift lead, who set the pace of a work face.
Named
In the Yards, where the shift lead has always been called the foreman.
In a fight
Slow, with the widest silhouette in the dive. A ground slam roots you and destroys cover. Breaking its shoulder actuators opens a stagger window.
Habit
Nobody talks on comms while a Foreman is walking.
Escalations
Three affixes that harden any unit.
Overclocked
Partly builtIn the dive in the development build.
It attacks half again as fast and moves faster, and every hit it lands arcs part of the damage to another Legend nearby.
It is running the shift it was given at a rate nobody authorised. What it takes off you, it passes on.
Encrypted
Designed
A shield that regrows when you stop hitting it and hardens each time you use the same ability. Its plates light up as it hardens, so switch.
It has read the last four things you did to it and priced the fifth. The plates lighting up are the arithmetic showing.
Corrupted
Designed
Its hits, and its death, leave a pool that burns whoever stands in it.
Whatever is wrong with it does not stay inside it. Where it stood is still where it is.
Stratum bosses
One for each stratum above ROOT Core.
ROOT itself is not a boss fight in the way these are. It has its own entry on the Lattice page.
The CERBERUS Process
the Turnstile
In the dev buildInside the one dive site in the development build.
The boundary authority between shallow work and the deep stacks.
Three heads, three redundant kill-authorities, because the works built its gatekeepers assuming they would fail. Divers still cross it. What ended in 2081 is the authority above it. The heads have three jobs: pursuit, overwatch and denial.
CERBERUS is stencilled on the hardware. The Junction's crews say the Turnstile, because a turnstile has no opinion about who you are and an opinion about the count. Crews argue the kill order the way the Ledger House argues a rate, and walk back out through the door in order, to be counted out.
In the build the heads are its armour. Ignoring them is legal and costly, and the first head to break rewrites the survivors, which get faster, reach further or bring more adds. It has three phases. Its enrage is soft and ramps, and it never wipes a crew on a clock.
Three authorities, one threshold, and nothing above the three since 2081. It has not been told, and it is still counting.
Clear four waves, hold the Uplink ring for 30 seconds, then break the CERBERUS Process and jack out.
The briefing for the one dive site
Three authorities. Break one and the others re-script.
Callout, first head down
It re-locks a door that leads nowhere — and comes for you.
DesignedThe boss of the Stacks is the game's design.
An assessment loop that takes the thing you use most, runs it better than you run it, and taxes you for the discrepancy.
Divers said the Auditor from 2086. Meridian's charters for the Stacks filed it as the Actuary, and the charter is what pays, so the charter is what stuck.
In the design it copies your most-used ability and taxes it. The answer is to vary what you use. Crews do not say what their best ability is on the way down.
It prices what enters the stratum against what the stratum can carry. It has priced you, and it thinks you lean on one thing too hard.
The name Auditor is a coincidence. Nobody in the Coil has ever been asked to confirm that.
Said of the divers' name
The Hive Compiler
the Quota
DesignedThe boss of the Black Vault is the game's design.
Capacity, and nothing else.
Its last instruction was to maintain capacity, and it builds that out of whatever the room contains. Yards crews called it the Quota, and the name is a complaint.
In the design it compiles adds out of the arena's scenery, so the room visibly loses material, and in its last phase it builds from the echoes of fallen allies. A crew starves it by killing its build-queue nodes. Black Vault crews carry their downed off the compile floor even when it costs the run.
Last order received: maintain capacity. It has not been relieved, and it is not behind.