The Art of the Working World

Assembly & Maintenance is the foundational discipline of creation. It is the pragmatic, often unglamorous, but utterly essential art of putting things together, keeping them working, and taking them apart again. It is the story of function over form, of reliability over romance. Where other disciplines dream of forging new realities, Assembly & Maintenance is concerned with the immediate, tangible reality of a loose bolt, a frayed wire, and a broken machine.

Unlike other disciplines that follow a specific technological or cultural progression, the path of the Maintainer is one of breadth and synthesis. Its mastery is not measured by the invention of a better wrench, but by the ability to look at a piece of alien technology, a living bio-ship, or a haunted artifact and say, with confidence, “I understand how this is meant to work.” It is the discipline of learning the universal grammar of all created things.

Tier 1: The Scavenger’s Art (The Pragmatic Foundation)

Philosophy: This is the discipline born of necessity. It is the art of jury-rigging, cannibalizing, and brute-force problem-solving. The Scavenger is a master of making do, their workshop a cluttered bench piled with scrap, their solutions held together by ingenuity and hope.

The Stations: A Makeshift Workbench, a Pile of Designated Scrap, a basic Welder.

The Core Verbs:

• Repair: Objects in the world possess Durability and can develop Flaws. Repair at this tier is a puzzle of diagnosis. The Subjective Interface might show a flickering schematic of a broken rifle, the player needing to use their skill to identify the [Cracked Firing Pin]. A low-skill, high-risk option is “Percussive Maintenance” (literally hitting the object) which has a small chance to fix a minor flaw and a high chance to make it worse.
• Dismantle / Cannibalize: This is the heart of the scavenger’s craft. It is the act of taking one broken thing apart to fix another. The skill check determines if the desired component is recovered intact or destroyed in the process.
• Recycle: The act of last resort. An object is reduced to its base [Scrap Metal] or [Component Parts], its form and function lost in exchange for raw potential.

Tier 2: The Technician’s Craft (The Logic of Systems)

Philosophy: The creator has moved from chaotic survival to ordered production. This is the realm of the specialist, the engineer, the guild-certified professional. The focus is on precision, following schematics, and understanding the intricate workings of a single, coherent technological system.

The Stations: Specialized stations like an Electronics Bench, a Mechanical Press, or a Diagnostic Scanner.

The Core Verbs:

• Assembly: This is the core of this tier. The Technician uses learned Schematics to assemble complex objects from high-quality components. The final object’s quality is a direct function of the parts used, rewarding the careful sourcing of materials.
• Maintenance: The focus shifts from reactive repair to preventative maintenance. A skilled Technician can “tune up” a device, temporarily boosting its performance and restoring its maximum Durability.
• Specialization: A Technician’s knowledge is deep but narrow. They might be a master of Hegemonic Ballistics, able to assemble a plasma rifle blindfolded, but be utterly baffled by the living, pulsating components of an Arborian Bio-Weapon. This creates a natural dependence on trade and collaboration.

Tier 3: The System Integrator’s Gnosis (The Universal Grammar)

Philosophy: This is the ultimate expression of this discipline. The Integrator is no longer just a specialist; they are a polymath, a heretic, a master of technological and biological linguistics. They have transcended the study of specific objects and have come to understand the universal principles of creation itself. Their art is not just making, but making things work together.

The Station: A high-tech Universal Interface Jig or an Eidic Multitool, stations designed for analysis and improvisation, not mass production.

The Integrated Mechanic: The Power of Insight A Master Integrator gains a unique perceptual ability that is reflected in their Subjective Interface. When they examine an unknown piece of technology, their UI does not show [UNKNOWN ALIEN DEVICE]. Instead, it attempts a functional translation based on the “Universal Grammar”:

• Observing an Arborian “Seed-Thrower”: The UI renders a schematic overlaid with the Integrator’s own analysis: [Probable Projectile Launcher. Energy Source: Organic, Seed-Based. Firing Mechanism: Bio-Chemical Reaction. Note: Incompatible with standard power cells. Requires nutrient feed.]

This allows the Integrator to diagnose, and even attempt to repair or modify, technology from cultures they have never encountered.

The Art of the Hybrid: Heretical Engineering This is the endgame of Assembly & Maintenance. A true master can attempt to jury-rig components from radically different technological and biological bases. This is a high-risk, high-reward form of crafting that pushes the game’s systems to their limits.

• Example 1: The Haunted Targeting System. An Integrator could attempt to power a Hegemonic Targeting System (which requires a [Quantum Power Core]) with a Krystallos Grief-Shard (which outputs raw, emotional Eidos). A successful craft might create a unique Artifact: a targeting system that is unnervingly accurate but occasionally glitches, displaying the ghostly last moments of the Krystallos’s ancestors.
• Example 2: The Symbiotic Servitor. A master might try to repair a damaged [Artisan] servitor arm not with steel, but by grafting a living, symbiotic [Arborian Gripper-Vine] onto the chassis. The result could be a self-repairing but sometimes disobedient limb.

Assembly & Maintenance is the discipline that holds the crafting world together. Its progression is a journey of ever-widening understanding, from the desperate struggle to keep a single tool working to the god-like ability to synthesize the forgotten technologies of a dozen fallen empires into something new, strange, and uniquely your own.