[FIXER’S COMMUNIQUE: STREET-LEVEL SURVIVAL]
SUBJECT: A Survivor’s Guide to Fashion (Or, How Not to Look Like Fresh Meat)
In this city, your look is your resume. It’s the story you tell before you even open your mouth. Every piece of chrome, every scrap of fabric, every scar on your skin is a line in your biography. It tells us if you’re a threat, an asset, a ghost, or just a tourist waiting to get rolled. Dress smart.
The Two Worlds: The Cage and the Cold
First, understand there are two sets of rules for what you wear.
- Inside the Cage (The Bastion): The Warmth Grid keeps the city from freezing solid, but don’t get it twisted — it’s not paradise. The air is always damp, the streets are slick with a perpetual drizzle, and the air tastes of ozone and steam . The temperature is bearable, so you can show some skin if you’re looking to make a statement. But this is a vertical slum; practicality is king. Think layers, waterproof materials, and boots that can handle grimy puddles and rusty ladders.
- Outside the Walls (The Amber Wastes): Out here, fashion is a joke. Survival is the only aesthetic. The cold is a physical enemy, the Amber Snow is a contagion, and the wind carries the static. You don’t leave the city gates without full, insulated gear. Sealed coats, heavy boots, and always, always a rebreather or gas mask. Your skin is a liability out here. Protection is the only thing that matters.
Building Your Ghost: A Layer-by-Layer Guide
Think about your avatar from the inside out. Every piece tells your story.
- The Skin (Your Canvas): Are you a clean-blooded Vaulted, your skin untouched by the city’s grime? Or a Runner, covered in a thin layer of street-dirt and the faint scars of back-alley scuffles? Maybe you’re an Outlander, your face weathered by the wind, your skin carrying the subtle, unhealthy pallor of low-level Blight exposure. Your tattoos aren’t just art; they’re faction tags, circuit diagrams, or memorials to a dead crew.
- The Chrome (Your Plumbing): Cybernetics here aren’t the sleek, seamless toys the Corpos advertise. On the street, chrome is plumbing. It’s surgery with a wrench. Your cyber-arm should have visible seams, exposed hydraulic lines, and maybe a few scuffs. Your optic implant might flicker with a constant, monochrome data-scroll. It’s a tool, and it should look like it’s been used.
- The Layers (Your Resume): Your clothing is a collage of your history. A Runner might wear a scavenged Aurora security vest over a worn synth-leather jacket and patched-up cargo pants . An Outlander wears functional, layered gear made from military surplus and the chitinous hides of Riftspawn they’ve killed themselves. A Sanguine favors dark, tailored, functional clothing that looks clean but allows for the predatory grace they’re known for .
- The Details (Your Story): This is what makes you real. The worn holster for a pistol you don’t always carry. The heavy, scavenged bag full of tools or data-slates. The gas mask hanging from your belt. The piece of jewelry made from a spent bullet casing or a strange, crystalline shard found in the Wastes. These are the small things that tell the world you belong here.
[TRANSMISSION END]
