Chapter 3.5: The Cysuit and Aelith in Play

Most Morlenciri field characters carry a cysuit. It is clothing, protection, medical system, computer, sensors, toolmaker, and the wearer's interface to the Aelith. Those functions operate at different layers. A lost radio link can cut off a Focus download while the same cysuit continues to seal a wound, hold pressure, and read the atmosphere.

On a character sheet, a functioning cysuit is a Trait. Its ordinary capabilities require no separate inventory entries. Dedicated hardware, unusual damage, and current network conditions receive Traits of their own.

Standard Cysuit Capabilities

A functioning standard cysuit provides the following capabilities.

These capabilities establish what is possible before a Task is called. A routine atmospheric reading succeeds automatically. A Task begins when the sample is alien, concealed, changing under pressure, or beyond the standard sensors. The cysuit makes an eight-hour vacuum crossing possible; navigation, pursuit, damage, and the closing life-support window can still make that crossing uncertain.

Local Functions and Network Functions

Environmental protection, physical support, loaded Focuses, local sensors, general fabrication, and trauma routines remain available without the Aelith. The cysuit can also form a local mesh with nearby cysuits.

The following functions require an active connection to the wider Aelith or to a node carrying the needed signed data:

• downloading a new Focus;
• reaching live Imperial records beyond the local cache;
• receiving remote Assistance or Motor Authority;
• transmitting Sensus beyond the local mesh;
• calling distant specialists, ships, or facilities.

Treat the current connection as one of four states.

The gamemaster states the connection when it matters. Distance to a relay, local interference, hostile jamming, deliberate radio silence, or damage can change it. A successful Task may improve the connection by creating a Trait such as Relay Aligned or Clear Line to the Ship.

Focus Loadouts

A Focus is an active package of references, interpretive models, and cysuit routines. A main character has six Focus Slots. The Focuses chosen during Lifepath fill the starting Loadout. A Focus expands the critical-success range of a matching Task to the character's Specialization rating; swapping a Focus never changes that rating.

Most Focuses are Loadable. When you fill a Loadable slot, choose any signed library the character can legitimately access. Imperial public and professional libraries cover the sample Focuses in Chapter 4.3. Restricted records, foreign systems, and newly discovered fields may require an Asset, permission, or work in the fiction before their Focus becomes available.

Some Focuses are Rooted. A Rooted Focus represents personal knowledge or embodied practice that a library cannot supply safely: a named community known from years of life, a martial style built into muscle memory, a relationship of earned trust, or a personal artistic practice. Mark a Focus as Rooted when you choose it. It occupies one Focus Slot and cannot be replaced through a Focus Swap. Changing it requires time, training, and a development in the character's story.

The same name can describe either source. Hand-to-Hand Combat may be a Loadable motor library for one character and a Rooted school of practice for another. State the source when the distinction matters.

Shipboard Focus Swapping

On your ship, connect the cysuit or Synthetic chassis to a dataport. Between scenes, replace any number of Loadable Focuses. This costs no Momentum, requires no Task, and uses no external radio channel. The ship verifies and transfers the signed packages directly.

Choose the crew's departure Loadouts after reading the commission and selecting Prepared Assets. This is ordinary preparation.

Field Focus Swapping

In the field, replace one Loadable Focus at a time.

1. Establish a Full or Limited Aelith connection to a node carrying the signed Focus package.
2. Name the active Loadable Focus being replaced and the Focus being loaded.
3. Maintain the connection for 10 minutes at Full bandwidth or 30 minutes at Limited bandwidth.
4. At the end of that time, replace the old Focus with the new one.

The transfer costs no Momentum, generates no Threat, and requires no Task in stable conditions. Its costs are time, bandwidth, and exposure. An interruption leaves the old Focus in place. Cysuits accept complete, verified packages and discard an incomplete transfer.

A field Focus Swap is a sustained, high-volume radio transmission. It creates the Trait Active Aelith Transmission for the duration. Any adversary equipped to monitor the local bands detects the cysuit's presence automatically. Sensor coverage over the area reveals its position; more distant monitoring yields a bearing or search area. When the transfer ends, the adversary retains the last known position.

Ordinary messages and short telemetry bursts may also be detected according to the scene. A Focus Swap always produces enough traffic for capable opposition to find.

Your infiltrator entered the facility with Disguise loaded. The sealed archive proves to use a foreign circuit architecture, so she wants Vault and Containment Systems. Her link to the ship is Limited. The swap takes 30 minutes and replaces Disguise. The facility's security array monitors the same band, so it detects her transmission and records her position. She gains the Focus; security gains a place to start looking.

Focuses, Tools, and Hardware

Loading software supplies information and routines. Physical work still requires physical means.

• A Focus can apply to analysis, planning, or interpretation with no specialized tool when the action itself needs none.
• A Task that requires common hand tools can use the standard cysuit fabricator.
• A Task that requires a laboratory, weapon, vehicle, specialized instrument, or substantial feedstock needs the relevant Trait or Asset.
• Missing essential equipment can make a Task impossible. Improvised or inferior equipment usually raises the Difficulty or complication range.

A Cysuit Hardware Trait names a structure committed into the colony: Clinical Sequencer, Deep-Survey Sensor Array, Integrated Microfoundry, Defensive Field Projector, or Signal-Bending Rig. Hardware can make a Task possible, lower its Difficulty, or increase its effect according to the Trait rules. It remains installed across Focus Swaps. Changing committed hardware requires an extended Foundry refit between commissions and the gamemaster's agreement.

External equipment can meet the same requirement. A character with Genetic Sequencing can use a shipboard Laboratory without carrying a Clinical Sequencer.

Remote Assistance and Sensus

Remote Assistance follows the ordinary Assistance rules in Chapter 3.1 and also requires a Full or Limited connection. Full bandwidth carries an assistant's timing and sensory context cleanly. A Limited connection acts as a Trait whenever delay or lost fidelity obstructs the help. Minimal and Offline connections can carry prior instructions or cached records, with no live Assistance roll.

Remote medicine also requires the patient to open the relevant Sensus layers or an emergency Vitalis protocol to engage. Motor Authority requires its own explicit authorization. Consent remains under the originator's control throughout.

Damage, Power, and Repair

Cysuit damage should name the affected function. Useful Complication Traits include Radio Burned Out, Sensor Colony Contaminated, Medical Reserves Depleted, Fabricator Mass Exhausted, and Protection Compromised. Disable or penalize the named function while leaving the rest of the distributed colony in operation.

With suitable tools, repairing one compromised function is a Control + Engineering Task at Difficulty 1 on a ship or in a proper facility, and Difficulty 2 in the field. Damage woven through living tissue may require Medicine and Engineering working together. Severe colony loss can become an Injury and follows Chapter 3.4.

Routine power and feedstock remain background details. Make them Traits when the fiction depletes them. Power Starved may narrow sensors and fabrication; Colony Mass Exhausted prevents forming further equipment until the character reclaims material.

Characters Without a Cysuit

An unbonded character keeps their Attributes and Specializations. Their Focuses represent learned expertise and are Rooted by default. They use carried equipment, terminals, and Prepared Assets as Traits, receive no cysuit Protection, and cannot perform a cysuit Focus Swap. This supports the Syliri who decline bonding and visitors who work with a crew before adopting Imperial augmentation. A main character already passed the Rites and therefore bonded in the past; their Unbonded Trait records a later separation. A lifelong-unbonded person may appear as a Companion, Supporting Character, or NPC and does not hold Starborn status.

A Synthetic character in its own chassis uses its substrate and chassis interface for these rules. It may Focus Swap through a dataport or the Aelith, and chooses a Chassis Hardware Trait in place of Cysuit Hardware. A Synthetic joined to an organic partner uses the shared cysuit.