Starting Equipment

Some Ghosts find their Guardians right away, but others do not find their Guardians so quickly. Some search for decades, or even centuries, traveling as far as the Reef or beyond to find the single someone they can align with.

Whatever the case, during its travels, your Ghost has had the opportunity to collect gear and items which it bequeaths to you when it resurrects you for the first time. Choose one item from each of the following options to determine the equipment you have at 1st level. At the Architect’s discretion, your Ghost may have additional gear or glimmer determined by its travels prior to finding you.

1. A generalist shell for your Ghost.
2. Either (a) a simple melee weapon, or (b) a simple firearm of your choice and 5 simple ammo magazines.
3. Either (a) leather armor, (b) plastwire armor, or (c) plasteel armor.
4. Either (a) a bow of your choice and 20 ammunition for it, (b) a martial firearm of your choice and 3 magazines for it, or (c) a martial melee weapon of your choice.
5. 5d4 x 100 glimmer, which you can choose to spend on additional equipment your Ghost has ready for you.
6. A trinket from the trinket table, or another trinket of your choice (discuss with your Architect).

Wealth and Glimmer

Wealth is measured almost universally across the solar system in terms of glimmer: white-blue, brightly shining programmable cubes of matter from the Golden Age that can be turned into any nonliving substance or object. In some far-flung, lost, or forgotten corners of the system, wealth may be measured in material goods instead, but such places are few and far between.

The Golden Age of humanity left behind an untold amount of glimmer. Sometimes Guardians can find a few bits here and there while rummaging through a ruined house; other times, they may stumble across an unimaginable amount in a vault deep beneath a ruined metropolis. But more often than not, Guardians will receive glimmer from others, either taking it from enemies or by trading goods or services.

Any item that was made out of glimmer, either in part or in whole, can be reduced back to a third of the bits of glimmer used to create the item. Parts that were not made out of glimmer remain as physical pieces. Ghosts and the average scanner can easily detect if an item is glimmer-made or not, or how much of the object consists of glimmer-made materials.

Glimmer-made objects can be programmed to be irreversible, though a very good hacker can get around this. Glimmer is also susceptible to glitching, resulting in objects that may be rendered… a bit off. These items may appear in an odd color, have strange geometry jutting out of them, or have unique properties other than what their construction should entail.

Measuring Glimmer

The smallest quantitative unit of glimmer is referred to as a single bit. Physically, a bit is hardly bigger than the average pinkie nail of a human. Bits can be added together to save physical space. The Glimmer Dimensions table lists the size of perfect cubes of glimmer, but glimmer can come in imperfect cuboid forms or crystals of varying size. The term for the amount of glimmer in a cube or object is bit depth.

Due to the nature of glimmer, it’s more efficient to store glimmer together as a single object than to split it apart into several objects.

When it comes to mercantile transactions, the price of goods is almost always listed as how many bits it costs, or simply how much glimmer is required to make the item in question. An object that requires 1,000 bits of glimmer to make is often listed simply as costing 1,000 glimmer—with perhaps a bit extra, for the service of programming and rendering the object.

Amount	Perfect Cube Side Length	Weight
1 bit	0.25”	0.0003 lb.
10 bits	0.5”	0.0025 lb.
100 bits	1”	0.02 lb.
1,000 bits	2”	0.16 lb.
10,000 bits	4”	~1.3 lb.
100,000 bits	8”	~10 lb.

Glimmer Mining

It is believed that during the Golden Age, glimmer was so abundant people rarely used any other material to create anything non-organic. Indeed, many of the surviving ruins of the Golden Age still retain functionality because they are made of the seemingly timeless glimmer, and despite the best efforts of the best minds they remain unhackable, thus preventing anyone from deconstructing them back to raw glimmer.

However, Earth in particular saw so much glimmer usage that glimmer particles are ubiquitous in the ecosystem, much like particulate microplastics were before the Golden Age. Because of this, glimmer can be mined from naturally concentrated veins, if you have highly specialized machinery and don’t mind tearing up the earth to do it.

Engrams

Engrams are encrypted dodecahedrons of glimmer that, when decrypted, render into a single, predetermined item. Decrypting an engram is no easy task. Most Guardians rely on the studied Cryptarchy to decrypt their engrams rather than leaving the task to their Ghosts. This is especially true for more difficult engrams, because a botched decryption attempt can decohere an engram’s contents into mere glimmer rather than whatever item was worth hiding in encoded form.

Only items that are made completely of glimmer can be turned into engrams.

Repairing Items

Guardians may be able to resurrect from total destruction, but their equipment isn’t always so lucky. Weapons can be stolen, armor can be broken, and paper books can get burnt to ash. 

When something is damaged, but not totally destroyed, your Architect may allow you to repair it. Whoever performs the repair will need an appropriate toolkit or skill proficiency: Arcana for artifacts, electronics toolkit for electronics, vehicle toolkit for vehicles, etc (ask your Architect). They’ll also need to spend some glimmer to create the necessary materials, or gather the materials, to make the actual repairs with. 

The amount of glimmer spent should be 10-50% of the total cost of making the item. For instance, a lightly damaged tier 0 auto rifle (total spent to create: 1,750 gl) might cost 175 gl to repair (10%), but a badly damaged tier 2 auto rifle (total spent to create: 4,750 gl) might cost 2,375 gl to repair (50%).

Ghosts Capturing Equipment

When a Ghost captures a Guardian’s Power, any equipment they’re wearing or wielding is also captured in the Ghost’s memory. Then, when the Guardian is resurrected, they’re brought back with their worn and wielded items, which are in the same state as they were when the Guardian’s Power was captured. This may mean one or more items are captured as broken, and thus will still be broken when the Guardian resurrects.