Nexus Spine

Archotech spine that doubles as a full neural bus and load column.

Rules Reference

Field	Value
Capacity Cost	4
Category	cyber-prosthetics
Rek Cost	200000 (no legitimate vendor; salvaged, bespoke-commissioned, or stolen Core commando stock)

Notes

Benefit: Archotech spine that doubles as a full neural bus and load column. Treat your Strength as 3 higher for carry capacity and encumbrance, gain +3 to initiative and +3 to Reflex, ignore all recoil penalty from small arms and the first 2 points from heavy weapons, and gain +4 to Fortitude vs paralysis, stun, and neural shock. The spine is a hardpoint: one other spinal or torso augmentation fitted to the carrier has its capacityCost reduced by 1 (minimum 1). Major benefit level.

Install Risk: Medicine DC 23 to integrate the archotech column and bus. Recipient makes a Fortitude save DC 18 or gains Botched Implant: sensory flood, chronic overload pain and -3 to all d20 rolls from unfiltered nerve traffic until a Medicine DC 19 recalibration by a specialist.

Origin: Pre-Fall archotech stock or peer-state commando programmes; the spine is the centrepiece around which a full combat chassis is built.

Signature: Ghost. Off the Kadiss registry; its neural-traffic pattern is unmistakable to any scanner and marks the carrier as commando-grade hardware at a glance.

Strain: No filter. The nexus carries every signal at full strength, so the carrier feels their whole body in unblunted detail; recovery from ongoing pain or sensory effects takes twice as long, and neural-shock weapons deal half their damage as extra nerve trauma to the carrier. If the spine is severed, the carrier is paralyzed below the neck until it is repaired.