Survival, Medical, and Colony Gear

The Verge is large and indifferent. Between the charted slipstream corridors and the major port stations, there is an enormous amount of space that will kill you quickly if you give it any kind of opportunity. The survivors of the Verge's fringe are people who learned this and responded by carrying more gear, maintaining it better, and developing a studied suspicion of optimism.

This chapter covers three related categories: the equipment that keeps a person alive in hostile environments, the equipment that keeps a person alive after something goes wrong with their body, and the equipment that keeps a small community alive in the kinds of places where communities tend to be established because the land was cheap and the question of why it was cheap was not asked until after the contracts were signed.

Survival Gear

Survival gear represents the gap between "we are somewhere hostile and we need to not die" and "we are somewhere hostile and we have the tools to not die." The gap is bridgeable. It requires the right equipment maintained in working order, the knowledge of how to use it, and the willingness to have thought about this before the moment when it becomes urgently relevant.

Professional crews in the Verge treat survival gear the way professional crews treat fire suppression equipment: you hope you never need it, you maintain it anyway, and you make sure everyone on the ship knows where it is and what to do with it. Crews that treat survival gear as optional equipment that takes up space make for very short stories.

Emergency Rations (1 week supply). High-caloric-density blocks designed for palatability across species-general nutritional requirements. The "standard" version is genuinely nutritionally adequate for humans and Felina, marginally adequate for Ilyari and Dhoran, and technically survivable for Ssarathi for about three days before species-specific nutritional deficits become noticeable. The species-appropriate variants at +10cr are worth the additional cost and represent the difference between emergency rations and emergency rations that do not make the situation worse. They taste approximately the same regardless of species targeting, which is to say: they taste like compressed necessity.

Filtration Unit. A hand-portable water purification system that handles biological contamination, heavy metals, radiation contamination up to a moderate threshold, and most chemical contaminants. It does not filter everything; some industrial-grade chemical soups require more than a portable filtration unit, and the device will tell you when this is the case rather than producing water that seems clean and is not. Runtime on a charge is about 72 hours of continuous operation. On a colony with marginal or uncertain water supply, the Filtration Unit is not optional equipment; it is infrastructure.

Emergency Shelter (4-person). A pressurized pop-tent rated for hostile atmospheres at up to 4 standard pressures. Deploys from a compact carry pack in about ninety seconds, generates its own air supply from a built-in recycler for up to 8 hours, and maintains internal pressure against winds up to about 120km/h. Not vacuum-rated: the material and sealing are atmosphere-grade only. Not intended for long-term habitation: 8 hours is the designed window, after which the recycler begins losing efficiency and CO2 levels start rising. Very good at what it does within those parameters, which is keeping four people alive long enough to be found or to find their way somewhere better.

Emergency Beacon. A hardened transmitter broadcasting on all standard emergency frequencies simultaneously. 72-hour battery. The signal contains the beacon's GPS coordinates and a standard distress identifier. Relay-network range varies by environment: on a planet with relay coverage, a rescue query will be received within minutes. On a planet without relay coverage, you are broadcasting at ships in system and hoping someone is paying attention. In deep space with no relay and no ships in sensor range, the beacon is doing its job; it is just not doing it for an audience yet.

Mag Boots. Electrostatic adhesion boots for use on ferrous or metallic surfaces in zero-g. The adhesion is strong enough to work against about 2g of lateral force before releasing, which means the wearer can move normally and still be pushed off the surface if something large hits them. The toggle for release is at the ankle; new zero-g workers learn within the first hour of use why the toggle needs to be where they can activate it deliberately and not where it can be bumped accidentally.

Grapple Line and Launcher. A pneumatic launcher that fires a magnetic grapple head to 30 meters, with a retractable high-tensile line rated for 400kg. Used for EVA work when thruster packs are unavailable or unnecessary, for boarding and vertical movement in station environments, and for rescue situations. The head can be swapped for adhesive pads for non-ferrous surfaces or a hook for structure anchoring. Carry three replacement heads. You will use them.

Thruster Pack (personal EVA). A compact thruster assembly that fits over a standard suit and provides genuine free movement in zero-g using compressed propellant. 30 minutes of active thrust means about 45 minutes of effective use with conservative management; aggressive thrusting consumes the supply faster. Not designed for combat: the thruster pack is not maneuverable enough to be useful in active fire, and the propellant tank represents a significant vulnerability. For calm zero-g work and EVA traversal, it is considerably more useful than a grapple line and considerably less frightening than pushing off a surface and hoping you aimed correctly.

Rebreather. A face-fitting device with a filter and recycling system that extends survivable time in hostile atmospheres by about 30 minutes. It addresses: low oxygen concentration, most biological particulates, and moderate chemical contamination. It does not address: hard vacuum, extreme chemical atmospheres, radiation, or atmospheres with unsurvivable composition regardless of oxygen. Thirty minutes is not a solution; it is a buffer. A buffer is frequently the difference between a crisis and a fatality.

Environmental Suit (light, atmosphere only). A sealed full-body suit designed for hostile atmosphere work. Covers the species-general body plan with sealed joints and integrated atmospheric management. Not vacuum-rated: the seals are designed for pressure differentials up to 3 standard, which covers most planetary hostile atmospheres but not the zero-pressure environment of open space. For vacuum work, a proper EVA suit is required. The light environmental suit is significantly easier to work in than a full EVA suit and is the standard option for surface operations on worlds with hostile but not vacuum environments.

Active Camouflage System. A surface-coating and emitter array that can be applied to worn gear, vehicles, or equipment. The system reads surrounding environment and adjusts surface coloration and thermal output to match, providing genuine adaptive camouflage against both visual and sensor detection. The effect is impressive in natural environments and significantly less effective in uniform artificial ones: on a featureless white wall, actively trying to look like the featureless white wall produces a recognizable outline. In undergrowth, rocky terrain, or mixed natural-artificial environments, it is remarkably effective.

Colony Survival Pack. The standard departure kit for anyone heading to a colony that might not be what was advertised. Bundled pricing makes this significantly cheaper than buying the components separately, which is why it is the standard option despite being slightly heavier than necessary for any single situation it is designed for. Fringe colony supply merchants sell more Colony Survival Packs than anything else in their inventory, which tells you something about the nature of fringe colony situations.

Funtari Hover Sled (personal). A Funtari-manufactured single-person anti-gravity platform with a cargo shelf rated for 10 Enc of additional gear. The operator stands or sits on the platform and controls it through a combination of weight distribution and integrated handgrip controls. Atmospheric only: the anti-gravity system does not function in vacuum and the hover ceiling is about 15 meters above the ground in standard gravity. Not fast: maximum speed is roughly 60km/h at top output, and 40km/h is more practical for loaded work. Extremely useful for carrying heavy gear over terrain that would otherwise require significant physical effort or a ground vehicle.

Planetary Vehicle Tools. The ground vehicle equivalent of the Engineer's Kit: a comprehensive maintenance and repair toolkit for atmospheric and ground vehicles. Covers most common drive systems, suspension configurations, and power plants. Required for any serious repair attempt on a ground vehicle. Covers the two most common ground vehicle standards and includes adapter sets for another six. Does not include welding equipment; for serious structural work, add a Portable Welder.

Medical Gear

Medical practice in the Verge is complicated by the fact that there are five species with genuinely different physiologies, that the standards of medical care vary enormously by jurisdiction and wealth, and that a significant portion of the people who need medical care are in situations where the nearest hospital is six jumps away at minimum.

The field medicine that shipboard crew practice is a specific discipline. It is not the same as hospital medicine. It is closer to: knowing which problems can be stabilized until proper care is available, which problems cannot be stabilized but can be managed, and which problems are going to resolve one way or another regardless of what you do. The best shipboard medics are honest about which category any given situation falls into.

A word about species: most medical items in this chapter specify multi-species supplies, which means they include species-appropriate pharmaceutical variants and instruments. Using single-species supplies on the wrong species does not work: the pharmaceutical dosages are wrong, the diagnostic reference values are wrong, and in some cases (Dhoran physiology, Ssarathi thermal shock responses) the wrong treatment actively causes harm. Species-Specific Medical Packs exist for a reason.

Field Medkit. The minimum viable medical kit for shipboard use. Contains: wound dressings in multiple formats, a multi-species diagnostic reference and triage checklist, pharmaceutical basics across all five species (analgesics, anticoagulants, basic antibiotics, anti-inflammatory compounds), trauma shears, and an adrenaline auto-injector. Replenishing supplies after use costs about 40cr per session of use; running out of supplies is not an abstract risk on long hauls.

Trauma Kit (surgical-grade field). The Field Medkit handles triage and stabilization. The Trauma Kit handles the things that happen when triage and stabilization are not enough. Contains everything in the Field Medkit plus: a portable surgical light array, bone-setting tools for three species, sterile field generators, a cauterization unit, diagnostic probes for internal imaging, and a considerably expanded pharmaceutical suite including surgical anesthetics, blood volume expanders for all five species, and anti-rejection compounds for emergency tissue work. Heavy enough that crews with a dedicated medic tend to carry the Trauma Kit in a dedicated bag rather than on a person.

Stimpack. A pressurized injector containing a blend of coagulants, neural stimulants, and rapid-action cellular repair compounds. Jabs in, triggers the injection, and the body's ability to keep functioning extends meaningfully in the short term. What it does not do is fix underlying damage: a person who has taken three stimpacks has pushed themselves past the point where their body's emergency systems are sustainable, and the overdose effect represents the physiological cost of that. The street recommendation is: two maximum in a fight. The medical recommendation is one maximum and then stop fighting.

Combat Stims. A different category from stimpacks: these address the mental and autonomic cost of sustained stress rather than physical trauma. The effect is a rapid-onset focus and stress-response enhancement followed by a predictable backlash. Used by military personnel, first responders, and people who know they have one very difficult moment in front of them and need everything they have for it. The backlash Strain is predictable and manageable with rest; using them repeatedly in a session without rest is not recommended and is the kind of thing that produces medical files with language like "pattern of substance use" in them.

Anesthetic. A pharmaceutical agent available in injectable and aerosol formats. The injectable is more reliable and has a faster onset; the aerosol covers a slightly larger area but has a lower effective dose per target and does not work through sealed respiratory filters. Dosage varies significantly by species: Dhoran require approximately triple the standard dose for the same effect; Ssarathi metabolize standard anesthetics significantly faster than expected and may require supplemental doses for extended procedures. The dosage reference card included in every anesthetic package has been updated four times in the last decade.

Anti-Venom/Antitoxin. A multi-spectrum pharmaceutical formulation that binds to and neutralizes a broad range of biological and synthetic toxins. Not universal: some exotic chemical compounds and certain engineered biological toxins require species-specific formulations that are not included in the standard version. The packaging includes a toxin identification guide, because using antitoxin against something it does not address wastes the dose and the time. Standard formulation covers: common biological venoms (Ssarathi, Dhoran, and several Verge fauna species), most commercial chemical intoxicants, and the half-dozen most commonly encountered industrial toxins.

Xenomedical Supplement Kit. The kit contains species-specific diagnostic references, pharmaceutical adjuncts, and instrument adapters that allow a practitioner trained primarily in one species' medicine to work across the full range. It does not replace species-specific training; a practitioner without the Xenomedicine talent is still working at reduced effectiveness. What it does is provide the reference material to reduce the most basic errors: knowing that Ilyari patients require lower analgesic doses, that Felina have a dangerous interaction with standard human anticoagulants, and that Dhoran wound sealing requires different pressure techniques. The kit is, in practice, the difference between making workable decisions and making guesses.

Medical Diagnostic Scanner. A clinical-grade handheld scanner that returns full physiological data on a scanned patient: vital signs across species-appropriate parameters, tissue damage mapping to about 5cm resolution, toxin and pharmaceutical levels, neural activity baseline, and comparative reference against species-typical health profiles. An experienced medic with a Diagnostic Scanner can identify conditions that a visual examination would miss entirely. Required for any situation where the diagnosis is not immediately obvious, which in field medicine is most situations.

Surgical Suite (portable). The fully equipped option for field surgery. Contains: a deployable sterile field tent, a surgical traction table that adjusts for all five species' body plans, a complete instrument set for major surgery, an AI-assisted surgical guidance system that provides step-by-step procedure reference and alerts on anomalous readings, anesthesia delivery system, and a post-operative monitoring package. Setting up the full suite takes about fifteen minutes. It is not a hospital; it is what you use when a hospital is not an option and the problem cannot wait.

Species-Specific Medical Pack. Each pack contains a full pharmacological and instrument suite for one species, calibrated to that species' physiological standards. The Ilyari pack includes fine instruments sized for Ilyari physiology and low-dose pharmaceutical formulations; the Ssarathi pack addresses the species' unique thermal-biology considerations and requires different wound-sealing approaches; the Felina pack includes formulations that avoid the interaction risks common in multi-species kits; the Dhoran pack is larger than the others by necessity and contains reinforced instruments. A medic using a Species-Specific pack for the matching species is working at full capability regardless of xenomedicine training; the pack has done the species-specific adjustment work already.

Continuity Stack Emergency Patch. A Shoiyan-manufactured hardware kit for emergency intervention in a damaged or failing continuity stack implant. The stack is, as the Shoiyan maintain, the most important hardware a person carries; its failure at the moment of death means the backup is lost and the death is, by Shoiyan legal definition, permanent. The Emergency Patch provides a bypass for common failure modes, a manual backup trigger, and a short-range broadcast that can initiate transfer even if the implant's primary broadcast is compromised. Using it requires a successful Medicine check at Average difficulty. Failing means the backup may still be lost; succeeding means the death, if it comes, still has a legal solution.

Pain Suppressants. The pharmaceutical management of pain has a long history and a complex ethical context. Pain suppressants in the Verge work well. They work so well that using them in combat is genuinely dangerous, because the feedback that tells you how badly you are hurt is the feedback that tells you to stop doing the thing that is hurting you. The medical consensus is: use them for recovery and procedure, not for pushing through a situation that your body is correctly identifying as unsustainable.

Stimulant Injector (auto). A wearable device that monitors the wearer's vital signs and automatically administers a stimpack when those signs indicate critical trauma. The advantage: it does not require anyone to be in a position to help when the moment arrives. The disadvantage: it uses one stimpack, which counts toward the overdose threshold if the wearer subsequently takes additional stims. The injector is calibrated to species-appropriate thresholds; a Dhoran-calibrated injector will not fire at the same vitals reading as a human-calibrated one.

Cryo Pack. An emergency stasis system for field use. The cryo pack brings a patient's metabolic processes to a near-halt, preserving their current condition, stable or otherwise, for up to 72 hours without further deterioration. The catch: "current condition" includes any active bleeding, toxin spread, or damage process that was ongoing at the time of application. The cryo pack does not fix anything; it stops the clock. It is the difference between a 72-hour window to reach proper care and a situation that resolves badly before help arrives.

Colony and Infrastructure Gear

The fringe colonies of the Verge are built by people who had a compelling reason to go somewhere difficult: a land grant, a resource claim, a religious community, a corporate development project, a desire to be far enough from every existing authority that they could run their own show for once. The compelling reason does not guarantee that the place is livable, the support infrastructure exists, or that help is coming quickly when something goes wrong.

Fringe colonies are defined by what they cannot get easily. They cannot get replacement parts shipped in quickly, so they maintain everything past the point where a port-adjacent operation would have replaced it. They cannot get specialists in quickly, so generalists develop skills in whatever the colony needs them to develop. They cannot get medical care quickly, so they invest heavily in prevention, self-treatment capability, and the social infrastructure of people who know how to do things the hard way.

The equipment in this section represents the practical technology of colony survival. It is not glamorous. A Water Reclamation Unit is not exciting. It is also the difference between a colony that can function indefinitely and a colony that runs out of options the first time the supply ship is delayed two months.

Portable Power Cell (standard). The workhorse of field power supply. A standard-form rechargeable cell that outputs at the universal connector standard that about 70% of equipment in the Verge uses, with adapters for most of the rest. 48 hours at standard draw; heavy equipment drains faster. Recharges from a Heavy Power Generator in about 6 hours, from a ship's secondary power in 4, and from solar if you have the attachment array and the sun's cooperation. Colonies maintain banks of charged cells as a buffer against generator downtime; running out of charged cells is a bad situation that happens gradually and then suddenly.

Heavy Power Generator. A robust power generation system that can run on several fuel types: hydrogen cells, processed biomass, solar concentrators, or geothermal coupling if the local geology cooperates. The generator itself does not care; the fuel handling does. A properly maintained Heavy Power Generator running on available local fuel is the basis of any permanent colony installation. Two generators as primary and backup is considered minimum viable for any settlement that cannot afford to go dark; one generator is what colonies have when they could only afford one generator, which is common.

Water Reclamation Unit. Collects all water outputs from a group of ten people, including respiration moisture, wastewater, and condensation, filters and purifies them through a multi-stage process, and returns potable water. The system requires almost no external water input once running; the small daily loss to evaporation and absorption is the only replenishment needed under normal conditions. On a world with any surface water source, this is supplemented easily. On a world with no accessible surface water, the reclamation unit is what keeps the colony alive. Colonies have been established on genuinely waterless worlds on the basis that the reclamation unit would handle it; this is true and also an extremely uncomfortable long-term operating reality.

Atmospheric Processor (personal scale). A sealed-habitat atmospheric converter that pulls outside atmosphere through its intake, strips out the hostile components, adds appropriate oxygen and nitrogen mix from its onboard reserves, and outputs breathable air into the connected habitat space. "Personal scale" covers a space approximately 8m x 6m x 3m at comfortable living density. For larger spaces, multiple units are required or a larger industrial-scale system is needed. The unit's onboard reserves for adding components to a thin atmosphere last about 30 days; after that, the unit needs resupply if it cannot find what it needs locally. On most worlds with hostile but not completely inert atmospheres, it can work indefinitely on local inputs.

Construction Drones (pack of 4). A set of four medium-sized construction drones capable of basic fabrication, material transport, excavation, and structural assembly. They are not autonomous: they require an operator to direct them through a control interface, and they do not handle complex problem-solving independently. What they do is tireless, accurate, and physically capable in ways that human labor cannot match: a team of four construction drones can move and place materials that would require a dozen workers otherwise, and they do not need rest, food, or protection from hostile environment conditions that their sealed casings handle. The control interface has a gentle learning curve; experienced drone operators are genuinely valuable on colony projects.

Portable Relay Booster. The relay network that the Verge runs on is genuinely impressive infrastructure that also has coverage gaps wherever it was not profitable to install coverage. Fringe colonies frequently sit in exactly these gaps. The Portable Relay Booster is a signal amplification and relay-node extension device that connects to whatever relay signal is marginally available at a location and extends it to cover an area of roughly 50km radius at functional strength. It does not create relay coverage where no signal whatsoever reaches; it improves marginal coverage to usable coverage. For colonies just inside the coverage edge, it is the difference between having relay access and not having it.

Crop Accelerator (agricultural). A sealed hydroponic growth environment with controlled lighting, atmospheric composition, nutrient delivery, and temperature management. Calibrated for accelerated growth cycles across a range of common food crops. On most colony worlds, the Crop Accelerator does not replace field agriculture; it supplements it, providing fresh produce and caloric variety during establishment phases and serving as the primary food source during hostile seasons or dust events that prevent outdoor growing. The accelerated growth cycle produces yields in roughly a third of standard growing time at the cost of higher energy consumption. Running one requires a Heavy Power Generator or equivalent.

Emergency Bulkhead Seal. A rapid-deployment habitat breach sealing system for use when a pressure loss in a colony structure needs to be addressed faster than standard repair allows. The system deploys an expanding composite membrane over a breach up to 4m x 4m in seconds, bonding to surrounding structure and holding pressure while permanent repair is completed. Rated for 6 standard atmospheres of differential. Used once and then replaced; the membrane is single-deployment. Every colony habitat section should have at least one mounted on the wall. Many do not, until after the first time they need one.

Colony Medical Station. The minimum viable automated medical capability for a settlement that cannot get to a hospital and cannot get a hospital to come to it. The station contains: a diagnostic suite capable of identifying most conditions, a pharmaceutical dispensary with the 200 most common therapeutic agents across all five species, a surgical capability for a defined set of procedures, a continuous monitoring system for up to 6 patients, and an AI guidance system that walks non-specialist operators through procedures step by step. The AI guidance system is explicitly not a Jaziri AGI and the documentation says so in three places; this matters in Caliphate-adjacent markets. What it is: a capable expert system that dramatically extends the medical capability of a colony that does not have a dedicated physician. It makes serious mistakes less often than it makes correct decisions, which is the standard it was designed to meet.

Drafting Purpose

Catalog survival, medical, life-support, colony, and continuity-adjacent equipment.

Canon Dependencies

• Book profile: _system/ai-prompts/book_profiles/equipment_guide.md
• Audience: Players and GMs; restricted and GM-only acquisitions must be clearly marked.
• Book job: Expanded gear, weapons, armor, services, cargo, availability, legality, and black markets.
• Ownership note: Owns prices, availability, legality, expanded equipment, services, cargo, item qualities, black markets, and gear quick references.
• Source canon: Universe_Bible.md, publication-manifest.md, technology-options.md, gravity-rules.md, irnan-teleportation.md, artificial-intelligence-rules.md, ship catalogs as cross-references, core rules.

Cross-Book Boundaries

• Use publication-manifest.md before drafting final text.
• Echo companion-book canon only as much as this reader needs.
• Do not create alternate rules for canon owned by another book.
• Do not add fake page references; use book and chapter names until layout is locked.

Draft Notes

TODO: Shoiyan stack law and restoration secrets are GM-facing.