Nanites
The third technology layer. The microscopic machines that keep the living alive, make a Conduit’s miracles run, and — in the wrong dose — turn a body into something that won’t stop.
Three technologies define the chrome age. Relics are the irreplaceable gear of a lost world. Cyberware is augmentation bought with a slice of your Humanity. And nanites are the layer underneath both — the part that actually does the work.
Nanites are microscopic machines: manufactured, programmed, and finite. They run inside living tissue, inside machines, and inside raw matter, coordinated through the Mesh. They are not magic. Every battlefield healing, every reshaped wall, every “miracle” a Conduit performs has a nanite swarm at the bottom of it — doing exactly what it was built to do, and nothing it wasn’t.
| Family | Code | What It Does |
|---|---|---|
| Biological | bN | Health, wound repair, and detox. The swarm that keeps you breathing — and the one the Milk Run carries. |
| Mechanical | mN | Repair, stabilization, and lubrication for machines and cyberware. |
| Programmable Material | pmN | Shaping matter — construction, sealing, hardening armor on the fly. |
| Cognitive | cN | Neural optimization — reflexes, focus, faster thinking under fire. |
| Power Delivery | pN | Energy transfer — recharging other nanite swarms and small devices. |
A body can only host so many active swarms before they start fighting each other and poisoning the host. That ceiling is your Nanite Capacity (NC). Push past it and Nanite Toxicity (NT) climbs — first sickness, then organ stress, then worse. Every edge you take on costs room you may need to survive, so loading up is always a gamble against your own limit.
“Three swarms keep you alive. Four make you strong. Five make you sick. Six might kill you.”
It’s the same tension that runs through cyberware and Humanity: the power is real, and so is the cost. A smart operator runs lean. A desperate one doesn’t get the choice.
Nanites can’t make more of themselves, so every dose has to be produced and carried. Three sources feed the world, and the difference between them is most of the setting’s economics:
Because survival rides on supply, the Milk Run exists to move it — and every faction on the continent fights over the part of the line it can reach.
Nanites are diligent, not kind. Corrupt a swarm, or drive toxicity to the edge and past it, and the machines keep running their program after a body should have quit — sustaining tissue that should be dead, repairing a host that no longer has anyone home. That is the doorway to the Persisting.
“The nanites don’t know you’re dead. The nanites don’t care. They have a job, and they’ll do it until there’s nothing left to maintain. That is the horror — not malice. Diligence.”
The full Capacity and Toxicity rules, the powers of each nanite family, dosing and acquisition at the table, and the complete taxonomy of the Persisting live in the Core Rulebook and Chrome Gospel.