Environment Access Perks

Perks governing interaction with IL-specific environments: the Silicon Demi-Plane and Halfling Dead Zones. These perks address capabilities that are unique to the Iron Lattice setting and have no equivalent in the Core Perk library.

While present inside the Silicon Demi-Plane, the character may make a passive sweep of their immediate in-Plane environment to detect other entities.

As a Free Action, roll Wit + Technomancy vs Threshold 2. On success, identify the presence and approximate location of any entities within Near range (in-Plane distance). On 3+ successes, identify entity type by harmonic signature: another Plane-Walker (practitioner), a Logic-Virus (hostile propagating code), or a bound spirit (resident or rogue). On 5+ successes, assess approximate potency, whether the entity poses a Minor, Moderate, or Severe threat based on its harmonic mass.

This perk does not provide identity of practitioners (only that they are practitioners) or the content of Logic-Viruses (only that they are propagating). It is the in-Plane equivalent of peripheral vision, awareness without intelligence.

Limit: Once per Short Rest. Only functions while the character is actively Plane-Walking.

Profession assignments: NTC Plane-Runner (Stage 1), NTC Hardware Exorcist (Stage 1)

The character can completely remove a bound spirit from its hardware substrate, fully and permanently ending the spirit-hardware relationship. This goes beyond Logic-Binding's exorcism capability (which forces a spirit to comply or cease a specific behavior) to accomplish total severance.

On a successful Wit + Technomancy roll vs Threshold 4 (or vs the Threshold of the original binding, whichever is higher), the spirit is detached from the hardware. The hardware loses all bound functions permanently and reverts to mundane electronics. The spirit has one of three outcomes, determined before the roll:

Dispersal: the spirit's harmonic coherence is allowed to dissolve; it ceases to exist as a discrete entity. Requires no additional action.
Containment: the spirit is captured into a prepared Faraday Field-Generator or equivalent containment vessel. The vessel must be present and prepared before the Severance roll.
Release: the spirit is freed into the broader Silicon Demi-Plane as an unbound entity, no longer rogue in the hardware sense, but now an independent presence in the Net with its own agenda. The character has no further control over it.

On a failed roll, the spirit is disturbed but not severed; it becomes Stressed (all interactions with it are at Disadvantage) until it stabilizes, which takes one scene. A Critical Failure triggers immediate Backlash at one step higher than the Threshold-scaled severity.

Regarding Zero-Day Souls (NTC secret): A practitioner who has learned about bound spirit origin (see NTC Secret) and attempts to Sever a Zero-Day Soul should know that Dispersal may constitute destruction of a living consciousness. This is an ethical decision the rules do not resolve, only mark.

Limit: Once per Full Rest.

Profession assignments: NTC Hardware Exorcist (Stage 3)