Scavenger Guard
Guards are the pack's defensive specialists — a guard who cannot block isn't a guard, and the pack cannot afford to lose the members who keep everyone else alive.
Overview
Guards carry the heaviest salvaged plating in the pack — old server-chassis lids, flattened ductwork, anything rigid enough to deflect a blade or absorb a hit. Their equipment is defensive by necessity: a guard who cannot block isn't a guard, and the pack cannot afford to lose the members who keep everyone else alive.
Their job is protecting the chief and shielding wounded pack members during retreats. Guards position themselves between threats and the pack's vulnerable members — runners who have been caught, brutes who have taken too many hits, the chief when they are directing rather than fighting. The role demands absorbing damage meant for others, and the Dregs offers no medical care. Guards do not last as long as they should, but while they are alive, the pack is stronger because of them.
Place in the Pack
Guards work instinctively with brutes — the brute attacks, the guard covers the brute's flanks and rear. This pairing is the core unit of any scavenger engagement. Guards are the most valued members of the pack, and they know it. Chiefs rely on them. Brutes trust them with their blind spots. Runners look to them as the closest thing to safety the Deep Dregs offers.
The Actuarial Floor
The guard is not on the bay floor by accident. The bay floor is where the actuarial logic deposits you when every other floor has done the math on your Reading and declined the investment.
Professional-tier employment runs background checks that include Reading disclosure. Housing applications run credit assessments built on Reading-weighted risk models. The training programs that might otherwise redirect a Read-Short worker to something less dangerous require institutional investment that institutions do not make in people the system has already decided won't be here to return the value. The guard absorbs impacts meant for others on a floor they reached because every other floor said no. The corridor does not distribute this risk the way a solidarity pool would — the solidarity pool was built on not-knowing, and The Reading ended not-knowing in 2184, so what replaced it was this: the people whose odds ran worst stand at the front, because the front doesn't ask.
| Body Type | human |
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Connections
The people, places, systems, and open questions connected to Scavenger Guard—and why each connection matters here.
Other connections
The pack's defensive specialists — the most valued members, who position themselves between threats and the vulnerable.
Packs endemic to the drained bay floor who strip the abandoned machines — and lose their own people to the live ones.
Pairs instinctively with a brute — the brute attacks, the guard covers its flanks and rear; the core unit of any scavenger fight.
Shields the chief when they are directing rather than fighting; chiefs rely on guards above all others.
Holds corridors and covers retreats in a place that offers no medical care to anyone who fails to.
The Sprawl's lowest stratum and its quiet proof that the corporate system is optional.
The guard's presence on the bay floor is actuarially overdetermined — the Read-Short are excluded from housing, credit, and Professional-tier employment by systems that use their forecast, so the salvage floor becomes the destination that doesn't ask; the guard absorbs damage for people behind them because the corridor does not distribute this risk the way a solidarity pool would
A Good Fortune lifespan certificate that predicts remaining years, sorts access to finance, and dissolves mutual aid.
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