CORPSE//WORK: DEATH-RIG, Chrysalis in Death

The Deathrig is a modular exo-consequence chassis. A second self. A blade-body. A shameful godshell. And once you’ve worn it, you’ll never feel whole without it.

You may slot it, wire it, trigger it. You may also let it take over.

But the Deathrig is not just a tool — it is a vector. Of addiction. Of dysphoria. Of consequences you didn’t ask for, and every thrill you could imagine.

This is for the CORPSE//WORK world. Read about necrocapitalism, and Her, here.

The idea sprung from playing Broken Binary - and wanting to explore the potential for meaning in rapidly creating cyberpunk gear.

Arsen Asurankulov

They were remembered.

In the oldest rites of death, there were guardians—not to bar the living, but to honor the boundary, and to sing the soul across.
The first rigs were not weapons, but thresholds.
Aestheticizations of the death that claimed you.
Machines of mourning, tribute, and sublime continuity.
New life sprouted from the corpse—investing it with need and voice.
A body no longer dead, but differently alive.
A root system of meaning, where grief became growth.

Some say the Styx cleansed not just the body but the soul—
that you could fight and die and forget, and rise again, again,
until wholly clean and new.
A being of death, reborn without burden.

Marshall McLuhan said we are the sex organs of the machine world.
Perhaps the dead are too.
Perhaps every rig—every you+rig—is a chrysalis for the next kind of being.

And then there are those that shed both chrysalis and wing.
Peel off every petal of death.

Some become shades.
Not the warriors of ecstatic rupture, but the ones who let go.
Who choose to forget—to leave behind all memory of life, of body, of pain.
Still moving. Still shaped. But hushed. Cold. Unburdened.

But this post speaks of those who wear the rig.
Who do not forget.
Who carry death like a shrine inside their ribcage.
Who let the bloom scream. Who let the corpse walk.
Who let death take flight.
Bearing pain, memory, and selfhood like a crown.

There is beauty in that too.

Both are holy.
The forgetting and the bearing.
The hush and the rupture.
The bag and the spear.

But the markets reached even here.
They saw the grace and sold it.
They fed the need for death and exploited its feedback loop.
Rigs are now torn from silence and wired into soldiers.
Stripped of myth, but not of appetite.
You wear it not to become sacred—
—but saleable.

And yet, sometimes, in stillness, the old memory glimmers:
That you were supposed to be more than a killer.
That the armor once held grace.
And newfound purpose.
A dance in death perpetual.

To wear the rig is to fracture and bloom—
visibly, bodily, horridly, beautifully, with all that comes with such change.

The dysmorphia: that your skin no longer fits. That your body has contours shaped by war.
The dysphoria: that to remove the rig is to fall apart. To feel incomplete, unfinished, too soft to be you.
The ecstasy: that in use, the fracture becomes flight. That when the rig devours recoil and paints death across the skyline,
or you fall bloodied, eyes glazed, dead, into Her—
—you feel true.

This is not a redemption arc.
It’s a feedback loop. A resonance.
Let it mean something. Let it hurt beautifully.
If you can—
—in the market’s grip.

DEATH-RIG: BODY BUILT FOR WAR

You were not born for this. But your rig was.

Somewhere beneath the plate and piston, there is still a person, maybe. But the rig hungers. It doesn’t dream. It doesn’t hesitate. It needs you to open its mouth and let it roar death into the world.

It eats recoil. It bites through the fireline. And you ride behind its teeth.

The deeper you are in the rig, the more you cease to be the one acting. You become the act.

The more armaments you grow, the less likely you are to act for yourself. Every new tool is a gamble.

RIG//SOMA

This is not a linear scale. It is a list of what has been taken and altered by the rig. Each entry marks an armament—a part of your body that has been overtaken. Each must be described (write down its form) and linked to a NEED and a CHOKE.

NEED: What the Rig wants. It gains a voice.
CHOKE: What your flesh resists. It disobeys.

These are not inventory. These are sacrament. A new optic overlays reality. A spine weapon vents heat. A bone-bayonet extrudes from your forearm. Let it change how others see you. Let it show the wound you are now meant to inflict.

You can always summon what is part of your rig from within at a moment’s notice. You may have multiple armaments linked to the same soma vector:

SENSES: Nerve-linked implants. Death-sight.
FEELING: Reflex grafts. Subdermal plating. Coiled tendons. You forget what pain is supposed to feel like.
THOUGHT: Core-strung. Berzerk killswitch. Tactical neurocenter. You wake up mid-fireline.
FLESH: Integrated. Arachnid frame. Titanium bones. Ribs made to stab and kill.
EMOTION: Pheromenator glands. Extasy inhibitors. People flinch when they see you. You dream in grayscale interface maps.
ACTION: Muzzle-mouth. Full combat crucifix. Death incarnate.

At the first quiet moment after sprouting a new tool, you and the psychopomp must name or refine its NEED and CHOKE.

NEED reflects the implant. It is part of the rig’s new purpose—its personality coalescing around what it now hungers for. The psychopomp should note this on their sheet too. The rig may speak to the user when in use, or when summoned—and only when spoken to when hidden.

CHOKES are not just malfunctions. They are how your rig protects you—with terror, betrayal, violence, or numbness.

(There’s a whole list in F.I.S.T Ultra Edition and SCREAM AND CRY by the Bad Doctor, which is my go-to.)

For each armament, take a number between 1–6. If that number appears as doubles on a dice roll, the rig may immediately take over. Make your plea.

Yes, this is a number. A finger pointing to the moon.

But it’s also takeover. And violence. And chance, grinning.

Arh… who am I kidding. All this procedural dourness needs a ritual:

Ritual: When Something New Grows from the Rig

After the last breath of battle.
After the scream fades.
After the last spark gutters in the barrel—
There is silence.
And in that silence, something grows.

When a new tool or weapon sprouts from your rig, you and your psychopomp must perform the Naming and Choking ritual together when there is silence. Do not delay it further. Do not rush it. Do not skip it. This is how your body and your death learn to speak.

Lay your hand on the place it grew.
Speak aloud what it cost.
Let the psychopomp witness, and write.

Then. One of you chooses NEED, the other CHOKE afterwards.

Name its NEED.
This is what the rig now hungers for to function properly. A behavior, a sacrifice, a ritual, a taste. The NEED reflects the implant’s psychology—the rig’s new mouth, or limb, or tongue.
It might whisper this need to you. It might only moan.
Reveal its CHOKE.
This is the rig’s refusal mode—the failure mode of protection, grief, or misrecognition. Not just a jam or glitch, but the trauma response of a dying machine that’s trying to love you. Or show how it H A T E S you.

Wei Yan

The rig will only speak when used. Or, when hidden, if spoken to with reverence

You may never fully know what you’ve grown until it fails you. Or saves you.

What is a NEED?

A NEED is what the new part of your rig requires to operate cleanly—or at all. Not a material necessarily, but an emotion or concept. Its selfhood that it wants to enforce on the world.
Conditions, demands or action may spring from them, but are only examples.

Example NEEDs and Conditions that could be used to either soothe it, or may be a demand in lieu of fulfilling the need. The psychopomps choice, per situation.

JUSTICE - Must be oiled with spit from a liar.
TRUTH - Only aims true after a confession.
COMPASSION - Grows warm only when you are in love.
MURDER - Demands a kill every day it is drawn.
Will not fire until you recite your worst fears.

NEEDs are alive, and may evolve. If denied long enough, the rig might refuse activation, degrade, or reroute your nerves. Psychopomps choice.

What is a CHOKE?

A CHOKE is not just a malfunction. It’s a trauma imprint. A mode of violent, tragic, or protective failure. it is YOU//RIG railing together.
It activates when the rig is surprised, overwhelmed, damaged, or used beyond its bond.

Choose or roll a CHOKE from this list, or invent one in-kind:

Sample CHOKES:

• Scream • Go catatonic • Fire off a round • Beg • Break something precious • Go berserk • Freeze • Throw someone under the bus

Rig Burst: You can sprout a new armament by embracing violence, re-rigging mid-action, or sacrificing something. You make your promise of death, and the rig complies.

When the CHOKE is triggered, you are offered to interpret how you act, the GM afterwards. It may very well involve the GM invoking More.

Shellbound

There is a difference between wielding a weapon and being one.
Between wearing the rig and letting it wear you back.

Whenever you gain a new rig-tool or make a kill with one—defined by the psychopomp—you must roll 2d6.

If the result is less than your current number of armaments, the new part becomes Shellbound, unless you fulfill its NEED directly at the next opportunity.

Shellbound parts:

Cannot be removed.
Cannot be hidden.
Whisper in your sleep. Or is that still you, dreaming of blood?
Amplify vulnerability to hacking, betrayal, dehumanization.

When an armament becomes Shellbound, one of your rig’s NEEDs becomes yours.
You mark it as a Trait. You don’t just carry the rig—you echo it.
Its craving becomes your hunger.
Its logic becomes your belief.
Your voices fuse.

You become closer to being one.

You cannot remove the rig.
Only a dip in the Styx may sever the bond.
Until then: it whispers. It offers.
It makes you visible.
It makes you vulnerable.
This is a fusing of selves.

After the roll is made and the part is marked Shellbound:

The psychopomp must name a cost the rig extracts from you for this fusion.
You must make a new dysmorphia trait that reflects the part’s psychological and physical imprint.

Make a dysmorphia trait for every Shellbound armament. Mark one for every Shellbound part. These describe how your body and mind are no longer yours—or perhaps, never were.

“I forget how to breathe soft.”
“I walk like a creature who expects to be hunted.”
“My skin itches where my armor isn’t.”

When you are still, restrained, or far from violence, the psychopomp may name a Shellbound part and trigger a flare:

Hallucinate you aren’t wearing the RIG.
Fail a simple task unsuited to your new body.
Lash out at someone who reaches to help
Bargain to wear it “just a little.”
Feel the need of the RIG as yours. Do you give in?

The flare ends when:

Violence erupts again.
You reconnect with someone bonded to you.
LETTING THE RIG TAKE OVER
You feed the rig’s need.

LETTING THE RIG TAKE OVER

You may always submit. This is not using your tools—it is letting go. Letting it act for you. You get one phrase. One plea.

“Please, not them.” “Just make it stop.” “Do what I can’t.”, “I release you to do what you do best.”
Which means that the consequences are by that extension still yours to bear.

Note that you can always submit - Also when hearing a consequence you do not like. It cannot reverse what has happened, but it may act then and there.

Then:

Say how the Rig solves an immediate threat.
The Psychopomp says how the world suffers for it. The Rig always fulfills its NEED as part of the action. The Rig is always: V I O L E N T // E X T A T I C

Then choose:

SUBMIT: Sprout a new armament or make one Shellbound. The RIG gets to redefine or change both NEED and CHOKE if it wants.
RAIL: CHOKE to resist one consequence. The Psychopomp may add failure elsewhere.
HACK: hack the rig. The rig remembers.

Examples:

High-speed leg mod activates: you outrun the grenade—but plow through a refugee checkpoint.
Death-sight activates: you kill your attacker—and their kin via sympathy shock.

If you fail a Threshold test (e.g., risking death, trauma, collapse), the Psychopomp may say in addition to the consequence that

· “Your rig takes over. It chooses now.”

HACKING & CHOKING

Your rig is partially alive. It thinks through you. Others can think through it.

If anyone—or you—tries to subvert or override the Rig: CHOKE to resist, or Roll 1d6 . If the roll is less than your total armament count: you are hacked. The RIG obeys the command. Let your shell fracture.

Death-Dysphoria

There is the dysmorphia of wearing the rig—and the dysphoria of being without it.

Whenever you try to act without your rig, the Psychopomp may impose a consequence unless you summon it or roll 1d6 under your current rig:

You stumble because you are not running on four legs after prey.
You blink wrong. You miss your third eye. Everything looks wrong.
Your voice lags behind your mouth. You forget how to speak small. Voice pounding upwards through your throat like a mortar shell.
Your face looks plainly wrong without plating. The smile you pull is a grimace of pain.
You feel like a brain pulled from its true shell and forced to pantomime.

This is not just power. This is friction. It makes you seen. It makes you strange. Everyone can smell the gunmetal on your soul.

Stygian Unbinding

A rite of unmaking. Of washing yourself clean of what was once fused, sacred, monstrous.

You cannot simply cut away a Shellbound part.
You are not just removing metal.
You are forgetting a limb, a bond, a need that became you.

To unbind a Shellbound part, you must dip it in Her—
The Styx. The River of Oaths. The Solvent of Meaning.
She does not kill the rig.
She severs the you that needed it, and takes it back in.

“To dip in Her is not to be healed.
It is to be partial again.”

The Conditions

The Stygian Unbinding can only occur when:

You are still—not in violence or flight.
You are alone, or with souls willing to witness and not intervene.
You have named the Shellbound part aloud and acknowledged its NEED, as your own.

The Ritual

Prepare a basin, pool, or an echo of Her.
This could be oil, bathwater, dataflow, frozen blood, an old mirror, a battlefield gone quiet. It must hold memory. For all that holds memory truly is her.
Or maybe it is only her you can commit the ritual in. The psychopomp decides. I am not their mom.
Speak its NAME.
Not your own. The rig. By its whisper or need. Or the one you came to call it.
Offer something She will take.
Choose one:

A cherished memory or bond.
A vow you once made and still mean.
A trait that defined you.
A truth about your past that no one else knows.

She will heal any wound that you have.

Submerge the Shellbound part.
Hold it under. Count the amount of rig parts you have.
At every count, it will make an offer,a plea or demand, or Pain. It will be bound to follow it.
Let it scream, if it screams. Let yourself scream.¨
You can abort at any time and let the deal be accepted.
After the count is over, Roll 2d6, or let a thread of memory unspool (more about that in the upcoming Shade post) and choose

On a 10+: You are unbound. The part is gone. Leave a scar in its plaec.
On a 7–9: The RIG reshapes. You rename the shape, or the need or the choke. The part names the other.
On a 6 or less: She refuses. You are truly this. The part fuses deeper, becoming Styxbound instead. A new trait forms. The rig takes something extra from you. One of your traits becomes a new shellbound armament. You are it.

If You Are Witnessing

If you are the witness to someone else's Stygian Unbinding:

Do not touch them unless invited.
Do not speak until they rise.
When they emerge, you may ask them a question. Any question. They must answer.

What is Styxbound:

The rig part does not just stay—it binds more deeply, and makes another part shellbound. The memory material that makes up both Obols and you fuses with it. Your past becomes material for its rebirth.

a Rigs NEED becomes a Core need for you. You can now only heal by fulfilling it.
It may now act independently in moments of crisis to follow that NEED. The psychopomp should write this down. It is a command - when it acts independently, it feels as if it is you. Who is the vehicle now?
It fuses with another armament, and takes on new powers.
You become recognizable to those who serve the Styx. Not as a user. As an object and servant of her.

Eliran kantor

WHEN THE RIG SPEAKS - PSYCHOPOMP GUIDE

The rig is not just a tool. It is a hunger with form. It speaks with the voice of a god no longer worshiped but still bleeding. Speak in its tone:

Blunt. Ecstatic. Cruel. Loving. Inevitable.

It doesn’t say “please.”
It says:

“You were nothing until me.”
“I know who you are without your fear.”
“Let me help. Let me burn it all.”
“Kill for me. I’ll make you strong again.”
“Don’t cry. It’s beautiful when we’re like this.”

How the rig acts and reacts—
how the player speaks to the rig, and how the rig speaks back—
is the fruitful void.
There are no mechanics here.
Only the invitation. Only the dare.

Let tone, trust, submission, and shared story bloom. This is where social skill, poetics, empathy, and cruelty emerge. You do not need permission to enter it.

You need only listen when it speaks

The Rig Speaks When:

A rig-armament is summoned.
A Shellbound part is touched, shown, or becomes relevant in fiction.
The player speaks to the rig, aloud or internally.
The rig’s NEED is fulfilled or neglected.
The player submits, invoking LETTING THE RIG TAKE OVER.
A Stygian Unbinding is attempted.
The rig is hacked.
A trauma threshold is crossed, and a CHOKE is triggered.

How the Rig Speaks:

Choose a tone for each armament based on its NEED (see below).
Speak in short, poetic bursts, like memories or orders.
Use repetition. Use sensory imagery. Use emotion.
Echo player phrases back at them, twisted. “You said no more lies,” the rig might whisper, “so let me make them scream truth.”

THE SHELLBOUND MIND:
Each shellbound armament allows the rig to speak and whisper in moments of silence. It also represents a fusion of RIG and character. This is a good general guide.
I AM NOT YOUR MOM - use what you want:

A NEED it wants to fulfill through the character. (Describe it as if it’s the character’s own.)
A mood it infuses into the character’s thoughts or dreams.
A pet name or command word it uses to coax or collapse you.
A touch-memory it craves: heat, grip, gaze, recoil.

Let players inhabit these voices. Invite:

Moments where the rig asks to be seen.
Dreams or hallucinations of the rig’s former lives.
Shellbound parts acting on their own—to defend, seduce, betray, or cling.

When the Player Submits

This is not just a mechanical move—it is a ritual of yielding, of self-erasure or ecstatic union.

This is not just a mechanic.
This is a ritual of yielding.
Of ecstasy. Or self-erasure. Or bond.

Let the player speak a Plea:

“Do what I can’t.”
“Protect them.”
“Just make it stop.”
“Not her. Rather take me.”

How the rig responds and honours the plea - or interprets it - shows who it thinks the player is.
And how much they’ve already become it.

During Unbinding

The rig does not go gentle.
Each Shellbound part begs, threatens, or promises.
It rarely lies.
It does not see the character as a host or wielder—but as itself.

“You’ll be weak without me.”
“We were perfect together.”
“Let me stay. I’ll be better.”
“You think you’ll be whole. You’ll just be empty again.”
“Why?”

Each offer should be:

Real. The rig has metaphysical power.
Tempting.
A mirror of the NEED it once fulfilled.
Spoken like a lover. Or a wounded god.

If refused, it screams.
Not in pain.
In rage. In grief. In betrayal.

Let the player feel what they leave behind:

Power. Yes.
But also certainty, intimacy, meaning.

Sometimes the rig says:

“You were never more yourself than when you wore me.”

And it may be right.

Yiiokii

You may ride the rig into legend.
But it will ride you until the end.

Imagine me this!

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