Tinkerer
His real name, whatever it was, stopped being used before the second winter. Now he is the Tinkerer and that is enough. He lives in the old fish processing shed north of Svartvik harbour, in the part where the roof still holds. His floor is engine parts and wire stripped from boats that will not run again. He does not ask where you have been. If you come back with the vehicle running he nods and looks at the damage and starts working. He keeps a small notebook in his jacket with measurements in it — not words, just numbers. He says he has one in his head too, and the one in his head is more accurate. When asked about the corruption he does not answer directly. He will hold up a piece of machinery — a fuel injector, a distributor cap — and say something about tolerances. About how things work right up until they do not. He has been saying this longer than most people have known to be afraid.
She carries the pistol tucked against her body when she is not using it, which is not often. The barrel is wrapped with heat tape she has replaced three times in the past month; the original tape was red and now it is grey, and the layer underneath has started to show through. The gun works. That is the standard she applies to most things.
The toolkit is on her back: a salvaged frame, fasteners from three different vehicles, tool-heads that no longer match any single system but still do what they need to do. She is not a mechanic in the sense of repairing things to specification. She repairs things to functional. The gap between those two states does not bother her. Nothing in the world is at specification anymore.
The particular skill — the thing that makes her useful in the kinds of situations she is in regularly — is the ability to read a threat environment fast enough to respond. Four enemies within striking range means the pistol, not the wrench. Seven means get out and buy time. The calculation happens below the level of decision. She would describe it as luck. It is not luck.
Generated by lore-from-features agent