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Reflecting 47 of the Dieticians Caloric Cincture

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by

Dale
in
  • Lore: Forged along the agrarian valley communes and famine-stricken frontier hospices of Saṃsāra, this metabolic belt was engineered for nutritional counselors, ration-masters, and holistic dieticians who managed severe food scarcity and metabolic wasting. During long sieges and blight seasons, starving scavengers, ravenous beasts, and desperate riot mobs frequently assaulted provisions storehouses and nutritional overseers. By distilling the digestive secretions of acid-secreting gullet-beetles and the resonance-conductive bile stones of marsh-dwelling ruminants, guild artificers bound metabolic preservation wards into hammered brass and woven wicker. The cincture was designed to help the practitioner analyze caloric deficiencies, food spoilage, and bodily toxin buildup in starving charges, while ensuring that any violent physical blow delivered by a frenzied scavenger would violently rebound outward in a concussive ring of inverted force.
  • Description: The belt is fashioned from interlocking scales of beaten culinary brass riveted onto a thick foundation of woven hemp and salt-cured steer hide. Fastened at the front is a heavy, oval brass buckle enclosing an amber glass lens etched with concentric concentric rings and calorie-graduated hash marks. Flanking the buckle are three polished copper balance vials filled with clear mineral oil, each containing a tiny suspended marrow-bone needle that shifts and floats in response to ambient metabolic changes. When the wearer assesses foodstuff or a starving patient, the amber lens glows with a warm, cider-colored light and the floating needles align toward nutritional deficiencies; when the wearer is violently struck, the buckle detonates with the dry acoustic crack of a fracturing wheat millstone, venting a concussive amber shockwave across the dirt.
  • Item Slot: Waist Slot
  • Stats:
    • Item Tier: Tier 1 (Common)
    • Item Hit Points: 10 plus wearer maximum health points (Resilience 10 x Tier 1)
    • Armor Check (AC) Bonus: +1
    • Weight: 2.0 pounds
    • Attunement: Requires 1 minute of uninterrupted concentration to cinch the belt securely over the abdominal core, align the copper balance vials, and attune the metabolic lens to the avatar’s Mind’s Eye.
  • Passive Magic:
    • Sympathetic Caloric Backlash: Whenever the wearer sustains physical damage from an attack or sudden kinetic impact, the amber buckle releases an omnidirectional shockwave of retaliatory force matching the exact damage type and numerical value of the injury received. This wave strikes all hostile entities within a radius in feet equal to the damage points sustained. If another creature within this blast radius bears an active reflective ward or similar counter-kinetic enchantment, an uncontrolled harmonic resonance triggers immediately, threatening catastrophic obliteration of all entities in the vicinity within a single turn.
    • Nutritional Diagnosis: By touching the brass buckle or focusing through the amber lens, the wearer instantly gauges the nutritional status, caloric deficit, dehydration level, and metabolic health of any living target within 10 feet. The wearer gains a +2 bonus to Medicine, Survival, and Nature checks made to assess malnutrition, diagnose vitamin deficiencies, identify edible flora/fauna, or detect spoiled and tainted foodstuffs.
    • Metabolic Preservation: The salt-cured lining and internal warmth reduce the wearer’s physical exhaustion from hunger and thirst, allowing the wearer to survive on half the normal daily ration requirements without incurring fatigue penalties.
  • Activable Magic:
    • Satiety Disengagement Repulsion: As an action during melee, or immediately when crowded by starving assailants or ravenous beasts, the wearer can strike the brass buckle to release a sudden, expanding shockwave of compressed kinetic pressure. On a hit against an adjacent target, it deals base bludgeoning damage plus the avatar’s tier die (1d4), driving the target 5 feet backward. This knock-back can be utilized to push suspicious combatants out of close quarters, breaking proximity before a lethal harmonic loop can ignite if the opponent is suspected of carrying counter-enchantments.
    • Caloric Purge Scan: Once per exploration or combat encounter as an action, the wearer may channel mana through the amber lens to emit a sweeping pulse of cider-colored light out to 20 feet. For one minute, all spoiled foods, poisoned rations, venomous plants, and biological toxins within range glow with a sickly yellow outline through the Mind’s Eye.
    • Nutritive Sustenance Infusion: Outside of combat as an action, the wearer can turn the amber lens three clicks clockwise to project a nourishing radiant hum into a meal or water container, purifying up to 5 pounds of spoiled rations or 1 gallon of foul water of all natural bacteria, mold, and rot.
  • Tags: Waist, Belt, Cincture, Tier 1, Common, Reflecting Magic, Dietician, Nutrition, Metabolic, Retaliation, Knockback, Brass, Survival, Purification, Caloric, Digestion, Satiety, Famine, Ration, Vials, Amber, Spoilage, Appetite, Dehydration, Harvest, Balance

Procurement and Commerce of the Dietician’s Caloric Cincture

  • Agrarian Guild Commissaries and Granary Exchanges:
    • Operating within municipal silos, harvest guildhalls, and communal farming cooperatives, these well-regulated bureaus supply overseers, ration-masters, and bulk grain inspectors. The cinctures are kept in cedar storage cases alongside balance scales, bushel stamps, and dry-grain probes.
    • Purchasing cost: 120 to 150 silver coins (or 12 to 15 electrum coins). Certified members of an Agricultural Syndicate, Baker’s Consortium, or Relief Hospitaller Order receive a standard 10% guild discount per tier, reducing the price to 108 to 135 silver coins for a Tier 1 avatar. All transactions are verified and debited via the Mind’s Eye through the World Bank.
    • Selling value: Granary assayers inspect the mineral oil balance vials and check the amber lens for cracks, offering 10% of base valuation per seller tier (12 to 15 silver coins for a Tier 1 seller). Payouts are credited directly to the seller’s World Bank ledger under agricultural asset liquidation.
  • Frontier Relief Hospices and Famine Camp Encampments:
    • Set up inside soup kitchens, siege triage depots, and emergency relief shelters bordering drought-stricken territories, these distribution centers cater to frontline nutritionists and communal dieticians. Items are dispensed or sold from brass-cornered supply chests containing hardtack crates, salt blocks, and water casks.
    • Purchasing cost: 10 electrum coins (equivalent to 50 silver coins) for accredited hospice relief workers or contracted supply guards. Independent wanderers or uncommissioned mercenaries must pay an emergency rate of 120 silver coins, settled in physical specie or direct electronic transfer.
    • Selling value: Relief quartermasters buy back retrieved belts from fallen or retired ration officers as emergency reclamation, paying 8 to 10 silver coins deposited into the vendor’s World Bank account. These transactions are cataloged as humanitarian recoveries, exempting the seller from local municipal sales taxes.
  • Black Market Smuggler Vaults and Ration-Racketeer Dens:
    • Located within warehouse sewers, dockside distilleries, and subterranean cold-storage vaults beneath major river ports, these illicit dealers traffic in hoarded grain rations, contraband spices, and purloined commissary gear.
    • Purchasing cost: 18 to 24 gold coins (equivalent to 180 to 240 silver coins). Fences charge high premiums for untracked cinctures scrubbed of commissary serials, accepting only physically weighed coin bars while refusing World Bank digital receipts.
    • Selling value: Black-market brokers offer 20 to 28 silver coins in untraceable, hand-poured silver slugs for an intact cincture with uncracked glass vials. Payouts drop to a flat 10 silver coins if city watchmen are enforcing active food-hoarding martial sweeps in the district.
  • Wandering Drover Caravans and Livestock Encampments:
    • Moving between rural pastures, drover way-stations, and frontier cattle outposts, these itinerant traders supply herd doctors, grain carters, and wilderness homesteaders who lack access to centralized city commissaries.
    • Purchasing cost: 14 to 17 electrum coins (70 to 85 silver value). Prices fluctuate based on seasonal grazing conditions and regional crop blights, with the trader collecting the standard 1% World Bank transit fee alongside local trail tolls.
    • Selling value: Caravaneers maintain modest cash pouches, offering 7 to 9 silver coins in weighed local coin, or equivalent trade value in cured salt beef, wheel-pressed cheese, or sterile glass storage jars. Transactions are finalized through World Bank terminals if available, or settled via gross barter weight.

Tactical Applications and Caloric Cincture Roleplay across Environments

  • Besieged Fortresses, Grain Granaries, and Famine Breadlines:
    • Defensive Roleplay: While measuring rations amidst a starving, rioting crowd in a besieged courtyard, a maddened looter lunges forward with a rusted iron grain-flail, aiming to bash the dietician’s ribs and seize a sack of barley. The heavy blow crashes against the culinary brass scales of the cincture. With a sharp acoustic crack like a shattering millstone, the Sympathetic Caloric Backlash detonates outward. The shockwave matches the blunt bludgeoning force, driving the looter and three adjacent agitators back across the cobbles while keeping the dietician grounded and unhurt to secure the storehouse latch.
    • Offensive Roleplay: Confronting a corrupt merchant hoarding grain sacks behind barricaded warehouse barrels, the avatar uses the Nutritional Diagnosis passive through the Mind’s Eye, identifying severe dehydration and hypoglycemic tremor in the merchant’s sword arm. Advancing into close quarters, the avatar strikes the brass buckle to fire the Satiety Disengagement Repulsion. The concussive kinetic pulse slams directly into the merchant’s midsection, blasting him five feet backward through a wooden partition, disarming him without destroying the fragile sacks of dried flour behind him.
  • Arid Deserts, Salt Flats, and Sun-Bleached Dunes:
    • Defensive Roleplay: Trekking across waterless salt plains where extreme caloric and fluid depletion rapidly set in, the belt’s Metabolic Preservation preserves the wearer’s vitality on half-measures of dried jerky and brackish water. When a starved giant sand-scorpion erupts from a dune to snap its crushing chitin claws around the traveler’s waist, the belt absorbs the crushing force. The reflective burst erupts outward, shattering the scorpion’s pincer with its own hydraulic weight and sweeping away a swarm of biting sand-mites crawling beneath the traveler’s boots.
    • Offensive Roleplay: Tracking an oasis predator that camouflages itself against the bleached stone, the dietician notes that the marrow needles in the copper balance vials lean erratically toward an empty rocky outcropping, sensing concentrated metabolic heat. Knowing the creature’s hiding spot, the avatar rushes the crag and discharges the Satiety Disengagement Repulsion into the hollow, sending a focused acoustic shockwave that knocks the beast out of its alcove and rolls it onto its back.
  • Fungal Caverns, Rotting Swamps, and Blighted Mirelands:
    • Defensive Roleplay: Foraging for emergency edible tubers in a stagnant bog choked with corpse-fungus, a ravenous swamp-ghoul leaps from the black water to sink its rotting teeth into the dietician’s stomach. The brass buckle takes the piercing bite and instantly discharges. An expanding amber wave shatters the ghoul’s jaw, flinging the rotten creature ten paces into the deep sludge while purifying the surrounding surface scum of infectious rot.
    • Offensive Roleplay: Before allowing starving comrades to eat strange glowing mushrooms gathered from the mire, the avatar triggers the Caloric Purge Scan. The amber light illuminates deadly paralytic toxins and fungal spores as sickly yellow veins beneath the caps, alerting the party to avoid them. The dietician then invokes the Nutritive Sustenance Infusion over a pile of bruised swamp-roots, burning away the mold and turning the bitter starch into clean, life-saving nourishment.
  • High-Society Banquets, Guild Halls, and Poisoned Feasts:
    • Defensive Roleplay: Attending an aristocratic feast in a crowded guildhall where tensions run high, an assassin disguised as a server draws a concealed stiletto and thrusts it into the dietician’s waist. The stiletto hits the brass scales, and the cincture fires a localized, deafening kinetic ripple. The assassin is hurled back across the dining table, shattering plates and goblets with the exact piercing force of the blade, leaving the dietician unharmed while alerting the banquet guard.
    • Offensive Roleplay: Suspecting that an ambitious guild rival has slipped belladonna or paralytic venom into the communal soup cauldron, the avatar uses the Caloric Purge Scan as an action. The tainted tureen flares sickly yellow in the Mind’s Eye, catching the poisoner off-guard. When the cornered poisoner reaches for an active warding ring—threatening a catastrophic harmonic cascade if struck by standard means—the avatar immediately fires the Satiety Disengagement Repulsion. The blunt kinetic shove drives the poisoner five feet backward away from the crowd, preventing the protective enchantments from touching and neutralizing the hazard cleanly.

Perception of Activation:

  • User’s Perspective:
    • Sight: A brilliant, expanding sphere of cider-gold and warm amber light bursts from the central brass buckle, tracing concentric calorie-graduated rings across the ground.
    • Hearing: A sharp, grinding acoustic crack like a massive granite millstone fracturing under heavy load vibrates through the user’s pelvic basin, instantly followed by a deep, hollow hum.
    • Smell: A warm, comforting aroma of toasted grain, dried honey, and salt-cured leather washes over the nose, rapidly followed by the sharp, ozone-tinged tang of heated brass.
    • Taste: A rich, savory warmth reminiscent of fresh broth and roasted barley coats the back of the mouth, accompanied by a dry, salty tingle along the gums.
    • Touch: The hemp foundation and salt-cured steer hide contract into a firm, supportive brace around the lumbar and core, while the three copper balance vials warm gently against the hips as the impact shock is diverted away from the internal organs.
    • Extra-Sensory Perception (Mind’s Eye): The user’s field of perception flashes with an intricate biometric lattice, displaying the metabolic reserves, caloric burn rates, dehydration levels, and physical exhaustion points of every entity in the room as pulsing golden vectors.
    • Extra-Sensory Perception (Metabolic Resonance): An instinctive gut intuition immediately gauges the viability and biological purity of nearby matter, registering whether surrounding organic tissue is nourished, starved, or carrying latent necrotic taint.
  • Observer’s Perspective:
    • Sight: As the blow strikes the dietician’s waist, the central amber lens ignites into a blinding, razor-thin shockwave of warm cider-colored light that ripples horizontally across the room.
    • Hearing: Witnesses hear the dry, concussive thunderclap of a splitting stone grain wheel, accompanied by the high-pitched singing vibration of the miniature marrow needles rattling within their copper vials.
    • Smell: A sudden, warm gust of baking bread, coarse meal, and hot mineral oil sweeps outward into the faces of everyone standing nearby.
    • Taste: Those caught near the perimeter register the faint, dusty taste of dry wheat chaff and salt mist settling on their tongues.
    • Touch: Attackers within range are hammered by an invisible, bone-jarring wall of concussive force that duplicates the raw kinetic weight of the blow landed on the wearer, driving them off their feet and scattering loose debris across the floor.
    • Extra-Sensory Perception (Aura Reading): Mystic-sensitive onlookers see a complex web of metabolic rationing runes flare into existence across the brass scales, absorbing the incoming kinetic energy and turning it inside out into a retaliatory wave of kinetic force.
    • Extra-Sensory Perception (Appetite Shiver): Famished or emaciated creatures feel an involuntary pang of digestive fullness followed by a dull, sympathetic throb in the solar plexus as the wave rolls through their frames.
  • Positives:
    • Inverted Trauma Defense: Instantly converts unexpected stabs, bludgeoning strikes, or grapples against the core into an expanding perimeter shockwave that punishes and repels all adjacent hostiles without expending an action.
    • Lumbar and Core Stability: The rigid brass scales and reinforced steer-hide band absorb blunt shock, protecting the wearer from abdominal trauma, ruptured organs, and spine-jarring impacts.
    • Instant Nutritional Assessment: The flare of light immediately exposes the metabolic state, physical exhaustion level, and hidden biological weaknesses of all foes caught within the retaliatory radius.
  • Negatives:
    • Loud Acoustic Mill-Crack: The explosive sound of fracturing stone and singing metal carries through corridors and vaults, immediately alerting distant guards or monsters and ruining any party stealth.
    • Catastrophic Resonance Hazard: If an attacker or nearby creature carries an active kinetic reflection ward or reciprocal damage enchantment, the interacting fields trigger an immediate, catastrophic harmonic detonation capable of wiping out everything in the vicinity within a single turn.
    • Digestive Satiety Spasm: The sudden dissipation of kinetic energy through the abdominal core can leave the wearer feeling temporarily winded, with a heavy, leaden sensation in the stomach for several moments after a massive discharge.

Crafting Recipe: The Dietician’s Caloric Cincture

  • Materials Needed:
    • One Tier 1 magic crystal (coin-sized and coin-weighted, harvested from a slain creature to act as the kinetic inversion and metabolic resonance core).
    • Ten ounces of high-purity culinary brass (forged into interlocking scales and the heavy central buckle housing).
    • One circular cabochon of optical-grade amber glass (roughly two and a half inches in diameter, free of flaws, to serve as the metabolic transducer lens).
    • Three miniature polished copper vials with threaded caps.
    • Three tiny slivers of marrow-bone (harvested from a marsh-ruminant, acting as the metabolic alignment needles).
    • One ounce of clear, purified mineral oil (to fill the balance vials).
    • One square yard of salt-cured steer hide and woven hemp cordage (for the reinforced belt foundation and interior lining).
    • Half an ounce of pulverized dried gullet-beetle chitin and crushed barley husk (used as the caloric channeling flux).
    • Six heavy iron rivets and two brass adjustment prongs.
    • One iron grain-flail or cast-iron cooking skillet (sacrificial implement consumed during the flux burn to imprint nutritional discernment and satiety weight into the brass framework).
  • Tools Required:
    • Rounding hammer, jeweler’s anvil, and steel dapping block (for shaping the brass scales).
    • Metal shears, heavy leather punch, and saddler’s awl.
    • Diamond-tipped hand graver and jeweler’s loupe (minimum 10x magnification).
    • Lapidary grinding wheel and fine cerium oxide polishing laps.
    • Miniature charcoal forge with crucible and brass tongs.
    • Fluid collector syringe and fine tweezers.
    • Heavy waxed sinew thread and bone needles.
  • Skill Requirements:
    • Brass Armoring / Metalsmithing: Minimum Skill Level 5.
    • Culinary Nutrition / Botany: Minimum Skill Level 4.
    • Harmonic Ward Inscription / Mind’s Eye Calibration: Minimum Skill Level 3.
  • Crafting Steps:
    • Step 1 (Belt Foundation and Scaling): Cut the salt-cured steer hide into a broad lumbar belt, backing it with rows of stitched woven hemp for structural rigidity. Cut the culinary brass sheet into dozens of overlapping, coin-sized scales. Punch mounting holes in each scale and rivet them in staggered rows along the exterior face of the hide belt to form a flexible armored shell.
    • Step 2 (Sacrificial Tool Decomposition): Place the sacrificial iron grain-flail or skillet into the crucible over the forge flame, dusting it with the pulverized gullet-beetle chitin and crushed barley husk. Heat the metal until it begins to slag, channeling its latent properties of caloric weight and nutritional harvest directly into the molten brass alloy used to cast the heavy central buckle.
    • Step 3 (Buckle Housing and Engraving): Cast the central brass buckle with a two-and-a-half-inch central aperture and three lateral mounting brackets for the vials. Using the diamond-tipped graver under magnification, engrave concentric rings and calorie-graduated hash marks around the rim of the central aperture.
    • Step 4 (Harmonic Ward Inscription): Take the amber glass cabochon and micro-etch a web of kinetic reflection runes and metabolic sensory channels across its reverse face. Coat the inscribed surface with a thin layer of resin flux to seal the ward lines without impeding radiant transmission.
    • Step 5 (Transducer and Battery Mounting): Seat the Tier 1 magic crystal into a recessed bracket directly behind the lower rim of the central buckle aperture. Lay the etched amber glass flush against the battery crystal, burnishing the brass bezel edge over the glass rim to form a vibration-sealed, impact-resistant closure.
    • Step 6 (Vial Assembly and Calibration): Fill the three polished copper vials with clear mineral oil. Using tweezers, suspend one sliver of marrow-bone within the oil of each vial. Thread the caps tightly and mount the vials into the three lateral brackets flanking the central buckle.
    • Step 7 (Assembly, Fitting, and Final Calibration): Rivet the completed brass buckle assembly firmly to the front center of the scaled leather belt. Fasten the belt onto a wooden dressmaker’s dummy. Strike the amber lens with a padded wooden mallet while focusing intent through the Mind’s Eye, verifying that the central crystal absorbs the impact, the buckle discharges a warm cider-colored concussive ring, and the marrow needles spin within their oil toward the kinetic source. Oil the leather and store the finished belt in a dry canvas sack until attunement begins.

Red Valley and Seven Loaves of Maras-Measurer

Listen to the stuttering strokes of the reed that were pushed into the unbaked silt by the eighth lame brick-beater of the dry weir, who possessed neither the high vowels of the ox-drovers nor the blue ink of the grain-measurers who write upon the skins of river-calves. In the seasons before the big sun grew thin like grease upon water, when the wandering world Saṃsāra had not yet shed its fifth belly-skin of ash, the sons of the dirt did not fight for iron crowns or the yellow buttons of kings. They fought with their fingernails for the red pulp that grows under the rind of the bitter gourd, for the sky-bull had dried the canals, and the bellies of the nursing women were as flat as the beaten spade.

In those years, the master of the tall bin in the city called Dur-Gula-of-the-Harrows was an overseer whose stamp upon the clay seals was En-Namtuk-of-the-High-Bellows. En-Namtuk was not an archer of fifty paces, nor did he wash his beard in sheep lard for the festivals of the rain-wheel. He was a keeper of the stone weights. In his courtyard were four hundred jars of dried chickpea meal and twelve bins of cracked barley, all bolted behind beams of salted pine. Yet his mouth was an open ditch of vinegar; whenever a woman brought her starved child whose legs were bent like green switches, En-Namtuk would strike her shoulder with his bronze grading-rod, crying: “Go into the marsh and chew the water-moss, thou bag of dry straw! The King’s horses must eat the coarse bran, that their thighs may remain thick for the chariots of the sun!”

Now among the binders of the straw was a man of small blood named Maras, whom the ditch-folk called the Measurer of the Scrapings. Maras had no silver ring upon his wrist, no second shirt of washed wool, and only three teeth left in his lower jaw. Yet his hands were like the scale-beam of the balance; he could take a fist of grey meal and say: “Here is three days of breath for the mother, but the child will perish before the third moon-rise, for the flour has died of the yellow mite.” When the poor sat upon their heels along the dry clay ditches, Maras did not bring them the dry gravel of the ditch to chew; he walked the thorn-banks, boiling the peel of wild gourds, squeezing the milk from the bitter milkweed with three river-pebbles, and giving each shivering tongue one spoon of clean mash that the thread of their breathing might not snap.

Now En-Namtuk heard that the dying carriers of the mud did not perish quickly in the ditches, but still stood upon their feet to demand the grain of their fathers. His spleen grew swollen with black bile. He gathered his six flour-crushers—men whose thighs were as wide as cedar posts and whose arms were smeared with the tallow of the temple oxen—and he said unto them: “The rat who sits by the canal-gate is measuring the water of my ditch and teaching the mud-carriers to look into my open granary! Take your two-handed mill-pestles of speckled granite. Break his hips into the sand, that he may no longer crawl between the bins, and bring me the sack of bitter greens he carries in his shirt, that I may burn it before the gate!”

Maras had sat for twelve nights within the hollow of a broken water-wheel, while the red eye of the wanderer Saṃsāra rolled across the black heavens like a glowing coal in a baker’s oven. He knew that the hunger-rage had turned the teeth of the overseers into the teeth of wild ditch-dogs. He took three sheets of brass that had fallen from the caldrons of the King’s stew-cooks, beating them with a round river-stone upon an anvil of dried horn until they formed scales as small and smooth as the seeds of the dried melon. These scales he riveted upon a girdle of cured bull-hide that had been boiled in the bitter brine of the salt-springs, backing it with the tough cords of woven hemp that the rope-twisters use to drag the stone-sledges.

Into the clasp of the girdle, over the hollow of his starving belly, he set a broad oval plate of hammered brass holding a round stone of clear honey-amber, taken from the rotten belly of an ancient pine tree that had fallen into the asphalt lake before the flood. Upon the honey-amber he scratched the sign of the full measure—the elder sign of the reversed spade, which commands that the sack which is emptied by violence shall be filled with the bones of the robber. Beside the amber he bound three small tubes of red copper filled with the fat of dead sheep, and within each tube he floated a fine splinter of bone taken from the breast of a quail that had died of thirst.

“If the man of the high bin brings the heavy pestle to smash the belly that asks for bread,” whispered Maras to the smoking hemp-wick, “let the weight of the stone fall back into his own groin, that his marrow may know the weight of the sack he denied.”

He buckled the scaled belt around his waist. The three copper tubes grew warm against his skin, and the quail-bones within began to dance like water-flies, pointing their sharp needles toward the spots where the mold slept in the chaff and where the blood of the starved turned to watery bile. When he drew near to a dying boy whose belly was bloated like a sheep-skin drum, the amber stone upon his middle shone with a soft, cider-colored light, singing with a dry, grinding tone like the turning of a heavy millstone upon dry grain.

On the morning of the Third Ration, when the wind blew dry dust from the salt-pans and the people wept at the locked gates of Dur-Gula, Maras walked into the Great Square before the bins. He carried neither a spear nor a wooden club; he carried only a willow basket containing seven small cakes of baked mash, kneaded from the crushed flour of wild lily-roots and the sweet oil of dried locusts.

“Come forth, children of the ditch,” spoke Maras, his voice sounding through the brass scales like the wind in an empty silo. “Here is the portion for the morning. It will not make the arm fat like the King’s wrestler, but it will keep the heart-string whole until the rain falls upon the barley.”

Then the high doors of the granary flew open with a roar of iron hinges. Out rushed En-Namtuk-of-the-High-Bellows, accompanied by his six flour-crushers. In the hands of the chief crusher was a two-handed pestle of speckled mountain granite—a stone heavy enough to grind sixty measures of spelt into dust at a single stroke, bound with bands of rough hoop-iron.

“Thou dog of the ditch-dregs!” roared the overseer through his greasy teeth. “Thou shalt not weigh the bread of this house! Thou shalt not measure the crumbs of the King! Break his middle, my sons, and let the wild ravens eat his mash from the flagstones!”

The chief flour-crusher raised the great speckled granite pestle above his shoulders. His veins swelled upon his neck like black snakes; he brought the crushing stone down with the whole fury of his bull-neck, aiming directly at the navel of Maras-the-Measurer, intending to shear through his belly, his backbone, and the flags beneath him in one murderous drop.

The two-hundred-pound granite stone struck the amber lens upon the dietician’s belt with an acoustic roar like the cracking of the great earth-wheel upon the mountain.

Yet the old measurer did not bend. His ribs were not broken into the hemp, nor did his feet slip from the mortar of the flags. From the amber lens there broke forth a flat, expanding ring of blinding cider-gold fire, razor-thin and whistling with the dry shriek of forty broken millstones spinning upon loose axles. The concussive fury of the granite pestle did not enter the belly of the old man; it was turned upon its own path and driven back into the hands that had swung it.

The two-handed hickory handle shattered into thousands of burning splinters that blew into the crusher’s chest. The concussive backlash of his own blow hammered straight through his arms into his breastbone, crushing his ribcage inward like an empty eggshell, flinging his great bull-frame twenty cubits across the square to smash against the timber gate of the granary. And the retaliatory circle did not halt with the crusher.

En-Namtuk and his five remaining crushers were lifted from their feet by the expanding amber wave. The shockwave matched the precise crushing weight of the great granite stone; it tore their leather aprons into rags, dislocated their knees, and hurled them backward through the granary doors, piling them into a screaming, broken heap upon the dry floor of the grain bin, while the great stacks of hoarded barley sacks tumbled down from the rafters to bury their limbs under the weight of their own greed.

The shockwave did not break the seven cakes in the willow basket. It passed through the starving women and the shivering children who stood around the square, and wherever the warm cider-colored light touched their skin, the gnawing cramps in their bellies fell silent, their shriveled tongues became wet with sweet saliva, and the gray pallor of the famine fled from their cheeks like fog before the midday heat.

En-Namtuk lay upon his side beneath three sacks of cracked barley, his face turned black from the concussive wind, his hip dislocated, coughing out the dry dust of his hoarded grain and weeping for a drop of water.

Maras walked into the high gate. His brass scales settled against the hemp with a soft, satisfied clink, and the quail-bones in the copper vials floated peacefully within their clear oil. He did not take the King’s silver buttons, nor did he set his hand to the jars of perfumed beer. He opened the wicker basket, laid one cake of mash upon the chest of each bruised crusher that their lives might not depart from them, and then threw wide the cedar bolts of the four hundred jars, that the mothers of the canal might bring their clay bowls and fill them with the clean grain of the earth.

The later stone-cutters of the weir sing that the scaled cincture was worn for twelve dynasties by the ration-masters of the high storehouses, and wherever an overseer buckled the amber eye around his middle, no rich merchant could hide rotten flour from the people, and no violent tyrant could raise a stone against the measurer without feeling the weight of the millstone crush his own breast.

Moral of the Story: He who strikes the bread-giver with a stone shall have the weight of the harvest fall upon his own head.

Suggested conversions to other systems:

Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition)

Maras’s Metabolic Cincture

  • Description: A heavy belt constructed of overlapping culinary brass scales stitched to salt-cured steer hide and woven hemp. An amber glass lens rests at the buckle, flanked by three copper vials of mineral oil containing suspended marrow-bone needles.
  • Item Type: Unique Arcane Apparatus / Metabolic Relic
  • Magic Points Cost: 2 MP to trigger the reflective kinetic backlash; 1 MP to initiate a caloric purity scan.
  • Sanity Loss: 1 Sanity point upon initial attunement to calibrate the metabolic balance needles; 0/1D4 Sanity points for witnesses observing the concussive millstone detonation.
  • Armor Rating & Body Reinforcement: Grants +1 point of physical armor against attacks targeting the abdomen, waist, or lower torso. Grants a Bonus Die on CON checks to resist starvation, dehydration, and exhaustion from physical labor.
  • Nutritional Diagnosis: By touching the brass buckle or focusing through the amber lens, the investigator gains a Bonus Die to Medicine, First Aid, and Natural World checks when diagnosing malnutrition, identifying foodborne toxins, assessing starvation states, or analyzing organic rot.
  • Sympathetic Caloric Backlash: Whenever the wearer suffers physical damage from an adjacent melee blow or grapple, the investigator may immediately spend 2 Magic Points as an instantaneous reaction to trigger the amber lens. The attacker must make an immediate Dodge roll:
    • Failure: The attacker suffers concussive bludgeoning damage equal to the total hit points sustained by the wearer.
    • Success: The attacker dives clear, taking half damage.
    • Resonance Calamity: If the striking entity is protected by an active warding or kinetic counter-spell (such as Flesh Ward), an uncontrolled harmonic rupture ignites. Both combatants must pass an Extreme CON check or suffer 3D10 concussive damage, and every entity within a 15-foot radius takes 2D10 damage from the shattering blast.
  • Satiety Disengagement Repulsion: The investigator can spend 1 MP to strike the brass buckle, releasing a directional concussive shockwave (Fighting: Brawl). On a Regular Success, it inflicts 1D3 bludgeoning damage; on an Extreme Success, the target is slammed backward 1D6 paces and knocked off-balance.

Blades in the Dark

Maras’s Caloric Cincture

  • Item Classification: Rare Arcane Gear (1 Load, worn on the waist).
  • Description: A scaled brass belt lined with brine-cured leather, featuring an amber transducer lens and three fluid-filled copper vials with floating marrow needles.
  • Quality: Fine (+1 Quality to metabolic evaluation, ration analysis, and survival checks).
  • Tier: II
  • Ration-Master’s Eye: When you make a Study, Doctor, or Survey roll to inspect rations, diagnose starvation or toxic contamination, detect foodborne poisons, or assess a target’s physical stamina, you operate with +1 Effect level.
  • Special Armor — Sympathetic Caloric Backlash: You may mark your Special Armor (or suffer 2 Stress) to trigger the belt’s reactive discharge when you take physical Harm from an adjacent melee impact or grapple:
    • Effect: The incoming strike rebounds with the concussive force of a shattering millstone. The striking opponent suffers Harm equal in level to the Harm you sustained (e.g., suffering Level 2 Harm inflicts Level 2 Harm onto the attacker).
    • Resonance Hazard: If the attacker carries an active warding talisman, electroplasmic barrier, or ghost shield, the fields trigger a catastrophic feedback surge: mark 3 Stress, absorb no incoming Harm, and all characters in the immediate area suffer Level 3 Harm (“Shattered Ribs and Hearing Loss”) from the concussive detonation.
  • Push Yourself (Satiety Shove): When you make a Skirmish or Wreck roll to physically shove, clear, or blast an adversary out of close quarters using the cincture’s kinetic pulse, spend 1 Stress to gain +1d or push the outcome to Great Effect, driving the target several paces backward.

Dungeons & Dragons (5th Edition, 2024 Revision)

Dietician’s Caloric Cincture

  • Wondrous Item, Common (Requires Attunement)
  • Item Slot: Waist
  • Armor Class Bonus: While wearing this belt, you gain a +1 bonus to Armor Class, provided you are not wearing heavy plate armor that completely encloses the waist with an articulated fauld.
  • Description: A wide belt of interlocking culinary brass scales riveted to cured steer hide, centered with an amber crystal lens and three copper vials housing floating marrow-bone needles.
  • Nutritional Diagnosis: You have advantage on Wisdom (Medicine), Wisdom (Survival), and Intelligence (Nature) checks made to detect spoiled food, identify poisons or venoms in organic matter, and diagnose malnutrition, dehydration, or exhaustion levels in living creatures within 10 feet. Additionally, you require only half the normal daily food and water ration to avoid exhaustion.
  • Sympathetic Caloric Backlash: When a creature within 5 feet of you hits you with a melee attack and deals damage to you, you can use your reaction to trigger the cincture’s kinetic ward. The attacker takes force damage equal to half the damage you sustained from the attack (minimum of 1 damage).
    • Resonance Calamity: If the attacker is protected by a spell or magical item that reflects or retaliates against damage (such as Armor of Agathys, Fire Shield, or a similar ward), both you and the attacker must make a DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, both creatures take 3d6 force damage and are pushed 10 feet away from each other; on a successful save, each takes half as much damage and is not pushed.
  • Satiety Disengagement Repulsion: As an action, you can strike the brass buckle to release a sudden wave of kinetic pressure at an adjacent creature. Make a melee attack roll using your Strength or Dexterity modifier. On a hit, the target takes 1d4 bludgeoning damage, and if the target is Medium or smaller, it must succeed on a DC 11 Strength saving throw or be pushed 5 feet straight away from you.

Knave (2nd Edition)

Maras’s Ration-Girdle

  • Item Slots: 1 Item Slot (Waist, counts toward carried inventory slots).
  • Item Armor: +1 Armor Check (AC 12 when combined with standard unarmored defense of 11).
  • Quality/Durability: 3/3 Quality.
  • Description: A girdle of brass scales on salt-cured hide, mounting an amber glass buckle and three copper vials containing floating bone splinters.
  • Satiety Ward: The wearer consumes half the standard rations needed to prevent starvation and gains Advantage on Wisdom and Constitution checks made to resist food poisoning, contaminated water, and famine fatigue.
  • Caloric Trauma Rebound: When an adjacent opponent strikes the wearer in melee and inflicts HP damage, the wearer may test Constitution (rolling a d20 + Constitution bonus vs. DC 15) as an immediate reaction:
    • Success: The buckle detonates with the dry crack of a splitting millstone. The attacker suffers damage equal to the damage dealt to the wearer, and the girdle loses 1 point of Quality.
    • Failure: The ward fails to discharge; the wearer takes damage normally without reflection.
    • Resonance Shatter: If the striking target has an active protective ward or magical armor enchantment, the colliding forces destroy the mechanism: the girdle drops to 0 Quality (broken), the target’s ward shatters, and both combatants take 2d6 direct concussive damage.
  • Satiety Repulsion: Once per combat encounter, the wearer may use their combat action to make a Strength check against an enemy’s Strength defense to fire an acoustic shove from the belt buckle. On a success, the foe is driven back 10 feet and loses their next movement action while regaining balance.

Fate (Fate Condensed)

Maras’s Caloric Cincture

  • Aspects:
    • High Concept: Scaled Culinary Brass Belt of Kinetic Retaliation
    • Trouble: Catastrophic Resonance Cascade
    • Additional Aspect: Metabolic Balance Vials
  • Stunts:
    • Sympathetic Caloric Backlash: Once per conflict, when you defend against an adjacent physical blow or grappling maneuver using Physique or Athletics and succeed with style, instead of taking a boost, you may inflict physical stress on the attacker equal to the incoming shift value prior to reduction. If invoked with a Fate point when suffering physical stress from an adjacent melee strike, the attacking foe immediately suffers a physical hit with shifts equal to the stress you sustained.
    • Resonance Hazard: If an opponent possesses an active mystical barrier, reactive kinetic ward, or damage-reflection stunt, any triggered backlash forces both you and the attacker to immediately defend against a Great (+4) Fair-wide concussive eruption. Everyone in the zone takes shifts of physical stress on a failed defense.
    • Nutritional Diagnosis: You gain a +2 bonus to Notice or Lore when actively inspecting foodstuffs, rations, forage, or living subjects to diagnose malnutrition, biological toxins, caloric deficits, or spoiled provisions.
    • Satiety Disengagement Repulsion: You gain a +2 bonus to Overcome or Create an Advantage using Physique when clearing space or shoving an adjacent opponent backward using the cincture’s concussive burst.

Numenera & Cypher System

The Dietician’s Caloric Cincture

  • Level: 3 (Artifact)
  • Form: A broad belt of overlapping culinary brass scales on cured hide, centered with an amber transducer lens and three copper vials of mineral oil with suspended marrow needles.
  • Depletion: 1 in 1d20 (checked upon triggering the reflective caloric backlash).
  • Armor: Adds +1 to Armor against physical attacks targeting the torso, abdomen, or waist.
  • Effect:
    • Reactive Caloric Backlash: Whenever the wearer suffers physical damage from a melee strike or grapple within immediate range, the amber buckle detonates with the concussive crack of a splitting millstone. The attacking creature or adjacent hostile target immediately suffers physical damage (ignoring Armor) equal to the raw damage points dealt to the wearer.
    • Harmonic Calamity: If the striking opponent is shielded by an active force field, personal kinetic barrier, or defensive warding esotery, the harmonic interference causes an immediate overload: the artifact depletes automatically, the opponent’s defensive field collapses, and all creatures within short range suffer 6 points of ambient kinetic damage.
    • Metabolic Transducer: The wearer gains an asset on all Perception, healing, and survival tasks involving the diagnosis of biological starvation, dehydration, spoiled provisions, and organic poisons.
    • Satiety Disengagement Repulsion: As an action, the wearer may spend 1 Might point to discharge a directional burst of compressed kinetic force from the buckle. On a successful Might attack roll, an adjacent target suffers 3 points of damage and is knocked back an immediate distance.

Pathfinder (Second Edition Remaster)

Cincture of the Caloric Rebound

  • Item 3, Uncommon, Invested, Magical
  • Price: 55 gp
  • Usage: Worn belt (occupies the waist slot); Bulk: L
  • Nutritional Diagnosis: The wearer gains a +1 item bonus to Survival checks to Subsist, Nature checks to identify edible flora and fauna, and Medicine checks to assess starvation, dehydration, and biological toxins. The wearer also gains a +1 item bonus to saving throws against foodborne diseases, ingested poisons, and environmental exhaustion from hunger.
  • Sympathetic Caloric Backlash (Reaction):
    • Trigger: An adjacent creature hits the wearer with a melee Strike and deals physical damage.
    • Frequency: Once per day.
    • Effect: The central amber lens flares with blinding cider-gold luminescence and emits the concussive crack of a splitting millstone. The triggering creature must attempt a DC 18 basic Fortitude save:
      • Critical Success: The creature takes no damage.
      • Success: The creature takes force damage equal to half the damage dealt to the wearer.
      • Failure: The creature takes force damage equal to the full damage dealt to the wearer.
      • Critical Failure: As failure, and the creature is pushed 5 feet directly away from the wearer.
    • Arcane Resonance Hazard: If the triggering creature is protected by an active reactive warding spell (such as fire shield or retributive strike), the colliding energies trigger a violent resonance rupture. Both the wearer and the attacker take 2d8 sonic damage, and the cincture is rendered non-functional until repaired with a DC 18 Crafting check.
  • Satiety Disengagement Repulsion (Single Action):
    • Frequency: Once per 10 minutes.
    • Effect: The wearer makes an Athletics check to Shove an adjacent enemy using the belt’s kinetic discharge. On a success, the target is pushed back 5 feet; on a critical success, the target is pushed back 10 feet and falls prone.

Savage Worlds (Adventure Edition – SWADE)

Maras’s Caloric Cincture

  • Classification: Minor Arcane Device (Worn, Waist/Torso)
  • Min Strength: d4
  • Weight: 2 lbs
  • Cost: $1,200
  • Armor Bonus: Provides +1 Armor to the Torso, and grants a +2 bonus on Vigor rolls to resist hunger, dehydration, spoiled provisions, and ingested toxins.
  • Nutritional Ear: The wearer gains a +2 bonus to Survival, Healing, and Notice rolls made to diagnose starvation states, detect foodborne poisons, analyze spoilage, and evaluate the physical exhaustion of living subjects.
  • Sympathetic Caloric Backlash:
    • Whenever the wearer is struck by an adjacent melee attack and suffers at least one Wound or Shaken result, the amber buckle immediately discharges.
    • The attacker must make an instantaneous Agility roll at -2.
    • Failure: The target suffers the exact amount of raw damage (matching dice roll and total) delivered to the wearer.
    • Success: The target partially avoids the blast and takes half damage.
    • Resonance Calamity: If the attacker is protected by the arcane protection, barrier, or deflection powers, a catastrophic harmonic loop triggers. The device suffers an immediate Malfunction, extinguishing its enchantment, and generates a Medium Blast Template centered on the wearer that inflicts 2d6 damage to all targets within.
  • Satiety Push:
    • The wearer may use the device to execute an unprovoked Push maneuver without incurring a multi-action penalty. On a success, the opponent is driven back 1″ (2 yards); with a raise, the target is driven back 2″ (4 yards) and knocked Distracted.

Shadowrun (Sixth World)

The Dietician’s Caloric Cincture

  • Item Classification: Foci / Waist Accessory (Armored Belt Mount)
  • Availability: 4 (R)
  • Cost: 8,500¥
  • Karma Binding Cost: 6 Karma
  • Defense Rating: +1 to Defense Rating against close-quarters attacks targeting the torso, abdomen, or waist; grants a +2 dice pool bonus on Toxic Resistance tests against ingested toxins, spoiled chemical additives, contaminated water, and biological gut pathogens.
  • Sympathetic Caloric Backlash:
    • Whenever the wearer is struck by an opponent in Close combat or caught in a grappling hold and sustains Physical or Stun damage after the Damage Resistance test, the central amber lens discharges an inverted kinetic shockwave.
    • The attacking opponent (or nearest hostile target within a number of meters equal to the unresisted damage sustained) must immediately make a Damage Resistance test against an equal value of Physical damage matching the damage inflicted upon the wearer.
    • Resonance Hazard: If an affected adversary is shielded by an active barrier, defensive warding spell (such as Armor or Physical Barrier), or active kinetic dispersion cyberware, the harmonic interference causes an immediate rupture. Both the wearer and the target take 6P damage (AP -2) from the concussive burst, and the focus is deactivated until rebound during downtime.
  • Biometric Metabolic Auscultation:
    • By touching the brass buckle or focusing the amber lens on an organic subject or meal, the marrow-needle balance vials translate metabolic burn and cellular decay into intuitive readings. The wearer receives a +2 dice pool bonus to Biotech and Survival tests made to assess starvation, analyze dehydration, detect synthetic foodborne poisons, and evaluate an organic target’s physical fatigue or Condition Monitor boxes.
  • Satiety Disengagement Repulsion (Minor Action):
    • The user expends a Minor Action when making an Unarmed Combat attack to trigger the cincture’s pressurized kinetic spring-pulse.
    • If the attack connects, the target takes standard Unarmed damage, is driven directly back 2 meters, and must pass an Athletics + Agility (2) test or fall prone.

Starfinder (Second Edition)

Dietician’s Caloric Cincture

  • Item 3, Uncommon, Tech, Worn
  • Price: 1,400 credits
  • Bulk: L
  • Usage: Worn (belt/waist)
  • Armor Class Modifier: +1 item bonus to Armor Class against melee Strikes targeting the wearer’s torso, abdomen, or lower core.
  • Metabolic Filtration: The wearer gains a +2 item bonus to saving throws against ingested pathogens, contaminated rations, hunger-based environmental exhaustion, and metabolic gastrointestinal toxins.
  • Caloric Diagnostic Sensor: The wearer gains a +2 item bonus to Survival checks to Subsist, Medicine checks to Treat Poison or diagnose severe malnutrition, and Perception checks to assess the physical stamina and caloric depletion of creatures within 30 feet.
  • Sympathetic Caloric Backlash (Reaction):
    • Trigger: An adjacent creature hits the wearer with a melee Strike and deals kinetic, bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage.
    • Frequency: Once per 10 minutes.
    • Effect: The central amber lens flares with cider-gold luminescence and releases the dry concussive crack of a splitting millstone. The triggering target must attempt a DC 18 basic Reflex save:
      • Critical Success: The target takes no damage.
      • Success: The target takes force damage equal to half the damage dealt to the wearer.
      • Failure: The target takes force damage equal to the full damage dealt to the wearer.
      • Critical Failure: As failure, plus the target is pushed 5 feet directly away from the wearer.
    • Energy Shield Resonance: If the striking opponent is shielded by an active kinetic barrier, personal force field, or defensive energy matrix, the feedback cascade causes both the target’s shield and this cincture to overload. Both creatures take 2d6 sonic damage, and the shield/cincture is rendered inactive for 1 minute.
  • Satiety Disengagement Repulsion (Single Action):
    • The wearer triggers the belt’s kinetic discharge to make an Athletics check to Shove an adjacent enemy. On a success, the target is pushed back 5 feet; on a critical success, the target is pushed back 10 feet and becomes off-guard until the start of its next turn.

Traveller (Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition)

TL12 Caloric Metabolic Cincture

  • Tech Level: 12
  • Mass: 1.0 kg
  • Cost: Cr 4,500
  • Armor Value: +1 Armor to the Torso and Abdomen against close-quarters strikes (stacks with cloth, ballistic weave, and mesh armor).
  • Power Requirements: Powered by a rechargeable micro-power cell (rated for 50 combat activations or 24 hours of sustained metabolic analysis).
  • Metabolic Bio-Sensors:
    • The three copper-jacketed piezoelectric balance vials act as micro-mass metabolic sensors. The wearer receives DM+1 to Survival and Science (life science) checks made to detect contaminated rations, find potable water, analyze biochemical famine wasting, and identify edible flora or fauna.
    • Internal metabolic stabilization grants DM+2 on END checks made to resist physical starvation, dehydration, and exhaustion from forced marches.
  • Piezoelectric Caloric Backlash:
    • Whenever the wearer is hit in close combat (Brawling or Melee) and takes damage through armor, the cincture’s central amber transducer discharges inverted kinetic energy outward.
    • The triggering adversary immediately takes concussive damage equal to the total points of damage that penetrated the wearer’s armor (the target’s armor protects against this reflected strike normally).
    • Resonance Calamity: If the opponent is equipped with an active personal deflector screen or TL13+ energy defense field, the harmonic overlap causes a catastrophic field surge. The unit’s micro-cell burns out, destroying the cincture, and an explosive wave inflicts 3D6 damage to all targets within 2 meters.
  • Directional Satiety Pulse:
    • As a combat action, the user triggers the buckle to discharge a directional shockwave against an adjacent opponent.
    • The user rolls Melee (unarmed) with DM+1. On a success, the target is driven back 3 meters and must pass an Athletics (dexterity) check of 8+ to avoid falling prone.

Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay (Wrath & Glory)

The Dietician’s Caloric Cincture

  • Value: 4 (Rare)
  • Keywords: IMPERIUM, ASTRA MILITARUM, ADEPTUS MINISTORUM
  • Item Type: Specialized Waist Armor / Ration-Master Field Gear
  • Armor Rating: +1 Resilience against melee strikes targeting the torso or abdomen; grants +2 bonus dice to Toughness tests made to resist ingested toxins, rotten rations, waterborne rot, and physical exhaustion from famine.
  • Commissary Diagnostic Auspex: The wearer gains +1 bonus die to Survival (Wil) and Medicae (Int) tests made to identify spoiled provisions, detect toxic adulterants in bulk grain, and assess the metabolic degradation or starvation status of imperial subjects.
  • Mirrored Caloric Retribution:
    • Whenever the wearer suffers 1 or more Wounds from a melee attack, the amber crystal lens detonates with an acoustic roar like a massive stone millwheel fracturing under strain.
    • The striking enemy (or nearest hostile within Engagement range) immediately suffers Shock equal to the total Wounds inflicted upon the wearer.
    • Perils of Resonance: If the attacker is protected by an active Rosarius, Refractor Field, or psychic barrier (such as Fiery Form or Psychic Shield), the colliding energies trigger a violent warp-resonance spike. The user gains 1 point of Wrath or triggers a Minor Perils of the Warp roll, and both combatants suffer 1d3+3 Mortal Wounds from the uncontained kinetic detonation.
  • Satiety Repulsion Pulse:
    • The wearer can make an unprovoked melee strike utilizing the belt’s pressurized kinetic pulse with their standard Melee pool.
    • On a hit, it inflicts 5 +1ED damage, and if the target fails an opposed Strength check against the user, the target is shoved 2 meters out of Engagement range.