Field Manual · § 3
What it costs to carry
This section is the one operatives skip and then come back to. It is written bluntly because every softer version that has been tried produced people who made the decision late, on their own, in the dark, with a Sitra capsule already in their hand.
Corruption
Corruption is a number between nought and a hundred and it measures how far into you the enemy has got. You will not feel the first twenty-five of it. That is not a design flaw in your instruments; it is the mechanism working exactly as the Adversary built it, which is to say that the price is arranged to arrive after the purchase.
Almost all of it comes from Sitra. A capsule burned in a
Fabricator , a capsule put into a tank, a
capsule fed to a construct or to your own Shekhinah — one point each, every
time, no exceptions and no way to be careful about it.
| Source | Gain |
|---|---|
| A Fabricator burning Sitra | +1 per capsule |
| Sitra put into an Ohr Tank | +1 per capsule |
| Sitra fed to a construct | +1 per capsule |
| Sitra fed to your Shekhinah | +1 per capsule |
| Standing near a Nerve Cluster | +1 every 30s, within eight metres |
The four states
0–25
Clean
Nothing. Everything works.
26–50
Tainted
A gold cast at the edge of sight. Their constructs are a tenth less likely to pick you. Your Shekhinah is slower off the mark.
51–75
Compromised
Gold wisps come off you. Half of them stop picking you. Scanner mode will not start.
76–100
Corrupted
Gold over everything. They no longer target you at all unless you make them. Your Shekhinah has begun to drift.
Read the third column again
The higher you go, the less the enemy notices you. That is not a reward the designers of this system overlooked. It is the shape of the offer, and it is the reason this section exists: at seventy-six and above you can walk through a nerve centre and be left alone, and the only thing you will have given up for it is the part of you that they would have had to notice.
Getting it out
| Method | Removes | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Time | −1 every 10 minutes | Always. Doing nothing is a treatment. |
| Standing near Sanctified Stone | −1 every 2 minutes | Within four metres. Build with it. |
| A Manna Wafer | −15, at once | Craftable. Keep some. |
| An Ohr Injection | −30, at once | Craftable, and not cheap. |
Build with 
Sanctified Stone . A room of it
treats you slowly while you work, which is enough to make casual Sitra use
survivable and is not enough to make it free.
Machines rot too
Every machine keeps its own count, out of a thousand, and it gains ten
for each Sitra capsule it burns. Unlike yours, it does not
decay. A machine you corrupted in your first month is exactly
as corrupted in your fifth unless you have gone and done something about
it — a 
Pure Ohr Capsule takes off a hundred,
Sanctified Salt takes off two hundred and fifty.
At a thousand it stops being a machine. It becomes
Infected Silicon , everything inside it
is gone, and it puts out one to three
Nerve Cluster in the spaces around it.
Those spread. They creep into stone and dirt on their own time, faster where there are others nearby, and anyone standing within eight metres of one is taking a point every thirty seconds without doing anything at all. They will not cross Sanctified Stone. Salt kills one outright. A pickaxe also works and drops nothing, which tells you what they are.
Containment
If you see gold particles near your machines, stop and check the count before you do anything else. A ring of Sanctified Stone around a Fabricator costs an afternoon and is the difference between losing a machine and losing a room.
The Tree
Against all of that, the complex measures something else. The Sephirot are ten vessels, and the tradition they are named from says they shattered, and that everything since has been the work of repair. Ours are ten measures of what an operative is becoming, and they advance only by doing the thing they govern — you do not buy Gevurah, you earn it by destroying Adversary constructs, and you cannot earn Binah by fighting no matter how well you fight.
| # | Sephirah | Governs | Advanced by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Keter Crown | Rank | Advance the rest of the tree broadly |
| 2 | Chokhmah Wisdom | Scanning | Scan. Find things before they find you |
| 3 | Binah Understanding | Fabrication | Make what has not been made |
| 4 | Chesed Mercy | Healing | Mend people and machines |
| 5 | Gevurah Severity | Combat | Destroy Adversary constructs |
| 6 | Tiferet Beauty | Balance | Stay clean |
| 7 | Netzach Eternity | Constructs | Keep yours running |
| 8 | Hod Glory | Defence | Take the hit on a shield |
| 9 | Yesod Foundation | The world | Go out. Reclaim complexes |
| 10 | Malkuth Kingdom | Automation | Build |
Keter, and what you are called
Keter does not advance by doing anything. It measures breadth — how much of the rest of the tree you have grown — and it is what decides what the complex calls you, which is what decides what you are issued. The ranks are the ladder in § 2, and they are the same words for a reason.
| Keter | Rank | Requires |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Initiate | Automatic |
| 2 | Acolyte | Three others at 1 or better |
| 3 | Sword | Five others at 2 or better |
| 4 | Archon | Seven others at 3 or better |
| 5 | Enochian | All nine at 4 or better |
Your tree is readable at any 
Metatron Terminal ,
which is the nearest almost anyone gets to the thing at the end of the chain
of command.
I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil… therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. Deuteronomy 30:15, 19