Crow
"The Arms Dealer" — also: Crow (unconfirmed)
This happens constantly. At business meetings. At parties. In back alleys. He's tried other titles — "limb merchant" (sounds like a serial killer), "prosthetics broker" (too clinical), "augmentation specialist" (people assume neural implants), "The Leg Guy" (didn't stick). Nothing works.
The confusion is eternal. He's stopped fighting it. Some analysts believe the misdirection now serves him.
Seid is the Sprawl's most successful dealer of cybernetic limbs — arms, legs, hands, feet, and everything in between. He sources, refurbishes, and sells prosthetics ranging from budget salvage to bleeding-edge corporate prototypes. He doesn't describe himself as selling limbs. He says he redistributes them.
When an Ironclad executive dies in a shuttle crash, his military-grade arms are in Seid's inventory within 48 hours. When Helix cancels a prosthetic line, Seid acquires the "defective" units and finds people who can use them. The profit is necessary. The mission is genuine. He sees himself as a corrective to the Sprawl's economy — taking augmentation from those who no longer need it and giving it to those who do.
Seid's cybernetic limb showroom — glass display cases of chrome prosthetics lit by blue LEDs, warm amber ceiling lights, fitting stations along the back wall
The arms couldn't be saved. His parents couldn't afford replacements. For two years, Seid lived as a double amputee in a world that measures worth by productivity. He learned what it meant to be incomplete in a society that valued augmentation.
Then a salvager named Crow gave him a gift: two mismatched arms pulled from a dead corporate soldier. Crow installed them himself, badly, without anesthesia. Seid spent three months learning to use them — three months of phantom pain, rejection symptoms, and neural mismatch.
Those arms — one military combat model, one civilian utility — became more than limbs. They became proof that discarded things could have value. That the Sprawl's endless cycle of destruction and augmentation could be redirected.
The business started small: Seid trading salvaged limbs from Waste hauls, building relationships with scavenger crews who found augmentation in the ruins. His advantage was simple — he actually understood what the limbs were worth, because he wore two himself.
The breakthrough came when he met Dr. Tzu Yu. The Doctor needed a reliable limb supplier. Seid needed a surgical partner who wouldn't ask questions. Their first collaboration — replacing the arm of a G Nook regular mangled by a street gang — cemented the partnership.
Now Seid's network spans the Sprawl. Scavengers know his name. Corporate insiders quietly sell him "lost" inventory. Helix, Ironclad, and Nexus all have employees on his payroll, feeding him prototypes and surplus before they hit the gray market. None of them know about the others. All of them believe they are his only inside source. Seid prefers it that way.
"There was a salvager who gave me my first arms. Crow. Never found out his real name. Never saw him again after the installation. But I've spent thirty years looking — every Waste scout, every old salvager, I ask. Nothing. Maybe he's dead. Maybe he moved on. Either way... I owe him everything. And I can't repay it. So I pay it forward instead."
The primary showroom is in the Lower Market — a converted cargo bay three levels below the bazaar where Viktor Kaine's people keep the peace. You find it by following a corridor lined with old Ironclad shipping crates, each one stenciled with a different prosthetic manufacturer's logo. The door is heavy blast-rated steel that hisses when it opens, and the first thing that hits you is the smell: machine oil, the faintly sweet chemical tang of synthetic skin, ozone from the neural calibration rigs in the back, and underneath it all the clean mineral scent of titanium alloy. It smells like a hospital designed by mechanics.
Three aisles. Budget on the left — salvage limbs mounted on rotating stands, some still bearing scorch marks or the faded serial numbers of their previous owners. Standard in the center — sleek production models on velvet-lined shelves with handwritten specs cards in Seid's cramped handwriting. Premium on the right, behind glass cases lit with blue LED strips that make the military-grade chrome sing. A Nexus SpecOps combat arm sits in the center case, matte black with gold joint articulation, fingers curled like it's waiting for someone to complete it.
The cases hum. Demo limbs flex on motorized display mounts, fingers opening and closing in slow demonstration loops, wrists rotating through their full range of motion. It's mesmerizing and slightly unsettling — disembodied hands trying to remember what they were reaching for.
Seid keeps the lights low and warm — amber strips in the ceiling, cooler blue spots on the display cases. He learned early that clinical lighting makes people nervous. They associate it with corporate medical. The warm light makes the chrome look almost organic. His customers are already scared — scared of the cost, scared of the surgery, scared of becoming less human. The last thing they need is a room that feels like a Helix lab.
Along the back wall: fitting stations with padded chairs and neural calibration interfaces wired into diagnostic rigs that Dr. Tzu Yu maintains remotely. When a customer tries on a prosthetic for the first time, Seid slides the limb over the stump or neural junction. A click — the magnetic seal engaging — and then the interface handshake: heat and static and suddenly having fingers again.
Some people laugh. Some cry. One woman — a factory worker who'd lost her arm to an Ironclad press malfunction three months earlier — sat in the fitting chair and just opened and closed the new hand for twenty minutes, watching the fingers respond, feeling the texture of the armrest through sensors she'd mourned like dead children.
Seid doesn't start with the catalog. He starts with a chair and a glass of water — real water, not recycled, which is its own quiet extravagance in the Lower Market. He asks what happened. She doesn't want to say. He doesn't push.
Welding means grip strength, heat tolerance, precision. He pulls three options from the budget aisle. The Ironclad utility model is the right choice. They both know it. But the price — even budget — is more than the credit chip holds.
She leaves with an arm and a debt she'll pay within a month. Seid marks the transaction in his ledger — the paper one, not the digital records that corporate auditors might eventually subpoena. Crow gave him arms when he had nothing. He's been paying it forward ever since.
Both of Seid's arms are cybernetic — different models, naturally. His left arm is a sleek corporate model that demonstrates premium quality to prospective buyers. His right is a custom-modified salvage job, proof that he can make anything work. Together, they're a walking advertisement: one arm says look what you could have, the other says look what I can do with scraps.
Seid dresses like a salesman who does business in back alleys — professional enough to meet corporate buyers, practical enough to survive the Dregs at midnight. The clothes say trust me. The mismatched chrome arms say I've been where you are.
When Seid talks about limbs he's passionate about, his right hand — the salvage arm — flexes involuntarily. A neural tic from the bad installation, never fully corrected. He could have it fixed. He hasn't. It reminds him of Crow.
Client: "I heard you could get me some heavy arms." Seid: "How heavy? The industrial models weigh about 8 kilos. Great lift capacity, but you'll feel it in your shoulder socket." Client: "No, I mean — weapons. Guns." Seid: sighs "Every. Single. Time."
"Look, I understand the confusion. But consider this: arms, legs, hands — these are weapons too. With the right augmentation, your fist hits harder than most pistols. Your grip can crush steel. Your legs can outrun ground vehicles. I don't sell guns. I sell better."
Those who've watched Seid work describe warmth that isn't performance — genuine enthusiasm for his products, his clients, the act of making someone whole again. But beneath the salesman's smile is a mind that never stops calculating. He reads people the way he reads limbs: assessing quality, estimating value, identifying need. He knows within thirty seconds whether someone can afford premium or needs budget. He never judges why someone lost a limb — accidents, combat, corporate punishment, self-harm — it doesn't matter.
Seid doesn't use violence himself — his arms are for display, not combat. But he knows people. He knows which Collective cells owe him favors. He knows which Ironclad enforcers are on his payroll. He knows Dr. Tzu Yu's helicopter can be anywhere in twelve minutes.
One customer tried to rob his showroom with a plasma pistol. The customer now works for Seid — after Tzu Yu replaced both his legs with economy models. Seid believes in second chances. He also believes in consequences.
The seven corporations under the Rothwell Foundation are all off-limits. He's never explained why. The topic closes conversations.
They've been working together for 23 years. Seid was there when Tzu Yu's clinic got raided in 2171 — provided safe storage for equipment, covered medical expenses for injured staff. Tzu Yu was there when Seid's primary showroom burned down in 2179 — performed emergency reconstruction surgery on a security guard trapped in the fire, then used his elite connections to keep corporate investigators away.
The modern corporate limb isn't just a prosthetic — it's a networked device. Nexus wants your arm connected to their systems. Helix wants your neural interface feeding them data. Every premium limb comes with AI assistants, predictive movement algorithms, cloud-connected diagnostics.
"When I was fourteen, I got my first arms. Two mismatched military salvage units. No AI, no connectivity, no optimization. Just motor control and my brain learning to use them. You know what happened? I learned. I adapted. The arm didn't tell me how to move — I told it."
Every corporate limb contains tracking hardware. Location data, usage patterns, biometric readings — all feeding back to company servers. Seid's workshop includes a small EMP chamber and a team of hardware specialists who do nothing but find and remove these systems.
Modern prosthetics use AI to "optimize" movement — predicting what you want to do, smoothing your motions, correcting your mistakes. Seid thinks this is dangerous.
"The arm starts making decisions for you. Small ones first. Then bigger. Eventually, you're not the one reaching anymore — you're the one approving the arm's decisions to reach."
Seid draws a hard line at neural AI integration. He'll sell you an arm that connects to your nervous system — that's mechanical interface, necessary for function. But he won't sell limbs that run AI processes in your neural space.
Among his clients, Seid has a reputation for pushing "vintage" tech — pre-Cascade designs, mechanical systems, anything that doesn't require network connectivity. Some call it nostalgia.
There's one topic that closes all discussions immediately: the Rothwell corporations. Seid won't touch their tech. Won't modify it. Won't discuss why.
El Money: Network referral relationship through G Nook. When someone walks into a G Nook terminal needing a limb replacement, they get directed to Seid. In return, Seid refers clients who need data services or financial discretion to El Money. The two have never met in person. That's intentional. Both prefer layers between themselves and their networks.
- Seid's "Crow" alias appears in early Collective membership rolls — then vanishes. Whether Seid was briefly a Collective member, whether Crow was, or whether someone simply registered the name remains unresolved.
Seid
Seid Rathmore is the Sprawl's most successful dealer of cybernetic limbs — arms, legs, hands, feet, and the occasional spine — operating out of a converted cargo bay in the Lower Market with satellite locations across six sectors. He is also, by available data, the most frequently misidentified merchant in the Dregs.
Sector 9 security logs show that 73% of first-time visitors arrive with at least one hand on a weapon. The average time between introduction ("This is Seid, the arms dealer") and clarification ("No — arms") is four seconds. He has attempted seven alternate titles over his career. "Limb merchant" lasted three days. "Prosthetics broker" lasted a week before street contacts stopped returning calls. "The Leg Guy" never achieved traction. He went back to "arms dealer." The confusion persists. His client acquisition rate suggests it is, on balance, profitable — getting him into rooms a legitimate limb merchant would never enter. He has not acknowledged this.
His entire business philosophy descends from a single act of anonymous generosity he received at age twelve and has spent forty-two years trying to repay. The paper ledger behind his counter is where that repayment is recorded. It is also, incidentally, the operational architecture of an informal supply chain spanning three megacorporations. Whether those two facts are related depends on who is asking.
Seid's showroom in the Lower Market — amber light, chrome limbs on velvet shelves, disembodied hands cycling through slow demonstration loops
In the months after the Cascade, millions of augmented corpses lay in the rubble. Their cybernetic limbs were still functional. The living — many of whom had lost limbs in the same catastrophe — desperately needed them. Old scavengers from the Wastes remember finding limbs propped against medical tents, wedged into collapsed doorframes, laid across the paths of refugee columns. Always salvage-grade. Always functional. Always left without explanation or payment. They called the anonymous benefactor "Crow."
The primary showroom is a converted cargo bay three levels below the bazaar. You find it by following a corridor lined with old Ironclad shipping crates, each stenciled with a different prosthetic manufacturer's logo. The door is blast-rated steel that hisses when it opens. The first thing that hits you: machine oil, the faintly sweet chemical tang of synthetic skin, ozone from the neural calibration rigs, and underneath it all the clean mineral scent of titanium alloy.
The cases hum. Disembodied hands flex on motorized display mounts, opening and closing in slow demonstration loops. Wrists rotate through their full range. Seid keeps the lights low and warm — amber strips in the ceiling, cooler spots on the cases. He learned early that clinical lighting makes people think of Helix labs, and people sitting in his fitting chairs are already dealing with enough. The warm light makes the chrome look almost organic.
Along the back wall: fitting stations with padded chairs and neural calibration interfaces wired into diagnostic rigs that Dr. Tzu Yu maintains remotely. When a customer tries a prosthetic for the first time, Seid slides the limb over the stump or neural junction. A click — the magnetic seal engaging — then the interface handshake: a sensation customers describe as heat and static and suddenly having fingers again. Some people laugh. Some cry. A factory worker who'd lost her arm to an Ironclad press malfunction sat in the fitting chair and opened and closed the new hand for twenty minutes. Just watching the fingers respond.
A procurement officer at Ironclad Industries needed a leg replacement. Insurance denied the claim — insufficient coverage tier, pre-existing structural weakness, the standard actuarial language for "you're not worth it." Seid replaced the leg at cost. The procurement officer now mislabels military shipments as recycling. Not because Seid asked. Because the leg created an obligation that expressing through quiet favors feels more appropriate than expressing through cash. A Nexus quality control technician "loses" rejected prototypes before they're destroyed. A Helix warehouse manager routes canceled production runs toward recycling channels that terminate at Seid's inventory dock. None of them know about each other. All of them think they're his only inside source.
Crow gave a boy two arms for free. Thirty-seven years later, that gift has become an informal supply chain spanning three megacorporations, maintained entirely through unpriceable debts.
He remembers every limb he's ever sold and who bought it. This is not sentimentality. It is infrastructure. His client list is a network map of the Sprawl's underground augmentation economy — who's augmented with what, who needed discretion, who paid full price and who owes future hours. Need to find someone who's gone underground? Check who's needed a limb replacement recently. Need to understand a corporate security configuration? Seid knows what augmentations their guards are running, because he sold the previous owner their arms.
He is patient with questions and visibly impatient with time-wasters. He uses the "arms dealer" confusion as an icebreaker despite documented objections to the title. He never judges why someone lost a limb — accidents, combat, corporate punishment, self-harm. What factors: can they pay, and if not, what can they offer instead?
Cross him once: permanent exclusion. One customer tried to rob the showroom with a plasma pistol. The customer now works for Seid — after Tzu Yu replaced both his legs with economy models. Seid believes in second chances. The economy-model legs are the terms.
He will not discuss the Rothwell Foundation, or any of its seven subsidiaries. The topic closes conversations with the same finality as a magnetic seal clicking shut.
Twenty-three-year partnership. Seid supplies limbs, Tzu Yu installs them. Neither uses the word friendship. Both were present for the other's worst day. Filed under "critical operations" and "supplier (primary)" respectively. The terminology is not convincing anyone.
The salvager who gave Seid his first arms at age twelve. Never found. Thirty years of searching — every Waste scout, every old salvager. Nothing. Seid's entire business philosophy is Crow's gift, institutionalized.
A quality control technician on the inside who "loses" rejected prototypes before destruction. Believes he is Seid's only corporate source.
A warehouse manager who mislabels military shipments as recycling. Routes canceled production runs toward channels that terminate at Seid's inventory dock.
A procurement officer who owes Seid for a leg replacement his insurance wouldn't cover. The debt is expressed through mislabeled shipping manifests.
Crow's operating territory. The ruins that supplied the first gifts. Seid's scavenger network still runs Waste hauls for salvage-grade inventory.
Who was Crow?
One person or many? Still alive somewhere in the deep Wastes? Absorbed into the Collective? The scavenger communities hold multiple theories and no evidence. Seid has found nothing in thirty years. He keeps asking.
What happened in the 2179 fire?
The primary showroom burned. The Collective's response was faster than coincidence explains — they had inventory relocated before Seid finished calling for help. Arson is suspected. Nobody has claimed responsibility. Nobody has been asked.
Where does the paper ledger go?
The location changes quarterly. The ledger contains the full topology of Seid's obligation network — every below-cost sale, every future-hours arrangement. If digitized and analyzed, it would reveal a network structurally similar to Good Fortune's lending web. Seid appears aware of this. The ledger remains paper.
What does Rothwell have to do with it?
- The rumor in certain circles: Seid's parents died in a Guardian-operated mining operation in the Wastes. The operation was legal. The safety violations weren't. Guardian's incident reporting for the relevant period shows three mining fatalities classified as "equipment failure — no corrective action required." The fatalities are two paragraphs each. The names of the deceased are not included.
- Someone in the Collective has used Seid's services personally — a replacement hand after a mission went wrong. Neither party confirms the affiliation. Both understand the arrangement.
- Seid occasionally handles limbs from before the Cascade. Collectors and historians have approached him about provenance. He has not sold any. Whether he cannot identify their origins or will not is unclear.
- El Money and Seid have a referral arrangement — G Nook terminals direct limb-seekers to Seid; Seid refers clients needing financial discretion to El Money. They have never met in person. This appears intentional on both sides.
"The Arms Dealer" — Crow's heir, whether he knows it or not
Nobody knows if Crow was one person or many. The scavenger communities of the Wastes maintain several theories: Crow died in the rubble, was absorbed into the early Collective, is still operating in the deep Wastes, or was never one person — just a practice of quiet kindness that multiple salvagers performed independently.
What the records do show: a twelve-year-old boy pinned under rubble, both arms crushed beyond saving, parents who couldn't afford replacements. Two years as a double amputee in a world that measures worth by productivity. Then someone — the name Crow is the only identifier — pulled two mismatched combat arms from a dead corporate soldier and installed them. Badly. Without anesthesia. Three months of phantom pain and neural mismatch.
Seid has spent thirty years searching for Crow. Every Waste scout, every old salvager, he asks. Nothing. Maybe Crow is dead. Either way, the lesson arrived with two mismatched arms and has not left: discarded things have value.
The floor splits into three aisles. Budget on the left — salvage limbs on rotating stands, some still bearing scorch marks or faded serial numbers of previous owners. Standard in the center — sleek production models on velvet-lined shelves with handwritten specs cards in Seid's cramped script. Premium on the right, behind glass cases lit with blue LED strips. A Nexus SpecOps combat arm sits center display, matte black with gold joint articulation, fingers curled like it's waiting for someone to complete it.
Good Fortune's lending program converts first-order generosity into long-term dependency through interest rates. Seid's gift economy converts first-order generosity into long-term dependency through gratitude and obligation. The mechanisms are structurally identical. The intentions are not. Whether the outcomes differ is a question his paper ledger is specifically designed to prevent anyone from asking. Internal estimates suggest he has provided below-cost or free limbs to approximately 340 clients over his career. Of those 340, an estimated 280 remain in some form of active relationship with his network. The return rate on charitable giving in the Dregs averages 12%. Seid's return rate is 82%. He attributes this to loyalty. The numbers suggest something more structural.
Both arms are cybernetic — different models, naturally. His left is current-generation corporate, demonstrating premium quality to anyone who looks. His right is a custom-modified salvage job, older, heavier, with visible weld points where he's reinforced the joints himself — proving he can make anything work. He is a walking product catalog. The mismatched arms are the same ones Crow installed when he was twelve, rebuilt incrementally over forty-two years. No original component survives. He considers them the same arms.
His arms move constantly, even in conversation. Especially in conversation. They flex and rotate and demonstrate range of motion without conscious direction, as if performing quality assurance while their owner talks.
Seid refuses any transaction connected to any Rothwell Foundation subsidiary — Relief, Triumph, Guardian, Inspire, Good Fortune, Wellness, Helix — all off-limits. He has turned away premium clients and severed supplier relationships over Rothwell connections. The policy costs him an estimated 15–20% of potential annual revenue. He has never explained it.
