Extraction Beam

The Extraction Beam sits on the workbench like a relic reclaimed from a working accident: a slender brass cylinder about the length of a forearm, scored with fine scratches that catch the lamplight. Its surface is smooth but not flawless, polished in the places where hands have gripped it most, leaving tiny fingerprints that glitter when a spark passes by. Along its flank run delicate sigils, etched in teal that glows faintly when the device is powered. At the end is a glassy lens, protected by a lattice of fine copper mesh, through which light seems to pool and then retreat. The entire thing hums in a low, patient whisper, as if it is listening to the world rather than shouting at it. There is lore bound into its seams: old salvage tales say engineers who ransacked ruined airships learned to coax energy from stubborn wreckage, enough to glow a beacon for a night of work without detonating the hull around it. The Extraction Beam, in that telling, is the result—a trustful tool, built to coax lost power back to life. In game terms, it functions as a precise, energy-tuned lifter. You point it at irregular rock veins, cracked ancient machinery, or the husks of relics that refuse to yield to brute force, and the beam gently pulls free resonant shards and power residues. You don’t break things with it; you coax them into a more usable state. The collected energy has many uses: it can be banked into storage, traded to engineers for parts, or converted into crafting materials for upgrades and repairs. The Beam rewards patience and timing—linger on a pulse, align to a faint tremor in the substrate, and you’ll walk away with a richer haul than a careless harvest could ever provide. It encourages a traveler to slow down, to observe the ground beneath their boots, and to let the world reveal its hidden fractions. Prices for such rarefied gear drift with the wind and the tone of marketplaces, with stories of deals made and coins exchanged under flickering lanterns. In one telling, a last-minute bargain went through Saddlebag Exchange—a noisy stall where merchants trade stories as much as goods—and a single job’s worth of energy netted a buyer a map and a favor in return. The Extraction Beam isn’t about spectacle; it’s about a quiet discipline of salvage, a way to read the land and coax a little more life from it. It’s a tool that has outlived countless repairs because it respects the rhythm of the world, and because it has learned to listen when nothing else does.