Cardan

Cardan's workshop occupies an old trackman's shack on the edge of the station: a sturdy workbench, two bare bulbs, a cast-iron stove, and shelves stacked with spare parts sorted by size rather than value. He entered the Zone over ten years ago. At first, he patched up generators at the Cordon, gradually moving deeper until he finally settled here. Cardan never pokes his nose past the perimeter. He says the workbench isn't running off anywhere, and sloshing through mud and anomalies is for those who don't know how to hold a soldering iron.

He takes on almost any piece of hardware: artifact detectors, gas mask filters, firearms, and jury-rigged contraptions with inscrutable innards. Cardan doesn't care much for rubles. He prefers payment in rare blueprints, solid tools, decent scrap, and an honest explanation of how the hell the gear was broken in the first place. He smells a lie instantly by the carbon scorch on contacts and the shifty look in a client's eyes.

In conversation, the technician is biting, curt, and strictly to the point. He might spend ten minutes grumbling about the galvanic corrosion between copper and aluminum before quietly pouring you a mug of boiling water. Flattery is useless on him—Cardan will just grimace and return to his vise. But if he comes to see you as one of his own, he'll stand up for you against anyone.