Cato Kōshinchi

The communicator is a covert device used to connect Cato with agents and deities across the System. It transforms his expanding industrial and communications infrastructure into a political instrument: instead of relying only on weapons, portals, or visible alliances, Cato can invite potential defectors into a private exchange whose existence the System and its established powers may not immediately detect.

Design and Operating Method

The device is presented as a communications tool whose mortal and divine sides can link the world of ordinary inhabitants with the realm of the deities. Its construction belongs to the same broader technological problem that shapes Cato’s resistance: the System suppresses advanced technology through imposed physics, so Cato’s machinery often has to operate through biological or otherwise indirect means. A System interface can be used to create a device that connects to the mortal world, and the existence of this method becomes significant because it gives gods a way to communicate with Cato despite the absence of a normal connection between them.

The communicator is not used casually or placed in an obvious headquarters. Marus Eln creates a large stone slab with Skills rather than exposing a request through his Interface, then carves an innocuous instruction telling an unknown recipient to collect an item at a specified place on a specified world. The message does not mention either Marus Eln or Cato. Marus then spends a painful amount of essence to open a portal to the mortal world and leaves the slab in a quiet region far from current combat, accepting the risk that it might be discovered or eventually fall back onto Rikel. The device therefore works through concealment, indirection, and a deliberate separation between the message, its location, and the identities of the participants.

Marus Eln’s Test of the Channel

The communicator first becomes a concrete instrument of defection when Marus Eln uses it to contact Cato. After the hidden message is delivered, the stone slab flashes in the scry-view within five minutes, and the single word “Done.” appears at its bottom. Marus retrieves the slab with another expenditure of essence, finds no lingering energy, and confirms that the carving is exceptionally precise. The speed of the response demonstrates that distance is not a meaningful barrier to Cato’s network, even though Marus has deliberately placed the device on a distant frontier world.

Within an hour, a Copper-ranked Kesk reaches the communicator near the entrance of a Copper-ranked dungeon on a small hunting world. The world has no dedicated deity and only a minor Clan Lundt adjunct, making it a relatively safe location for an uncertain contact. Marus then asks whether he is speaking to Cato or to one of Cato’s agents. Cato answers directly, and Marus identifies himself as Marus Eln before stating that he wants to escape the existing order and join whatever Cato is doing. The device thus converts a private act of suspicion into an actionable political opening: Marus can test Cato’s reach, identify himself, and offer defection without traveling through official channels.

From Singular Contact to a Divine Network

The communicator’s strategic significance expands when Cato has more than a hundred comparable devices sent through Interfaces to other deities. He initially assigns the effort a very low chance of success, because the available simulations cannot reliably project the behavior of distant gods. The successful contact with Marus changes that calculation. Cato learns not to discard low-probability possibilities merely because they appear unlikely, and the communicators become part of a broader attempt to find divine actors willing to abandon or oppose the System.

This network also reveals a weakness in the existing divine hierarchy. The lower-ranking World Deities may be more willing to risk contact than figures such as Misse Eln or the Clan elders, who have greater authority but stronger reasons to suppress communication. A communicator therefore does not merely transmit speech; it sorts the political field by giving dissatisfied, marginal, or ambitious gods a route around their superiors. Cato’s preference for uncertain frontier worlds reinforces that function. Worlds with tiny permanent populations and no dedicated deity provide less protection, but they also provide fewer witnesses and fewer institutions capable of immediately prohibiting contact.

Negotiation and Political Consequences

The device later supports Cato’s direct conversation with Misse Eln. Through the mortal half of a Divine Communications Array, Cato recognizes that the seemingly ordinary mortal before her is not an ordinary participant: his composure before a deity and his possession of the communications apparatus identify him as Cato. He addresses Misse Eln without an honorific and asks whether the absorption of Mishkell and the collapse of the frontier are connected to her consolidation of power. Misse Eln replies that these measures are consequences of Cato’s hostility, while Cato distinguishes his quarrel with the System from a quarrel with her personally.

That exchange shows how the communicator alters the scale and form of conflict. Cato can confront a deity without bringing an army through a portal, and Misse Eln can answer him while remaining within the institutional center of divine power. The conversation does not resolve their opposition, but it makes their positions explicit: Misse Eln presents consolidation as defensive necessity, whereas Cato frames the System itself as the enemy. The device consequently becomes a stage for competing interpretations of responsibility before it becomes a weapon in a material battle.

When Misse Eln and Muar later restrict the System’s influence and the System withdraws toward the True Core, physics resumes around the War Worlds. Suns that had been kept apart are suddenly close enough for gravity to take hold, and the resulting danger forces the System to act. The communicator remains part of the larger apparatus through which Cato’s presence can be acknowledged and negotiated even as the underlying order destabilizes. Its most important consequence is therefore cumulative: repeated hidden contacts help transform Cato from a distant technological insurgent into a political alternative visible to defecting deities, frontier populations, and the powers attempting to preserve the System.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The communicator embodies the book’s contrast between slow construction and sudden systemic change. Cato’s expansion begins with delays: communications take months to establish, industrial growth proceeds from small solar arrays and improvised manufactories, and exponential growth initially appears almost motionless. Yet once the infrastructure reaches sufficient scale, a single channel can connect distant worlds, expose a dissatisfied god, and initiate a new chain of alliances. The device is a small object carrying the consequences of a much larger accumulation.

It also reverses the System’s own logic of controlled access. The System assigns ranks, regulates portals, imposes quests, and uses interfaces to shape behavior; Cato answers with a communications network that bypasses official permission and allows participants to choose whether to reveal themselves. The communicator cannot abolish danger—Marus must spend scarce essence, hide his message, and risk discovery—but it creates a form of agency that the System’s formal structures do not provide. In that sense, the object is both a practical relay and a miniature model of Cato’s larger project: build patiently under hostile rules, exploit every permitted ambiguity, and use connection itself to make the System’s monopoly on coordination impossible.