A Fragment is a piece of one of your people, sent into a world that could not hold them whole. Most of their strength stays sealed behind them, and what walks through the door is smaller, weaker, and still unmistakably them.

Some worlds run on a leash. A Machine fragment holds the world and decides how much power a visitor may bring inside. Kittanu did this to you in the Barovian Vale. She sealed most of your build and sent in a patient hunter, because a Golden King who can rewind an hour would have ended the place in an afternoon and learned nothing. 

The leash is a test, not a punishment, and the Machine can hand back a sealed piece, one at a time, if a Fragment’s life comes down to the wire.

A Fragment is still your Wanderer or your ally, carried at a lower weight. It keeps their promises, their bonds, and their weak spots, because the way to a stripped-down king still runs through the people he swore to protect. 

The same word also names beings broken off from gods and dragons who live as their own creatures; those belong to other books. Here it means only your own people, sent in small.

Each entry lists what was kept, what was sealed, and what the smaller form can still do when it is cornered. Read them as your people walking into rooms built to be beyond them, carrying only what the Machine let through the door.