4.1.- LA CULTURA E IDENTIDAD

Located in a precinct on the high starboard side of the dredge, Trade Town is the primary headquarters for the Traders’ Guild that operates throughout the fleet and, very occasionally, to areas far beyond. Trade the exterior that few other dredge natives

enjoy. When the Skelirroth Fleet trundles into the Shallows, sometimes the seafloor rises so dramatically that the dredge’s upper portions emerge from the water into the air, which from the exterior resembles a massive whale breaching the sea’s surface. Those under Ombel’s dome can see the sky and, on at least one celebrated occasion, the mystical “dry land” described in children’s stories.

Ombel supports just over two thousand humans, most of whom live in a family- claimed side chamber. The central compartment serves as a common area, though a large portion of it is under the dominion of the Fixers’ Guild, giving it the look of a busy junkyard to the unpracticed eye. Most days, travelers from other parts of the dredge (and even other dredges) are visiting Ombel looking for help with a particular problem, great or small.

Leasel is a Fixers’ Guild grandmaster who wears a long gown covered in pockets filled with tools. She specializes in taking the bodies of defunct maintenance automatons and creating pets, servants, and pieces of animate art from them. A few times she has actually repaired a maintenance automaton, but given that the Iskelorm dredge is essentially devoted to repairing and producing the automatons, neither she nor the other fixers feel much pressure to take that on themselves. Leasel lost her family to a plague of slimes, so she keeps several repurposed automatons as pets and companions, each named for a missing member of her original family.

Raychard, a human with piercing blue eyes and short black hair, is responsible for monitoring and maintaining the Januar Door, the nearby airlocked entrance to Ombel. Raychard has also been spreading the story that he saw a giant flying creature through the viewing dome the last time the Skelirroth dredge partly surfaced. What’s more, he says, people were riding the beast. Now Raychard wants to mount an expedition to the exterior surface and go looking for such a beast for himself, because he wants to fly.

NYLAD

The precinct of Nylad is a series of compartments located in conjunction with one of the sets of food vats that

Leasel: level 3, tasks

related to the numenera as level 7; has a few random cyphers

Repurposed automaton:

level 1, pleasant social interaction as level 4

Raychard: level 2, tasks

related to the numenera as level 5; has one random cypher Farrac, page 81

Ahrin: level 5; tasks

related to deception, politics, and dredge geography as level 7; Armor 1

The Traders’ Guild keeps several compartments solely for themselves at the top of the market. These compartments lead to a series of warehouse chambers where all manner of tradable goods are stored, some of which are especially valuable and require guards. Monitored passages lead from the guild house to no fewer than four airlocked exits to the dredge, all of which are under direct guild control.

The current Lead Trader is Tamrin Geran, a man never seen without a black scarf covering the lower half of his face. Tamrin has headed successful trading expeditions to other locations beyond the fleet, including down to Minifera. In fact, he is a naiadapt, and keeps dyremmi-bred cyphers in reserve should he ever need to manifest an ability to directly adapt to the ocean through which the dredge fleet passes. Otherwise, Tamrin is a short man with bands of strange “scaled” flesh swirling over his skin (marking him as a naiadapt to those who know) who rules the guild with an uncompromising and merciless business sense. He’s not amoral, but he would never, ever give away something for free that people would trade for.

Town contains about half of Zyeburn’s population and is made up of traders, merchants, and the hunters who brave the interior to gather cuinum.

Trade Town has a five-tiered market in an immense but narrow open compartment. Within the many subcompartments— reachable by ladders, pulley systems, rickety stairs, and the occasional flier—a cornucopia of weird, hard-to-find,

surprising, and not-immediately-identifiable goods can be purchased. Sale items include puddings, cuinum flakes, fungi dyes, crunchy vermin coated in farrac glaze, oddities of all sorts, and cyphers. Barter and shins are both acceptable, and haggling is the norm.

TRADERS’ GUILD

Members of the Traders’ Guild, who make up only about five percent of the population, get around the market levels via ambulatory vine mounts called leaflings. These motile plants, snakelike in their movements, stretch about 35 feet (10 m) and can transfer traders and their chests with ease. Leaflings were cultivated from more aggressive versions found in the fungi forest that rots in Zyeburn’s core.

Leafling: level 4; Speed

defense as level 3 due to size; reacts like loyal pet to Traders’ Guild owner

Tamrin Geran: level 6,

tasks related to trade and persuasion as level 7; can use two random active dyremmi abilities Minifera, page 96 Naiadapt, page 101 Dyremmi, page 97

Forest directly. Little else would explain the profundity and exuberance of the fungi and plant life found here.

Several tiny human tribes inhabit the