No coin comes easy, but if you got a beat to brew and a nose for ripe payload, reckon you’ll feather this tale. Who ain’t got taste for good cream, yeah? Yeah.
So I’m sitting at the Sowing Season per usual minding my own mug, when this rattled drifter shades the hatch. Cagey like a fry-bird on the block, but sure as shit weren’t no kip. That was clear as the vac-rings round his neck. He’d been under pressure.
Now I ain’t one to slip mugs on no account, but the drifter looked like he needed a taste and I got more vouchers in my cast than time to grog, so scraped a drink off the froth and slid it his way.
Weren’t too grateful. Queried on friar-gas and when I says I got no business with fiends, you could see the shame in his shoulders. No lean drifter needs to turn toward the haze for solace. True as a Grom rails, a sip or two started to shed his shakes.
That’s when the chant got wild.
I asked him what he seen that got him hankering for the gas. After a weighty tick as the terror stewed silent in his skull, two words simmered up and dripped out of his bonebox…
VELLUM SHALE.
If you haven’t mise nor matter to scratch with antiquities, as I reckon you don’t, V-Shale is rarer than rare. A supermaterial of the Old World. Light as sheet plastic, but strong and pliable and electro-conductive. I ain’t never seen it with mine own, but when they say them Old World ships had wings, I reckon it was the shale on display. Shimmering in all colors.
Material of myth it remains. The ore gone extinct ages back after they heat-domed the whole planet with over-eager extraction towers. So rare, merchants will spit flips if they catch whiff of even a tile of the stuff. A carriage-load would buy a neat fleet.
This drifter’s chant came in starts and stops, but eventually I gathered that his crew found a surveyor station. Strange craft of yore. Light-riding longhaulers for the Old World explorers of the deep fringe, many of which never made it back to berth, left to drift in the ether like the rest of us.
The carcasses still float, but they’re impossible to track down. Sometimes you catch galley-chant of a sighting - always by chance. A shiny castle in the distance, drifting back toward home.
I plied for more, but all the drifter said was that he had a carriage full of v-shale and that all he wanted was to get his payday and go warm some deep hovel.
I’m more interested in foul tales than a hot tip and you could tell by his tenor that shit got sweaty, but he bucked my queries. To shut me up, he let slip that his crew could’t pinch the whole pot. There were stacks more on the rig. He scrawled the coordinates on his napkin and left me to stew on the treasure map.
If you’re angled to believe the prophesies, I got them here - the ticks that’ll take you to the surveyor, still hanging creamy reams of vellum shale for the plucking.
I got no drip for my own expo. Those seasons are long past. Crews be crouchy and quipment be heavy and I got all I need here at the Sow to grease what cycles I got left, so you can have ‘em if you got the fire.
But word to warder: if you’re gonna chase this cream, pick your crew with care. Take heed of how they’re quipt and what badge they brandish. Stack skills, kit, and affiliations for the job at hand, but also for what you cannot plan, be they threats or opportunities.
The Void is dark and full of secrets. The crossing, long and treacherous.
Be wary of pirates and other such predators. Be wary of restlessness and hunger. Ward contamination of both mind and body.
Keep taut. Ready to work and ready to fight and ready to follow the trail…for not even Margul knows where it might lead.
If your crew is shit, you will die. Or worse - be forced to live out the rest of your seasons tipping mugs and huffing gas to dull the sting of the plunder left unpillaged, squares left unpainted, the life you could have led.
Stay smooth, drifter. Herd your pack and go get that cream.