Asteroid Mining and Comet Jockeys

30 Jul, 2026

A Secret Santa in July gift for tim4242 on the Sci-Fi RPG Collective server. Hope you enjoy!

Economics of Postech Societies

A postech society is distinguished from its tech level 3 cousins by three main differentiating factors: abundant energy provided by solar energy capture or fusion reactors, interstellar space travel via spike drives, and abundant mineral wealth.

All other factors of a postech society flow from these three elements. Without abundant energy, the crude gravitics that make starships habitable and allow breaker guns to brighten the Dark Forest would be unusable. Their energy demands are simply to great for even modern-day nuclear power plants. Without massive amounts of rare and pure minerals, the fusion cores and superconductors needed to provide the energy would cease to exist. Without fusion energy and cheap alloys, there would be no spike drive construction at scale. Without the spike drive and related devices like the grav-rudder, it would be cost-prohibitive to acquire minerals from space, limiting postech societies to anomalously metal-rich planets.

The third leg of the triad, the abundant mineral wealth, is most often provided to a postech society by asteroid mining.¹ The majority of systems have enough mineral-rich space rocks to make asteroid mining viable.

A Digression on Space Navies

Polities do not build space fleets on a whim. Starships are expensive, troublesome, and delicate beasts at the best of times; every credit spent on a starship is one that can't be spent on some other budget priority (or given back to the people.) Planetary cultures can also defend themselves from spaceborne threats without building a space navy. Breaker guns eliminate the threat of unguided relativistic kill vehicles, and quantum ECM forces enemies into the planet's atmosphere to fight. The logistics of interstellar travel mean that ground invasions, which would otherwise bypass these defenses, are unfeasible except over short distances by the militaristic powers.

So why have a space navy at all? Why not simply build the planetary shore defenses and leave it at that? Why does nearly every planetary postech society build a space navy as soon as it's able?

The first and primary purpose of a space navy is to secure and defend the mineral wealth of the system's planets and asteroids. Without some sort of organized defense force, all stellar industry is at the mercy of the first pirate squadron that rolls into the system. A determined attacker could cut off a navyless planet from its mineral wealth, to say nothing of its dependent colonies and habitats.

The separation of a planet from its stellar resources is the actual goal of most interstellar wars. Cutting a planet off from its stellar mineral wealth is not fatal, but it immediately imposes costs on its populace. If a society has grown used to cheap metals, it will be suffer massive disruptions when metal is no longer cheap. Governments collapse and angry protestors fill the streets. Even elites might see luxuries slip from their fingers.

As a planetary siege continues, the situation inevitably deteriorates. Outlying colonies and outposts, cut off from supplies, might surrender outright. Vital machinery like fusion reactors, QECM projectors, and breaker guns become harder and harder to maintain without the vast amounts of cheap metals. As these machines fail, planetary bombardment becomes more effective, and a planetary landing becomes more likely. If the enemy can get a beachhead on the planet, the combination of a blockade and active warfare spells a slow doom for the polity.

It is not impossible to ride out these sieges, and it is possible to harden a policy against them. However, these options impose massive social costs. In almost all cases, it is cheaper to put together even a token space navy and deter all but the largest, most determined foes.

Asteroid Mining

Asteroid mining concept, Denise Watt for NASA, 1977

The people who actually mine asteroids have a few names in the Novarion Sector. Many cultures use a term descended from the Jian name "shínóng" (石农). In Imperial Corunian and White Christian legal documents, they are still referred to as "latomi." However, in Neo-Mandate Yinglés, and thus in most conversations, they are called "comet jockeys."

A typical comet jockey has a small, frigate-class system ship with themselves as the only crew.² They fly ships stripped to the bone. Every single luxury that even a novice Far Trader might include in their free merchant is removed, in service of making a less expensive, more robust, and more efficient ship. The first thing to go is extra life support that might be found on a ships of a similar size. The most expensive thing to carry into the cold of deep space is, after all, another breathing human. While planetary regulations or cultural traditions might mandate keeping enough life support for two or three people, comet jockeys will axe anything in excess of that. Most comet jockeys will spend their lives alone in their ships.

Once whittled down to just the necessary components, comet jockeys add three things: missile launchers, cargo space, and slingshot tethers. All asteroid mining are equipped with a low-yield nuclear warhead missiles, enough cargo space to carry dozens of dogies, and a dozen or more metallic tethers. Together, they are the pickaxe of the comet jockey.

Asteroid mining occurs in asteroid fields and asteroid belts. Anywhere asteroids or space debris are a million kilometers or less apart is workable, and denser areas are better. While it is possible to secure an economical amount of minerals from a loner asteroid in deep space,³ asteroid mining is a numbers game. A miner needs multiple asteroids, preferably small ones, in order to mine profitably. A given asteroid of even a kilometer of diameter just doesn't have enough ore on its own to justify the costs of flying, cracking, and shipping it.

Asteroid fields would have been surveyed during a culture's early forays into spaceflight. However, just knowing where asteroids are is the first step. Prospecting asteroids is more of an art than a science. While large mining concerns can afford to scrupulously probe and measure vast numbers of rocks, the majority of comet jockeys must gamble using inexact measurements, quick but sparsely detailed scanning, and good old human intuition.⁴ Carbon-rich and silicate-rich asteroids are usually passed over, unless the system is deficient in other sources.⁵

Of course, property is nine-tenths of the law, and that is as true in the hard vacuum as it is on the planetary surface. All polities strictly regulate who can mine asteroids, and where. Polities with private property might sell segments of an asteroid belt or entire orbits at once. The government or owner of an orbit can subdivide regions of space using powerful radio beacons that transmit their location and the three-dimensional bounds of the claim. However, property lines can get fuzzy, and that's before the chicanery that miners, companies, or even random ships can perform. Other polities control miners through contracting or bounty systems, or run all asteroid mining through state corporations. However, no system is perfect, and each one can be plagued by fraud, claim-jumping, and harvesting disputes.⁶

Once a comet jockey decides to mine an asteroid,⁷ they first line up their shots. Asteroids larger than a few hundred meters need to be broken apart before shipment and processing. The comet jockey will maneuver a couple hundred thousand kilometers away, until the asteroid is just out range of the ship's nuke snuffer, then fire enough nuclear missiles to crack the asteroid apart. Doing this correctly takes finesse and experience.⁸ Every comet jockey, at some point or another, has misjudged the force needed to crack a prospect, and was forced to watch as tens of thousands of credits hurtled off into deep space at a fraction of c. Cracking the asteroid down to usable chunks take several waves of missiles, depending on its diameter and porousness. Experienced, silver-handed comet jockeys can fire off the necessary salvos in a matter of minutes.⁹

Once the rock is broken into manageable pieces, the comet jockey must send it to an orbital processor. This is when the cargo space in the comet jockey's ship comes in, though not in the usual way. Even small asteroids are just too large to haul in the cargo bay of a frigate-sized ship, and the time and fuel costs of shuttling asteroid debris back and forth would erode the ore's profit.¹⁰

Instead, a comet jockey will fill their cargo hold with small, transponder-equipped guidance rockets, called dogies (singular "dogie".) Each dogie is about the size of a large motorcycle, with a manhole-cover-sized plate that is bolted to the asteroid chunk. Once attached, the dogie will broadcast its location for safety purposes, then search for a signal from an asteroid processor station. Once it picks up a signal, it uses its directional rockets to guide the chunk within a few hundred kilometers.

Some comet jockeys with a little extra capital or with engineering expertise add manipulators to their ships that allow them to attach the dogies from the safety of their cockpit, but most have to suit up and do it by hand. An experienced comet jockey in their prime can secure a dogie in about fifteen minutes, but the records average below three minutes per dogie. It is otherwise lonely work, even by the standards of the lonely work that is asteroid mining. A comet jockey must spend hours in a vaccsuit, tethered to their ship by a thin line, without even the comforting embrace of artificial gravity. They must carefully attach the dogie while the asteroid chunks spin and shift around them. Ghost stories and ill omens manifest during this time.

Concept art of a tethered asteroid, NASA, 1984.

Once all the dogies are attached, the chunks must be slingshot towards an asteroid processor, in order to impart enough momentum for timely arrival. Each dogie hooks into the ship's twelve to twenty-four metallic high-tension tethers. Tethers can extend up to two thousand meters from their anchors, and go rigid or slacken at the push of a button. The comet jockey locks the tethers in place, keeping the chunks spread to avoid collision on their journey.¹¹ Once the chunks are positioned, the comet jockey accelerates their ship, dragging the chunks up to a decent speed. When they gain enough momentum, the comet jockey slackens the tethers and lets the dogies loose.

Shooting these chunks through space requires comet jockeys to be aware of gravitational conditions between themselves and their targets. While most systems will have an asteroid processor relatively near (on stellar scales) areas of high mining activity, some miners might have to send their finds across multiple orbits, or even on a secant through the system. Even slight deviations can put the haul so off-course that the dogies won't have a chance in hell of course-correcting. To avoid issues, comet jockeys pay careful attention to current orbital positions, scrupulously maintain their accelerator engines, and try to cultivate very good relationship with stationside programmers that craft their slingshot routines. Angry comet jockeys are the first to report gravitational anomalies or unregistered space stations, and any scientist or naval observer worth their boots will listen to them.

Once the asteroids are on their way, it might be days, weeks, or (in remote frontier systems) months before they arrive near the asteroid processor. In this time, the comet jockey will prospect, crack, and ship a dozen more asteroids in the same area, if there are good prospects. As they slowly trickle in to the processor, the comet jockey will tally up their finds, scrupulously recording where they found them, which dogies were attached, and so on, in order to estimate their payout. Comet jockeys will continue a run until they empty their tank, get injured, or something breaks, at which point they limp to the nearest refueling station.

Asteroid processing facilities vary in size. Frontier systems might have processors that fit only a dozen seasonal workers, while better-established systems have factory-habitats with permanent inhabitants. At all times, processors are surrounded by a cloud of debris, slowly picked apart and refilled by oncoming hauls. When they detect incoming dogies, they use miniaturized breaker guns to slow and direct the oncoming haul. Some large processors, or those built into planetoids, can shepherd asteroid chunks into waiting mechanical maws for immediate reprocessing. Others must send small pinnaces up to capture individual chunks and haul them into the processors.

Once inside the processor, machines remove the dogies and sort the ores. The ore is weighed, tagged, and spectrographed. A payout is tallied up based on the number of dogies received. Unscrupulous or cheap asteroid millers might "accidentally" allow the dogies to be ground with with the ore, and many comet jockeys make their first planetside visit in years to sue them. Of course, other comet jockeys, being independent sorts, will handle things themselves; unscrupulous asteroid millers therefore spend extra on bodyguards and semi-legal defensive weaponry.

Once inside the asteroid processor, the ore is ground up, separated, and processed into ingots. System transports will make regular stops at these stations to pick them up in exchange for fuel, water, and supplies. When the comet jockeys arrive, they are given their dogies and a credit payout. If the processor has no other services, the comet jockey will be on their way, off to find an orbital bar or station habitat. They pay their maintenance costs, buy up some fuel vouchers, and fritter away whatever is left on drink and companionship. When the money runs out, they suit up, climb back in their cockpit, and head out to start the process all over again.

Comet Jockey Culture

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, 1942

Comet jockeys are stereotyped as loners. Working for days and weeks in the depths of space, where there might not be another person around for a few billion kilometers, puts a terrible pressure on the social ape. Experienced comet jockeys sneer at "dirtsiders" who try to take up their profession; planet-born people must prove themselves able to function in the absence of direct human contact for extended periods of time.

Comet jockeys attempt to fill this hole of loneliness in many ways. Despite living in a space smaller than studio apartments, every comet jockey tries to make it homey. It will be filled with furniture of their culture, trinkets, pictures of home, plants, or entertainment systems. The one thing a comet jockey will splurge on is a nice bed with reliable gravity; this is the largest and most cumbersome piece of personal equipment that can be found in their ship, everything else having been trimmed for space. Entering a comet jockey's cockpit and living quarters (a single space) uninvited is the biggest faux pas a stranger can commit. Their personal ship space is sacred.

Comet jockeys will also try to dispel the loneliness by keeping in contact with each other over radio. Because they may be light-minutes or light-hours apart, messages have a delay. Comet jockeys are more than willing to wait; the relief of another person's voice message is worth an hour of silence. Comet jockeys send each other stories, jokes, and rumors. Some comet jockeys have even developed elaborate turn-based games, like chess-by-mail, but played over radio through the depths of space.

Of course, this loneliness manifests in other ways. Comet jockeys are a superstitious lot, moreso than the average orbital. Someone living in a habitat might have a hundred or a thousand people around them for comfort, but a comet jockey is truly alone in a way that most planet-bound people can't even contemplate. Beyond that, a comet jockey's livelihood is unstable. Every one of them years for that grand payday, the big score, the haul to outshine them all. However, by that same token, prospecting might be a bust for days or weeks at a time. If a comet jockey goes through a long dry spell, it might mean their ship breaks down far, far away from help.

Each culture imports their own unique superstitions into space. For example, the comet jockeys operating in the Trinculo system, all devoted Orange Christians from Caliban, carry three Bibles at all times - one in their living quarters, one in their cargo bay, and one sewn over the heart of their vaccsuit. Throughout the Ringtail Cluster, a unified superstition is that a comet jockey must knock three times before returning to the ship - if something knocks back, you don't go in.

Their precarious livelihood also has more material consequences. Few comet jockeys own their ship outright. Most must mortgage their ship to purchase mineral rights and keep themselves afloat. Money from their ore hauls flows to the bankers before the maintenance costs and living expenses. Comet jockeys that go without good hauls for weeks or months might find themselves further indebted to fuel vendors and orbital victuallers. When a comet jockey starts paying for their breakfast on credit, they are truly in dire straits. (Comet jockeys under planned economies fare somewhat better, getting a standard wage and having accommodations and supplies provided, but production quotas can introduce a whole other set of problems.)

Comet jockeys that default can try to run, but unlike a delinquent Far Trader, they can't escape to another system, or a lawless area like the The Deadworlds, on their system drive. They are entirely dependent on pirate havens or unknown hideouts within their system, which in a well-patrolled system, might not even exist. This precarity drives poorer comet jockeys into the arms of criminal enterprises, who can provide a steadier income that hauling rocks. Comet jockeys can easily smuggle small cargoes without arousing suspicion of system authorities. They're not closely-tracked outsiders, like incoming Far Trader ships, but they also aren't highly regulated system freighters, expected to make regular stops to known locations. No one questions a comet jockey that suddenly plunges into some obscure region of deep space. Occasionally, a careless or greedy comet jockey might get caught, but it's impossible for a spacy navy to closely track every single one. They prefer to make an example of the ones they catch and hope it scares the rest.

The engine modifications to a comet jockey's ship are particularly valuable for criminal activities. Of course, the high-acceleration drives are for slingshotting asteroid chunks, but the ability to accelerate at rates that would make a drive rating 3 courier captain weep is also useful running a blockade, or evading anti-starship weaponry. This acceleration cannot be sustained for long, but it is often enough to allow a determined comet jockey in a well-maintained craft to briefly slip out of combat range.

Some comet jockeys take this to the next level. In less developed systems where mining is more lucrative, comet jockey organize themselves into racing leagues in their spare time, each trying to outdo the others in sheer acceleration. These drag races generate enough gees of acceleration to overwhelm protective grav-shielding, sometimes killing their pilots. Needless to say, gambling on these races runs rampant, up to and including how many will die. However, this is one of the few social activities that is exclusive to comet jockeys. The races are a community bonding ritual: a place to bury hatchets, rekindle friendships, and collaborate against external threats. Outsiders who prove themselves in these races will win the community's respect.

Outside of their craft (in both senses of the word), comet jockeys are a frequent sight at space habitats, refueling stations, and spacer bars. In some well-developed systems, there are even establishments that cater to them. Comet jockeys are valued as sources of news and entertainment, since they travel much farther than the average orbital. However, they have a reputation for overstaying their welcome. Independent comet jockeys tend to linger at a station until they get bored, go broke, or get kicked out, none of which endear them to station managers.

It is on these stations that the loneliness and isolation of their duties strike once more. Most comet jockeys ease the burden of isolation and the system shock of returning to society by abusing substances. Most manage despite this, but every year, a share of them are consumed by it, their ship repossessed and the jockey themselves forced to beg their way to the planet and perhaps a dole. Comet jockeys also pay for companionship, but while some simply hire sex workers, others fall into elaborate cons designed to prey on the lonely spacer's desire. These parasitical threats are well-known (and sometimes get embellished into stories of conspiracies and space vampires), but it doesn't stop young comet jockeys with a mournful heart and a fistful of cash from learning a very painful lesson.

A Digression on Orbitals

Inhabitants of Old Earth in the 21st century divided human populations into two broad groups based on the density of their habitation: urban, and rural.¹² Urban people live in dense cities, and rural people lived in small or spatially spread communities in the countryside or wilderness.

Both of these categories persist into the 32nd century, though their presence on a planet is dependent on environmental and social conditions - it's difficult to have a rural population on a planet with freezing temperatures and an ammonia atmosphere.¹³ Postech societies add a third, distinct category: the orbitals, those living in space habitats or aboard starships on a permanent basis.

Most postech societies implemented radiation shielding techniques handed down from the time of the Mandate as soon as they could obtain the materials, preventing cosmic radiation from wreaking its terrible toll during long-term space travel. With the spread of the mass-manufactured artificial gravity panel in the late 30th and early 31st century, the other major barrier to decent life in space was conquered. Habitats have enough radiation shielding to reduce exposure to acceptable levels (although it is not as good as hiding under a strong ionosphere), and enough gravity to prevent major muscle loss and bone decay (although it is never quite as strong or consistent as terrestrial gravity.)

Aboard these habitats and their attendant starships live the orbitals, among whom the comet jockeys count themselves. For a given postech polity that is centered on a terrestrial garden planet, 15% of the population will be orbitals, living continuously in space habitats.¹⁴

Orbitals have as distinct a culture as rural people do from urban people. They are born and live in an entirely artificial construction, and keenly aware from an early age that damage to their home means a slow death. They don't have many opportunities to travel casually, and unlike rural people, they do not have the ability to wander far from their home. Even harsh planetary wilderness pales in comparison to the killing power of hard vacuum.

The pressures of space living leave orbitals stereotyped as insular, hidebound, and standoffish. Orbital people tend to have extremely strong bonds with their community, and relatively thin bonds with the rest of polity. Orbitals are rarely innovators or trendsetters. They stick to tradition, because following the rules and staying between the lines kept their parents, their grandparents, and all their spaceborne ancestors alive. Overturning things for no good reason is a good way to die in the depths of space. They carry this attitude into their social mores: they tend to be religious and traditional. They aren't risk-takers and view those who are as foolish, selfish ingrates. However, by that same token, they are a coolheaded and fast-acting comrade in a crisis.

Orbitals in turn tend to view "dirtsiders" as spoiled, soft children. The people who lived within the warm, comforting bosom of a planet's gravity field and ionosphere have no conception of reality, so they say. Orbitals find them careless, rude, indulgent, and worst of all, unreasonably demanding. Dirtsiders arrive with big ideas, ready to bulldoze the fragile routine that sustains their world. They are keenly aware that the planetary people see their elaborate routines and contingencies as mere inefficiencies on a spreadsheet. They are also keenly aware that much of their labor is in service to distant planetary populations who they may never meet. Few are as alienated from the products of their labor as the inhabitants of distant resource-generation outposts.

The one bridge in this gap is service in the space navy. While orbitals serve disproportionately, any navy would be hard-pressed to fill all of its ranks with orbitals alone. Aboard naval vessels, the planetside and orbital meet, mingle, and work together. Naval discipline in most polities has a tendency to erode their distinctions. Even the most contemptuous orbital still remembers their shipmates fondly.

Five¹⁵ Comet Jockeys

Bill and Dale Chipper are a pair of Amitian brothers from the Leigh system. They've been comet jockeys since they were sixteen, and they've been together the whole time. One might assume their bond is strong, but stationside, they have the most acrimonious relationship anyone has ever seen outside of divorced couples. They will usually arrive in good spirits, but within a day or so, they will inevitably be at each others throats over some trivial dispute. Most stations' security are well aware of their antics. They are banned from the most reputable stations in the system, the sole exception being Roxanne's. Onlookers wonder why the pair haven't killed each other in deep space; but other comet jockeys report that the brothers sound happy and collegial working on a haul.

Bill desperately wants tickets to the Amity Speedway for his birthday, which is a problem, because they were banned three years ago after "the Beer Tank Incident." Dale is desperate to give Bill tickets to a race as his birthday present. They would be greatly indebted to anyone who could get them unbanned, or at least smuggle them into a race. If the characters can do that (and deal with the fallout) Bill and Dale will happily give them an account of all the commercial and military traffic in the system any time they visit, information that might prove advantageous to Far Traders or spies.

Harking Jack carries himself like a pirate, which is fitting for a wildcat miner. Wildcat miners move from system to system, mining regardless of ownership and selling to any processor who won't ask too many questions. Jack and the Chop Rippers Gang are Endonian by birth, but currently operate in the Parwood system, zipping through Maskall's Collar one step ahead of bounty hunters. Harking Jack is not a man to be trifled with; he claims he's only killed seventeen people personally, but the authorities on Maskall want him in connection with thirty-two other deaths in that system alone. Despite this, the law treads carefully around his gang, as they have something most comet jockeys and wildcats don't: an illegally up-gunned bulk freighter, the Bread and Honey. Since they don't partake in piratical activities, the resource-strapped colonial authorities overlook their activities until the complaints of other comet jockeys grow too loud. Even if they give chase, the Bread and Honey will just scoop up the gang and jump away until the heat dies down.

Harking Jack has a problem that he needs someone else to solve. He thinks that a bounty hunter by the name of Luis Nieves Conde has figured out the location of his gang's base in the Parwood system. (No, he won't tell you.) He would be interested in someone who's disconnected from his gang - the characters that have chanced to stop in the system, for example - to go and erase that data from the bounty hunter's Free Merchant before he can start blackmailing Harking Jack or worse, telling the authorities. Jack doesn't care how this is accomplished or what sort of collateral damage is done, so long as the data is gone, Luis is out of the picture, and his gang has nothing to do with it. In return, he will happily provide the locations, probe readings, and spectrography of several mineral deposits on planets and moons throughout Parwood that his gang can't exploit. This information could guarantee a successful mining outpost. If the characters are willing to do more jobs, Harking Jack can give them similar information for other systems.

Irgen was once a navigator for the Gulu Lamun Gūsa Nomad Fleet, but they stripped her of her clan name and exiled her for a crime she will not state. Unable to set a foot on a planet, she bounced from job to job until she fell into asteroid mining in the Stonemeuse system. She is a dour, taciturn woman with few friends and a deep sense of loss carried on her back. She has shed most of her fleet's traditional garments in favor of simple flightsuits acquired from travelling traders. Most recently, she has been wearing surplus Gallican ship suits. Her ship is the fastest in the system, capable of sustained acceleration similar to a drive rating-2 ship.

She finds talking to strangers and interstellar sojourners easier than system inhabitants. If they get her talking, Irgen will eventually explain that the one thing that will bring her great comfort is a small box still in the hands of her clan. She will explain exactly where it is: aboard the hearthship Ihan, in third houseroom of the Yin clan, in the bedroom of the house patriarch, third drawer, access code 1086524. The box is made of jade and polished acaia wood, and sealed with a simple latch. If that box is brought to her, she will lighten, and become a fierce ally of those who brought her the last memories of her beloved. She will teach them the navigational techniques of her fleet, and record several secret rutters.

The family Stone - Pierre, Mathilde, Gomez, and Anna - are an oddity, a group of four people that all live together on their comet jockey ship in the Sagitario system. Their living space is larger than most comet jockey ships, but it is still small for four people. Gomez and Anna, eighteen and sixteen years old, respectively, were born on the ship and have lived there their whole lives. With all four of them working, the family is more or less self-sufficient, able to earn enough that they can keep flying while still having lots of leisure.¹⁶ Whenever they're at a station, they are a perfect, harmonious family.

All except for Anna. She's always been a bit of an odd one out, the baby of the family, and more of a dreamer than the rest. She dreams of life planetside, houses and cities, running through fields, oceans and deserts. She yearns for gravity's embrace, for a world where the the vacuums fatal harshness is a distant dream. She's managed to gather 1,000 credits - 500 Puertascurian, 237 Amity, 102 Gallican, 58 Endonian, 36 Corunian, and a handful of other polities - that she will happily pay to anyone who can secure her passage to a terrestrial garden world. Her family will not let her go easily, and they will assume anyone attempting to help her is corrupting her.

Enrique Kymani is something of a Renaissance comet jockey. Not only are they a comet jockey par excellence, but they are also a capable programmer, a champion racer, and unbeknownst to the authorities, the finest drug smuggler this side of the Novarion Cross. Maintaining that status as the Puertascurian authorities tighten their grip on the Free Port of Luque is no easy feat. For those in the know, Enrique slips drugs and other goods in and out of the free port undetected, avoiding inspection and the strict patrols that separate Puertascurian and foreign traffic. They pour the money they make back into their highly customized miner, their pride and joy, their magnum opus.

Enrique doesn't work for anyone they don't already trust, and it would take a lot of work for characters to ingratiate themselves with Puertascurian criminal syndicates. Anyone who approaches asking about smuggling will spook them. However, they do have an opportunity for outsiders. Recently, one of their contacts expressed her desire for a spinal fluid extract from the Mesaclaw, a species of warbeast from Pentameter.¹⁷ Unfortunately, she doesn't have the first clue about sourcing it. If Enrique can deliver usable spinal fluid to her, they would gain major renown and expand their customer base. If the characters can give them the spinal fluid of the Mesaclaw, they will happily treat them as trusted contacts and offer smuggling services.

#lore #novarion-sector #rpg #swn #worldbuilding