The Silverwake
Under the ice, silver veins run like a second river.
TERRITORY CONCEPT PAINTING / NOT GAMEPLAY“Leave a marker. Someone follows.”
The moving ground
Nothing built on the glacier stays where its builders left it. Survey markers lean, tunnels close, and yesterday’s safe crossing becomes tomorrow’s crevasse. The Silverwake crews maintain two maps: the rock beneath the ice and the ice above the rock. Only the first can be trusted for longer than a season.
Small pieces, long journeys
Wake silver is cast into narrow plates that fit inside a coat. Couriers carry it between settlements because a small delivery can pay for a meal, a valve or a night in a warm bunk. Each plate carries an assay mark. An unmarked plate is not worthless, but the next person has to test it again.
The meltwater bargain
Pumps send glacier water south through insulated pipes. In return, the Reach sends replacement drill heads and the Cinder Union guarantees heat through the long dark. The bargain fails whenever one settlement counts its own stores and forgets what keeps them useful.