Tantalus Cut
Every magnet, motor and machine on the frontier starts as mud in this hole.
PRE-PRODUCTION BLOCKOUT / NOT GAMEPLAY“Nothing here is precious. Everything here is required.”
The unglamorous seam
Gold buys a story. Neodymium buys a turbine. The Cut produces neither beauty nor legend — it produces the grey concentrate that every motor, every wind mast and every cooling fan on the frontier is eventually made from. Nobody sings about it. Everybody queues for it.
Separation is the hard part
Digging the ore takes a week. Separating seventeen chemically identical elements takes the rest of the year, a river of solvent and more power than the settlement generates. The Cut's leach cascades run at night on borrowed Cinder allocation, and the tailings pond has its own night-watch.
Why three factions want it
The Hearthbound want the magnets for their refinery drives. The Cinder Union wants them for turbine rotors. The Open Ledger wants them for the cooling plant that keeps the Archive alive. The Cut has no steward of its own, only three neighbours with standing claims and very good lawyers.