The Circler
The Circler is the outermost of Vael Prime's three glitter bands: a ring habitat eight-point-two million strong, mostly second-tier House staff, salaried Entertainers, and the families of indispensable artisans.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Aesthetic | glitter |
| Anchor System | vael-prime |
| Controlling Faction | Asset Realisation |
| Fold Bleed | low |
| Population | 8200000 |
| Role | satellite |
| Zone | Core |
Notes
Dangers: Tier-throttled duels: a Circler habit. The duel happens, the loser leaves at a lower Kadiss tier than they arrived, and the loser is expected to thank the winner for the lesson in writing., Orbital glide: the Circler's ring is fragile in one twenty-kilometre arc; a stress fracture there would put a million sleepers into vacuum in under three minutes, and the backup seal is half-installed.
Hooks: A Circler casino has been quietly throttling the Kadiss tiers of its losing high-rollers to keep them at the tables; one of them is the wife of a House Vael second-cousin, and the family wants the situation resolved before it becomes a scandal., A retired Navigator lives out her leash in a Circler garden suite and has begun teaching unauthorised fold-geometry to a Kith noble child; the Navigator pool's enforcers want her retired in the older sense of the word., The Circler's outer maintenance ring has been hit by a string of identical suicides; the staff suspect a single resonance in the station's Kadiss lullaby band, but the band is on House Vael's own closed network.
Lore: The Circler is the outermost of Vael Prime's three glitter bands: a ring habitat eight-point-two million strong, mostly second-tier House staff, salaried entertainers, and the families of indispensable artisans. The ring is older than the planet's current dynasty -- it predates Asset Realisation's formal incorporation -- and House Vael inherited it with the rest of the world. The Casino Loop is the public face; the Garden Tier is the hidden one, the only place in the system where a real, unsynthesised tomato can be eaten, which is itself a kind of currency among the ring's chefs. The Petal Cathedral, with its ceiling of recovered Akraan glass, is the rare thing on Vael Prime that is older than the Houses: nobody knows who built it, and House Vael's archivists would very much like to. The ring's outer maintenance arc has begun to show its age, and the station mind has started playing a Kadiss lullaby band on the maintenance corridors that staff find unsettling without being able to say why. The station mind has also been refusing, for two years, to play the lullaby in any language other than the old one.
Notable: The Casino Loop: a forty-kilometre ribbon of licensed gaming halls where a losing streak is a hosted experience, not a misfortune., The Garden Tier: the inner ring's hydroponic parks; the only place in the system a real tomato is grown under daylight-spectrum lamps., The Petal Cathedral: a House Vael wedding chapel built to seat ten thousand; the ceiling is a single piece of recovered Akraan glass of unknown age.