Nate Nukeular is a Mercurian street food vendor based in Titan Garden who can be found operating all around the Sol system. A laid-back and mellow fellow, Nate Nukeular loves good vibes and good company, cultivating a deep love of cultural exchange and expanding boundaries. Nate's the kind of guy you could talk at for hours about whatever your passion is, and when you start to think he might not be listening he'll ask a question about a point you made twenty minutes ago- the fact that you're so passionate about what you're saying means what you're saying is worth taking in, and it's so cool how you're into it like that. And since he's the kind of guy to pay attention like that, he's loaded with weird little facts about all sorts of topics he can offer up himself, often shared with that forced-but-controlled voice you've gotta use to hold a conversation underneath the overly-loud atmosphere of music at a given social venue. It's cool to know stuff, man. Share what you got.
Nate's passion is sauces. As a Mercurian native his Gift of Sol is the purview of poisons, which is arguably a bit of a cursed gift, but it's one he's spun into a productive craft. Did you know? The plants we use to make hot sauces are actually creating poisons to deter us from eating them, but that poison is valuable so we eat them anyways. Nate Nukeular uses his Mercurian talent to read how various poisonous plants interact with other ingredients to create rich and flavorful sauces that still boast a desirable amount of heat. He's got sauces on deck in a variety of heat and flavor profiles to accommodate everyone from sensitive Venusians to intrepid Martians to the most arrogant lead-bellied Callistans- he's even got some blends designed specifically for Androids, poisoned blends designed to play with the Android error response to heat in ways that produce interesting audio-visual sensory input corruptions, almost like living inside a music visualizer for a few moments. If you're a synthetic starfarer ask for Bolthead Baroque or Pernicious Pendulum on your order and enjoy the vibe. He's a hot sauce boss, not a purveyor of sensory suffering, so if he sees someone is having a hard time with some of his food Nate Nukeular can pop his Firewalker form and ease the effect his poison sauces are having on that customer. Alternately, if someone is bullying a shy customer over their order he can pop Firewalker to really roast a rude boy with an amplified dose of Mercurian heat. Be cool, man. It ain't about showing off, it's about enjoying the ride.
You can find Nate and his collection of hot sauces at Nate Nukeular's Atomic Food Cart- Yipyap rates it at five barks out of five! Painted with black-and-pink hotrod flames, Nate Nukeular's Atomic Food Cart is never found in just one location, but moves all around Titan Garden to be in the right spot at the right time. When you hit up Nate's you're generally looking at getting a skewer of grilled food with your choice of sauces on top- you can pick your percentage between meats and vegetables, but the sauce is generally what you're there for. Sauced-up skewers are served resting in a sliced bread roll; this is so a customer has a clean and easy way to hold their food when they're not eating, but also so they have a bit of neutralizing bread to help provide respite from the spicy heat of their meal. Nate can be found in the A-District outside local concert venues, at the B-District during busy holidays or in the E-District when SABLE boxing matches are going on. Nate Nukeular's Atomic Food Cart even finds its way off Titan, popping up on random little moons where racing circuit events take place. If a spot is hot, Nate Nukeular and his Atomic Food Cart will be there!
Nate Nukeular can often be found wearing a pair of gold sunglasses, even at night or in the darkness of space. Most people assume it's just part of his trademark look, but there's a practical reason for those stylish shades. It's known that Mercurians's ember eyes can see or read their gifted purview in ways other people can't, but what's less-commonly known is that this effect can be neutralized by a filtering layer of gold. Electroplated gold lenses are an old protective measure stretching back to the earliest days of space travel, but for Mercurians a set of electroplated gold lenses offers them a bit of relief from being bombarded with that extra layer of information all the time. For Nate Nukeular, his purview is poison, so while he leverages that insight into making different kinds of hot sauce, he's still a citizen of the starfaring age, surrounded by technology and industrial equipment producing smoke and various degrees of radiation. Technology and poison go hand in hand, and Nate's one of the unlucky few who can really see the bonds of that relationship, so he likes to throw on his gold shades and share his food with like-minded people without paying too much mind to the side-effects of the technologies that brought those people together in the first place. It's good to just turn off the noise sometimes, and just focus on what's really important to you.
