Avery is one of the Outer Belt's many rogues, taking on a number of jobs but primarily working as a courier for sensitive and well-connected organizations. He's a gruff-but-affable person to be around, never one to put on airs or try to talk down to his companions; quite the contrary, he has a way of making people feel good about themselves, always happy to put the spotlight on you rather than on himself. Sadly, Avery also happens to be a ruthless opportunist, there to gas you up but when the heat is on he's nowhere to be found. Being likeable and being somewhere else are two survival instincts duct-taped together, and while he doesn't mean it personally, people do tend to remember when he suddenly makes himself scarce. In his line of work, though, that's just part of doing business, and most people understand that. He tends to keep an eye over his shoulder for the ones who don't.

Living on a knife's edge like that, it's important to know how to read a room so you can tell when it's time to hit the bricks before the little hand strikes the hour. Lucky for him, Avery's Gift of Sol is "Language"- he can read the meaning and the subtext behind any visible expression of thought on sight, regardless of the language or the manner in which it is written. Facial and body language fall within this purview, allowing Avery to stay one step ahead when trouble comes looking for him. When he assumes his Firewalker form he's able to speak and understand language unequivocally, beyond just what his eyes can see; he can shape his words to be understood as a local dialect, he can parse the intent of an animal's cry or eavesdrop on an isolated communications signal. When he's talking with you, he's not necessarily reading what you like to hear and feeding it to you to warm you up to him, but that's also not exactly something he doesn't notice. And while it's not the first Gift to spring to mind when people think of cool things a Mercurian can do, it's certainly kept Avery alive through some very dicey situations.

Taking on contracts with everyone but having no concrete affiliation with any one group, Avery is able to navigate the underbelly of most cities and social hubs throughout the Sol system and act as a trusted mediator or go-between when words are sharp and things get hot between conflicting interests. Despite his slippery nature, he's understood to be a fair and honest person, and this reputation has earned Avery the privilege of earning a lot of credits carrying goods, gifts, documents, codes and messages in between criminal parties who prefer a transaction happen as discreetly and assuredly as possible. Avery has a titanium briefcase whose locking mechanism requires a code that is recognizable to no known linguistic tradition, and inside this case he is trusted to transport anything from credits to data sticks, confessions to threats, jewelry to hands; Android memory units, deeds to buildings, the last will of a family patriarch, you name it, he's delivered it safely from point A to point B without the intervention of public or private interests. As a criminal courier Avery navigates public spaces like trains and commercial starships comfortably, his Gift of Language picking up on body cues when someone else on the traincar is looking for him and his trusty boots carrying him someplace safer before his delivery can be intercepted. It helps to be an easy conversationalist, warming strangers up to you can make a sudden exit a little bit harder to follow when your pursuer attempts to make their move on a friendly guy like you.

Avery's learned to run his courier game over many years, a lot of trial and error and a whole lot of close calls. Early on, when he was first cutting his teeth as a young man, he would make a habit of linking up with someone bigger and tougher than him, a traveling companion who could buffer against trouble when the iron came out. He's run with a few different companions, but the most memorable for him- the one he regrets the most- was one he'd met when he was a bright-eyed young upstart. She was tall, taller than him, and she carried herself with confidence. She was a young Mercurian like him, about the same age, with jagged red hair and a spitfire personality; she put on a tough front but he could read in her body language that she was adrift, trying to find her own place in the vastness of Sol's warmth. He remembers meeting her in some backstreet pub in a Martian port town, knocking the lights out of a surly Android with a right cross. He remembers the little curl of a smile she wore after she wiped the blood off her upper lip, the moment of quiet in the pub dissipating back into the din of indifferent conversation around the exchange. He remembers picking up his old lead-lined briefcase from between his feet. Figured he'd go introduce himself. Strike up a conversation.

He used to call her Red. This had to be, what, the 2350's? It was a while ago. Avery and Red, for a year or two they stitched around the Sol system together. He had places to be, she had naught but the solar wind at her back. It worked out nice, he'd get a stack of credits and cut her a slice if she helped keep him out of trouble. They worked well together, something about Red's Gift, she had a sense for impending danger kinda like his own. Having another Mercurian share a starliner cabin with you, it was nice to chat in your native Tunnelspeak, it felt natural. That first job went off without a hitch. He'd catch her again, see if she was up for more credits. Red didn't seem to have roots anywhere, didn't have a home of her own; she always seemed to be up for the job. They ran a lot of jobs together, booked a lot of starliners together. She was welcome company. He was starting to feel good around her. He could tell the feeling was mutual.

Around this time Avery was building a reputation for himself among the folks it's good to know. He built a reputation for quiet, professional work, no tricks, no nonsense, and bigger fish began to take notice. At a pub on Titan, an Android named S41NT reached out to him on behalf of his employers, offering him a very handsome contract for some very low-profile work on-call. It's the kind of job that would set you up for life- either a long one or a short one- provided you put in the years of work to make good on your end. A Mercurian linguist was a very valuable commodity, and S41NT's employers knew the value of what he had to offer. Avery could read between the lines, he knew this was his big break into picking up the real interesting work. There was just one little hitch.

From job to job Avery would run into Red on whatever world he'd last seen her. Hey Red, he'd say, you good for more work? He could read the answer in the glint in her eyes before she'd had a chance to confirm it in words. She'd kept him alive long enough to learn the ins and outs of his trade, long enough to build his reputation in the shadows of Sol's light. He'd run into Red fairly often; they'd never sought each other out deliberately but they had a way of crossing paths when the time was right to move on to a new world. It'd been a few months since their last job together, before his meetings with S41NT. He had big news to share with her. The day the solar winds swept them back together, though, in that port-town pub, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He saw that she had news to share with him as well.

He could read it in her body language. He saw the way her eyes scanned the crowds for him, the knit in her brow. That curl in the corner of her devilish smile had flatlined. She'd tapped the straw on a glass of ice water, a twist of lemon stripped to the rind resting on a bar napkin next to her. Red had some kind of sixth sense Gift to her, but Avery had the Gift of Language. He could see a difficult conversation was hunting for him. They'd seen a lot of Sol together, but he'd finally got a good thing going for himself. He turned and slipped out the back door before she could see him.

Avery's in his fifties now. He prefers to travel alone, his sense for danger honed to a razor's edge over the years, but he'll still hire on a bodyguard for this job or that- he tends to partner with Androids these days. He's got reputations in every criminal circle, most of them good but some not-so-much; someone's always got a mind to kill the messenger. He's got a couple comfortable safehouses in major cities throughout the Outer Belt, his employers have been good to him. He keeps a flashcaster on his belt, but it's rare for him to have to use it, it's hard to catch the man flat-footed. He's got a decade or two of good work left in him; he's got plenty of credits, and the close calls feel like they're getting closer every time. He's thinking of retiring, but he wouldn't know what else he'd do with himself. Truth is, he likes the work. It's adventurous.

Today, Avery's on Tethys, a woodsy moon circling Saturn. There's a tent market today, the kind of pop-up shops filling up a city block's worth of remote and uninhabited land, where anything can be bought or sold, legitimate or otherwise, that disappear as quick as they come. Avery's looking for a Ganymedean named Blyx, he's been told they sell ornamental woven rugs out of one such tent- Blyx has a piece of royal Ganymedean tribute that must have fallen off the wagon, and Avery's employer would like it to find it's way into their private collection without any undue attention. Avery blends well with the market crowd. His briefcase latches click shut, their cryptic locks dialing into an inscrutable pattern; the job goes as smooth as ever. He purchases a large woven rug for himself, hoisting it under one arm, and turns to carry on his way. That's when the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Sol's a big place, he'd thought, all those years ago. It's heartbreaking, but if he left now, if he turned and walked away, he could move on with his life and he'd never have to see her again. That was a lifetime ago, but it may as well have been yesterday. Today, on Tethys, in the pop-up tent market, Avery turned his head at the right angle, at the right time, and he saw her. She was standing between a jolly Venusian woman and some sort of walking lantern. Across a shifting crowd of people, he saw those eyes. He could read her body language instantly- she saw him too. They'd both frozen in their steps, their ember gaze locked. She remembered. He knew. Her companions looked to her, and then looked his way. He dropped the rug from under his arm.

She was already vaulting over a table of curios when he turned to shove his way through a dense crowd of marketgoers, desperate to move in the opposite direction. With both arms he clutched his briefcase tightly against his chest. He hoped his companion had kept the ship warmed up for him.

A rare and sought-after gem, the Mercurian-made A'aqraba Stinger has the muscle to go toe-to-toe with any street car you can put it up against. Built to navigate the winding tunnels and unique hazards of Mercury's subterranean civilization, the Stinger's balanced weight, road-gripping tires and and adaptable all-wheel powertrain ensure the car is capable of pulling up inclines and avoiding precipitous falls. When you take all that out of the Mercurian underground and drop it onto a strip of E-District roadway, the Stinger runs like a fighter who's just dropped its training weights. Built between 2357 and 2368, exports of new-model Stingers were hard to come by, with interplanetary trade routes disrupted by the dawn of the Inner World Terraforming Conflict, and so sales of these old Stingers were mostly limited to Mercury itself. Here in 2389, original A'aqraba parts for that vintage are hard to find anywhere in the Sol system, so if you see a Stinger on the road, either someone took great care of theirs or someone made a very lucky buy. Either way, you can be sure the car belongs to a proud owner who will assuredly describe to you the pains they took to preserve their baby.

Restoring a Stinger can be a fun money-sink, and every owner has a different priority in what they want to fix up about the one they got their hands on. A prominent feature of A'aqraba's design was its use of piped bumpers- designed to take incidental bumps and scuffs, a Stinger's front and rear bumper are mounted to the frame of the car in a way that makes it easy to tie a line and tow one out of a ditch if it happens to take a bad roll. Some owners insist on their bumper pipes looking factory-new, while others feel a few cosmetic scuffs add to the authenticity of a car built to run under the rocks. The Stinger houses a formidable eight-chamber Alsumi engine inside an enclosed block, delivering power to its four wheels independently so that on tricky terrain traction can be sent to whichever tires have grip to pull the car to level ground again. A not-uncommon hazard of the Mercurian tunnelway is the occasional flooded dip in the road, which can often block traffic until it is dealt with. The Stinger's elevated tailpipe ensures that proton exhaust is not drowned or obstructed when the car attempts to cross one of these flooded dips. The elevated pipe also keeps hot exhaust from igniting pockets of flammable gas that might be beneath the Stinger itself, and it's positioning along the driver's side of the car allows it to be visible or accessible to a Mercurian driver who may have a use for their Gift in handling breakdown on a long and difficult drive. Most Stinger owners maintain the exhaust in this configuration, and many go so far as to seek out original hot-metal warning label decals to put on theirs, but a few Stinger owners will modify their exhaust pipes to run along the bottom of the car, either out of preference for the aesthetic or for concern in navigating the hot exhaust pipe when they enter or exit the driver's side of the vehicle. It's a very controversial topic within the A'aqraba restoration community, but you're bound to see a little of the latter among the bulk of the former.

One of the A'aqraba community's proudest members is Timberwolf's charming captain, Bryce. A long-term pet project of his, Bryce salvaged a 2359 Stinger and a small cache of original parts from the wreck of a merchant hauler called the Osprey, found broken apart in a patch of dead space somewhere inside the Asteroid belt. Immediately recognizing what he had on his hands, he's since worked with his chief mechanic Pixel and his on-staff Mercurian cannoneer Jack to slowly bring his salvaged wreck back to life as authentically as possible. Bryce loves to roll the windows down and take his Stinger out for a ride around Titan Garden, letting the engine rumble and turning heads wherever he goes- he loves to take members of his own crew out for the ride with him, but what he loves most of all is seeing the deep and abiding envy the sight of an old A'aqraba strikes into the heart of his rival salvage captain, Amy. She's so jealous, and she can't hide it at all. It drives her wild, and he knows it. So, confession time: Bryce's restoration of the Stinger isn't one-hundred percent authentic. There's one component he purposefully used an aftermarket part for, replacing the original steel timing chain with one made of Venusian carbon links, offering similar durability and heat tolerance with less friction between each link. It's the one part that's wrong, and it's one no one will be able to see when he pops the hood to show off his Stinger- no one but Amy and her Mercurian Gift. He'll take any excuse to bring the Stinger out for a ride, but sometimes he'll take the long way out of the Dockyards just to cruise past the Red Raven hangar, hoping to see the look in those cinder-glowing eyes when they see the salvage haul of a lifetime roll by. Bryce can never hear what Amy is shouting over the growl of that big eight-chamber engine, but it's always the highlight of his day.

A modern A'aqraba is a perfectly reliable car, but if you happen to get your hands on a vintage Stinger, take good care of it. If you're racing for credits and you hear the rattle of the exhaust cap roll up next to you, puffing out gouts of proton flame, you can be sure you're in trouble. However you come to meet an old A'aqraba, you're going to want to be on the right side of its sting- its venom goes right for the heart.

Marrowgrimm is a Mercurian forensic examiner and the current president of Titan's emergency service workers union chapter, UESW Local 1964. A spry 102 years old, Marrowgrimm is a cantankerous old battle axe, having little patience for fool arguments and reckless behavior. As union president he is a ferocious advocate for his workers in contract negotiations with Titan administration, making sure sufficient emergency response crews are on standby at any moment to guarantee no single crew needs to stretch themselves too thin by handling too many calls alone. As a fellow emergency responder he is not very friendly, taking a matter-of-fact approach to matters of fact and never sparing a laugh for a bit of levity. Overall Marrowgrimm is the sort of person you're glad to have on your side, and the sort of person you'd dread having to deal with sitting across the table from you. Just remember the scowl isn't anything personal, he's just like that with everyone.

In his time working as a forensic examiner, Marrowgrimm has seen many things, having pieced together the events that led to many catastrophic losses of life, determining whether a given incident was accidental or intentional and establishing whether the outcome could have been prevented. Life in space is dependent on mechanical and social systems, and a breakdown in either can lead to terrible results; Marrowgrimm's job is to establish reasons for these breakdowns so investigators can determine if someone was at fault. He carries a collapsible lantern and a monogrammed bag of forensic tools when he joins an emergency team on a site, preferring to trust his own equipment on a job over tools provided by others- he gets very precious about his things, so be sure to keep your hands off! He doesn't need your grubby mitts compromising his investigations.

Marrowgrimm has a very strong reputation for surfacing forensic truths, and part of that comes from his innate Mercurian talents. Being the bearer of a rare Curse of Sol- or a gift that is strong enough to pull a Mercurian towards calamity- Marrowgrimm's Mercurian purview is "Entropy". He is able to perceive the innate chaotic energy within a thing or a group of things and he can tell how close or far those things are from an irreversible breaking point, either on their way towards it or how far beyond it they have come. He describes "seeing" entropy as a bright pulse, a throbbing flash of heat that builds its rhythm towards a steady monotone, towards an entropic breaking point. A broken entropic dispersal of this heat appears to him like a flash of fireworks in very slow motion; motes of that throbbing heat scatters away from its break point in streaking lines, away from a specific moment of collapse. As a forensic examiner Marrowgrimm can quite literally trace the trajectory of an entropic break back to its point of no return, he can pinpoint which chaotic elements disrupted a system and he can use that insight to find the information he needs to present his assessment of an incident site to his non-Mercurian peers.

In his Firewalker Form Marrowgrimm is able to accelerate or reverse entropic breakdown, which is a harrowing power to know someone possesses. If he wants to he can accelerate the wear and decay of physical materials, he can expedite or reverse the aging process within an organic body or, if he needs to, he can un-break an egg. He does not like to unbreak eggs; but sometimes, if he absolutely must, if he feels it is his only way to determine a cause for harm and calamity that eludes even his vision, he can bring the dead back across the entropic threshold, to hold them here for long enough that they might tell their own tales, that they might name a name or speak a truth that would otherwise be lost with their own passing. Some eggs can remain unbroken when his Firewalking passes, but the spark of life, once that energy is released, it must be allowed to continue on its course and trajectory. When Marrowgrimm has troubled the dead long enough he will ease them back into their entropic release and return them how he found them, restoring them to their eternal rest. If one knows he has this ability, one must never ask him to use it. You will not be able to unbreak the eggshell of his scorn.

In addition to his work as a forensic examiner, Marrowgrimm is occasionally contracted for private work of an unusual nature. It's known that ghosts can become a problem in space; it's rare, but every now and then a starship passing through a point of space that saw a traumatic event could become a new anchor for the ghosts of former starfarers from years, decades or even centuries past, and now that ship is haunted. Getting rid of a ghost hitchhiker can be a big problem- some are quiet, some just stare, others can be quite loud and others still could become violent, smashing or throwing objects on a ship. These ghosts have unresolved business and it's usually not possible to immediately discern what they want to resolve before they can pass on, so you'll need to contact a professional to see them off with their business un-settled. Marrowgrimm is one of the guys you call to take care of a ghost problem. Having mastered his Curse over an eventful century, Marrowgrimm is able to entropically decay the bonds that chain a ghost to this plane, dissolving the weight that keeps them in our world and forcing them to drift away into their final destination. It's a grave task depriving someone of their eternal closure in this way, but we can't always know what they want and these starship crews can't provide that closure themselves. It's bitter work but Marrowgrimm will do it. He's very expensive, though. These grim labors take a toll on everyone.

Being able to see the chaotic pulse within everything around him, to see how close to breaking anything is, it's a weighty curse. Mercurians generally look out for one another, it isn't a hard or fast rule but culturally a Mercurian would be hesitant to, say, narc on another Mercurian's scam, or hunt another Mercurian's bounty, or otherwise give up a fellow Mercurian to a power or authority outside of their own. Mercurians like to handle their business internally, and while they absolutely don't all like each other, when faced with an outside force they find solidarity with each other very quickly. Marrowgrimm stands out against this context in that he hates other Mercurians, he can't stand them. Bearing their Gifts of Sol, Mercurians are a very entropically-volatile people, testing fate and riding rockets towards their own explosive ends. Having been around for a full century, a fair few Mercurians have heard stories of Marrowgrimm, or they know that someone like them is out there who can un-break eggs, who can undo the calamity their own Gifts of Sol might cause. Enough Mercurians have asked Marrowgrimm for the favor of his Curse, to undo a mistake they wouldn't have made in the first place had they a mote more restraint, that he has developed a bitter resentment towards his Curse and his people. A younger Marrowgrimm would agree to undo a catastrophic but genuine mistake if it meant restoring another person's wholeness, but this has happened often enough that today's older Marrowgrimm will refuse to use his abilities to help anyone avoid accountability for their own recklessness- the outcome they want reversed is a severe lesson but it is one they must grow from. He can see their chaotic tendencies and he has heard enough pleas to put the entropic toothpaste back into the tube, he resents that you would force him to say no to a request for a kind of help only he can provide.

Marrowgrimm is a bitter old man who has seen a lot of breakdown and decay in his lifetime, but he is still a Mercurian himself. He won't sell out a confession like this from another Mercurian- he will give you hell and festoon you with guilt, but he won't ever turn you over to a Star Patroller or Titan Administration. He won't unbreak your eggshells, he will hope that cleaning your own spattered egg yolk will make you a better Mercurian in the future, that the experience of dealing with your own broken eggs will give you the gentle restraint needed to better handle your eggshells in the future. He's a mean bastard, but that's why his union elects him president. It's better to have him fighting for you than against you, you can be sure of that.

Jenny and Nollaig are the hosts of Catch of the Day, a weekly television show broadcasting out of Titan Garden and beamed across the satellite relay network to all corners of the Sol system. Jenny is a Mercurian woman, skeptical and intuitive, having a keen ear for gossip but never acting on a rumor without doing her due diligence in verifying the truth first. Nollaig is an Android manufactured by Aoba Lifelike Systems Specialists, built with a full beard and a broad frame, he's more than happy to take on the heavy lifting of a job for the betterment of his crew. The pair have been long-time collaborators on various projects over the years- above and below the board- and Catch of the Day is their current and most successful venture to date. They've established a trustworthy and respectable reputation for themselves, which is a very useful asset in Saturn's frontier orbit.

Going by the stage names Jenny Jellyfish and Nollaig the Skipper, the pair host Catch of the Day every Sunday on Channel 65. Billed as a TV show for bounty hunters, Catch of the Day highlights rumors, sightings, new listings and old faces connected to the Star Navy Bounty Board. The show's theming is built around old Terran fishermen, their film set built like the deck of an old boat and their soundtrack featuring fiddles, flutes and foghorns abound, framing bounties like they're fish in the sea for a hunter to reel in and put a tag on. Nollaig will often cast and reel his fishing line to emphasize a point, Jenny will puff steam out of her pipe and one or the other may find themselves dangling from a prop fishing net while they present a segment of the show. They could present the whole thing more straight-laced and clinically but the theming makes it feel a bit more "fun", and the pair like to play up their parts on the program.

The show is broken up into a number of sections, each detailing a different aspect of the bounty hunting cycle. Small Fries, for example, are presented as new listings to the bounty board, for crooks who've just earned enough notoriety to find themselves on the Grand Admiral's big list. The Starboard Bow, the main segment, presents rumors and eye-witness reports of known bounty head activity; when, where and how they were spotted, rigorously verified by Jenny Jellyfish and Nollaig the Skipper themselves. Slipped The Hook, or, "The One That Got Away", is a segment where Jenny and Nollaig report on near-miss encounters between bounties and hunters, presented tongue-in-cheek, it's usually not a segment many bounty hunters want to find themselves on, although the section does highlight very immediate details for an active bounty head that another fisherman might want to swoop in and steal. The eponymous Catch of the Day segment, by contrast, highlights bounty heads who have been successfully apprehended, where they were caught, the hunters who caught them and the price they earned for reeling them in. And finally, the Big Fish segment of the show features the biggest, the oldest and the most dangerous bounties, the ones who earn nicknames, reputations and grudges among old lawbringers. Jenny and Nollaig often warn young bounty hunters about the features on this segment, reminding them that there's a reason they're still lurking beneath the waves and aren't dangling on a hook. Similar to The Starboard Bow, this segment features sightings and activity by active bounty heads, but given their scale, notoriety and reputations for sinking would-be whaling vessels they warrant their own segment at the end of the show. It's just better television that way.

Trust is the key to Catch of the Day's success as a bounty board television program, and the secret to that trust can be found in Jenny and Nollaig's past. Before getting into showbusiness the pair were themselves a crew of successful smugglers, running controlled goods and moving wanted criminals across the Inner Belt. Part of the key to their success navigating controlled spaces was Jenny's Mercurian gift being the purview of Intent. The way she describes it, she can "see" the intent of an individual as a corona of color around them; whether their motives are peaceful, rote, curious, suspicious, bored, hostile or what have you, Jenny can see behind a poker face and catch an early warning if a Star Patroller is just going through routine motions or if they're flagging you down for a more specific purpose. When she's Firewalking she can mask or alter someone's perceivable intent, allowing them to pass off a nervous sweat as just a contagious fever or reinforcing a pilot's warm smile as not warranting any further investigation. Nollaig pairs well with Jenny's gift, as he is big, affable and genuine, he's a great canvas for a Firewalking Jenny to manipulate and present the perfect front to a curious Star Patroller and preserve their precious cargo from perusal, and if things go sideways he's good at knocking heads together and making a getaway. Since the cargo they're hauling is occasionally a bounty head, the pair have a good reputation among outlaws as being reliable and trustworthy.

Jenny and Nollaig had a successful run as smugglers, but they know that no one's luck lasts forever, so after a point they decided to quit while they're ahead and get into a more legitimate line of work. To ensure they aren't retroactively picked up they decided to hide in plain sight, starting Catch of the Day and presenting it as a show for lawbringers, providing an aggregate source of real information, real rumors, real eye-witness sightings and real actionable information a bounty hunter might find useful in plying their trade across the Sol system. True to Jenny's nature, though, there is a dual intent to the program. Watching it as a bounty hunter, one might read the intent of the show as helping do the dirty work of locating outlaws outside the Grand Admiral's jurisdiction and bringing them to swift justice, but watching it as an outlaw you can hear the other layer of intent beneath Jenny Jellyfish and Nollaig the Skipper's broadcast. They don't track people down, they don't seek out this information, they glean it from rumors and reports- to an outlaw, they're saying, "you're now worth this much, someone saw you here, people think you're moving this way, they think you have this contraband, this hunter grabbed or nearly-grabbed your friends. Be careful." Outlaws have TVs too, and their show is an open ear in Titan's civilian center to let their old friends know who might be hot on their tail and where it isn't safe to be. They dress up as fishermen but they are, at their hearts, children of the sea, and every Sunday on Channel 65 they'll report on where the lines are dropping to help you slip the hook and keep from becoming the next Catch of the Day.