PmWiki | Waylight / Harmattan

Harmattan is a heighliner that travels the lower clockwise Stream. Supposedly built around a collection of pre-Invasion hover transports used in the Secret War and in post-Invasion evacuation to higher ground, she is an armored and mostly airtight rectangular box whose myriad of protrusions change continually as harvesting or salvaging operations shift in scope and priority. While Harmattan cannot leave the lower sky, she is the most maneuverable of the heighliners and will spend days or weeks hovering over a deep crystal field or Fungal Forest patch known to contain rare or useful materials. Harmattan is large enough to carry crystal refineries; internal governance is by a Board of Foremen selected (by ballot, raffle, brawl or armwrestling) by the various workgroups, with a Mining Party, Hunting Party and Gathering Party continuously arguing whether to focus on which sort of operation type the most; supposedly a Society of Engineers acts as an inner council by virtue of being able to decide the actual steering -- about a third of Harmattan's engines are functional at any given time.

Children in Harmattan are rare, and people who have lived their entire lives on the heighliners even more so; immigrants expect a few years of backbreaking work for a big payout when they leave, and some even manage to reach that goal.

Notably, a number of Harmattan's systems require biodiesel to function; the booster fuel is generally traded in bulk for refined crystals.

Harmattan carries a number of large crystal-harvesting ground vehicles that can be deployed on appropriate deep terrain; each of these, called D.O.N.K.s (What the letters mean has been lost to time), is able to operate and sustain crew for weeks on end while waiting for the heighliner's return. Submersibles that cannot reach the upper sky often hitch a ride on Harmattan when they can in order to use her as a drydock and refinery.

Traders who dock with Harmattan generally do so at the Derrick, a collapsible ballon-topped tower which can be lifted out of the lower sky; the general population of Harmattan tend to keep for themselves, largely because they're either working or sleeping. This adds to the perceived oddness of the heighliner's inhabitants.

Harmattanites are rarely seen out of their stomp suits, and yet despite this tend to suffer from psi chosys more often than most other inhabitants of the Slipstream, due to the air filters not being 100% efficient; the combination of strength from industrial work, perennially nervous behavior and supercharged stamina has given them a scary reputation. Stories of "Harmattan emerged from the deeps and shot my convoy to pieces so that they could 'salvage' it later" are generally attributed to exaggerations of one or two confirmed incidents involving rogue ak-ak gunners, but the notion that if Harmattan decided to be a pirate canton it would be a very successful one is ever present in most military minds.

 (Stereotype: Used Future)

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