The Adrift

A middle-aged gentleman with hair just beginning to grey led a small donkey laden with bags down the Tucha Stairwell. He paused at a vendor’s cart to fill his cup with cold pinepear juice. Custie! Tamaya mouthed silently to Sumat. The boy hurried to grab the last bechi they had left over from lunch time, hoping it still looked appealing enough.

“Bechi, sir! Bruno’s best, hot off the grill not 5 minutes ago!”

A couple of years ago, Sumat had been cute enough to inspire a few sales. Nowadays he had to settle for pitiable enough. But his hustle was vastly improved: he kept the custie engaged while Tamaya made her way around to the donkey. She scanned the bags, hoping for something more than a sack of donkey feed, then selected a likely candidate. Spotting one, she waited a brief moment: the haggling ended. The man went to pay, Sumat artfully “dropped” the payment, and as the man bent down to retrieve the pennies Tamaya’s quick fingers lifted the bag.

Disappearing around the corner, she was halfway down the alley when she stopped in her tracks, bag cracked open.

“Oh, no,” she thought.

There are some things that people won’t overlook when they go missing. There are some things that can get you killed. 

Tamaya set down the bag and made her way toward home, leaving the bag and its contents in the middle of the alley. She and Sumat would go hungry tonight.

A rough, marginalized element of the city, the Adrift started as a community of homeless — and hopeless —  teens and young adults who had to hustle to get by. They make their homes in abandoned homes, warehouses left empty by the shifting economy of the city, and anywhere else they can find. Some find niche crafts or services to offer while others turn to grey-market or outright criminal activity. The Adrift are certainly not all criminals: a bohemian spirit permeates them, and more than one great bard or artist has emerged from the slums between the Scars. But there is an undeniable desperation to their lifestyle that exposes an unsavory facet of human nature among many of them.

Many young Seta leave their villages for the big city during their daipiki. Some have successfully entered the city and found jobs, and many return to a more traditional life. But some have struggled between cultures, not wanting to fish and fly kites all day but left behind by the rose stone boom without gainful employment. This tension has placed a disproportionate number of Seta among the Adrift.

During the build-up to the Symposium of Wonders, many of The Adrift have been displaced from their makeshift shelters, but a few strongholds remain. They have evolved into a counterculture that attracts the young and the fringe.