Nix of the Sump

Holds authority in the Rustlands by controlling who gets told what, which in a country of shifting scrap hills is the only durable power there is. Nix knows the stratigraphy of the Kingdom's refuse better than the Kingdom knows its own history, and has begun to notice that the deepest layers do not match the official chronology.

In Person

Small, quick, filthy, and never entirely still — hands always working at something, conversation branching four ways and arriving anyway. Visitors consistently mistake this for a lack of focus and consistently discover afterwards that every question they asked was answered and every question they were asked was noted.

Nix has been burned, gassed, crushed twice, and mended each time out of the heaps, and displays the repairs the way a Winterworks master displays a mechanism.

History

Came up a picker — youngest of a crew, in the heaps, unlicensed — and built the Warden's Office out of a habit nobody else thought was worth anything: writing down where things were found. Twenty years of that became the Strata Record, and the Strata Record became the reason claims could be arbitrated, and arbitration became the reason there is a government in the Rustlands at all.

The office was not seized and is not hereditary. It exists because Nix keeps the only document everyone needs.

Method

Licenses, arbitration, and information. A dig without a license is not stopped — it is simply not recorded, which means the find cannot be sold at the Sump, which means it cannot be sold. Nix has never had to enforce anything.

The deep work is the Strata Record itself, and it has stopped being commercial. Four hundred years of the Kingdom's garbage, indexed by heap and depth, is a complete material history of a nation compiled from what it discarded, and it contains at least three things the Chancery's official record denies — including a decade in which the Kingdom disposed of a very great deal of iron.

Household

The Salvage-Wardens. Two dozen licensed arbitrators, mostly former pickers, who settle claims in the field and are trusted because Nix pays them enough not to be bought.

The Tinkers' Free Bench. Gremlin artificers who repair, recombine, and have started producing things the Winterworks has not invented. Nix protects them and has begun to understand what they represent, which is a problem arriving on a schedule.

The Pickers' Camps. Transient crews, mostly Basekin, subcontracted and — unlike anywhere in the Kingdom — paid.

Relations

Sells to Foreman-Ascendant Coilbrass's factors at Bellowsgate and has never shorted a weight, which is the whole of the relationship and enough. Provisions the Great Hunt when it comes through for materiel and charges it properly, which the King is said to appreciate.

Has not endorsed the Quiet Wind — who argue the province should stop selling and start stockpiling, because the Wilds will need an arsenal — and has not stopped them either. The Deep Cut Syndicate has stopped filing its finds with the Warden's Office, and Nix has not acted, which is unlike Nix.

Reputation

In the Wilds: the person who says where things came from, and therefore what they are worth. In the Kingdom: unknown, unnamed, and the holder of the most complete counter-history of the Faerie Kingdom in existence.

Hooks

"Nix does not tell you what a thing is. Nix tells you what was on top of it, and lets you work out the rest, and charges for the second part."