Gabbleratchets fly through the murk at night — phantom, human-headed, barking and whelping and announcing themselves with enough cacophony that you hear them well before they find you. Their din can induce what the locals call skriker: the victim loses all reason and wanders open-armed and staring, in the same attitude as the creatures themselves. Sophie Hinchcliffe heard them one evening leaving Farantees. She stopped under a tram shelter. She ran when she couldn't stand it any longer. Nobody saw her after that.

ripperthroats are the destination, not the threat — at least for the xin. Around age two hundred, a xin who wishes it may take the voluntary pilgrimage to the ripperthroat grounds; less than one percent choose this. The remaining 979 in a thousand die in duels, hunting, or war, which says something about what the alternative involves.

Junkyard speedball is played in gruizer graveyards with a carbon ball that has opinions about being hit. Ball control is achieved through symbiot — creatures that respond to psychic intention — which means players in a compromised state find the ball refusing to cooperate. This is a significant design flaw in a sport played almost exclusively by people who are stonked.

Bradfield Dale after murkfall: no lights, walls that trap the murk at shoulder height, and an organic network running the old way — unfiltered, with its own opinions about what it observes. Courier work along that road pays more than it should, which is the first thing you notice. The second is that the envelope you're carrying will apparently find its own way from the Loxley junction — which means it knows where it's going, and you don't know what's in it.