Hellsborough beer — brewed from Wisewood water, as most things here are — does not function like beer from the off-world. Tom Calver, housing assessor, noted on his first visit to the Warden's Gap that it does not loosen you: it recalibrates you, adjusting the weight of your preoccupations to fit the container the evening provides without removing them. He drank two pints and left before the third, having already noticed what it was doing; the noticing, he observed, was the antidote.

Netherland clan membership correlates with colour: the Leys run blue and detail-oriented, the Woods red and headstrong, the Moors purple and prize enjoyment above all else, the Marshes green and will leave you alone until they do not. All four clan lines share a common understanding of the Nascenti as overlords — the term in general use is "bottom-sucking scum," which suggests the assessment predates diplomacy. When they visit Hellsborough, they use the Van Hallam design of psycmask: aids breathing, does not connect to the hivemind, invisible to the organic network.

Pip Rippon was absent for three weeks following the exacid removal — taken, returned, no memory of the interval whatsoever. Van described this as expected and produced rockcrust. What Pip had missed, Van noted, included the Days wi'out names, which Van described as "all the fun" and did not immediately elaborate on.

ripperthroats hunt cooperatively in nuclear family packs and are territorial to the point where fights over territory are among the principal causes of ripperthroat mortality — a fact that suggests their threat model does not extend as far forward as it might. Certain remote sects of the Moors clan-line respect them, which is noted here as a data point rather than a recommendation. ripperthroats are also the ancestral species of the domestic barker, a detail Van has never commented on and Pip has never asked about.