Umbra
Refined from the sacred Blackflower found in the Root tier of the Pit, Umbra is a substance like no other. Boiled in brine vats, pressed under cathetal weight, and alchemically transformed into an iridescent ink-black elixir, Umbra comes in many forms:
Ink for healing tattoos or protective markings
Powder for ritual and recreational use
Crystals (“blackstar") prized by engineers, mages, and military alchemists
Its effects vary by dosage: clarity, frenzy, euphoria, hallucination — or madness.
For some, it is a gateway to the Veil. For others, escape and endurance.
For the Synod of Solarium, it is forbidden.
Except, of course, when it isn't…
The City’s Poison of Choice
Sacrament before Scourge
Umbra was always in the blood of this city.
Before it became Raptoraem’s most coveted export, Umbra was sacred. Loommistresses of the Spider Shrine wove it into rites. Veil cults called it a key to communing with the Blessed Five. Blackflower petals were burned in offerings or brewed into elixirs to speak with ancestors.
Then came the Cull.
When Netherkin were driven from the caverns, mercenaries discovered Umbra’s practical horrors. It enhanced stamina, dulled fear, prolonged combat prowess. But it also fractured minds, created dependency, and birthed a new class of addict-warriors.
Among those conscripted to clean the tunnels were two boys:
Leopold Lang: big-hearted, brave and rootbound
Erik Mordiger: quiet, sharp-eyed, and always seeking.
The Two Boys
Armed with nothing but keen wits and bruised fists, Erik and Leo began small — lacing cigarette paper with Umbra extract, fencing them up through Smuggler’s Cove, and trading with foreign mercenaries or washed-up veterans.
Soon a trade was born.
In the Pit's Canine Tier, they set up the first bonded shop:
Fake licenses. Real product. And demand that never dipped.
Leopold was the charm — soothing nerves and loosening coin. Mordiger stayed in shadow — the boy with ink-stained fingers, tweaking weight slips, cooking profits, and covering tracks.
Even then, he was learning to lie like law.
From this humble den, the stall spawned into the Vertex Market: a shadow economy of bootlegged goods and hard bargains. Its steel undergirding let Raptoraem dodge Synod tariffs, skirt trade laws, and build a civic shell around a criminal core.
After Leopold’s murder in the Black Wake, Mordiger did what he always did:
He kept the books.
Then he rewrote them.
Rebranded The Vertex Consortium, the operation was expanded across all Five Struts as a civic salvage guild. Today, the original charter still hangs in a few bonded warehouses. A miner’s oath, scrawled in soot.
It's a lie no one bothers to read anymore.
They just sign beneath it.
A Profitable Poison
The Vertex Consortium is Raptoraem’s largest bonded trade syndicate — a sprawling network of freight lines, salvage crews, and warehousing guilds headquartered in the Pit.
Founded by Erik Mordiger, the unsung Black Maw, Vertex claims to support “ethical salvage” and civic recovery. In truth, it is the primary artery of the Black Market, and the sole controller of Umbra and its coveted byproduct:
Blackstar Crystal.
Every Strut is in on the act:
Strait of Silks – Weaves the satchels for flower harvesters.
Strait of Stone – Boils raw extract in underground brine vats.
Strait of Coal – Refines Umbra into crystalline Blackstar.
Strait of Gold – Launders payments, bribes, and false ledgers.
Strait of Veils – Disguises exports in crates of religious tracts and monk phials.
Each Strutlord swears they’re not complicit.
Each one signs the ledger anyway.
Solarium’s Dirty Secret
Officially, Umbra is outlawed under Solarium doctrine.
The Synod calls it heretical: a toxin of the Pit. They claim it is a destabilizing agent — spiritually and socially corrosive. Possession is punishable by exile.
Unofficially, they trade for it in bulk.
Every Synod Proctor claims clean hands. Yet Umbra moves across the straits in incense crates, sea-salt casks, and sealed manifests sanctioned for civic calibration.
The truth is simpler than heresy: Umbra sells.
And it fuels far more than the Pit.
Even now, the Synod’s latest marvel — the towering Heliometer, a civic timekeeper raised in Solarium’s Grand Quadrivium — is rumored to run on Blackstar crystal, the byproduct of Umbra refinement.
Aurea Pallas, youngest Proctor of the High Synod, brokered exclusive mineral rights to Raptoraem’s southern veins under the guise of civic cooperation. She claims the device will “align citizenry to the rhythm of the sun.”
But in the Pit, they say it simply turns their poison into Solarium’s clockwork.
And so the cycle continues:
Outlawed in word. Bought in secret.
Snorted in private.