12/22/14 +600 pixels from gun sale - 400 pixels from materials used in said gun Net: +200 pixels Total: 200 pixels I've decided to become completely self-sufficient. No digging into my life savings unless it's literally life-or-death. As a result, I've gone ahead and started this log of all the money I'm making in Antares. Turns out there's just enough demand for crystal weapons to keep me afloat sleeping on my ship. So far I've made just a single sale over radio request, to a poor Avian girl -- maybe barely more than an adolescent -- who wanted a sidearm. Made one custom, sold it for pretty cheap because she looked like a wreck. Soon I'll start advertising, maybe make some more steady income, but this should keep me afloat for a while. On a more horrifying note: There's some kind of serial killer going around and dumping bodies on Asani. The second time -- I'm told it's actually the third, but I only saw two -- the guy was alive, even with a missing arm and jaw. It's pretty horrifying, but at least it'll boost gun sales, in a macabre way. I swear, I'm already becoming desensitized. Kluex save me.
12/23/14 Total: 200 pixels Yesterday, Siarra -- an Avian I met on Asani -- suggested that I see whether the crystals on Asani could work in place of our own. I thought it was an interesting idea: apparently the Asani crystals give off a strong magnetic field that might be able to be used. So I got my hands on some of the stuff -- I confess, I just kicked at an outcropping that I found on the lake-shore until a crystal came loose -- and tried it out. Sadly, the stuff doesn't seem to give off a magnetic field as much as it somehow reacts to Asani's. Two crystals don't push away from one another, but a crystal pushes away from the planet. This also means that when one flies into a high enough orbit, the things just stop working completely and become about as useful as paperweights. The crystals seem to have pretty strange effects in general, actually. Judging by how little is needed to suspend a chunk of rock and a bar on top of it a hundred feet from the ground, I should be able to step on my little crystal and float into the air. This is not the case. Oh, well. Maybe I can find someone interested in buying the thing, or just put it back where I found it.
12/30/14 - appx. 100 pixels for costs of living Total: 100 pixels Thanks Kluex for this ship. It's god a bed, so I don't have to pay for a room, and it's insulated, which keeps me from dying but also holds in heat. I still have to pay for food and to keep the oxygen scrubbers in shape, though, and I figure I can last maybe a week or two on what I've got before the rest of my non-emergency money goes away. I talked with an Avian who needed some crystals, a real hypocrite-type who lectured me on daring to offer my services to her but then never told me her own religious views or even her name. Sometimes I don't understand why the priest-types are so stingy about the crystals; yes, they're religious artifacts, in a way. They're also used to power lights and ovens and air conditioners and weapons. If you're an Avian in robes who asks every other Avian who walks in if they're Flightless, you're probably a Flightless. Anyways, that's going off-topic. She wanted a little crystal to power a handheld device and then a slightly bigger one for powering a gun. I could've offered to sell her a gun outright, but it would've brought another series of berating, so I just offered to sell the things outright and charged a bigger markup than I usually do. Both of them together will go for maybe six or seven hundred pixels, of which I'll probably be able to pocket two or three hundred while still paying for the actual crystals and to keep my friends in customs on good terms. Of course, all this assumes that I ever actually see this Avian again to make the deal and that I don't get shot to death in the meantime.
