Demoiselle (#74028412)

Electricty flows through the Shifting Expanse as blood flows through a body. It must not collect and clot in one area. Any overabundance of power in one area will, with no exception, result in the deprivation of power in another area. The cities of the Shifting Expanse must enforce this balance for the good of the region, for it cannot afford yet another swell and collapse of a power-swollen empire.

This blessed electricity disperses itself through erratic and unpredictable weather, moody storms striking wherever they please. This random dispersal affects much of the Expanse equally, but not all of the Expanse is populated equally with spires, generators, any such form of collectors of this electricity. Vast, lonely swaths of desert swallow this energy, too, fossilizing it in enchanted glass, obscuring it deeply in sand as if these were precious secrets whispered to them by the weather.

And the glass - the blessed electricity, imprisoned in prisms - just sits there. The energy's flow has paused at the sand's own greed. If it cannot have people, culture, love, it will simply swallow what it can, clinging on to the one bit of evidence that it was ever touched by something warm and bright.

Bounty diggers are deployed to retrieve this glass. Many end up offering their bodies in place of the glass. A fair price, the metro councils utter from their spires, for the preservation of the blessed flow. Fair, too, for the lonely dunes; bodies above or below the sand, what does it matter when even a necropolis is still a polis?

When charged glass makes it to within the walls of a city, it is processed into energy to be used by various city utilities, especially lighting, transportation, and radio. Energy is used as it should. Yet not all units of glass meet this fate, and the councils know well of it. Within this enforced flow, a subtle, stirring current goes a different way. Some diggers do not hold full loyalty to their councils, and under-report the mass of their gains, stashing away the remainder to be sold elsewhere.

And who are their clientele? Collectors - rich, frivolous collectors that see their needs as above the needs of the city. And, if one is not to hoard it, there are many interesting things one can do with this glass: craft with it, decorate with it, power automata with it, possibly even consume it... not that the traders would know, or care, so long as their end of the transactions were upheld.