Rockcrust is slurped through a straw directly into the olfactory canal and — critically — does not wait to be inhaled; it moves toward intention. Van obtained it from Dirty Leaves. Its primary effect is not euphoria but clarity: hivemind noise becomes signal, and a sufficiently focused user can interact with it directly. Pip used this, on his first dose, to cancel a psycmask infomercial through concentrated will. Van described this as expected.

Exacids are the enforcement arm of the Nascenti: biologically engineered crabs in bipedal form, heavily armoured, and not considered unusual by the human population of Hellsborough. They are not bright — this is almost certainly deliberate. They will attempt the same approach three times before pausing, and that pause is your window. What is not your window is the question of why an Exacid is there, which implies a Nascenti nearby that has decided not to show itself yet.

Wadsley Common has a hidden glade whose location shifts in time and space. Finding it requires the right moment — of the year, or of the day — and the correct position relative to the white obelisk atop Loxley Edge, which may be the fulcrum around which the common rotates. Pip found it twice. Both times the paths unfolded without warning and he was not entirely certain how he got back out.

Everyone on the Middlewood Road knows Van Hallam, or knows of him — Pandora has known him all her life; Scraith Rawson knows him from the crosslands; Old Jarv the baccy merchant asks after his tobacco supply. Van sits ten feet away playing cribbage. Whether this constitutes a social network or a surveillance operation has never been formally established.