Verith Maw is a claustrophobic, vertical slum-district anchoring the lower-industrial rings of a high-gravity megastructure. In 13 Parsecs, it serves as an ideal "underbelly" hub—a place where players go to disappear, fence stolen cyberware, or pick up high-risk, low-legality corporate sabotage contracts.
The Concept: The Sinking City
Verith Maw is built directly over a massive, unshielded plasma-coolant exhaust column known simply as The Vent. The entire district consists of modular, rust-strewn habitats and catwalks suspended by heavy-duty carbon-tension cables.
Because of the extreme heat and localized gravitational fluctuations from the structure's core, the district is slowly dropping. Every few decades, the lowest layers—the "Sump"—melt or collapse into the plasma exhaust, forcing residents to weld new modules onto the top of the stack.
Atmosphere: Constant low-frequency vibration, neon signs flickering through thick, amber-tinted industrial smog, and the perpetual hiss of hydraulic stabilizers fighting the gravitational drag.
Key Locations
| Location | Type | Description |
| The Rust Grotto | Black Market Hub | A chaotic bazaar built inside a hollowed-out cargo freighter that crashed and wedged between two structural pillars. Best place for illegal augmentations and forged transit chips. |
| Circuit & Spine | Cantina / Safehouse | A multi-level bar wrapped around a primary power conduit. The taproom is heavily shielded from electronic surveillance, making it the premier spot for data-brokers and runners to meet clients. |
| The Drop-Point | Industrial Crane Grid | A shifting maze of automated cargo cranes. Local gangs use the blind spots in the crane paths to transfer contraband away from corporate drone patrols. |
| The Sump | Toxic Wasteland | The absolute bottom of the Maw. The air requires filtration masks, but the discarded corporate tech that falls from the upper rings makes it a goldmine for scavengers and desperate tech-mancers. |
Notable Factions & NPCs
The Cable-Born (Street Gang)
A localized syndicate of augmented grease-monkeys and parkour-runners. They treat the tension cables like a highway system, using magnetic grappling rigs to move faster than any corporate security team can track.
Key NPC: Jaxx "The Anchor" Vane — A veteran rigger with heavy industrial hydraulic arms. He controls access to the upper transit elevators and charges a steep premium for unmonitored passage.
Apex Sub-Dynamics (Corporate Presence)
Apex is the mid-tier megacorp responsible for maintaining the coolant column. They don't care about the crime, the drugs, or the violence in Verith Maw—they only care if someone tampers with the plasma flow.
Key NPC: Director Karenza Thorne — A cold, ruthlessly efficient executive with optical cybernetic overlays. She frequently hires external mercenaries (13 Parsecs crews) for off-the-books wetwork to keep local gang leaders from getting too ambitious.
Adventure Hooks for Your Crew
The Sump Salvage: An Apex corporate transport carrying an experimental AI-core crashed directly into the Sump. The corp wants it back before it melts; the Cable-Born want it to weaponize their defense grids. The crew is caught in the middle.
Blackout Protocol: The power conduit feeding the Circuit & Spine has been tapped by a rival syndicate, threatening to blow the district's stabilizers and drop the entire Maw into the Vent. The barkeep offers a massive stash of military-grade cyberware if the crew eliminates the leeches quietly.
Navigating the shaking, smog-choked catwalks of Verith Maw is dangerous. This d100 random encounter table is split into themes to help you quickly narrate the chaos, environmental hazards, and sudden violence of the district.
01–25: Environmental & Industrial Hazards
| d100 | Encounter |
| 01–05 | Vent Flare: A sudden spike in the plasma exhaust below causes the floor plating to rapidly heat up. Everyone must find high ground or take thermal damage. |
| 06–10 | Cable Snap: A high-tension structural cable snaps with a thunderous crack, whipping through a nearby catwalk and severing a chunk of the sector. |
| 11–15 | Coolant Rain: A burst pipe overhead showers the alleyway in scalding, chemically toxic emerald fluid. Neon signs short-circuit and explode in showers of sparks. |
| 16–20 | Gravity Pocket: The localized gravity stabilizers flicker. For 1d4 minutes, gravity shifts 45 degrees to the left, or drops to zero entirely, sending unsecured cargo flying. |
| 21–25 | Smog Blind: A thick, amber wave of industrial sulfur rolls out of a ventilation shaft. Visibility drops to zero; filtering breathing apparatuses are required to avoid choking. |
26–50: Street Life, Tech, & Scavengers
| d100 | Encounter |
| 26–30 | The Glitch-Preacher: A cyber-fanatic with a jury-rigged loudspeaker implant stands on a shipping crate, screaming that the Sinking City is a divine sign to purge all organic flesh. |
| 31–35 | Scavenger Turf War: Two rival packs of Sump-scavengers are violently fighting over a crate of discarded cybernetic limbs that fell from the upper rings. |
| 36–40 | Cyber-Psychosis: A heavily augmented heavy-labor drone operator has snapped. They are tearing through a storefront with industrial hydraulic claws, screaming at hallucinations. |
| 41–45 | Data Leak: A malfunctioning advertising kiosk begins broadcasting encrypted corporate data instead of holograms. Local data-brokers are converging on it with extraction decks. |
| 46–50 | The Juiced Doc: A back-alley Ripperdoc, visibly vibrating from too many neural stimulants, approaches the crew offering a "buy-one-get-one" discount on black-market optical rigs. |
51–75: Law, Corporate, & Criminal Elements
| d100 | Encounter |
| 51–55 | Apex Sweeper Drone: An automated Apex Sub-Dynamics security drone descends, scanning the crowd. It locks its red spotlight onto a crew member whose forged IDs are being aggressively pinged. |
| 56–60 | Cable-Born Toll: A trio of Cable-Born gangers drop down from the overhead structural beams on magnetic mag-lines, demanding a "transit fee" to cross their bridge. |
| 61–65 | Corpse Shakedown: A corporate clean-up crew is executing a local resident in an alley for "intellectual property theft" (having unlicensed corporate software running in their neural implant). |
| 66–70 | The Runaway Synth: A highly advanced synthetic humanoid, shivering and wrapped in a tattered tarp, begs the crew to hide them from a pair of silent, trench-coated corporate trackers. |
| 71–75 | Bounty Trap: A localized EMP mine trips in the alleyway, disabling all cyberware and electronics for 1d6 rounds. Bounty hunters step out of the shadows with flash-batons. |
76–100: Anomalies, Strangers, & Opportunities
| d100 | Encounter |
| 76–80 | Ghost in the Wire: Every crew member’s neural interface suddenly receives a static-heavy audio ping: a desperate voice giving coordinates deeper in the Sump, followed by a scream. |
| 81–85 | The Blind Fencer: A completely unaugmented, blind old man sits at a folding table selling incredibly rare, pristine pre-collapse military hardware. He only accepts untraceable hard currency. |
| 86–90 | Stray Combat Drone: A heavily damaged, rogue military drone is wandering the streets like a stray dog. Its targeting matrix is glitched, alternating between whimpering noises and spinning up its minigun. |
| 91–95 | The High-Ring Tourist: A wealthy corporate heir from the top spires has overdosed on designer street drugs and is passed out in a gutter, wearing a chrono-watch worth more than the entire city block. |
| 96–100 | The Maw Shivers: A massive structural shift occurs. The entire district drops six inches down the tension lines in a split second. Everyone is knocked prone, and alarms go off across the sector. |
GM Tip: If the crew is moving fast or using stealth, roll once. If they are causing a scene or staying in one place too long, roll twice and combine the results (e.g., an Apex Sweeper Drone tracking a criminal right into a sudden Gravity Pocket).
When a crew takes a high-risk dive into the depths of Verith Maw—especially down into the scorching, toxic junk-heaps of The Sump—they aren't just looking for scrap metal. They’re hunting for lost corporate data, forgotten tech prototypes, and rare street commodities.
Here is a d100 random table of artifacts, oddities, and treasures your players can pull from the depths of the Maw.
01–25: Black-Market Cyberware & Bioware
These components are highly illegal, heavily modified, or pulled directly from corporate test subjects.
| d100 | Artifact / Treasure | Estimated Street Value |
| 01–05 | "Sump-Eye" Thermal Rig: A heavily jury-rigged optical implant that bypasses thick industrial smog and heavy plasma smoke, granting perfect thermal vision but leaving the user with a permanent twitch. | 1,200 Credits |
| 06–10 | Overclocked Reflex Booster: A jagged, military-surplus neural spine implant. When activated, it doubles reaction speed for 3 rounds, but forces a grueling physical system shock immediately after. | 3,500 Credits |
| 11–15 | Apex "Chameleon" Subdermal Mesh: A rare patch of active-camouflage skin netting salvaged from a black-ops corpse. When grafted, it allows the user to blend seamlessly into rusted metal and industrial shadows. | 5,000 Credits |
| 16–20 | Hydraulic "Breaker" Fist: An oversized, rust-pitted cybernetic forearm built for heavy demolition. It ignores structural armor thresholds but drains battery cells at three times the normal rate. | 2,800 Credits |
| 21–25 | Unlicensed Splicer Kit: A sealed, bioluminescent vial containing synthetic, highly illegal gene-therapy sequencing designed to temporarily rewrite muscle density for high-G environments. | 4,000 Credits |
26–50: Datashards, Intel, & Encrypted Code
The most valuable currency in Verith Maw isn't physical—it's the data that corporations killed to hide.
| d100 | Artifact / Treasure | Estimated Street Value |
| 26–30 | The Thorne Dossier: A corrupted datashard containing blackmail material on Apex Director Karenza Thorne, including off-the-books wetwork contracts and shell company financial routings. | 6,000 Credits (or a massive target on your back) |
| 31–35 | Glitch-Preacher Source Code: An unencrypted memory chip containing the core linguistic algorithm used by the local cyber-cultists. A clever decker could use it to manipulate or disperse street crowds. | 800 Credits |
| 36–40 | Corporate Transit Decryptor: A sleek, matte-black hardware key that continuously cycles through Apex Sub-Dynamics security codes, granting unmonitored access to high-ring cargo elevators. | 3,200 Credits |
| 41–45 | Ghost-Grid Coordinates: A hand-etched data drive revealing the location of a stable, unmonitored tap into the megastructure’s primary power grid, perfect for setting up a permanent hidden safehouse. | 2,500 Credits |
| 46–50 | AI Fragment "Vandal": A rogue, highly aggressive piece of ICE-breaking software trapped on a secure quantum drive. It speaks in erratic, fragmented poetry but can shred basic corporate firewalls in seconds. | 4,500 Credits |
51–75: Exotic Tech, Weapons, & Industrial Gear
Hardware designed to survive the brutal gravity shifts, high heat, and corrosive atmosphere of the lower rings.
| d100 | Artifact / Treasure | Estimated Street Value |
| 51–55 | Mag-Grip Grapple Rifle: A heavy-duty, pneumatic line-launcher modified by the Cable-Born gang. It can fire a carbon-tension line up to 100 meters and lock onto any metallic surface with massive magnetic force. | 1,500 Credits |
| 56–60 | Plasma Torch Carbine: An industrial plasma-cutter weaponized into a short-range rifle. It easily melts through heavy blast doors and corporate armor, but a critical failure risks catastrophic backfire. | 3,800 Credits |
| 61–65 | Gravity Anchor Belt: A bulky, harness-style generator that creates a personal localized gravity field, completely neutralizing the Maw's random gravity fluctuations for its wearer. | 2,200 Credits |
| 66–70 | Prototype EMP Grenades (x3): Experimental tactical ordinance stamped with a redacted corporate logo. They completely disable all cyberware and non-shielded electronics within a 15-meter radius. | 1,800 Credits (set) |
| 71–75 | "Sump-Stalker" Hazard Suit: A battered, heavy-layered environmental suit coated in anti-corrosive sealant. It completely protects the wearer from boiling coolant leaks, acid smog, and ambient radiation. | 2,000 Credits |
76–100: Oddities, Curios, & High-Value Luxury Salvage
In a place as miserable as Verith Maw, rare organic items or pure luxury goods from the upper rings fetch astronomical prices.
| d100 | Artifact / Treasure | Estimated Street Value |
| 76–80 | A Living Bonsai Tree: Found perfectly preserved inside an airtight, automated hydroponic stasis pod that slipped out of an upper-ring luxury garden. A staggering rarity in the smog-choked slums. | 7,500 Credits to the right collector |
| 81–85 | Pre-Collapse Whiskey: A pristine, unopened bottle of authentic, organic earth-style whiskey, discovered hidden away in a dead captain's personal safe within the Rust Grotto. | 3,000 Credits |
| 86–90 | Pure Gold Bullion (2kg): A solid brick of heavy raw gold, stamped with an ancient planetary federation seal. Completely useless for modern tech, but highly valued by old-school black market fences. | 5,000 Credits |
| 91–95 | High-Ring Chrono-Watch: A sleek, diamond-coated timepiece recovered from an overdosed corporate heir. It is biometric-locked, but the raw materials alone are worth a fortune. | 4,200 Credits |
| 96–100 | The Omega Drive: A pristine, gold-plated master data drive containing the complete architectural blueprints of the megastructure's stabilizing core. Holding this means every faction in the city is actively hunting you. | Priceless (Destroys the campaign balance if sold carelessly) |
GM Rule of Thumb: When players salvage a physical item from the hazardous zones shown in the art—such as the broken catwalks near the boiling coolant leaks or structural collapses—have them make an Agility or Tech-use check. Success ensures the item is fully functional; a failure means the item is damaged, requiring a costly repair from a local Ripperdoc or grease-monkey before it can be used or sold for full value.
Here is a fully detailed black-market fence NPC designed specifically for 13 Parsecs. She is perfectly positioned to serve as a recurring patron, a source of dangerous jobs, or a buyer for the strange artifacts pulled from the depths of Verith Maw.
NPC Profile: "Tinker" Thorne (Anatila Thorne)
"You bring me scrap, you get scrap-weight credits. You bring me an un-wiped Apex mainframe core that’s still warm? Well... then we’re having a real conversation."
Species: Remoni (A lanky, multi-limbed, or sharp-featured alien lineage known for calculating intellect) or Augmented Human.
Archetype Alignment: Underworld Slicer / Tech-Broker
Operation Base: Deep inside The Rust Grotto, operating out of a heavily shielded, triple-locked repair bay disguised as a junked starship engine manifold.
Description
Anatila "Tinker" Thorne is a master of asymmetric salvage. She has two pairs of cybernetic auxiliary arms mounted to her upper torso—each tipped with micro-soldering tools, optical scanners, and interface leads—allowing her to strip a corporate datashard or a piece of military cyberware in seconds. Her left eye is a spinning, multi-lens mechanical array that continuously evaluates the structural integrity and monetary value of whatever is placed in front of her.
Unlike the chaotic street gangs of the Maw, Tinker is entirely professional. She doesn't take sides in gang wars, and she doesn't care whose corporate emblem is stamped on the gear you bring her—as long as the tracking signals are thoroughly scrubbed before you cross her threshold.
Mechanical Interface (For the GM)
Tinker is an invaluable asset for a 13 Parsecs crew, but dealing with her requires navigating her strict codes of business.
The Valuation Check
When the crew brings a salvaged artifact or data drive to Tinker, she uses her advanced tech-broker skills to evaluate the gear.
Pristine Gear: She pays 60% of standard street value in hard, untraceable credits.
Damaged / Corrupted Gear: She pays 20% of the value as-is, OR she offers to repair/decrypt it using her Career Training as a tech-broker. The crew must wait 1d4 days and pay a flat 30% service fee, after which the item is fully functional for their own use or open for a higher-value resale.
The Rule of 2 (Complications)
Tinker’s shop is safe, but getting to and from it with high-value contraband is not. Whenever the crew completes a transaction with her involving an item worth more than 3,000 Credits, roll a d6. On a result of 1 or 2, a complication occurs:
The Tail: An Apex Sub-Dynamics tracker drone or a Cable-Born scout spotted the transaction and is waiting in ambush outside her manifold doors.
The Hot Data: The drive the crew just sold her triggered a silent, localized network ping before she could finish shielding it. The sector's corporate security is adjusting their patrol vectors directly toward the block.
Adventure & Job Hooks
Tinker doesn't just buy loot; she actively hires 13 Parsecs crews for high-risk data extraction and retrieval missions.
The Sump Extraction: Tinker has localized the signal of a crashed high-ring transport deep in the boiling coolant zones of The Sump. She needs a crew with a solid Augmented frontliner or a heavy hazard suit to dive into the toxic zone and retrieve an experimental gravity-anchor blueprint before the hull melts completely.
The Frame-Up: She has a buyers' market for a corrupted piece of Apex corporate blackmail data (The Thorne Dossier). She will provide the crew with forged security credentials and an encrypted system-override spike; they just need to sneak a Slicer into a mid-ring sub-station to upload it.
A Debt in Blood: A rival fence in the Circuit & Spine cantina tried to pass off a brick of counterfeit gold bullion to one of Tinker’s premium off-world clients. She wants the crew to track down the counterfeiter, shut down their operation, and "secure" their genuine inventory as compensation.
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