General Goods

Here's where you'll find most basic goods; clothes, food, and such. On the Core, you visit a major triplex or market district to buy these things, assuming you don't just have it delivered straight to you after orderin' on the Cortex. Out on the Rim, find the local General Store and hope they've got what you need. Just remember that there's a lot of gear not listed in this section. If you want a compass or pencils or tea bags, just do a quick price conversion or ask your GM to name a figure.

Fire Jelly
Sold in 8" tall tin cans, fire jelly was originally designed during the Unification War as an alternative to campfires for soldiers in the field. When lit, the jelly burns at 550 degrees at a rate of ½" per hour; the can is largely heat-proof, and putting the lid back on quickly snuffs the low-burning, smokeless flame.

Garden Bunk
When you can't afford to buy fresh vegetables, which is likely somewhere close to always, you can grow 'em - even on your boat. The "garden bunk" has become fairly popular, consisting of a plastic soil trough, sized to fit on a small bed (hence the name), growing lamps and a simple sprinkler system. Garden bunks don't afford a huge harvest, but a few fresh tomatoes can do wonders for morale, especially for crews used to making do with protein out of a tube. The listed weight includes the soil and plants the unit will hold.

Gun Cleaning Kit
Every good soldier and settler knows that you need to take care of your weapons if you want 'em to take care of you. Guns need to be cleaned, maintained, and occasionally repaired, and this small kit includes all the tools necessary to do so. Bought on the Rim, the kit most likely comes in a leather pouch about the size of a shoulder bag. Purchased on the Core, it will come in a professional-looking metal case.

Multiband
The evolution of the digital wristwatch has led, at long last, to the Multiband. It's an all-in-one watch, digital compass, calculator, alarm, radio receiver, generic remote control, voice memo, and a host of other useful doodads. Unfortunately, multibands break easily and are not especially suited to the kind of rough living folks on the Rim are used to. They're mostly popular among students as a fashion accessory, with varieties ranging from cheap versions with plastic cases to gold-plated ones sold out of suitcases by shady men on street corners.

Patch Tape
A holdover from the war, patch tape looks like a roll of shiny duct tape. The thin tape is airtight, and the adhesive coating on one side provides a hold strong enough to seal a vacuum suit at full pressure. Hull breaches and the like usually can't be fixed in this manner, but if some sah gwa wants to try, it's his funeral. Keeping a roll in a vac-suit pocket can often be a life-saver.

Purification Crystals
Frontier settlers and soldiers usually carry packets of these powdery, pale blue crystals. One packet can cleanse up to a gallon of water for human consumption, killing pretty much all bacteria and parasites, just as if you'd boiled it.

Trash Incinerator
Most ships come equipped with some way to dispose of garbage, but there's always a market for ways to quickly get rid of refuse. The incinerator is a 2-foot hollow metal cube fitted with electrical heating coils. In a matter of moments it can destroy most any organic material that can fit inside. The resulting residue and ash is collected in a small filter that occasionally needs cleaning out.

Crop Supplements
While terraforming has succeeded in making many planets habitable, the individual quirks of various planets and moons make it difficult to predict what will grow where. Highly concentrated fertilizers and pesticides, packed into easily applied pellets, are one of the more common solutions to that problem. Settlers usually bring a fair supply with them in order to give their first few years a boost by ensuring a bountiful harvest. The pellets come in drums, bags, or boxes; one container is enough for five acres when mixed with the seed before planting or tilled into the earth beforehand. The benefits usually last for two or three growing seasons, depending on the crop in question.

Drink, Fine Wine
A case of twelve bottles of extremely good wine. Fine wine is hard to come by, so it can be worth a shiny penny, but many folk consider it worthwhile.

Drink, Good Whiskey
For those a little too manly to go sippin' on grape juice, a good barrel-aged whiskey is a fine substitute. Costs a bit more than a jug of white lightning, but it has the added benefit of not making you go blind.

Foodstuffs, Canned
While not as good as fresh, canned or otherwise pre-prepared food is still a fair bit better than processed protein. Since canned food keeps indefinitely (or at least a far sight longer than the fresh stuff), food packs and canned fruit are popular among settlers and ship crews. The given price buys two or three boxes of different kinds of food, allowing one person to eat decently for about a week. Rationed, the food will stretch further.

Foodstuffs, Fresh
Here it is: fresh vegetables, fruit, and meat. Unfortunately, real food is fairly expensive, and it goes south quick. Most folk on the Rim can't afford it unless things are going real smooth. Most often, fresh food is bought in small amounts to supplement less flavorful options or carefully rationed over a period of time, at least by those who live in the black.

Foodstuffs, Luxury
This is the kind of fancy-pants yummies you can't even find on the Rim. A pound of fresh strawberries, a chocolate ice cream cake, caviar - such things count as luxury goods to folk on the Rim. The units in which the food is sold depends upon exactly what it is. The price can vary as well, but whatever it is, it will almost always be pricey.

Foodstuffs, Nutrient Bars
A Newtech Alliance ration, nutrient bars are perhaps the most compact form of food ever developed. Each bar is about the shape and size of a gold ingot and wrapped in foil. The actual bar is a near-tasteless, brownish compound that, sliced thinly, can provide 30 days' worth of nutrition for a single person. The person will still need water and some additional calories, but all the vitamins, minerals, immune supplements, and so on are provided, allowing someone to subsist on an otherwise minimal diet.

Foodstuffs, Protein Packs
Tubes of colored and (supposedly) flavorsome protein paste are the standard diet of spacefarers across the 'Verse. The past is sometimes molded into different forms and cooked different ways, but it all pretty well tastes the same, no matter what you do to it. It's boring, but it's cheap, healthy and stores a good long while.

Spices, Common
Sprigs of rosemary, nutmeg nuts, and a little bottle of oregano can make your day a little brighter, particularly if the rest of your meal is squirted out of a tube.

Spices, Rare
Popular in the Core for those what can afford high-class dining, rare spices such as saffron can be extremely expensive. A good cargo to carry, and even better to have in the galley if you can afford it.