Great Tree Sap

Pulled from the branches and trunk of the Great Tree comes a sticky viscous liquid that until recently was thought of as simply a good glue. In the present though and thanks to Arashi Katai and her Pipemen the sap has become the defacto power source for all of Arbor usurping coal almost completly and rendering other oil based alternatives obsolete. It is no small thing to say that without the sap Arbor would not have stepped so boldly into the industrial age nor would it have stepped so quickly.

"This stuff is sticky smells bad and tastes worse why anyone would think to refine it to booze is beyond me but it's what my da did so I did too I just got the recipie a bit wrong and got lucky is all..." - Arashi Katai Leader of the Pipemen

Appearance

Great Tree Sap in it's unrefined form is an incredibly viscous almost black substance that resembles tar. It's said that the Great Tree seems to bleed black when cut as if the world itself was bleeding along with it. This shows up as a stark contrast to the silvery bark.

History

Early Era

Wounds in the great tree are easy to spot and like most things the tree provides early on the peoples of the time sought to use the black substance exuding from the tree expecting it to be as magical or powerful as some of it's other components. However the only thing the poeple at the time were able to make of the Great tree sap was a kind of glue it held incridebly well magically so apparently but that was all that it was useful for at the time. The distillers at the time had alrady secured the rights to Dream Fruit and Star Rose for their needs and were producing a wonderful alcohol and besides the stuff tasted awful so no one used it for anything except the glue and that was in such supply that it needn't be managed.

Pre Steam

Fast forward now to a more modern era the amount of people in the city has ballooned so the need for cheap alcohol for the masses increases dramatically. However dream fruit as a source is hard to come by and other fruits or grains are almost impossible to acquire without being rich yourselves. So enterprising and desperate people will make due with what is available. The earliest bootleggers simply would find an exposed root and using a bucket collect an amount of the sap from the tree hoping that it contained some amount of sugar as they knew other trees in the world did. Lucky for them they were right and a shadow industry sprung up and alcohol of varying quality began to surface in pubs across the Twigs

Post Steam

Arashi Katai is a name that is synonmous with Great Tree Sap these days and indeed they are credited with turning what was a simple alcohol into a burnable fuel. At some point they figured out that this alocohol they were making could be burned and more importantly turned into something that could be made solid or liquid. They stole the name Star Light from the wine made by The Arborian Revelers secured the rights to the Sap for the pipemen and heralded in the revolution.

Creation

The sap is created from inside the great Tree the exact mechanisim is unkown at this time.

Components

Physically from everyone's anaylisis thus far the Sap consists of three elements an element that causes the sap to turn black and is the sticky part needed in the production of glue. A sweet part that when refined actually tastes quite nice on a bit of toast or pancakes, and finally an element that comprises the ability for the sap to transform into the fuel source for all of Arbor. Of course this third component and how to refine it is a trade secret of the Pipemen and they will do anything to maintain this secret. It's interesting to note here though that the second component is also highly addictive and is the main component that was used to create the moonshine that preceeded the creation of the Star Light fuel source.