Cycler

As you know, the six Grand Atocites meet once in twenty years. This event is also the largest. Other Atocites occasionaly get close together to trade some small things.
So how do you think there can even be some trade between the Atocites? Well kids, without the cyclers like the one you can see coming, the trade would be prety much non-existent.

Description and creation

Cycler is a name given to strong platform tied to chunks of raw Resonin. The platform, usually made of stone, is adjusted to house the crew and its cargo.
The creation of Cycler begins with at minimum four chunks of raw Resonin, as equal in mass as possible. unequal chunks can be used, but extra attention must be put into balancing the platform.
Once the Resonin chunks are selected, they are attached to the corners of a platform of choice. This platform's main focus is to provide a large surface area for the crew to live on and store their trade goods and other cargo.
This primary platform is highly unsafe, so some fences and walls are added to prevent crew or cargo from going overboard.
After the necessary safety measures are added, a mechanism to attach to Atocites are included along with wheels to make traveling through Atocites easier. This mechanism is often in form of hooks that are either tossed by hand or shot by steam or spring-powered cannons.
Each Cycler has at minimum two such hooks, but more are added for larger crews. The more hooks the vehicle has, the easier it can climb onto, or around the Atocite.

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Use and operation

The Cyclers travel on the upper streams of The Flow, with the raw chunks of Resonin keeping the cycler afloat. Thanks to the fact that their mass and weight are much smaller than that of Atocites, they travel faster and can catch up on them.
When Atocite is in sight, the Cycler's crew uses the hooks to either climb onto it or around it.
Some Atocites created mechanisms or ramps where Cyclers up to a certain size can climb up. This allows the cyclers to quickly get to the center of the Atocite, do all the trading, and as quickly move on to continue their journey.
Atocites without these ramps are a much tougher challenge. The crew of the vehicle must hook around the perimeter of the Atocite, or climb up the hard way.
Once the trading is done, the Cycler gets at the front of the Atocite, lowers itself onto the Flow again, and continues on its journey.
Due to the nature of the upper stream, the only way for the Cycler is forward. So it does not meet the same Atocite until it goes all the way around the Atocitera. The only changes of direction happen at places where upper streams cross. At these crossroads, the Cycler can move from one cycling stream to the other, determining which Atocites it will meet.

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Variants

The Cycler's size is determined by the platform which provides the surface area where the crew operates. The size of the platform and maximal weight of Cycler is in turn determined by the amount of raw Resonin it has.
This allows for a lot of customization options once the crew gets wealthy enough to afford more raw Resonin.
Most common Cycler upgrades include more platforms, tied to the main one by numerous ropes.
Thanks to having more platforms instead of one massive one mean that the Cycler can still be operated by the same crew, just doing the tasks for each platform.

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History

After the The Grand migration, the people created settlements on Atocites.
These Atocites were however separated from each other, without ways to communicate or travel. Under these conditions, it was impossible to have any kind of trade.
The properties of Resonin were known even before the migration, but the idea to use it to create a vehicle took a few years to appear.
It came from an exchange between two Atocites of different sizes. After comparing their measurements of the distance they came up with the conclusion, that smaller Atocites with less mass travel faster.
From that realization came the idea to create smaller artificial Atocites, and from that the idea for Cyclers.
The first attempts to create them ended up in disasters. People were falling from the platforms, unbalanced platforms were losing cargo, or the chunk of Resonin slipped from its attachment and Cycler fell from the sky.
The first appearance of Cycler at an Atocite came up as a shock for both parties. The people of the Atocite did not expect the traveling traders, and the crew of the cycler found themselves in a lot of trouble before they managed to explain the purpose of the cycler.
The vehicle was at first considered an attempt of attack. The key argument in clearing its purpose was that the Cycler can only move forward on the upper streams, thus it takes the whole cycle before it returns to the original Atocite.
It took some time before the Cyclers became widely known, but after that, whole families made their name as traders, whose cyclers are passed throughout the generations.