Offcut

Life in the Aktergean keetwood industry is made of hard work, great risk, and little pleasure. Loggers climb to hundreds of feet to dismantle mature trees from the top down. Dangerous creatures lurk in the forest, the water is bitter, and the food not even that. Since the camp travels down the cut, no home is sturdier than a tent. The pay is merely adequate, and travel to other islands for the off-season is costly and time-consuming.

But who would want to?

When the wedge has been worked from top to bottom, while the lift teams transport the logging equipment back to the upper point, the logging crews get to spend two glorious months in Offcut.
Offcut is luxury apartments, fresh food and drink, amusements, games, parties--but most of all, a chance to relax and enjoy life after spending most of the year doing exhausting and dangerous physical labor. For ten months straight Offcut is filled with pleasure seekers as each wedge's camp finishes its shift in turn. There is nowhere else on the island to spend money, and very little incentive to save it, so Aktergeans can easily use up their entire year's wages in two months of lavish living, celebrating all the milestones that occurred since the last off-season. Party halls fill up night after night, with weddings and re-weddings the most frequent uses. More babies are born in the penultimate month of a camp's shift than at any other time.

History

The bustling resort that is Offcut had its beginnings as a tiny supply station at the mouth of the Harakol river. At the end of a harvest cycle, crews would camp at the station for several weeks to inspect tools, take on provisions, and negotiate new contracts or terminate current ones.  Given the occupational hazards, people with children were initally barred from working in the camps.  As recruits became harder to come by, that restriction had to be lifted in order to keep productivity high enough.  The camp demographics shifted from temporary workers to families with established roots, and their earnings stayed on the island.  On speculation, Offcut began importing luxury goods and marking them up heavily, only to find that workers wouldn't pay for things they'd have to drag from camp to camp.  Offcut then built the first permanent structures besides the warehouses, and rented hard-sided housing during the off-seasons to workers tired of living under canvas.  That venture, far more successful, launched Offcut into the resort town it is today.

Tourism

Offcut is the only resort in the world where the tourists are locals, and the employees are outsiders.  Although its reputation as a hedonistic haven is well enough known, only those born and raised on Aktergea can stand the side effects of its environment for extended periods of time.  Off-islanders come for the money they can earn for short stints working as anything from performers to housekeepers.  A resort job is also often the jumping-off point for young Aktergeans looking to break out of the endless cycle.

Location under

Aktergea