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Spoiler warning!
This article or section contains plot spoilers for the Mortal Engines quartet. Proceed at your own risk. |
A trading cluster is a gathering of small traction towns and villages where they typically trade goods and resources.
Overview[]
During a trading cluster, the communities engage in a gentlemen's agreement to not partake in consumption of or eat each other because most of time they are the same or nearly the same size so it is impossible for them to devour each other. In addition, there's usually little time for them to trade as they have to do so before bigger towns and cities come across the cluster and preys on them.
History[]
Mortal Engines quartet[]
Mortal Engines[]
After Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw fall out of London, they board a small town called Speedwell. Its leader, Orme Wreyland, schemed to sell the pair as slaves for profit at a trading cluster. Tom and Hester escape Speedwell and encounter Anna Fang on Stayns, who agrees to give them passage to London. The Wreylands catch up, and Anna engages them while the teenagers find an airship. When they get to the quays, Orme corners them before Hester violently beats the old man; Tom and Anna promptly stop her. Fang then takes the duo to her ship, the Jenny Haniver, and leaves Stayns for Airhaven.
A Darkling Plain[]
The biggest trading cluster known to have occurred during the series is during the preparation for the attack of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft on the Green Storm, the biggest and most important of traction cities were present in the cluster such as Manchester, Murnau, and even Airhaven. It also consisted of hundreds of smaller cities, towns, suburbs, villages and hamlets. The cluster was for both the trade of goods and plans for the invasion on Shan Guo and its surrounding territories, it was also a way for the cities to gather for the attack without raising too much suspicion of the Green Storm.
Film[]
Salthook was gathering with other cities before being forced to move away when London began moving toward the cluster. It then ate Salthook, but the others presumably went away from the site.
Tom, Hester, and other slaves of Scuttlebug were taken to a trading cluster in the Rustwater Marshes to be pawned off.