Sponsorship
Every crawler now has three sponsors, and next floor those sponsors become tradeable assets.
Story so far
The AI reports that every crawler has now received all three sponsors, and that bidding was at record levels this time around. But the fun is not over: if a crawler finds themselves with an inactive or stingy sponsor, the odds are good that the sponsor is simply holding the slot in order to sell it — because starting next floor, sponsors will be allowed to sell their sponsorship stakes.
The implication is that a crawler's backing can change hands without the crawler having any say in it, and that a quiet sponsor is not necessarily a disinterested one but a speculator waiting for the market to open. It also means a crawler's own performance is now an asset someone else can flip. Carl's own sponsor relationship is what produces the Platinum Fan Box and, through it, the CrawlCon booking he cannot refuse — a reminder that the money attached to a crawler buys real control over what they have to do.
Appearance
Invisible machinery, surfacing as boxes that arrive, obligations that attach, and now a secondary market announced from the ceiling.
Role
The crawl's patronage system, about to become a tradeable market in which crawlers are the underlying asset.
Relationships
Sources — 4 recorded facts, by chapter
- System by which outside parties bid to sponsor individual crawlers, with the final slots opened on the sixth floor.
- Three slots per crawler, and the third one closes with an Admin Notice on a bridge.
- Corporate backing that can be stripped without warning — and re-auctioned in sixty hours when conflicts of interest arise.
- Every crawler now has three sponsors, and next floor those sponsors become tradeable assets.