Nansen is everybody's dealer.
Born outside Longyearbyen, Svalbard, an Earth island halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole that is the northernmost reach of human civilization on the planet, Nansen was named after a polar explorer famous for being the first to get close to the North Pole by deliberately allowing his sturdy ship to be frozen into the ice to follow the drift.
Now wanted as a Jumper best known for piloting his unique fleet of Fleas, Nansen was formerly a mining supervisor by trade, overseeing some of the most lucrative thorium mines on the planet in Svalbard. (The element thorium, the slowest-decaying of the radioactive metals, was quickly becoming the most popular fuel for experimental small nuclear propulsion engines before all engine manufacturing was made illegal and carefully controlled by the MultiCorps.)
Born on the frontier of human civilization, Nansen saw the Svalbard environment change rapidly thanks to global warming (as the ice sheets receded, and the island became the optimal temperate climate for growing the coveted delicacy of cloudberries) and warfare — as edible plant species died out across the planet, a succession of Earth national and MultiCorps entities battled over control of the Doomsday Vault, where emergency seed samples for the world’s crops had been stored.
Nansen was one of the last people to flee the Doomsday Vault as it was overrun by MultiCorps Security Forces, and no one knows exactly what he was able to take with him. But he did do business on several occasions with Hank Henderson, the former owner of the Cheyenne, the Dot and the Conductor, as well as husband of Cat Anne.
There have been numerous warrants out for Nansen’s arrest ever since — but he always appears to be one step ahead of his pursuers, popping in unannounced to trade at remote outposts like Far Commissariat, and then again disappearing.
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