A post-war descendant of cotton, Radgauze has as much a place in the heart of the South as it did during the Antebellum and afterwards. Initially, Radgauze was nearly impossible to cultivate and harvest due to select changes between it and pre-war cotton. Despite this, years of selective breeding have led to a crop which, while still as unruly as its pre-war ancestor, is a lucrative cash crop.
Biology[]
Radgauze is mutated from pre-war cotton and as such resembles the plant greatly. The most notable differences appear on a level which is only considered for cultivation. Radgauze has more seeds and thicker fibres than pre-war cotton which initially made the plant very difficult to process. However, breeding of certain types of Radgauze and interbreeding with other surviving wild cotton plants produced a product which is more easily processed.
Alongside its use as fibre for creating clothes, the body of the plant is edible by livestock. The seeds, however, are toxic to both humans and livestock except through a long refinement process. After this process, cottonseed oil is produced which is used as vegetable oil. The leftover seeds are typically added to feed for Brahmin and other ruminants but not to animals which only possess a single-chambered stomach. This is because the leftover seed meal is still considered toxic to monogastric creatures.
Properties[]
Radgauze is a naturally dense fibre which is useful for clothes, medical supplies, furniture, and a variety of other civil uses. In this regard, it hardly differs from its pre-war counterpart. The most unique property of Radgauze is its weak radiation absorbent behaviour, acting similarly to plants like Cacti but for different types of radiation. While this effect is weak, it is enough to give someone a slightly higher quality of life in this radiation-infested wasteland. It should be of note that the fibres have a tolerance where any radiation past that point cannot be absorbed by the material.
Habitat[]
Originating somewhere in the Charleston Wasteland and spreading across the Southern United States. Radgauze has provided a relatively cheap clothing alternative. Like its pre-war counterpart, however, radgauze is a labour-intensive crop which required manpower above all else to process. It also requires a fairly warm climate to grow with the crops quickly dying in cold temperatures. For these reasons, the gruelling process of obtaining radgauze is often performed by slaves, indentured servants, or robots.
Since its appearance, Radgauze has become an effective currency of its own. Within marginally more developed economies such as the Klansmen Confederacy, the Brigadiers, the Brethren of the Shroud, and much of the Gulf Coast, Radgauze is a fairly common trade good which can replace even Caps or clean Water in transactions.
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