Absalom Station

Absalom Station is the metaphorical center of the Pact Worlds System—the hub around which all things revolve. It was here that the Pact Worlds Government as a formal entity were created, via the Absalom Pact, and it remains the system’s heart governmentally, culturally, and economically. All sentient species, from the familiar to the most alien, are welcome in its streets, with the mysterious artifact at its heart acting as a singularly powerful hyperspace beacon, Absalom Station finds its significance only growing as the races of the Pact Worlds System spread out across the galaxy.

Geography

Seen from above, Absalom Station is shaped roughly like an asymmetrical, six-pointed star spreading out in a flat plane from the Eye, the huge central dome that encloses a cluster of skyscrapers surrounded by shockingly green parks. More towers and neighborhoods, collectively called the Ring, partially fill the gaps between the station’s arms, and a single tapering pillar called the Spike drops down from the station’s central disk. While interior additions and renovations are common, in both the freestanding buildings and the three-dimensional warren of chambers and corridors, actually expanding the station is difficult due to the extreme hardness of the exterior hull metal—an inconvenience that nevertheless keeps whole neighborhoods from getting decompressed by a single gunfight.

• Altogether, Absalom Station is only 5 miles across, yet its three-dimensional structure means it can house upward of 2 million people and still be easy for the uninitiated to get lost in or find themselves alone in rarely visited corridors.
• Artificial gravity is in effect throughout the station, with “down” always being perpendicular to the disk and arms, toward the complex technomagical gravity field generators in the Spike’s tip.
• Except where modifications have been made to the contrary, atmosphere and other environmental conditions seem tailored for human comfort. Station lights in many sectors are set to artificially enforce a 24-hour cycle of day and night, and independent regulators and air scrubbers are located throughout the station for maximum safety.

Districts: While all sectors of the station have both wealthy and hardscrabble residents, money and power generally flow inward from the numerous bustling docks toward the station’s dome and towers, while the downtrodden drift lower into the machine-cramped access warrens of the Spike.

• The Arms
• The Eye
• The Ring
• The Spike
• The Armada

Natural Resources

As Absalom Station lacks the natural resources of even the smallest planet or asteroid, its inhabitants have had to get creative in order to survive. Fortunately, what technology can’t solve, magic can.
The *Starstone* provides for the station in two key ways. By offering free energy on a massive scale, the artifact-powered central reactor allows the station to undertake many energy- intensive forms of agriculture and recycling in order to feed and reclaim nutrients from its citizens. Strangely, while this energy appears limitless for most industrial uses, attempts to store it in battery form and transport it beyond the station in industrial quantities inevitably fail, with the batteries mysteriously losing charge as they travel away from the station. Yet, the *Starstone*’s real value to the station is its function as a supercharged Drift beacon, making Absalom Station the first trading post for anyone—domestic or alien— jumping into the system, as well as the last stop before heading out. It’s this trade, plus the station’s concentration of corporate and governmental headquarters, that keeps enough money flowing in that minimal taxes and tariffs support the station and its people.
Absalom Station does have another valuable resource, however: information. As the home of the Starfinder Society, the station has the most data on newly discovered planets beyond the Pact Worlds System, as well as the most complete known “histories” of the Gap, as scholars cross-reference and validate sources to make their best guesses on different subjects. Add to this the multitude of texts from pre-Gap Golarion included in the station’s libraries and private collections, not to mention leading magical and religious schools, and Absalom Station manages to remain at the forefront of the knowledge economy.

Diameter	5 miles
Mass	less than x1/100
Gravity	x1(artificial)
Atmosphere	Normal
Day	1 day(artificial)
Year	1 yr

Type

Space Station

Location under

Pact Worlds System

Included Locations

• The Arms

Owning Organization

Pact Worlds Government