The Arms

Visitors to Absalom Station disembark along one of the station’s protruding Arms, which house dozens of different docks and bays ranging from force-walled, atmosphere-filled hangars ships can fly directly into to more conventional airless bays or, for larger ships, docking tubes and mooring clamps. Docks are assigned by Absalom Traffic Control, yet this is more than just a question of space, as different docks all have different characteristics. A ship full of gilled kalo, for instance, would likely prefer to dock near the flooded chambers of the Puddles, while most well-off merchant captains would rather fly into the sun than pay Little Akiton’s unofficial “docking fees” or watch their cargo walk away on its notoriously crime-ridden docks.

The Arms consist of more than just docks, however. Like those in spaceports anywhere, the corridors leading to the station’s center are lined with everything a spacer coming stationside might need, from entertainment and lodging to bustling markets and shops. Many traders coming to the station never bother to leave the Arms, and the residential areas that have sprung up to support these services are also the most likely to contain facilities or whole neighborhoods for creatures that find the station’s humanocentric living conditions unpleasant. Government-run quarantine centers left over from the Stardust Plague still operate here, now used by customs agents to screen travelers of unfamiliar species.

Districts

• Fogtown: This neighborhood takes its name from its thick, multicolored atmosphere tailored to natives of the gas giant worlds Bretheda and Liavara. Nevertheless, other species visit frequently, making use of communal breathing masks in the airlocks in order to interact with representatives from the various Brethedan biotech companies or negotiate for gas- mining or research rights on Liavara.
• Puddles: Catering to water-breathing creatures, this neighborhood is a mazelike system of tanks and flooded hallways, with glass-walled tubes running throughout to accommodate air-breathing guests. Despite the inconvenience, many “huffers” (as Puddles residents sometimes derogatorily refer to air breathers) find that Puddles restaurants provide an exotic but delicious dining experience. Local company Qualdeep Ltd. makes some of the best environmental suits around, as well as weapons augmented for aquatic use.
• Vesk Quarter: While most ethnic enclaves on Absalom Station are simply the result of like attracting like, this one was deliberately established in the first days following the end of the war with the Veskarium in an attempt to reduce violence and tension on both sides. Today, vesk can be found throughout Absalom Station, living and working like any other race, yet they still retain their highest concentration in the drab, barracks-like buildings of the Vesk Quarter.

Points of interest

• Click-Clack Club: Named for the trademark sounds of its mechanical clientele, this bar and VR parlor caters specifically to mechanical creatures such as anacites, androids, and cybernetically enhanced folks sympathetic to the Augmented cause. Sometimes called “C3” for short, the club is run by the dragonkin, Tsalu, and his ryphorian bond partner, Barnaba, both heavily augmented themselves. Though the two are notorious for running less-than-legal betting on their array of VR games, they’re quick to take augmented folks and anyone they see as social outcasts under their wings, and those who can best Barnaba in a game of Drift Racer or Infiltration X can win lucrative business contracts or favors from the club owners and their eccentric regulars.
• Cosmonastery of the Empty Orbit: The alien architecture of this sprawling complex weaves like a banyan tree around a central courtyard with only a thin force field protecting it from the vacuum of space. Within its squat towers, High Sola Tabishad Oseo Markola runs the greatest solarian training facility outside of the Idari or Kasath itself. A taciturn woman, Tabishad is consumed by the idea that both Golarion’s disappearance and planet-scale engineering projects fundamentally disrupt the balance of the universe. Those who successfully graduate from her grueling program sometimes join her Order of the Empty Orbit, dedicated to preventing such deliberate reengineering of the cosmos.
• Eyeswide Agency: Purveyors of “holistic investigation services,” the Eyeswide Agency is a private detective firm that operates in a moral and legal gray area, combining psychic mind-reading abilities with more conventional investigative practices. Eyeswide agents, often derisively called “headscanners,” hire themselves out for corporate espionage, missing-persons cases, unsolved crimes, and whatever else clients might require from a streetwise, rough-and-tumble psychic. While many citizens remain skeptical, the Eyeswide Agency claims to operate within the bounds of the law (if just barely), and its utility to law enforcement and politicians in both official and unofficial capacities keeps anyone from digging too hard into supposed violations.
• Fardock: At the tip of Kavalasa’s Arm, in otherwise prime docking space, stands a quiet enigma. Standing 20 feet tall, this stone archway twists like a Möbius strip and is always slightly out of focus, its surface occasionally manifesting alien runes that crest and disappear like surfacing dolphins. Inside the archway is a plane of flat green light. To either side of the mysterious portal stand the massive Farguards—two seemingly robotic stone automatons that are vaguely humanoid but with features of an alien lion and serpent, respectively. Able to generate powerful lances of the same green energy that the archway produces, these guards immediately attack anyone who comes within 40 feet of the archway. Yet, even those daredevils who’ve managed to make it past the Farguards and into the plane of green find it turning an angry purple—a glow matched by the revealed runes—before being blasted backward as streamers of bloody meat. Where the Fardock leads to, what might have emerged from it in secret, or if indeed it’s even a portal at all remains up for debate, with competing theories claiming it gives access to the chamber of the Starstone, distant empires, or Golarion itself. Research on the portal is limited by station security posted around the area in order to repulse any potential invasion and save on janitorial fees.

Type

District

Location under

Absalom Station