Embassy Ark

Location	Circinus Stream / Elpis System / Third Orbit (Aistanar L3 point)
Population	1.300.000
Capital	Sector Zero
Ownership	Embassy Committee

Embassy Ark - the millenia-old great Yoni worldship that ferried us over from the doomed Globula and dismantled itself to provide us with all of our early needs. Look at the Ark now. Well-to-do traders and residents inhabit the central tower whilst the Ark's underclass struggle to survive on the impoverished Ring-Below.

The Embassy Ark is a major, sovereign space station - the remnants of the celestial Yoni Ark that brought the first settlers to Tau Elpis . The station went through several stages, being mostly abandonned after the Great Jump , before recovering some thirty cycles ago. Nowadays, Embassy boasts a growing cosmopolitan society, and has become a place for commerce and diplomacy across the Tau Elpis system. The current leader of the Embassy Committee is Zaalan trader Zhovia Kharasa.

Embassy is built around its central Gilded Tower, connected by four pillars to the Ark's Stanford torus, the Ring-Below. Gravity is generated through Thaumium drives in the tower, but is provided via centrifugal force on the Ring-Below.

Layout

Sector Zero (the Tower)

Sector Zero is Embassy Ark's gilded crown. It is an upmarket part of the station, famous for its neon facades, glass arcologies, and its vibrant lifestyle. It is as close to a "downtown" as it gets, and most major corporations have at least regional HQs here. Gravcars tend to stay parked on the outside of the tower; instead, a series of spiralling public lifts carry people up and down the tower.

F100 : Embassy Plaza

At the top of the tower, Embassy Plaza stands proud. Holographic fish hover playfully above the MetroLift exit. A map of Tau Elpis is built into the marble of the plaza itself, which is adorned with trees and columns. The plaza is topped with a dome that filters light trough. The plaza leads to several subtowers built on the side of the superstructure and carrying upwards. One will find Infinity Hotel, Starlyft House, Control Tower, and Government House here.

F95 : Whitespire

The upper levels of the Tower, collectively called Whitespire, are mostly office or diplomatic levels. There, every MetroLift exit gives onto a golden or crystalline plaza, typically adorned with fountains and holographic trees before giving way to some corporation headquarter or embassy. Many news outlets and finance companies maintain their headquarters here to try and stay independent from government control. In a bid to avoid Whitespire being too empty during off hours, several floors are reserved for businesses, nightclubs, and entertainment facilities. There is a temple of the Aeonic Way here, built around a former workshop space alledgedly used by one of the Way's deities.

F50 : Highcross

Floor 50, more commonly known as Highcross Hub, is the station's major transit hub. MetroLift connects to four radial gravtram lines which collect passengers from the Rings-Below. The transit hub is built out of fine marble and its walls are gilded and adorned with various shops and eateries. The transit zone flows into the Galleria, where several high-end restaurants are located. In recent years, security checkpoints have appeared here, ensuring that workers from the Rings-Below are properly processed when working in the Tower itself. Ark Security maintains its headquarters here.

Highcross is supported by logistics levels where hidden freight lifts distribute and collect goods and waste from across the Tower. The Exiles' Sanctuary, a controversial low-income estate, was built here in the 129th Cycle using derelict parts of the logistics levels.

F13 : Hanging Gardens

The floors below Floor 50 tend to be residential in nature. Floors 13 to 48 unfold into a vertical sanctuary known as the Hanging Gardens. This carefully curated park area forms the green heart of the Tower, almost like a world turned inward, where light filters in from slits in the tower's superstructure. The MetroLift passes through the centre of this park, cascading alongside waterfalls and through foliage. There is a carefully maintained ecosystem here, with a population of birds and insects. Apartment towers are built into the superstructure, giving onto several of the floors. Floor 13 is home to Speaker's Park, an important area for festivities and protests. Several crystals kept from lost Mewei worlds hang in this area of the station and simulate some kind of day-night cycle. This is a wealthy district, and crime is relatively rare.

F1 : Arkblazer Order HQ

At the bottom of the tower, above the various engineering facilities providing gravity and axis control to the station, the Arkblazer Order maintains its headquarters. Floor 1 is designed as a hub to various subtowers jutting out of the Gilded Tower's superstructure. This area of the tower is heavily guarded.

The Pillars

The Pillars are the four structures which connect the central tower structure to the Ring. Built out of highly advanced alloys, they can withstand immense pressure and dominate the skyline of the Ring structure below. The Pillars each house a Fusion Reactor; all four reactors provide enough power to fuel the entirety of Embassy Station as well as any passing ships.

Each Pillar allows gravtrams to connect the Ring to the Tower. Typically, gravtrams will start at Highcross before running express services along the Ring. Where the Pillars connect to the Ring, one can find the largest shipyards and starports.

The Ring-Below

The Ring (also called the Ring-Below, the Torus, the Undercity or the Slums) is the vast, slowly spinning habitat of Embassy Ark. It is separated in four sectors by the Pillars that link the Ring to the Tower. During the Great Jump, the Ring was the main dwelling space as the Tower was filled with Programmable Matter, but nowadays the Ring is very much the suburban outer core of Embassy Ark. High walls line the torus, each side layered and carved into various habitats and facilities, though many of these continue to stay abandonned even as people return to the Ark. There are many bridges across the span of the ring, and a giant river flows at its bottom.

On both sides of the Ring, two gravtram lines provide ring transit as well as access to the Tower. Express gravtrams, only stopping at major stops, lead directly to the Tower, and it is possible to change to local gravtrams which run the length of the Ring.

Sector One is a middle-income Boshaari district called Asa Serin. It is a walled town surrounded by hydroponics facilities, featuring apartment buildings, shrines, and several factories. Much of this sector is agricultural, and helps feed the rest of the station. There is junk and rubble left over from the Great Jump, yet unclaimed by the locals.

Sector Two is a low-income area, where many of the Tower's poorer workers live. A town called Abydos sprawls the length of Sector Two. ArkSec does not patrol this area very much, but its multicultural community is very tight-knit, and a lot of the crime is solved by prominent community members. There are a few transversal avenues here, the most famous of which is Goldsun Strip.

Sector Three is home to various waste reclaim facilities, water plants, and factories, and the outer edge of this sector is also home to several smaller shipyards. Few people live here but the most desperate. Ice Cold Synergy maintains an ice asteroid processing facility here.

Sector Four is a middle-income community called Mora Lei. A mix of Boshaari and Mewei maintains this area, and this area is a blend of housing and agricultural facilities.

Culture & Economy

Embassy Ark is not merely a station - it is a symbol of continued survival and unity, despite the fractured political landscape of Tau Elpis. It is a city of survivors, but also a mix of fortunes and heritage, where the poor and the ultrarich live almost shoulder to shoulder. No single culture dominates here, and Embassy's culture stands unique as a result, though defined by a fierce independance from traditional colonial governments. The Zaalan diaspora has made a home for itself on the Ring, where it finds more success than elsewhere in the System.

Embassy culture is often far more progressive than anywhere else in the system. A core theme of Embassy identity is the right to self-creation and expression, often at odds with the most conservative societies ruled by the Mewei Domain or the Boshaari Council. Embassy Station reports more cybernetics use than anywhere else in settled Elpis, and often attracts the youth from nearby Aistanar.

Life on the station is vibrant, as one might expect from one million people crammed together in the system's largest orbital melting pot. Visitors often report being overwhelmed as music - from buskers and concert halls to festivals and even the jingles played at each Metro stop - is an important part of self-expression on the station. Street stalls filled with Zaalan dumblings or Mewei shortcakes can be found at every major intersection, and signs are typically at least trilingual. The zoning laws are poorly enforced, and thus labs and small factories are interspersed with residential or community blocks. The architecture of the station's various streets takes from whoever first erected their buildings, and can be wildly inconsistent, though most structures are clearly modular, almost puzzle-like in nature. Embassy is often described as a true "Elpisian culture"; it is not uncommon to see Boshaari incense and tapestries at the foot of clearly Mewei science towers, fronted by plaza with Hiderid statues of honoured ancestors.

The Tower is more subdued than the Ring, and aims to project quiet luxury to the rest of the system. Whitespire is a hub of fashion and design, and its glassy, crystalline architectural style has inspired many colonial projects in the past thirty cycles. If the Ring is full of Zaalans, the Tower is home to the wealthiest Hiderid (and it explains how Tower food, made for the Hiderid who live there, is quite different from Ringside food!). A few visitors might point out that the power dynamics that have played out between both species since before the Great Jump continue to perdure here - whilst Zaalans are overall more successful on Embassy, most remain lower-income citizens, and wealth inequality continues to widen.

Defences

The Embassy Ark has several layers of defense. It boasts its own Embassy Fleet, officially a small peacekeeping force which also acts to support ringside and towerside police (ArcSek). The Citadel also uses point-turrets to ward off smaller ships. ArkSek are a commissionned public security organization that are effectively the eyes and ears of the Committee, and handle law and order on the Tower as well as - to a lesser extent - ringside. ArkSek boasts a culture of public service, but they also enforce much of the Committee's harsher laws in the interests of the public and station self-preservation. ArkSek also handles monster infestations ringside.

Trade Table

Embassy Ark (-2 Cultural, -1 Military, +1 Luxury, +2 Arcane) (Base Friction : 2)

Trade Good	Types	Cost / Unit
Clothing	Common, Cultural	1,000
Colonial Survival Supplies	Survival, Postech	5,000
Drugs, Recreational	Luxury, Biotech, Compact	50,000
Exotic Jewels	Rare, Mineral, Luxury, Compact	25,000
Parts (Advanced)	Tool	75,000
Parts (Starship)	Arcane, Tool, Rare	25,000
Programmable Matter	Low Tech, Tool	100,000
Small Arms, Energy	Military	10,000
Small Arms, Projectile	Military, Low Tech	5,000
Fine Liquor	Luxury, Low Tech, Compact	10,000

Type

Orbital, Station