The Ring

Made up of corridors and spires between the protruding docks of the Arms and the cosmopolitan Eye, the Ring is the most residential, middle-class section of Absalom Station, yet it also contains campuses for corporations and other organizations that don’t need the traffic of the Arms or the prestige of the Eye.

Districts

Congregation

While churches and shrines to various gods can be found throughout the station, this vertical, wedge-shaped district is an easy go-to for faithful fresh off the docks, containing temples to most of the Pact Worlds’ major deities and many of its smaller ones. Smaller shrines are funded in part by the district’s linchpin: the Gathering of Vessels, a legendary academy and research center for mystics of all sorts, where both the pious and the agnostic can work together to master the strange forces they channel.

Drifter’s End

Surrounding the Lorespire Complex, this district earns its name by catering to alien ambassadors from newly discovered worlds, explorers, long-haul cargo crews, and spacefaring vagabonds of all sorts. Housing is cheap and temporary, bars are noisy and full of stories, and patrons looking to hire experienced scouts and first-contact specialists clog notorious “Drifter” hangouts such as the Hard Burn, Kristoff’s, and the Last Good Run.

Freemarkets

AbadarCorp has a responsibility to make money for its shareholders, yet it also has a holy duty to foster competition and create robust markets. One of the ways it squares this circle on Absalom Station is by sponsoring the Freemarkets, a riotous bazaar of entrepreneurs selling wares out of cooperative storefronts, temporary stalls, and vehicles. While station security and AbadarCorp’s priests attempt to police the area and make sure business stays relatively legal, the Freemarkets are a great place to buy and sell nearly anything, from used adventuring gear and alien artifacts to custom code, magic items, and refurbished robots.

Olensa

Though this small neighborhood has always had a high concentration of humans, in recent years, disgruntled human supremacists have succeeded in forcing out nearly all non-human residents and merchants through a calculated campaign of social and economic pressure. In addition to creating a racial enclave, this concentrated population grants Strong Absalom an official voice in station government through its election of the group’s public face, a young firebrand named Silek Odegard, as the neighborhood syndic.

Points of interest

Bluerise Tower

The Absalom Station government is decidedly laissez-faire toward the businesses operating on the station, yet even this minimal oversight is too much for some corporations. In Bluerise Tower, various corporations have arranged for nearly complete sovereignty over the tower levels they own, with even the Stewards having a difficult time obtaining permission to enter. Exactly why these corporations require so much privacy is anyone’s guess, but official inquiries have always shown tower residents to be living in a self-described anarcho-capitalist utopia. If any tenants disagree, their complaints have never made it past their employers’ private security.

Golden Vault

Any good business knows to avoid putting all its eggs in one basket, and AbadarCorp is no different, having as many regional offices as there are civilized worlds to support them. Yet, the Golden Vault on Absalom Station is the corporation’s head office and the church’s greatest holy site in the Pact Worlds, its golden logo blazing 10 stories tall from the side of the building. Inside the cathedral-bank, congregants worship or attend free financial-literacy courses, while secular customers negotiate with representatives for loans, product placement in AbadarCorp stores, or the blessing and witnessing of contracts. Since the notoriously impregnable safes and servers of the Golden Vault hold the wealth of entire nations, the organization regularly hires security experts to test their defenses. A recent increase in hiring has some on the street suggesting that someone might finally have breached the network and gotten away with a fortune.

Lorespire Complex

This cluster of buildings with its eponymous central spire is home to the Starfinder Society. While most people immediately think of the campus’s famous Archives, with its massive collection of texts and artifacts gathered from across the galaxy and studied in communal labs, the Starfinder headquarters is also home to the offices of the organization’s venture-captains, who help agents with funding and logistics for their exploration and research. The Lorespire Complex also houses the Hall of Discovery, where the elected Forum members and First Seeker Luwazi Elsebo (NG female human envoy) meet to steer the organization, and the vast, heavily secured machinery containing Guidance, the collective consciousness of previous Starfinder leaders.

Security Resources Pavilion

While most large private-security contractors maintain their own offices on Absalom Station, the SecRes Pavilion is a one-stop shop where those in need of quick muscle can come to have representatives from various crews bid on jobs or to interview prospective contractors for specific needs. The Pavilion is particularly useful for freelance soldiers, as anyone with a few credits and no active warrants can hang out her shingle and compete for contracts, giving rise to its slang name of “the Merc Lurk.” It’s also an excellent place to gain the attention of a more established mercenary group—for better or worse—as respected organizations like Redscale Security, the Sisterhood of Iron, and Starshield Limited all keep an eye on newcomers to the Pavilion.

Location under

Absalom Station