Absalom Station

Floating in the orbit formerly occupied by Golarion, Absalom Station is the primary home of humanity and the undisputed center of both interstellar trade and governance among The Pact Worlds. From here, the Pact Council and its legion of delegates from all recognized Pact Worlds control the fragile alliance keeping harmony in the system, while also regulating property claims on newly discovered worlds. Here as well are the headquarters of the interplanetary law-enforcement officers called The Stewards, AbadarCorp's home offices (at least on The Material Plane), the Archives of the galaxy-exploring Starfinders, and more. Yet the most important feature of the space station is not its grand and mysterious architecture, nor its myriad residents, but the strange artifact locked deep within the station’s heavily guarded core: the fabled Starstone. For reasons unknown even to priests of Triune, the Starstone not only powers the station but acts as an immensely powerful hyperspace beacon, allowing ships to jump quickly to the space around it no matter the distance and making Absalom Station a natural relay point for voyages returning from beyond the solar system.
No one knows who built the vast space platform or when it entered Golarion’s orbit, though the name hearkens back to that world’s pre-Gap history. Artificial gravity creates a consistent “down” in most of the station’s radial arms and soaring towers, and aside from individual neighborhoods retrofitted to accommodate the environmental needs of resident aliens, most of the station seems designed to cater to human comfort. Otherwise, neighboring districts often have shockingly different cultures and living conditions, from Sparks’ hardscrabble engineering bays and the flooded tank-warrens of Puddles to the rowdy spacer bars of Drifter’s End and the elegant, self-contained corporate enclaves in Bluerise Tower. As a general rule, money and power flow inward from the numerous bustling docks toward the great parklike dome known as the Eye, while the downtrodden masses sink down into the machine cramped access warrens of the Spike. Gangs rule lower-class neighborhoods such as Botscrap, Downlow, and Pipetown, yet their tentative alliances filter all the way into the upper reaches of government via the station’s Syndicsguild, the legislative body that gives each neighborhood a voice in station policy and elects the station’s ruling Prime Executive (or Primex).
In addition to the platform itself, Absalom Station is surrounded by a constantly changing swarm of undocked ships, both transient and resident. These latter are somewhat mockingly called the Armada, yet most are not military—the station has only a modest security fleet, depending instead on the Stewards and robust station-mounted defenses for its safety. Rather, the Armada is comprised of those starships whose owners seek the benefits of living near Absalom Station while remaining unbound by all but the most basic station laws. Absalom Station’s generally permissive government allows this, since the volume of trade pouring through its corridors means even the lowest taxes suffice to keep the station flush.
This is not to say the station runs in perfect harmony. With so many different interests on and around the platform, Absalom Station is never more than one slip away from chaos. Private security contractors wage shadow wars with street gangs and militant cults, alien ambassadors negotiate tense trade agreements, and explorers blast each other over claims on newly discovered worlds. One of the most dangerous factions to emerge of late is the Strong Absalom movement. This group believes the Starstone belongs only to the refugee races of Golarion, in compensation for their lost world, and that other races should be either taxed exorbitantly or outright forbidden from using the station as a waypoint. While the political arm of this movement officially decries the xenophobic terrorism of its fringe elements, its increasing strength poses a grave threat to a government built upon interplanetary cooperation.
While trade, politics, and a cosmopolitan atmosphere are major draws to Absalom Station, they’re not the only ones. The Arcanamirium trains some of the best technomancers in the solar system, while the station’s famed Cosmonastery of the Empty Orbit teaches the solarian’s path. Religious organizations seek converts, the Eyeswide Agency hires out psychic investigators, the Starfinder Society launches expeditions into the unknown, and more. This endless bustle marks Absalom Station as a land of opportunity—a chance for people of all sorts to make a fresh start.

Demographics

Absalom Station is a melting pot. Though many see the station as the hereditary home of all Golarion’s races, particularly of humanity, today its corridors are choked with natives of many planets, and its status as the primary waypoint in and out of the Pact Worlds means even the rarest spacefaring species can sometimes be found in its docks.
For all the station’s multiculturalism, however, humans are by far the most numerous. In the wake of the Gap, while elves retreated to Castrovel and dwarves constructed their massive Star Citadels, humanity clung to the station as a key piece of its cultural identity, finding comfort in its tangible—if mysterious—sense of history and continuity. Even today, many humans look to the station’s extensive records of pre-Gap Golarion, seeking a source of pride and a sense of significance, adopting the names of bygone ethnic groups whose DNA they don’t necessarily share, practicing ancient religions, or attempting to revive archaic organizations from scraps of information. Such traditionalists are often at odds with those called Second Age philosophers, who believe the Gap gave human culture a chance to start afresh and build a utopia. Of course, the majority of humans are far more concerned with their own families and livelihoods than metaphysical questions about culture. Still, humans being what they are, most of those on Absalom Station view the station as inherently theirs, with vague exceptions made for other races once native to Golarion, and treat all others as encroaching immigrants or foreign nationals. This naturally raises some hackles with the other common species on the station, many of which have been residents for just as long (as far as anyone can tell). Of late, one of the biggest conflicts on the station has been the rise of the Strong Absalom movement, a group that believes the Starstone belongs solely to the refugee races of Golarion and that aliens should be either forbidden from using it as a waypoint or else taxed exorbitantly. This is further complicated by the group’s tendency toward humanocentrism. While the political arm of the Strong Absalom movement officially decries the xenophobic terrorism of its fringe elements, its growing strength poses a grave threat to a government built on interplanetary cooperation.
Even more than race, economic class divides Absalom Station’s citizens. Taxes on trade keep even the poorest on the station fed—if only with unappetizing nutrient paste and protein bricks—yet the people living in the posh corporate towers of the Eye have little in common with the impoverished wretches of the Spike. Money both democratizes and oppresses station residents: those who manage to build a fortune, legally or otherwise, tend to find the upper classes welcoming them with open arms, yet true wealth tends to remain concentrated in the hands of the elites who make the rules. Fortunately, the generally egalitarian government, organizations such as the Starfinder Society and Stewards, and the constant flow of merchants and mercenaries through the station offer even the lowliest Botscrap street rat a chance at social advancement.
On the other hand, religion helps unify the station’s disparate peoples and hold its political apparatus together. Several major churches—most notably those of Abadar and Iomedae—have their headquarters here, but shrines and temples of countless gods can be found throughout the station, and most congregations are decidedly diverse. Nearly as influential are the various powerful gangs and families who look out for their members, from the rough-and-tumble Threepiece Girls of Sparks, with their infamous custom drones, to the Fleurasik family of Kemanis, which knows every politician’s secrets.

Government

As an independent Pact World, Absalom Station is ruled by the Prime Executive, a term-limited position with theoretically absolute authority over the station’s legislation and management. Colloquially known as the “Primex,” the Prime Executive is elected and advised by the Syndicsguild, a council of neighborhood representatives called syndics who do much of the real work of running the station and who, while bound by the Primex’s decrees, also have the ability to remove their leader from power at any time and call for a new election. Partitioning the station’s different neighborhoods into dozens of electoral districts over the years—many times in ways that favor one faction over others—means that, while most syndics are democratically elected, some corporate or criminal enclaves are dynasties in all but name.
The current Prime Executive, Kumara Melacruz (LG female human envoy), is only halfway through her first term, but she’s already garnered controversy for her crackdown on white-collar crime and her progressive stance on non-human immigration to the station. She’s survived one assassination attempt so far, and allegations are still flying as to whether the culprits were corporations fearing her policies, the Six Tip Gang angry over the arrest of its leader, or the nativist Strong Absalom movement.
In addition to its own government, Absalom Station also hosts the Pact Worlds’ representative body, the Pact Council, meaning that the station is constantly flooded with ambassadors and delegates from other worlds. While this is good for business and gives Absalom Station residents easy access to the movers and shakers of the Pact Worlds, it also creates tension, as these foreign nationals operate with varying degrees of diplomatic immunity. The Stewards, the Pact Worlds’ primary peacekeeping force, also maintain a headquarters on Absalom Station, and local laws allow corporations to employ private security in their holdings, so citizens sometimes find Absalom Station’s legal system a jurisdictional nightmare, while savvy criminals often manage to slip through the cracks. Those in the know often warn that the station is never more than one misstep away from chaos, as security contractors and militant zealots wage shadow wars with street gangs and each other, alien ambassadors negotiate world-shaking trade deals, and explorers go to any lengths to beat rivals’ claims to new planets. Still, station security does the best it can, and most denizens of Absalom Station live and work in relative safety—at least in the nicer neighborhoods.
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 such that even minimal taxes and tariffs are sufficient to 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, 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.

History

Absalom Station is the metaphorical center of the Pact Worlds—the hub around which all things revolve. It was here that the Pact Worlds as a formal entity were created, via the eponymous Absalom Pact, and it remains the system’s heart culturally, economically, and governmentally. All sentient species, from the familiar to the most alien, are welcome in its streets, and 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 spread out across the galaxy.
Due to the Gap, no one knows who built Absalom Station or why—whether it was created as a run-of-the-mill space platform, a lifeboat during some frantic exodus from doomed Golarion, or something else entirely. Its thoroughly mechanical nature and walls of ceramic, metal, and plastic lead most scholars to assume it was built by ordinary mortals, while its population of historically Golarion-based species, as well as its position in the precise orbit vacated by Golarion, suggests that Golarion natives were responsible for the vast undertaking. What’s more, records show that when the Gap ended, the station seemed lived in and worn, implying that the residents had already been there for quite some time. Even today, the mysteries surrounding the station’s origin and its ties to Golarion’s disappearance make it a natural draw for Gap researchers, who constantly strive to infer bits of objective truth from the shifting morass of the station’s past.
After the Gap, Absalom Station’s inhabitants found themselves even more adrift than most cultures, with no home world and no trustworthy records of their social ties or governance. Anarchy reigned; gangs based on racial or religious identities looted and fought in the streets, and systems broke down as people abandoned their posts. Only when a runaway malfunction nearly resulted in the venting of the entire station’s atmosphere did people recognize their precarious position and begin to pull together, with the heads of the various gangs forming the first Syndicsguild and electing the first Prime Executive, Loqua Tem.
With the advent of Drift travel, the residents of Absalom Station were surprised to find it transformed from a backwater raft of “homeless” races—most notably humanity—into the most powerful and prosperous port in the Pact Worlds. Early post-Gap engineers attempting to understand the station’s workings had known for several years that the station’s power core was no mere reactor but rather a powerful magical artifact called the Starstone, believed to be the same object that had lain at the heart of the station’s namesake city on Golarion and through whose magic Iomedae and other deities had risen to godhood. Locked away behind unbreachable defenses, it had always provided enough free energy to power the entire station, yet it came to reveal a new function: no matter where in the galaxy a ship started from, the Starstone made Drift travel to the space around Absalom Station as quick and safe as hopping between planets in a single system. Now, no matter how far explorers may roam, Absalom Station is always right next door.
The next decades were marked by harsh growing pains as Absalom Station struggled to retain its autonomy. Various other governments attempted to claim the station, most notably the Bone Sages of Eox, who launched the Magefire Assault in 7 ag only to be rebuffed by the station’s formidable defensive batteries. Having established its independence and dedicated itself to neutrality and equitable trade, Absalom Station became the natural headquarters for newly formed interplanetary organizations and eventually the seat of government for the Pact Worlds, forever giving all other planets in the system a stake in defending its sovereignty.
CONFLICTS AND THREATS Absalomians take deep pride in their political independence, but it comes at the price of fear. While some see the expansion of Pact Council power as the primary threat and others worry about corporate or military takeovers by other worlds, all realize how valuable their station is—and what a precarious situation that puts them in. Fortunately, whoever built the station seems to have had defense in mind. In times of conflict, a tremendous blast shield closes over the station’s central dome, and huge superlaser and mass driver batteries open all across the station’s surface, filling the void with a web of death while the station’s immense repositioning thrusters nudge it out of the way of danger. Though the station itself has relatively few military vessels—just enough for security to deal with problems in the Armada—this is a deliberate choice, as both the Steward fleet and the Armada are required to defend the station in times of trouble.
On a smaller scale, various gangs vie for control of tiny territories within the less-fortunate neighborhoods of Absalom Station. These scuffles occasionally turn into full-fledged firefights and can sometimes wound or kill innocent passersby. The station’s security force attempts to quickly squash these brawls when possible, but the more influential gangs have the sway and the credits to ask corrupt officials to look the other way.

Tourism

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.
The neighborhoods of the Arms include Fogtown, which takes its name from its thick, multicolored atmosphere tailored to natives of the gas giant worlds Bretheda and Liavara; Puddles, a mazelike system of tanks and flooded hallways, with glass-walled tubes running throughout to accommodate air-breathing guests; and the Vesk Quarter, which 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.

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 Tsalu (LN male Dragonkin technomancer) and his bonded partner Barnaba (CN male Ryphorian operative), 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 (LN female kasatha solarian) 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 legal and moral 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.

The Eye

Absalom Station’s massive, transparent central dome, filled with air and bathed in the light of the sun, is at the same time a civic center and the station’s most exclusive sector. The lush trees and fields of Jatembe Park are open to all citizens and constantly full of young lovers and artists enjoying their splendor under the watchful eyes of the druidic caretakers. At the same time, government buildings rub shoulders with the most expensive residences and corporate offices in the city—the sorts of places where heavily armed guards in formal armor check identification constantly and the lines between public and private security blur.
The neighborhoods of the Eye include Kemanis, which combines the enthusiastic energy of students with the money of the city’s elite to create the station’s most prominent entertainment district; Nyori Palisades, which houses only the richest Absalomians, from virtual reality stars and celebrity inventors to colony financiers and starship magnates; and Parkside, which runs along the edge of Jatembe Park and contains government buildings such as the Pact Council headquarters.

Arcanamirium

Like Absalom Station itself, the Arcanamirium takes its name from a pre-Gap institution on Golarion, though whether it maintains a direct line of continuity with that ancient school is anyone’s guess. The most prestigious magical university on the station, the Arcanamirium treats magic like the science its professors believe it to be, specializing in spellcoding and blending it with cutting-edge engineering to train some of the best technomancers in the Pact Worlds. At the same time, however, it also harbors an immense trove of ancient and alien magical artifacts in need of study, and a growing subset of magical scholars uninterested in technology—often derisively called “esotericists” by their fellow faculty—regularly provide the academy with new breakthroughs via the study of ancient magical arts.

Bastion

This imposing fortress is the headquarters of the Stewards, the Pact Worlds’ primary peacekeeping force. Within its walls, new Stewards receive training for their roles as warrior-diplomats, learning everything from personal combat and battlefield tactics to individual planetary legal codes and cultural mores, such as the proper way to honor a Shobhad chieftain on Akiton or convince a Brethedan to listen. All of the Stewards’ activities across the Pact Worlds—including training, troop movements, and officers’ actions—are overseen by the decorated veterans of the Conclave of Legates under the leadership of Director-General Lin Camulan (LG male korasha lashunta soldier), who also sits on the Pact Council’s Directorate. Though they act as the de facto military arm of the Pact Worlds, Stewards never forget that their duty is to the Pact itself rather than to individual politicians, and Bastion is built to resist a siege, should they ever have need to oppose those currently in power.

Hamisfore Theatorium

Renowned throughout the Pact Worlds, the Hamisfore Theatorium is the premiere venue for performers of all sorts on Absalom Station. It draws its unique name from the fact that the entire building can reconfigure itself, drawing back its roof and adding seats as it transforms from a traditional theater to a massive stadium. In its theater form, it hosts everything from zero-g dance troupes and laser-lit euphonics raves to the screaming theritars of the latest eyebite rock, while its stadium form fills with cheers for the local brutaris team, the Absalom Assailants, or for the best warriors in carefully regulated gladiatorial exhibitions and private security talent searches. The owner of the theatorium, Jebodah Hamisfore (N male feychild gnome envoy) is the third member of his family to own the theatorium and is constantly searching for his next great act. He’s particularly known for his love of alien art forms never before seen in the Pact Worlds, and he pays handsome “talent scout” fees to anyone who can introduce him to truly novel performances.

Plenara

A familiar sight on news feeds across the system, the stepped dome of the Plenara is the capitol building of the Pact Worlds. Inside its walls, representatives from every member world debate fiercely and publicly as part of the Pact Council, hear concerns from citizens and lobbyists, and maintain the web of alliances that binds them all together. While most issues are decided in the vast Council Chamber, particularly contentious ones are “kicked upstairs” to the Star Chamber at the dome’s highest point, where the six members of the Directorate can look out over the entirety of the Eye as they decide the fate of the Pact Worlds.

Swordlight Cathedral

This cathedral, replete with sword-themed architecture and surrounded by statues illustrating the goddess Iomedae’s 11 miraculous acts as a mortal before her ascension, rises above the immaculate white marble tiles of the Plaza Sancta Iomedaea. Inside the temple, massive stone knights raise swords to support the arched ceiling and create the feel of a true medieval cathedral, though constantly shifting holograms replace the traditional stained-glass windows. Above this impressive chamber, the building turns modern, housing high priests, visiting clergy, and a standing garrison of Iomedaean crusaders to protect the cathedral’s relics and records.

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.
The neighborhoods of the Ring include Congregation, which contains temples to most of the Pact Worlds’ major deities and many of its smaller ones; Drifter’s End, which surrounds the Lorespire Complex and earns its name by catering to alien ambassadors from newly discovered worlds, explorers, long-haul cargo crews, and spacefaring vagabonds of all sorts; Freemarkets, a riotous bazaar of entrepreneurs selling wares out of cooperative storefronts, temporary stalls, and vehicles; and Olensa, where, 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.

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 onestop 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. SecRes 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.

The Spike

The hundreds of levels extending below Absalom Station’s radial plane—often collectively referred to as “Downside”—are simultaneously its most crucial and least appreciated. Here, sandwiched between other heavy industry in the station’s gritty underbelly, the vast machines in charge of the station’s life support and defenses chug away, some only partially understood by the engineers who maintain them. The poorest classes of Absalom Station’s citizenry live here, gradually trickling down and away from the light and wealth of the upper levels to build slums in former access corridors or venture into the half-explored Ghost Levels, discovered abandoned at the end of the Gap. Monsters of all sorts hunt in the depths of the Spike, from simple criminals to bizarre creatures with no apparent reason to be on the station at all, creating whole ecosystems in the gloom. Politicians occasionally champion purging and resettling everything below the lowest official neighborhoods, but they are inevitably dissuaded by scholars and experts in both science and magic who posit that the Ghost Levels and their bizarre ecosystems may contain keys to the station’s function or destiny—not to mention mysterious treasures that expeditions into the unmapped levels occasionally bring back.
The neighborhoods of the Spike include Botscrap, home to private junkyards filled with complex robotics, suspiciously functional and restricted military “trash,” and gangs of goblin squatters; Conduit, commonly called Pipetown, is a dense, seemingly endless forest of pipes that sometimes create a three-dimensional labyrinth with settlements in their clearings; Downlow, the largest, safest, and most cosmopolitan of the Spike districts, though routinely disparaged by the wealthier residents of the Eye; and Sparks, a warren of engineering bays ranging from cramped, one-person custom-tech shops to titanic dry docks for starship manufacturing and repair.

Diamond Defense and Surplus

Absalom Station has any number of places for mercenaries and private citizens to purchase weapons and armor, from tent stalls in the Freemarkets to high-end emporiums in the Eye. Those with more particular needs, however, frequent this dingy shop off a dirty, neon-signed alley. Always covered in her beloved knives, Lhana “Diamond” Nokoriso (N female ysoki operative) has a surprisingly large selection up front, but those who earn her trust can enter the basement: a warehouse-sized space filled with black-market, military-grade munitions of astonishing value, many magical and all completely untraceable. Via her connections as a member of the Golden League, Diamond is legendary in criminal circles for being able to get anyone anything they need, for the right price, as well as for being a notorious font of underworld information, so long as it doesn’t jeopardize her deals. She’s also extremely fond of brokering favors, and those able to accommodate her feisty personality and complete her “little jobs” can earn discounts and introductions to the station’s criminal elite.

Rig House

This tumbledown establishment is so large that no one’s sure just how many rooms it has—and that’s exactly how its proprietors like it. Run by the Lowrigger gang, the infamous Rig House is simultaneously an eccentric flophouse, avantgarde performance venue, elite nightclub, community center, and makeshift government building for the Spike. As neutral territory, it hosts meetings of the rich and powerful from all over the station and beyond, and it is a well-known place for adventurous starship crews to pick up new jobs and patrons, as long as they know how to keep their mouths shut. Rumor has it that the Lowriggers have, interspersed among the public chambers, a whole set of secret rooms called the Backstairs, where those who’ve earned their respect can train, view privileged information, hide from the law, or access smuggling tunnels running throughout the station.

Starstone Reactor

Deep in the heart of the Spike lies the Starstone Reactor, which powers the entire station. Given the incalculable value of the Starstone within, Absalom Station’s elite Starstone Defenders keep the chambers surrounding the reactor under intense guard at all times, and only engineers with the highest security clearance are allowed access to the systems that transfer the artifact’s energy to the rest of the station. These safeguards hide another fact: no one can actually reach the Starstone directly. The Starstone itself is housed in a small chamber floating in the center of a large, mostly empty space called the Core, connected only by power conduits and four narrow bridges to the outer chambers where the engineering staff work. While heavy blast doors lead out onto these bridges, the codes locking them were apparently lost during the Gap, and attempts to tamper with them or gain access to the Core from another direction activate overwhelmingly deadly magical defenses and cause a station-wide brownout. Still, foolhardy people occasionally try, as legend holds that those who manage to touch the Starstone and are found worthy can ascend to godhood, as Iomedae once did. This only compounds the need for the Starstone Defenders, though engineers peering through the observation windows report strange phantoms—some of them humanoid and dressed in modern station clothing styles—flickering in and out of existence inside the Core, leading some to wonder whether the Starstone has guardians of its own.

The Armada

Absalom Station’s unofficial fifth sector isn’t actually on the station at all—it’s the so-called Armada, a vast and shifting swarm of ships, both transient and permanent, that constantly orbits the station. By spurning the station’s docks but still remaining nearby, the crews of the Armada’s ships can gain many of the benefits of living on Absalom Station without being subject to more than the most basic laws and taxes. Ships constantly raft together to make black-market deals, and some of these conglomerations have become permanent, forming tiny space stations in their own right. Still, the majority of Armadans are simply independent ship crews who feel safer keeping to themselves or aren’t interested in paying recurring docking fees. The government of Absalom Station is content to let ships remain in the Armada indefinitely so long as their crews don’t cause trouble, as they appreciate the convenience and safety of having some of their less savory elements separated from innocent citizens by a mile of hard vacuum.

King Curney’s Kasbah

A combination casino, drug den, and brothel, King Curney’s Kasbah consists of an ungainly amalgamation of several large freighters and assorted smaller ships permanently welded together, their engines only barely able to keep them in orbit around the station. Legend has it that each of the myriad ships in Curney’s collection was repossessed from clients who failed to repay their loans and that even now their severed heads remain in Curney’s private chambers, kept alive and conscious by elaborate alien technology. Despite being singularly ugly in both body and soul, King Curney (NE male dwarf envoy/operative) nevertheless maintains the most popular recreational facilities for the Armada’s less savory residents. Even Absalom Station’s most powerful government and corporate officials have been known to organize illicit deals at the surveillance-shielded tables of his cantina, lose fortunes gambling in his “scrupulously fair” orbits games, or narrowly avoid interplanetary scandal in the synthetic flesh walls of his Pleasure Pits.

Simar Communion

The human women of the Simar Communion rarely allow outsiders beyond the reception area of their floating commune—and it’s easy to tell who’s an outsider, for every member of the Communion is technically the same person. For the last hundred years, this station has been home to an unknown number of identical clones, who span a full range of ages from infant to elderly. While the technology to create an adult clone is both restricted and incredibly expensive on most Pact Worlds, members of the Communion get around this by simply raising their clone-sisters from “birth,” training them in the art of being Simar. Though they’re often sought for their knowledge of human genetics, implant-free biohacking, and psychic magic, it’s also an open secret that the Communion’s intense training regimen and near-religious dedication to self-control make them impressive operatives and assassins. As the old Armadan adage goes, when a Simar leaves her home, someone is about to have a very bad day.

Valor’s Heart

A more or less permanent fixture in the Armada, this carrier serves as a training vessel where the church of Iomedae trains novice priests in the arts of holy combat. Valor’s Heart is no mere school, however; it remains a fully operational warship that has added its might to the defense of Absalom Station on more than one occasion.

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. 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 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. While additions and renovations to both the freestanding buildings and the three-dimensional warren of chambers and corridors are common, actually expanding the station itself 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.

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, 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.
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.

ABSALOM STATION NG space station Population 2,130,000 (46% Human, 9% Android, 9% Ysoki, 7% Lashunta, 5% Shirren, 4% Dwarf, 4% Halfling, 4% Kasatha, 3% Vesk, 2% Gnome, 1% Nuar, 6% other) Government council (Syndicsguild led by Prime Executive Kumara Melacruz) Qualities academic, cultured, financial center, technologically average Maximum Item Level 20th NOTABLE LOCATIONS Absalom Station is divided into several sectors, each the size of a small city replete with wide arrays of distinct neighborhoods.

Alternative Name(s)

The Nexus

Type

Orbital, Station

Included Locations

• The Cosmonastery of the Empty Orbit