The Core - Coriolis Station

The Ring is very obviously a place mainly for commerce, but the Core houses both several important administrative functions and a rich life of culture and entertainment. The Core is also open and airy in comparison to the tight, crowded spaces of the rest of the station. The Core Plaza is located in the heart of the station, open all the way up to the lower levels of the Spire.
THE CORE PLAZA The Core Plaza lies at the very center of Coriolis. It is dominated by a large building that contains many of the station’s adminis-trative functions and a series of vertilanes and grav shafts that connect the Core to the Spire. The smaller businesses on the Core Plaza are cantinas, taverns, cafés, and courtesan houses, and the clientele is mainly bureaucrats and merchants. What empty space there is on the plaza is not covered with market stalls as in the other plazas, but kept clear for the slow-moving clutter of bodies on their way to or from work. There are many tailors and haberdasheries in the streets around the plaza. This is where to go for the latest fashion, even for members of the upper classes in the Spire, although the very rich deal only with the tailors that do house calls. The most famous haberdasheries here are Fermahat & Sons, Yisimi’s fabrics, and the Pasha’s Flying Palace, which is the most expensive of them all, offering house calls at an extra fee. Many courier agencies also have their offices by the Core Plaza; both the Bulletin’s own Ermes and private firms like Kifri’s Courier Bureau can be found here.
MULUKHAD Coriolis’ entertainment district is called the Mulukhad – a pot-pourri of shady alleys and old buildings housing restaurants, cantinas, bars, and gambling dens. The Mulukhad has every-thing a thrill seeking resident or visitor could possibly desire. Gambling is clearly the dominant vice, taking place in bars, gambling dens, and in the big Stadium located just next to the district. Restaurants that stand out are the Al-Qadr with its all-red interior and the Mudejar, a classier establishment for refined – and expensive – excitement.
THE AMPHITHEATER The artists on Coriolis who don’t live and work in the Ring can be found in the district around the Amphitheater. The open, bowl-shaped theater is based on a Dabaran original and is partly made from yellow Algolan sandstone. Both modern art forms such as holo art, modulator sculptures, and proxy music and eternal classics such as dance, theater, mime, storytelling, and classical music are performed on the stage of the Amphi. The diva Chemara Kour is the artistic director and makes sure the ticket prices are kept reasonable. There are private boxes available for those with some extra birr to spend. The largest events are usually concerts with famous performers like Sani Sowal, The Lotus Flutes, or the dance troop Feather Steps.
THE LITTLE HORIZON The Little Horizon blocks are located along one of the Core’s outer walls and are home to all new arrivals on the station, from all corners of the Horizon. The street vendors here offer exotic delicacies such as candied hysia bugs, moon fruit, or salted florineys. The architecture is also varied and foreign with Algolan pagodas and round nomad huts crammed in between angular Sadaalian houses and Miran balconies. The Little Horizon is home to the smuggling organization the Serpent, and the Syndicate gangs now and then attempt to claim the area, which often results in street fighting.
THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE CORIOLIS GUARD AND THE JUDICATORS The headquarters of the Coriolis Guard is located in a pillar that is the center beam of the frame of the station. This is not the only office of the Guard, but it is the largest, with its administration, garages, grav elevators that run through the whole Core, and their arsenal of a few light police vehicles. The offices of the Judicators are also located here, behind thick armor-plated walls and equipped with security gates since the gang war of CC 59. The front of the judicators’ section of the building is more imposing than that of the Guard’s, in polished marble rather than scratched hyper plastic.
THE BULLETIN COMPLEX A brand new complex close to the outer wall of the Core serves as headquarters for the Bulletin. The beautiful facade of the building is in old Miran bas-reliefs depicting famous reporters, courier vessels and the faction’s spherical portal probes, easy to recognize by their four antennas. The com-plex contains several broadcast studios, newsrooms, offices, make-up rooms, holo effect chambers, and everything else necessary for the making of a Bulletin show. The wing facing the Core is where you will find the infobase, the hub that connects all the terminals on the station to the infonet. The public is not allowed inside the complex other than as studio audience for a select few shows such as the Wheel of Fatima or News at Dawn.
THE DOME OF THE ICONS The Dome of the Icons prides itself on being the largest temple in the Horizon, even if the veracity of this has been questioned. The Dome has a front made of glass from Akhandar sand from the volcanic beaches of Antmira and it is surely a breath-taking sight, stretching one hundred meters into the air. The dome itself is a towering sixty meters high, also made of glass, anchored in the twice-as-high central tower with thick steel cables. From the chamber at the top of the tower, the preachers lead the faithful in prayer between the watches. The Dome is always lit by huge spotlights in a representation of the Icons’ light in the dark night, and is the only exception in the otherwise perpetual semi-dusk of the Core. The open dome covers an exquisite mosaic floor where the actual shrine is located, a humble nine-sided temple in burned clay, only a few meters high, just below the central tower. The temple is covered in inscriptions and symbols, some hinting at an Iconic connection. A little to the side of the temple sits a small well called the Well of Tears, a quiet place of refuge for people in grief or bereavement. The tiled floor of the well is covered with talismans, handkerchiefs, hairpins, jewelry, and other offerings.
THE FOUNDATION’S INFOTHECA The black, glass front of the Infotheca is the bastion of the unbelievers on Coriolis. The halls inside cannot be accessed without sanctioned business in the building, and contain every possible form of data storage – from holograms, modulates, and proxy to Miran books bound in human skin, papyrus from Dabaran, magnetic memory cubes of meteorite iron from the frozen wastes of Odacon, and much, much more. One can gaze down at all this from the high galleries at the top of the building through volcano-proof sapphire glass, and elite Legionnaries and secret security systems developed by the Foundation guard the whole complex.
THE STUDENT DISTRICT If you are looking for wild parties and daring japes, the Student district is the place to go. The district is jammed in between the academies of the factions and the gambling dens of the Mulukhad, and its tiny apartments make even the living modules of the Ring feel spacious. Peace and quiet are non-existent concepts as the student parties here run around the clock in rolling waves of intoxication, music and laughter. The taverns Wurud’s and Azad’s are good places to visit if you need a reasonably priced place to recover from the nightlife. The roofside Quadim restaurant with its view of the Mulukhad is somewhat more expensive, but in return, they keep the noisier students away.
THE UNIVERSITY DISTRICT The massive university district contains all the faction-run schools and academies, the Bulletin’s gigantic Infotheca, and the rampant decadence of the Student district. The district has one of the larger tube stations on Coriolis – The Academy – where students crowd with ordinary people coming into the Core from the Spice Plaza located just a spoke away. The larger academies have their own student housing, usually in the form of long rows of modest buildings with many floors of student halls. A few parks are scattered across the university district.
THE GARDEN OF SEEKERS The Garden of Seekers is an odd collection of many different miniature landscapes in a space smaller than one hectare. In the middle of the garden sits the Seeker cult’s strange temple, constructed in a weird blend of all the garden’s architectural styles. The landscapes of the garden are from all across the Horizon: a Dabaran oasis sits next to some steaming Kuan jungle, and a spindly marsh delta from Bahram on Sadaal shares a corner with a dry, Zalosian forest. Several places in the garden are built like small canyons, with rope bridges across seemingly bottomless ravines. There are small benches and tables for visitors to rest at scattered across the garden. All the Horizon’s flowers can be smelled here, from poppy to jasmine. The noise from the Core is softened by the lush greenery and mixed with the gentle babble of small brooks, giving the garden an almost meditative aura. The streets around the garden are far from safe however – the Guard, the gangs, and other violent types usually lie in wait for their victims here or in the surrounding blocks. Some shifty dealings take place inside the garden as well – spies and professional snitches often lurk about the shadowy green.
THE SAMARITAN SANATORIUM Just opposite the Infotheca’s black front lies the conglomerate of blocks and buildings that have melded together into the Samaritan Sanatorium. Inside the front gates, you come to a hallway where you are supposed to state your business before you are allowed to continue. The vast courtyard of the complex is a wonderland of flowing, green hills and mosaic paths of blue and white – a place of rest and refuge. Visitors to the Sanatorium usually remark that even the air smells better here. Elevated walkways and balconies stretching high up into the air of the Core circle the courtyard. Patients, relatives, Samaritans, and even pets mingle on the balconies that are full of laundry lines, tables and patios – not unlike the alleys of the Ring. The Samaritans live in a row of low, whitewashed houses made from Kuan clay that also function as wards and chapels in honor of the Martyr. Stairs from the courtyard lead to the open wards above as well as to the rooms for treatment and storage that exist in the deep cellar of the sanatorium – an underbelly of unknown depths. Anyone is welcome at the Samaritan Sanatorium, regardless of status or wealth, but it is mainly poor people who are patients here as the privileged employ private physicians. There are of course exceptions – rich people afflicted with grave and disgraceful illnesses that have lost them their social status or family support are often forced to visit the Samaritans as a last resort.

THE LAW OF THE LEGION
Easy access to bio sculptors, prosthetisists, tattoo artists, and guns makes the Ozone Plaza and the nearby stretch of the Promenade attract Legionnaires like moths to a flame. Legion-affiliated bars usually feature skulls or bones in their names or on their signs. The three most infamous watering holes are Mokbaran’s, Igal’s, and the Cranium Bar, the latter also serving as the unofficial headquarters of the faction and the place one should seek out to join the ranks of the Legionnaires. Many other mercenary agencies can be found in close proximity to these three places. The heavy Legion presence makes the Ozone Plaza a relatively safe place. The so-called “Bone Law”, based on military laws and punishment, is enforced in the plaza. The Legion makes sure the peace is kept, and the Coriolis Guard never patrols here. Legally, the Bone Law actually only applies to members of the Legion, and contains some pretty archaic practices, such as the right to trial by combat, and public whip-ping as punishment. The harshest punishment in the Bone Law is the “promenade”, in which the guilty party is simply thrown out of an airlock, but it has never been carried out on Coriolis.

GUARD DRONES
The latest addition to the Guards’ arsenal is three sensor drones on loan from the Palatena lab owned by the Foundation. They are really a sort of modified sensor buoy of the same model as those used in spaceship countermeasure dispensers, but with remote control via djinn units and holo glasses. They are armed with both Vulcan and stun weapons, and, according to rumors, the new and experimen-tal vomit fields developed by the Foundation. The people of Coriolis hate the drones bitterly and the machines are often met with volleys of rotten fruit or garbage when they are out on patrol.

Founding Date

10

Type

District

Location under

Coriolis space station

THE MISSING STUDENTS
Every year, students go missing from the universi-ties and academies. Most of them either drop out, find new lives or seek their happiness somewhere else in the Horizon. Some families go looking for their lost ones, but this is the exception. When the elderly waba Corriha one day strolled past the little grove between her block and University Park, she spotted a hand sticking out of the ground. The Guard and eventually the Judicators were called to the scene. When the grove was dug out, the bodies of two missing students were found – both murdered, but the Judicators won’t say how. The nightlife is suddenly much quieter in the Student district. Everyone is scared and whispers to one another: Is there a killer among us?