Absalom Station is a sprawling, densely inhabited space station filling a similar orbit that the forgotten planet Golarion once held around its sun. Its inhabitants include races native to, or descended from natives of, Golarion, making the station the last relic of the lost planet remaining in the Pact Worlds system. The station is also a focal point of the galaxy due to the Starstone, which makes the station effectively near every place in the galaxy via the Drift.

Stats

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)

Qualities: academic, cultured, financial center, major port and trade center,technologically average

Maximum Item Level: 20

Origin and History

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 Golarionbased 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 and station residents found themselves unsure about their pasts, the station seemed lived in and worn, implying that they’d 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 shiftingmorass 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 and 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—to the most prosperous and powerful 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 independence. 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. Since then, having 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 independence.

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, 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 delegates and ambassadors 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 maintains 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.

in mind. In times of conflict, a tremendous blast shield closes over the station’s central dome, and huge defenseAbsalomians 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 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.

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.

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 Starstone The energyintensive 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.

Society

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 other 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 only 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.

Geography

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 you can fly your ship into to more conventional airless bays or, if your ship is larger, 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 spacercomingstationside might need, from lodging and entertainment 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.

• Little Akiton
• Quarantine Centers
• Fogtown
• Puddles
• Qualdeep Ltd.
• Vesk Quarter
• Click Clack Club
• Cosmonastery of the Empty Orbit
• Eyeswide Agency
• Fardock
• Lodging
• Entertainment
• Market
• Shops
• Docking Bay 94

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 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 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 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.