The Neutral Ground
The station lurked between here and nowhere, suspended like a fat spider upon an invisible web and secured in place by sheer determination and a hell of a lot of elbow grease. She was massive and beautiful, a twinkling work of art haloed by a ring of blue and yellow shipping lane markers. Up until one hundred years ago, she belonged to the Thade peoples but now she was used as a place of peace and wisdom. Not that Thade weren’t wise; they’re simply were not peaceful according to galactic social standards. Think of it as that rude uncle with the loud tie offering a small child a quid. The child can’t help but be excited, so much so that he’s willing to overlook the obnoxious uncle in favor of the treat. Thus the galaxy whole-heartedly agreed to ignore the Thade’s strange mindset and odd hygiene habits in favor of the gift. She had been retrofitted by more advanced nations, properly named [i]Pax Concordia[/i] by sage minds, and was now bastion for peace.
The area of space known occupied by the station was the Triune Quadrant. This hardy bit of real estate was overlapped in ownership by three major empires but given up as neutral ground in favor of diplomatic relations. All three patrolled the TQ, and two had designated shipping routes for those seeking to go to and from the station. It needs to be said, however, that these massive and highly advanced empires took a dim view of anyone thinking to bring war to the passive station, and any attempts made upon the TQ would be met with outright war (unless the Nifid answered first; they were prone to genocide over such grievances as rings left by coffee cups or stray cracker crumbs on the lace tablecloth).
The station was comprised of many levels, each being vital to the overall function, and it housed workers, diplomats, medical personnel and a host of others. Indeed, those that lived on the station saw it as a unique, multispecies city. The very northern tip of the station was an array of communication and other devices. The very south held fuels and other necessary “go juice” storage. In between was a bevy of nooks and crannies containing vital machines, bio-habitat (life support) gases storage, and the gunkworks that provided artificial gravity. These were peppered throughout the station, leaving the rest of it open for actual living or as shipping, receiving and docking bays. Everything else was external, to include the long arms that served as docking anchors for vessels too large to find their way inside.
Inside, there were large sections dedicated to an Earth-like atmosphere; there were smaller sections dedicated to life support for those species that found Earth to be toxic. The insides were (as previously stated) a thriving community of workers and diplomats that lived in a somewhat harmonious existence minus the occasional dockworker strike or complaints over holiday displays.
The isolation from all the nonsense of the universe allowed for peace. There were several organizations inhabiting the station that stood for such noble causes. The IAPA was one of them. Other, smaller groups included a smattering of individuals concerned over war orphans (as in ‘displaced peoples recovering after their world was detonated’) and those seeking to cure diseases and plagues, or end starvation, or a host of other noble causes. There was even a very small branch office of The International Red Cross & Peace Corp of Nationstates, Inc.
Those that came to the station retained their citizenship and were held accountable to their nation’s own laws however they had to also follow laws established by the station’s governors. These additional laws helped to keep the peace between species. They were very basic “do no harm” or “golden rule” things that any sensible person could understand, and most of them had to do with respecting personal space, tolerating those species unfamiliar with your customs and culture, and doing nothing to compromise the station itself.
Not that it was all a slice of nirvana. Many projects had been tackled by the lowest bidder, so the artificial gravity could go out at the most inconvenient times. Nations tended to war with one another and those ripples sometimes touched the populaces on the station, giving way to angry outbursts and demonstrations that hampered the morning commute (no one would risk a terrorist act due to the three empires - and the Thade propensity for eating/spacing people). There weren’t any public schools and the small population of visiting children were usually bored out of their minds. Imported food was always expensive. To top it off, you were living in an enclosed system far from any habitable rocks, and nothing more than a fish in a tank, and at any given time the life support could fail, or something could explode and buckle entire portions of the station, or a host of other nasty things.
The area of space known occupied by the station was the Triune Quadrant. This hardy bit of real estate was overlapped in ownership by three major empires but given up as neutral ground in favor of diplomatic relations. All three patrolled the TQ, and two had designated shipping routes for those seeking to go to and from the station. It needs to be said, however, that these massive and highly advanced empires took a dim view of anyone thinking to bring war to the passive station, and any attempts made upon the TQ would be met with outright war (unless the Nifid answered first; they were prone to genocide over such grievances as rings left by coffee cups or stray cracker crumbs on the lace tablecloth).
The station was comprised of many levels, each being vital to the overall function, and it housed workers, diplomats, medical personnel and a host of others. Indeed, those that lived on the station saw it as a unique, multispecies city. The very northern tip of the station was an array of communication and other devices. The very south held fuels and other necessary “go juice” storage. In between was a bevy of nooks and crannies containing vital machines, bio-habitat (life support) gases storage, and the gunkworks that provided artificial gravity. These were peppered throughout the station, leaving the rest of it open for actual living or as shipping, receiving and docking bays. Everything else was external, to include the long arms that served as docking anchors for vessels too large to find their way inside.
Inside, there were large sections dedicated to an Earth-like atmosphere; there were smaller sections dedicated to life support for those species that found Earth to be toxic. The insides were (as previously stated) a thriving community of workers and diplomats that lived in a somewhat harmonious existence minus the occasional dockworker strike or complaints over holiday displays.
The isolation from all the nonsense of the universe allowed for peace. There were several organizations inhabiting the station that stood for such noble causes. The IAPA was one of them. Other, smaller groups included a smattering of individuals concerned over war orphans (as in ‘displaced peoples recovering after their world was detonated’) and those seeking to cure diseases and plagues, or end starvation, or a host of other noble causes. There was even a very small branch office of The International Red Cross & Peace Corp of Nationstates, Inc.
Those that came to the station retained their citizenship and were held accountable to their nation’s own laws however they had to also follow laws established by the station’s governors. These additional laws helped to keep the peace between species. They were very basic “do no harm” or “golden rule” things that any sensible person could understand, and most of them had to do with respecting personal space, tolerating those species unfamiliar with your customs and culture, and doing nothing to compromise the station itself.
Not that it was all a slice of nirvana. Many projects had been tackled by the lowest bidder, so the artificial gravity could go out at the most inconvenient times. Nations tended to war with one another and those ripples sometimes touched the populaces on the station, giving way to angry outbursts and demonstrations that hampered the morning commute (no one would risk a terrorist act due to the three empires - and the Thade propensity for eating/spacing people). There weren’t any public schools and the small population of visiting children were usually bored out of their minds. Imported food was always expensive. To top it off, you were living in an enclosed system far from any habitable rocks, and nothing more than a fish in a tank, and at any given time the life support could fail, or something could explode and buckle entire portions of the station, or a host of other nasty things.
The Pax Concordia Space Station is owned and operated explicitly by the Technocracy of Cerillium.