Editing Diners of Amber (section)

===<div class="center" style="width: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">'''Hasik Station '''<div>===
<div class="center" style="width: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">[[File:Hasik Station.jpg]]<div>

Not everyplace in shadow is clean.

Hasik Station is a dirty place where the paths of trade crash into each other and leave a big mess.  And everyone gets a taste and everyone gets rich.
Soldiers, fleet marines, ground troops, merchants, spies, and lunatics of a thousand flavors.  And they are all armed to the teeth and trying to make a gold [[fullwing]] as easily as possible. The poor recycle, and recycling is big business. Its not corruption if its the way business is always done.

Now, as for Hasik Station.
 
On the planet Shatiro, a moon really, around a huge blue gas giant of planet called Halot, circling a sun called, the Sun, is a metropolis called Gadat.  It has a population of over 12 million people and is only one of 9 metropolitan areas spaced out across a vast desert.  They grew up around oil refineries and oil production facilities. The continent is dirt, overgrown and clogged with traffic from the subterranean rail systems to the ground level roadways systems to the many levels of air transport corridors. 

The average temperature outside is from 90 to 130 degrees. Sometimes higher. Hot by most people's standards. They have given up on having outdoor trees. Water rests below and depending on the source is not hard to bring up.  The 9 cities of this moon are on aquifers that are massive, enough to support generations of people. Of course once the water is brought it rarely goes down again.  They have managed elaborate methods of keeping water here. Vast hydroponic farms recycle water through plants. A thick grass that grows a foot high is grazed on by lumbering beef animals that never run even when they are directed to the slaughter. The grass is often mowed and used as a base for a type of granola bar of mixed vegetables and bound in The Sweet Flora, shipped in from Adzikies in Winter by travelers. 

 
Somewhere in the history of this world civilization broke down and a study of how they survived might be instructional.

In Gadat is a gigantic hub of industry called Hasik Station.  It has the technical facilities to qualify as an interplanetary space-station, the storage areas to satisfy the needs of tens of thousands of traders, the charm of a trucker’s diner, and the cleanliness of a gas station bathroom.
It’s a rough place but you can find what you are looking for in the vast cubbyholes of shops in this place.  There are several long lanes where merchant ships make port and customers come on board through ally side shops to look over wares.  Hand carts, wandering robot salesman, and guys selling watches and music boxes out of their trench-coats. Pickpockets live like kings. 

What sets Hasik Station apart from any of a dozen other spaceport-land transport hubs in Gadat alone, or any of the similiar Stations in the other 8 mega-cities is one thing sequestered deep in one of its great stadium barrel vaults.  In a swap-meet the size of a small city, under a single tightly sun-filtered dome, surrounded by official and unofficial kiosks, is 200 yards of Jeweled Road. Hence the trade in off-world goods.  Trade-goods going from one shadow to another on one of the smalled Diaga routes passes through Hasik Station and the people here get a taste.  They place orders.  It has made this place rich and vulnerable.  War may come. 


For all the muck of this place, it has some big upsides.

I don’t know about calling this place a Diner of Amber but it does have some foods to recommend it.  There are hundreds of thousands of noodle shops throughout the place along.  One on every corner like those wretched green coffee places.  They have those here too.  There are food carts filled with incredibly flavored meat on a stick that are lovely if you don't think about the kind of meat it is. A salted beef jerky is a traditional snack and is ubiquitous, found in almost every kiosk as an impulse purchase by the cash-box. 

Erasmus Braldig owns a repair station here staffed by his apprentices.  Need something repaired, see them.  There is a bizarre range of items available in the shops here that might be from here or from anyplace in shadow.  

Alien races, not native to this shadow where it turns out they were alone, have a foothold here and there. Elves in particular, of the Drow variety, are common.  So is a race of essentially orc from a nearby shadow just up the Jeweled Road are a frequent sight.  These orcs are merchants as much as raiders. All identifiable non-native races are called "Hasik Folk".  This pisses off the native Hasik people enough to cause them to be either fiercely protective of aliens or radically xenophobic about them.  Go figure, no middle ground.

Guilds of all kinds vie for trade and customers.  

<span style=color:darkgreen>Addendum

<span style=color:darkgreen>I've not been able to run down the reason on this shadow but ones nearby it give hints as to why a planet wide cultural horror and legal prohibition against cannibalism is enforced too stringently degrees.  Apparently in the long past, it was an issue.  The idea of Eaters of the Dead draped in bear furs, ridding motorcycles and dune buggies, raiding peaceful and desperate remnants of a fallen society are the terrors these people experienced.

<span style=color:darkgreen>Shatiro is not the only inhabited moon around Halot.  Halot has 70 or so moons of which half are inhabited on a regular basis.  Nor is Halot the only planet around their sun.  8 other planets circle it.  4 gas giants and 4 rocks.  There is a regular trade by star freighters and inner system ships pushing speeds fast enough to make star travel reasonable.  Yet on none of the inhabited places in this system are new ships being built.  All native space ships are hundreds of years old, often held together by wires, welds, and duct tape. 

<span style=color:darkgreen>One is a garden of a world in the sweet zone.  It is full of life, a wet world of mighty trees, raging oceans, vast plains, and amazing beaches.  Despite there being the remnants of once mighty nations no one sets foot on it. It is the Garden to these people and is the world of their origin. For unknown reason when the people left to explore their solar system they decided to leave this world alone to recover from the ravages dealt it by a developing people.  Im sure there is more to the story then that but their history seems to start when the left their home world. Its a blind choice of educators to just not discuss what drove them to the stars. 
 
<span style=color:darkred>((GM-Notes: First off, like many places, this world has cubbyholes of people for any nefarious need..  Secondly, with an ethic of making a [[fullwing]] any way one can, the opportunities are vast. This options aside were bigger game ideas.  One was the PCs defending the Jeweled Road segment from attack, maybe even establishing an embassy near it to show the flag.  Another idea was for the PCs to unravel the mystery of why the garden world is avoided.  I thought a virulent disease, one possibly dangerous even to Amberites, might infest the world. Maybe a hidden city of people whose ancestors didn't leave with the diaspora.    

<span style=color:darkred>((GM-Notes: I had a large mad max/wasteland warriors campaign in mind.