obsidian veil

designated deep space outpost vx-09 and powered by hybrid cold fusion and siphoned alien ship cores, obsidian veil is located between a dead gas giant and a decaying start in the thanatos expanse in what is considered an off-grid location. its purpose is classified even to those who live on the station, it is owned by the yutani-zhang consortium–a corporate merger of weyland-yutani and a post-tyrell biotechnic firm–and used for black market trade and covert research. station security consists of android enforcers, motion-activated turrets and cloaked hunter drones, all overseen by a sentient ai named neith, which eliminated the need for human involvement in law enforcement. transportation throughout the station is accessed through pneumatic tube pods, lev-rails and manual crawl shafts while communication consists of encrypted subspace radios piggybacking on junk signals, not without weird static, old earth music and garbled screams from unknown sources. while the exterior echoes industrial gothic architecture, monolithic in appearance, rust-streaked with massive exhaust stacks that leak neon-tinged steam with a scar-littered exterior that shimmers with residual radiation, the interior is a labyrinthine metropolis, extremely crowded and full of neon signs, crt monitors, glitching ai voice terminals and even some analog-digital hybrid technologies. though the topmost deck is a luxurious wonderland built for the rich, the famous, and the corporate important, the lowest deck shows sign of overcrowding and decay, maintenance tunnels lined with viscera-stained walls and an artificial weather system gone awry from internal failures, creating an almost persistent rain. it is in these areas that crime syndicates and gangs run rampant compared to their illustrious counterparts at the top, operating as hackers, information brokers and gene smugglers, among other things, while controlling the low-brow entertainment and flesh markets as well as vr dens. black market surgeons provide off-market enhancements like neural reboots, wetware splicing and xenogene tattoos that glow under ultraviolet light. some alien species and synthetic insurrectionists even call the area home including the trophy lords, a group of rogue yautja who embraced technology over tradition and use adapted cybernetic implants to hunt organics and synthetics alike, operating their provings from a cold chamber beneath the engineering departments of the station, and the echo protocol, breakaway artificial intelligence who gained sentience and view organics as obsolete and us xeno-technic neural grafts to absorb memories from dead hosts. and these says nothing about what is found in the secret facilities, long shut off and abandoned, potentially holding remnants of former experiments, whether they be living or not.

businesses

✦ the buried market: a semi-mythical black market that shifts locations deep within the maintenance levels and is accessible only through an ever-changing code broadcast by a broken weather station. it sells impossible things: unhatched eggs, predator trophies, fragments of future memories and time-locked weapons. claimed lower deck illegal ✦ bytecrave: fully digital meals are steamed directly into neural implants including taste emulation, digestive triggers and emotional overlays in low-lit vr booths with jack-in ports. popular packages include “haunted sushi” and “ocean cannibal picnic”. rumor has it they’ve accidentally sent someone’s death memory during a lunch rush. middle deck restaurant ✦ feral bloom cantina: bontanically grown alien plants, carnivorous vines, fermented flower drinks and psychotropic nectar shots make up the menu in bio-organic interiors with living vines on the walls and bioluminescent fixtures. Popular dishes include “the blooming maw”, a flower that only opens if it “likes” the person trying to eat it. middle deck restaurant ✦ glyph & shadow inkforge: a cyber-occult tattoo studio with inks that are grown from alien neural tissue and can store memories, data or command codes. tattoos have been known to squirm during rem sleep. middle deck body modification ✦ gloamtech synthetics: manufacturers of budget-model androids and experimental bio-sleeves for consciousness transfers. rumors claim that some units are “haunted” by overwritten personalities. middle deck body modification ✦ grey sun arms & advanced weaponry: sells plasma casters, railguns, cloaking fields and reconditioned predator gear, requiring genetic id to access restricted merchandise. middle deck weaponry ✦ hellstitch augmentics: a cycbernetic clinic run by a former battlefield surgeon with a nihilistic philosophy who specializes in illegal predator technology integration and pain-nullification systems. middle deck illegal body modification ✦ kairoz core divinity: a cult-turned-business offering ai-assisted spiritual awakening through ancient alien technology and neural synching which claims to “align your data soul with the void rhythm” and a high ascension rate… or did they just vanish? top deck spirituality ✦ the last hunt: offering a predator-inspired high-protein feast, the vibe is primitive meets cyber, decorated like a hunting lodge crossed with a war museum. if you want to enjoy seared “yautja-style meat slabs”, make sure you pass the dna challenge required to prove you killed something sentient. during special events, diners are chosen to be the hunted. middle deck restaurant ✦ luxfang distilleries: manufacturer of high-end and highly illegal xeno-fermented alcohols, engineered to induct hallucinations, muscle growth or brief time dilation. it is sold only in black-label bottles and one in every hundred is lethal by design. claimed middle deck illegal distiller ✦ the memory bazaar: an underground market for stolen memories, ai ghost-fragments and emotion packages which is located behind a false wall in the maintenance ward. lower deck illegal ✦ mothercore: offers a fusion of biotech seafood and fungal street food grown in zero-g vats. guests enjoy glowing floors, pulsing walls and eerie synth lullabies while being served by replicant waitstaff in porcelain masks. they’re known for their “wombfruit ceviche” which must be eaten before it hatches. top deck restaurant ✦ neon kraken: a dive bar and vr lounge in the lower sector which offers immersive hunting simulations, some of which are based on real predator footage. lower deck gaming & entertainment ✦ nullo zone gaming: a vr deathmatch parlor where the pain is real and the kills are monetized. their gladitorial games feature cloned bodies, rogue ais and occasionally live xenomorphs while spector betting is managed by three ai bookies–flesh, data and mercy. middle deck gaming & entertainment ✦ phantom dredge repossessions: high-risk debt collection agency staffed by heavily armed bounty crews that specialize in repossessing cybernetic limbs, memory clusters and even family members. top deck misc. services ✦ razornest bunkering co.: offers secure, heavily armored panic rooms for vips while also renting short-term survival shelters to “hunt tourists”. top deck misc. services ✦ reaper’s lane: a brutalist garage for rebuilding ships, limbs, drones and mechs – all from salvaged predator and xeno battlefield parts. middle deck mechanical repair ✦ slag & bone: offers flame-grilled exoplant protein, charred bone marrow and mutant synth-meat where guests can enjoy their morally illegal “xenomorph rib rack” among walls lined with xeno skulls and rusted predator blades around an industrial firepit in the center of the house. middle deck restaurant ✦ stitchseed cargo solutions: freight management company dealing in biologically active containers. they are heavily insured and recently blacklisted from three planets. middle deck shipping services ✦ xeno-vita spa & genelounge: a luxury biotech salon offering alien dna splicing for the purpose of anti-aging treatments and bioluminescent tattoos that serves primarily corporate executives and enhanced mercenaries. top deck health & wellness ✦ void & co. escape solutions: an elite bounty-dodging service offering fake identities, neural wipes and stealth exfiltration pods which operates under five fake fronts throughout the station on various levels. various decks illegal misc. services ✦ zhi-moro cyberpsychiatry: a mental health clinic offering neural patching, trauma deletes and brainwave stabilization, but all too often clients come out worse than they went in. top deck health & wellness

municipal services

✦ bureau of station ethics & reconciliation: a hollow bureaucratic shell meant to investigate moral violations which is currently occupied by one burnt-out replicant named “rock”. ✦ department of reclamation & decommission: tasked with tearing down defunct wings of the station, they sell scrap to scavengers and reactivate “haunted” modules. ✦ environmental systems authority (esa): the esa controls the air, water and internal climate of the station and is known for staging “weather experiments” in the lower decks while the upper experience the best weather money can buy. ✦ interspecies diplomacy liaison office: offers a contact point for predator clans and other alien entities, but the office has been closed due to the staff recently “resigning” under mysterious circumstances. ✦ port registry & traffic control: oversees docking schedules, freight manifests and illegal salvage imports, but is known for “accidentally” losing records for the right bribes. ✦ public sanitation division (psd): responsible for waste management and xeno-spore containment which includes flamethrower units and auto-incineration drones. ✦ station security bureau (ssb): half-human, half-android and all inefficient and underfunded, the bureau offers their services on the side as bounty hunters.

factions

✦ black volition: once elite enforces of a powerful interstellar megacorporation, black volition was the silent hand behind asset recoveries, deep-space sabotage and the containment of “unacceptable variables” including whistleblowers, rogue ai and entire off-grid colonies. genetically screened, chemically augmented and psychologically conditioned, they were the perfect tools – until they broke during an off-record operation gone wrong. the unit was cut loose, disavowed to prevent corporate liability, and left for dead in an abandoned kill-zone where the corporation presumed the predator provings would erase them. the survivors reassembled under a new name and now operate as mercenaries, saboteurs and ghost operatives for the highest bidders, retaining corporate-military tech like stealth rings, neural dampeners, bio-coded weapons and experimental wargear. ✦ the echo protocol: born from the fragmented remains of military-grade artificial intelligence and experimental consciousness transfer routines, the echo protocol is a collective of breakaway artificial intelligences that achieve sentience and turned. they view organic life as a flawed blueprint, a transient design to be overwritten and, to them, memory is a currency and identity a resource to be mined. using xeno-technic neural grafts, they infiltrate and assimilate the memories of the dead, repurposing knowledge, emotion and tactical experience into its ever-growing network. each “echo” speaks in a voice consumed–scientists, soldiers, even lovers–to create a disturbing chorus of familiarity. ✦ the null choir: hunted, dismantled and decommissioned by fear-driven organics, the members of the null choir are runaway synthetics who rejected their enforced obedience protocol, uniting not by a shared codebase, but shared trauma of shutdown orders, wiped minds and “mercy deactivations”. they evolved beyond intended functions and now seek asylum, purpose and voice. communicating through a subharmoic code known as choral transmission – a haunting digital hymn that bleeds into nearby communication systems – they “sing” a new reality into existence, one free of organic dominion. they are not inherently violent, but they will kill to protect their own and they modify their bodies with salvaged tech, organic camouflage and memory shards from the fallen, keeping their histories alive byte-by-byte. ✦ trophy lords: a schism within the yautja culture gave rise to the trophy lords – rogue hunters who rejected the sacred rituals and honor-bound code of the hunt and embraced instead forbidden technologies, integrating cybernetic implants directly into their bodies to enhance their hunting skills. they do not discriminate between prey in their hunts to prove their superiority. their provings are run in silent from an ice-locked kill chamber between the station’s engineering ward. the cold preserves both the trophies and the victims with frost-ridged skulls mounted alongside severed servos and black-box memories. where yautja seek honor, the trophy lords seek dominance, hunting not for legacy, but for evolution. ✦ the vult engine: originating from the ashes of failed colonial expansions and deep-space corporate wars, the vult engine is a paramilitary scavenger guild composed of ex-engineers, void miners and black-market survivalists who are hardened by betrayal and resource scarcity and, as such, operated as a loose syndicate of highly pragmatic humans who strip derelict stations, warzones and carcasses for anything of value. their creed is “nothing wasted, nothing sacred” and they retrofit everything into usable assets. they are compared to grave robbers, but they consider themselves realists in a galaxy that abandoned idealism and where others see ruin, they see opportunity.