In petlacalli # 3 Station ~ The Box Among The Stars

  The captain of the Shifter To Stars had come to In petlacalli  station at the urging of the Emperor but it was a decision he was already regretting. The place was off of the standard space lanes & orbiting a blue white dwarf . The station was old & built around the ansible which was still maintained by the Pé Chó. They were least of his worries. He counted at least a dozen alien races that might be trouble. There were the Gronk taciturn proletarian warriors of great fortitude and dour outlooks who acted as station security. They're presence a bit of a predictable side as he looked deeply into the mind of the creature. The thoughts were as dour as their host. He pasted by the local shop of a drilg who was actually an information broker but acted as a tailor of dream suits & other textile wares. He watched the delicate patterns as a local psi mage wove an illusion of dancing nymphs. A group of once human mutants were in an animated conversion with a Hallimox exterminator for the current rates on a getting rid of a small bug problem on their colony world. A glimp -shell dealership had its pendants blowing in the breeze of  holographic weather. A group of adventurers were looking over the pack animals as their four armed wizard haggled with the a salesman over the price. To'vvors headed deeper into the station where the reddish warning sign telepathically projected its usual warning of danger, hostile beings enter at your own risk. The crew followed at a distance to give their Captain enough room as he stiffed at the passage of  no less then four Mi-go. They were hive vets no longer connected to their respective hives & were realigned to miners & explorers which made them no less dangerous. They could at a moment's notice & with the release of a hormone from their queen become warriors yet again as the circumstances dictated. They passed only to be replaced by Zagonite prostitutes & shuttered remembering what lay beneath their stolen skins. The telepathic cat calls & such were lost on him as he neared the rear darkness. The neon holo forms shivered in the heat about the shop which simply said jewelry in whatever language the user happened to speak.The Jaladari stood in the doorway waiting for him, whispering to one another as the wizard left before him. His crew watched with baited breath as their captain walked inside uncertain of who would be coming out. 
  In petlacalli  station was built centuries around both an inter planar generator & the ansible that it houses. The station is now a middle ground orbiting a blue white dwarf. A haven for all types of alien beings, cut throats,criminal elements, etc. This is not a place where one can travel without sidearm handy but never a better place will an adventurer find for buying equipment, unloading contraband, making deals, finding a ship or gambling away loot. Here the order of the day is capitalism in the crudest sense of the word for the 23 levels of shops, malls, gambling dens, & whatnot. There are species from a million worlds all coming to trade, do business, & continue to move in the orbits that money creates. This is not a place that suffers fools gladly but a location where many can find the type of pilots or hirelings that thrive in backwater solar systems.
 Some of the most note worthy little tid bits of history include the role that this place played during the Mi Go wars of  12300 which were a series of skirmishes during the First Regulan War. The breaking of a very sinister pirate ring during the Clonemaster Cyborg Wars. Rumors speak of the finding of artifacts of the Great Race but if there has ever been an outpost of this fantastic peoples it vanished during the war. Fake artifacts show up from time to time though. The system in which the system is situated is unremarkable for the planets are mostly inhabited by human clone workers freed after the wars.The station now sits in a very critical time when the eyes of the universe are turned on to which direction the universe will take.
All races mentioned in the article are found here http://zalchis.blogspot.com/
Notes on the Ansible are here http://ixians.blogspot.com/2011/04/notes-on-ansible.html