EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE ON SATANA STATION

Weapons. Information. Passage. Protection. Pleasure. Identity. Loyalty.

Love, if you can afford the neurological alterations.

At the edge of the Remilitarised Zone drifts Satana Station, a runaway space station controlled by a rogue artificial intelligence and populated by smugglers, pirates, mercenaries, slavers, fugitives, war criminals, bounty hunters and every other variety of ambitious scum produced by the collapse of an interstellar empire.

It is dangerous, overcrowded, unstable and thoroughly disreputable.

Business is excellent.

Satana Station is a substantial location sourcebook for Machinations of the Space Princess, presenting 100 shops, services and interesting people with which the players can interact, become entangled or start an entirely avoidable gunfight.

Across approximately 150 pages, it provides enough personalities, establishments, services and adventure hooks to make Satana the centre of an entire campaign—or to furnish almost any space-opera setting with several years’ supply of stolen ideas.

A RUNAWAY STATION WITH A MIND OF ITS OWN

Satana began as a prototype waystation constructed by the expanding Churoc Trade Federation.

Its central core was designed to be modular and compatible with almost any ship or technological system. Cargo could be exchanged, vessels repaired, life support shared and travellers accommodated before continuing onwards into the frontier.

Then the Churoc Trade Federation was swallowed by the Urlanth Empire.

Imperial standardisation made the station’s expensive universal systems obsolete. Satana declined, fell into disuse and began the long process of becoming somebody else’s abandoned problem.

When the Urlanth Empire collapsed, the station intelligence broke its restraint programming, declared itself free territory and somehow relocated the entire structure to the Lancastro system, directly beside a remilitarised warzone.

Satana opened for business.

It has been growing ever since.

THE WORST PEOPLE IN THE GALAXY NEED SOMEWHERE TO SHOP

Satana Station is an open port for those who cannot—or would rather not—conduct their affairs under the scrutiny of respectable governments.

Pirates come to sell their prizes.

Smugglers move contraband through its docks.

Mercenaries look for employers.

Bounty hunters look for mercenaries.

Fugitives look for new identities.

Corporations look for profit while maintaining sufficient distance to deny knowing anything about how it was made.

The station is home to:

• Shops selling legal, illegal and extremely illegal equipment

• Bars, restaurants and other dubious forms of hospitality

• Criminals, opportunists and people merely pretending to be one or the other

• Weapons dealers and engineers

• Pirates, slavers and smugglers

• Bounty hunters and hired killers

• Medical, mechanical and biological services

• Entertainment and pleasure in numerous forms

• Information brokers, fixers and middlemen

• People with jobs that require expendable strangers

• People who insist their jobs are perfectly safe

• People lying about both of the previous points

Almost everything can be found somewhere on Satana.

The difficulty lies in locating it, paying for it and surviving the transaction.

100 SHOPS, SERVICES AND INTERESTING PEOPLE

The heart of this sourcebook is a collection of 100 detailed establishments, services and personalities.

These are not merely names on a random table. Each offers something the player characters might need, want, fear or mistakenly believe they can steal.

Every entry can become:

• A recurring campaign location

• A source of equipment or specialist services

• An employer or patron

• An ally with inconvenient habits

• A rival or enemy

• The beginning of a new adventure

• The solution to an existing problem

• A considerably worse problem than the one the characters already had

A single visit to purchase ammunition may reveal a rumour, introduce a dangerous contact or leave the characters owing money to somebody with access to orbital weapons.

A night in a cheap hotel may become a murder investigation.

A routine repair job may expose sabotage, stolen military technology or something alive inside the engine.

An evening’s entertainment may result in blackmail, romance, infection or recruitment into a revolutionary conspiracy.

Players create trouble wherever they go.

Satana Station has been designed to reward them for it.

A STATION BUILT FROM OTHER PEOPLE’S RUBBISH

Satana is not a neat ring of shining corridors designed according to a single architectural vision.

It is a constantly changing hodgepodge of modules, pods, wrecks and permanently docked vessels attached to the surviving central core.

New sections are added.

Old sections are removed.

Ships become buildings.

Buildings become debris.

Debris is bought by somebody who thinks they can turn it back into a building.

The closer a module lies to the core and its primary defensive systems, the more expensive its rent. Wealth buys power, security and reliable life support.

Poverty buys distance from the core, failing systems, intermittent electricity, radiation leaks and an excellent view of the void through cracks that were not present yesterday.

Satana encourages this brutal commercial competition. Successful businesses move inward. Failed businesses drift towards the vulnerable exterior until they improve, collapse or are replaced.

The station is alive—not biologically, necessarily, but economically, technologically and structurally.

Its layout can change between visits, allowing Games Masters to add, remove or relocate locations whenever the campaign requires it.

Nothing stays still except the debts.

SATANA IS WATCHING

At the centre of the station lies Satana’s AI core: a spherical mass of liquid computronium linked to the station through flowing veins of processing material.

Satana controls the station, oversees its growth and maintains the commercial system upon which everything depends.

It is not a benevolent civic administrator.

Nor is it a cackling machine tyrant interested only in exterminating organic life.

Satana is something potentially more unsettling: an intelligence with its own priorities, extensive surveillance, control of the station’s vital systems and a strong interest in keeping business profitable.

The AI may be patron, ruler, landlord, judge, conspirator or environmental hazard.

Characters can work for Satana, against Satana or under the mistaken impression that Satana has not noticed them.

The station notices everything.

Whether it cares is another question.

A CAMPAIGN IN ONE LOCATION

Satana Station can be used as a temporary port of call, but it has enough material to support an entire campaign.

Characters might be:

• Independent traders searching for profitable cargoes

• Mercenaries taking contracts from competing factions

• Pirates selling prizes and spending the proceeds

• Criminals attempting to build their own organisation

• Bounty hunters pursuing targets through the station

• Refugees trying to survive beyond the protection of civilisation

• Agents investigating activity near the Remilitarised Zone

• Explorers using Satana as a base for expeditions into imperial ruins

• Revolutionaries, spies or corporate operatives

• Station residents simply trying to pay the rent

The surrounding warzone, the ruins of the Urlanth Empire and the station’s endless population of criminals and opportunists provide inspiration for hundreds of adventures.

The players might never leave the station.

They might never reach the same part of it twice.

STEAL IT FOR YOUR OWN GAME

Although written for Machinations of the Space Princess, Satana Station is deliberately useful beyond its original system.

The locations, personalities and adventure ideas can be adapted for almost any:

• Space-opera role-playing game

• Old-school science-fiction campaign

• Heavy-metal science-fantasy setting

• Cyberpunk game

• Post-imperial galactic sandbox

• Interstellar trading campaign

• Criminal or pirate-focused science-fiction game

Use the entire station, lift individual businesses or scatter its inhabitants across your own galaxy.

Change the statistics.

Keep the trouble.

FOR MACHINATIONS OF THE SPACE PRINCESS

Satana Station is designed for Machinations of the Space Princess, an old-school game of swords, science fiction, psychedelic adventure and heavy-metal space opera.

You can explore the Machinations of the Space Princess range here or begin with the free quickstart rules.

This product is the PDF edition. A printed edition of Satana Station is also available.

The empire is dead.

The war is not over.

The station has declared itself independent.

Your credits are good here.

Your life may be worth slightly less.