Kalabar


Type: Airless Moon.
Function: Pirate Haven.
Region: Border Regions.
Trade Route: Feeder to the Breakneck Run.
Sector: Yaeger Sector.
Strategic Location: Outside of the spheres of influence of the organized powers, near the edge of Chakh Space.
Temperature: 402% standard during daylight hours, 21% standard after nightfall. The interiors of the ports are generally kept climate controlled, though the more run-down ports tend to have problems with those systems.
Atmosphere: Trace.
Hydrosphere: There is no water on the surface of Kalabar, with the exception of the two great ice mountains, ice asteroids that were moved to Kalabar to provide water for the ports.
Gravity: .09% standard.
Terrain: Cratered, precipitous mountain ranges.
Mineral Resources: Substantial reserves of duranium and raw durasteel. Some deposits of a variant of lommite, kalabarium, which is refined rather easily.
Length of Day: 29 standard hours.
Length of Year: Kalabar rotates around Gaffeld every 419 local days. Gaffeld rotates around Yuam every 370 standard days.
Sapient Species: None.
Capital City: All of the settlements of Kalabar are actually one giant city, joined together by an unified sewer and transportation system, and all owned by one individual, Maduk the Hutt.
Other Cities: See capital city.
Starport: The settlements on Kalabar can be described as a single galaxy class port, though it is actually any number of smaller planetary and standard ports, with the galactic class services available in a centralized area.
Population (within +/- 1%): 2,402,490 (mostly human).
Government: Dictatorship/Anarchy. Those areas of the world where the higher end facilities are located are protected by the security forces of the Globus Group, the criminal collective that Maduk the Hutt has founded. Those areas which don't earn sufficient amounts to interest Maduk belong to whomever is strong enough to hold them.
Tech Level: High space. As one of the few places where pirates and smugglers can get their ships repaired and refitted, the facilities of Kalabar are of the highest quality, but tend to charge prices far in excess of more legitimate operations.
Major Exports: Repaired and remanufactured ships and weapons, supplies and fuel.
Major Imports: Raw materials, manufactured goods, used starships, captured cargos.
System: Yuamite
Star: Yuam
Name Planet Type Moons
NarilDesert World0
VulamSwamp World1
LorinRadioactive Wasteland4
GaffeldWater World2
UmbirGas Giant6
WessalGas Giant6

System Capsule:

Naril: This blisteringly hot world is home to a few hardy native scrubs. Attempts to introduce other life forms have failed miserably, due to the heat and aridity of the world.
Vulam: The ammonia laced swamps of this pale blue world are filled with a remarkable array of hostile life forms.
Lorin: Once home to an information age culture, this world was irradiated quite thoroughly due to an accident in world's central power generator.
Gaffeld: The deep oceans of this world are tinted a faint crimson due to great quantities of dissolved iron.
Umbir: A large and pale white world, Umbir's moons are quite high in platinum reserves, and are home to several mining corporations.
Wessal: Smaller than Umbir, Wessal has no metallic reserves to attract any attention.

Planetary Capsule:

Flora and fauna: None.

Sentient Species: None.

History: Founded before the Imperium moved into the sector, the ports of the Kalabar, also known as Pirate's Moon, have always been known as a den of pirates and smugglers. Far from the Yaeger core, Kalabar's facilities are mostly underground, and would be quite hard to root out, except through prolonged bombardment, which was not an option for the Yaeger that far from the territory they claimed. Since the Empire reached the sector, the facilities at Kalabar have expanded greatly, as predators of various sorts were forced out of Imperial space and into the areas served by the ports of Kalabar. In addition, control of the planet shifted from a council of independent crimelords to the Globus group, a rather sinister organization of more powerful crimelords, founded by Maduk the Hutt, and including Khumin Ohan Lai, the Thalian slaver who controls a good chunk of the market in the Yaeger Sector, the Winged Serpents, a massive drug trafficking swoop gang, and several other individuals and organizations.

Since the Globus Group assumed control of the more lucrative operations of the ports, some of the freewheeling atmosphere of the port has been reigned in a bit, as their rather brutal enforcers are rather good at breaking up fights and taking care of those whose behavior exceeds even the liberal standards of Pirate's Moon. However, the less well managed areas of the ports have actually experienced an increase in violence, something that many thought impossible, as those who are expelled from the area under the Globus Group's control tend to wind up there.

As the activities of the Globus Group tend to be limited to independent areas, they have not yet drawn the attention of the Black Serpents, though as they expand down toward the center of the sector, conflict with that Yaeger group seems inevitable, and several of the most experienced of the Sector's pirates have started looking for another port to stop at for fear of the Serpents.

The ports of Kalabar are actually quite well designed. Massive impact craters have been converted into landing bays, with port facilities located directly below the surface. The near vacuum of Kalabar and the massive size of some of those landing craters allow virtually every type of craft to dock at Kalabar, including those that are usually limited to deep space docking facilities. In addition to the crater landing fields, many docking bays have been carved out of the rock for the smaller ships, whose owners prefer to be able to access their craft without the need for a vacuum suit. These facilities are usually niches along the walls of the craters, so as to allow these ships almost equal access to port facilities as the larger craft.

Kalabar's ports have been built over generations, with older structures being built over by newer facilities. For this reason, the maze of tunnels connecting the various port facilities can prove quite bewildering to those who stray from the main pathways, and are home to rather unusual imported life forms and sentient life forms who have wound up with a life at the very edges of civilization. The primary connection between the docking areas, the central port facilities and the other important areas of Kalabar (the power core, the shield generators, and the warehouses, for instance) has always been the ultrafast grav tubes, and those who stick to the tubes can usually avoid the tunnel dwellers.

Kalabar's defence grid was put together in a similarly piecemeal fashion, but as it was put together by some of the most skilled pirate chieftains of the sector over the span of generations, it is quite effective, with antique pulse wave cannons complementing the latest ion cannon batteries. Most of the more elderly weapons are not manned, but many are still operational, and are still occasionally moved up to operational status to add what little they can to defend against particularly intense offensives.
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