Created by Captain Michael Turlogh Kane on Aug 16, 2016 @ 10:29pm

TX01 V-A ('The Bazaar')

Originally a barren, cratered rock filled with mostly useless mineral deposits, the TX01 V-A moon has changed quite a bit since its initial discovery by a Klingon survey team almost 300 years ago. The moon is locked in an uneven, shifting orbit around its mother world, an enormous gas giant which the Klingons never bothered to name, but which gradually earned the moniker "Fatso" from the merchants who settled its moon in later decades. Originally of interest to the Klingons as a potential strategic location, it was quickly abandoned as largely useless. TX01 V-A was too small to support any significant military infrastructure. Also, its unusual orbit around its mother world create gravimetric oscillations that make landing larger vessels extremely dangerous, which reduces TX01 V-A's usefulness as a refueling/resupply station. The moon was abandoned by the Klingons barely 100 years after its initial discovery, and in the ensuing decades, the merchants moved in, and the moon gained the moniker 'The Bazaar'.

Over the years, The Bazaar developed into a small, but bustling, trading hub in the sector. Governed by a loose affiliation of merchant interests, The Bazaar is lawless, but not anarchic. Disputes are settled by the people involved, and not always with violence. Good business is the primary goal of every powerful interest on the moon, and dead bodies in the streets scare away customers. Since there were no diplomatic interests to interfere with the selling of less reputable goods, The Bazaar is also a popular place for the cementing of illicit partnerships or the completion of shady deals. After the organized gangs moved in, street-level crimes were mostly forced out, save for the very desperate or very stupid. Pickpockets and stick-up men can still occasionally be found, but most criminals know better than to steal from someone on The Bazaar, since you can never be sure how powerful an enemy you might be making.

The moon now holds a standing population of around 250, but with the near constant stream of visiting merchants and buyers, hired hands and hired guns, and other assorted riff-raff, it is not unusual for the total population to swell to around 500 people at any one time. The surface of the moon has little in the way of permanent defenses, but The Bazaar is now perpetually surrounded by a cloud of traffic - trade ships, mostly, but a few escort and scout ships, too. The buildings have expanded well beyond the original infrastructure laid down by the Klingons, into a labyrinth of shacks, tents, and kiosks. Most of the permanent buildings belong to the permanent residents, and most of the settled areas of the moon’s surface are given over to shops, inns, and bars, not all of them as seedy as they look from the outside.

Early settlers of The Bazaar set up some rudimentary atmospheric processors, giving the moon a thin imitation of an M-class world’s atmosphere, but most humanoid species still wear intranasal oxygen masks when they are outside, to make up for the reduced levels of oxygen and nitrogen.