Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Maxient (section)

===The Commercial Halls===
Far outside the tightly-controlled martial portions of the station, Thrones rule lives.  Like many stations under the influence of Rogue Traders, there is little in Port Maxient that cannot be swayed into one’s pocket for the right sums of cash.  However, unlike similar Imperial border stations like Port Wander, or Port Seidenham, Port Maxient remains a military posting at heart.  The vast Commercial Hall is a place where Rogue Traders and Captains can escape from the scrutiny of the Naval Provosts and do business.  While slavery is illegal on Port Maxien, very little else is short of outright robbery and murder.  Even xenotech finds its way into the collections of unscrupulous spacers here.

The Commercial Halls consist of two of the six enormous storage modules of the original Xerxes III station, with their bulkhead-directed artificial gravity replaced with conventional mono-directional systems to make trade easier.  Bay One holds a massive bazaar, with well over six hundred thousand merchants, traders, hawkers, buskers, hiring agents, purchasers, runners, and dealers working here day in, day out.  The chamber is packed to the brim with mercantile goods and people selling it all, from wild animals to awe or battle, to indentured servants trained in the widest variety of obedience, to exotic construction materials.

Bay Two is the living goods area.  Unlike Bay One, Bay Two is far emptier, with substantially more space between the ad hoc decks added after the gravity systems were overhauled.  This is to facilitate the venting of metabolic gasses from the thousands of animals and people bought and sold here as gladiators, riding mounts, target practice, experimental subjects, companions for a day or eternity, or any other purpose.  Technically, the edict against the buying of slaves remains in place here, but the border between ‘indentured servant’ and ‘slave’ in the Imperium is fuzzy at the best of times.  Conveniently, there is a massive fighting pit on the lowest portion of Bay Two, where new purchases can be tried out against wild animals bought in Bay One, although the Adeptus Arbites rarely allow such engagements to proceed to the death.  There are other living goods for sale here, however, beyond animals and people’s contracts.  There are also greenhouses in climate-controlled subdecks, where rare plants and fungi from across the worlds of Cloudburst and beyond can be bought and sold, with extensive documentation – or not – about proper care and cultivation.