The Wages of Sin was a giant commercial space station and pleasure resort orbiting the planet Erewhon.
Architecture[]
The station included shops, hotels of various grades, gambling rooms, entertainment, and so on. Some of the rooms included very large overhead screens which displayed a variety of scenes, some of them breathtaking. Externally, it was covered with equally spectacular images, emulating garish ancient "neon signage".
It was composed primarily of assorted intertwined tubes, leading to sufficient confusion amongst those who came aboard that special maps were prepared and distributed to help visitors get from place to place with minimal disorientation. Because the station did not have a large enough diameter to mislead the senses (as do most planetary surfaces), traveling in the tubes gave one the sense of continuously walking uphill, or if looking back, having walked downhill. Many of the publicly accessible tubes were paralleled with maintenance tubing passages for ventilation, wiring, water, sewage and similar, also mostly in the form of tubes. (CS1)
Weapons policy[]
Weapons were banned aboard The Wages of Sin, save for official security personnel and law enforcement. Incoming visitors with weapons were required to check them with station security during their stay. (CS1)
Role in interstellar politics[]
The Wages of Sin was the chosen site for an attempt by a outlaw group of Masadan exiles to kidnap Princess Ruth Winton of Manticore. In the attempt, many civilians as well as all of the Masadan crew (both Masadans and Scrags) were killed. Soon afterwards, a scheme for capturing a Jessyk Combine slave transport which was in orbit near the station was developed, largely by Victor Cachat, a Republic of Haven agent on assignment to represent Haven at the funeral for Hieronymus Stein.
Out of the entire affair developed the scheme for liberating Verdant Vista, a planet in Erewhon's neighborhood usually referred to as Congo, from its Manpower Incorporated owners. (CS1)