The original pirate haven.
Port Royal system had been a pirate hideaway for decades before someone decided to register it and set up a legitimate business enterprise.
Anastasia Vasilov, a fiercly independent gas extractor and refiner, cashed in a heap of favors and a small fortune of refined Helium 3 to register the Port Royal system and claim the gas and mineral rights to the system. Her goal was to construct an extraction and refinement station, catering primarily to "independent shipping interests" and selling any excess on the Greater Freelance Market Network.
To put this another way, Vasilov intended to turn Port Royal into a pirate and smuggler gas station. For the few decades that Anastasia was alive after the station was up and running, this worked well. She had worked hard to develop a solid reputation with the criminal underground, and had secured enough favors and good will amongst a majority of captains, that this arangement worked.
And then she died. None of her children had any particular interest in picking up the baton, and none of her business partners had the same connections with the local underground. Within 15 years, the business had collapsed, the mining, extraction, and refining equipment had either fallen into terminal disrepair, been sold, or been stolen. Sometimes, all three.
By the twentieth anniversary of her passing, the remaining superstructure of the station was a derelict ghost station, most often used as a rendezvouz point.
Eventually,
From Matt:
Ah, Clew Bay.
Listen, I like this station from a design perspective. I wouldn't want to live here.
Every other station I had designed up to this point was always a purpose-built thing. Freedom Station was meant to be the primary station of the League and was made to represent them on a visual level. Clew Bay ain't that.
Clew Bay was an experiment in cobbling things together. There are two pieces of it that should be recognizable if you've been paying attention to other designs on here.
What I was aiming for was a station jury-rigged out of whatever the various owners of the station could get their hands on over the years. Now, the station is trying for an air of legitimacy. We'll see how that goes.