Background
Port Imperiale is the capital, and indeed the only major population centre left on the former mining world of Jamakeer. Once a thriving mining colony with several large cities, and innumerable smaller mining facilities, it has been mined to exhaustion of its vast reserves of mineral resources by the Adeptus Mechanicus and their legions of Servitors, being left a pock-marked, unstable and polluted shell of a planet unable even to support food growth outside of hydroponics facilities.
Long since abandoned by the Imperium as being of no tactical or practical use, situated, as it is, on the very edge of Imperial Space, the world has been taken over by the very worst dregs of human- and alienkind, and is now used as a homeworld by many Pirate warbands. Always armed, usually the worse for drug or drugs, and liable to be involved in long running petty vendettas with other pirate bands, means that violence in Port Imperiale is never that far away.
These desperate, degenerate criminals prey on spacelanes all over the sector, attacking weaker craft, and either ransacking them for valuables and trade goods, or hijacking them entirely, bringing them back to Jamakeer's surface to strip them down and sell their cargo, parts, and indeed crews, to the highest bidder. A few of the better equipped Pirate bands will also risk ground attacks on remote outposts, capturing supplies, fuel and vehicles.
Because of this, Port Imperiale and its environs have less resemblance to a former mining colony, and more a colossal scrapyard, with most of the buildings in the city now repaired with, or entirely made from, the rusting hulks of spacecraft.
Trade, here, is king. Anything can be bought and sold, and nothing is illegal, so it has become an important, if illicit, trading post in this sector of the galaxy, dealing with traders of all races, as long as they're prepared not to ask questions, and have a retinue big enough to protect their investments.
Overall control and leadership (for what it's worth) in Port Imperiale is given over to the 'Council of Nine', a group consisting of the nine most powerful pirate leaders who claim the city as their home. They hold meetings several times a year, and also emergency sessions in times of need, to discuss the issues of the day. Although closed to the general public, any pirate captain can attend Council meetings and have their say on matters of importance.
Jamakeer has proved time and again to be an ideal pirate retreat. As well as the distance from any major Imperium Strongholds, vast clouds of toxic smog still envelop the upper atmosphere, causing electrical storms and making it difficult for ship's sensors to locate the pirates or their city. Even in the rare case that an Imperium ship does land, the planet is riddled with innumerable miles of tunnels from centuries of mining, enabling easy escape to those that have taken the time to learn them, and a quick death to those that venture after them.
