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The Clave is a large, man-made station that lies somewhere within the Sol-Jupiter system. It is never at rest for more than a few minutes, and you have to know someone who's been there to find out how to find it. It has very sophisticated shielding and an intricate system of relays for its transporters. It is a staging area for racing needles, small, one-man craft that are little more than a fuselage, engines, and atmospheric maneuvering wings. They are thin and wedge-shaped, giving rise to the name. Racing at the Clave is illegal and is mostly the province of teenagers and people in their early twenties. Legal needle racing exists, similar to the 21st Century's NASCAR races. In fact, there is still an annual race run from Indianapolis, Indiana, on the North American continent of Terra every May 30th, which is still referred to as the Indi 500.
There are three basic types of Clavists: 'Racers,' those who actually pilot and race the needles; 'Makers,' engineers, those who build and maintain the needles, and 'Groupies,' hangers-on, camp-followers. People usually begin as Groupies, and most 'graduate' to being Makers and/or Racers. There is a hierarchy at the Clave: the best Racer is always 'The King' or Le Roi, the next-best is known as 'Prince.' Someone who is up-and-coming and acknowledged as the most likely to be King someday is 'Heir Apparent.' These distinctions usually change rather rapidly. Those who manage to stay 'King' for over a year usually go down in the record books. Records are also maintained for spectacular feats of daring, as well as for simple longevity - if you remain a Clavist long enough, everyone becomes familiar with you and your accomplishments, even if those accomplishments aren't, in and of themselves, anything particularly impressive.
No one uses legal names at the Clave. What they are doing is illegal, so they protect themselves and each other by not knowing who they really are. If a Clavist happens to know someone from somewhere else, s/he will still never use their real name while at the Clave.
A Racer is designated by the name of his/her needle (the Maker who built her usually gets to name her). When a needle is built for a specific person, the names can get pretty appropriate. Makers and Groupies tend to choose a name that they believe fits them in some way.
The Clave is supported by a number of wealthy entrepreneurs, and extremely secretly, by Starfleet itself, which views it as a very promising recruiting ground for pilots, scientists, and engineers. The best known of these entrepreneurs was Ruis Calvario, also known as Cal. A former Racer himself, one of the ways in which he supported the Clave (and his estate still supports it), besides providing actual monetary aid to maintain the station itself, was to provide a place for Racers, Makers, and Groupies to hang out, thereby supporting the sub-culture itself. His penthouse in Rio de Janeiro was used for parties, for which he provided all the food and chemicals and everything else, including bedrooms and more imaginative places to engage in a wide variety of sexual experiences. He also (sometimes and for some people) provided partners for those experiences. He always made sure that everyone at his parties was safe, that they didn't overdose or get into something they couldn't handle. In that way, he was very careful. And he helped financially with building needles, transportation cards to get to Rio, and whatever else Clavists might need to indulge in their hobby.
There are many Clave myths, those typical of a star-faring sub-culture such as that of a Flying Dutchman (a 'ghost needle,' said to be that of the Clave's first Le Roi, which would appear when a Racer was in trouble), 'fireflies' (small rapidly moving lights that would sometimes surround a needle during a race), and one that turned out not to be a myth at all. It was said there was a Hunter, a being or thing that preyed on Racers. This grew out of the infrequent but unfortunate loss of life during a race, where one needle and its pilot would simply disappear. Some Clavists attributed this to the rather dangerous nature of their pastime and the many many things that could go wrong on a small ship like a needle. Others were convinced there was a malificence behind it.
They were right.
In the Standard Year 2241, it was revealed that there was, indeed, a Hunter, and that this Hunter was none other than the Clavist's greatest patron, Ruis Calvario (for details, see The Dead Have Names. After his capture, trial, and sentence to Elba II, other patrons stepped in and the Clave became a very different place, more the playground for wealthy dilletants and an openly important recruiting field for Starfleet than the underground rebellion it had once been. While chemicals, parties and sex are still a large part of the atmosphere, the Clave is much safer and much tamer than in the days of Calvario's reign.