The Setting
It begins and ends with the Klorn, a race so ancient they have no peers...
The Klorn don't seem to mind offworlders coming to their worlds. They just don't make it a big point to be all that hospitable. You can find places where they'll let you sleep, and they will offer you things that are edible, but it's a challenge. The Klorn hold something they call the Festival of Eternal Indifference. It seems that's how they treat the rest of the Galaxy most of the time.
Zodran Glii, The Essential Sights of the Galaxy
When the Klorn agreed to consider joining the Coterie, the finest and most experienced diplomats in the Galaxy mobilized for the task. Their first suggestion was to host the Klorn on any one of a hundred willing worlds. The Klorn did not respond. The second plan was to ask if the Klorn wished to host the discussions themselves. The Klorn did not respond. A million bureaucrats began to worry, fearing that the Klorn might back away from their agreement. Visions of magical new Klorn technologies and unexplored new Klorn sciences seemed just out of reach.
Art isn't defined by the work or the viewer. It's defined by the moment between the two.
Unknown
As usual, the Klorn paid little attention to the credentials of the diplomats that arrived on the Klorn homeworld. Negotiations stalled. First Contact Teams and xenosociological experts were called in. Position papers and proposals were written, discussed, and dismissed. The collected expertise of the Coterie failed to find a solution that would rouse the Klorn.
Are the Klorn in the Coterie? Politically, no. Geographically, their worlds sit in the heart of the Galaxy. You can't go from one side of the Galaxy to the other without going near or through Klorn space.
Zodran Glii, The Essential Sights of the Galaxy
In the end, the Coterie turned to a handful of individuals who'd had significant dealings with the Klorn in the past. The bureaucrats and diplomats were aghast, appalled, and assumed that nothing would come of it.
"You're not indifferent?" I asked, trying to make some conversation. There were no other Klorn in sight.
"I am kilgallen," was all it said, as if that explained everything. I still don't know what it means.
Captain Maggie Gale
The Klorn responded to a few select individuals. The Klorn would meet with the Coterie, if they were allowed to pick the Coterie representatives. When the various races of the Coterie tried to argue against this, the Klorn stopped listening again. In some cases, this was rather abrupt; a rather famously obnoxious Wipploi minister simply vanished, to reappear two days later in the midst of a rather smelly bleem herd three hundred light yearcycles from where he'd been. A second diplomat sent in to plead the Coterie case returned quietly, glowing with a soft scintillating orange nimbus and a demand to be transferred as far from the Klorn as was possible.
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
Henry Ward Beecher
The Coterie considered the question again, recalled the handful of individuals to service, and told them to consent to the Klorn demand. They were also asked to find an appropriate place for the discussions. Conclave World, a planet in the Core Worlds given over to the use of the Coterie, was the natural choice. It was relatively close to Klorn space, and there were corps of senior diplomatic representatives from most Coterie worlds in residence, despite being several yearcycles of travel from most of their homeworlds. Once again, the Klorn refused.
After a short time, the Klorn announced that the meeting would be held in F'nordalpl'een's bar, on the station at McCutcheon's Nebula.
Why plant a station there, at the edge of the unstable electromagnetic hell that is McCutcheon's Nebula? Nine big hyperspatial valleys meet at that point in space, making it easy to get to and from a lot of places. Besides, it makes a nice view from the bar at F'nordalpl'een's.
Zodran Glii, The Essential Sights of the Galaxy
The Station at McCutcheon's Nebula is a huge orbital habitat, millions of tons of hollowed asteroid, steel and nanofilaments, hanging on the edge of a stellar maelstrom. It's a popular destination for starliners, surprisingly easy to reach in hyperspace. It's also a well-known home base for asteroid miners and entrepreneurs, a hub of commerce and trade. There are always beings from dozens of races living and working there, with a thousand tales about this nexus in a forbidding pocket of a well-travelled spiral arm of the Galaxy.
Patrons are responsible for their own biology.
Sign over the bar at F'nordalpl'een's
To newcomers, after a long journey in the muted pastel fogs of hyperspace, entering F'nordalpl'een's is like learning the spectrum all over again. The brilliant colors from the nebula flood through the diamond-glass that stretches from floor to ceiling, along the entire length of the voluminous room. The place is famous for it. Tourists plan entire vacations just to come here, to capture their image in front of the turbulent vortices weaving ribbons of fire through incandescent gas clouds.
Great art picks up where nature ends.
Marc Chagall
There are rumors that the General Secretary for the Oversight of the Coterie suffered a significant "medical event" when it learned that the Klorn wanted to hold these negotiations in a tavern on a station with few political affiliations. It was not mollified by the answer that there were potables and intoxicants available for more than a thousand species. It accused the responsible individual of "flaming and callous disregard for the sensibilities of good politics."
You are remembered for the rules you break.
Douglas MacArthur
The Klorn would not hear of any changes. That General Secretary has retired. The Klorn have chosen their delegates. Those delegates have been briefed by their home governments and the Coterie. Meeting rooms around the station have been prepared for private conferences. All is in readiness.
Bets are now being taken at the bar, on everything and anything involved in the Telling.