In the outer systems of many spheres there are often small habitable rocks, often no larger than a single hex. In the course of the year, a wayport will often be very close to a portal to the Phlogiston. If a captain times his trip right, he can go from his home port to a wayport, then a short distance to a portal, then through the Phlogiston, with another short trip to a wayport, where he refreshes his air and supplies.
Because the wayports' resources are easily exhausted they do not care to become centers of commerce, but a few captains know of them and make use of them to carry larger crews than they could safely do otherwise.
The wayports are usually small farming communities, settled by people who wanted to get away from the worlds. Figuring the small outer system rocks would be unlikely to become objects of struggle, they assumed that they would have few visitors. As intersphere traffic increased there were more accidental encounters between ships travelling between the spheres and these small outposts.
At first, the wayports couldn't do much to deter intersphere traders from replenishing their air, coming at unexpected times. During the First Unhuman war, whole fleets would sometimes show up at a wayport, looting all the food they could, and if they were humanoids, setting fire to everything before they left. Many wayports were depopulated, their air fouled, their carefully transplanted crops burnt.
The next wave of settlers of the wayport isles knew more about the intersystem trade routes. Once they knew the location of the permanent portals and the rivers of Phlogiston with respect to their orbits they could anticipate when ships would pass through. Some of the settlers used this knowledge to aid piracy. Slowly the piracy became more organized and became taxation. It was still more profitable to make stops at the wayports than to bypass them, but the wayports had more ships now. They often had enough ships to transport their entire (though small) populations.
For a while the wayports prospered and were independant, but the neogi slave trade and the build up towards the Second Unhuman war, and their own political feuds ended their independance. The Neogi wanted to control the wayports because then their ships could move more slaves, the elves wanted naval bases to keep an eye on the humanoids and suddenly there was a mad rush towards the suddenly strategic isles. Some powers tried to play one wayport faction against another, some disregarded the power of the wayport ex-pirate navies and tried to establish themselves by force, some came in as 'friends and protectors' of the wayport way of life.
Sometimes one faction would establish hegemony over a large arc of the wayports, so they'd have more control over trade from particular spheres in particular parts of the year, while another faction would dominate trade and travel between spheres at different parts of the year.
Adventure Hooks: PC's can come from the wayports for many reasons, they could've enlisted or been pressed into an inter-system fleet, they could be rebels against the isolationist tendencies of the wayport settlers, or they could be patriotic wayporters who want the wayports to be independant, and work to get more ships, more skills, more weapons to the wayports.
