Drinax

 In the days of its strength, the Kingdom of Drinax – or, to give it its proper title, the Star Dragon Empire of Sindal in Exile – ruled many worlds across Tliowaha subsector. Tliowaha, of course, is the Aslan name; old charts still call it Drinax subsector. The heart of the Kingdom of Drinax was the arc of planets first named by Solomani settlers in the age of the Second Imperium. These worlds were named for the great visionary writers of old Terra – Banks (now Khusai), Stross (now Kteiroa), Asim, Pourne, Hilfer, Paal, Torpal, Clarke and Blue. Beyond these core worlds, the Kingdom also had a presence in two dozen other systems across the subsector and beyond. 

Of course, the Kings of Drinax also claimed to be the heirs to the vanished Empire of Sindal, and if one were to accept that right, then half the sector legally belongs to them. That particular Empire of Sindal arose in the year -2000 and ruled for 600 years, although for much of the last 200 years it was riven by internal dissent, rebellions, and brutal punitive attacks on its own vassals. The Sindalian Empire finally fell around -1400, when the imperial seat at Noricum was bombed to oblivion. 

Half a dozen regional dukes proclaimed themselves Emperor or King, and the Kingdom of Drinax was the longest-lasting of these pretenders. From -1400 until the year 902, a span of more than two millennia, the Kings of Drinax ruled over their domain, guarding their vassal worlds from invaders and pirates. For most of their reign, the Kings were wise and well loved. It was only around the year 700, under the disastrous reign of Glaco IX, called the Vengeful, when Drinax started using the old tactics of Sindal and bombed their vassals to keep them in line. The Kingdom became increasingly unruly in the face of the growing Aslan threat, and the outer worlds broke away from the cruel yoke of the Kings. 

Matters came to a head in 884, when King Oleb XIV placed a tax of 20% on all trade between the Third Imperium and the Aslan Hierate that passed through the Kingdom. The Aslan response was swift, deadly, and all too fitting for the descendants of Sindal. They bombed Drinax from orbit.

THE FEW & THE FORGOTTEN 

Few Travellers visit Drinax today. According to the charts of the Imperial Scouts, the planet still has a Class-A Starport, but the charts are centuries out of date. Drinax is a dead world. There are no settlements on its surface, only the scars left by the Aslan when they bombed the cities from orbit. The once-fertile grasslands were seared to deserts; the forests where the kings of old hunted were razed. The seas bloom red with algae after they were boiled to death. Few live on Drinax anymore. 

They live above it. 

A sense of irony is shared by both Humaniti and Aslani. The Hierate’s invasion force spared the famous floating palace of the Kings of Drinax. They blasted the cities and laid waste to the countryside, but did not touch the golden grav-platform or any of the palace’s elegant domes or delicate towers. They exterminated millions of commoners, but let no harm come to the nobles, servants, sycophants and courtiers on the Floating Palace. 

The survivors of the invasion, numbering a scant few thousand, had to adapt to survive. The glorious Hanging Gardens, said to be a wonder of the sector, were cleared of their exotic blooms from a hundred worlds and turned into hydroponics bays. Delicate nobles who had never worked an honest day in their lives suddenly found tools thrust into the hands. The early years were not easy. Blood stained the diamond tiles of the King’s Seraglio, and the ancient Scrolls of the Prophet Zaol were used for kindling. Still, the people of the Floating Palace survived. In the months before the invasion, the King had ordered the staff of the great university to transfer their best scientists and equipment to the Scholar’s Tower, so they were able to retain the bulk of their scientific knowledge. The Drinaxi still have TL15-era knowledge, although they lack the mineral resources to put it to use. With most of the world below still radioactive, diseased or simply scorched beyond use, all the knowledge in the galaxy is useless when you have no copper or steel or rare earths with which to forge your wonders. 

Behold, then, the Floating Palace – a flying city, an aerial pleasure-dome of surpassing beauty, of endless wonder... and utter despair. 

LIFE IN THE FLOATING PALACE 

Imagine you are a craftsman, an artist, a scientist, an engineer, the best in your generation. You trained for years, studying under the previous masters, honing your talents with endless practice. You produced works of surpassing excellence, works combining wild genius and perfect technique, until you were ready to make your masterwork, your legacy to the ages. You worked for ten years - ten sleepless, obsessive, glorious years – ignoring the outside world, ignoring everything except the fire in your soul that drove you to this act of creation. Finally, exhausted and emotionally shattered, your masterwork was done, and you proudly presented it to the King of Drinax. 

Now, between all the possible fields of creation and study, from sculpture and painting to weapon-smithing to astronomy to molecular biology, let us assume there are a dozen such masterworks in every generation across a single planet. These masterworks are things of such staggering genius that they will be remembered for centuries. A dozen from each generation of artists and creators... from every one of thirty worlds that owed fealty to Drinax... for more than fifty generations. If you take, say, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or Taj Mahal as your baseline, then the Floating Palace of Drinax is crammed with around 20,000 such works of staggering genius, along with ten times as many lesser works and treasures from across the stars. Add onto that all that they looted from the Sindalian empire and from other worlds, including the Ziru Sirka. 

Walking into half the rooms in the Floating Palace is like being hit in the face by a firehouse of baroque beauty. Where do you look first? At the onyx floor inlaid with a map of the subsector made from artificial diamonds that are lit by hidden lasers to perfectly match the colours of every star, or at the dozen Hiver scented sculptures imported at great expense from the far side of Charted Space, or the first printings of the entire works of the Sindalian poetess Shing Za Zoha that spill from the bookcase that was carved from the living heart of a genetically engineered amber-plant, or the vaulted ceiling decorated with animated holograms of the Seven Glorious Deeds, the Nine Celestial Virtues and the Eight Seasons of Drinax? 

The splendour is so great that it distracts you from the absurdity. The Floating Palace is absurdly overcrowded. Every ballroom and feasthall is home to a dozen families; children play among the works of art and technological wonders. The people ‘make do’ amid the greatest collection of art in the whole sector, stringing washing lines between golden statues, and using ancient tapestries as blankets. 

When the Aslan destroyed Drinax and the survivors crowded into the Floating Palace, the divide between noble and commoner vanished overnight. Back then, there were some twenty thousand survivors, split evenly between the titled aristocracy, courtiers and other nobility, and the servants and lower classes. Two hundred years of interbreeding grew the population to some forty thousand, and every single one of them has inherited at least one title. These titles are not used from day to day, but Drinax clings tightly to formality and ritual, so every plumber and hydroponic farmer in the Floating Palace can list their lineage and titles. 

The Floating Palace is the size of a city, a flying Gormenghast of plas-steel and carbosamite. It is easy to get lost in the endless maze of hallways, monumental chambers and spiralling towers. The palace mixes the wonderful and the absurd at every side. To take a prosaic example, the bathrooms are all made of shimmering silver, with delicate fountains sculpted by microgravity generators in the walls into the shape of nymphs and dolphins, with baths large enough to drown in that that sing to you as you bathe – but because the Floating Palace is no longer visited by water-barges from the planet below, the inhabitants must collect rainwater in barrels to fill the ornamental lakes and reservoirs. Similarly, the Palace had a hundred ornamental gardens but no farmland beyond the hydroponics; a hundred palatial galleries and ballrooms but no factories beyond a few small workshops. The inhabitants of the Floating Palace may have all the ball-gowns, starched military uniforms and glittering jewellery they desire, but there is a distinct lack of vacc suits and engineering overalls. Notable locations on board the palace include: 

The Dragon Throne: Looted (or so the legends say) from the Sindalian Throne World of Noricum before it fell, the Dragon Throne is older than the fabled Iridium Throne of the Imperium (a fact that the courtiers of Drinax never fail to point out to visiting ambassadors). The Dragon Throne is made from fragments of fused hull-metal from ships defeated and captured by the Star Guard over the last three thousand years; even though every ship only contributes a scrap of metal, the throne has still grown into a huge, ugly monstrosity like a dragon’s skull. King Oleb only drags the thing out for formal occasions, preferring a more comfortable grav-couch most of the time. 

• The Throne Room: The old Throne Room was converted into a hangar, so King Oleb’s throne room is now a much smaller affair. The walls are laseretched platinum showing the deeds of his ancestors, and there are long low benches on either side for his ‘courtiers’. As almost everyone on board the Floating Palace can claim a noble lineage of one sort of another, the king’s actual courtiers and advisers are chosen for their practical knowledge and wisdom, not their family connections. 

• The Scholar’s Tower: Drinax maintained its high level of technology by sheer chance – the best academics and a full copy of the planet’s scientific corpus were moved to the palace mere weeks before the Aslan attacked. Of course, with such a small population to draw from, the Scholars of the intervening two centuries have made no new discoveries, but they have preserved the knowledge of the ancients. The small staff of the Scholar’s Tower are easily the best university in the subsector; students come from across the stars to learn here, and their fees are one of Drinax’s few sources of income. 

• Rachando’s Bazaar: After the King, the most powerful figure on the Floating Palace is one of the few without noble blood. Rachando the merchant sells high-tech gadgets, art and relics offworld and imports vitally needed supplies. He came to the Floating Palace five years ago on board his free trader, the Invisible Hand. The King begrudges every treasure he sells to Rachando, but has little choice in the matter. Every trade Rachando makes diminishes the past glory of Drinax to preserve its fragile future. 

• The Starport: The Aslan destroyed the original starport of Drinax, but the King’s personal starport qualifies almost as a Class A port. It lacks a shipyard, but can repair any ship that lands there and has absolutely luxurious fittings for both crews and vessels. 

• The Underlinth: The underlinth refers to the network of access corridors, drains and secret passages that riddle the huge platform that supports the Floating Palace. It is the shadow side of the palace, used by spies, smugglers and conspirators. 

• Gravity Dungeons: The dungeons are on the lower side of the platform. The huge anti-gravity generators that hold the Floating Palace suspended above the ground are so powerful that they create zones of intense gravity within themselves. Prisoners kept within the gravity dungeons are held in cells by three or more gravities. The closer to the anti-grav generators, the more intense the field; the deepest cells are under a bone-crushing 20G.

THE SCORCHED WORLD OF DRINAX 

Below the Floating Palace, Drinax is a wasteland. The Aslan dropped rocks from space on much of the planet. Dust clouds choked the skies for years, plunging the whole planet into a long impact winter. Major population centres were blasted with plasma weapons and disease bombs; millions died at the claws of the conquerers. 

Two hundred years later, the planet is slowly healing. Green shoots cover the impact scars, and new forests are growing in the ashes of the old. It will be another thousand years before the planet is close to its former vitality, and some wounds will never heal. The spores of the Aslan biological weapons still sleep in the overgrown ruins of the cities, so Drinax may never be safe for human occupation. 

The Vespexers are tribes of humans who live on the surface of Drinax. Most are the descendants of survivors; others are exiles from the Floating Palace. The Vespexers are a hardy folk who subsist primarily by hunting and gathering, although they have farms in a few sheltered valleys. They wear protective hazard suits made by the craftsmen of the Floating Palace to protect them from the dangers of Drinax. The Vespexers are technically subjects of the King of Drinax, but obey no laws except those of their tribe. The Floating Palace trades hazard suits and other worked goods for food and raw materials.