Karrakis

Jewel of the Baronic Crown

A palace world, Karrakis is the capital of the Karrakin Trade Baronies.
Karrakis is home to Throne Karraka, the ancestral palace of the Karrakin peoples, now a sprawling estate-city grown to encompass roughly 8 million square kilometers. The original palace, the first colony of Karrakis, was seeded pre-fall: it is now a living royal museum, an enclave set inside the crown district of Karrakis City that incorporates remaining artifacts of their generation ship into public monuments, art, and architecture.
Karrakis is a temperate world, a Gaia planet seeded pre-Fall and left isolated during the Dark Age. It has developed divergent from Union for thousands of years, under the assumption that it alone had survived the Fall.
Karrakis is the heart of the Baronies and now home to the galaxy’s premier naval and finishing college, the Royal Karrakin Admiralty. Pro-Union Houses view attendance at the Admiralty as a necessary path for their children, and service as an honorable achievement. They are happy to send their children to the college, often at great temporal cost to their families, as local blink is far less developed in the Baronies than in Cradle -- this, some barons grumble, by design.
Following the introduction of mechanized chassis as a warfighting machine, the Karrakin Cavalry College adapted the new technology, and is now known for the quality -- not quantity -- of officer and machine its cohorts produce. While attendance and service in the Admiralty is still viewed as the most prestigious track for a Barony youth, attendance and service in the Cavalry is a parallel honor -- one more martial than mental.
Karrakis through the years has remained the jewel in the Baronic crown: a conservative, traditional world with rigid social structures, rituals, and protocol -- lit as well by small-but-bright cosmopolitan centers -- Karrakis nonetheless is the political and cultural heart of the Baronies. No one writes poems or odes to Cradle in Baronic space: Karrakis has replaced that old world in the heart of Baronic nobility and their subjects.
There are public and royal grounds on Karrakis, the division between the two areas heavily policed by royal guards, artificial or natural walls, and lander access. Non-Baronic subjects are only welcome on Karrakis by invite or diplomatic or economic mission; other worlds in the Baronic Concern may have similar prohibitions, but none as strict as the capital.

Geography

Karrakis is a palace world, and the capital of the Karrakin Trade Baronies – an oligarchic, interstellar federal monarchy near Cradle.
The planet of Karrakis is home to the Baronies’ original palace-city, Throne Karraka, a sprawling estate that has grown to become a city-within-a-metroswathe, blanketing roughly 4 million square kilometers. The original palace – the first settlement on Karrakis – is the royal administrative heart of Karrakis City, the metroswathe around Throne Karraka. Karrakis City is home to billions, a municipality unmatched in size, scale, and sheer planetary impact on any world in the galaxy.
Karrakis is a temperate Gaia world settled prior to the Fall by the Apollo – one of the Ten – and left isolated during the dark age before Union’s creation. Like the Aun, the Karrakin people developed divergent from Union for thousands of years under the assumption that they alone had survived the Fall. Recontact with Karrakis occurred under the First Committee via unmanned communications vessels sent to potential sites of pre-Fall colonies. Having flourished for nearly 7,000 years, Karrakis responded rapidly; the two cultures were gradually knit together through regular, though slow, communication, though physical first contact did not occur for centuries.
Unencumbered by the trauma of the Fall, the colonization of Karrakis was straightforward and the society that came about developed at conventional rates for millennia. By first contact, the Baronies had grown to be an advanced interplanetary empire laden with thousands of years of cultural history; by the time of the Deimos Event, the Baronies had already claimed stars under their own flag, built the first of their ring worlds, and charted doctrines of interstellar war.
Despite their massive head start, the barons were stunned when Cradle and her bickering children – the many peoples of post-Fall humanity – proved to be capable and formidable rivals on the galactic scale. Indeed, as Union grew in size and leapfrogged beyond Karrakis in interstellar acumen and fantastic technologies, the barons grew more and more frustrated with the new – to them – polity. Throne Karrakis, not Cradle, was the center of the galaxy in their minds. When Cradle disagreed, war broke out, and the barons – proud and assured of their place – were dealt a stunning, sobering defeat. In the end, it was the Deimos Event that called Union’s ships back from Karrakis’ skies; if it weren’t for the Deimos Event and Union’s meteoric rise to technological ascendancy, Karrakis may have been the seat of humanity’s power.
A series of embarrassing defeats followed for the Baronies as first Union, and Harrison Armory second, broke all dictates of honourable warfare and interstellar doctrine. The Baronies, cowed on a galactic scale, retreated and turned inwards. Let the young Union try to manage the galaxy; Throne Karrakis was the true prize anyways, and in ceding hegemony to Union, the barons could enjoy privileged positions as the galaxy’s major suppliers of industry – the guarantors of Union’s utopian dream.
It is a grim truth – and a cause of tension between the factions of the Third Committee – that whoever holds Karrakis has at least one hand on the levers of Union’s power. The Baronic embassy on Cradle is constantly trafficked by Union diplomats and officials, just as the Union campus on Karrakis is inundated with nobles and magnates.
Following the introduction of mechanized chassis as warfighting machines, the ancient Karrakin Cavalry College quickly adapted the new technology. Today, it is known for the quality of the officers and machines it produces, as evidenced by the military performance of the Baronic houses and the Free Companies. Similarly, learning from its defeats, the Baronies has established a well-respected naval college system, the Royal Naval Academy. While attendance and service in the cavalry are still viewed as the most prestigious course for young scions, attendance and service in the navy is a parallel honour – one more mental than martial.

Type

Planet

Owning Organization

Karrakin Trade Baronies