The great domed city of Yunqi stands on a hill overlooking a massive river of Mai, it’s huge shape, remeniscant of an compund eye one would see portruding on a fly, stands defiant under the hazy red sun whose rays scorch the black jungles. The great tributaries of Mai carry endless barges filled with grains and ores to the Yunqi spaceport, the single one that exists on Lanu, where, with the hellish screeches of steam, large, bulbous and malformed spaceships take off and land, bringing more and more slaves and workers to the new world.
In the centre of Yunqi, at the temple pyramid, like an unworthy god, sits Lei Fu, a poor replacement for his cousin, whose place he took. Lei concerns himself with carnal pleasures of flesh and substance, leaving the development of his planet to private companies, servants and friends, caring only for the next slave to pleasure himself with.
And the cities that sprang under Lei were befitting of the effort he put into them, the twin cities of Hei and Hunhe, little more than slums built around the edges of pits scarring the formerly lush jungles of this world, Jihua, the new grandest fishing port, a eternally damp and rusting pile of shacks on the ocean edge and Isge, the planned jewel of the south, slowly sinking into the swamp.
Despite this, Lei rules because of his guard, the fifty thousand castrated men, made to wear the parasite on their heads, it’s needles entering their nostrils and reaching deep into their brains, ensuring their loyalty as he sends them to break up one riot after another.
The people of Lanu, humans, free, enslaved, modified, mingle with hybrids raised to servitude, androids and robots, living in small, crammed and dirty cells some call homes, yet some cling to hope of change after their drug fueled work shifts, as demagogues and rabble rousers call to them.