System: Alrakis

Alrakis, a large, warm planet rich in metals, both in its rocky mountain ranges and on the barren surfaces of its three largest moons, has been an industrial prize for both the Lyran and Draconis states since the earliest days of the Great Houses. The rich mineral ores drew more mining, manufacturing, and shipping concerns to the planet than dedicated colonists at first, despite the planet's modestly fertile lands and deep, rich oceans. Two factors inhibited the early efforts to truly settle - rather than merely exploit - Alrakis.

The first is the planet's high gravity, which limited travel to the most hardy of settlers and workers, and their ships, but far more difficult to contend with was the dominant life-form, the vicious and territorial tigerfalcon. Adapted to the planet's high gravity, the tigerfalcon - a man-sized avian with black-striped, furlike feathers, a serrated beak, and four clawed feet - is much more powerful than any terrestrial bird of prey, and has been known to attack even small work parties in flocks of three to five. Hunting the tigerfalcon became not merely a sport but a matter of self-defense for the early Alrakan settlers. By the Star League era, the tigerfalcon menace had been contained enough to allow for widespread colonization, mostly centered on the large inland lakes and the metal-rich mountains of the northern Skopje continent.

Today, Alrakis remains an important mining and manufacturing world , exporting all manner of heavy industrial equipment, including heavy IndustrialMech designs and personal-support weaponry. Heavy military industry, discouraged by centuries of continuous raiding by House Steiner , never found a home on Alrakis. However, what this planet lacks in military sophistication, it more than makes up for in powerful native infantry defenders, a bonus made possible by mankind's adaptation to the local gravity.

The planetary capital city, Sigmundrac, is located on the northern edge of the large Lake Carantha on Skopje. Tarowena, a spaceport city and home to Desmond Arms, a maker of personal weaponry ranging from knives to heavy support lasers, is located on the southern supercontinent of Strumm. The equatorial continents of Kabast and Ronigawa are comparatively uninhabited, due to their inhospitable jungles, which are also the last major refuge of the native tigerfalcon.

There are no functional factories located on this planet.