Deathstalker Universe - Worlds

Worlds

• Virimonde is originally Owen Deathstalker's home, after becoming a rebel the planet is inherited by David (Daveed) Deathstalker, after his death it is given into the none-too-gentle Valentine Wolfe. Virimonde is an agriworld, given over totally to the growth and production of food for the rest of the Empire. Under the Deathstalker clan, food was grown using traditional, pastoral methods, and the population was relatively free. When David took over the planet, the population started to experiment with democracy. Lionstone used this as a reason to make an example of Virimonde, in the form of an invasion led by the High Lord Dram and Valentine Wolfe. The remarkable level of violence ("Up to 50 percent casualties among the civil population are acceptable") finally triggered the last chapter of the great rebellion, bringing about uprisings on every world of the Empire. Unfortunately for the planet, after the invasion the landscape was mainly ash and dirt, with a few ruins. By the time of the later books, the planet was inhabitable again, but very poor.

• Shub is the planet of the rogue AIs, though perhaps the term 'planet' cannot exactly apply to it. Shub is a giant supercomputer the size of a jovian planet the AIs built as their home. Its huge complexity is hardly understood by humans. Through the course of the series, only three human beings are allowed to visit Shub.

• Golgotha is the capital of the Galactic Empire, hub of trade and travel, home to the Imperial Court and the imperial capital city, Parade of the Endless and the infamous arena. A heavily urbanized world, Golgotha is also the home of the epser and clone undergrounds, not to mention the cyberats. Golgotha has been humankind's homeworld throughout history and the author gives some hints in Deathstalker Coda that Golgotha might be Earth in a far future.

• Haden/Wolfling World is the home of both the Hadenmen and the Wolflings, as well as the location of the Madness Maze. It is also deep in the Darkvoid, meaning that it should, by all logic, be nothing more than a frozen dustball, but unknown technology (possibly Haden or Wolfling in origin) keep parts of the planet underground habitable.

• Grendel is a world quarantined by the Empire, because it is the home of the Sleepers (often referred to simply as "Grendels"). The Sleepers are bioengineered killers, some of the most ferocious aliens ever encountered. When the Empress Lionstone eventually makes the decision to utilize the Sleepers as shock troops, it is found that the AIs of Shub have slipped past the quarantine somehow and captured most of the Sleepers, in order to turn them against Humanity.

• Technos III is a major manufacturing planet of the Empire, where the planet itself has disappeared under the interlocking factories. During the rebellion, Technos III was given over to the Wolfes in order to produce the new stardrive en masse.

• Shannon's World, also known as Halcedama, was a pleasure planet, a world-spanning theme park, before the AIs of Shub came. Shannon's World recreated a popular line of children's book using robots to animate the main characters, allowing their aristocratic customers to live out their childhood fantasies. But agents of Shub made the toys fully sentient. Many of them turned on the aristos in their care and butchered them, but others came to view humans as their parents and denounced the other toys as murderers. A civil war broke out between pro-Shub toys (who sought to wreak havoc offworld) and the pro-human toys. During the Great Rebellion, an Imperial general crash-landed on Shannon's world and became a prophet to the toys in the guise of Father Christmas, teaching them "all that lives is holy."

• Loki is a manufacturing planet that's constantly besieged by massive storm systems. In Deathstalker Honor, Jack Random and Ruby Journey go there to put an end to rebel forces that had aligned themselves with Shub.

• Lachrymae Christi is a leper colony. The world that is entirely covered by blood-red plants that evolved naturally over millions of years. It has always rained there, and complex underground caverns hold the water before it is evaporated into the atmosphere to fall again. The plants are mobile and part of a large consciousness dubbed "The Red Brain," which Moon taps into during Owen and Hazel's last stand to defend the colony from an army of Grendels.

• Mistworld is a rebel planet where the Empire holds no sway. Populated by renegade espers, criminals, bounty hunters, deserters, and revolutionaries, Mistworld is a harsh place with bitterly cold and miserable weather. The espers maintain a mental shield around the planet to protect it from Imperial attack, but the Empire has developed several anti-esper weapons in order to defeat them. Typhoid Mary (in Mistworld from Twilight of Empire) and Legion (in Deathstalker Rebellion) are two of the most recent, and the most deadly.