Plakhán

Plakhán (pronounced /pləˈkɑːn/) is an onirarchy located on a series of islands near the eastern end of the Akararal Sea. Plakhán has little trade or interaction with other nations, managing to remain more or less self-sufficient.

Batirines

The first impression a visitor to Plakhán might get is one of emptiness—or at least, emptiness of humans and other natural creatures. The cities that fill the islands of Plakhán, as well as the oceans surrounding those cities, seem to be populated entirely by batirines. While in most onirarchies some basic labor is still performed by humans, here it's all done by specially designed varieties of batirine. Due to the extremely low rebellion rate of batirines, only the most minimal of law enforcement is necessary.

Most of Plakhán's batirines qualify as "inhabitants" only in a very generous sense. They are not intelligent creatures; they are well fashioned for their functions, but have no independent will of their own. This isn't to say that all the batirines in Plakhán are rote automata, merely going through predetermined motions. Those that serve as spies and law enforcement necessarily require some measure of initiative to do what they must. However, the number needed for these tasks is much less than in most lands—there's certainly no way the mindless labor batirines can rebel, so they need watch out primarily for the very rare invader from outside, or the practically nonexistent threat of internal rebellion by one of Plakhán's human inhabitants.

Humans

For there are humans in Plakhán, aside from the onirarchs, of course—there have to be to supply the dream energy that fuels the batirines and the onirarchs' powers. But the humans aren't seen out on the streets because they are given no reason ever to leave their residences—and indeed, little reason even to wake up. The humans of Plakhán are in almost perpetual sleep—lying densely packed in halls hidden away inside the buildings. They wake only to eat and to have sex—and they only do that in the waking world because it's ordered by the onirarchs so they can have new generations of subjects; as pleasurable as sex may be, it's just as pleasurable in the dreamworld. Batirines come in to bring them food and remove wastes; the average citizen of Plakhán, after his infancy, never physically leaves his sleeping hall, passing his entire real life in a single room, even if he may roam far in his dreams.

The onirarchs' initial idea behind keeping their populace forever asleep was to increase the amount of dream energy they would generate. Alas, this didn't work out; there seemed to be a daily limit to the amount of time they could actually spend in productive dreaming, and making them dream all day didn't appreciably increase the energy gained. However, it still seemed a desirable end, because it did decrease the potential for rebellion—if all the city's inhabitants were supposedly asleep in known locations, then anyone unaccounted for seen on the streets or anywhere other than a sleeping hall was either a rebel or an intruder. This theory has proved itself very well, and Plakhán has a virtually nonexistent resistance rate, surpassed only by Risinien, which keeps its citizens in place in an even more drastic way.

Dreams

One problem remained: dreams of joy and adventure supplied the main motivation the oneiriarchs had for keeping their populace content with—and even eager for—long hours of sleep. If the Plakhani people couldn't be kept dreaming all day, what would keep them happily sleeping? The onirarchs hit upon an efficient answer—using tabulator batirines interfaced with the citizens' minds to give them artificial dreams. Thus, even when a Plakhani citizen isn't dreaming naturally, he's still dreaming artificially, and the artificial dreamworld, unlike the natural one, the onirarchs can modify according to their exact desires.