Khalan

Khalan is a planet claimed by the Second Konabian Empire, and put to use as a vast prison. All the planet's surface is devoted to the cause of keeping the prisoners secure; Khalan has no industry or resource exploitation other than the incarceration of criminals.

Given Khalan's escape-proof reputation, it is used to house some of the most infamous and most dangerous criminals in the whole Empire. However, not every prisoner there is so egregious. Some much less notorious criminals who happen to be captured nearby are sent to Khalan out of convenience; others may end up there due to political reasons. Of course, the worst of the criminals are kept in the highest-security areas and are segregated, at least in principle, from the more minor miscreants.

Prison system

Necessarily, as a prison covering an entire planet, Khalan is not filled with walls and cells. On the contrary, while some prisoners are kept in closer quarters and watched more carefully (particularly those with psionic powers that may make them dangerous to other inmates or to the prison's security), for the most part its prisoners are able to range over a fairly wide area. They are, however, monitored through special implants in their bodies, and, in theory at least, the guards know where they are at any moment. In practice, this is truer in some parts of Khalan than in others; the guards in some areas are perpetually vigilant and keep the prisoners on a tight leash, while in others they adopt a laissez faire attitude and let the prisoners do more or less whatever they want, up to and including killing each other, as long as they don't endanger the prison staff or try to escape.

In any case, however, trying to escape is probably a fruitless task. Space above Khalan is filled with satellites, all set to destroy any ship that enters or leaves the atmosphere. These same satellites also set up a field that prevents teleportation on or off the planet. Supplies are airdropped from outside the atmosphere, not carried in by ship—as, for that matter, are new prisoners, stuck in a box with a parachute through the long fall through the atmosphere to the surface, where the prison's wardens finally open the box and get them out. The satellites can be programmed to temporarily allow passage through a small area, both to allow these airdrops through (since otherwise even they would be destroyed by the cerberean satellites) and to let by the infrequent shuttles. The satellites can only be shut off from the outside, though; they do not respond to any signals from Khalan's surface. Among other things, the shuttles carry off released prisoners, though there are few of these... a sentence to Khalan is usually a sentence for life.

One of the most effective ways the government of Khalan keeps tabs on its prisoners is by spies planted among them. Some government agents either with natural telepathic abilities that allow them to communicate unobtrusively with the prison officials or with cybernetic enhancements granting them such powers are brought to the planet and treated in every way as if they were prisoners, the idea being that the real prisoners will take them for fellow convicts and the spies will accordingly be able to infiltrate their societies and find out what's really going on there. For the most part, this works extremely well. The main disadvantage is the difficulty of recruiting the spies. The spies can't be given any special treatment, or it would blow their cover, and must be left in their position for many years, since it may take that long for them to become trusted enough to really learn the prisoners' secret plans. This makes it hard to find sufficient motivation to make men take the job. For the most part, the spies are people who either have loved ones elsewhere they want to provide for (and who are paid for the spies' services), or who are willing to put up with conditions on Khalan for a few years in exchange for ample pay when they're finally brought out—if they live long enough to fulfill their tour of duty.

Economy

Khalan has no imports or exports, per se, unless one counts the prisoners themselves. It is funded by the Imperial government, and more specifically by the Bureau of Corrections. Occasional schemes are bruited to make Khalan help pay for itself by engaging the prisoners in some sort of manufacture, but they have never been put into action; it is feared that putting any such infrastructure in the prisoners' hands could provide too easy a means to help them escape.

There is no regular trade back and forth to Khalan—or even regular transportation. Even the guards and other prison staff stay there continually, a daily commute of personnel providing too much opportunity for prisoners' escapes. Within any given administrative district, shuttles arrive about once every twenty days, on an irregular schedule (to prevent the prisoners' plotting any sort of ambush). These shuttles bring necessary supplies (those too valuable to airdrop) and a rotation of personnel, taking one shift out and bringing another in. Naturally, the shuttles are very carefully searched and scanned before leaving, and all shuttle operations are done in the utmost security.

While Khalan has no trade with other worlds, however, it does have an internal economy, of sorts. The prisoners trade amongst themselves for certain favors, preferred accomodations, and what other meager goods and services they can manage to acquire. The media of exchange for this unofficial economy varies from place to place, and frequently changes, as the guards find out about it and try to quash this vestige of the prisoners' autonomy. Ironically, however, many groups of the Khalanian guards have a similar unofficial economy going on, being themselves stuck on the planet for long periods of time without easy access to new supplies.

One potential problem that has been accumulating on Khalan is that of waste disposal. The garbage produced by the numerous prisoners and operations on the planet has long been accumulating, and little effort is made to do anything to improve the situation. There has been talk of having the shuttles that bring in supplies also take out trash, but so far this has not been implemented, and seems unlikely to be unless the problem grows too large to ignore and no other solution can be found. Government officials believe there is too much risk of prisoners somehow finding a way to stow away in the trash if it were taken off the planet, and that the less the shuttles take out with them the better.

Geography

The world of Khalan is mostly covered with water, with four continents three of which are longer in the north-south direction than the east-west. Its land is rough and mountainous, covered with some scraggly vegetation imported from other terrestrial planets. The seas have never been fully explored, though there are facilities within them for the containment of aquatic prisoners, as well as domed cities under and atop the oceans where the highest-security areas for the landbound prisoners are located.

The very barrenness of the land is the main factor keeping prisoners near the guard facilities. With the exception of those high-security prisoners kept in closely confined quarters, most of the prisoners on Khalan are not hemmed in by walls, but can in principle wander about the land as far as they want. What usually keeps them from wandering far is that it is back at the prison facilities where the food and supplies are. Living off the harsh land of Khalan is not an easy task. There are those who manage to do it, nevertheless... but of course even they are stuck on the planet, and the prison still serves its purpose.

History

Khalan's prison records date back four hundred and eighty years, from its establishment as a prison by decree of the then-Emperor. It first contained only a few scattered facilities, but over time it grew and, as the satellite system was established, the government saw less need to keep most of the prisoners in walled areas, and began to more and more use the entire planet as one big prison.

In all the history of Khalan, there has never been a verified large-scale prison break. There are, however, a number of rumors of escaped prisoners supposedly "hushed up" by the government. The highest-profile of these was a notorious scam artist named Gatan Tairdy. According to official reports, Tairdy was killed on Khalan by an earthquake, but many people believe this is only a cover story, and that what really happened is that he somehow escaped and lived out the rest of his life under an assumed name. No one has suggested, however, exactly how he or any of the other alleged escapees managed to pull off this feat.

Inhabitants

Officially, Khalan is supposed to have no inhabitants other than the prisoners and some guards and other support staff who, at least for some periods of time, live on the premises (although in quarters far removed from those of the prisoners, and of significantly higher comfort level). However, in practice this isn't necessarily true. For one thing, some of the prisoners have had children. Given the half-hearted attempts to segregate the prisoners by gender, this isn't surprising—there are separate detention centers for male and female prisoners, but those centers are separated by nothing more than open terrain, and it's not too hard to walk through them. Official policy is that any children born to prisoners are taken off Khalan and placed into orphanages elsewhere—this being another commodity the shuttles take off the planet. However, a few children may be hidden by their parents or otherwise overlooked, and it seems that there is a decent population—much smaller than the prisoner population, but still non-negligible—hidden away somewhere in the wilds of Khalan. What these Khalan natives live on is an open question, given the planet's general inhospitality and their lack of access to the supplies that support the prisoners and staff, but apparently they manage to make enough use of Khalan's sparse plant life to get by.

These natives may not be the only people on Khalan besides the prisoners and guards, however. There are stories of others, too, who might be there: devoted friends and lovers of some of the prisoners who have made their own way to Khalan to be with the ones they care about, refugees who decided that life on Khalan is better than being caught by whoever is after them (and after all breaking into Khalan is easier than breaking out of it), and rogue scientists who have arranged with the imperial government to be allowed to establish labs on Khalan away from prying eyes (and where perhaps they can experiment on prisoners). With regard to these rogue scientists, some say their experiments have borne an odd sort of fruit, and that out-of-the-way corners of Khalan are now haunted by weird monsters engendered by their experiments... though that may very well be just baseless rumor.

Government

The leader of Khalan is an official called the Archwarden, who has supreme dominion over all the prison's doings, subject of course to the Emperor and his ministers. Under the Archwarden, twelve Overwardens preside over large areas of the planet, in turn supervising Wardens and finally Underwardens who supervise single detention centers. The current Archwarden is a humorless mandrile named Colonn Pshall who prides himself on his integrity, particularly in comparison with the corruption of many of his predecessors, although the truth is that Pshall isn't quite as incorruptible as he likes to think—he's just very good at justifying his actions to himself.

This imperially appointed hierarchy, however, is not the only government of Khalan. It may be the official government, but many of the prisoners have developed their own pecking orders, ranging especially where the guards' vigilance is particularly lax to full-fledged, complex shadow governments. Most of the prisoners' governing structures are unmolested by the official government only because they remain unknown or are considered unimportant; the guards try to monitor the prisoners' positions, but can't account for their every action. Some of them, however, have attained a sort of quasi-official status through bribery or favors toward the local guards. In any case, survival on Khalan usually means adhering to the laws of the prisoners' leaders as well as those of the official imperial government.

Society

Nominally, Khalan serves not only to detain its prisoners, but also to correct their ways. In practice, there's relatively little of this going on. Teachers and priests are occasionally brought in by shuttle to try to minister to those prisoners who seem most tractable, but only a tiny fraction of the prisoners are ever contacted by them, and of those only a small fraction ever seem to genuinely be much affected. For the most part, the prisoners are left to their own devices, as long as they don't seem to be causing too much trouble for the staff. This has led to their forming their own societal structures... not just their own governments, as already mentioned, but in other ways as well. Though the details vary regionally, prisoners on Khalan have their own laws, their own marriage customs, sometimes their own religions.

Many of the prisoners engage in commerce with other prisoners, using what skills and resources they have to produce goods and services they can trade with the other prisoners. Some seek out and gather edible plants and other useful materials; others build tools and structures; others produce works of art with what few implements are at hand. Still others provide services for other prisoners, ranging from education through medical care to prostitution. Not all service is voluntary, however; in many places, the prisoners have instituted forms of slavery.

Some of the prisoners have even claimed territory in Khalan's land. These claims are not recognized by the official government, but if they're enforced by the prisoners' unofficial government, that's often good enough. These prisoners may set aside their land for particular purposes (including as commercial establishments), or they may keep them to themselves; either way, however, they're likely to deal harshly with trespassers. Perhaps the biggest "land-owner" on Khalan is a goran named Closter, who controls several square kilometers he runs as a sort of private resort he calls simply "The Field". He allows guests in, for a fee (negotiated on a case-by-case basis), but those who he finds in his domain without his permission are enslaved, or worse.