Pulse of the Imperium

Map of Lankiveil

Lankiveil is the fifth planet of the Kornephoros (Beta Herculis A), distantly orbiting the yellow giant. For most of its 500-million-year history, Lankiveil lay sealed within ice, but as its ageing sun grew bigger and brighter, the thaw began at the equator. Roughly 2 million years ago, open water broke through to the surface, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere and revealing a rich microbial ecosystem of a hidden ocean as well as archipelagos of volcanic crags which the glacial counterweight and volcanic uplift had serrated from the seafloor.

It wasn't until the bioseeding efforts of the Old Empire, however, that the planet became breathable and a home to a diverse marine ecosystem, including the majestic fur whales that have adapted well to their new environment. Ever since, the pelagic band between the tropics has been the hotbed of all life on this frigid planet, ice sheets reigning over the dead zones everywhere beyond. Habitation on the planet has ever been near subsistence, and ever too close to collapse. It was where Abulurd Harkonnen went to exile after the Battle of Corrin, and from where House Harkonnen, against all odds, would eventually spring back into galactic prominence with a vengeance.

With whale hunting as its only real and quite stable source of income and the intertropical ocean the only nutritional lifeline for the inhabitants, Lankiveil has remained a rustic backwater, and even the Harkonnen treat it as such from their proud capital on Giedi Prime. It has long slipped into custodianship of a mostly indigenous House Rabban along with an outsized title of a Count, now held by Glossu 'Beast' Rabban.

The current Count of Lankiveil is an overlord of a pitiful score of fjord-nestling villages, whaling outposts and remote Buddhislamic monasteries, the state of affairs he, very unlike his father, viciously detests. He delivered an ample proof of this abhorrence by massacring whales at their nursery in Tula Fjord, then by destroying Bifrost Eyrie, which used to be the cultural and spiritual centre of the Jainist Buddhislam on the planet, and eventually - by patricide.

In stark contrast to their Count's utmost cruelty, a significant portion of the population rejects violence on religious grounds even as the best they can count on is moral victories. Recently, they have been caught between Rabban's oppression and Atreides retaliation, the latest raid several months ago devastating their fishing and whaling industries, halting exports and pushing the people to the brink of famine.

Humiliation notwithstanding, Rabban couldn't care less. For House Harkonnen, Lankiveil has long primarily been the icy graveyard of old dark secrets and the vault for breeding new ones.

Aarnikotka means griffin in one of the languages of the Old Terra. The name reaches way back to this area being settled by Abulurd Harkonnen in the wake of the Battle of Corrin. What was first in Harkonnen history to inspire the symbol: the crest, the region, or the name of the Abulurd's great-grandson, is hard to tell at this point.

The Harkonnen have failed to transform the region in any substantial manner, and not for the lack of trying. Nature still reigns and refuses to yield, hiding its treasures below ice or in oceanic depths. The labyrinthine small islands and fjords of the region fracture the cold ocean but also keep the local communities isolated, cloistered, and doomed to heroic self-reliance. Subsistence farming, traditional fishing and egg gathering is usually all that keeps local peasants from death of starvation. What sustains them is a hope that one day may again be ruled by a lord like Abulurd Rabban, who shared Harkonnen spice wealth with them.
The region's central part, along the Tula Fjord, where the 'capital' is located, has lost its economic meaning since Glossu Rabban's spiteful devastation dealt to it in the process of wresting power from his father's hands two decades ago. The whaling industry has moved eastward, toward the open ocean, along with the cargo spaceport, the old one to the south falling into disuse and disrepair.

That 'capital' used to be called Abulurd's Village, but the Beast has changed this parochial name into a grotesque one - the Slaughterhouse, which sadly encapsulates both his gloating about his misdeeds and the promise of cruelties to come. Little of the town's original wooden architecture remains; what has survived is dwarfed by the new bulky, brutalistic ferrocrete structure on the outskirts.

The western reaches of Aarnikotka remain the most pristine, in all their severe and windswept beauty. Human habitation here is sparse and limited to Buddhislamic monasteries, perched atop cliffs or hidden in the passes of icy mountains. Before its destruction, Bifrost Eyrie served as the spiritual and intellectual center of the region, administered by the original Rabban family. Though the damage to it is irreversible, the southern monastery of Veritas has reluctantly assumed the mantle of a regional religious hub. It is also believed to be the last place of retreat for Emmi Rabban, Glossu’s mother.

The rest of the region is an inhospitable wasteland—ever threatened by being crushed between the advancing northern glaciers and the encroaching ocean. Avalanches, subglacial quakes, and methane seepage from the fjord floor are not uncommon.

The land endures — but only just. The recent Atreides raid has set it back many years, and its recovery remains uncertain. Its inhabitants keep praying for the whales to return to their pre-massacre migratory routes.