Telacia

Telacia was the homeworld of the Dronos. A founding and generally leading member of the Tetrarchy of Mezlagob before it was absorbed into the Golden Empire in 102 ABY, it was located in the Mezlag sector of the. It was generally acknowleged as the birthplace of Orhyo, the official language of both the Tetrarchy and the Empire.

Geography
A world pleasant to both its native Dronos and many s and other aliens, Telacia's undeveloped areas were largely verdant, grassy plains. Many forests had been cut down by ancient Dronos as building materials and fuel, but the ones that remained were usually protected as parks and wildlife preserves. Domesticated livestock were kept on farms, but the wild livestock of the planet were not as large; both predators and their prey were almost always too small to pose a threat to a Dronos-sized sentient.

Some of Telacia's water was in its ice caps, although wide oceans separated the continents; only two of the six generally recognized continents were physically connected. The remainder was in wide rivers and lakes, as well as a few inland seas.

Telacia had a single moon. The Dronos had established mining bases on it, but its lack of atmosphere made the creation of a full colony more trouble than it was worth.

Society and culture
Telacia was a society of free elections and ample debate. The entire planet was unified under a single government, led by the Royal Consul, but was subdivided into smaller administrative states. With Consuls appointed by the Sovereign, the Dronos and the resident aliens monitored the election of the planet's Tribune with almost feverish intensity. In all levels of government and daily life, the measure of an argument was often which side expressed itself more convincingly and eloquently, rather than concerns of moral worth to one side or the other.

Unlike many planets in the Empire, the majority of citizens of Telacia were not bilingual. Orhyo was both the Empire's language and the native tongue of the Dronos, and thus they had no need to learn any others, though some who engaged in offworld trade for a living learned. The study of Orhyo was highly prized on Telacia, and proficiency in its extensive vocabulary a respected accomplishment. The Orhyo Literature program at the Grand Academy of Arts and Letters, Telacia's best known institution, was generally agreed by academians to be the Empire's finest.

Telacia's cultural openness to discussion and debate led it to have the largest population of aliens of any of the four Tetrarchy founding worlds. While not as well known for art as Tyras, the presence of numerous alien cultures on Telacia led the planet to have a rich diversity of art forms and several famous art museums.

History
The fauna of Telacia evolved with a plethora of herbivores and omnivores, but relatively few major predators. Packs of small predators were common, but the few large predators which could have endangered Dronos were hunted to extinction by the Dronos themselves or killed off by herds of other animals. When the Dronos evolved to sentience, established cities, and domesticated some herd animals, they furthered the decimation of predators by protecting their flocks. The predators could not subsist on the smaller prey animals which remained in the wild, and their desperation drove them into conflict with Dronos hunters, and ultimately death.

Generally safe from predators throughout their evolution, the Dronos evolved a deliberative style of communal decision-making that shaped the development of their societies. Across Telacia, few Dronos rose to (or kept) power based on force alone; however, Dronos could sometimes be persuaded to ally or even subordinate their cities or countries to others if they were convinced of the benefits of the change. Nevertheless, the majority of Dronos cities and states were either strict or representative democracies.

The Dronos developed limited space travel a few centuries before their encounter with the Tetrarchy. They knew Telacia's moon to be uninhabitable without an artificial colony, but established a few small moon bases to harvest the rare and strong metals they had found there. Most valuable, though the Dronos themselves were only familiar with some of its properties, was. In their spacefaring attempts, the Dronos also released probes into the galaxy with information about their society.

One of these probes was intercepted by a Mezzel scout ship, and the combined forces of Mezlagob and Hudrel arrived at Telacia with their army of soldiers and Hudrelan s. Telacia looked like an easy first conquest, but the Hudrelans allowed their s time to absorb Orhyo in order to communicate demands to the Dronos; they were interested in conquest and rule, not devastation. Once the droids could speak presentable Orhyo, however, the Dronos engaged the Mezzels and Hudrelans, asking endless questions about their plans, histories, and legal and philosophical systems. Stymied by this development, the aliens found themselves grudgingly impressed by the Dronos artistry with words, even through translation. The Mezzels were still open to conquest as planned, but the Hudrelans convinced their partners that the Dronos could be of use, turning Orhyo and its complexity into a weapon for the domination of other species. The Mezzels relented, and a Dronos was invited to become a leader of the alliance. With the addition of the Umdals shortly thereafter, the Tetrarchy of Mezlagob was formed.

Telacia prospered under the Tetrarchy's rule. Orhyo became the official language of the government, and in the initial decades of the Tetrarchy Telacia experienced a massive influx of scholars, lawyers, and government agents from other Tetrarchy worlds. Telacia also received a portion of the Tetrarchy's tax revenue equal to those of Mezlagob, Hudrel, and Ommol. Many Dronos found work in the government's bureaucracy, writing and revising laws and edicts.

When the Great Liberation began, Telacia staunchly supported the Tetrarchy. However, when Tariun Sakaros and Keltrayu engineered a shadowfeed onto the Tetrarchy's HoloNet, some Dronos began to consider the Empire's position. A few public demonstrations encouraging open debate with the Empire were allowed, but when the Empire won a stunning victory at the Battle of Tizgo V, dissenters began to disappear. Unused to the secret police suppression their vassal worlds experienced, the Dronos protested, and the spirit of rebellion began to grow covertly.

After the Empire captured the Vall`to sector, most Telacians could see that the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt. The death of the Dronos Tetrarch Dourshe deprived the species of its representative among the leadership. While the Dronos had never approved of strictly military conquest and rule by force alone, many contrasted the Empire's relative mercy to former Tetrarchy systems with the brutality the Tetrarchy had showed to Tershin and other worlds in the Romasi sector, not to mention the worlds it had briefly reclaimed from the Empire in the Xoquon sector.

Before Rin Sakaros could begin her final assault on the Mezlag sector, Telacian citizens led by Dronos politicians and scholar and consisting of a variety of resident species contacted her discretely and offered to surrender Telacia willingly. The Prime Fleet took the world and assisted the Dronos rebels in overthrowing the Tetrarchy loyalists, then went on to capture Hudrel, Mezlagob, and Ommol. Telacia lost some of its accumulated wealth immediately after the war as the Royal government claimed reparations for abused former vassal worlds of the Tetrarchy, but these sanctions were less punishing than those experienced by the homeworlds of the other leading Tetrarchy worlds.

When the Empire adopted Orhyo as its official language, Telacia experienced a second influx of alien species eager to master the language on its homeworld. Telacia's political importance faded under the Empire's rule, but it became an even greater center of philosophy and political discussion; Rin Sakaros was more tolerant of open debate than the Tetrarchs had ever been.