The Jax of Salk

The Jax are a conquering Psychic people from the planet Salk. Tall and elf-like, they are energetic, ambitious, and accustomed to judging a foreign land by what can be taken from it. Wealth, slaves, territory, and the prestige of opening a new world are enough to finance an expedition.

Jax society is patriarchal, aristocratic, and intensely elitist. Women nevertheless serve as warriors, sorcerers, and officers. Families arrange marriages to secure alliances and sustain population growth. The aristocracy can facilitate a desirable marriage as a reward, turning family, military advancement, and political favor into the same system.

Rank and Conquest

Jax titles precede the personal name.

• A Malyr belongs to royalty. Malyrs possess the status and resources to finance distant expeditions.
• An Elyr is a military commander. An Elyr may lead an army, a mercenary force, or an entire conquest.
• A Veyr commands one military or sorcerer unit.

Jax without one of these titles are addressed by name. The ranks describe authority rather than sex. A female Veyr commands her soldiers as readily as a male one, even within a society where dynastic power and marriage remain controlled chiefly by men.

Jax conquest does not require every expedition to be a royal army. An ambitious Elyr can gather soldiers and sorcerers around a possible world, then seek the support of a Malyr. A successful expedition enriches its patron and raises its officers. A failed one can disappear beyond a rift without weakening Salk itself.

The Sovereignty of the Mind

Every Jax awakens telepathy, but using it against another free Jax without permission is a serious violation. Telepathy can become surveillance, and surveillance can become domination. Military networks therefore require explicit consent; joining one places the soldier's thoughts within an officer's reach for a defined purpose.

Slaves receive no such protection. Jax may read, command, or dominate them freely. The same distinction governs first contact: a foreign mind is not necessarily treated as a sovereign mind. Jax morality protects membership and status before it protects thought.

The Distant Listening

Jax sorcerers cast Gate through collective rituals. Their listening rituals can also strengthen Rift Sense enough to find concentrations of Psychic life on another world. Ordinary warriors cannot tear open such passages by themselves.

The drow cities became the signal that drew the Jax toward Janashia. Their Psychic power could be heard from Salk, and fragments of emotion gave Jax listeners enough to imagine the bodies producing it. The first expedition came looking for an attractive and useful servant population beneath the world.

Humanity did not appear in that listening. Red mana has no presence in Rift Sense, so the people of the Ark seemed to possess neither magic nor any power worth fearing. Most humans in the Republic were not spellcasters, which confirmed the mistake when the first expeditions met them. The Jax classified humanity as labor, merchandise, and a weak population standing between an expedition and its true objective.

The War for the Drows

The first raids brought drow captives back to Salk. Jax nobles then discovered what a drow memory was worth to them. A drow could learn a language, military technique, court secret, or report from a distant province, remove that memory, and give it to a Jax. The Jax retained the knowledge as if they had learned it themselves. An enslaved drow became an assistant who could be taught, emptied, and taught again.

The discovery brought expeditions from many Jax countries. What began as exploration became a trade in abduction. The drow families resisted alone while Jax soldiers fought in disciplined formations, followed Psychic traces through darkness, and brought regenerating war trolls against drow summons. The other great drow cities were destroyed. Zaran Mor was occupied.

Human resistance changed the war. The Ark's territories united forces that had spent centuries competing with one another, but still lost ground until Archon cast the Partage in M1010. Its red magic had been absent from every Jax search. Archon liberated Zaran Mor, drove the invaders back through their Gates, carried the war to Salk, and closed Janashia with Planar Lock.

The military archives and great houses of Salk remember why they lost. They know Rift Sense cannot find red mana and that an apparently empty human can be a great wizard. When the planar seal falls with Archon and the Partage in M1705, the next expedition has no reason to repeat the first one's mistake.

The Drows of Salk

Several thousand drow slaves remained on Salk when Planar Lock closed. Over the next seven centuries they formed lasting servile communities within Jax houses. Many speak Jax and were born on Salk, Jax by the law of the place in the only sense the law allows them: property.

Jax masters keep these drows managed, protected, and safe. That safety suppresses the formative experiences that awaken drow Psychic powers. Most remain weak throughout their lives without their owners needing to understand why.

A drow can live about twelve centuries; a Jax, about four. The oldest slaves outlive successive masters and become the longest memory in a noble house. They serve as archives, tutors, and witnesses because they remember what a grandfather promised and what his heir tried to hide. A drow who awakens despite that protection becomes far more dangerous than the household expected.

The fall of the seal gives them a road back to Janashia. It does not decide whether Salk is the prison they must escape or the only home they have ever known.

Vaeraks

The favored Jax war beast is the Vaerak, a large hunter bred on Salk. Vaeraks guard ritual sites and follow Psychic traces that ordinary animals cannot perceive. They share their masters' blind spot: Rift Sense cannot reveal a human or any other creature whose magic is purely red.

Jax expedition forces are collected as playable NPC groups under Jax Warriors and Jax Sorcerers.