Forty-ninth House

The Forty-ninth House is one of the many families which make up the Zarnac Empire.

The Forty-ninth House of Zarn is unique in that it never formed a city state of its own following the arrival of the I'car-saluuman warrior caste on Zarn. Instead they became the knights of a more influential family, gaining prestige and honor in fighting for them. Through their skill, the city state they served grew into one of the twenty-three nation states that joined to form the Empire.

The Forty-ninth continued to serve as simple soldiers throughout the First Empire and the Republic. Their unerring honor and courage nonewithstanding, it was their dedication to no one government but to the protection of the people that allowed them to seamlessly move from serving one regime to the next. Though some would call this switching sides while the time was right, it was more a simple devotion to protecting those who could not protect themselves.

But, it was this mindset that proved the undoing of the Forty-ninth. In Federation year 2328, the leader of the Forty-ninth House was Nara. He had risen to the rank of Canum in the Imperial Forces and been knighted by the Emporer. It was thought by many that he would one day become the youngest Doloth in the Imperial Forces. But, this would not come to pass.

Though Nara did not ascribe to the beliefs of the Anti-Imperialists, he did not abide the slaughter of those who only wished to speak their mind in freedom. One day, his ship was escorting a freighter loaded with political prisoners to a penal colony. The order came from High Command to fake a border incursion by forces of the Baraban Confederation, disable his ship and destroy the transport. Nara rightly saw no honor in such an act, and refused. The transport reached the penal colony without incident.

When he returned to Zarn, Nara was stripped of his rank and title, and given a choice - take his dishonored house and go into exile, or live in shame and allow his house to be killed in retribution for his treason. Nara took the honorable route, sacrificing his place in Zarnac society for the lives of his family, and fled into exile.

Taking a few small ships and Nara's personal yacht, the members of the Forty-ninth left their homeland and journeyed into the vastness of space. After months of wandering, they found themselves in an uninhabited system whose only Class M planet was a jungle world teeming with indiginous lower life forms. There they landed, using the barrier field generator from Nara's yacht to create a shield which would hide them from detection should the Empire decide to come hunting for them. There they lived for decades, only venturing outside the barrier to gather wood for building and to tend the herds of azwaca they had brought along for food.

They managed to live blissfully in peace until the the late 2370's, when the United Federation of Planets established a colony on what they assumed was the uninhabited planet Deridous IV. The Zarnac watched from the shadows, knowing that one day they would be discovered. Sure enough, it happened when their over fifty year old barrier finally failed after years of throwing off radiation that had sterilized many of them.

Through the work of the Zarnac engineers and Federation Starfleet officers, the barrier was rebuilt, and the sterility was reversed for many of the afflicted Zarnac. They now continue thier peaceful existance, mindful that because of their brief contact with the outside universe, the Empire would come for them sooner or later.

It turned out, it would be much sooner. The Empire dispatched a task force of fifteen ships under the command of Sadoloth Athon, Son of the Tenth House. The force swiftly captured the Deridous colony and Starfleet base, forcing Starfleets forces to take refuge in the woods. But, thankfully, a massive force of forty-two Starfleet and fifteen Klingon ships called together by Admiral Custer (the sector commander) arrived just before the Imperial forces could liquidate the Forty-ninth. The Imperial force had no choice but to flee the system.

That was not the last of them, however. Approximately one year later, a force of Imperial Marines that had been hidden in the Deridian jungles launched an attack on the Federation colony. There was also an attempt to destroy the barrier field protecting the Forty-ninth House, but the explosive device planted at the base of the field was eaten by a local animal and detonated several hundred meters away. The bulk of this small force was wiped out by Starfleet forces, with the remaining few captured and sent to Starbase 83 for interrogation.

Now, more than a year later, everyone on Deridous is forced to wonder when the Zarnac will return again.