interminable civil war between two castes—the Amakuras and the Castakas—who adhere to respective versions of a once-shared warrior code, known by the Amakuras as Bushikara and by the Castakas as Bushitaka. One day, the Castakas' queen Oriela was abducted by the Amakura king Divadal, taunting her king Omezo by publicly raping her and taking her hostage. Omezo, employing guile over the established codes of combat, overwhelmed the Amakuras, but not before Divadal released a bioweapon that rendered every man on the planet sterile. Oriela, having been shielded from the weapon, gave birth to Divadal's son, Dayal—the last fertile male on the planet, spared in contravention of the bushitaka due to necessity—then committed ritual suicide eight days later, leaving him only a bite on his shoulder as a memento. Once of age, Dayal became a breeding-stud to all the Castaka women, but once his offspring came of age themselves, Omezo gave up concealing his disgust at his half-Amakura "stepson" and banished him. His mentor General Pakko matched him with his daughter Antigrea, whom he had conceived just before the assault on the Amakuras, and despite initial antipathy they fell in love. Antigrea bore Dayal twin daughters, Myrtha and Narda, but Dayal's disappointment at lacking a male heir drove him to withdraw to the wilderness, hunting wild game, while Antigrea and Pakko raised the twins in the martial arts. Some years later, the Technopriests elected to build their new space station in Ahour's system. While they saw the planet as no inherent threat, their concern that an enemy might use it as a bridgehead led them to lobby the ageing Omezo to install planetary defences on-world. When he declined, they infected him with a virus in hopes his heir (Dayal) might be more accommodating. The dying Omezo abhorred having Dayal succeed him and ordered the murder of him and his family, but Pakko bought time for them to reunite at Dayal's remote bunker. The Technos, witnessing the failure of their machinations, destroyed the whole planet, leaving the bunker adrift as an asteroid. There, Dayal finally acknowledged his warrior daughters and completed their training. The family hijacked a Techno convoy and leveraged its booty and their lethal martial skills to claim leadership of the pirate asteroid of Thor-Thougah, from which they wage a bloody and profitable offensive against the Technos. Eventually, the Technos catch the pirates in an ambush and Antigrea is mortally