Jack Vance
Jack Vance was born in the smog-choked scrap colonies of Pryon IX, a planet more rust than rock. Pryon was an industrial hellhole, its atmosphere thick with coolant vapors and melted polycarbon slag. Corporations owned the skies, and survival was a game of barter, bluff, and betrayal. His mother was a mechanic who sold ship parts with explosive "surprises" built in. His father was a gambler who lost their habitat module in a game of Ghost Hand. Drake learned quickly that words could be weapons, that charm could steal more than a blaster ever could, and that trusting anyone was the fastest route to a body bag. By age twelve, he was running shell cons on visiting traders. At fourteen, he was boosting engines from half-stripped gunships. And at seventeen, he made the move that sealed his name in the data-halls of legend.
The Outlaw Years
Jack became a ghost with teeth. Smuggling weapons. Slipping Dominion patrols. Cheating pirates and out-talking bounty hunters. His reputation grew as a rogue who couldn't be caught and couldn't be trusted. He ran guns to rebel moons, partied with tech cultists, and seduced data couriers just to steal their encryption keys. His flask was never empty, and neither were his lies. He'd toast to "freedom" one day, then sell out an arms dealer the next. But it was never about wealth. Drake was chasing something else a sense of control, perhaps, or just the thrill of never being owned again.
The Breaking Point
It was a contract gone wrong on Kaldrith Prime that cracked the veneer. A job to deliver med-tech supplies turned out to be a cover for bioweapon trafficking. The Dominion dropped a vapor bomb to cover it up. The colony was wiped out. Drake survived. He stood in the wreckage, ash raining down, the screams of the dying still echoing in his memory. Something in him snapped. He couldn't laugh it off. He couldn't fly away. He wanted justice not for himself, but for the innocents burned in the crossfire of men like him.
Birth of the Zone Warriors
He started gathering misfits—people the Dominion wouldn’t expect to fight back. Outcasts. Former killers. Broken souls. Each one with a reason to rebel, a need to redeem, or just a desire to watch the stars burn. They called themselves the Zone Warriors, because they lived in the dead zones, the gray spaces between the law and the void. Drake, reluctantly, became their leader. Not because he wanted the job, but because everyone else trusted him to lie better than they could.