Alkam Palace
Overview: Alkam Palace is the house of Prince Sviastoslav Alkam, 94th of his name, and regent of the Alkam Principalty. The palace is sitting atop small mountains dominating the area occupied by the Alkam University, as if its gothic spires and sinister defences are a reminder of whom the universitariat is obliged to.
Purpose / Function
The Alkam Palace is an ancient construction predating the era of the Great Crusade and was built as the seat of power of the alleged founders of Jonovah, whom where vassals of the great Alkam Dynasty.
At the time, the Palace was the greatest fortification and the richest seat of power of the world, but it decayed to the point of being only a historical artefact when the Alkam dynasty disappeared from the political arena, barely maintained by serfs and familial servants while the Alkam Principalty became the Alkam Republic.
When the ruling family of Alkam came back to power circa 40 950, the palace was reinstated as the seat of power and is still now the main area from where the Alkam dynasty rules over its diminished domain.
Alterations
Even thought the palace at one point became more of a museum, it never truly lost its integrated psychic defences, orbital lasers and its many barracks and fortress walls to make it the highly defensible area it is nowaday. However, over time, the resources of the Alkam Dynasty decreased until they reached a point where maintaing and replacing the valuable orbital defences of the fortress couldn't be done, reducing the number of those from six to three.
However, the Alkam Dynasty and its prince, Sviatoslav Alkam the 94th, still claim that all their defence silos are still workable.
Architecture
The Sviatoslav Palace was at first a building of ancient grey rock dominated by ancient pannels of adamantium and even auramite for its front gate. While seeming as a resplandant Castle, most of it is covered in a way that no sunlight can enter its interior sections. This has been made to recude to the minimum the structural weaknesses in the fortress in case of a planeteray invasion or xenos raid in a time where the Imperium of Man did not exist to protect its vassal realms.
The fortress changed appearance a little over time, adopting the more common gothic style over the millenias as gargoyles sporting auspex matrices and automated weapons were added in replacement of its ancient cybernetic weapons, while plants grew on its surface, untamed and staining those rare windows and rock to a black moss.
History
At first the seat of planetary governance, forgotten wars before the arrival of the Imperium of Mankind saw the castle becoming the seat of power of a small kingdom under the Alkam Prince until the dynasty retreated from the public face of the world at the beginning of the 39th millenium.
At that point, the castle was mostly a museum for high ranking imperial officials and members of the Jonovan or gorian aristocracy where the Alkam dynasty still sported all its flamboyance and power for those luckiest to see.
However, at the end of the 41st millenium, the Alkam Dynasty decided to take back control of the Alkam Republic and make it the Alkam Principalty, which they now rule from the Alkam Palace.
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