Glans of Tarunan

Somewhere in deep space a nebula opens a mouth like the mouth of a dark cave but it is a space rift and the rift leads to a star system and a breathtaking planet, known to its indigenous inhabitants as Orae. The Westorys Rift, so the Rift is named, after the man who discovered it and invented the technology to cross it. This is the story of Professor Justin Westorys's son and daughter, Andreas and Sara. This is the tragic story of the love of Andreas and Naerga, princess of the Vráin ruling race. This is the story of Naerga's mother and her desperate struggle to preserve her culture and her world in the face of calamitous changes. This is foremost the story of Andreas's son Yurin (zjoori'en as pronounced in the old tongue of the Vráin) and his constant tug-of-war between his human side and the side of his Vráin forebears. For even as the Vráin taught a philosophy of peace that is close to nature, their wisdom was no weapon in the bloodshed that swept across the planet and pitted the diverse races and species of Orae against each other. The Tarunan Glans that each Vráin bore and seemingly preserved their youth was the cause of their extinction, for even as they used the elixir of the Glans to keep their planet fertile, it was an object of mythical and legendary proportions the Colonists coveted.

Yurin too was endowed with the Glans but on him it had another, violent, side. For his own survival Yurin faced a choice: to preserve the Glans as a tradition of fertility and peace, or use it as a weapon and choosing the latter he would condemn himself to the same savagery that wiped out his mother's race.