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The most important world within the Jacker Stars is Grisette, about 400 light-years corewards from Earth.

The planet circles an ordinary yellow-white star, in a system with several other resource-rich but airless worlds. 4000 kilometers in diameter, Grisette has a surface gravity of 0.45 G. The weather is temperate, the local ecology compatible with human and ara-human biology.

Small polar ice caps exist, and three large islands or small continents (each less than 1000 kilometers across); otherwise, the land area is made up from hundreds of mountainous islands (1 to 100 kilometers across). There is no important native life on Grisette, but the land and seas are thick with a wide variety of imported plants and animals.

Each of the three large islands has a city; the northernmost, Chunn Dasch, also boasts a modern spaceport with ship construction facilities. Some orbital defense platforms exist, along with the remains of an orbital elevator (destroyed a few decades ago).

Four factions control Grisette:

• the Negrantine, an ara-human species forming a religious cult. The most prosperous and numerous of Grisette's factions, they operate many agricultural estates on islands scattered about the planet. Negrantine citizens like to believe their people don't become pirates, mercenaries, and so forth. Their religious beliefs center around reincarnation and identifying their ancestors in their current incarnations. The largest island in the southern hemisphere, Quom Central, is almost entirely inhabited by the Negrantine. There are nearly a million Negrantine on the planet.

• a city, Ordbrett, built on the northern ice cap. Captives awaiting ransom, hostages, kidnapping victims and others live here under strange, stringent rules set by a sub-cult of the Negrantine -- the Order of Hosts. Depending on how rich the victim is, or how much ransom is expected, living conditions can range from prison-like to tolerably interesting. The Hosts use everything from chains to high-tech scanning equipment to prevent escapes and rescues. The city has quite impressive -- and probably effective -- defenses to prevent spacecraft (or submarines) from approaching without permission. Tens of thousands of Hosts and Guests reside in Ordbrett. The pirates, kidnappers, hostage-takers, etc. are referred to as Patrons or Clients; the persons wishing to release or recover captives, as the Redeemers.

(note:  the orthodox Negrantine which are found elsewhere on Grisette are none-too-pleased with the Order of Hosts. While they are of the same ara-human species, the two groups don't get along well -- the orthodox Negrantine deplore kidnapping, for one thing.)

• Frelltek, a stock company, employs thousands of persons in the spaceport and other high-tech industries of Grisette. The company must of course enforce its own contracts and defend its own factories, housing, etc. By contrast with the usual pirates of the Jacker Stars region, employees of Frelltek seem quaintly suburban. Most of Frelltek's activities are in Chunn Dasch, which it effectively controls. Probably a hundred thousand Frelltek employees and their families work within the Grisette system.

• the Jackers are an entirely informal, loose association of pirates, rouges, thieves and mercenaries; their leader(s) change fairly often, based on fortune, treachery, skill and cunning. Most of the planet's islands that are not Negrantine estates are the personal fiefs of Jacker chieftains.  No Jacker captain or clan has enough power to impose their will on the other Jackers as a whole; but the current Captain of Captains (or Admiral, or Grand Poobah, or numerous other titles) has much to say about how the planet is run. The Captain of Captains has a nominal "palace" in equatorial orbit, in what was formerly the station atop the planet's orbital elevator.

The Jacker fleets as a whole are quite powerful -- enough to keep the Sirian Principality from conquering this world. Attacks by Jackers on each others' ships, islands, crews, etc. are quite common; the planet has even seen a couple of nuclear weapons used in the last few decades.

The Negrantine people, and employees of Frelltek, are in theory off-limits to Jacker attacks; but there are Jackers who respect nothing and nobody, not even the laws of their lawless society. The Captain of Captains often has to negotiate with, and arrange compensation for, the Negrantine and Frelltek.

Think of the Jacker-controlled islands here as being "drug lord mansions" -- extravagantly (if not always effectively) well-defended, with lavish and tasteless architecture. Or in many cases less pleasant, and inhabited by criminals scheming to obtain and maintain an extravagant, tasteless island of their own. A particular island-controlling Jacker group might have 100 to 1000 persons residing on their island.

Mines and other operations to extract resources from the other planets of the system are mostly run by Frelltek.