The Xi'an house Nergathakark has a monopoly on industry, as mentioned in another reply, but are there groups or houses in the Xi'an that have a rebellious, I-do-what-I-want attitude, like Drake? Are there alien equivalents of Drake Interplanetary?

I mean, I don't see why not. The Xi'an do assign monopolies in different industries that are really high level. It's only really assigned to super prestigious houses. It doesn't really do that with smaller houses. And remember that each big house usually has like 100 or so satellite houses that fall under its umbrella. So any of those little tiny houses might just not want to do whatever industry was assigned to the big house, and they would do something else.