Life on Coruscant – Manuk’s formative years

Manuk Gagak

Character
Sith Order
Rank
Champion

Character Profile
Link
OOC
Corbeau
Joined
May 19, 2020
Messages
224
Reaction score
52
“Coruscant, the capital of the Republic. The entire planet is one big city.”
― Ric Olié


Located in the Coruscant subsector of the Corusca sector within the Core Worlds region, Coruscant was a planet covered in a dense ecumenopolis.It orbited relatively far from its small sun and thus did not have a climate that suited any one particular species (although this inconvenience was rectified by technological means and the vast heat generated by the multi-level cityscape). In fact, the planet’s weather patterns were created by the troposphere-piercing buildings that covered the planet’s surface.

Coruscant’s surface was defined by its urban sprawl, which collectively was called Galactic City. The dense city blocks were built on top of each other, the highest reaching to Level 5127. The lowest known habitable level was Level 5. At its highest level, Galactic City’s skyscrapers were built with many reaching 6,000 meters into the atmosphere, with sleek, transparisteel edifices standing next to older duracrete structures.

And it was in one of these beautiful buildings that Manuk grew up. And she did so alone, save for a protocol droid that grew less servile in direct proportion to the young girl's advancing years.
 

Manuk Gagak

Character
Sith Order
Rank
Champion

Character Profile
Link
OOC
Corbeau
Joined
May 19, 2020
Messages
224
Reaction score
52
Officially she was a Coruscanti – although she knew better. Or rather, she believed she did. It was entirely possible she was born here. Alternatively, she could have been from any planet or star system in the galaxy. For she was technically an orphan. Unlike many of her kind, she was not abandoned to fate – but instead inherited wealth mere mortals could only dream of, and even then not reach its truly dizzy heights.

On Coruscant, wealth increased with altitude: the lowermost levels were devoid of light and abandoned, with Level 1 deemed uninhabitable and roaming with strange creatures and monsters; above them were lawless under-levels—countless blocks inhabited by billions of middle-class workers. The super-towers on Level 5217 remained home to the ultra-wealthy. Furthering this class divide, citizens who lived in the upper levels were able to breathe air that was filtered and clean, while lower-class inhabitants were forced to breathe the air of toxic fumes from factory and vehicular waste.

All these things were ‘normal’ to the young Manuk – who knew only the finer things. But like any way of life, ordinary equated to boring after a while and the young blonde was always seeking new ways to inject some fun and spontaneity into her existence.

When she was younger, she used to try to spend the interest she accrued each day. By the time she was a teenager she gave up – not only was it impossible, it was tedious.
 

Manuk Gagak

Character
Sith Order
Rank
Champion

Character Profile
Link
OOC
Corbeau
Joined
May 19, 2020
Messages
224
Reaction score
52
In a planet of an estimated one trillion inhabitants, she always felt alone.

Speeders, swoops, and aircars roared above her in unending streams, the motorized circulatory system of the Republic’s heart. Skyrises, bridges, lifts, and plazas covered the entire surface of Coruscant to a height of kilometres, all of it the trappings of a wealthy, decadent civilization, a sheath that sought to hide the rot in a cocoon of duracrete and transparisteel.

Sunlight was a stranger to Coruscant. The sun set as ever, but so ambient was the light from the cityscape’s forest of sky-scraping towers that true darkness was a thing that prowled only the deepest canyons, or was summoned with purpose by those residents who could afford blackout transparisteel (which she could of course). From space, the planet’s dark side sparkled like a finely wrought ornament strung with bioluminescent life-forms, such as might be displayed in an heirloom cabinet or a museum devoted to folk art.

Not that the stars ever truly appeared in the sky, except to those who resided in the very tallest buildings. But stars of a different sort turned up nightly at Coruscant’s celebrated entertainment complexes – singers, performers, artists, and since the wane of the control of politicians, business moguls.

Not that Manuk could be considered as such, but she was young, pretty and rich beyond most people’s wildest aspirations. So, as soon as she was old enough to frequent these places she did so – yet found once more that her attention span was short and access to legal alcohol, less legal drugs and even boys was interesting for a very short while – until once more she gave up and sought new horizons.
 

Manuk Gagak

Character
Sith Order
Rank
Champion

Character Profile
Link
OOC
Corbeau
Joined
May 19, 2020
Messages
224
Reaction score
52
The day was warm and cloudless, except to the north, where microclimatic storms were swirling about the summits of some of Coruscant’s taller buildings. Manuk was, as ever, bored. So she decided to do something she’d never considered before. She went for a walk.

From nowhere she’d developed a yearning to explore the city-planet from bottom to top. A quest that would remain a dream until she started and to what end she had no idea, but the thought would not go away – and so she put on some black leather walking boots, and covered herself with a shapeless black hooded cloak, with her face hidden in its shadows.

As she began to walk, she felt something strange. Her natural senses became accustomed to the travelling quite quickly. Her smell found it the hardest as the deeper she went the more pungent the surroundings became. What she felt – sensed – was tangible yet she could not explain it.

The truth was beyond her, but it was there none the less. Because it resided in all life, the Force was in some sense concentrated on Coruscant. But the Force felt differently there than on worlds in their natural state, where the interconnectedness of all life created subtle shifts and rhythms. If on many worlds the Force was a gentle murmur, on Coruscant it was a howl--a white noise of sentience.

So, the deeper Manuk went, the more powerful the sensation became.
 

Manuk Gagak

Character
Sith Order
Rank
Champion

Character Profile
Link
OOC
Corbeau
Joined
May 19, 2020
Messages
224
Reaction score
52
It was said that a person could live out her entire life on Coruscant without once leaving the building she called home. And that even if someone devoted her life to exploring as much of Coruscant as possible, she would scarcely be able to take in a few square kilometres; that he would be better off trying to visit all the far-flung worlds of the galaxy.

The planet’s original surface was so long forgotten and so seldom visited that it had become an underworld of mythic dimension, whose denizens actually boasted of the fact that their subterranean realm hadn’t seen the sun in twenty-five thousand standard years.

Closer to the sky, however, where the air was continually scrubbed and giant mirrors lit the floor of shallower canyons, wealth and privilege ruled. Yet Manuk was turning her back on that – at least for the time being – believing that something was calling her, guiding her down.

Home, kilometres above the murky depths, resided those who fashioned their own rarified atmospheres; who moved about by private skylimo, and watched the diffuse sun set blazing red around the curve of the planet; and who ventured below the two-kilometre level only to conduct transactions of a sinister sort, or to visit the statuary-studded squares that fronted those landmark structures whose sublime architecture hadn’t been razed, buried, or walled in by mediocrity.

One such landmark – or rather a place that once housed one – was the Jedi Temple. In its prime it was a kilometre-high truncated pyramid crowned by five elegant towers, that soared above its surroundings, purposefully isolated from the babble of Coruscant’s overlapping electromagnetic fields and holding forth against the blight of modernisation. Below it stretched a plain of rooftops, skybridges, and aerial thoroughfares that had conspired to create a mosaic of sumptuous geometries--colossal spirals and concentricities, crosses and triangles, quilts and diamonds--great mandalas aimed at the stars, or perhaps the temporal complements of the constellations to be found there.
 

Manuk Gagak

Character
Sith Order
Rank
Champion

Character Profile
Link
OOC
Corbeau
Joined
May 19, 2020
Messages
224
Reaction score
52
It was on one of these trips that she heard a word that would change her life. Just the one word, caught on a whispered conversation in one of the seedy cantinas she was inexorably being drawn to.

Sith.

An innocuous word, just the single syllable, but she’d seen the HoloNews and the term resonated with her. And moreover, it intrigued her. And from that moment on she was obsessed.

One of the benefits of untold wealth is access to things that mere mortals cannot – like all aspects of the DarkNet that could only be reached with the greasing of palms.

What she found was fascinating, tantalising and bordering on a fairy-tale. If it were not so hard to find, she would completely doubt it. But she spent months in her apartment, pausing only to eat when so hungry she fainted – or slept. Her droid took to washing her when she was unconscious, taking her into the shower and placing her into her bed, from where she would wake up in fresh clothes and begin her search again.

She was insatiable.
 

Manuk Gagak

Character
Sith Order
Rank
Champion

Character Profile
Link
OOC
Corbeau
Joined
May 19, 2020
Messages
224
Reaction score
52
Over the weeks she began to piece together fragments of stories. Some corroborated but most not. She accepted that no doubt only twenty per cent of what she found was the truth, but even that amount was amazing.

She learned of the Jedi – their records were fragmented but real, if you knew where to look. It seemed that someone had tried to expunge their history from the record books, but knowledge was power and power was both leverage and credits, so it was impossible to remove all traces. And of course, they had a hand it seemed in the overthrow of the First Order.

So, she believed that the Sith had come into being a couple of thousand years ago – give or take a few centuries. They were initially a cult given over to the dark side of something known as the Force – which was apparently how they gained their power, Jedi and Sith alike. What is was, and how it was used was beyond sketchy in terms of records. Manuk had wasted a good six weeks doing her best to fathom it and finally accepted the answer would not be found on some web record.

The Sith and Jedi appeared to be in perpetual war with one another. And it seemed that the Sith themselves warred internally.

And then…nothing. For a very long time there was nothing, before sporadic accounts emerged. Skywalker. Vader. These names cropped up time and time again, but details were lacking – although to Manuk it proved the two sets of protagonists never died out.
 

Manuk Gagak

Character
Sith Order
Rank
Champion

Character Profile
Link
OOC
Corbeau
Joined
May 19, 2020
Messages
224
Reaction score
52
The cherry on the icing on the cake was the HoloNet recording. Surely this was proof that the Sith were back?

As she chose to shower for herself for the first time in many, many months, she noted how her muscles had wasted and she scrubbed herself clean before walking through her apartment and threw open the doors to her balcony.

She demanded her droid bring her food and she spent the next four weeks eating, fitness training and dancing until she was in the best shape she’d ever been in. During this time she wondered why the Sith had intrigued her and not the Jedi. Unable to come up with a logical answer, she shrugged it off and simply went with her gut instinct.

Finally, she picked an outfit from her wardrobe – a black Firaxan shark bodysuit, matching boots and a black fine-cotton cloak with a hood. She knew that only so much information could be gleaned from a computer and sensed – maybe wrongly – that if Sith were alive and well, the place to find them would not be at her current altitude. She needed to go down. As low as she could go.
 
Top