“Coruscant, capital of the Republic, an entire planet evolved into one city.”
―Ric Olié
In the lowest levels, in the abyssal urban depths, of the ecumenopolis that was Coruscant, it was a rare thing indeed to see sunlight. For the inhabitants of the baroque and gleaming cloudcutters, skytowers and superskytowers – the latter reaching as much as two kilometres high – the sun was something taken for granted, just as were the other comforts of life. Since WeatherNet guaranteed that it never rained until dusk or later, the rich golden sunlight was simply expected, in the same way that one expected air to till one’s lungs with every breath.
But hundreds of stories below the first inhabited floors of the great towers, ziggurats, and minarets, in some places actually on or under the city-planet’s surface, it was another story. Here hundreds of thousands of humans and other species lived and died, sometimes without ever catching as much as a glimpse of the fabled sky. Here the light that filtered through the omnipresent grey inversion layer was wan and pallid. The rain that reached the surface was nearly always acidic, enough so at times to etch tiny channels and grooves into ferrocarbon foundations. It was hard to believe that anything at all could survive in these dismal trenches. Yet even here, life – both intelligent and otherwise – had adjusted long ago to the perpetual twilight and strictured environment.
At the very bottom of the chasms, in the variegated pulsing of phosphor lights and signs, stone mites, conduit worms, and other scavengers flourished on technological detritus. Duracrete slugs blindly masticated their way through rubble. Hawk-bats built nests near power converters to keep their eggs warm. Armoured rats and spider-roaches scuttled and hunted through piles of trash two stories high. And millions of other species of opportunistic and parasitic organisms, from single-celled animalcules all the way up to those self-aware enough to wish they weren’t, doggedly pursued their common quest for survival, little different from the struggles on a thousand different jungle worlds. Down here was where the jetsam of the galaxy, a motley collection of sentients dismissed by those above simply as “the underdwellers,” eked out lives of brutality and despair. It was merely a different kind of jungle, after all.
And where there’s a jungle, there are always those who hunt.
This was, in many ways, a routine mission – and therefore one Fiach volunteered for as her first venture with her Padawan. Was there a lure of Coruscant itself? She’d asked herself the same on many occasions but dismissed it for now – for the here and now required focus. Yes, they were simply here to see if there were any clues as to the identities of the recent train station massacre – but this was a dangerous place and their first contact liked to spend time in the seediest part of the seediest sector of Coruscant.
They travelled light at Fiach’s request – no droids or equipment, just a discretely carried saber would be required. As they walked, Fiach spoke. “So, what do you know of Coruscant? Its history, past and near-present – and more importantly, any recent Sith activity here?”
@Andrewza
―Ric Olié
In the lowest levels, in the abyssal urban depths, of the ecumenopolis that was Coruscant, it was a rare thing indeed to see sunlight. For the inhabitants of the baroque and gleaming cloudcutters, skytowers and superskytowers – the latter reaching as much as two kilometres high – the sun was something taken for granted, just as were the other comforts of life. Since WeatherNet guaranteed that it never rained until dusk or later, the rich golden sunlight was simply expected, in the same way that one expected air to till one’s lungs with every breath.
But hundreds of stories below the first inhabited floors of the great towers, ziggurats, and minarets, in some places actually on or under the city-planet’s surface, it was another story. Here hundreds of thousands of humans and other species lived and died, sometimes without ever catching as much as a glimpse of the fabled sky. Here the light that filtered through the omnipresent grey inversion layer was wan and pallid. The rain that reached the surface was nearly always acidic, enough so at times to etch tiny channels and grooves into ferrocarbon foundations. It was hard to believe that anything at all could survive in these dismal trenches. Yet even here, life – both intelligent and otherwise – had adjusted long ago to the perpetual twilight and strictured environment.
At the very bottom of the chasms, in the variegated pulsing of phosphor lights and signs, stone mites, conduit worms, and other scavengers flourished on technological detritus. Duracrete slugs blindly masticated their way through rubble. Hawk-bats built nests near power converters to keep their eggs warm. Armoured rats and spider-roaches scuttled and hunted through piles of trash two stories high. And millions of other species of opportunistic and parasitic organisms, from single-celled animalcules all the way up to those self-aware enough to wish they weren’t, doggedly pursued their common quest for survival, little different from the struggles on a thousand different jungle worlds. Down here was where the jetsam of the galaxy, a motley collection of sentients dismissed by those above simply as “the underdwellers,” eked out lives of brutality and despair. It was merely a different kind of jungle, after all.
And where there’s a jungle, there are always those who hunt.
This was, in many ways, a routine mission – and therefore one Fiach volunteered for as her first venture with her Padawan. Was there a lure of Coruscant itself? She’d asked herself the same on many occasions but dismissed it for now – for the here and now required focus. Yes, they were simply here to see if there were any clues as to the identities of the recent train station massacre – but this was a dangerous place and their first contact liked to spend time in the seediest part of the seediest sector of Coruscant.
They travelled light at Fiach’s request – no droids or equipment, just a discretely carried saber would be required. As they walked, Fiach spoke. “So, what do you know of Coruscant? Its history, past and near-present – and more importantly, any recent Sith activity here?”
@Andrewza
