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Saga - Legends Research Notes: The Aquarium (DDC 2024)

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction- Before, Saga, and Beyond' started by Mechalich, Jan 7, 2024.

  1. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    Title: Research Notes: The Aquarium
    Author: Mechalich
    Timeframe: 1 ABY
    Characters: Jio Gihal, ľpśũ-Ċhōnďru Řĥodôś (Carra), Azivk, other OCs*
    Genre: Science Fiction, Drama
    Keywords: Coruscant Underworld, Sentientology, Aquatic Species, Extinction
    Summary: Evidence of the possible survival of an extinct species is detected deep in the Coruscant Underworld. Xenobiologist Jio Gihal investigates.
    Notes: This entry for the 2024 Deary Diary Challenge presents a series of field research notes. It is primarily Legends-based, but utilizes the 5127 level system for the Corsucant Underworld established in the Disney canon and subject to considerable personal fanon work of my own.
    *- Character portraits are AI-generated using Stable Diffusion XL


    Entry One
    Having submitted my final report from Misnor last month, I had been looking forward to enjoying a much-needed period of vacation followed by office time after a prolonged period of field study. I especially hoped to renew my awareness of recent research developments after considerable isolation from academic information sources. I did not expect to receive a new field assignment for several months at a minimum, especially given the ongoing Imperial effort to tighten restrictions on travel and to reduce the supply of research licenses. In fact, I fully anticipated spending the next semester teaching rather than in the field. Given the environment, perhaps several semesters. As such, I received the director’s summons today with great surprise, and his order to prepare for immediate departure on a new research expedition doubly so.

    I have been dispatched not to some distant Outer Rim World, but rather the opposite. I’m going to Coruscant itself, the geographic heart – according to the coordinate system anyway, not the astronomers – of the galaxy. Decidedly unexpected. City worlds, with their inevitably depauperate ecologies, are hardly hotbeds of xenobiological research.

    Despite this, it seems that Corsucant’s status as a center of commerce, history, and travel is an anomaly among its peers in a way I was not aware. The director reported to me, in a manner stressing that this information should remain confidential for present, that an automated reporting system monitoring environmental DNA in a wastewater system of the planet’s vast urban cityscape underworld generated a highly anomalous result. My task is to investigate this anomaly and, if possible, verify and document it.

    The report in question is simple: the system identified the biosignature of an isolated DNA fragment as belonging to a Tzorbi. I confess, it’s difficult to imagine a more unexpected result. The name of that species is well known to me, and I assume to most, as the first aquatic species to join the Old Republic following its founding. Equally so, they attained a significantly less pleasant form of renown as one of the species rendered extinct during the terrible purges of the Pius Dea Era. A shame of the Republic now rarely mentioned. Despite their extinction nearly twelve thousand years ago, the genetic code of the Tzorbi is well-known thanks to enterprising research conducted by brave bioanalysts during the Galactic Wars Era and it would be difficult for the systems to make a mistake of this kind. Despite that, the implications of such a report are staggering: surviving Tzorbi after twelve millennia unknown?

    I am in complete agreement with the director that this demands a priority investigation. Some kind of data artifact or error seems the most likely answer. Even if that hypothesis can be rejected, there is the possibility of some kind of hoax or perhaps the output of some kind of illegal bioengineering project. Potentially the Tzorbi genome is sufficiently complete to allow the production of a clone, or worse. The director wants the matter to be examined quietly, and it seems he was alerted to this result by some highly placed member of the bureaucracy on Coruscant. Certainly, the ancient affiliation of the species means that their survival would carry political implications. Additionally, their traditional homeworld, Tzorb, is a valuable planet on the Corellian Run currently owned outright by TaggeCo, meaning there would be significant economic implications as well.

    It is unclear to me, distinctly, why I was chosen for this assignment. Certainyly the Tzorbi were, or perhaps, are, an aquatic species, and I have training and experience conducting xenobiological research in aquatic environments, but this is not a rare distinction among the institute’s faculty. Baraboo is an ocean world after all. Similarly, while I am Human and this probably affords me greater operational flexibility on Corsucant than any professor from another species, this is also a status shared with the majority of the faculty.

    I am left to speculate that this assignment was granted not based upon qualifications, but rather on trust. I assume the director read my report on the Chiilaks of Misnor and recognized my conservationist credentials. Additionally, any reading of that report makes it clear that I am willing to endure both considerable hardship in the field and lengthy periods of work with minimal results. The Coruscant Underworld is infamously impenetrable, so I could see that impacting his choice.

    Regardless, I must prepare for rapid departure for Coruscant. This effort is likely a fool’s errand, but I suppose it cannot hurt to hope.

    Notes
    Jio Gihal, Misnor, and Chiilaks are all canon references tracing to Creatures of the Galaxy, a 1994 supplement to the WEG edition of the Star Wars RPG. The supplement includes a brief passage where Jio describes his field work searching for and encountering the Chiilaks. That entry describes Imperial-sponsored hunting of the Chiilaks for twenty years. Postulating Jio’s recent return from that assignment places these events in 1 ABY.

    Jio’s academic affiliation is unknown. I have chosen to append him to the Institute for Sentient Studies on Baraboo, first referenced in the Black Fleet Crisis. Baraboo is canonically an ocean planet.

    The Tzorbi originate in canon in SWTOR, entirely offscreen. The Bioanalysis Crew Skill Mission ‘Remembering the Lost’ involves dispatching a crewmember to the Tzorbi homeworld. The Tzorbi are said to be both one of the first species to join the Republic and extinct. I have chosen to attribute that extinction to the Pius Dea, which seems eminently reasonable, and to make the species aquatic, because it serves my purposes.

    Environmental DNA is a real thing, representing DNA shed into the environment via such means as mucus and shed skin, and can be used to detect the presence of species in the absence of any active observations.

    TaggeCo, properly Tagge Corporation, is one of the galaxy’s more notable and less savory canon megacorporations. I have invented their ownership of the Tzorbi Homeworld, but this does not seem implausible.
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2024
  2. Happy Sando

    Happy Sando Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 23, 2023
    Interesting approach! Really enjoyed the slight academic angle to this, and appreciate the intent to dig deeper (pun semi-intended) into Coruscant's past. The way Jio's new assignment came to light makes a lot of sense, as does the reaction to keep it confidential, particularly considering that this is Imperial Coruscant we're dealing with. The tangled web of corporate interests, bureaucratic butt-covering and political fallout is only gonna make this more difficult. I mean, a hoax would be one thing, but cloning? Bioengineering? By who, and why? It'll be cool to follow along with this investigation in the coming months. Quite the mystery!
     
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  3. DarthIshtar

    DarthIshtar Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    My first thought was, oh, no. Cloning DNA from ancient creatures? Jurassic Coruscant? I’m not familiar with the source materials, but I like this character and am curious as to where you’ll take it.
     
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  4. Kahara

    Kahara Chosen One star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 3, 2001
    Ooh, looking forward to more of this for sure! :D I really enjoy the byzantine weirdness of Coruscant's biome and the all-around sociological and practical aspects to it as you've shown them in your Dr. Nema series. I'm interested to see how Jio finds things there in the Imperial era... it seems like it will get challenging fast if what he's seeking is really there. And probably even if it's not.

    Nifty; I have heard of this but this is probably the first time I've seen it in a SW context. It does seem like something that would be widely used, and Coruscant like a place that would have at least some infrastructure for it.

    Okay, worse is... concerning. [face_worried]

    That definitely puts a lot more pressure on Jio to find the answers fast -- and a lot more complexity to how to handle those answers if he finds them!

    Aww, I like that he does have some anticipation at the idea of maybe finding this species -- which would indeed be a really cool revelation even if it opens a can of worms. [face_thinking]
     
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  5. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    Yes, there is some freaky stuff going on. I'm having fun with this approach, using research notes (admittedly probably more coherent than any real-life academic's field notes have ever been) instead of a 'proper' diary.

    I have a tendency to write fanfic like a caddisfly builds a house, gathering up detritus strewn at the bottom of canon and gluing it together into a whole. So yeah, lots of obscure sources.

    The underworld is just so vast. I'm quite certain the people who came up with the idea never did the math. But I did! And I'm not letting it go!

    Yeah, it's a growing field, and eDNA hits have discovered species we've thought might be extinct, usually things like rare fish that haven't been collected since 1857 or something, in real life, so it's a fairly straightforward translation into Star Wars.

    Fear the dark depths of speculative biology, for down in that abyss disturbing designs spawned of Gigerian dreams dwell.

    I blame Dr. Aphra, but Domina Tagge is slowly creeping up my personal list of 'best Star Wars redheads' (the top spot is untouchable, obviously). So that I decided to go with that evil megacorp instead of Czerka (my usual standby). Not sure exactly how things will unfold in that regard.
     
  6. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    I like your new character, writing about his research. Coruscant will have many secrets to unveil
     
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  7. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    Entry Two
    Entry to Coruscant has become more complex since my previous visit five years ago. It was never exactly simple, the bustle of such a heavily populated world demands complex management and breeds long lines, but things have gone from frustratingly to infuriatingly cumbersome due to new security measures. Authorization, licenses, and financial statements are all demanded of new arrivals, and all baggage undergoes thorough and detailed examination by the green-garbed officers of Imperial Customs while white-armored stormtroopers stand guard.

    I expected an easy entry, aside from the lines. The institute double-checked my credentials and, of course, being a Human from the boring world of Loretto I should represent a low-interest case. It did not turn out that way. Surprisingly, the officers displayed minimal interest in my stunner or the E-5 Blaster Rifle I’d procured and spent considerable effort to get properly licensed – a necessary concession to personal protection in the underworld. Instead, I was pulled aside for questioning after I presented my academic credentials. I gave full and complete answers to all their questions. My research mission is highly public and covered by granting documents the director and I filed prior to departure, even if the objective is somewhat obscured. I was released after only thirty minutes, to mostly confused looks.

    This delay was much less than that of many others passing through the spaceport, some of whom I gather were interrogated for hours or even days, but more than I expected. Based on the nature of the questions, which the officer read off his datapad in a manner clearly revealing he was following a script and had no understanding of the various terms of art in xenobiology he was repeating, it seems like someone, or something, has flagged the Institute for Sentient Studies as somehow subversive. At a guess, it’s probably COMPNOR. Members of the so-called Coalition for Progress have been seen prowling about Baraboo lately. Sometimes they even attend lectures wearing those quasi-uniforms they favor, thinking no one can tell who they are.

    I find this very frustrating. Science is not political. Determination, quantification, and classification of sentient life is an essential baseline practice, necessary to understand the galaxy. Even the proponents of this newly popular Human High Culture garbage ought to be able to understand that much. I mean, if you’re going to exalt one culture you must do that in comparison to others. Saying ‘humans are the best!’ is useless in a vacuum. Besides, you’d think the government would be supportive of trying to figure out whether a whole sentient species still lived on the planet or not. That’s a pretty basic demographics threshold. Yet, the moment I mentioned the underworld the eyes of the customs officers glazed over, as if I was talking about some distant Outer Rim mining colony, not inhabited space directly beneath our collective feet.

    Beyond the spaceport, the rest of Galactic City seems unchanged from several years ago. At least, I didn’t notice any real difference in the several hours I spent buying reagents, vials, traps, and other testing equipment it made no sense to ship across the hyperlanes. There are more security checkpoints, maybe, but there’s always been an awful lot of those, and the old timers say that goes back all the way to the Clone Wars. Matches my impression from the documentary holos. The eye isn’t to be trusted about such things, to really know if the number’s gone up would require a proper count.

    Otherwise, it is as tense and busy as ever. People crushed into harsh duracrete slab spaces with insufficient room for them all and kept brutally clean of both detritus and character by overzealous maintenance droids. Perhaps, once again a real trend analysis demands data beyond ocular observation, there are fewer aliens than in the past, but Galactic City has always been predominantly Human.

    Most totally urbanized worlds are, seemingly. Something about density, or so the sociologists speculate. Machine-mediated mass production produces stylistic conformity, and the needs to build to a single structural model for physiological traits such as body mass and height means that architecture of this kind naturally lends itself to a homogenous population. This seems to remain true even on city worlds with long multicultural histories, such as Empress Teta. It certainly works the other way around – city worlds built by aliens, like Shako, are almost exclusively mono-species, just with a different baseline. Heterogenous demographics only occur when sourced not to choice, but to force, as on Nar Shaddaa or in my destination, the Underworld.

    Regardless, I personally have little fondness for this sort of overbuilt environment where the star can barely be seen, and everything always crackles with a pervasive backdrop of electrical undercurrents from buried machinery. A world where even the oceans were paved over seems hardly worthy of the term planet at all. Or habitable. Supposedly, the environment of the underworld holds greater variation than that of the surface’s endlessly towering buildings. I hope so. Documentation on the region below the surface, an entirely artificial distinction in the first place, is oddly scarce. Worrying, given that the Tzorbi detection occurred nearly halfway to the bottom.

    Notes
    Imperial Customs doesn’t get a lot of play in Star Wars media, but it does exist, and you are supposed to clear customs when arriving on developed worlds.

    The E-5 Blaster Rifle is a common canon blaster well known as being used as the primary weapon of B1 Battle Droids. By 1 ABY the weapon is old and underpowered enough to plausibly be in civilian ownership. It can fire underwater, which is rather relevant here.

    COMPNOR, properly the Committee for the Preservation of the New Order, is the extremely widespread canonical government agency that handled development, indoctrination, propaganda, security and a wide variety of other responsibilities for the Empire. It is functionally equivalent to the party apparatus of a traditional autocratic state and as such has a ton of power while having somewhat nebulous official responsibilities.

    Empress Teta (aka Koros Major), Skako, and Nar Shaddaa are all ecumenopolis worlds (aka city planets). There are enough such planets (between both versions of canon there are over two dozen) in the GFFA that they represent a distinct type of habitat in which a significant portion of the galactic population resides.
     
  8. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    Imperial Customs, yes they should have that with all the delays and questions. But he has made it coming with his E-5 blaster rifle and observes how Coruscant is one of those city-planets he doesn't like at all.
     
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  9. scienfictionfan

    scienfictionfan Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 1, 2020
    I find it funny the Imperials are less concerned about the blaster even with a permit compared to the fact that he is a Professor of Xenobiology. It says a lot about the Empire's priorities even as they are slowly losing the Galactic Civil War and explains much of their loss they are so obsessed with their ideological goals it overrides everything else.
     
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  10. Kahara

    Kahara Chosen One star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 3, 2001
    Same here, I'm tickled that they are so worried about... gasp... academics :eek:, that bringing literal weapons through is a minor hassle by comparison.
     
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  11. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    In defense of the priorities of Imperial Customs, Star Wars is a universe rather awash in blasters and weapons control measures seem to be rather limited at best. It seems like pretty much anyone can carry anything not exclusively designated as military hardware basically anywhere so long as they have the right paperwork. I mean, Boba Fett operates on Imperial worlds plenty, and he carries enough weaponry to level a small town at all times.
     
  12. Happy Sando

    Happy Sando Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 23, 2023
    Yeah, that whole Imperial Customs exchange made perfect sense to me, in a twisted, totalitarian sort of way. I loved it; great immersive detail.

    Also, this...?
    =D= =D= =D=

    Yeah, I really like Jio now!
     
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  13. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    Entry Three
    Until I took a transport down to Level 2690 I really had no idea as to the true size of the Coruscant Underworld. Without direct visual evidence there is simply no way to imagine something that massive. Even witnessing it in person, the mind rebels. Five thousand, one hundred, and twenty-seven levels, with each level averaging ten meters in height. 51.27 kilometers of structure sitting between planetary bedrock and free atmosphere.

    It’s mountainous, or rather, it’s multiply mountainous, the height of several very large mountains stacked on top of each other. Due to the structural limitations of most common planetary crust minerals, most planets with standard gravity struggle to have their mountains reach much past the 25,000-meter mark above sea level. Morsin, as it happened, had such a mountain, a giant volcano at the center of a massive igneous province. I took an airspeeder to the summit, ostensibly to sample alpine extremophile bacteria, but mostly for the view. That was already absurdly high, pressure suit and tank just to stand there high, and the underworld reaches twice the height of that towering peak.

    Traffic to and from such immense depths uses portals, immense shafts driven straight down into the structure and wide enough to allow starships passage. Tubes of durasteel kilometers wide that somehow remain open from surface to depth despite the combined power of gravity and pressure to slam them shut. Apparently monstrously powerful repulsor fields generated somewhere within the superstructure of the underworld are used to keep them open. I queried the municipal authority database for a primer on how that works. I knew I wouldn’t understand the engineering but thought just seeing it would help ease my mind. Wrong. The database spat out several paragraphs of legalese saying that the portals are sustained using proprietary Columi technology and no data on their operations is publicly available. I’m fairly certain that means ancient alien machines whose working no one in the universe truly understands anymore are needed to keep everyone living on Coruscant, which is only the capital of the galaxy, from dying a horrific crushing death.

    I can already feel the nightmares forming, just waiting for me to get tired.

    Level 2690 forms the upper boundary of a ‘region’ of interconnected levels with a shared environment stretching from level 2646 to 2690, a 45-level zone that, as a unit, has a height of 450 meters. Divisions such as this are present throughout the underworld. Viewed from the portals, this produces an effect rather like that of layers strata on the walls of a massive canyon. It’s barely even a metaphor, given that the underworld operates on legitimately geologic scale.

    Underworld guidebooks – there are quite a few on offer, though their publication history is rather dubious – list this region as ‘The Aquarium.’ The name’s origin is obvious, given that the entirety of the space is flooded and used by aquatic and amphibious species. A considerable portion of Coruscant’s lost oceans seem to have ended up here. The guidebooks also say that local residents tend to find this name offensive, hardly surprising, and suggest use of the term ‘Aphotic,’ a reference to the lightless portion of natural oceans, instead. It’s not exactly accurate, since most of this contained watery underworld is in fact quite well lit, though the lights are obviously artificial.

    The environmental DNA signature sources to a filtration station on level 2655, within fifty kilometers of the portal I used. It should not be difficult to reach. The tram and lift system used throughout the underworld remains operational within the Aquarium, though the tubes and cars are flooded and utilize a submarine propulsion system. However, before rushing off to the site, I want to take a day to acclimate to the environment and run final checks on the new model Uni-Environmental Survival Suit I acquired for this mission. Not my first time going under the waves for research, and you always double-check your gear first. Always.

    Notes
    The regional division system of the Coruscant Underworld is my own invention, though we see hints of this in some sources such as The Clone Wars. Notably, characters who are supposed to be thousands of levels down have a ‘roof’ over their heads that obviously doesn’t reach the all the way to the surface. A more complete breakdown of the superstructure is found in my fanon post on the subject.

    Olympus Mons, on Mars, is ~22 km above the surface and is the tallest mountain in our solar system. Conceivably, a mountain could be somewhat taller than that. For an alternate size reference, the summit of Mount Everest hits ~9 km above sea level. The Coruscant Underworld therefore hits 5.8 Everest’s stacked on top of each other.

    Some kind of fictional technology is necessary to keep the Underworld Portals open and active at breathable atmospheric pressures – which we know they have because Ahsoka walked around in the middle of one. I have chosen to attribute this to the Columi, since they’re a pre-Republic civilization with all sorts of strange tech.

    450 meters might not sound like a lot in ocean depth terms, but that’s deeper than the maximum depth of Lake Superior. This is a lot of water.

    The Uni-Environmental Survival Suit is a canon piece of protective gear.
     
  14. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    He sure gives great details about the environment he is going to.
    A suit will be needed. And unknown technology to keep the air eveywhere at breathable level from the tallest structure to the lowest level
     
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  15. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    Entry Four
    There’s a stormtrooper guard post at the airlock access between this underworld portal and the Aquarium Level 2690. The soldiers here must be very bored because they were positively chatty. Not usually a feature of stormtroopers. Unlike the customs officers, these grunts found my academic credentials impressive – I doubt they’ve ever met anyone with a doctorate before – and offered more than a few bits of unsolicited advice and warning.

    Specifically, they more or less outright admitted that once beyond the portals, imperial control over the Aquarium vanishes. Coruscant’s Municipal Authority, a quasi-governmental bureaucracy, does still hold sway, maintaining various essential services such as water and power, but almost all their employees are locals drawn from the resident aquatic species who receive minimal oversight from senior administrators. This makes the area a hot tub of criminal activity, mostly operated by Nautolan members of Wandering Star, a powerful Coruscanti crime syndicate. Apparently, being both an outsider and a Human, I’m highly vulnerable to exploitation. They suggested hiring protection prior to leaving the simple hotel that lies immediately opposite the portal and caters to outsiders with local business to conduct.

    In my experience, stormtroopers are many things, few of them good, but they are the last kind of people to exaggerate danger. I also noticed that the squad posted here wore the standard white armor, not the specialized aquatic assault gear used by their underwater specialty units. That’s certainly a point of evidence suggesting a lack of control in the waters beyond, since these troops would last only a few minutes before their helmet air ran out. As such, I took them at their word. Hiring a bodyguard will be expensive, but the accounts authorized by the institute can handle it, barely.

    The little hotel was a common example of this sort of cross-environment exchange setup. The rooms were individualized habitat modules of the sort used on space stations, capable of reconfiguring into basically any habitable environment known, from underwater to the high gravity methane skies of a gas giant. My first real exposure to the hardships of the Coruscant Underworld came when I pulled up the configuration menu and discovered over half the options were disabled. Even shifting from the default freshwater setup to terrestrial standard induced enough filter leakage to leave visible puddles behind. If I were to stay more than a few days the room would absolutely start growing mold, regardless of claims to supposedly sterile status. Assuming the search for the Tzordi becomes prolonged, finding long-term lodging has now been added to my list of tasks. The envirosuit is comfortable enough, but I’d like to avoid actively living in it, if possible. That’s a great way to develop a lousy set of skin conditions.

    Though not truly surprising, poorly maintained and outdated tech is everywhere in the galaxy, it is depressing to find such things on Coruscant. I’ve been to the Outer Rim and observed its great misery and brutal underdevelopment firsthand. Not one step through the portals and this superstructural landscape gives off the same feel. A limited outpost of civilization, held together, barely, by decaying machinery capable of sustaining the extant circumstances but unable to foster conditions capable of producing prosperity, all of it surrounded by hostile wilderness and under threat from predatory actors. The only difference is that the wilderness of the underworld is made of durasteel, piping, cables, and industrial ruins than untamed wild. A distinct downgrade in the scenic quality of the deadly backdrop.

    Experiencing such neglect does, paradoxically, foster hope in me that a supposedly extinct species might linger somewhere in the bowels of this place. The census on file is clearly little more than a polite fiction, and the government has no idea what is truly hiding in the deep reaches. Unfortunately, that means the search is sure to be challenging.

    Notes
    Wandering Star is a crime syndicate mentioned in Disney Canon as operating on Coruscant and in the underworld. I’m porting them over via the correspondence principle.
     
  16. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    Interesting remarks about the stormtroopers and his hotel. Outdated tech even there and no beauty at all
     
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  17. Happy Sando

    Happy Sando Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 23, 2023
    Love the chatty Stormtroopers. It's great that Jio notes that they can be "many things, few of them good" but they're still people under those buckets, and so any glimpse of emotion, decency or morality is always interesting and immersive. It's tempting to take that concept too far sometimes, but you nailed the balance here. These were Stormtroopers acting out-of-character whilst simultaneously staying totally in character. Bravo!

    I also love the idea of the 'Aquarium' being somewhat lawless, its exclusivity making it difficult (or, knowing the Empire, prohibitively expensive) to police and therefore easy to exploit. The amount of descriptive detail, and its effectiveness, continues to impress.

    And finally, Jio's brief flicker of hopefulness amidst such dilapidation and corruption is admirable. He continues to grow on me!
     
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  18. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    With regard to outdated tech, city planets are, in a sense, the hardest places in the galaxy to keep current. They are essentially giant buildings, and the easiest way to drastically update a building is to knock it down and replace it with a new one. Failing that, it's to boot everyone out and gut it completely down to the walls for a full rebuild. On Coruscant, both of these things are impossible. The underworld is too big and interlocking to properly replace anything without a massive government commitment, and there's nowhere for anyone to go while repairs are conducted. The last big restoration on Coruscant was probably in the immediate aftermath of the Ruusan Reformations in 1000 BBY.

    There's several components to this exchange, but one thing worth noting is social class. Star Wars is culturally anachronistic, resembling the world of ~1910 as opposed to the modern world. One impact of that is that doctoral degrees are comparatively much less common in Star Wars society than they are in something like the US in 2024 (where 1-2% of the population has a PhD). Jio is basically just a post-doc, but it says 'Doctor' on his identification and to a group of Stormtroopers, who are probably entirely unfamiliar with the very concept of higher education, this is a big deal. He's inherently treated with a higher level of respect than a random member of the public.

    One thing is that the Aquarium, like numerous other portions of the Underworld that emulate some kind of non-standard environment - methane atmosphere, extreme cold, etc. - has functionally zero Human residents. The Empire's stance on such places is pretty much total neglect. So long as unrest remains contained, they don't care if everything within falls apart. That's why the Stormtroopers are stationed on the outside, not inside.
     
  19. scienfictionfan

    scienfictionfan Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 1, 2020
    That doesn't make sense since we see buildings torn down and replaced by construction droids in several works located on Coruscant. I agree that they probably can't do a full replacement all at once of Coruscant infrastructure, but you can't really do it to modern cities either instead, modern cities gradually tear down old building and replace them with new ones constantly. If it's difficult to replace buildings, then how do the massive construction droids mentioned in several books work in your canon?
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2024
  20. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    Scale. A building, even a big building, compares to the totality of the underworld like a single cell does to your body. This is a space with roughly 11,000 times the volume of the Death Star. So yes, the construction droids can replace whole buildings are a time, but that's not capable of addressing the really big problems involving the truly gigantic structures - such as the mammoth piping systems that appear in The Pipecleaner in which a construction droid could roll along like a red blood cell in one of your veins. For example, Jio notes that the puddles would start growing mold, even though that should not happen because the water in the Aquarium is supposed to be purified and treated to remove things like fungal spores, but the filters are mechanisms the size of whole cities and no one is willing undertake the effort to turn a bunch of them off and flush them because it would severely inconvenience millions of people to do that. And that folds back to the general analogy. It's really hard to repair say, a plumbing problem with your shower while you are taking a shower, and much easier to do so by making everyone leave the house for a few days. This is a collective action problem, the Republic, post-Ruusan, did not have the bureaucratic and enforcement capacity to make millions of people relocate to hotels for a few weeks, and the Empire just doesn't care.
     
  21. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    Entry Five
    Following consultation with colleagues at the University of Coruscant, all of whom expressed considerable interest in my research but who seem to have avoided any pursuit of such possibilities on their own initiative as a result of a general research focus program shifting all resources to investigation of the history of Human cultures – no doubt a consequence of the primarily government-based funding of the institution – I engaged the assistance of Korden Protective Services to find and vet a potential bodyguard for down here in the Aquarium. Initially, I’d thought that the simplest and cheapest approach would be to lease a protective droid, but my fellow professors counseled strongly against this. Apparently various anti-droid countermeasures are ubiquitous in the underworld and even security units are tagged and stolen on a regular basis. The refusal of the Underworld Police to use such units, even though in Galactic City police droids massively outnumber organic officers, is strong evidence that this is true.

    Based on this recommendation, I have employed ľpśũ-Ċhōnďru Řĥodôś, a Gigartine, who has asked me to call her Carra for simplicity. Basic does not easily or properly express the complex tonal accents of her fluid and sonorous nomenclature. This is my first encounter with a member of this species. I read the Institute’s file on the taxon, of course, but that report is pre-Ruusan in origin and hasn’t been so much as reviewed in centuries. As such, I’ve chosen to record a summary based on my initial insights here.

    Gigartines, who hail from an Expansion Region planet of the same name, are a near-Human species. Externally, their variations from the Human baseline are modest. They possess cherry-crimson hair. This pigmentation is derived from symbiotic algae. This same algae infiltrates throughout the dermis, erupting across the surface of the skin in widespread irregular splotches and dots. On a human, this would appear as a severe skin rash or autoimmune disorder. The symbiotic relationship is essential for osmotic regulation, removing sulfites from the bloodstream. A similar, unpigmented, feature is found within the eye, forming a ring inside the iris that filters the vitreous fluid. This gives the eye the appearance of a second circle. It also means that Gigartine tears are yellow-shaded and sulfurous.

    Their noses are also somewhat enlarged due to the presence of filtering membranes at the base of the nostrils. This membrane also allows the closure of the nasal passages during submersion. The altered shape of the nasal cartilage is not always immediately apparent but can be detected as an unsourced lack of symmetry in the face from a Human perspective.

    Internal variations are significantly more substantial. Gigartines possess nearly double the per kilo blood volume as Humans, and the per milliliter concentration of blood cells is nearly triple. The hemoglobin within those cells is a synthetic creation that has efficiency enhanced well above the protein’s natural evolutionary state. This allows them to hold their breath for a prolonged period, upwards of thirty minutes of intense physical activity, and more with training and acclimation. Their bodies also resist the pressure, cold, and gas exchange impacts of prolonged dives. Negatively, this means that they rely upon a hyperventilate-and-store breathing methodology and struggle to maintain sustained aerobic activity even in air. Attempting to run a marathon, for example, is impossible without oxygen supplementation. Their high blood volume, and consequently the pressure level needed to move all that fluid internally, make them very vulnerable to bleeding from wounds. Capillary density near the surface has been reduced to mitigate this, which results in reduced touch sensitivity.

    These adaptations to an amphibious, though not truly aquatic, existence, are surely not a result of natural evolution and instead represent the alteration of Humans to serve as a labor force on Gigartine, a planet whose vast seaweed beds fertilized by continual volcanism have immense pharmaceutical value. Those responsible for this alteration are unknown, as all records of the original settlement of the planet were lost during the Second Alsakan Conflict. Most likely one of the long-defunct Great Conglomerates is responsible. The practice of engineering near-Humans to settle aquatic worlds was common during that era and traces to the ancient colonial practices of Adamastor.

    Carra explained to me that the underworld has hosted a small community of Gigartines for at least the last thousand years. They originated among refugees who fled Sith aggression during the Draggulch Period. Apparently, there are many such communities scattered throughout the underworld, as any number of historical conflicts, great and small, induce flight to this planet and its perceived safety as the seat of government. Such moves are meant to be temporary, but it would seem that Coruscant is easier to reach than it is to leave.

    As a personal matter, Carra was born in the Aquarium. Her martial credentials trace to membership in an informal citizen’s militia and service in a mercenary unit during a prolonged struggle with a rogue droid intelligence that attempted to sabotage infrastructure in the region from levels 2601 to 2635 known as The Pumps. Such outbursts of maliciously malevolent AI are, if reports are correct, distressingly common due to the extremely aged artificial programming used by underworld systems.

    Like most members of aquatic species I have met, Carra is not especially talkative, but she otherwise reads as extremely professional. She wears a suit of aquatic-adapted armor that surely began existence as Clone Trooper Armor, decorated in the same crimson shade as her hair. Owning such armor is highly illegal, but she has a certificate attesting that the armor is in fact ancient Republic commando gear of similar design that, despite being an obvious fraud, seems to satisfy the extant authorities. I do not recognize the model of blaster rifle she carries, but based on size and power pack it is certainly military grade. I suspect it is a locally produced product that evades licensing requirements through just not being on any security list. Hopefully she will have no need to use it.

    Unsurprisingly, she has never heard of the Tzordi, but when I explained my mission her response was broadly supportive. She also did not find the idea of a species hidden in the underworld the least bit unusual, suggesting directly that there are numerous communities existing here unknown to external authority, with whole regions of the underworld occupied by squatters in technically uninhabited territory. Apparently, no proper census has even been attempted, much less completed, for centuries. The Republic gave up at some point and the Empire simply does not care to bother.

    A most distressing state of affairs.

    Notes
    The University of Coruscant is canon. Under the Empire, it was a center of Humanocentrism and non-Humans were prohibited from attending.

    The Gigartines are my invention. The name is taken from Gigartinales, an order of red algae. Carra, specifically, is named after Irish Moss, Chondrus crispus.

    The Great Conglomerates were companies that dominated the settlement of the Expansion Region. The Second Alsakan Conflict that obscured the origins of this species took place between 16,200 and 15,400 BBY (Star Wars history is lengthy).

    The bit about Carra’s armor is something of an inside joke involving SWTOR, which has a number of armor sets that look more or less exactly like Clone Trooper Armor.
     
  22. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    Nice for him to work with Carra. And more revealing details about the underworld.
     
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  23. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    Entry Six
    The Aquarium is unlike any other aquatic environment I have ever experienced and, I submit, is quite possibly unique in the galaxy. While oceans with a distinct upper and lower bound of solid material are in fact quite common, as in the many, many subsurface oceans wedged between layers of ice on frozen worlds, these measure their thickness in hundreds of kilometers, not a mere four hundred and fifty meters. The Aquarium is, amazingly, sufficiently slender that in places where there is both excellent lighting and water clarity – admittedly a very rare combination – it is possible to see all the way from the bottom to the top. At the same time, the volume of this artificial sea is truly vast, some 300,000,000 cubic kilometers of space. This admittedly somewhat simplified figure also happens to be roughly one-third of the total volume of all oceans on a typical terrestrial planet.

    Despite the massive size, the environment is stunningly artificial. It doesn’t mimic the natural conditions of any planet at all, instead, light, pressure, dissolved gas composition, nutrient flux, mineral content, and other variables are all actively manipulated according to arbitrary standards. Portions of the Aquarium are lightless and possess the crushing pressures of abyssal zones, while others are surface bright and atmospherically idyllic, yet the possibilities go well beyond simply gradients to allow for glowing depths and blackened surfaces through technological manipulation. The total number of variable environments is not known, but there must be tens of thousands at a minimum given the many residents. Regional population is estimated at 22.5 billion. Many planets, even heavily developed ones, feature far fewer inhabitants, though admittedly it is the rare world that utilizes such a substantial vertical dimension with this kind of thoroughness.

    Though the Aquarium technically encompasses some forty-five levels of the underworld, in practice the waters are unbounded from top to bottom and the levels are differentiated internally only by their elevator stops, markings on support struts, and the placement of heavy machinery such as filtration stations, circulation turbines, and various buffer walls. Habitation and division are instead produced by enclosures extended out from the massive plates of duracrete forming the ‘ceiling’ or ‘floor.’ In the largest cases these reach across the entirety of the four-hundred-and-fifty-meter span and extend for hundreds of kilometers laterally. These are called bubbles, a label that is functional because the boundaries of these enclosures are comprised of vast sheets of advanced containment and filtration membrane but seems woefully inadequate. While tiny personal bubbles barely the size of a building can be found in some areas, most are immense and contain populations of hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals.

    If the rest of the underworld were peeled away and the Aquarium could be seen from the outside, it would resemble a glass globe filled with a thin watery layer and covered in air bubbles.

    Outside of the bubbles, the waters are common space, and their condition is controlled by the municipal authority. This space hosts essential transport infrastructure and other resources, houses those members of the bureaucracy who work within this zone, hosts storage and essential industry conducted primarily by droids, and is generally turned to any other purpose where environmental specification is not necessary. These common waters are continuously lit, warm, manipulated to surface pressure regardless of depth using repulsor fields, kept at a constant dissolved oxygen level, and purified. At least, that is the objective. In reality, failures are commonplace and in any given area it is likely that some system is not operating properly. In the case of lightning outages or temperature variation this is mostly a nuisance, but loss of dissolved oxygen or a failure to manage the pressure gradient can be swiftly lethal. As a result, most of the residents, even though nominally native to aquatic environments, wear armor or environment suits at all times when outside of their home bubbles. Observation suggests that provisions of this kind are commonplace throughout the underworld, merely exaggerated in an aqueous environment. A sad commentary on overall maintenance status.

    Notes
    Subsurface oceans with ice above and below are a real, theorized, planetary environment, with our solar system potentially having several of them (Europa and Enceladus most likely, possibly several other bodies).

    Being able to see 450 meters in water is right around the theoretical visibility limit in a situation with no turbidity at all, however, this is somewhat augmented by the presence of lights above and below.

    The volume figure I have given should be accurate, though it’s very low precision given the extremely large numbers involved in the calculation (Corsucant’s diameter is 12240 km) and the large amount of rounding involved.

    If you could see the Aquarium from space, it would look kind of like this bubble-filled glass float.
     
  24. earlybird-obi-wan

    earlybird-obi-wan Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 21, 2006
    Great explanation of how the aquarium works
     
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  25. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    Entry Seven
    The wastewater management facility on 2655 is a large compound full of pipes, sluicing systems, filtration turbines, and other mechanisms used to cleanse and sort vast volumes of water from the surrounding area. Sources include the tram system, warehouses, squatter habitats, and more. From microscopic viral particles to wildlife remains the size of large cetaceans, such wastage spans an astonishing volume range. All of this is, in concept, filtered, depolymerized, sterilized, and then processed down to base molecular components for recycling, though only the first stages of this process are completed locally. Instead, the waste stream is reduced and compressed to semi-liquid sludge and pumped down several hundred levels to the conglomerated waste processing zone known as Distillation. Cumbersome logistics, but the team of Chagrian engineers and droid techs operating the facility claim the economies of scale justify such complex networks.

    Environmental DNA is one of a great many sampling protocols run on the incoming bulk water intake prior to filtration. Toxic chemicals, heavy metals, and other contaminants are also monitored regularly alongside continual measurements of ambient traits like temperature and dissolved oxygen. The local operators were not even aware that this facility reported the eDNA indication of a Tzordi. It seems they only get notified of emergency results that require immediate correction. Everything else, including long-term trend analysis and the overwhelming majority of the bulk data is tabulated using off-site central computation systems in the Network Access Zone occupying levels 2601-2610. It seems this sort of off-site processing is an underworld constant. Frustrating, given how it obliterates local control and initiative.

    The operators had never heard of the Tzordi, but they are aware of the use of eDNA. It seems that this method is used to register the presence of illegal squatters and even occasional outbursts of criminal activity. They suggested that I call on the Underworld Police to examine the archived data and to get permission to run a full trace on the filtration feeds to get a 3D model of the intake plume origin that provided the report. Attempting to access the data directly through the processing plant’s local feed was apparently impossible, since only droids can get a direct connection.

    Happily, and somewhat unexpectedly, the Underworld Police had no problem linking me to the archived data. It turns out that all this wastewater processing testing information is a matter of public record, just buried in the bottom of the municipal authority’s archives because hardly anyone ever looks at it. After a brief message exchange a helpful officer sent me instructions on how to work through the directory maze. Carra found this surprising. Her comment was that of course Humans help each other. I found this supposition interesting, mostly because I had no idea the species of the officer on the other end and had no reason, beyond the demographic data suggesting that Humans have the slightest of majorities in the underworld populace, to assume that species. My bodyguard informed me, afterward, that the Underworld Police has overwhelmingly Human personnel, despite the environmental obstacles that raises in a place like the Aquarium. This seems to have historic origins and is rooted primarily in nepotism – the underworld police have a very strong tendency to push their relatives to follow the same career path – than speciesism. Still very strange.

    It took some effort to pull the data from the municipal database in a useful format. Typical of historical government archives they are organized according to bizarre bureaucratic priorities and not to facilitate effective science. After a few hours I was able to grasp the interlinking structure and could take the Tzordi hit and overlay it against a steady flow model indicating a zone of probable origin. This encompassed a region near the ‘floor’ of the Aquarium contained a highly automated bulk processing facility that churns out the huge sheets of filtration membranes used to enclose bubbles and a bottom level tram line.

    This seemed like little help, since neither environment is a good candidate for anyone to operate in without an environment suit. The historic biological data on the Tzordi makes is very clear that they have unique environmental requirements with specialized organic compounds present in the mix. The nearly purified ambient backdrop of the Aquarium would quickly poison them. I suspect the eDNA hit, and it was a single hit, no repeated records can be found, resulted from a suit breach, probably a serious injury, that dumped a substantial quantity of biomass into the water.

    I went back to the police to inquire as to accidents or violence reported from the same place and time, though Carra cautioned that unless the incident occurred on the tram – which is blanketed in cameras – there would be no record. She also added that because of the constant surveillance the tram system is considered to be a safe space and feuds, criminal activity, and other sources of violence are taboo there. A curious custom, but it does seem to hold up, as there are very few crime reports sourced to the tram system. I suspect this initially developed as a means of avoiding police attention. There’s hardly any other public place in the Aquarium with decent surveillance coverage.

    Regardless, no pertinent reports came back. The only relevant accident, an elderly sentient swam too close to the tram track and lost an arm in the subsequent collision, is clearly attributed to a male Nautolan. Accidents are common in elderly members of that species, since as the sensitivity of their head tendrils degrades with age, their spatial awareness fades. It seems I’ll need to try something else.

    Notes
    The idea of the Underworld Police being overwhelmingly Human is based on the fact that in TCW, where they appear in several episodes, they all look exactly the same. No faces can be seen, but since there is only one character model they are probably all the same species, which means they are going to all be Human. Nepotism is a plausible explanation, as ‘police families’ are a common feature of many national and local administrations, especially where being a civil servant is one of the few paths to gainful employment.

    Nautolan head tails are supposed to have a strong sensory component, so the idea of them breaking down with age is logical to me.
     
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