The Galactic Center of
Coruscant
(pronounced /’kʊɹəsɑnt/), originally called Notron, also known as
Imperial Center or the Queen of the Core, was the political hub of the
galaxy for millennia. It was generally agreed that Coruscant was, during
most of Galactic history, the most politically important world in the
galaxy. At various times, it was the capital of
the Galactic Republic,
the Galactic Empire, the New Republic, briefly the Empire Reborn, the
New Republic again, the Yuuzhan Vong Empire occupation, the Galactic
Alliance, the Fel Empire and Darth Krayt’s Galactic Empire. These
governments, that all controlled Coruscant, controlled the galaxy in the
process.
A large number of the galaxy’s trade routes—including the Perlemian
Trade Route, the Corellian Run, the Metellos Trade Route, the Koros
Trunk Line, and the Leisure Corridor—went through Coruscant, making it
one of the richest worlds in the galaxy. Tellingly, the planet’s
hyperspace coordinates were (0,0,0), and the military designation was
Triple Zero. Accordingly, it was the main planet of the all-important
‘Sector Zero’, a military designation for the Coruscant and surrounding
systems.
The actual planet-wide metropolis of Coruscant was divided into
smaller ‘cities’, (though each was the size of the average country by
most standards). Among these was the administrative center, known as
Galactic City, Republic City,
Coruscant City or the City of Spires under
the Galactic Republic,
Imperial City during the rule of the Galactic Empire, and New Republic
City under the New Republic, and later Yuuzhan’tar when the planet was
under Yuuzhan Vong control.
Description
Surface
Geologically, the planet was composed of a molten core with a rocky
mantle and a silicate rock crust. At its poles were huge ice caps that
were popular spots for tourists.
The entire surface of
Coruscant
was covered by sprawling kilometers-high skyscrapers and cities, and
boasted a population of over a hundred billion to several trillion,
depending on the era. Following the end of the Clone Wars, an official
census noted 1 trillion official permanent residents. The statistics did
not include transients, temporary workers, unregistered populace nor
residents of orbital facilities. Because of these omissions, the “real”
population of Coruscant was estimated to be three times the official
amount.
Night view of the Senate District from 500 Republica, c. 19 BBY.
Coruscanti skyscrapers dwarfed all the original natural features,
including mountains, as well as floors of oceans which once covered a
large proportion of Coruscant’s surface. Areas of Galactic City were
broken up into levels, megablocks, blocks, and subblocks. Coruscant
itself was divided into quadrants, which were divided into zones. Below
the skyscrapers was Coruscant’s undercity, where sunlight never reached.
Artificial lighting illuminated these lower levels and advertisement
holograms could be seen everywhere. There were numerous establishments
for entertainment, catering to a myriad of alien species. The residents
were collectively referred to as Twilighters.
Water
Coruscant was once a world mostly covered in oceans. However, all
natural bodies of water were drained and stored in vast caverns beneath
the city as a result of years of overpopulation. The only body of water
visible was the artificial Western Sea, with many artificially-created
islands floating on it, used by tourists on holidays.
With no other bodies of water available to feed and water its
trillion inhabitants, Coruscant’s architects, along with many others
from around the galaxy, worked together to build a self-contained
eco-system in the massive buildings set all over the planet. Polar cap
stations also melted ice and distributed water throughout the planetwide
city through a complex series of pipes.
Pipes bring water from Coruscant’s polar regions.
Manarai Mountains
One of the few pieces of Coruscant’s landmass that were left untouched
were the Manarai Mountains, twin peaks that stuck up out of the ground
near the famous Imperial Palace. The Manarai Mountains included the
tallest peak, Umate; many floating restaurants; Monument Plaza; and were
home to the Flames of Umate cult. It was beneath the Manarai Mountains
that the Lusankya was hidden. The mountains were destroyed during the
Yuuzhan Vong assault on Coruscant.
Neighborhoods
Galactic City was divided into quadrants, “several thousand” in number,
with each quadrant further split into sectors. Each sector was numbered
on official maps, but sectors often had nicknames, such as Sah’c Town
(sector H-46, named for a prominent family that owned a large portion of
its land) and The Works, the largest of Coruscant’s designated
industrial zones. (Coruscant practiced zoning, which is the designation
of specific areas of land for particular purposes, such as governmental
and senatorial, financial (including banking zones), residential,
commercial, industrial, and manufacturing. Manufacturing and industrial
zones were typically the largest designated areas of the planet.) The
Works was once one of the galaxy’s major manufacturing areas, where
spacecraft parts, droids, and building materials were heavily produced
during centuries, but as construction and industry became more efficient
and cheaper away from
Coruscant,
The Works fell into disrepair. It gained a reputation as a hub of
criminal activity and many locals stayed away from it. A similar, but
more dangerous area, was the Factory District, which was once the
industrial heart of Coruscant until it too lost out to competition from
producers in other
Core Worlds.
By the time of the Great Jedi Purge it lay in ruins and was almost
completely deserted of sentients, because of the feral droids that
prowled its streets. It was located on the opposite side of the planet,
and was much more dangerous than the Southern Underground, Invisible
Sector, which were infamous in their own right. Another area of
Coruscant was CoCo Town (short for “collective commerce”). Many diverse
species lived there and worked in manufacturing. A partially enclosed
open-air plaza near the Senate building, the Column Commons, was
so-called because it housed most of the HoloNet and news media
corporations.
The multi-layered surface of Coruscant.
Livability
Coruscant
also orbited relatively far from its small star Coruscant Prime,
ranging from 207 million to 251 million km. Thus, Coruscant did not
naturally have a climate suitable for Humans. Coruscant’s Humans
countered this by erecting a series of orbital mirrors that reflected
the sun’s warmth and light. Several of these mirrors would be destroyed
in the Battle of Coruscant during the Clone Wars, although it is unknown
whether this had any lasting effect. It is known that thunderstorms and
rain occurred during 19 BBY and 3 ABY, possibly as an effect of the
altered sunlight from the remaining mirrors.
The planet produced trillions of tons of waste an hour. Though almost
everything on the planet, from clothes to packaging and machinery, was
recyclable, some waste was too dangerous to recycle such as worn-out
hyperdrive cores were delivered to one of five-thousand garbage pits on
Coruscant, there they were put into canisters and chemically shot into a
tight orbit around Coruscant where garbage ships would collect them and
transport them to nearby moons for storage. Some of the most dangerous
materials were shot into the nearby sun and completely incinerated.
Garbage not exported or destroyed was mixed into a slurry of silicone
oils and processed by garbage worms who chewed it into pellets removing
any remaining organics, plastic, or recoverable metals. They turned
millions of tons of pellets into carbon dioxide, methane, and other
gases. Another problem for a world like Coruscant was the unimaginable
amount of carbon dioxide and heat energy that its trillion-being
population generated each day, so thousands of carbon dioxide-reactive
atmospheric dampeners were put into place in the upper atmosphere to
prevent atmospheric degeneration. The first set of these planet-wide
dampeners, developed by
the Galactic Republic, was known as the Coruscant Atmospheric Reclamation Project.
Near the planet’s core were a number of massive power relay stations.
The lowest levels were abandoned to mutants and scavengers, such as the
cannibalistic, mythical Cthons. The foundations of many of the
buildings, some of which weighed billions of tons, also extended deep
into the planet’s crust.
Galactic Standard Time was developed on Coruscant and revolved around
the hours in a single Coruscant day, 24, with 368 local days a year.
Public Safety
The Public Safety Department was in charge of preventing situations that
might endanger the public’s safety. Fire fighting, rescue and cleanup
was performed by the Coruscant Rescue Ops which dealt mainly with the
tens of thousands of ships that were in the capital. Each planetary
district maintained their own teams. Law enforcement was provided mostly
by the
Coruscant Police Force. They were assisted, at various times, by the
Jedi Order,
Judicial Forces, the Republic Security Force, clone troopers of the
GAR, the Coruscant Guard, the Stormtrooper Corps, the Coruscant
Planetary Defense Force, the New Jedi Order, the Galactic Alliance
Guard, and Galactic Alliance Security. Police droids were also used. The
CoCo District maintained its own constabulary force.
Panoramic view of the planetary cityscape of Coruscant from the High Council Chamber
Defenses
As of the Battle of
Coruscant
during the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, Coruscant had a four tier defense
system. The first and “uppermost” tier was a series of mines. These were
deactivated during the Battle of Coruscant at the behest of Lando
Calrissian because he believed that they would do more harm than good,
only to be reactivated by Calrissian later when the attacking Vong fleet
was in the midst of it, thus trapping many more foes.
The second tier was a series of Golan Defense Platforms, mostly Golan
II types. The command platform was dubbed “Orbital Defense One” and was
larger than its cousins. Most of these were destroyed when the Vong
broke through New Republic lines, including Orbital Defense One.
The third tier was a massive planetary shield, controlled by a series
of relays on the surface of Coruscant. The shield seems to have worked
by some kind of dispersion of energy released onto the shield. The Vong
employed a tactic which involved waves of kamikaze ships crashing into
the shield, overloading the relays, and effectively bringing it down.
The fourth and last tier was an array of rooftop turbolasers, akin to
the point-defense systems on some capital ships. Some were operated
automatically, others by Human gunners and astromech droids. Also
counted was the proton bomb in the Chief of State’s office, which was
detonated when Vong soldiers occupied the Imperial Palace. The explosion
destroyed the building housing the office, and the data towers on
Coruscant.
It is unknown as to whether the Galactic Alliance incorporated these same defenses during the rebuilding of Coruscant.
The Works landscape.
History
Pre-Republic
The very early history of Coruscant is a bit sketchy and is not well known.
Coruscant
was considered by many to be the Human homeworld. Millennia ago, the
Celestials could have removed Humans from Coruscant with which to
populate Corellia.
Around 200,000 BBY, the near-Human Taungs attempted to conquer the 13
baseline Human nations of the Battalions of Zhell. A volcano decimated
the Zhell, the ash filling the skies for two years, so the Taungs
adopted the name Dha Werda Verda (Warriors of Shadow) for themselves.
The Human Zhell eventually recovered and drove the Taungs offworld.
One hundred millennia later, Coruscant was surveyed by the Columi,
who dismissed the planet as a primitive disappointment, despite the
already planet-spanning ecumenopolis of Galactic City. New buildings
were built on the old. As a result, there was virtually no exposed land.
In the forgotten underlevels of the city, there was darkness, pollution
and crime. Higher up, there were government offices and penthouses
owned by the elite. The lower fifty levels of the ecumenopolis is said
to have last seen sunlight around 95,000 BBY.
Coruscant was one of many worlds conquered by the Infinite Empire of
the Rakata, who used Human slaves to build the Star Forge in 30,000 BBY.
Under Rakatan domination, the Humans of Coruscant’s colonization
attempts were limited to sleeper ships, which ended up on
Alderaan, in
the Tion Cluster, Seoul 5, Kuat, Alsakan, Axum, Anaxes, Atrisia, Metellos, Corulag, and many
other worlds.
The Rakata were eventually decimated by a massive plague, leading to
slave revolutions on Coruscant and other subjugated worlds.
Over the next two centuries, Coruscant was linked to other
Core Worlds, including Corellia,
Alderaan,
New Plympto and Duro, by hyperspace cannons, via the Herglic Trade
Empire. It was during this time that the Coruscant government peacefully
absorbed the nearby Azure Imperium. During these pre-Republic years,
the languages of
Coruscant and its neighbors meshed to become Old Galactic Standard.
Coruscant at the time of the Great Galactic War
Early Republic
In 25,053 BBY, the Corellians and Duros invented the hyperdrive proper,
allowing Coruscant to become the capital of a democratic union:
the Galactic Republic.
53 years later the planet became the galactic centre, and remained the
Republic’s capital for twenty five thousand years. Shortly after the
formation of the Republic, the Perlemian Trade Route was mapped, linking
Coruscant to Ossus and bringing the
Jedi Knights
into the Republic. Over the next millennium, the Corellian Run was
mapped, linking Coruscant to Corellia and beyond. Blasters were also
invented on
Coruscant around this time, and the famous Galactic Museum was constructed in 12,000 BBY.
From the very beginning, Coruscant, as the Republic’s capital, was
the primary objective in several wars. The earliest among these was the
Tionese War with the Honorable Union of Desevro and Tion in 24,000 BBY,
in which Coruscant was bombarded with Tionese pressure bombs. Other
early battles included the Alsakan Conflicts, the Duinuogwuin
Contention, the Great Hyperspace War, the Third Great Schism, the Great
Droid Revolution, and the Great Sith War.
Following the devastation of Ossus, the
Jedi Council
took up residence in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, to which many Jedi
relics from Ossus were taken. The Temple was greatly expanded, including
the building of the original Jedi Council Chamber. The Temple was
repeatedly expanded including in 3,519 BBY, 2,519 BBY (when the Jedi
Archives were built), 2,019 BBY, and 1,000 BBY (when the Temple spires
were finally fully rebuilt).
At some point, the Senate Rotunda was founded, replacing the previous
assembly place. The exterior of this massive structure would survive
the planet’s transformation into the new Yuuzhan’tar.
The Sacking of Coruscant in 3,653 BBY.
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