So a couple things about Coruscant, circa roughly right before Order 66 and probably during the whole Empire too but I like the Prequel era as a backdrop so bear with me:
- Most of Coruscant’s population technically lives in the sam building as the rich and powerful but MUCH lower down and the levels aren’t necessarily easily acessible.
- Padme mentions in an episode of TCW that power rationing in the lower levels had gotten to the point where her senatorial aides only had power and running water once a week.
- Coruscant’s police department is underfunded and too small for the sheer masses it’s supposed to patrol, so a lot of “crime” occurs in the form of “Normal business transactions but we ain’t paying taxes for services we’ll never see”
- It gets more dangerous the farther down you go not necessarily because of crime but because the lower levels are full of things like Giant Mutant Rats, Escaped Monsters From The Pet Trade, and Monstrous Eyeless Humanoids That Might Have Been Normal People Several Centuries Ago Until They Stopped Being Able To See The Sun And Also Might Like To Eat Toes
But between food shortages, a lack of regulation and Lots of large Animals Down There, you can’t tell me there aren’t people who are effectively
Ecumenopolis Bush-Meat Hunters. Owing to the lack of actual Bush and the Rule Of Cool, we’ll call them Dark Meat Hunters.
Anyone willing to brave The Deep Dark and come back with fresh* meat for thier hungry communities and maybe also some cool tusks the size of your whole leg is probably a very respected member of thier community**, and with the proliferation of military-grade weapons in Star Wars it’s probably not that difficult to get your hands on the appropriate gear*** So there’s probably an entire collective of Dark Meat Hunters. Some of them might have even made firends with the Eyeless Humanoids**** and formed cooperative You-Return-Any-Lost-Eyed-People-You-Find-And-I’ll-Smuggle-Some-Vaccines-Down relationships with them.
*Well, it was killed today and is free of any visible parasites at least. You should porbably have your steak well-done though. As a precaution.
**Not Canon, but heavily suggested by canon: If there aren’t enough cops and it’s a beauractic nightmare anyway, it might not be that hard for say, an entire city block to stop paying taxes and turn themselves into an autonomus commune if they didn’t actively pick fights.
***Drive your friend’s crappy speeder at the truck hard enoug and you could LITERALLY knock an arms dealer over.
****
Hunter 1, new on the job: “WHAT IS THAT HIDEOUS CREATURE???”
Hunter 2: “What? Oh, that’s Eyeless Bob. Say Hi Bob!”
Bob: *Throaty, wet gibbering noises and flailing*
Hunter 2: “HA! You’re hilarious.”
Hunter 1: “You can understand him?”
Hunter 2: “Sure, it takes a bit to get used to his accent but he’s a riot at parties.”Aw man this has potential for a short story/RPG characters/Art, but its 3 AM and i oughtta go to bed.
This is frikkin’ brilliant.
Oh hey I’m not done with this yet:
-Dark Meat Hunters are rarely solo- it’s way easier to take down a Mutant Pig-Rat the size of a minivan when you’ve got some friends and maybe a riding animal to help you. it’s also a lot easier to hold down a good territiory or keep your books and sell your prey at market if you’ve got some friends who can do patrols and bookeeping and sales for you.
-Hence, most Dark meat Hunters are part of “gangs” which is Imperialst for “Community organization that doesn’t pay taxes”, that contain not only multiple types of hunters, but other food-generating professions, managment and in the larger groups, quality control to make sure whatever you dredged up isn’t going to sicken important clients.
-Some of the other food-generating operations include: Hydroponic farming in empty warehouses that still have sewerhookups, insect farming, fungal farming, water collection and purification, Deep fishing and Grand Theft Basil.
-Seriously, spices are at a premium and worth killing for in the half-starved mid and lower levels. There’s big money in ripping off fancy restaurants or rich people for seasoning.
-Hunters identify themselves with luminescent face and body paint, both to show they’re not prey and to identify what Clan they belong to. It’d be pretty dumb to get speared by your buddy just becuase he thought you were a rival gang member. Luminescent paint is also camoflage- many animals living in the sunless lower levels of Coruscant are bioluminescent themselves, to attract mates and rey, and to blend in with the neons.
-Speaking of Levels, consider: If the average Cloud Cover level is “0″
Cloud-Level: 0-1 miles below cloud cover, rich bitches. The senate, a good portion of the jedi temple and Padme Amidala’s penthouse are up here.
Upper Level: 1-2 mi below cloud cover, upper-class-but-not-the-1%, sa bit of an economic dead zone- food is delivered regularly enough that shortages are rare. If you’re sneaky you can do hydroponic farming, process water or insect farm. You’ll need guards, engineers to fix the sewer and powerlines, probably a few biologists with student loans, and someone to manage the beuacratic end of things (whether that’s bribery or a string of mssing tax collectors is up to the clan)
Mid-Level: 2-3 mi blow cc: middle-class to poor, this is where dark food is sold, without the payment of taxes. limited light, limited power, MASSIVE shortages, this is where markets happen. Clan fights for control can get bitter and extremely voilent but are rarely public- the masses are already scared and desperate, open violence will only incite more violence and reduce sales. Public clan fights take the form of verbal taunting a vicious rumor mill. Once out of the market, things can get nasty- there’s a persistent rumor about the Dark Markets that if you piss of one of the clans enough, you could end up being their wares the next day.
Lower Level: 3-4 mi cc: Poor, actually less populated than the Mid-Level, almost no sunlight. This is where game starts to appear- escaped exotics from the pet trade, mutant rats, invasive small and medium game that’s adapted to city life. Wookies, Togruta, Trandoshans, and Rodians dominate the species makeup of the Hunters, many of them bringing thier planet-of-origin’s hunting traditions and hunting animals with them. Humans, Twi’lekk and other populous meat-eating species are common too, and many operate Hunt-Adjacent businesses, like trap and weapon maunfacurers, Kennels, bait-makers, outfitters and guides.
“Bottom” level: 4-4.5 mi cc. About 4,5 miles down from the highest buildings is most of coruscant’s water table. Sections of it are acessible and are filled with billions of tons of blind sewer fish. Fishing’s a risky business- some of those fish are the size of tiberian freighters. This is also where many of the large carnivores like urban Nexu, narglatches and rancors live, where they don’t have to compete with the citizenry for food. Also down here are the ruins of the first civilization of coruscant, and open sections of former city filled with dark-growing mushrooms, extoic plants and all kinds of treasures, many of which can poison or eat you too. High risk, high reward, requires a biology degree to mine properly
4.5 miles and lower: Byssal level.Entirely underground (or underwater) , this is where the cnothic people (eyeless pale and slightly cannibalistic humanoids) live, and thier secrets are not easily given up. Poorly mapped and barely explored, “delving” here combines aspects of spelunking, mining, cartography, archeology and sheer dumb luck. People have come back with amazing things- original Kolto cultures, ancient force-user artifacts, paper books , but they also come back changed- hypersensitive to light and sound, and a little looser on the ethics of potentially eating members of your dig team
If i ever GM a Star War I’m stealing this for my game
Steal Away! And tell me all about it, this is a concept I highly encourage people to take and use in games/fic/art whatever!
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