Star Systems

The known galaxy included nearly a billion inhabited star systems, from uncharted smugglers' settlements to planet-spanning ecumenopoleis where scarcely a meter of ground remained untouched. Under the Galactic Empire, nearly seventy million of those system were sufficiently populated to merit some form of representation.

In the first years of the Galactic Republic, any planet with a large enough population was granted a seat in the Galactic Senate. However, even before the Galactic Republic had expanded beyond the Core Worlds, this system of government was unworkable: the Senate's sheer size made debate interminable and consensus almost impossible to arrive to. The Planetary Senate was thus reorganized, with sectors being formed of groups of up to fifty star systems to act as the new constituencies, while recognized representatives of a single planet or species still had the right to petition the full Senate. A prominent example of this towards the end of the Republic was Jar Jar Binks, representing the Gungan people of Naboo.

Planetary Governors represented the central government on a single planet. Their writ typically included the entire star system, though there were exceptions for systems that included multiple planets with huge populations or very different cultures, such as the Corellian system. In the eldest parts of the Core Worlds, systems and even individual planets were centers of political power, a relic of the Galactic Republic's origins. Elsewhere, systems were subservient in representation to subsectors, sectors and regions.


Sectors

The basic political unit for much of galactic history was the sector, largely artificial divisions of space organized for political, military and economic reasons. After the first years of the Galactic Republic, the star systems of the Republic were organized into sectors limited to fifty systems with substantial populations. As the Republic expanded, the huge number of sectors led to gridlock within the Galactic Senate, and some sectors swelled to include thousands of inhabited worlds, even as galactic civilization continued to expand wildly, until there were millions of sectors.

This was not resolved until the Ruusan Reformations of 1000 BBY, which reorganized the galaxy into 1,024 regional sectors divided into constituent subsectors. The Chommell sector of the Mid Rim, for example, though fairly sparsely settled, contained some forty thousand inhabited worlds. Sectors by 0 BBY included cultural groupings like the Tapani sector and the Senex-Juvex, and business-controlled economic areas like the Corporate Sector, but generally they were fairly arbitrary groupings of planets and colonies of very differing fates and cultures, such as the Gordian Reach, the Arkanis sector, and the Anoat sector.

The Ruusan Reformations created a number of problems with sectorial representation that would not be resolved until the Republic's end. A moratorium was included on the creation of new sectors, but settlers kept pushing beyond the Republic's frontier, reclaiming systems lost during the New Sith Wars and settling new worlds. Some of these systems were annexed by existing sectors, which caused some outlying sectors to swell to gargantuan proportions. Others became de facto corporate possessions, or were directly administered by the Republic bureaucracy and denied Senate representation, though it was claimed that they were "virtually represented" by other senators. The old Core sectors saw the rimward megasectors as a threat to their ancient power and prestige, while the directly-administered systems complained that their "virtual representation" was a farce. The reforms of 124 BBY sought to address these issues, with many settled areas outside the Republic's borders becoming incorporated as freestanding subsectors, with their representatives reporting to the senator of an associated sector.

Until the final years of the Galactic Republic, sectors were governed by their senators, while the Supreme Chancellor had the right to appoint a Governor-General to coordinate military action within the sector during a state of emergency. Palpatine exploited this law frequently during the Clone Wars, culminating in the Sector Governance Decree, that appointed a permanent new class of military governors to the regional sectors - the Galactic Empire's Moffs. The Galactic Empire also created or carved out a number of new sectors, overturning the Ruusan Reformations' moratorium, including the Indrexu sector in the Greater Tion, and combined several freestanding subsectors to create the Baxel and Zuma sectors.


Regions

The galaxy's largest territorial entities were the regions. These were largely cultural entities as opposed to political ones, and generally corresponded to stages of galactic exploration and settlement. The nine most famous regions were the Deep Core, the Core Worlds, the Colonies, the Inner Rim, the Expansion Region, the Mid Rim, the Outer Rim Territories, and beyond the galactic frontier, Wild Space and the Unknown Regions. Casual phraseology usually split the galaxy into "the Core" and "the Rim", with the latter consisting of the Expansion Region and parts beyond.

---Deep Core

At the very heart of the galaxy, the Deep Core (also known as the Core Systems) was a region that spanned seven thousand light years, and contained roughly 30 billion stars. Due to the gravitational pull of the vast number of stars, as well as a massive black hole at the center, local space-time was severely warped, making hyperspace travel difficult at best. For millennia, only the fringes of the Deep Core closest to the Core Worlds, within a mathematically defined boundary known as the Horizon, had been settled. These worlds included Khomm, Thoadeye, Vulpter, and the dominant planet of the Deep Core, Empress Teta. The heart of the region was thought to be almost inaccessible until Emperor Palpatine found several safe hyperlanes into the region. The area remained fiercely loyal to the New Order, and was an Imperial stronghold until almost twenty years after the Battle of Endor.

---Core Worlds

The Core Worlds was an ancient region bordering the outlying areas of the Deep Core, and included some of the most prestigious, well-developed, well-known, and heavily populated planets in the galaxy. The Galactic Republic and subsequently all galaxywide governments were born in the Core Worlds and spread out over the galaxy. During both the time of the Republic and Empire, Coruscant, a major core world, was the Galactic Capital. The region of the Core Worlds known as the Tetrahedron became the cradle of the early Republic, and simultaneously scouts discovered the Perlemian Trade Route and the Corellian Run emanating from Coruscant, creating a region known as the Arrowhead containing the ancient worlds of Alsakan, Anaxes, Basilisk and Ixtlar. Colonization created a semi-circular ring extending south as far as Abregado-rae, often considered the cream of the Core Worlds, while subsequent centuries create a second ring to the galactic west, though these worlds, disparaged as "the Negs" for their negative-digit galactic coordinates, were looked down upon by the rest of the Core. The Core's natural wealth was buoyed by the farming worlds of the Agricultural Circuit, the semi-independent colonies of the Illodia sector, the Bormea/Darpa Corridor, the manufacturing planets of the Humbarine sector, and the military shipyards of the Kuat sector.

---Colonies

The Colonies, so named because it was among the first areas outside the Core to be colonized, contained many of the galaxy's wealthiest worlds and prided itself on being the galaxy's economic engine. Worlds here were typically heavily populated, industrialized, and cultured, and the region was considered the meeting point of Core wealth and Rim raw materials. The Colonies, forming the tip of the Slice, came to include many of the galaxy's oldest manufacturing worlds, including Balmorra, Commenor and Neimoidia. Subsequent colonization produced the shipyards of Loronar, the urbanized worlds of the Pencael system, and the young worlds of Yabol Opa with its great university, the fortress world of Raithal, and the farm worlds of the Delle system.

---Inner Rim

The Inner Rim was a region of the galaxy between the Colonies and the Expansion Region. It was originally just called "The Rim", as it was expected to be the farthest extent of the known galaxy for centuries, but the Expanded Rim (later renamed the Expansion Region) was opened within a hundred years of the Inner Rim being settled during the Great Manifest Period. Inner Rimmers tended to see themselves as being part of the Core and looked disdainfully upon the "outer galaxy", but were known to resent and envy the greater wealth and history of the Core Worlds. The region had minimal cultural influence and had few truly notable planets beyond the ecumenopolis of Denon and the medical worlds of Manaan and Thyferra. As the bridge between the Core and the Rim, the Inner Rim held great strategic value, and during both the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War, brutal battles were fought over the region.

---Expansion Region

The Expansion Region began as an experiment in corporate-controlled worlds, known as the Exploitation Region, with powerful corporations exploiting and profiting heavily from the planets for their raw materials, metals and ores. Inhabitants were oppressed while the corporations stripped entire stellar systems along the Corellian Run of all their resources. The damage was so catastrophic that colonization shifted spinward to the Perlemian Trade Route, which was responsible for the conspicuous northern "bulge" of the modern Inner Rim's border. Colonization resumed during the Great Manifest Period, but the Alsakan Conflicts destroyed many of the Expansion Region's worlds in the Slice, shifting colonization west of the Corellian Run, creating a stretch of space known as the 77 sectors that was dominated by Corellians for millennia. This part of the Expansion Region thrived, with the Rimma, Hydia, and Corellian Trade Spine Routes opening up the region and linking worlds like Tynna, the Gran homeworld of Kinyen, and trading planets of the Harrin Trade Corridor. This region's citizens often preferred to think of themselves as being apart from the rest of the luckless Expansion Region, which continued to suffer during the Republic's final millennium. A second, disastrous experiment in corporate control known as the Outer Expansion Zone ravaged the region and the resulting scandal forced the Senate to disband the Expansionist Oligarchy, but the final centuries of the Republic saw the Slice sectors of the Region fall into economic ruin. The story was told by the region's trade routes: while the Core, Colonies and Inner Rim were dense webs of tangled hyperlanes, the Expansion Region was ill-served by routes and the casual observer might think that it had never been settled. Expansion Region worlds continued to be producers of raw materials and ores. However, most natural resources were exhausted by the Imperial Period, with Gyndine, Bacrana and Cyrillia being among the few remaining viable ports.

---Mid Rim

With fewer natural resources (and therefore a smaller population) than many neighboring regions, the Mid Rim was a territory where residents worked hard for everything they had. Colonization began as the Expansion Region was settled, and while corporations continued to prefer to exploit that region, homesteading incentives and development grants from Coruscant were instead picked up by religious communes or local political confederations. The Slice in the Mid Rim was colonized slowly over several millennia, following a crosshatching pattern determined by Coruscant, giving rise to an orderly region whose residents had plenty of room to spread out. Corporate exploitation remained in the Expansion Region while lawlessness gravitated to the less-governed Outer Rim Territories, which were opened for colonization at the same time. Consequently, the Mid Rim built up a successful economy based on low-cost manufacturing and agriculture, and following the blazing of the Hydian War in 3693 BBY, the northern and southern arcs of the Mid Rim came into shape. Historic Republic outposts like Malastare or lost colonies like Naboo found themselves at the heart of new, orderly, government zoned settlement districts, some of which retained their alphanumeric identifications for centuries. Few of the Mid Rim's worlds became famous, but among those that did were the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk and the Zabrak homeworld of Iridonia, the ocean planet of Glee Anselm, the Order of the Sacred Circle's retreat of Monastery, and Ansion, the nexus of several hyperlanes linked by the Keitumite Mutual Military Treaty.

---Outer Rim Territories

The Outer Rim Territories was the largest region of the galaxy, and the last widely settled expanse before Wild Space and the Unknown Regions. It was strewn with obscure worlds, and rugged, primitive frontier planets. Due to its distance from the Core, government control was historically the weakest in the Outer Rim Territories, and it was the traditional refuge for dissidents, pilgrims and freedom-seekers, but it was also beset by lawlessness, oppression and violence. The worlds of the Outer Rim were immensely varied as a consequence: Eriadu was a prosperous, industrialised megalopolis, and Entralla was a vibrant, Human-dominated spaceport world, but Terminus and Aduba-3 were criminal-run shadowports, and Tatooine was a Hutt-controlled trade depot. The Outer Rim was also dotted with barely-habited worlds like Dagobah, Hoth, Tund and Muskree. Worlds closest to the major super-hyperroutes tended to be the most civilized, but far from these trade links, they tended to be dominated by the Hutts. Mass settlement of large portions of the Outer Rim did not begin until after 5500 BBY, when colonists took advantage of the new trade routes of the Hydian, the Rimma, and the Corellian Trade Spine. Settlement in the southern quadrant was rapid, but expansion in the northern quadrant was hampered by the Great Galactic War and the horrors of the Kanz Disorders. In a reversal of the galaxy's usual pattern, colonization was slowest in the Slice, dominated as it was Hutt Space. Republic authority in the region all-but collapsed during the New Sith Wars, and arguably never returned, with the Hutts filling the power vacuum and piracy, slavery and anarchy dominating. In 124 BBY, the Senate declared the whole region a Free Trade Zone in an effort to jump-start economic development, but this was exploited by the Trade Federation, and the Senate re-imposing taxation in 33 BBY was the trigger for the Invasion of Naboo and the Separatist Crisis. The Galactic Empire oppressed much of the Outer Rim, leading to greater sympathy for the Alliance to Restore the Republic in the region, but the New Republic and the Galactic Alliance both failed to impose central control in the area, leaving the Outer Rim much as it had been for centuries.

---Wild Space and the Unknown Regions

Wild Space was the frontier of galactic society, separating the known parts of the galaxy from the Unknown Regions. It was not a formal label, but was applied to the unsettled galactic fringe and other parts of the galaxy with negligible colonization or development. Wild Space by the Imperial Period typically referred to the wispy fringe of the galaxy's eastern disk, as well as the narrow, meandering strip that separated the civilized galaxy from the Unknown Regions. One of Emperor Palpatine's last acts was to open up much of the region to more extensive exploration. Wild Space differed from the Unknown Regions in that some of Wild Space had been explored, though not extensively, and the findings recorded in official logs; the Unknown Regions remained mysterious. The worlds of Wild Space largely ignored the central government, and were generally peaceful, but many acted as criminal hideaways.

The term "Unknown Regions" referred to those areas that had not been directly surveyed by Republic or Imperial scouts. It was most commonly applied to the less-known parts of the galaxy's western disk, a quadrant stretching roughly between Bakura and the Imperial Remnant. However, the term also applied to the galaxy's halo of gas, dust and stars, as well as the satellite galaxies. When the aggregate of all this territory is summed, the Unknown Regions reached nearly triple the size of settled space, but by some calculations, just 15% of the galactic disk's total stellar mass qualified as part of the Unknown Regions. The chunk of the Unknown Regions within the galaxy was a product of the lack of any western analogues to the Perlemian Trade Route and the Corellian Run, and the Republic's early scouts were content to expand into the easier-to-reach territories of the Slice. It later became clear that the route to the west was in fact barred by a tangle of hyperspace disturbances that effectively split the galaxy in half, forming the midline of the galactic barrier that enveloped the galaxy. The barrier to the Unknown Regions was permeable, however, with spacer tales telling of strange ships visiting distant Outer Rim ports like Terminus, hyperdrive mishaps taking ships through the divide, or ancient alien trails allowing access to the region.

The ill-fated Outbound Flight Project was one of the first official attempts to penetrate the Unknown Regions, while the Galactic Empire's Grand Admiral Thrawn spent several years mapping portions of the area. The Chiss were the dominant species of the Unknown Regions, but in comparison to known space, where most amoral or expansionist species were cowed or exterminated by the early Republic, the Unknown Regions were still a savage, anarchic area. Other powerful species within the region included the slaver empire of the Vagaari, the illusion-spinning mollusks called Crokes, the religiously-fanatical Ssi-ruuk, and the blind berserkers of the Leech Legion. Outside the disk, in the satellite galaxy of Companion Besh, lived the Nagai and their oppressors, the Tofs. The Nagai invaded known space in 4 ABY, pursued by the Tofs, and joined forces with the Alliance of Free Planets to defeat their oppressors and returned to Firefist to liberate it.

Normalization of relations with the Chiss Ascendancy after the Yuuzhan Vong War led to the establishment of stable hyperroutes into the Unknown Regions through the Utegetu Nebula, such as the Rago Run, and by 44 ABY the name was largely inaccurate, at least when applied to the galactic disk. The galactic halo and the satellite galaxies, however, remained poorly explored and mysterious.

---Miscellaneous territories

The galaxy's ten main regions did not reflect the full reality of its political and cultural divisions. Within the territorial bands between the Core and the Outer Rim lay a number of groupings and prefectures, some that had their own regional governments, and others that had only shared cultural stereotypes. The largest of these was the Slice, a vast region of space between the Perlemian and the Corellian Run generally considered the center of galactic civilization and commerce. At its tip was the Arrowhead, encompassing the Core Worlds part of the Slice, with Coruscant at its point. The Arrowhead's other two vertices traditionally fell on Vento on the Perlemian and on Corellia itself, on the Run. The Arrowhead contained the elite of the Core Worlds, and grew out of the ancient pre-Republic Tetrahedron that was the cradle of galactic civilization. Sometimes called the Inner Core, the Arrowhead included Ixtlar, Alsakan, Grizmallt and Anaxes, which became ever-more prestigious the closer they were to Coruscant.

Colonists out of the Arrowhead settled the Slice, going out into what became known as the Colonies, and then further beyond. The worlds along the Perlemian and the Corellian Run were settled for millennia, and colonization slowly reached out from both to knit the Slice together. The Core, Colonies and Inner Rim portions of the Slice were thickly-settled and crisscrossed with thousands of hyperlanes and praediums; the Expansion Region was heavily-colonized near the Corellian Run (and dominated by Corellian interests), but more sparsely settled south of the Perlemian, the product of the millennia-long Alsakan Conflicts. The Slice's luster had begun to fade by the time colonists pushed beyond the Expansion Region in the central Slice; the Mid Rim reaches were well-surveyed but thinly-settled, and the Hutts dominated the Outer Rim precincts even beyond Hutt Space. Though new industries and businesses had largely moved beyond the Slice by the time of the Clone Wars, the region was still considered the heart of galactic civilization, a distinction its citizens remained proud of.

The Southern Core was settled from the Arrowhead and grew through contact with a number of advanced ancient civilizations, including the Devaronians, the Herglics, and the Atrisian Commonwealth. This made it a polyglot region that resisted easy characterization. The western quadrant of the Core Worlds long resisted exploration, lacking any super-hyperroutes and limiting progress along hyperlanes like the Metellos Trade Route to one- or two-light-year hops. Worlds settled along this western frontier received a negative first digit in their galactic coordinates owing to their position west of Coruscant, earning them the name "the Negs", dooming such areas as the Farlax sector to perennial second-class status within the Core.

The Northern Dependencies, a long-settled region north of Coruscant, generally looked outward, whether to Nouane, the worlds of the Hydian Way, or the New Territories beyond. Some of the galaxy's greatest traders, explorers and entrepreneurs hailed from the Northern Dependencies, and the region included some of the galaxy's eldest worlds, rarely troubling itself with Core World politics. To its northeast, the region north of the Perlemian Trade Route, was the Trans-Hydian, an area dotted with worlds with ancient histories, such as Mandalore or the planets of the Sith Worlds and the Tion Cluster, but largely sidelined economically until late in galactic history. Economic development jumped from the Slice to the Trailing Sectors further south, and then followed the Hydian Way into the New Territories. For millennia, the threat of the Mandalorians, rumors of the ancient Sith, and geographic oddities such as the vast Radama Void encouraged more profitable enterprises elsewhere. The Trans-Hydian owed its name to traders from Ord Mantell and Celanon, who braved the threat of Mandalorian raiders to blaze new trade routes like the Listehol Run, the Shaltin Tunnels and the Gordian Reach to link the Hydian and the Perlemian. After the Battle of Endor, the region's loyalties were split between the Empire and the New Republic, earning it the name of the Borderland Regions.

The Trailing Sectors were settled during the Alsakan Conflicts, which saw many colonies in the Slice ruined, enslaved or depopulated, pushing colonization west of the Corellian Run. Here, intrepid traders had long done business with the Herglics, Givin and Tynnans, and the Expansion Region's Trailing Sectors soon outstripped the Slice sectors, jumpstarting expansion into the Mid Rim. The rise of the Rimma Trade Route in 5500 BBY and the Hydian Way two thousand years later furthered this long boom, knitting the region together for traders from across the galaxy. Denizens of the Trailing Sectors tended to view their region as having built on the successes and traditions of the Slice while disregarding its mistakes, valuing entrepreneurship and and hard work.

The Western Reaches grew up around the Corellian Trade Spine and the Hydian Way, with settlement flowing in from the Southern Core and the Trailing Sectors and inheriting those regions' diversity and sense of independence. Explorers and settlers continued to expand the region as late as the period of the New Republic, pushing further west into the Unknown Regions. The Reaches' independence and distance from Coruscant historically made them a hotbed of rebellion, being the refuge for the last holdouts of the Confederacy of Independent Systems after the Clone Wars. The Galactic Empire launched a massive campaign to pacify the Western Reaches, but the area remained a refuge for the Alliance to Restore the Republic throughout the Galactic Civil War and was the site of many Imperial atrocities.

The New Territories were beyond the Northern Dependencies in a region that had developed slowly in contrast to much of the galaxy. Worlds such as Ithor, Ord Mantell and Iridonia were well known, but they were isolated outposts. Large-scale efforts to promote settlement in the northern quadrant repeatedly failed, leading to disasters like the Kanz Disorders and the Outer Expansion Zone. The region was finally properly settled in the final years of the Republic, with the D'Asta merchant family of Serenno establishing markets along the Braxant Run while the Nalroni Merchant Council expanded along the Celanon Spur. These economic successes encouraged Coruscant to invest heavily in the region, soon dubbed the New Territories, and between Republic spending on programs like the Planetary Pioneers and the influence of the D'Asta family, the region was strongly Loyalist during the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War. The New Territories was the core of many Imperial successor states after the Battle of Endor, and it became the contested frontier between the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant. The New Territories were devastated during the Yuuzhan Vong War, and struggled to rebound afterwards.