Manaan
Manaan
Embedded Files
**Title**
Manaan
**Small Text / Caption**
An ocean world of Selkath sovereignty, guarded neutrality, and kolto reserves that the galaxy's great powers cannot afford to ignore.
**Heading**
Overview
**Standard Text**
Manaan is the aquatic homeworld of the Selkath and one of the most strategically important neutral worlds of the SWTOR era. Its importance does not come from vast armies, industrial shipyards, or territorial ambition, but from kolto: a medicinal resource that has repeatedly made control of Manaan's trade valuable to governments, militaries, physicians, merchants, smugglers, and anyone responsible for keeping wounded people alive.
For much of its history, Manaan has attempted to protect itself through neutrality. That policy is neither simple pacifism nor indifference to the wider galaxy. The Selkath have experienced foreign enslavement, political manipulation, attacks upon their people, Imperial bombardment, economic isolation, covert activity, and ultimately a direct Imperial invasion intended to secure greater access to kolto. Neutrality is therefore best understood as a strategy for preserving Selkath independence in a galaxy where more powerful states repeatedly seek something from their world.
For roleplay, Manaan works especially well for diplomacy, medicine, espionage, military operations, trade disputes, smuggling, scientific work, underwater expeditions, salvage, cultural encounters, and stories in which characters must operate somewhere neither the **Galactic Republic** (https://www.starforgerp.com/lore/factions-powers/galactic-republic) nor the **Sith Empire** (https://www.starforgerp.com/lore/factions-powers/sith-empire) can simply assume it possesses unquestioned authority.
**Image / Photo — Optional**
**Suggested Placement:**Below the Overview.
**Suggested Subject / Description:**An SWTOR-era establishing view of Manaan's pale surface architecture rising above the open ocean, emphasizing the contrast between tranquil water, advanced Selkath construction, and the planet's strategic importance.
**Heading**
Quick Reference
**List**
* World Type: Ocean world* Native Species: Selkath* Political Position: Independent; historically committed to neutrality* Primary Strategic Resource: Kolto* Major Historical Settlement: Ahto City* Important Modern Area: Mercantile Plaza* Important Natural Site: Hrakert Rift* Local Defense: Selkath security and military forces, including the Manaan Special Warfare Group* Force Tradition: Order of Shasa* Major External Interests: Galactic Republic and Sith Empire* Current StarForgeRP Context: The Imperial invasion associated with Legacy of the Sith has already occurred; Manaan remains relevant to the continuing Republic–Imperial conflict.
**Heading**
Environment & Geography
**Standard Text**
Manaan is a world dominated completely by ocean. Its lack of conventional landmasses sharply limits where offworld spacecraft, military forces, industries, and permanent surface facilities can operate. Habitable structures rise above the water or extend beneath it, while much of Selkath civilization can function in environments inaccessible to an unprepared offworld visitor. SWTOR explicitly identifies the planet's aquatic surface and shortage of suitable landing areas as major complications for military operations.
This geography should affect roleplay. Arriving on Manaan is not equivalent to setting down wherever a pilot chooses. Surface facilities, landing zones, docks, controlled transportation routes, underwater installations, pressure conditions, and local permissions can all matter. Characters attempting to reach remote submerged sites may require specialized equipment, vehicles, environmental protection, local guides, or access to infrastructure designed for underwater travel.
The oceans are not empty. Firaxan sharks are among the dangerous creatures associated with Manaan's depths, particularly around the Hrakert Rift. Deep-water operations can therefore combine environmental danger with the political or military problem that brought the characters underwater in the first place.
**Subheading**
Living Above and Below the Water
**Standard Text**
Offworlders are most likely to experience Manaan through surface installations and facilities built to accommodate interstellar visitors. Selkath life, however, should not be imagined as confined to those areas. After the destruction of much of Manaan's surface infrastructure, the Selkath withdrew into underwater settlements and spent years largely separated from galactic society.
For a Selkath character, an offworlder's view of Manaan may therefore feel extremely limited. A visitor may know plazas, docks, military positions, trade facilities, and a few famous ruins while knowing almost nothing about the communities beneath the ocean.
**Heading**
Selkath Society & Neutrality
**Standard Text**
The Selkath relationship with outsiders has been shaped by repeated experiences of foreign domination and interference. Official SWTOR material traces this caution as far back as the Infinite Empire, whose Rakatan rulers enslaved the Selkath in antiquity. Later civilizations coveted Manaan's kolto, giving the Selkath both enormous economic leverage and a continuing reason to fear becoming dependent upon—or controlled by—more powerful outsiders.
Neutrality became one answer to that problem. During earlier galactic conflicts, Manaan permitted rival powers to maintain a presence while expecting them to obey Selkath law and refrain from turning the planet into another battlefield. That arrangement did not always survive contact with the ambitions of those powers.
Neutrality should not be treated as a universal Selkath personality trait. Some Selkath may support strict isolation, others may favor greater commerce or cooperation with particular outsiders, and others may regard engagement with the galaxy as necessary even when they dislike it. SWTOR's own account of Manaan's return to galactic trade describes significant internal debate over whether isolation could remain economically sustainable.
**Subheading**
Attitudes Toward Offworlders
**Standard Text**
Visitors should not assume that being permitted onto Manaan means they are trusted.
A Republic diplomat may be regarded more favorably than an Imperial officer without being treated as a friend. A physician seeking kolto may receive a different reception from a merchant seeking profit. A scientist, Jedi, Sith, spy, salvager, or heavily armed mercenary may create concerns that an ordinary traveler would not.
Individual Selkath can likewise respond differently to the same visitor. Family history, profession, political beliefs, experiences during the invasion, economic interests, and personal contact with offworlders can all matter more than a single species-wide attitude.
**Heading**
Kolto
**Standard Text**
Kolto is the resource that repeatedly draws galactic attention to Manaan. During the SWTOR era it remains a vital medical substance, and resource shortages during the renewed Republic–Imperial war make access to Manaan's reserves strategically important enough for the Sith Empire to launch a military offensive intended to secure them.
For the Selkath, kolto is therefore both an asset and a vulnerability. Controlling its sale gives Manaan influence far beyond what might otherwise be expected from an independent ocean world, but that same resource gives foreign governments, corporations, criminals, and military planners reasons to interfere in Selkath affairs.
For roleplay, kolto can matter without becoming a galaxy-saving plot device. A disputed shipment, procurement contract, damaged processing facility, smuggling operation, hospital shortage, stolen cargo, falsified trade authorization, contaminated supply, or conflict over who receives a limited allocation can support stories at a much more useful scale.
Kolto should also not be treated as an effortless cure for every injury. It is an important medical resource, not a reason for wounds, recovery time, disability, medical expertise, or the consequences of serious violence to become irrelevant.
**Heading**
SWTOR-Era History
**Subheading**
Ancient Exploitation and the Origins of Neutrality
**Standard Text**
Long before the modern Republic–Imperial conflict, Manaan fell under the rule of the Rakatan Infinite Empire. SWTOR's own historical account describes the Selkath as having been enslaved during that period and remembering the experience as part of the reason later generations resisted becoming subject to foreign powers.
As kolto became important to offworld civilizations, Manaan attempted to use neutrality to prevent competition for the resource from becoming foreign domination of the planet.
**Subheading**
Revan, Shasa, and the Earlier Sith Presence
**Standard Text**
During the era associated with Revan, both the Republic and the Sith maintained embassies in Ahto City under Manaan's neutral arrangements. That balance deteriorated when Revan exposed a Sith effort involving the abduction and manipulation of young Selkath. One of those Selkath, Shasa, later became central to an uprising that drove the Sith from Ahto City.
The Order of Shasa subsequently developed into an important Selkath Force tradition and became closely associated with the defense of Manaan's independence.
**Subheading**
The Devastation of Manaan
**Standard Text**
When the restored Sith Empire later returned to the wider galaxy, the Selkath again attempted to maintain their neutrality. The Empire responded to Manaan's refusal to submit by bombarding the world, destroying or sinking most surface structures, including Ahto City. The Republic's failure to come to Manaan's defense deepened Selkath resentment toward both galactic powers.
The Selkath withdrew beneath the ocean and largely abandoned participation in galactic politics. This period of isolation protected Manaan from immediate foreign influence but eventually brought economic difficulties of its own.
**Subheading**
Return to Galactic Trade
**Standard Text**
Manaan eventually reopened limited contact with the wider galaxy. The Mercantile Plaza became an important new surface facility, and access was initially tightly restricted. Over time, both Republic and Imperial interests again received opportunities to conduct business with the Selkath.
This return should not be mistaken for a return to unquestioning trust. Selkath leaders were deliberately attempting to balance competing outside powers while avoiding dependence upon either of them.
**Subheading**
The Revanite Crisis
**Standard Text**
During the events leading toward the Revanite crisis, Manaan became the site of a secret underwater research operation involving Darth Arkous, Republic Colonel Rian Darok, and the Selkath scientist Gorima. Their work involved Rakatan technology and attempts to produce enhanced soldiers. The facility was ultimately destroyed.
This episode reinforces an important theme for Manaan roleplay: underwater facilities and remote sites can hide activities largely invisible from the peaceful surface plazas above them.
**Subheading**
The Imperial Invasion
**Standard Text**
During Legacy of the Sith, the Sith Empire launched a direct invasion of Manaan intended to gain greater access to its kolto reserves. Official SWTOR material presents separate Republic and Imperial storylines surrounding the conflict, while later content returns characters to faction-based operations and repeatable missions in the Manaan daily area.
For Manaan, this is more than another episode in the Republic–Imperial war. It is another attempt by an outside power to turn the resource that gives the Selkath independence into the reason their independence is threatened.
**Image / Photo — Optional**
**Suggested Placement:**Between The Imperial Invasion and Current Situation.
**Suggested Subject / Description:**A war-damaged SWTOR-era Manaan facility or ocean platform showing the contrast between the planet's clean aquatic architecture and the destruction caused by the recent Republic–Imperial conflict.
**Heading**
Current Situation
**Standard Text**
StarForgeRP's shared present is 3621 BBY / 32 ATC and incorporates SWTOR's released main-story continuity through Game Update 7.9: Legacy Reborn. The invasion of Manaan and the subsequent Manaan operations therefore belong to the recent past rather than an upcoming event. **Current Setting** (https://www.starforgerp.com/timeline/current-setting) provides the wider galactic context.
Manaan should currently be treated as a Selkath homeworld whose traditional neutrality has been severely tested rather than as an ordinary possession of either galactic superpower. The planet has experienced recent fighting, damage to infrastructure, military intervention, and renewed competition over its resources, while kolto remains strategically valuable to a galaxy still at war.
Exact tactical results from faction-specific gameplay should not automatically be turned into universal StarForgeRP history. Unless shared continuity deliberately establishes a more specific outcome, local control, access to particular installations, and the lasting condition of faction bases should remain consistent with established SWTOR events without assuming that either the Republic or Empire permanently annexed Manaan.
**Heading**
Republic & Imperial Relations
**Subheading**
Galactic Republic
**Standard Text**
Manaan's relationship with the **Galactic Republic** (https://www.starforgerp.com/lore/factions-powers/galactic-republic) is complicated.
The Selkath have reasons to cooperate with the Republic, and SWTOR material describes relations improving after Manaan returned to galactic trade. At the same time, Selkath historical memory includes the Republic's failure to intervene when the Empire devastated the planet. Republic support during later conflicts therefore does not erase older grievances or give Republic personnel automatic authority over Selkath affairs.
For Republic characters, Manaan is useful precisely because being on the broadly friendlier side does not mean being at home. Soldiers, Jedi, diplomats, SIS personnel, physicians, and contractors may still need to respect local restrictions and recognize that Selkath interests do not always match Republic priorities.
**Subheading**
Sith Empire
**Standard Text**
Manaan's history with the **Sith Empire** (https://www.starforgerp.com/lore/factions-powers/sith-empire) includes both negotiated trade and devastating violence.
The Selkath eventually permitted renewed Imperial commercial access despite the Empire's earlier bombardment, partly because balancing the Republic and Empire could help prevent either side from monopolizing Manaan's affairs. Legacy of the Sith shattered that balance when the Empire launched an offensive to seize greater control of the planet's kolto.
Imperial characters therefore have particularly strong reasons to attract scrutiny. That does not require every Selkath to respond identically to every Imperial citizen, trader, defector, prisoner, diplomat, or operative, but official Imperial authority should not be assumed to override Selkath sovereignty wherever Imperial forces are not actually in control.
**Heading**
The Order of Shasa
**Standard Text**
The Order of Shasa is a Selkath Force tradition whose origins lie in the legacy of Shasa, the Force-sensitive Selkath who helped drive the earlier Sith presence from Ahto City.
SWTOR material associates the Order with the protection of Manaan and describes its doctrine as influenced by Revan's unusual history and pragmatic relationship with both Jedi and Sith traditions. The Order should therefore not simply be described as “Selkath Jedi” or “Selkath Sith.” It possesses its own history, priorities, and relationship with Manaan.
For Force-focused roleplay, the Order provides an important reminder that the Jedi and Sith are not the only ways people in this era understand or organize around the Force.
**Heading**
Important Locations
**Subheading**
Ahto City
**Standard Text**
Ahto City was Manaan's great surface metropolis during an earlier period of neutrality, when Republic and Sith embassies operated within the same Selkath-controlled city.
The later Imperial bombardment devastated Ahto City, leaving much of it submerged and structurally ruined. By the later SWTOR era, Imperial intelligence describes the former capital as largely beneath the water and dangerous enough that large-scale exploitation of the ruins was considered impractical.
For roleplay, the ruins are better suited to hazardous salvage, archaeology, historical investigation, clandestine meetings, lost technology, or recovery missions than to ordinary modern city life.
**Subheading**
Mercantile Plaza
**Standard Text**
The Mercantile Plaza was constructed when Manaan cautiously reopened contact with the wider galaxy after its period of isolation. SWTOR describes strict limits on early landing privileges, with access gradually expanding as the Selkath resumed dealings with outside powers.
The Plaza is one of the most natural settings for visiting characters who have legitimate reasons to be on Manaan: diplomats, traders, medical representatives, officials, couriers, contractors, security personnel, and others conducting approved business.
**Subheading**
Hrakert Rift
**Standard Text**
The Hrakert Rift is an underwater region associated with exceptionally rich kolto deposits and dangerous firaxan sharks. Its resources have repeatedly made it strategically significant to outsiders seeking access to Manaan's medical wealth.
For roleplay, the Rift supports underwater exploration, resource-security operations, scientific work, rescue missions, smuggling, sabotage, missing expeditions, and encounters where the environment remains dangerous even after opposing characters stop shooting at one another.
**Subheading**
Underwater Research Sites
**Standard Text**
Manaan's depths have contained advanced research facilities, including the installation used by Gorima, Darth Arkous, and Colonel Darok during the Revanite crisis. That particular facility was destroyed, so it should not be treated as an intact public location in the present day.
Its history nevertheless demonstrates that secluded underwater installations are entirely appropriate to Manaan when supported by the story. New StarForgeRP-created laboratories, maintenance sites, habitats, security posts, or research stations should expand upon that established environment without casually replacing major known locations.
**Heading**
Visiting Manaan
**Standard Text**
A visitor to Manaan should have a reason to be there.
The planet's history and controlled surface access make unrestricted tourism, casual military deployment, and unexplained wandering less convincing than they would be on a highly open commercial world. Legitimate business, diplomacy, medical procurement, research, security assignments, government work, humanitarian activity, approved trade, or an established local contact can all provide straightforward reasons for arrival.
Characters operating illegally have possibilities as well, but illegality should matter. Smugglers, spies, unauthorized salvagers, infiltrators, thieves, and covert military personnel become more interesting when landing controls, Selkath law, surveillance, political sensitivity, and limited escape routes create actual complications.
**Subheading**
Using Local Authority in Roleplay
**Standard Text**
Manaan is especially useful for scenes in which characters accustomed to institutional power discover that their credentials do not automatically carry the same weight everywhere.
A Republic officer may have military authority without possessing jurisdiction over Selkath civilians. An Imperial Sith may command extraordinary power within the Empire while being regarded locally as a representative of the state that recently invaded the planet. A corporate executive may control substantial resources while still requiring Selkath permission to obtain what they came for.
That difference helps Manaan feel like a sovereign setting rather than another neutral-colored extension of either major faction.
**Heading**
Roleplay Considerations
**List**
* Why is the character on Manaan?
* Trade, medicine, diplomacy, military duty, research, investigation, family ties, local employment, Force-related interests, or covert activity can all work.
* Does the character have permission to be where they are?
* Legitimate access and unauthorized access should create very different stories.
* What does kolto mean to them?
* A physician may see patients; a general may see logistics; a merchant may see contracts; a smuggler may see profit; a Selkath may see both prosperity and generations of foreign pressure.
* How do they view Manaan's neutrality?
* Principled independence, frustrating obstruction, political necessity, commercial leverage, naïveté, survival strategy, or something more personal?
* How has the recent invasion affected them?
* Characters may have fought there, lost someone there, profited from the conflict, treated casualties, rebuilt damaged infrastructure, fled the fighting, or arrived only afterward.
* How comfortable are they underwater?
* Selkath, Nautolans, specialized divers, technicians, soldiers, scientists, and ordinary surface-dwellers may experience the same environment very differently.
* How much of Manaan do they actually know?
* Visiting a surface trade facility does not make someone knowledgeable about underwater Selkath communities.
* If the character is Selkath, what does Manaan's history mean to them personally?
* Family experience, politics, profession, generation, and individual temperament should matter more than assuming every Selkath shares the same opinion of outsiders.
**Heading**
Common Roleplay Hooks
**List**
* A kolto shipment disappears before reaching its intended medical destination.* Republic and Selkath officials disagree over how a security operation should be conducted.* Evidence suggests someone is illegally salvaging the submerged remains of Ahto City.* An underwater habitat or research station stops communicating.* A legitimate kolto contract becomes the target of espionage, bribery, or sabotage.* A Selkath family searches for someone missing since the invasion.* An Imperial character must conduct business on a world where their government is deeply distrusted.* An Order of Shasa member becomes involved in a problem neither Jedi nor Sith fully understands.* Divers investigating a remote site discover that local wildlife is a greater immediate danger than the people they expected to confront.* Competing medical, military, and civilian needs create a dispute over a limited supply of kolto.* Evidence from a wartime facility threatens to expose activity that one faction would rather leave buried.* A visiting character discovers that their official authorization does not permit access to the underwater location they actually need to reach.
**Heading**
Common Misconceptions
**Subheading**
“Manaan is a Republic world.”
**Standard Text**
Manaan has cooperated with the Republic and has had periods of comparatively positive relations with it, but the Selkath have consistently pursued their own sovereignty. Republic assistance does not make Manaan ordinary Republic territory.
**Subheading**
“Neutrality means the Selkath do not take sides about anything.”
**Standard Text**
Neutrality is primarily a policy toward outside galactic struggles. Selkath individuals and institutions can still have political opinions, preferred partners, grievances, rivalries, and strong views about how Manaan should respond to foreign powers.
**Subheading**
“All Selkath hate outsiders.”
**Standard Text**
Manaan's history provides excellent reasons for caution and distrust, but SWTOR also establishes deliberate returns to trade and interaction with the wider galaxy. Individual attitudes should reflect experience rather than a single species-wide stereotype.
**Subheading**
“The Order of Shasa is simply another Jedi Order.”
**Standard Text**
The Order developed from Manaan's own history and traditions. Its relationship with Revan's legacy makes it especially inappropriate to collapse it into an ordinary Jedi or Sith category.
**Subheading**
“Kolto means any injury can be cured immediately.”
**Standard Text**
Kolto is important because medicine matters, not because medicine has no limits. Injuries, treatment, recovery, medical skill, consequences, and scarcity can all remain meaningful parts of roleplay.
**Button / Link Text**
**Button Name:** Browse Planets & Moons**Link Page Name:** Planets & Moons**Page URL:** https://www.starforgerp.com/galaxy/planets-moons
**Button / Link Text**
**Button Name:** View Galactic Map**Link Page Name:** Galactic Map**Page URL:** https://www.starforgerp.com/galaxy/galactic-map
Manaan
**Small Text / Caption**
An ocean world of Selkath sovereignty, guarded neutrality, and kolto reserves that the galaxy's great powers cannot afford to ignore.
**Heading**
Overview
**Standard Text**
Manaan is the aquatic homeworld of the Selkath and one of the most strategically important neutral worlds of the SWTOR era. Its importance does not come from vast armies, industrial shipyards, or territorial ambition, but from kolto: a medicinal resource that has repeatedly made control of Manaan's trade valuable to governments, militaries, physicians, merchants, smugglers, and anyone responsible for keeping wounded people alive.
For much of its history, Manaan has attempted to protect itself through neutrality. That policy is neither simple pacifism nor indifference to the wider galaxy. The Selkath have experienced foreign enslavement, political manipulation, attacks upon their people, Imperial bombardment, economic isolation, covert activity, and ultimately a direct Imperial invasion intended to secure greater access to kolto. Neutrality is therefore best understood as a strategy for preserving Selkath independence in a galaxy where more powerful states repeatedly seek something from their world.
For roleplay, Manaan works especially well for diplomacy, medicine, espionage, military operations, trade disputes, smuggling, scientific work, underwater expeditions, salvage, cultural encounters, and stories in which characters must operate somewhere neither the **Galactic Republic** (https://www.starforgerp.com/lore/factions-powers/galactic-republic) nor the **Sith Empire** (https://www.starforgerp.com/lore/factions-powers/sith-empire) can simply assume it possesses unquestioned authority.
**Image / Photo — Optional**
**Suggested Placement:**Below the Overview.
**Suggested Subject / Description:**An SWTOR-era establishing view of Manaan's pale surface architecture rising above the open ocean, emphasizing the contrast between tranquil water, advanced Selkath construction, and the planet's strategic importance.
**Heading**
Quick Reference
**List**
* World Type: Ocean world* Native Species: Selkath* Political Position: Independent; historically committed to neutrality* Primary Strategic Resource: Kolto* Major Historical Settlement: Ahto City* Important Modern Area: Mercantile Plaza* Important Natural Site: Hrakert Rift* Local Defense: Selkath security and military forces, including the Manaan Special Warfare Group* Force Tradition: Order of Shasa* Major External Interests: Galactic Republic and Sith Empire* Current StarForgeRP Context: The Imperial invasion associated with Legacy of the Sith has already occurred; Manaan remains relevant to the continuing Republic–Imperial conflict.
**Heading**
Environment & Geography
**Standard Text**
Manaan is a world dominated completely by ocean. Its lack of conventional landmasses sharply limits where offworld spacecraft, military forces, industries, and permanent surface facilities can operate. Habitable structures rise above the water or extend beneath it, while much of Selkath civilization can function in environments inaccessible to an unprepared offworld visitor. SWTOR explicitly identifies the planet's aquatic surface and shortage of suitable landing areas as major complications for military operations.
This geography should affect roleplay. Arriving on Manaan is not equivalent to setting down wherever a pilot chooses. Surface facilities, landing zones, docks, controlled transportation routes, underwater installations, pressure conditions, and local permissions can all matter. Characters attempting to reach remote submerged sites may require specialized equipment, vehicles, environmental protection, local guides, or access to infrastructure designed for underwater travel.
The oceans are not empty. Firaxan sharks are among the dangerous creatures associated with Manaan's depths, particularly around the Hrakert Rift. Deep-water operations can therefore combine environmental danger with the political or military problem that brought the characters underwater in the first place.
**Subheading**
Living Above and Below the Water
**Standard Text**
Offworlders are most likely to experience Manaan through surface installations and facilities built to accommodate interstellar visitors. Selkath life, however, should not be imagined as confined to those areas. After the destruction of much of Manaan's surface infrastructure, the Selkath withdrew into underwater settlements and spent years largely separated from galactic society.
For a Selkath character, an offworlder's view of Manaan may therefore feel extremely limited. A visitor may know plazas, docks, military positions, trade facilities, and a few famous ruins while knowing almost nothing about the communities beneath the ocean.
**Heading**
Selkath Society & Neutrality
**Standard Text**
The Selkath relationship with outsiders has been shaped by repeated experiences of foreign domination and interference. Official SWTOR material traces this caution as far back as the Infinite Empire, whose Rakatan rulers enslaved the Selkath in antiquity. Later civilizations coveted Manaan's kolto, giving the Selkath both enormous economic leverage and a continuing reason to fear becoming dependent upon—or controlled by—more powerful outsiders.
Neutrality became one answer to that problem. During earlier galactic conflicts, Manaan permitted rival powers to maintain a presence while expecting them to obey Selkath law and refrain from turning the planet into another battlefield. That arrangement did not always survive contact with the ambitions of those powers.
Neutrality should not be treated as a universal Selkath personality trait. Some Selkath may support strict isolation, others may favor greater commerce or cooperation with particular outsiders, and others may regard engagement with the galaxy as necessary even when they dislike it. SWTOR's own account of Manaan's return to galactic trade describes significant internal debate over whether isolation could remain economically sustainable.
**Subheading**
Attitudes Toward Offworlders
**Standard Text**
Visitors should not assume that being permitted onto Manaan means they are trusted.
A Republic diplomat may be regarded more favorably than an Imperial officer without being treated as a friend. A physician seeking kolto may receive a different reception from a merchant seeking profit. A scientist, Jedi, Sith, spy, salvager, or heavily armed mercenary may create concerns that an ordinary traveler would not.
Individual Selkath can likewise respond differently to the same visitor. Family history, profession, political beliefs, experiences during the invasion, economic interests, and personal contact with offworlders can all matter more than a single species-wide attitude.
**Heading**
Kolto
**Standard Text**
Kolto is the resource that repeatedly draws galactic attention to Manaan. During the SWTOR era it remains a vital medical substance, and resource shortages during the renewed Republic–Imperial war make access to Manaan's reserves strategically important enough for the Sith Empire to launch a military offensive intended to secure them.
For the Selkath, kolto is therefore both an asset and a vulnerability. Controlling its sale gives Manaan influence far beyond what might otherwise be expected from an independent ocean world, but that same resource gives foreign governments, corporations, criminals, and military planners reasons to interfere in Selkath affairs.
For roleplay, kolto can matter without becoming a galaxy-saving plot device. A disputed shipment, procurement contract, damaged processing facility, smuggling operation, hospital shortage, stolen cargo, falsified trade authorization, contaminated supply, or conflict over who receives a limited allocation can support stories at a much more useful scale.
Kolto should also not be treated as an effortless cure for every injury. It is an important medical resource, not a reason for wounds, recovery time, disability, medical expertise, or the consequences of serious violence to become irrelevant.
**Heading**
SWTOR-Era History
**Subheading**
Ancient Exploitation and the Origins of Neutrality
**Standard Text**
Long before the modern Republic–Imperial conflict, Manaan fell under the rule of the Rakatan Infinite Empire. SWTOR's own historical account describes the Selkath as having been enslaved during that period and remembering the experience as part of the reason later generations resisted becoming subject to foreign powers.
As kolto became important to offworld civilizations, Manaan attempted to use neutrality to prevent competition for the resource from becoming foreign domination of the planet.
**Subheading**
Revan, Shasa, and the Earlier Sith Presence
**Standard Text**
During the era associated with Revan, both the Republic and the Sith maintained embassies in Ahto City under Manaan's neutral arrangements. That balance deteriorated when Revan exposed a Sith effort involving the abduction and manipulation of young Selkath. One of those Selkath, Shasa, later became central to an uprising that drove the Sith from Ahto City.
The Order of Shasa subsequently developed into an important Selkath Force tradition and became closely associated with the defense of Manaan's independence.
**Subheading**
The Devastation of Manaan
**Standard Text**
When the restored Sith Empire later returned to the wider galaxy, the Selkath again attempted to maintain their neutrality. The Empire responded to Manaan's refusal to submit by bombarding the world, destroying or sinking most surface structures, including Ahto City. The Republic's failure to come to Manaan's defense deepened Selkath resentment toward both galactic powers.
The Selkath withdrew beneath the ocean and largely abandoned participation in galactic politics. This period of isolation protected Manaan from immediate foreign influence but eventually brought economic difficulties of its own.
**Subheading**
Return to Galactic Trade
**Standard Text**
Manaan eventually reopened limited contact with the wider galaxy. The Mercantile Plaza became an important new surface facility, and access was initially tightly restricted. Over time, both Republic and Imperial interests again received opportunities to conduct business with the Selkath.
This return should not be mistaken for a return to unquestioning trust. Selkath leaders were deliberately attempting to balance competing outside powers while avoiding dependence upon either of them.
**Subheading**
The Revanite Crisis
**Standard Text**
During the events leading toward the Revanite crisis, Manaan became the site of a secret underwater research operation involving Darth Arkous, Republic Colonel Rian Darok, and the Selkath scientist Gorima. Their work involved Rakatan technology and attempts to produce enhanced soldiers. The facility was ultimately destroyed.
This episode reinforces an important theme for Manaan roleplay: underwater facilities and remote sites can hide activities largely invisible from the peaceful surface plazas above them.
**Subheading**
The Imperial Invasion
**Standard Text**
During Legacy of the Sith, the Sith Empire launched a direct invasion of Manaan intended to gain greater access to its kolto reserves. Official SWTOR material presents separate Republic and Imperial storylines surrounding the conflict, while later content returns characters to faction-based operations and repeatable missions in the Manaan daily area.
For Manaan, this is more than another episode in the Republic–Imperial war. It is another attempt by an outside power to turn the resource that gives the Selkath independence into the reason their independence is threatened.
**Image / Photo — Optional**
**Suggested Placement:**Between The Imperial Invasion and Current Situation.
**Suggested Subject / Description:**A war-damaged SWTOR-era Manaan facility or ocean platform showing the contrast between the planet's clean aquatic architecture and the destruction caused by the recent Republic–Imperial conflict.
**Heading**
Current Situation
**Standard Text**
StarForgeRP's shared present is 3621 BBY / 32 ATC and incorporates SWTOR's released main-story continuity through Game Update 7.9: Legacy Reborn. The invasion of Manaan and the subsequent Manaan operations therefore belong to the recent past rather than an upcoming event. **Current Setting** (https://www.starforgerp.com/timeline/current-setting) provides the wider galactic context.
Manaan should currently be treated as a Selkath homeworld whose traditional neutrality has been severely tested rather than as an ordinary possession of either galactic superpower. The planet has experienced recent fighting, damage to infrastructure, military intervention, and renewed competition over its resources, while kolto remains strategically valuable to a galaxy still at war.
Exact tactical results from faction-specific gameplay should not automatically be turned into universal StarForgeRP history. Unless shared continuity deliberately establishes a more specific outcome, local control, access to particular installations, and the lasting condition of faction bases should remain consistent with established SWTOR events without assuming that either the Republic or Empire permanently annexed Manaan.
**Heading**
Republic & Imperial Relations
**Subheading**
Galactic Republic
**Standard Text**
Manaan's relationship with the **Galactic Republic** (https://www.starforgerp.com/lore/factions-powers/galactic-republic) is complicated.
The Selkath have reasons to cooperate with the Republic, and SWTOR material describes relations improving after Manaan returned to galactic trade. At the same time, Selkath historical memory includes the Republic's failure to intervene when the Empire devastated the planet. Republic support during later conflicts therefore does not erase older grievances or give Republic personnel automatic authority over Selkath affairs.
For Republic characters, Manaan is useful precisely because being on the broadly friendlier side does not mean being at home. Soldiers, Jedi, diplomats, SIS personnel, physicians, and contractors may still need to respect local restrictions and recognize that Selkath interests do not always match Republic priorities.
**Subheading**
Sith Empire
**Standard Text**
Manaan's history with the **Sith Empire** (https://www.starforgerp.com/lore/factions-powers/sith-empire) includes both negotiated trade and devastating violence.
The Selkath eventually permitted renewed Imperial commercial access despite the Empire's earlier bombardment, partly because balancing the Republic and Empire could help prevent either side from monopolizing Manaan's affairs. Legacy of the Sith shattered that balance when the Empire launched an offensive to seize greater control of the planet's kolto.
Imperial characters therefore have particularly strong reasons to attract scrutiny. That does not require every Selkath to respond identically to every Imperial citizen, trader, defector, prisoner, diplomat, or operative, but official Imperial authority should not be assumed to override Selkath sovereignty wherever Imperial forces are not actually in control.
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The Order of Shasa
**Standard Text**
The Order of Shasa is a Selkath Force tradition whose origins lie in the legacy of Shasa, the Force-sensitive Selkath who helped drive the earlier Sith presence from Ahto City.
SWTOR material associates the Order with the protection of Manaan and describes its doctrine as influenced by Revan's unusual history and pragmatic relationship with both Jedi and Sith traditions. The Order should therefore not simply be described as “Selkath Jedi” or “Selkath Sith.” It possesses its own history, priorities, and relationship with Manaan.
For Force-focused roleplay, the Order provides an important reminder that the Jedi and Sith are not the only ways people in this era understand or organize around the Force.
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Important Locations
**Subheading**
Ahto City
**Standard Text**
Ahto City was Manaan's great surface metropolis during an earlier period of neutrality, when Republic and Sith embassies operated within the same Selkath-controlled city.
The later Imperial bombardment devastated Ahto City, leaving much of it submerged and structurally ruined. By the later SWTOR era, Imperial intelligence describes the former capital as largely beneath the water and dangerous enough that large-scale exploitation of the ruins was considered impractical.
For roleplay, the ruins are better suited to hazardous salvage, archaeology, historical investigation, clandestine meetings, lost technology, or recovery missions than to ordinary modern city life.
**Subheading**
Mercantile Plaza
**Standard Text**
The Mercantile Plaza was constructed when Manaan cautiously reopened contact with the wider galaxy after its period of isolation. SWTOR describes strict limits on early landing privileges, with access gradually expanding as the Selkath resumed dealings with outside powers.
The Plaza is one of the most natural settings for visiting characters who have legitimate reasons to be on Manaan: diplomats, traders, medical representatives, officials, couriers, contractors, security personnel, and others conducting approved business.
**Subheading**
Hrakert Rift
**Standard Text**
The Hrakert Rift is an underwater region associated with exceptionally rich kolto deposits and dangerous firaxan sharks. Its resources have repeatedly made it strategically significant to outsiders seeking access to Manaan's medical wealth.
For roleplay, the Rift supports underwater exploration, resource-security operations, scientific work, rescue missions, smuggling, sabotage, missing expeditions, and encounters where the environment remains dangerous even after opposing characters stop shooting at one another.
**Subheading**
Underwater Research Sites
**Standard Text**
Manaan's depths have contained advanced research facilities, including the installation used by Gorima, Darth Arkous, and Colonel Darok during the Revanite crisis. That particular facility was destroyed, so it should not be treated as an intact public location in the present day.
Its history nevertheless demonstrates that secluded underwater installations are entirely appropriate to Manaan when supported by the story. New StarForgeRP-created laboratories, maintenance sites, habitats, security posts, or research stations should expand upon that established environment without casually replacing major known locations.
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Visiting Manaan
**Standard Text**
A visitor to Manaan should have a reason to be there.
The planet's history and controlled surface access make unrestricted tourism, casual military deployment, and unexplained wandering less convincing than they would be on a highly open commercial world. Legitimate business, diplomacy, medical procurement, research, security assignments, government work, humanitarian activity, approved trade, or an established local contact can all provide straightforward reasons for arrival.
Characters operating illegally have possibilities as well, but illegality should matter. Smugglers, spies, unauthorized salvagers, infiltrators, thieves, and covert military personnel become more interesting when landing controls, Selkath law, surveillance, political sensitivity, and limited escape routes create actual complications.
**Subheading**
Using Local Authority in Roleplay
**Standard Text**
Manaan is especially useful for scenes in which characters accustomed to institutional power discover that their credentials do not automatically carry the same weight everywhere.
A Republic officer may have military authority without possessing jurisdiction over Selkath civilians. An Imperial Sith may command extraordinary power within the Empire while being regarded locally as a representative of the state that recently invaded the planet. A corporate executive may control substantial resources while still requiring Selkath permission to obtain what they came for.
That difference helps Manaan feel like a sovereign setting rather than another neutral-colored extension of either major faction.
**Heading**
Roleplay Considerations
**List**
* Why is the character on Manaan?
* Trade, medicine, diplomacy, military duty, research, investigation, family ties, local employment, Force-related interests, or covert activity can all work.
* Does the character have permission to be where they are?
* Legitimate access and unauthorized access should create very different stories.
* What does kolto mean to them?
* A physician may see patients; a general may see logistics; a merchant may see contracts; a smuggler may see profit; a Selkath may see both prosperity and generations of foreign pressure.
* How do they view Manaan's neutrality?
* Principled independence, frustrating obstruction, political necessity, commercial leverage, naïveté, survival strategy, or something more personal?
* How has the recent invasion affected them?
* Characters may have fought there, lost someone there, profited from the conflict, treated casualties, rebuilt damaged infrastructure, fled the fighting, or arrived only afterward.
* How comfortable are they underwater?
* Selkath, Nautolans, specialized divers, technicians, soldiers, scientists, and ordinary surface-dwellers may experience the same environment very differently.
* How much of Manaan do they actually know?
* Visiting a surface trade facility does not make someone knowledgeable about underwater Selkath communities.
* If the character is Selkath, what does Manaan's history mean to them personally?
* Family experience, politics, profession, generation, and individual temperament should matter more than assuming every Selkath shares the same opinion of outsiders.
**Heading**
Common Roleplay Hooks
**List**
* A kolto shipment disappears before reaching its intended medical destination.* Republic and Selkath officials disagree over how a security operation should be conducted.* Evidence suggests someone is illegally salvaging the submerged remains of Ahto City.* An underwater habitat or research station stops communicating.* A legitimate kolto contract becomes the target of espionage, bribery, or sabotage.* A Selkath family searches for someone missing since the invasion.* An Imperial character must conduct business on a world where their government is deeply distrusted.* An Order of Shasa member becomes involved in a problem neither Jedi nor Sith fully understands.* Divers investigating a remote site discover that local wildlife is a greater immediate danger than the people they expected to confront.* Competing medical, military, and civilian needs create a dispute over a limited supply of kolto.* Evidence from a wartime facility threatens to expose activity that one faction would rather leave buried.* A visiting character discovers that their official authorization does not permit access to the underwater location they actually need to reach.
**Heading**
Common Misconceptions
**Subheading**
“Manaan is a Republic world.”
**Standard Text**
Manaan has cooperated with the Republic and has had periods of comparatively positive relations with it, but the Selkath have consistently pursued their own sovereignty. Republic assistance does not make Manaan ordinary Republic territory.
**Subheading**
“Neutrality means the Selkath do not take sides about anything.”
**Standard Text**
Neutrality is primarily a policy toward outside galactic struggles. Selkath individuals and institutions can still have political opinions, preferred partners, grievances, rivalries, and strong views about how Manaan should respond to foreign powers.
**Subheading**
“All Selkath hate outsiders.”
**Standard Text**
Manaan's history provides excellent reasons for caution and distrust, but SWTOR also establishes deliberate returns to trade and interaction with the wider galaxy. Individual attitudes should reflect experience rather than a single species-wide stereotype.
**Subheading**
“The Order of Shasa is simply another Jedi Order.”
**Standard Text**
The Order developed from Manaan's own history and traditions. Its relationship with Revan's legacy makes it especially inappropriate to collapse it into an ordinary Jedi or Sith category.
**Subheading**
“Kolto means any injury can be cured immediately.”
**Standard Text**
Kolto is important because medicine matters, not because medicine has no limits. Injuries, treatment, recovery, medical skill, consequences, and scarcity can all remain meaningful parts of roleplay.
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