Taris

Taris is a former ecumenopolis—a planet once covered by an interconnected city—in the Ojoster sector of the Outer Rim Territories. Darth Malak’s bombardment during the Jedi Civil War destroyed its urban civilization. Centuries later, broken towers and collapsed city levels remain embedded in a landscape of wetlands, jungle, and recovering wildlife.

The planet’s destruction did not end its history. Survivors endured beneath the ruins, while later Republic colonists attempted to establish new homes and restore usable land. Reconstruction became a symbol of recovery from Sith devastation, drawing an Imperial offensive intended to deny the Republic that achievement.

Geography & Environmental Recovery

Taris’s environmental crisis began before the bombardment. Industrial pollution damaged its oceans, while waste and toxins accumulated beneath the expanding city. Destruction released additional contaminants as buildings, factories, and supporting systems collapsed.

Over the following centuries, vegetation spread through the ruins and animal populations recovered. This renewal is substantial, but uneven: flourishing habitats exist alongside acidic water and radioactive sinkholes. A green district may still contain polluted ground, unsafe water, or damaged machinery beneath its vegetation.

The former city has become part of the terrain. Building platforms form ledges, fallen structures interrupt routes, and buried levels create spaces beneath the apparent surface. The explored reclamation districts represent only part of the planet, rather than a complete account of its geography.

Travel & Environmental Hazards

Travel through the ruins depends on more than distance. A direct route may cross unstable flooring, submerged passages, contaminated ground, or an inhabited scavenger claim. Old maps remain useful historical evidence, but cannot establish that a bridge, lift, or access tunnel is still usable.

For expeditions, route surveys, environmental readings, communications, and an evacuation plan can be as important as weapons. Protective equipment should suit the particular danger: structural collapse, chemical exposure, radiation, and biological infection are different problems.

Flora & Fauna

Taris’s developing wilderness includes surviving native animals and descendants of escaped pets, zoo animals, and laboratory specimens. Their presence makes the ruins a subject for ecological research as well as a source of danger.

Settlers & Communities

The Republic’s reclamation attracted offworld refugees seeking a new home. Its small Cathar colony became a particularly visible symbol of resilience, connecting a displaced people with the restoration of a devastated world. Political support nevertheless coexisted with shortages and inadequate infrastructure.

The later Imperial offensive divided settlers’ responses. Some sought protection from Republic forces; others abandoned Taris. Cathar and Nikto colonists were recorded refusing to leave. These accounts preserve commitments to particular homes and communities without establishing that every settlement survived or that all members of either species made the same choice.

Everyday Life

Settlement on Taris requires dependable shelter, clean water, power, medical assistance, and supplies. These needs give practical importance to repair crews, freight handlers, technicians, and caregivers alongside researchers and soldiers. A household’s security may depend on whether a pump works or a delivery arrives.

For residents, rebuilding can also involve deciding what is worth preserving. A cleared site may contain another community’s possessions, testimony, or dead. The demands of making a place habitable can therefore intersect with questions of memory, ownership, and responsibility.

Government & Local Authority

During Republic reconstruction, civilian administration and military protection operated through reclamation bases and settlement infrastructure. Governor Saresh helped expand the project, but her governorship belongs to that historical phase. The subsequent Sith Empire offensive brought competing military authority and further displacement.

Present circumstances depend on the particular installation or community. A historical Republic designation does not establish a functioning contemporary administration, and an Imperial operation does not by itself establish uninterrupted control of the entire planet.

StarForgeRP records Tarika Kenau serving in a Taris recovery and security detachment during her early Imperial military career. Her dossier preserves that personal connection; it does not identify her as a planetary official.

Reclamation work centered on clearing sites, recovering usable material, and building the foundations of settlement. That work supports transport, equipment maintenance, construction, and specialist investigation. The practical value of a recovered generator may exceed that of a more spectacular artifact if it can keep an inhabited outpost operating.

Salvage also attracts competing interests. Some operators recover material for sale, while armed groups take valuables by force. During the earlier conflict, the Republic brought some scavenger operations into its reconstruction effort; the Imperial invasion subsequently altered those arrangements. Salvagers should not be treated as a single permanent faction.

The old city’s extensive transport network survives principally as damaged infrastructure and archaeological remains. Republic reconstruction added a spaceport, bases, machinery, and new facilities, but these belonged to particular phases of occupation. Travel to an individual site depends on its usable landing areas, supply connections, and local security.

The Rakghoul Plague

The rakghoul plague is a highly contagious, adaptable infection capable of causing severe illness and transforming victims into rakghouls. Direct contact with infected creatures, particularly bites, is a recognized transmission route. Many humanoid species are susceptible, although the disease’s course and manifestations vary.

Rakghouls originated through Sith alchemy. That historical origin is distinct from what individual settlers or researchers know: accounts within the setting also preserve competing theories about the disease. A character may understand exposure risks without knowing the plague’s origins.

Medical research and recoverable serum form part of Taris’s history. Their existence does not establish that every outpost has effective treatment, that one preparation addresses every strain, or that every stage of transformation can be reversed. Medical stories should preserve those distinctions without inventing a universal cure or inevitable outcome.

Nekghouls & Other Variants

Nekghouls are intelligent, speaking beings associated with rakghoul mutation and capable of using the Force. Their precise origins remain uncertain. The available account describes them as apparently unable to infect and transform victims in the manner of ordinary rakghouls; they should not simply be treated as larger examples of the same creature.

Trade, Inequality & the Old City

Taris developed at the intersection of hyperspace trading routes. Prosperity supported population growth and vertical construction, but improved routes elsewhere eventually weakened its commercial position. Wealth remained concentrated in the upper city while poorer inhabitants faced deprivation, gang violence, and famine below.

During the century before the bombardment, authorities violently suppressed a working-class rebellion and imposed discriminatory laws against non-Humans. Restrictions excluded them from public office and required permits to leave the lower levels. The surviving city therefore preserves a history of exclusion as well as commerce and architectural achievement.

Malak’s Bombardment

During the Jedi Civil War, Darth Malak’s forces shot down the Republic cruiser Endar Spire while pursuing Bastila Shan. Bastila survived and avoided capture with Revan’s assistance. Malak ordered an orbital bombardment to prevent her escape.

The attack destroyed the planetary city and killed billions, although Bastila and Revan escaped. Taris’s later ruins are the enduring consequence of that decision. The bombardment devastated civilization without eliminating every inhabitant or making the entire planet permanently lifeless.

The Promised Land & Its Survivors

Some Undercity outcasts escaped into an underground colony known as the Promised Land. Their descendants, the Promised Ones, survived for generations after the destruction above.

Rakghoul attacks, starvation, and radiation poisoning gradually destroyed the community. Its surviving holorecordings preserve testimony of that struggle, giving later investigators access to lives that continued long after the bombardment.

Republic Reclamation & Imperial Assault

After the Treaty of Coruscant, the Galactic Republic established a reclamation base and began restoring and resettling Taris. Olaris supported arrivals and administration, while Governor Saresh’s efforts helped develop the surrounding Republic Resettlement Zone.

Reconstruction carried an explicit political meaning: recovery would demonstrate that Sith destruction could be overcome. The Imperial offensive targeted that achievement as well as its physical infrastructure, bringing another period of fighting and displacement.

Taris supports stories built around a specific place, practical obligation, or disputed inheritance. These possibilities introduce situations for participants to develop without establishing their outcomes.

• Home & Community — A settlement needs repairs that would disturb an older burial site. Residents, technicians, and people connected to the dead must decide how to proceed.

• Freight & Access — A familiar landing area becomes unusable, forcing a supply crew to seek another route and negotiate access.

• Medicine & Exposure — Suspected rakghoul exposure strains an isolated community’s medical resources. Uncertain information complicates decisions about treatment and evacuation.

• Archives & Ownership — Recovered records or possessions attract conflicting family claims. The evidence may be incomplete without either claimant being deliberately dishonest.

• Environmental Investigation — Unexpected readings could indicate contamination, faulty equipment, or a changing habitat. Researchers need local knowledge to distinguish between them.

• Exploration & Recovery — A missing survey team leaves evidence that its planned route changed. Following that evidence requires navigating both damaged terrain and incomplete testimony.

• Salvage & Military History — Contractors uncover records whose significance exceeds the value of the machinery they were hired to recover.

• Investment & Local Decisions — Outside funding could restore essential infrastructure, but residents disagree about the obligations attached to it.

An engineer, former settler, researcher, soldier, and descendant of displaced Tarisians may encounter very different worlds within the same ruins. Their relationships and choices give a repaired route, recovered testimony, or surviving home its lasting significance.