INTRODUCTION

JASON: The planet Manda is full of Baobabs - Mungo is briefly seen as a

master of C-3PO and R2-D2 in the old Droids cartoon, which introduced
Manda and the idea of the Baobabs as a clan of powerful merchants. Ebenn
Q3 Baobab is the in-universe author of the Star Wars Galactic Phrase Book &
Travel Guide, which we know as written by Ben Burtt.

This chapter was originally developed as part of a pitch for a Wizards of the
Coast sourcebook about starhoppers and the galaxy; a lecture to apprentice
freighter captains seemed like a logical way to discuss the structure of
galaxies generally and the Star Wars galaxy specifically. Plus using a
merchant clan avoided tying the introduction to any one era, which was part of
our marching orders for the Atlas.

As mentioned in the Atlas acknowledgments, the science is a gloss on Ken

Croswell's excellent book The Alchemy of the Heavens, while the mistakes
are entirely mine. The Frank Drake-style equation for determining habitable
systems in the galaxy and other measures of galactic settlement has been
used before in Star Wars - see Daniel Keys Moran's "Empire Blues: The
Devaronian's Tale," from the Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina anthology. I
used Labria's numbers where I could in the Atlas's take on the question,
though I found Labria's view of the galaxy a bit too optimistic about life within
it, given the current thinking about star types and stellar populations in the real
universe.

Speaking of numbers, the basic numbers for the Star Wars galaxy have
wandered a bit too much over the years for the Atlas's take to satisfy
everybody. A galaxy 100,000 light years across containing 400 billion stars
became the baseline in the years before the Atlas - see, for instance, the New
Essential Guide to Alien Species. The 2nd Edition Star Wars Roleplaying
Book from West End Games is the most-specific source about the extent of
civilization. It says that at its peak the Republic included "over a million
member worlds, and countless more colonies, protectorates and
governorships. Nearly 100 quadrillion beings pledged allegiance to the
Republic in nearly 50 million systems." Shatterpoint is similarly specific,
stating that the Republic has 1.2 million member worlds and the Confederacy
of Independent Systems 1/10 of that number - which would be 1.32 million
member worlds between them. But that's during a time in which Republic
authorities has broken down in much of the Outer Rim and Hutt Space has
swollen to include worlds as far coreward as Gyndine. The numbers used in
the Atlas chapter were arrived at by postulating that the Empire reclaimed
much of the lost Republic territory and incorporating the WEG portrayal of the
Empire as having dramatically stepped up exploration and colonization.

The Atlas isn't an academic paper, but I'll show my work. Start with 400 billion
stars. Stick with the controversial but long-established EU fact that Known
Space accounts for 25% of the galaxy (a point to be discussed further in a bit)
and we have 100 billion stars. Baobab says there are 180 million systems (a
number derived from Croswell's real-universe work about systems with
multiple stars), so we have 45 billion systems in the Known Galaxy. Use the
star-types chart as a guide to habitability and we get 7.1 billion habitable stars
in the Known Galaxy, in 3.2 billion star systems. Take the Roleplaying Book
figures as representing the Republic at its peak, and the Shatterpoint figures
as a snapshot of it during its decline. I made an assumption that 25% of
Republic territory was lost during its pre-Clone Wars decline and reclaimed by
the Empire, giving us 1.65 million Imperial member worlds. Assume more-
aggressive colonization adds another 5% (remember we're talking major
worlds, not all worlds), and we get 1.73 million Imperial member worlds.

Turning to the 50 million systems WEG gives us when we add in Republic

colonies, protectorates and governorships, I assumed that colonization would
continue even as the Republic foundered over the centuries and so added
25% for 62.5 million. Assume aggressive Imperial-era colonization efforts add
another 10% and we get 68.75 million systems pledging allegiance to the
Empire.

As mentioned above, I fudged Labria's numbers a bit when it came to life and
intelligence. Those who want to preserve his assertion that there are more
than 20 million intelligent species in the galaxy can do so through
extrapolation: If Known Space is 25% of the galaxy, the five million figure the
Atlas uses tracks Labria's tale.
As for the use of Crix, it always bothered me that so many Star Wars first
names are unique - most of us have a friend or acquaintance who shares our
name, yet you rarely meet another Han or Luke - and the latter's even an
Earth name. So I've tried to do my part to make some of those one-off names
more popular in a galaxy far, far away. (We'll find out why the name Arhul is
so popular a little later.)

The galactic-coordinates system was introduced in Star Wars Gamer #9, in an

article written by the two of us and our old pal Craig Carey.
THE POLITICAL GALAXY
JASON: Uueg Tching was introduced in West End Games's superb Imperial
Sourcebook; he and Kitel Phard were further fleshed out in Star Wars
Adventure Journal #14. He seemed like a logical starting point for a
discussion of galactic politics, and seeing him brought to life by Chris Trevas
was an enormous thrill.

This chapter was an attempt to tackle one of the biggest problems of Star
Wars continuity: How to square the millions of sectors introduced by WEG
with the 1,024 sectors introduced in the prequels. (OK, at least it was a big
problem for geography geeks like us.) Putting together all the bits of senatorial
information introduced over the years of the EU was a challenge, to put it
mildly. Bits and pieces of real-world government were freely borrowed:
Functional constituencies are a part of the political system in Hong Kong and
Macau, for instance.

The idea that the Republic expanded before it was truly ready as part of its
war with the Tion Cluster was introduced in my write-up for Desevro in
Wizards' Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds and then fleshed out further by
Dan in the New Essential Chronology.
GEOGRAPHY AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE SENATE
JASON: The right to petition the full Senate is a plot point in the Black Fleet
Crisis trilogy, with Plat Mallar of Polneye doing just that. The Black Fleet Crisis
is also the source of the bit about extraterritorial powers being accorded
honorary representation: Molierre Cundertol is Bakura's senator in those
books, contradicting the Corellian Trilogy's statement that Bakura never joined
the New Republic. (The New Jedi Order followed the Black Fleet Crisis's
version and brought back Cundertol; for Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds,
I said Bakura was part of Wild Space. Ack!)

The danger with retcons is that you lose 99% of the audience if a retcon takes
more than a sentence or two, so I tried to make this one part of an interesting
tradition that would fit into the larger narrative of how cumbersome the Senate
was. The hope being that readers who didn't give a fig about Bakura's status
would still find the discussion of Senate traditions intriguing.
SYSTEMS, SECTORS, OVERSECTORS AND REGIONS
JASON: The basics for this section were introduced by West End Games and
is best described in the Imperial Sourcebook, though the confusion between
moffs, Grand Moffs and regional governors goes back practically to the dawn
of Star Wars. The treatment of governors is a bit all over the place in the EU -
for instance, the governors take their seats during the Revenge of the Sith
novelization, but in Cloak of Deception Tarkin is the lieutenant governor of the
Seswenna sector. Hence the little retcon here about governor originally being
a military title.

The prequels gave us a Senate of 1,024 sectors, but it was hard to imagine
that being an immutable number in an ever-expanding galactic civilization;
along the same lines, West End Games portrayed the Empire as having
aggressively stepped up scouting and the expansion of civilized space. The
discussion of freestanding subsectors, associated sectors, new regional
sectors and the like was intended to address both the natural expansion
expected in the millennium following the Ruusan Reformations and the
politically motivated Imperial expansion.

Incidentally, this mess has real-world precedent of a sort. In the years before
the American Revolution, good-sized British cities such as Manchester weren't
represented in Parliament because they'd been settled after the drawing of
parliamentary boundaries, which Parliament refused to redraw. Meanwhile,
some older towns were still represented despite having lost all importance -
one town had 15 residents but two members of Parliament. Parliament
claimed none of this mattered because "virtual representation" required MPs
to represent not only their direct constituents but all British subjects. Meet
Thomas Jefferson, Separatist!

The idea of "moff" being an ancient title borrowed from pre-Republic satrapies
was brainstormed by me, Dan and Abel Pena for the Holonet News article
written by Dan and Pablo Hidalgo in Star Wars Insider #84. This eight-page
feature is one of the gold mines of the EU, in that it addressed the transition
from the Republic to the Empire, taking into account all the new information
we learned with the release of Revenge of the Sith.

Oversectors date back to West End Games; the 20 sector armies seemed like
a logical connection, as those armies' areas of operation would have to cross
the borders of political sectors. Tying the Grand Moffs in with the 20 sector
armies seemed like a nice additional layer, meshing the rise of figures such as
Tarkin with the metamorphosis of the clone troopers into stormtroopers.
Looking at the whole, I think you can imagine yourself as a Republic citizen
who accepted an expanded military hierarchy as a wartime necessity, then
watched helplessly as that hierarchy remained alongside a weakened political
framework and then eliminated it.

The discussion of oversectors here dates back to the Yavin entry I wrote for
Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, which tackled the continuity problem
(originally from West End Games' superlative solo adventure Scoundrel's
Luck) of how an Imperial governor could be responsible for both Ord Mantell
and Yavin. Hardcore fans take note: Sector One (originally from the Black
Fleet Crisis) is the same as Sector Zero from Wizards' Coruscant and the
Core Worlds. Sector Zero should have been Sector One in that book, but I
somehow screwed up the reference, and couldn't put it right until now.

Regarding regions, the Ollonir Boundaries are from Alliance Intelligence

Reports, while the Botor Enclave is from the Dark Empire Sourcebook.

By the way, those up on the retcon high wire have a reassuring net when it
comes to the politics of the galaxy: The Imperial Sourcebook says that the
Emperor held power in part by deliberately creating webs of confusing and
colliding titles and responsibilities. God bless Greg Gorden!
THE DEEP CORE
JASON: Most of the material for this section follows the lead of an April 2005
Planet Hoppersfeature from Wizards of the Coast and the Dark Empire
Sourcebook.
MAP: THE DEEP CORE
JASON: One thing we forgot until late was that the Byss Run really shouldn't
exist on most maps - it doesn't exist until Palpatine's scouts use brute force to
push trade routes through to it, and crumbles soon after Byss's destruction.
Note that a close look at the final Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith maps
foreshadows this route and reveals how travelers from the Core Worlds would
reach Kalist. Without trying to be coy about it, we looked for places where the
maps could tell stories or impart bits of information on their own, without the
text.

The main galaxy map was simply too crowded for all the lesser trade routes,
so they wound up on the region maps.
THE CORE WORLDS
DAN: Whenever you discuss the culture of a specific region, there are always
some examples that don't fit. In the case of the Core Worlds that would
include the miscellaneous alien homeworlds that fall within its borders. The
Atlas notes the honored history of Duro, and contrasts that with New Plympto
and Orootooru. New Plympto is the home of the Nosaurians, represented by
Podracer Clegg Holdfast in The Phantom Menace. Jason and I have had fun
fleshing out this species in the past: me in the (unpublished) Essential Guide
to Episode I, he in the Star Wars Gamer article "The University of Sanbra
Guide to Intelligent Life: The Nosaurians." New Plympto has recently, and
memorably, appeared in the comic Star Wars: Dark Times.

The planet Orootooru was first referenced in the delightfully gross comic
Jabba the Hutt: The Hunger of Princess Nampi.

A new name for the cradle of the early Republic is provided here: the
Tetrahedron. Partly because I enjoy naming chunks of the early Republic (see
also: the Arrowhead) and partly because I'm fascinated with the Platonic
solids (did you know that Plato associated the tetrahedron with the element
fire because its corners are sharp and pointed?) I threw this section in here for
some color. The four vertices of the Tetrahedron are Coruscant, Alderaan,
Corellia, and the "Ginn Jump," which throws a bone to the fact that we're
talking about three-dimensional space even though it's a pretty sloppy
tetrahedron (acknowledged as such in the text).
MAP: THE CORE WORLDS
JASON: A bare-bones forerunner of this map appeared in Coruscant and the
Core Worlds. Obviously this map was a major challenge to illustrate,
particularly in the areas around Coruscant.
It would be interesting to know what society is like on the western fringes of
the Core, where the ancient, settled galaxy rapidly gives way to Wild Space
and the terra incognito of the hyperspace eddies and whorls that have stymied
navigation into the Unknown Regions for millennia. Is the "northern" Core
frontier different than the apparently more civilized "southern" Core frontier?
I'd love to know.
ASTROCARTOGRAPHY, NAVICOMPUTERS AND TRADE ROUTES
JASON: Whole lot of West End Games goodness here. The basics of
hyperspace travel were set down by WEG more than 20 years ago now, with
the introduction of the Star Wars roleplaying game. The discussion of jump
beacons is from the Tales of the Jedi Companion, while Platt's Smugglers
Guide covered the basics of the Imperial Space Ministry and how it works.

Those two familiar hyperspace scouts were based on a pair of authors as they
appeared during a moment in the DK booth at Comic-Con in 2008. If you've
got sharp eyes, you'll spot Chris Trevas a bit later in this book.
A SPACER'S LIFE: BoSS AND THE ImPeRe
JASON: Platt Okeefe, invented by Peter Schweighofer, is one of my favorite
West End Games personalities, and it was enormous fun to give her a cameo
in the Atlas. This material draws on Platt's Starport Guide.
MAP: THE COLONIES
JASON: The Shipwrights' Trace was one of the last of the "new" trade routes
to get a name. Most of the new routes we placed were carefully designed to fit
the often-brief descriptions of routes in various novels and EU sources - the
Namadii Corridor or the Triellus Trade Route, for instance. A couple of others
were placed because they seemed like logical connections between places
poorly served by other routes, and these were marked as TK (that's publishing
shorthand for "to come") until very late in the process. I noticed that we'd
placed a number of worlds known for shipbuilding along one route leading
rimward from Fondor, probably subconsciously thinking that route would make
a logical base for explorations in the galaxy's early days. So that route got the
name "The Shipwrights' Trace," an identification strengthened by adding a
couple more shipbuilding systems that hadn't yet been given a placement.
THE GALAXY'S POPULATION
JASON: We rewrote this section fairly extensively - in the first draft, Dan
described the blaze of various colors that would correspond to population
rather beautifully, which led us to the same conclusion: Why not show that
visually on a map and use this section to talk about something else? One the
population map was in place, this chapter began to morph into a discussion of
cultural regions.
DAN: The original "blaze of colors" mini-essay was something that I wrote for
The Essential Guide to Episode I, a Del Rey book that was cancelled prior to
publication. I tried to bring it back for a related project called The Ultimate
Guide to Episode I, which was also cancelled.The Essential Atlas was the
third place I tried to shoehorn it in, which explains why it took Jason so many
attempts to patiently explain to me that I didn't need to take up half a page
describing colors when there was a map directly opposite that actually
showed colors. He's right, but RIP blaze of colors essay.
JASON: The Slice dates back to the early days of West End Games, and for
years it was one of the few maps of the Star Wars galaxy. The Negs were my
invention back when I was playing with the coordinates system, and made
official by Dan in the New Essential Chronology.

The Borderlands are one of those concepts that date back to before there was
a galaxy map - Timothy Zahn introduced them for the Thrawn trilogy. One of
our earliest proposals in trying to hammer out the historical maps was that the
Borderlands were more or less the region between the Perlemian and the
Hydian, an area we gave the somewhat more-formal name of the Trans-
Hydian.

The Trailing Sectors were invented as an effort to give some historical weight
to galactic explorations, and the New Territories came about when we were
brainstorming about the character of the Imperial Remnant. The D'Asta family
was introduced in Crimson Empire; to give them a role commensurate with
their apparent status in that series, we made them into galactic power brokers
and cemented this by identifying them with Serenno, Count Dooku's
homeworld.

The Nalroni are from Celanon, a prominent West End Games planet that
never really got picked up for anything else in the EU, and hadn't been placed
until the Atlas. The Planetary Pioneers date back to The Maverick Moon, a
1979 kids' book that was a favorite of my son's while we were writing the
Atlas. We never did describe what Luke was doing on leave from the
Rebellion, though, or find a place for Zukonium rays.

When it came time to map these cultural regions, we discovered that we'd
only covered about half the galaxy. Enter the Northern Dependencies, the
Southern Core (a.k.a. the Inner Core from The Clone Wars movie) and the
Western Reaches.
MAP: GALACTIC POPULATION
JASON: This map terrified me, but it turned out to be relatively
straightforward: I looked up the stats for all the placed worlds, colored them
accordingly, and then extrapolated from there, keeping an eye on what we'd
established about historical settlement patterns and the extent of the civilized
galaxy.

We tied this map to the pre-New Jedi Order galaxy to get a snapshot of the
familiar "Imperial" galaxy's population. A post-NJO one would be interesting,
too.
THE INNER RIM
DAN: Not much ink was spilled on the Inner Rim here, though it's an
interesting coincidence that both Thyferra (home of bacta) and Manaan (home
of kolto, a bacta-like substitute from the game Knights of the Old Republic) are
both located in the Inner Rim. As noted in the text the Inner Rim is the setting
for the novel Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor. It's fun to note that
the premise of Mindor was built out of a minor line from The New Essential
Chronology, which in turn lifted the line out of the wonderful early 1990s
roleplaying sourcebook The Dark Empire Sourcebook.
MAP: THE INNER RIM
JASON: The systems in the "west" from Mindabaal to rimward were ooched
slightly "east" in the book's final days - we never deliberately set out to define
a western frontier, but found we'd effectively done that by making the various
historical maps, and the planets near Mindabaal were the only ones slightly
out of place. I'd call that the product of good planning if it hadn't been a
subconscious process. Sometimes you get lucky.
THE EXPANSION REGION
JASON: The 77 Sectors were introduced but not explained in Geonosis and
the Outer Rim Worlds, and revised into subsectors for the Atlas. The Outer
Expansion Zone, meanwhile, is a stray term from WEG's Galaxy Guide 10.
We did a lot of work to tie together the narratives of the Alsakan Conflicts, the
Trailing Sectors, the Kanz Disorders, the Outer Expansion Zone, the
Expansion Region, the Corporate Sector and the New Territories in hopes that
what emerged would give the galaxy a sense of depth and history
underpinning geography - and so needless to say, we lived in fear of finding
an obscure reference that would send all these dominoes tumbling out of
alignment.

In this section you'll find a surprising reference to the Corporate Sector

Authority at work in the Trailing Sectors. This is a rather odd retcon: West End
Games's Twin Stars of Kira introduced Enarc, a system apparently fairly near
the Corporate Sector, given the presence of CSA agents in one of the
supplement's adventures. Wizards' Secrets of Naboo, though, made Enarc
and Naboo practically neighbors - and Naboo is nowhere near the Corporate
Sector. (Old Star Wars hands will note that the Corporate Sector itself moved
around a bit before maps were established.)
MAP: THE EXPANSION REGION
JASON: The northern precincts of the Expansion Region are so thin that they
cried out for an explanation, which we tried to supply elsewhere. That was one
of the cool things about writing the Atlas around the realities of the established
maps - just looking at them, you thought that there had to be a story about
why the Expansion Region was very small in one place and very large in
another. So what was it?
THE WONDERS OF THE GALAXY
DAN: This was a hugely fun section to work on and is perhaps my favorite
section in the Atlas. The concept of "wonders of the galaxy" is clearly
borrowed from the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. What wows me is
the fact that only one of the Seven Ancient Wonders (the Great Pyramid of
Giza) is still standing. Accordingly, several entries on this list are lost or are
modern reproductions.

The concept "Twenty Wonders of the Galaxy" originated in the roleplaying

sourcebook Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, where I worked on fleshing
out the planet Makem Te (home of the Swokes Swokes, the species of Gragra
the gorgmonger from The Phantom Menace). In that book I mentioned that
the Tract of Makem Te was one of the Wonders of the Galaxy.

The book Arturum Galactinum is a new invention. Whenever I need to create

something related to Coruscant (such as the name of a Supreme Chancellor,
or a legal provision, or a historical era) I break out the faux-Latin.

Of the 20, half of them came from pre-existing sources. These are:
Coruscant's Imperial Palace (many, many sources including Heir to the
Empire), the Valley of Royalty on Duro (Mission to Mount Yoda), Crevasse
City on Alderaan (The Illustrated Star Wars Universe), the Coruscant Ice
Crypts (Before the Storm and Coruscant and the Core Worlds), the Tract of
Makem Te (Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds), the Esraza Temple of
Oligtaz (Riders of the Maelstrom), the Cyrstal City of Calius saj Leloo on
Berchest (The Last Command), the Halls of Knowledge on Phateem (The
Power of the Jedi Sourcebook), the Cathedral of Winds on Vortex (Dark
Apprentice), and the Space City of Nespis VIII (Dark Empire II).

The remainder are all new inventions:

The Dawn Pyramid of Aargau: This illustrates the extent of the pre-Republic
Sharu civilization (which first appeared in Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp
of Sharu). Aargau is a Core World famous for its banks, and it originated in
issue #48 of Marvel Comics' Star Wars series in a tale entitled "The Third
Law."

The Brass Soldiers of Axum: Clearly a gloss on the famous Terracotta Army
of Qin Shi Huang. I rather like the idea that these are actual soldiers
transformed into brass statues through magic, but I left it vague.

The Shawken Spire: Chris Trevas illustrated this. I thought it was fun to
imagine how an ancient culture would have built what is essentially a space
elevator using "primitive" materials.

Belgoth's Beacon: Chris Trevas also illustrated this one, bless him. When I
described it to him and tried to explain how it had a face on every side, it
turned out we were both essentially saying "...you know, kind of like the
Quintessons from Transformers the Movie." Not all of its 3 faces are visible in
the illustration, but they include a Columi (an ancient spacefaring species), a
molator (an Alderaanian beast seen in A New Hope as a holo-chess piece),
and a cacodemon (a mythological demon which I referenced in my short story
"The Monster").

The Celebratus Archive of Obroa-skai: The planet Obroa-skai has existed as

a library world since its introduction in Heir to the Empire. The Celebratus
Archive is a specific analogue to the Library of Alexandria, and Obroa-skai
seemed like the most logical place to put it. (For clarification, the Library of
Alexandria is not one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.)

The Statue of Xim on Desevro: This is a specific analogue to the Colossus of

Rhodes.

The Ark of Baron Auletphant: Something about this idea appealed to me, that
of a crazy Noah collecting fish from across the galaxy in his golden starship.
I'd imagine that when the ark was rediscovered 10,000 years later the smell
was terrible.

The Caliginous Automaton of Tomo-Reth: God, I loved naming these things.

This particular one - a robot that breathed fire at awed visitors - may have
been inspired by the giant statue of Bender from an episode of Futurama. I
saw the episode again recently and wondered if I wasn't unconsciously
acknowledging it in a George Harrison/"My Sweet Lord" sort of way.

The Forbidden Gardens of Nuswatta. Technically this location was originally

referenced in the comic Jabba the Hutt: Betrayal, but I wanted to note that it
made a perfect stand-in for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the
original Wonders of the Ancient World.

The Alsakan Mosaics. This references the Core World of Alsakan, and is
another wonder that has been largely destroyed in the modern era.
THE MID RIM
DAN: This is a good point to discuss my thoughts on structuring the galaxy,
and what it would mean from a cultural standpoint. Apologies in advance for
the U.S.-centric nature of this explanation, but it's what I was drawing on from
personal experience, and I thought a society that initially formed in a
concentrated area and later spread out into a vast, untamed frontier lent itself
well to such parallels. The Republic is split into six major divisions, and while
working on the Atlas my mental stereotypes were:

Core: Manhattan. An undisputed center of business, fashion, music,

publishing, tourism, food, you name it. "If you can make it there you can make
it anywhere." Undeniably impressive, but its residents are hated by outsiders
as arrogant elites.

Colonies: Brooklyn/Queens. The outer boroughs of New York City just aren't
the same as Manhattan, but what the hell, it's still New York.

Inner Rim: New Jersey. The object of much mockery from New Yorkers,
despite the fact that New York City and New Jersey are all right on top of each
other. Culturally, New Jersey is considered some sort of remote hinterland,
but only to New Yorkers. Outsiders don't quite get it (somebody from
Indianapolis has no reason to make a New Jersey joke) and that's part of the
point. To those who live in the area, once you've traveled out of their small
patch of the eastern seaboard you've left the Core and entered the Rim.

Expansion Region: Detroit. The beginning of the Rim, i.e. a place settled
during frontier expansion where it eventually became an industrial
powerhouse. (Actually Detroit was settled in 1701 by the French, but let's not
split hairs.) Like many such places in the so-called "Rust Belt," Detroit's days
as a factory town are on the wane and it is filled with empty symbols of
industry.

Mid Rim: Iowa. A place of modest towns and modest ambitions, known for
honest, hard-working friendly folk. Derided as hopelessly behind the curve
and about as exciting as a bowl of unbuttered mashed potatoes.
Outer Rim: Dogpatch, Arkansas. If you live here you live a long way from
anywhere with cultural bragging rights. It doesn't matter how smart, stylish, or
brilliant you are - as soon as you announce your hometown even
Midwesterners give you "that look" and mentally classify you as a hillbilly.

I'm sure I annoyed many U.S. readers with my gross stereotyping, but this
isn't meant to be a commentary on America so much as it is a structure with
which I could set my head and write about the regions as if they were real
places. (It's obviously an incomplete structure anyway, since a city like Los
Angeles has no place in this particular cosmology.) I'm a Mid-Rimmer by birth
who has lived in the Expansion Region so I'm certainly not one to cast any
culture-war stones. Except for this one aimed at Jason, who is from the
Colonies and is therefore a huge snob.
MAP: THE MID RIM
JASON: The Celanon Spur was one of the trade routes that frightened me
most during the Atlas's long journey to publication. Celanon was one of the
first worlds we placed, and it dictated the placement of numerous other things,
in ways that were soon too tangled to easily undo. (If I ever do another atlas of
a make-believe galaxy, I'll have learned my lesson: Document every
placement and the reason for that placement!) I lived in fear of opening a Dark
Horse comic or young-adult book and finding that Celanon had been placed,
say, just west of Bespin. Thankfully, it didn't happen.

That little sliver of the Mid Rim and Outer Rim between the northern "arms" of
Hutt Space must be an interesting place.
CLIENT STATES OF THE EMPIRE
JASON: The discussion of the CSA is drawn largely from Han Solo and the
Corporate Sector Soucebook, which I think is one of West End Games's best
books - parts of it read like a very good novel or short story. Regarding Hapes,
we tried to address something that's struck me as a key question since the
first chapter of The Courtship of Princess Leia: If the Hapans are so powerful,
why did the Emperor tolerate their existence? Readers will find a number of
other Atlas attempts to make Hapes and Hapans the stuff of cultural
references in galactic society.

The discussion of Hutt Space leads into the "closer look" section, but a couple
of points. We wanted to develop the idea that the areas "east" of Hutt Space
have always been dominated by the Hutts and weren't formally governed from
Coruscant until the days of the Empire. We also wanted to make plain the
relationship between Hutt Space and the Empire, and used the question of
language and translations to paper over the inconsistencies. (This happens in
the real world, too - recall that Yasir Arafat used to habitually say peaceable
things in English and warlike things in Arabic.)

The term felinx-and-rodus was first used by me in Geonosis and the Outer
Rim Worlds. Felinxes first appeared in The Mandalorian Armor; a rodus is, of
course, a rat. I normally dislike making real-world terms "spacey," but since
we already had felinxes....
HUTT SPACE
JASON: This was the first of the "A Closer Look" sections of the Atlas written.
After I finished it, I confess to being mildly terrified by how much work we'd
taken on.

The Hutt view of history is drawn from New Essential Chronology, Geonosis
and the Outer Rim Worlds and the New Essential Guide to Alien Species; for
more on the Tionese exterminations, see the Hyperspace feature about Xim.
Budhila Hestilic Amura's name draws from two Sanskrit words referring to
wisdom.

The planet Sleheyron was developed for the Knights of the Old Republic
game but largely cut; its depiction follows what Bioware developer David
Gaider had in mind for it. (Sleheyron also made its way into the Clone Wars
Visual Guide.) The Ootmian Pabol is a corruption of Ootmian Pankapolla,
which the Galactic Phrase Book tells us means "Outlanders' Spaceship
Road," more or less. You can hear Watto complain about ootmians in Episode
I.

Nar Shaddaa's time as a respectable port is discussed in the Dark Empire

Sourcebook; Blotus the Hutt is mentioned in the New Essential Chronology.
The Thornhedge Nebula is from Underworld; the Kyyr system is a hasty
reversal of Ryyk, which I discovered late in the publication process had to be
near Mandalore.

The Atlas makes plain that the expanded borders of Hutt Space seen in the
Clone Wars era aren't actual political borders, but reflect economic
domination. Even at its feeblest, it's very hard to imagine the Republic
surrendering a planet such as Gyndine to the Hutts, and other sources seem
to show pretty clearly that the Hutts are de facto rulers of Tatooine, not de jure
rulers - Episode I watchers shouldn't take Shmi's conversation with Qui-Gon
and Padme so literally. (Secrets of Tatooine, for instance, notes the planet's
nominal Republic membership.)
Regarding the Hutt worlds, some quick notes of interest or things that aren't
apparent from the text: Ganath is from Dark Empire II, Gar-Oth's attendants
from Star Wars Republic #27 are meant to be Jilruans, Circumtore is from The
Mandalorian Armor, Rorak 5 is from Jedi Quest: Path to Truth, the Parliament
of Moralan is from Polyhedron #170, and Sionian Skups are from Tales of the
Mos Eisley Cantina.
MAP: HUTT SPACE
JASON: This was the first detail map drawn for the book. I wanted Hutt Space
to feel slightly strange and dreadful even as visualized on a map. Remember
looking at the map of Mordor in the Lord of the Rings books and seeing
precincts of Sauron's kingdom that didn't appear in the story or even get
discussed? I'd always wonder about those, and I wanted that feel - I wanted to
see spacelanes and sub-regions with alien or forbidding names, and that
would be the stuff of rumor and legend among spacers who'd never been
there.
THE OUTER RIM
JASON: The Triellus is from Secrets of the Sisar Run, which indicates it runs
from near Hutt Space to Tatooine. The Atlas elongated this route greatly,
while trying to explain why it isn't a super-route like the Perlemian or the
Corellian Run.
MAP: THE OUTER RIM
JASON: I like that the general population of the Outer Rim and the
boundaries of civilized space can be inferred by the placements we made
here. For instance, you can tell the area around Eriadu is booming, while
Virgillia is on the frontier.

Readers who trace placements from the appendix back to the original sources
will find some other implied tales here. For instance, there are a lot of battles,
Imperial suppressions and Rebel struggles out around Virgillia and near Mon
Calamari. If some future Star Wars creator runs with that ball, fantastic.
WILD SPACE AND THE UNKNOWN REGIONS
JASON: While the Atlas was taking shape I read lots of Star Wars
manuscripts in order to keep the appendix as up to date as possible and to
head off potential geographical errors. One thing I kept seeing was authors
mixing up Wild Space and the Unknown Regions. It's an understandable error:
Wild Space sounds far more interesting and much more evocative for
storytelling, yet it's the Unknown Regions that are the Star Wars saga's true
terra incognito.

The location and nature of the Unknown Regions is a bit controversial: Some
fans dislike the idea (introduced in works such as Vision of the Future and
reinforced through the galactic maps) that a large swath of the galaxy is
unexplored. Their feeling is that having just 25% of the galaxy be Known
Space badly diminishes the Galactic Empire, and they cite all manner of
reasons to discard the EU concept that the Unknown Regions are part of the
main galaxy, from in-universe evidence (Han Solo discussing flying from one
side of the galaxy to the other, Jocasta Nu saying that if the Jedi don't know
about a system it doesn't exist) to logical arguments about the speed of
exploration and settlement by galactic civilizations.

I'm definitely sympathetic to this argument, particularly since Timothy Zahn's

model of the 25%-explored galaxy has been eroded by subsequent
placements in the formerly blank western galaxy (Ilum, Rakata Prime, etc.),
shrinking the Unknown Regions to a rather paltry part of the disk. But while we
did override some faulty placements in the Atlas (Lorrd and Concord Dawn
are two examples), overhauling the basic geographic vision of the galaxy
wasn't something we considered. Or wanted to consider, frankly. (Ditto for the
idea that hyperspace anomalies block the way "west" from the Core - I
understand why people dislike the idea, but a mechanism explaining the
"frontier Core" was necessary, and the anomalies and eddies are a long-
established piece of Star Wars lore that wasn't ours to discard. And frankly, I
think they work fairly well as a remnant of some conflict between the Rakatans
and the Celestials. Someone could write a terrific story, Wizards feature or
something else addressing them in that context.)
DAN: The hyperspace anomaly was in fact something that I helped create
during the development of the original Star Wars galaxy maps in the late
1990s. Even at that time, the existence of an Unknown Regions within the
galactic disc was established as a given. Trying to establish an internal logic
for why an Unknown Regions would exist at all, I hit on hyperspace and the
truism that traveling through it ain't like dusting crops. While hyperspace
disturbances are generally tied to real-world objects and their mass shadows,
that doesn't mean they always need to be - we're talking about an alternate
dimension after all - and appealing to the enigma of hyperspatial physics
helped establish three things: (1) why there was an Unknown Regions, (2)
why the galaxy had "superhighways," and (3) why nobody had traveled
outside the galaxy and made a start at establishing a multi-galaxy civilization.
(No, the satellite galaxies don't count.)
JASON: I've read arguments that the Unknown Regions are actually "above"
the galactic disk (in the halo, for instance) and so their apparent location is a
2-D illusion of a 3-D reality, but these are grasping at straws: Dan helped
create the first maps of the galaxy, so he'd know if that was the intent or even
a possibility. As for Jocasta Nu, fans who cite her statement as proof that the
entire galaxy is known are ignoring the context of the scene: Jocasta is
emblematic of the Jedi Order's arrogance and smug close-mindedness,
dismissing the idea that anything could be wrong with the library she loves
and tends. That's hardly evidence - and note that her blithe assurance that
Kamino can't exist is promptly revealed as incorrect by the galactic equivalent
of Mel from "Alice."

Anyway, apologies if that got ranty, but I just don't have a lot of patience with
cherry-picking quotes or claiming that maps actually show something very
different than what they appear to represent. But as I said, I'm sympathetic to
the root causes of the arguments. And so I did try to respect that point of view
and those arguments (not to mention the erosion of the Unknown Regions on
maps) and find a compromise of sorts. So in the Atlas, that 25% Known
Space figure takes into account not only the galactic disk but also the halo
and the satellite galaxies, and there's an acknowledgment that by some
calculations just 15% of the disk is part of the Unknown Regions. That
statement is weaselly on purpose -- only those who want to create the need
for more retcons deal in absolutes.
MISCELLANEOUS REGIONS
JASON: Atrisia is from the Imperial Sourcebook; Kitel Phard is from
Adventure Journal #14. Making them one and the same seemed logical - the
Imperial Sourcebook is clear about the fact that Uueg Tching united a planet.
Atrisia's antiquity and apparent importance to galactic culture argued for
putting it in the Core Worlds; we stuck it out on the frontier to give it more of a
whiff of the exotic and in hopes that future Star Wars creators might find
intriguing possibilities in that.

The Botor/Daupherm conflicts are discussed in the Dark Empire Sourcebook

and Cracken's Rebel Operatives.

The Ktilac Regions are discussed in Alliance Intelligence Reports. The

Murachaun are from Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, while the Tocoyans
are from the Customizable Card Game.

Nouane was introduced in Before the Storm, while the Four Sages of Dwartii
(about whom we tried to offer a bit of context without ruining their mystery) are
from Complete Locations. Paqwepori is also from Before the Storm.
GLOBULAR CLUSTERS AND SATELLITE GALAXIES
JASON: The biggest surprise here will be the addition of five other satellite
galaxies besides the two we see in Episode II. Those two are the Rishi Maze,
aka Companion Aurek, and Companion Besh, the home of the Nagai and the
Tofs from the Marvel series. The others are a new invention, but not an
unlikely one - the Milky Way is thought to have as many as 14 satellite
galaxies.

PART II: PLANETS OF THE GALAXY

JASON: A rule we followed for this section was that if a planet appeared or
was mentioned in one of the movies, we included it here. That did limit how
many EU planets we could address, but I think it was a good trade-off.

The original outline for the Atlas didn't have a section dedicated to planets, but
placed each significant planet near some point of historical context. But the
feeling was that a dedicated section connected the book to The Essential
Guide to Planets and Moons and gave more casual fans a way into the book,
preventing them from drowning in the complexity of the EU.
I like that we got to use the old West End Games stat blocks.
ANAXES
JASON: I invented Anaxes for Coruscant and the Core Worlds, thinking it
would be interesting to create a military world that was held in esteem by
typical citizens of the Republic, Empire and New Republic. (I also love the
Imperial Navy and thought it would be cool to have a place where you could
set a space version of An Officer and a Gentleman.) For this write-up I tried to
finesse the question of what role Anaxes played in the galaxy when there was
no Republic Navy. (Answer: It trained officers who served in sector navies.)
The name Whelm is a tip of the cap to Jack Vance, my favorite science-
fantasy writer. What? You haven't read the Alastor books? Put that right,
posthaste!
ANSION
JASON: Note that Ansion's web of treaties - described in brief in The
Approaching Storm - is explained here.
BESTINE
DAN: Bestine first appeared in Biggs Darklighter's dialogue from the
novelization of the original Star Wars movie. Since then it's been established
as a waterworld, and also the home of an Imperial naval yard. The Atlas gives
the Imperial facility a name, Juggerhead, and also throws in a reference to a
new type of TIE - the "TIE torpedo," which is described as a streamlined one-
person attack submersible. This is a fix for the puzzle of why a naval yard for
a spacegoing navy would exist on the surface of a planet instead of in orbit,
but it's also my excuse to create a new TIE. I admit I never really get tired of
seeing new TIE designs. Once I saw that octagonal windshield and ball
cockpit attached to crawler treads in Cam Kennedy's artwork for Dark Empire
(known as a "century tank"), I was hooked.
BOZ PITY
DAN: This entry is almost entirely made up of new material. Boz Pity is an
Episode II planet but has only previously appeared in the comic Star Wars:
Obsession where its giant graves were mentioned in passing. The sad story of
the planet's natives, the Gargantelles (the name is a nod to Gargantua and
Pantagruel) was invented for the Atlas, but the involvement of the electric
caliphs of Mourn in the destruction of the Gargantelles is a reference to the
New Essential Guide to Droids, in which I created the electric caliphs for a
simple throwaway line.
CHRISTOPHSIS
JASON: We added Christophsis and Teth to the Atlas after our revised pub
date let us include material from the Clone Wars movie and first season. (And
a bit of Season 2; more on that in a while.) I liked the idea of giving the
Christophsians a reputation for treating non-human servants and hirelings
badly - it makes you briefly share Whorm Loathsom's satisfaction at
rampaging across the planet.
FELUCIA
DAN: The fact that the Gossams were able to colonize Felucia prior to the
establishment of the Republic is unusual, but not unheard of. There are
several pre-Republic colonization missions that are mentioned throughout the
Atlas. However, because we wanted to minimize any appearances of the
hyperdrive prior to its established development in 25,000 BBY, this passage
references the Gossam Courivers who reached faster-than-light speeds by
using the "tumbledrive." I'm not exactly sure how the tumbledrive works, but it
doesn't sound particularly safe.
FONDOR
JASON: The Empire's plan to turn the Freeworlds into the Shapani sector
(here more-completely identified as a subsector) is detailed in Lords of the
Expanse.
GAMORR
JASON: It was fun to sprinkle the Atlas with galactic sayings, such as the
Gamorreans' apparently unlikely colonization of another star system being
cited in exasperation when apparently easy things can't get done.
HAPES
JASON: Galactic sayings, once again.
IEGO
DAN: In Episode I, Anakin tells Padm about the angels that live on the
moons of Iego. When contributing to the roleplaying sourcebook Geonosis
and the Outer Rim Worlds in 2004, I was given the opportunity to flesh out
Iego in all its glory. Because the "angel" seed had already been planted I tried
to create a setting that seemed inexplicable and bizarre, with elements that
reeked of the supernatural including singing demons, blind dragons, and
castaways who never age. This was partly a reaction to working on a lot of
roleplaying sourcebooks, in which I had created plenty of one-size-fits-all
planets by plopping down a starport, a cantina, and a mining facility. After a
while these start to blur together. Contributing to this is the fact that Star Wars
has a "lived in" environment in which strange things are routinely accepted as
no big deal.

This is a great strength of the setting, but it makes it hard to include something
truly weird that doesn't feel like it's visiting from another franchise. Every once
in a while somebody creates floating space skeletons and names them
"Starweirds" and I'm surprised in a good way. It's a balancing act and I tried
not to tip the balance too far in one direction with Iego. However, since the
publication of Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, Iego has been shifted
back toward the other side of the seesaw through its more conventional
appearances in Star Wars Legacy and the Clone Wars cartoon. It's a shared
universe, and we did our best to address all facets of Iego in this entry.
ILUM
DAN: Ilum's location within what is essentially the Unknown Regions is a
tricky bit. The rationalization here is that it takes a Force jump to get there, or
as the text puts it, "one uninterrupted hop directly from Metellos."
KALEE
DAN: Some details of this, including the fact that nearly all sea life on Kalee is
poisonous, came from unpublished backstory material created by Abel Pea
for his online article series "Unknown Soldier: The Story of General Grievous."
KAMINO
DAN: To establish that the Kaminoans have been in the cloning business for
a long time, I referenced the fact that they had a hand in shaping the "blind
berserkers of the Unknown Regions' Leech Legions." Look for this to be
expanded next year in Wizards of the Coast's Unknown Regions sourcebook
(despite my editor's distaste for the name Leech Legions).
MYGEETO
DAN: The "brief, doomed seizure by the Rebel Alliance in 3 ABY" mentioned
here is a reference to the game Star Wars: Imperial Ace, released for mobile
phones in Europe.
NAGI
JASON: The backstory of the Nagai and details of their life among the stars of
Companion Besh are new material.
NAL HUTTA
JASON: To my surprise, I noticed during final page proofs that we'd forgotten
to include a rundown of the planets of the Y'Toub system. To my greater
surprise, I couldn't find any place that those planets had been named.

The Vippits seemed to be crying out for a greater role in Hutt Space, so I gave
them a backstory that would make them feared and somewhat despised as
lawyers. (I know, that's another species generalization similar to Rodians
being bounty hunters and Gamorreans being bouncers. Guilty as charged.)
Regardless, I think it makes Doolb Snoil a more interesting and sympathetic
character.
NEIMOIDIA
DAN: This planet is mostly white, which would seem to indicate arctic
conditions - yet Neimoidia is a hothouse world of giant fungus! Nevertheless,
the white hue had previously been depicted and we had to match it. While
discussing this with editor Erich Schoeneweiss I helpfully pointed out that
some types of fungus are white. He replied, "that's an awful lot of fungus."
RAXUS PRIME
DAN: To heighten the squalor of the "junkyard planet," I tried to illustrate its
fall from grace. The fact that it was located inside territory once controlled by
the Tionese Empire provided the context for its former splendor, and allowed
me to make references to all-new oddities like "Nikato's bootheel" and the
"Duros Red Credit Brigade."
RISHI
DAN: The first thing I wanted to do here was to explicitly connect the planet
Rishi (introduced in 1992's Dark Force Rising) to the Rishi Maze from Attack
of the Clones. The explanation is that Rishi is frequently used as a
navigational calibration point for ships making a hyperspace transit to the
satellite galaxy. The route stretching between Rishi and Rishi - the Zareca
String - would offer a traveler such benefits as a pre-blazed hyperspace path
and a number of stopovers for fuel, supplies, and repairs.
RODIA
DAN: The Vagh Rodiek are awful, crab-like monstrosities created by Yuuzhan
Vong shapers through the mutation of Rodian slaves. I created these things
for the article "Being Yuuzhan Vong" (illustrated by Anthony Waters) in an
issue of Star Wars Gamer, and I love referencing them when I can.
RYLOTH
JASON: One of the surprises when I read the scripts for the first season of
The Clone Wars was that Ryloth was portrayed as a normal, terrestrial world,
and not the tide-locked planet beset by heat storms that we'd seen numerous
times in the EU.

We looked at ways to preserve the EU vision of Ryloth - the most imaginative

explanation I heard was that perhaps the Clone Wars shows took place
entirely within the twilight band - but in the end it felt like a really convoluted
attempt to deny the obvious. So we let it go and rewrote Ryloth's description
to acknowledge that it was a relatively terrestrial, rotating world. But we didn't
want to discard everything that had come before, so we took care to include
mention of scorching deserts, mountain strongholds and heat storms.
SHADDA-BI-BORAN
JASON: The fate of Shadda-Bi-Boran was discussed in scenes cut from
Attack of the Clones; I fleshed them out here in an effort to make the world a
galactic cause clbre and tragedy, which I hope adds a bit more depth to
Padme's backstory.
TATOOINE
JASON: Ha ha, Luke. In your face.
TRITON
JASON: "Deader than a Triton moon" is a throwaway line in the novelization
of The Empire Strikes Back, and years ago I saw a chance to surprise Star
Wars fans who assumed that was a reference to an interplanetary war or
some kind of cosmic cataclysm. Says who? Couldn't there be a backstory that
was unexpected and more interesting? That led to the Hyperspace story
"Deader Than a Triton Moon." Alas, that story will be spoiled for readers who
come to the Atlas first, but that's showbiz.

I wrote the parenthetical that scholars disagree on who or what Gactimus was
as a bit of color, not as cover for the Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia's
reference (mistaken, in my book) to Gactimus as a moon of Triton. But I
suppose it works as cover anyway.

PART III: BEFORE THE REPUBLIC

DAN: I've always been intrigued by the powers that existed prior to the
Republic, partly because no story has ever been set in this time period - it's all
just sourcebook references and the like. The lineup of pre-Republic powers
include the Rakatans (from the Knights of the Old Republic game), the Gree
(from the Star Wars Adventure Journal), the Columi (from West End Games'
Galaxy Guide 4), the Sharu (from Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of
Sharu), the Kwa (from Star Wars Republic: Infinity's End), the Killiks (from The
Illustrated Star Wars Universe originally, but more familiarly from The Swarm
War), and the Taungs (from, believe it or not, the CD liner notes that
accompanied the Shadows of the Empire soundtrack). One power, the
Celestials, first appeared in indirect fashion in The Corellian Trilogy (as the
ancient builders of Centerpoint Station) but remain largely a mystery.
MAP: THE RAKATA
DAN: Note that the worlds in the Rakatan Empire are single planets and
there's no great sweep of territory which you find on other political maps. This
is a result of the Rakatan hyperdrive, which can only zero in on planets with
strong Force signatures. My first take on this map had dozens of little
territorial patches but mapmaker Modi rightly suggested going with this
approach instead.

Planets such as Hijarna (The Last Command), Seylott (Boba Fett/Zam

Wesell) and Xo (Crimson Empire), all previously been specified as having pre-
Republic ruins, are now identified as having been part of the Rakatan empire.
MAP: THE CONQUESTS OF XIM THE DESPOT
JASON: The decision to include alternate names for some systems
conquered by Xer and Xim was an effort to lend a sense of antiquity to the
region, and to convey how thoroughly the Tionese had fallen from glory.
There's much more about Xim, Xer and the Tionese in the Xim feature on
Hyperspace.
MAP: ORIGINS OF THE JEDI
JASON: Note that this map also doubles as a political snapshot of the very
early Republic. We looked for ways to show the galaxy's expansion over
various historical maps so readers could get a sense of that expansion without
having to puzzle apart the colors on the very dense Galactic Explorations
map. But we wanted to fit that progression into maps that were showing other
things to add interest to them. For instance, I think this map would be quite flat
if all it showed were systems connected with Jedi origins and mystic Force
traditions. (There are some maps later in the Atlas that only show one thing,
and I think they suffer a bit in contrast.)

Note that the borders of Hutt Space will change as the Atlas maps move
forward in time, with minor trade routes also changing course, appearing and
disappearing. An early idea for the Atlas was that the position of the star
systems would also change over the eons. This would be a realistic reflection
of the fact that stars are revolving around the galactic center at different
speeds and on different vectors, but it would have left readers familiar with the
modern galaxy completely unmoored. So we quietly dropped it.
GALACTIC EXPLORATION
DAN: Listing all the signatories of the Republic was a fun bit, trying to tie
together as many "early" planets as possible without making our shaky maps
fall apart. Obviously we needed these kinds of planets to bunch together in
relatively contained geographical groupings or it started to seem far too
scattered. "Praediums" is a new term which describes short hyperspace
snippets connecting several systems but which aren't easily connected to
larger routes.
MAP: GALACTIC EXPLORATIONS
JASON: This map was a bear. You'll find lots of little islands of exploration
and odd peninsulas to reflect the fact that so many worlds we were once told
were charted, founded or settled late in galactic history have shown up in the
eras explored by the various Knights of the Old Republic tales. In the final
days of work on the Atlas, a good chunk of "blue" space had to be hastily
turned turquoise to account for two things: the forthcoming The Old Republic
MMO and its new origin story for the Hydian Way, and the mention of the
Minos Cluster in an online comic connected to the game.
DAN: Here's a scenario: you're mapping an era in which the planet Ithor is
way out in the distant Outer Rim, far too distant for anyone to reasonably have
reached it in your ancient era in which civilization is tightly clustered around
the Core. However, Ithorians are cool. It's a virtual certainty that some writer
or artist will stick an Ithorian in a comic book set during that time period. For
Jason and me, we had to either (1) extend the sweep of civilization in that era
to include Ithor, (2) identify Ithor as an isolated outpost way out in the
uncharted wilds, (3) assume that the Ithorian character in that hypothetical
comic was a wanderer far from home which would allow Ithor to stay
unknown, or (4) ignore it. Multiply that scenario 1000x and you have the
colossal headaches that were the Atlas' historical maps.
JASON: Note that this map also shows the extent of civilized space in 25 ABY
- another example of using one map to show two interesting things.
MAJOR TRADE ROUTES
JASON: The Balmorra Run, unveiled in the Clone Wars show, struck us as an
interesting name for a trade route. The name implied that the route went to
Balmorra, but for it to connect Balmorra and Kaliida Shoals would have made
it a pretty major route, forcing us either to come up with a not very convincing
explanation of why it disappeared before the classic era or to add it to the
galaxy map and shrug when people asked why such a big route had never
been mentioned before. So I came up with this explanation and held my
breath hoping no other Star Wars source would blow that out of the water
before the Atlas hit shelves.
THE SLICE
JASON: The Slice is pretty well established in Star Wars lore, so I thought the
best way to make this section interesting was to explore the Slice's historical
development. Historical atlases are full of the ebb and flow of empires and
wars, but it's hard to translate that to a galactic atlas: Interstellar empires are
basically dots connected by lines that can be drawn fairly arbitrarily. We tried
everywhere we could to give a broader picture by figuring out how settlement
would have flowed, how trade routes would have changed, and what galactic
powers would have won or lost based on that historical forces.

A decicred-dreadful is, of course, a spacey name for a "penny-dreadful." It

seemed logical that the Hutts would be the stuff of fearful rumor for citizens on
the frontier of the expanding Republic - a cruel, powerful alien species
somewhere out there. But of course that's just one side of the story - in this
section you can also see the seeds of anti-alien bias that the Empire would
one day exploit.
GREAT SPACEFARING SPECIES
DAN: The illustration in the upper left originally read "An Ithorian, Baragwin,
and Human play holochess." Note that the human in question is actually a
self-portrait drawn by Atlas illustrator Chris Trevas. To poke fun at Chris a little
bit, our editor Erich Shoeneweiss changed the caption at the last minute to
read, "An Ithorian and a Baragwin about to win a Human's starship in a game
of holochess."
ANCIENT MYSTERIES OF THE GALAXY
DAN: This section is largely a nod to the article "From the Files of Corellia
Antilles," written by Timothy O'Brien and published in issue #14 of the Star
Wars Adventure Journal. The article was meant as a listing of quest items for
Gamemasters to include in the roleplaying game, but O'Brien made the entire
thing a tribute to Indiana Jones (note that Indiana/Corellia = place names,
Jones/Antilles = common surnames).

Three items in this sidebar - the Shrines of Kooroo, the Loag Dagger, and the
Sharka'k Noor - originally appeared in "From the Files of Corellia Antilles." The
Infant of Shaa originally appeared in the Boba Fett/Zam Wesell comics, while
the Mindharp of Sharu is from the aptly-named Lando Calrissian and the
Mindharp of Sharu.

Two more Ancient Mysteries round out this section. The Nova Vaults of
Kakitai bel Toyouin is my homage to the Money Pit of Oak Island, something
that fascinated me as a kid. Finally, the Bedlam Spirits is a reference to the
one-of-a-kind Alan Moore story "Tilotny Throws a Shape," which can be found
in the comic collection Star Wars: Devilworlds.
THE GREAT HYPERSPACE WAR
DAN: This war seems to get bigger and bigger every time somebody writes
about it. In the original comics it's pretty much a done-in-one affair, but the
story feels like it should be more epic, so subsequent sources (including the
Essential Chronology, which I co-wrote) have put more meat on it. Late in the
Atlas editing process we ran across the "Lost Tribe of the Sith" ebooks, in
which it was mentioned that various members of Republic species were
already part of the Sith empire prior to the arrival of Gav and Jori Daragon and
that the Republic (or at least the existence of a civilization outside the borders
of the Sith Empire) was not an entirely new concept for the Sith Lords. After a
consultation with ebook writer John Jackson Miller, a hasty rewrite of one
paragraph allowed us to squeeze in an acknowledgment of these events.

The end of this section, detailing the fate of the Sith Empire, includes a
mention of one Sith Lord building up a new Sith Empire in the Unknown
Regions. This is a tie-in to LucasArts' upcoming MMO The Old Republic.
MAP: SITH SPACE
DAN: This is the first time that Sith Space has been mapped. I wanted to give
some geographical explanation for their isolation and a sunken ring in the
hyperspatial fabric called the Stygian Caldera was the result. When I needed
to invent new names for planets and routes to flesh out this map, I went with a
mix of 50% pseudo-German and 50% H.P. Lovecraft.
MAP: THE GREAT HYPERSPACE WAR
JASON: Note lots of systems from the Tales of the Jedi era on this map, and
the very different trade routes. (I always wanted to know why Cyrillia was such
an orphan on maps.) The trade routes will change drastically in subsequent
maps of the "ancient" galaxy, settling down somewhat at the end of the era of
fixed hyperspace beacons. Note also that this era's coreward border of Hutt
Space lines up with a later trade route to Randon - the idea being that traders
of that era wanted to stay out of the Hutt's dominion and so blazed a route to
accomplish that. Hutt Space later contracted, but the route proved stable.
THE GREAT SITH WAR
DAN: On this map we tried to find as many ways as possible to make the war
busier. It was a devastating galaxy-wide conflict, so just depicting the events
of the comics felt too small. Therefore, some of the arrows on the map reflect
what seemed like logical movements in a time of war. For a while it was as if
we were Republic generals, trying to decide where to send our troops in
response to the Sith movements we'd drawn on the map just minutes before.
Events such as "the Sith cut the Slice in half" and the arrival of the Republic
Swift Fleet came out of those discussions.
MAP: THE GREAT SITH WAR
JASON: The Hydian Way doesn't exist yet, but you can see some of the
islands and spurs it will connect. Some trade routes used by the Sith here will
cease to exist, reflecting the destruction of their hyperspace beacons and the
ruin of worlds and commerce along them.
MAP: THE JEDI CIVIL WAR
DAN:This map is based on the events (and backstory) of the first Knights of
the Old Republic game. I really wanted to include the events from Knights of
the Old Republic 2 on the same map, but it was simply too much information.
All the KOTOR2 events were dropped in order to have the resulting map be at
least semi-legible.
THE MANDALORIANS
JASON: Some of this material is new, and startling. It'll be clearer soon,
promise. The first outline of the Atlas called for a map of the Mandalore sector
with an accompanying "Closer Look," but with so many Mandalorian tales
being told, we scrapped that for fear of creating contradictions and
accidentally tying authors' hands.
MAP: THE MANDALORIAN WARS
DAN: For this map we were lucky to have the advice of Knights of the Old
Republic comics writer John Jackson Miller, who critiqued our first efforts and
added material he planned to introduce in his Knights run.
ZENITH OF THE REPUBLIC
DAN: This section features a few references to The Old Republic, the MMO
due for release in a year or two. We added these references at the last
second and didn't have time (or room) for anything more extensive.
MAP: THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC
DAN: I really like the way this map turned out, with the red and the blue. At
one point while making my rough map sketches in GIMP I made up my mind
to delete the line depicting "Darth Bane's travels." I thought it would mess up
the visuals, but my kill instructions were never received and I'm now glad of it.
THE KANZ DISORDERS
JASON: Geography fans will note that Lorrd used to be up by the Corporate
Sector. This was your authors' mistake in preparation for the map in The New
Essential Chronology, and one of a handful of geographical flubs that we put
right instead of trying to work around via a retcon.
THE HAPES CLUSTER
JASON: Readers who look up many of the worlds newly placed in the Hapes
Cluster will find lots of them are famous for riches, luxury items or ancient
mysteries - all the better for making Hapes seem exotic and mysterious.
MAP: THE HAPES CLUSTER
JASON: I think this might be my favorite map in the book. It's simply beautiful
- great work by Modi.
THE HYDIAN WAY
JASON: Peter Schweighofer invented the Kallea Cycle for the old Star Wars
Adventure Journals, and I was always intrigued by the idea. A Star Wars
opera? A heroic explorer? The founding of a new trade route? What was the
story of the Kallea Cycle? What "historical" truths did it reflect?

Peter didn't have any background notes he hadn't used, and kindly gave me
carte blanche to run with his creation. To honor the material that so intrigued
me, I decided to stick with the opera, writing a synopsis that would be
presented to an audience that wouldn't understand the Old Brentaal in which
the arias were sung.

The opera portrays Neimoidians, Gran and Dugs in a rather bad light, so you
can see how the Empire would have used it as propaganda for exalting a
largely human Core culture - think about the Nazis and Wagner. I took that a
step further by having the Empire do away with the long-standing tradition of
having the lone heroic alien part played by an actual Duros.
DAN: This might be my favorite part of the book, and I'm glad that Jason
decided to go this route. It's not at all a typical way to detail the formation of
the Hydian Way. We rarely get a glimpse of actual in-universe theatrical
productions in the Star Wars universe. Besides the opera that Palpatine and
Anakin watch in Revenge of the Sith (Squid Lake? Seriously?) there's "Uhl
Eharl Khoehng" by Patricia Jackson from the Star Wars Adventure Journal
and Michael Kogge's upcoming "The Despotica" on starwars.com.
JASON: Very late in the publication process, we found out that the Hydian
Way's founding had been pushed back seven centuries for The Old Republic
MMO. Happily, we were able to accommodate that by simply changing dates.
Whew!
MAP: THE HYDIAN WAY
JASON: We went for a very minimalist treatment here that's a bit at odds with
the rest of the book, but I think was helpful in spotlighting the Hydian Way and
Kallea's explorations. I also liked the simplicity of "The Mandalorian Road" as
a name. You might object that Republic citizens wouldn't use such a
threatening-sounding name, but our idea was that the route began as a
raiders' path into the civilized systems, and gradually became civilized but
kept its rather ominous moniker. "Sort of like the Santa Fe Trail," remarked
Dark Horse's John Jackson Miller, which was reassuring.

And behold Chris Reiff's gorgeous nebula!

DESCENT INTO DARKNESS
JASON: This section attempts to tie together a number of EU strands about
the years before Episode I - the rise of the Trade Federation, Cloak of
Deception's note that the Trade Federation blazed new hyperspace trails,
militarism in the Senate, and changes in the Senate's rules. Kol Huro is
mentioned in Rogue Planet.

"Luck is the remnant of manipulation" is an echo of the Branch Rickey quote

that "luck is the residue of design."
MAP: SIDIOUS'S PREPARATIONS
JASON: Note that Hutt Space has expanded dramatically here, reflecting the
Republic's weakness. Keeping track of the changing borders of Hutt Space
was no fun for our mapmakers.
MOVIE MAP: EPISODE I
JASON: This section does add a bit of new information to the Episode I story:
If Obi-Wan told Captain Panaka not to reply to Sio Bibble's message, how did
Darth Maul manage to trace the royal starship to Naboo? Maul gets to
Tatooine so quickly that it seems unlikely the message was traced through
some legwork by Sidious's agents. Given Panaka's disagreements with
Amidala and the Jedi about leaving Naboo, it seemed logical that he would
disobey a mere Padawan's orders and give Bibble a quick reply.
A CLOSER LOOK: TATOOINE ETC.
JASON: Arkanis's history is explored in Adventure Journal #6; the Attack of
the Clones Visual Dictionary ties the Lars family to Ator. The other worlds are
drawn from a blizzard of sources. A recent issue of Dark Horse's Legacy
series identifies Siskeen as being part of Arkanis Sector. It's not identified as
such here, but a lot could have happened in the century between the Fate of
the Jedi books and Cade Skywalker's day.
OUTBOUND FLIGHT
JASON: Outbound Flight's itinerary was a challenge - the ships jump all over
the galaxy. The answer I came up with was that the expedition was calling at
worlds represented by the project's Senate champions. But the Albanin Sector
is home to Barab, practically on the other side of the galaxy. What to do?
Well, no one said they actually went there - so I ruled that that stop had been
eliminated in C'baoth's haste to begin exploring beyond Roxuli.
THE CLONE WARS
JASON: As you might imagine, this section was rewritten multiple times as
more information became available about the Clone Wars. Since the Clone
Wars show can't be fit into a timeline yet, we decided the best thing to do was
to discuss the war thematically, focusing on strategies and techniques so we
could avoid the awkwardness of addressing the TV show without knowing
exactly where to do so.

The idea of the Confederacy's foundry is a new one - if you delve into the
appendix, you'll find Metalorn has lots of neighbors that saw fighting in the war
and/or are industrial worlds.
MAP: THE CLONE WARS
JASON: Given the still-evolving timeline, mapping the Clone Wars was a
challenge. Before the show became part of our Atlas plans, we were going to
have three maps offering snapshots of the war's beginning, middle and end.
Instead, we recast the first map as a snapshot of the initial Republic and CIS
territories, eliminated the middle map and left the third map as a snapshot of
the beginning of the Outer Rim Sieges.
A CLOSER LOOK: KASHYYYK
JASON: This is a much larger region than that explored in the other Closer
Looks - we wanted to capture some of the flavor of numerous competing
power interests in a region ripe with intrigue.

Lantillies is one of the EU worlds with a much larger profile post-Atlas, going
from basically an adjective for starships to a major trade world. Avenelle is
from Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook. Randon is from Vader's Fortress.
Ota is from Classic Star Wars: The Early Adventures, the site of an early
encounter between Our Heroes and Boba Fett. Rorgam is from Jedi
Apprentice: The Call to Vengeance. Coachelle is the homeworld of Jaxxon,
the infamous Lepus carnivorous from the early Marvel days. Deysum (and
many of its neighbors) are from West End Games's Classic Campaigns.
Blimph is from the Dark Horse one-shot Bounty Hunters.
MOVIE MAP: REVENGE OF THE SITH
JASON: Note that the secret route taken by Grievous and the later Byss Run
correspond.
SECRETS OF THE CLAATUVAC GUILD
JASON: I held my breath waiting to see if the folks at Lucasfilm would like this
section or not - it's the place in the Atlas where we dealt most directly with the
classic characters, which obviously is something you take great care in doing.

The EU material around Revenge of the Sith complicated the previously

known picture of Kashyyyk's place in the galaxy and the Wookiees' role as
hyperspace scouts and navigators. Complete Locations says Kashyyyk is
"close to a major route for the southwestern quadrant," which given
Kashyyyk's place in the galaxy we interpreted as the southwest quadrant of
the Slice. The same book says the Claatuvac Guild is responsible for
surveying and maintaining the galaxy's hyperspace routes. That seemed like
an overreach given a lot of established EU lore that never mentions the Guild
- furthermore, Dark Horse's subsequent Clone Wars comics treated the
Wookiees' hyperspace lore as secrets, which seemed to make more sense. A
breakdown of the Claatuvac operations in Tree Vikkilynn is found in Complete
Locations; Gumbaeki's role in the Guild is explored in the Clone Wars comics.

What of Chewie? Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross-Sections says he

spent years as a route-planner, which was the key to this section. Making
Chewie a key member of the Guild offered a nice way to deepen his
character, take an amusing dig at Han's reputation and give the Rebels an
advantage against the Empire that wouldn't have been widely known. It also
honors George Lucas's explanation that starships are fast not because of their
engines, but because their captains have the best routes.
THE DARK TIMES
DAN: This list of Imperial atrocities helped us flesh out a time period that is
still largely blank. The atrocities and their sources: the Cleansing of New
Plympto (Star Wars: Dark Times), the Byss Lure (the Dark Empire
Sourcebook and the webstrip Evasive Action: Recruitment), the Eye of
Palpatine (Children of the Jedi), the Caamas Firestorm (Specter of the Past),
the Dessication of Gholondreine-Beta (one of my faves, from Slave Ship), the
Enslavement of Kashyyyk (many sources including Dark Lord: The Rise of
Darth Vader), the Ghorman Massacre (the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook), and
the Subjugation of Mon Calamari (many sources including Galaxy Guide 4).
THE EXPLOITS OF LANDO CALRISSIAN
DAN: It just kills me that the only solo Lando adventures to speak of were
written more than 25 years ago. Look at that picture of young Lando by Chris
Trevas and tell me a new series of young Lando conning his way out of
trouble (a mix of James Bond and Face from the A-Team) wouldn't be
infinitely fun.
THE CENTRALITY
DAN: This map is based on the article "A Campaign Guide to the Centrality"
by Michael Kogge, which appeared in issue #5 of Star Wars Gamer.
THE ADVENTURES OF HAN SOLO
JASON: Saberhing and Coonee are mentioned by Lucas in a discussion of
Han Solo's background dictated to Carol Titelman in the summer of 1977, and
preserved (with a lot of other fascinating lore) in the beyond-awesome book
The Making of Star Wars. That lore isn't part of official continuity, but I couldn't
resist tossing Saberhing and Coonee into Han's biography, along with a nod
to the early draft of Revenge of the Sith in which Han is an urchin living on
Kashyyyk. In doing so, I was careful not to describe either planet, or to make
any statements about what part of Han's backstory is true.

The roster of Han's early smuggling contacts is drawn from the Brian Daley
and A.C. Crispin novels, Marvel comics, Dark Horse, The New Rebellion and
the Russ Manning strips. The story of Han and Chewie's smuggler initiation is
a retcon for the fungi-forested Kessel we see in the Russ Manning strips - I'd
never been convinced by various attempts to square the thin-atmosphered,
lumpy Kessel with the one covered with forests in the Manning strips. (To say
nothing of what we see in The Glove of Darth Vader and its sequels. We kind
of ignored those.) So I tried another tack. From this point of view, in the
Manning strips Han is giving Luke his own initiation by trying to fool him into
believing Little Kessel is Kessel. (Perhaps he's still hoping Luke might give up
idealistic crusades and help out aboard the Falcon.)

The idea was inspired by a Wizards of the Coast feature that made Marvel's
"Hoth Stuff" - the infamous comic in which Marvel mixed up the backstories of
Wedge and Biggs and killed Janson - into a tall tale told to new fighter pilots.
I'll grant it's not an airtight retcon and know some readers won't like it at all.
But I think it works better than various strained alternatives.
MAP: THE ADVENTURES OF HAN SOLO
JASON: Coming up with the labels for this one was fun.
It's not specified on the map, but Sarlucif is the planet where the Authority
attacks Doc's outlaw techs. The name is courtesy of my then-five-year-old
son, who asked one day if he could name a planet. Sure, I said, and then
wondered what I would do when Joshua wanted to call his planet Gwrlrtz or
Elmo or some name I'd have to hide somewhere. "Sarlucif," he said after a
moment's reflection. Startled, I asked him to repeat that. I wish any of the
names I made up for the Atlas were as good as Sarlucif.
THE CORPORATE SECTOR
JASON: A couple of strands of EU lore get braided together here. 30,000 star
systems total for the Corporate Sector is too small for a region of any
importance, so the Atlas made it 30,000 star systems of potential value. Given
the stellar population of various star types, that means the Sector probably
included about 125,000 stars in all. Sounds big, but still an infinitesimal
number compared with the overall galaxy.

The story of the corporate experiment in the Expansion Region is from Han
Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook, but was moved to the spinward
reaches of that region, instead of taking place in the Slice as the sourcebook
says. It was very hard to make that account work within the Slice, given the
larger sweep of galactic history as told by numerous sources. Moving it to the
New Territories, on the other hand, fit very nicely with our efforts to explain
why colonization moved with such fits and starts in that part of the galaxy. You
run into little continuity goofs like this a lot - a source establishes a fact with
very large ramifications, but that fact is forgotten or ignored by so many other
sources that it has to be discarded, or (better yet) modified. In the Atlas we
tried to discard very few things and modify only a few more. If we did modify
something, we tried whereever possible to preserve the spirit of it, and I hope
we did that here.
TaggeCo. is said to have stayed neutral in the Clone Wars (see The Essential
Guide to Weapons and Technology), but it's clearly favored in the early days
of the Empire. Our interpretation: TaggeCo. helped the Republic, but refused
to subordinate that to its interests as a galaxy-spanning megacorp.

The bit about the strange solar anomalies is mentioned in Han Solo at Stars'
End.

The discussion of Mytus owes something to the controversy over the rendition
of alleged terrorists captured by American forces to so-called black sites in
other countries. Any accompanying political commentary is a product of the
reader's imagination, though.
MAP: THE CORPORATE SECTOR
JASON: This map is adapted from a sketch drawn by Craig Carey for an
unreleased West End Games box set about the CSA. I have a treasure trove
of unreleased WEG stuff from the company's final days, and it was great to be
able to bring at least that little bit of it out into the world.
THE ULTIMATE POWER IN THE UNIVERSE
JASON: Oh, the Death Star. Nothing about it is easy, whether it's discussing
its origins or how the plans got to the Alliance.
This chapter starts off with a discussion of the Death Star from the perspective
of military strategy: It's an answer to the problem of how you protect an entire
galaxy of worlds against a mobile force - the "stateless strategy" explored a
number of places in the Atlas. Bevel Lemelisk's work with the Geonosians is
new material intended to bridge the various accounts of the Death Star's
origin, with a bit to explain how a Republic/Empire loyalist like Lemelisk would
have reacted to working with a Separatist power.

The Death Star novel (which also gave us the term "mundicide") notes that
the project moved several times, and it seemed logical that Tarkin would at
first try to keep the Death Star near his own base of power. (This also
connects nicely with the construction of the Tarkin battle station at Patriim in
the Marvel comics.) The various other locations and projects are all a part of
the vast, confusing body of Death Star lore. The reference to captured Rebel
leaders seeing the terrible truth firsthand is a nod to The Force Unleashed.
The account of Tagge and Motti is a retcon for why the two seem to be
playing roles opposite to their military ranks during the argument aboard the
Death Star in Episode IV. I was very excited when I figured out an answer for
that and spent 15 minutes explaining it to my wife. She asked to be left out of
such future discussions.
MAP: THE ULTIMATE POWER IN THE UNIVERSE
JASON: I think this is one of the Atlas's more successful "thematic" maps.
Note that the world where Tay Vanis was found is noted for the first time, and
the quiet (or perhaps I should say "grudging") acknowledgment of the "third"
Death Star from Star Tours.
MOVIE MAP: A NEW HOPE
JASON: Dark Horse's The Making of Baron Fel says Ord Biniir was
recaptured on the same day as the Battle of Yavin. The Death Star's stopoff at
Carida is from Children of the Jedi.
MAP: YAVIN AND THE GORDIAN REACH
JASON: This map elicited a complaint from Modi about my insistence on
putting nebulae everywhere. Sorry man.
THE ERA OF REBELLION
JASON: The dating convention of Palpatine's speech will be familiar to
readers of the Adventure Journal. Mon Mothma urging the Mon Cals to stay
neutral is a retcon for various contradictions about when the Mon Cals joined
the Rebellion and how openly they supported it.

Project Sarlacc is from Wizards' Dawn of Defiance campaign; the reference to

Scarl is an effort to untangle the two birthplaces of the Executor, as seen first
in Classic Star Wars and then in The Force Unleashed. The tale of the Yavin
blockade is from Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds. Jarnollan is the jungle
world seen in the first issue of Classic Star Wars; Pablo Hidalgo named it in
his WEG days for an Adventure Journal article that never saw the light of day.
Drexel is from Marvel; the Sil'Lume Belt is from the Jedi's Honor solo
adventure.
The Battle of Skorrupon is seen (but not named) in Classic Star Wars, while
the disaster at Deepspace Besh is seen in Rebellion: My Brother, My Enemy.
THE SPICE TRADE
JASON: The idea that spice would be useful in treating hibernation sickness,
and the use of it and carbonite for pre-hyperdrive colonization, are concepts
dreamed up by Pablo Hidalgo for a WEG boxed set that never came to pass.
The Galactic Spice Mining Guild is mentioned in Episode I: Racer.
MOVIE MAP: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
JASON: Narra's first name is new. (And yet familiar!) The Adventure Journal
tells how the Executor began blasting shadowports and Rebel ports of call in
the Outer Rim, with Syvris one target. Assume the Executor has been working
west from there. Fett's departure to fetch the Executor at Kinyen is new.
A CLOSER LOOK: HOTH AND THE GREATER JAVIN
JASON: Most of this section is a rewrite of the Wizards of the Coast online
feature written by myself, Dan and Craig Carey.
MAP: HOTH AND THE GREATER JAVIN
JASON: Some new worlds (particularly from X-Wing Alliance) were added to
this map. We debated dropping the unnamed systems, since no other "Closer
Look" map includes them, but left them in as an appreciative nod to the very
nice map Wizards did for the original article.
A CLOSER LOOK: ENDOR AND THE MODDELL SECTOR
JASON: Most of this section is a rewrite of the Star Wars Gamer feature
written by myself, Dan and Craig Carey. Note that Qina was misidentified as
Mina in the original article.
DAN: I know I breathed a sigh of relief when we got to the Hoth and Endor
parts of the Atlas, knowing that we'd done the heavy geographic lifting years
ago.
MAP: ENDOR AND THE MODDELL SECTOR
JASON: Another idea we dropped as too complicated was reflecting that up
and down are also significant in determining systems, sector boundaries and
the course of trade routes. We agreed that was a necessary simplification, but
regretted it nonetheless - and so gave Modi an enthusiastic thumbs-up when
he said he wanted to include a side view of the Moddell sector.
DAN: If we had unlimited time and resources, I'd love for every map in the
Atlas to have a side view just like this one. But we had to pick our battles or
else we would have been trampled by data.
MOVIE MAP: RETURN OF THE JEDI
JASON: The fight between Boba Fett and the other bounty hunters in the
asteroid field is seen in the Shadows of the Empire comic; its identification as
Vergesso is new, as is Our Heroes' starting point at Kothlis. Jerjerrod's first
name is new.
AN EMPIRE FRAGMENTED
JASON: Note the slight retcon/explanation that Lumiya's stormtroopers
weren't Imperial soldiers but loyal (at least for a while) to her.
MAP: THE SSI-RUUK AND NAGAI INVASIONS
JASON: Just as the maps of the early Republic also show the extent of
civilized space at certain times, the New Republic maps show the boundaries
of the oversectors and satrapies of the major post-Imperial warlords. We were
able to eliminate a map that showed the warlords' territories after realizing
we'd covered them all on the various historical maps.
ADVANCE OF THE NEW REPUBLIC
JASON: This section was written fairly late - somehow our initial outline
included a map for the period, but not a narrative. D'oh. We also wanted to
wait for Matt Stover's Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - but when
the book appeared, there wasn't a lot to do, as the action in Mindor turned out
to be essentially limited to a single system. (Shadowspawn did get a great
Chris Trevas painting.)

The fun of this section was connecting the dots between far-flung references
to Rebel victories and defeats and using that to create a narrative that worked
with the fall of various warlords.
MAP: THE ROAD TO CORUSCANT
JASON: This was the first historical detail map completed, and served as a
proof of concept for the look and feel of the overall maps and for the idea of
putting time references on some maps to make them easier to follow and give
them more interest. A tip of the cap, then, not just to Modi but to our timeline
gurus Nathan Butler and Eddie van der Heijden.
AN IMPERIAL RESTORATION
JASON: The material about Thrawn's relationship with the post-Imperial
warlords is new, as is the role of the D'Asta family as power brokers.
MAP: THRAWN'S CAMPAIGNS
JASON: The Thrawn campaigns were a particular challenge to map; Zahn is
great at describing military strategy and mentions star systems as if he's
looking at a map, but no map existed at the time, and the narrative of the
trilogy can't be made to fit perfectly on one. (Berchest and Orus and Poderis,
oh my!)

Dedicated Zahn fans will notice some minor, hopefully logical additions to the
campaign on this map. Not to mention the location of the Katana fleet, of
course.

Some readers will be disappointed that this is one of the only mentions of the
Empire of the Hand in the Atlas. We decided to stay away from that region for
two reasons. First, we were wary of leaving some readers feeling that the
Atlas had stripped all the mystery from the Star Wars galaxy, and leaving the
Empire of the Hand out preserved that. Second, we have a hunch (and it's
only a hunch - no inside information here) that Timothy Zahn will want to
explore the area he created one day, and we wanted to leave him as free a
hand as possible.
THE DARK EMPIRE
DAN: Large parts of Part 3 of the Atlas felt similar to the writing process for
the New Essential Chronology. Essentially we were summarizing historical
events, but wherever possible we emphasized geography so that the text
would tie in smoothly to the accompanying maps.
DECLINE AND FALL
DAN: This section is mostly an excuse for us to detail the Pentastar
Alignment. Both Jason and I are big fans of Anthony P. Russo's article "The
Pentastar Alignment" published in issue #3 of the Star Wars Adventure
Journal in 1994. The article was the first attempt to explain how warlordism
would cripple the post-Jedi Empire, and provided a detailed look at the
Pentastar Alignment in particular. It also introduced such bits of coolness as
Grand Moff Ardus Kaine (Grand Moff Tarkin's replacement) and the Super
Star Destroyer Reaper.

This section also covers the comic series Crimson Empire, and I made it
explicit here that the term Crimson Empire was used in-universe as well
(something I also did with Dark Empire). If you think about it, this particular
Imperial phase really needs its own name. So why not the Crimson Empire?
MAP: PENTASTAR ALIGNMENT AND THE IMPERIAL REMNANT
JASON: One of my favorite maps, from my sketch and brought beautifully to
life by Chris Reiff. Lots of references to the old West End Games module
Riders of the Maelstrom here.
A CLOSER LOOK: MON CALAMARI SPACE
DAN: The history of Mon Calamari space has been retconned several times
over the years. In West End Games' 1989 roleplaying sourcebook Galaxy
Guide 4: Alien Races (written by Troy Denning), it's stated that the Mon Cals
were unknown to the greater galaxy until discovered by the Empire. But the
Mon Cals and the Quarren were just too cool-looking to not get picked up by
other writers and artists in stories set earlier in the timeline. There are Quarren
senators in The Phantom Menace, for one. The Atlas puts a date of 4166 BBY
on first contact between the Mon Cals and the Republic, which will probably
come back to bite us in the butt at some point in the future.
A CLOSER LOOK: THE SENEX AND JUVEX WORLDS
JASON: This may seem like an odd choice for a "Closer Look" section, but
we wanted to take a look at a part of the galaxy that was insular and isolated
and deeply strange. Note that Gyla Petro from the Russ Manning comic "The
Kashyyyk Depths" is now revealed as gentry - and gets an explanation for
why she's so out of it about galactic politics.
The link between the Ninth Quadrant and Bozhnee sector (from the
Darkstryder boxed set) is new. The Senex and Juvex worlds are drawn from
many sources. ("Lords of Atron!" is an oath from Tales of the Empire, for
instance.) The tale of the Crimson Days ties together the planet Picutorion in
Kwymar Sector with the Senex house introduced in Children of the Jedi.
MAP: THE SENEX/JUVEX
JASON: Note that the Noopiths are mapped but not described. I'd always
wondered what they were since encountering them in Children of the Jedi -
but decided the Atlas shouldn't reveal every mystery!
MAP: VECTOR PRIME AND THE VONG ADVANCE
JASON: The New Jedi Order maps would seem straightforward, since we
could follow the "battle" maps in the books. But mapping the exact paths of
various fleets and keeping track of occupied worlds proved exhausting. On the
other hand, it was nice to add the Chiss Ascendancy to the third map, marking
its Atlas debut.
THE CHISS ASCENDANCY
DAN: There has been a lot of contradictory information published about the
Chiss over the years, so I pray that this section is relatively error-free. There's
also an Easter Egg in here, but I'm not saying what it is.
MAP: THE NEW GALACTIC CIVIL WAR
JASON: Note that the Empire has expanded again, reflecting its advances in
the final days of the Vong war.
EPILOGUE: THE EMPIRE REBORN
DAN: We were glad to include the Star Wars Legacy time period (137 ABY) in
the Atlas, but early in the process its future setting had a ripple effect that
threatened to wreck the rest of the Atlas. For example: If we're including
Legacy, does that mean that the POV of the Atlas writers is set in 137 ABY or
later? If so, shouldn't we be providing Legacy updates for every planet in the
planets section? And if we do that (e.g. "In 137 ABY, Kalee is now a cotton
candy factory") aren't we just closing down story opportunities for writers who
might want to tell tales set during the intervening century? The solution was to
make this last section an epilogue that can stand entirely on its own.
MAP: THE NEW EMPIRE
DAN: We ran this map by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema, creators of the
Legacy comics and time period, who suggested several changes. It's not
specified on the map itself, but the highlighted worlds are specific points of
interest related to the comics, such as Caamas (site of the defeat of the
Galactic Alliance fleet) and Vendaxa (where Cade Skywalker fights an
acklay).
APPENDIX
JASON: The appendix is a logical place to discuss the big question of how we
placed things in the Atlas.

The answer is it depended on the starting point.

Sometimes we had a cool-sounding system and we wanted it to go THERE.

So we'd cruise around the Excel database of all known star systems invented
for Star Wars searching for any connections that aren't directly referenced,
then go to the primary sources to read more. Generally it would be pretty
quickly apparent whether or not the system could go THERE. Though not
always -- I originally placed Halmad at the junction of the Hydian Way and the
Salin Corridor, only to realize while taking notes for the Hunt for Zsinj map that
Halmad needed to be closer to later areas of Imperial power. So Halmad had
to move and I had to find a new system for the junction. (It turned out to be
Botajef.) To me Halmad still looks like it's in the wrong place, since I got so
used to it being somewhere else.

Sometimes we had a dot on a sector/region map that could use a certain

characteristic -- busy port, mineral wealth, has a history of gladiator fights,
oppressed slave species, subject of brutal Imperial repression, etc. In that
case, we might cycle through the systems database, looking for systems that
meet those criteria but didn't have coordinates, were in the right region, etc. I'd
generally write down all the candidates that fit the bill and go to the original
sources to check for other information about the system. That usually knocked
the list down to a couple of candidates, or just one, or sometimes none.

And sometimes we had a bunch of dots and needed to fill them out with
names. Then it would be a case of going to the systems database, finding
systems that weren't described, and checking the primary sources. (Always,
always, always check the primary sources.)

Repeat that thousands and thousands of times, with occasional reversals and
lots of new material, and you've got an Atlas....

Of the 4,387 systems in the appendix, perhaps 3,000 had already been
placed before the book began, or got placed during the researching and
writing of the text. But that still left a ton for Dan and me to go through,
defining a grid location and region for each.

At this point we re-sorted the database by source and started taking chunks of
a couple of hundred each. Why re-sort by source? Because - particularly with
West End Games books - you could often infer loose connections between
star systems mentioned in the same section of a sourcebook or the same
sourcebook. Plus, at the risk of sounding mystical, individual books have a
"feel" that it's useful to get a handle on when making placements. Anyway,
Dan and I blitzed through the rest of the appendix that way in a week or so.

Our original plan was to assign every star system to a sector, and my hope
was that we'd be able to illustrate the sector boundaries somewhere - either
on the regional maps or in an online extra. But that proved much more
daunting than we'd thought. We figured out a number of sectors per region,
using the original 1,024 and then adding some others to reflect Imperial-era
exploration, which gave us a framework for what had to be illustrated. But that
framework showed we were up against some big challenges. There were
definitely too many sectors to include on the region maps of the Core and
Colonies, and probably the Inner Rim as well. As a test case, I mapped the
sectors of the Outer Rim. It took an enormous amount of work - hours and
hours of checking and cross-checking sources. And I was keenly aware that it
was far and away the easiest of the regions to so map.

So the sector plan went by the boards both for the maps and for the appendix.
My hope is that we'll be able to revisit it somehow, perhaps as an ongoing
online effort. But I've learned the hard way that it's an enormous job, and so
am not making promises.

As a last note, we worked very hard to track down every star system we
could, no matter how obscure the source. We tracked down Official Poster
Monthlies, RPGA adventures, first editions of WEG material, video-game
manuals - you name it. After consultation with Lucasfilm, we agreed to include
planets introduced in unofficial RPG articles in magazines such as Polyhedron
and Dragon, so long as they'd been written by authors who at some point
received an author credit for licensed Star Wars material. (Note that this says
nothing about such articles' canon status beyond the fact that the star systems
exist.) I'm sure we missed some things - in a project this big, that's inevitable.
But I hope it isn't very many - and I hope Atlas readers enjoy finding some of
the tremendously obscure mentions (and an Easter egg or two) in the
appendix.

Star Wars: The Essential Atlas tells some stories through maps, but that
means some connections aren't entirely clear. Here's a list of continuity bits
that weren't formally stated in the text.
Because all of these have been run by the folks at Lucasfilm, they can be
considered part of official continuity!

Antipose is Raskar's world from the old Archie Goodwin-penned newspaper

strips.

Cranan is the system where Han fought off pirates who attacked Jabba's ship
(as told on p. 100 of The Hutt Gambit.

Entuur is the site of Han and Chewie's military-script scam, referenced on p.

3 of Han Solo and the Lost Legacy.

Feenix is the system where Han and Xaverri bilked a moff's assistant, as
noted in The Hutt Gambit, p. 170.

Forscan is the site of Han and Chewie's clothes-legging scam, also from Lost
Legacy.

The Galaxy Gun, from Dark Empire II, also targeted Hirsi and Krinemonen.

Hoszh Iszhir, the Gektl homeworld, is in the Gekto system.

Gar-Oth's attendants in Republic #27 are Jilruans.

Keskin is the site of the battle involving Tank in Dark Horse's Rebellion: My
Brother, My Enemy. If you don't remember the one we mean, surely you
remember the amazing visuals of the TIE bomber crash?

Revyia is the site of the meeting Han recalls on p. 2 of Children of the Jedi.

Sarlucif is the base used by Doc's outlaw-techs in Han Solo at Stars' End.

Syngia is the site of Han's blowout party, remembered on p. 222 of Rebel

Dawn.

The Tascallon Nebula is the nebula discovered by paying careful attention to

the bas-relief in "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Rodian," from the Living
Force series of RPGA adventures.

More to come soon! If you have questions about the Essential Atlas, think
you've spotted an error, or just have a comment for Jason and I, please write
to us at essential.atlas@gmail.com.