Oseon 6845

Oseon 6845 was the largest asteroid in the Oseon system, a part of the Outer Rim Territories' Centrality. A 700-kilometer-wide iron-and-rock planetoid, it was airless and had extremely weak gravity; however, the inhabitants of Oseon 6845 locally augmented the latter and increased its rotation speed. As a result, landing starships on the asteroid was difficult, leading to a spaceport being constructed at its northern pole.
The asteroid was honeycombed with luxurious hotels, night entertainment venues, and stately residences. It attracted affluent individuals from throughout the wider galaxy who engaged in shopping and gambling in both Oseon 6845's underground establishments and on the Esplanade, an equator-stretching pedestrian thoroughfare. For three weeks each year, the phenomenon of the Oseon system known as the Flamewind made interasteroidal space travel practically impossible. As a result, individuals present on Oseon 6845 at that time became effectively stranded and engaged themselves in numerous parties.
Between 3 BBY and 2 BBY, the sorcerer Rokur Gepta arranged for Senior Administrator Lob Doluff of the Oseon system to invite the freighter captain and gambler Lando Calrissian, against whom Gepta held a grudge, to play the card game sabacc on Oseon 6845. One night, Calrissian was ambushed at his freighter by a member of the Renatasian Confederation, which was targeting the gambler's copilot droid, Vuffi Raa. After Calrissian killed his attacker in self-defense, he was arrested on the charge of carrying a lethal weapon. In lieu of capital punishment, Doluff forced the gambler to transport two law enforcement officers to the asteroid Oseon 5792, where Gepta intended to entrap Calrissian.
==Description==
===An asteroid of the Oseon system===
Oseon 6845, also referred to simply as Oseon, was the largest orbital body in the Oseon system, which lay within the Centrality sector, a part of the Slice portion of the Outer Rim Territories. Along with the rest of the Oseon system, Oseon 6845 was connected by the Falko Run hyperlane to the Arleen system, while the hyperspace route known as the Cadma Conduit linked it to the Erilnar system and the Cadma sector's Dagelin Minor and Simbarc systems. A constellation was visible from Oseon 6845 that the local inhabitants had named the Silly Rabbit.
An iron-based rock asteroid with a mass of a billion tons and a diameter of 700 kilometers that was also classified as a planetoid, Oseon 6845 was located in the Sixth Belt, one of the seven broad bands of subplanetary bodies that circled the star system's sun. It had negligible natural gravity, which was augmented by its inhabitants close to the asteroid's surface and canceled altogether in the proximity of its core. The rotation period of Oseon 6845 was also artificially shortened to twenty-five hours, which provided a familiar sense of day and night to the inhabitants.
However, the resultant speed of eighty-eight kilometers an hour at which the asteroid's barren, rocky surface moved, coupled with the worldlet's small size, made landing starships there difficult. Oseon 6845 was naturally airless, although artificial atmosphere was present in inhabited areas of the asteroid, with its temperature being considerably lower closer to its core than at its surface.
===The Flamewind of Oseon===
Once per each local year, Oseon 6845, along with every other orbital body in the Oseon system, was affected by a phenomenon known as the Flamewind. Caused by the flares of the Oseon sun tearing excited vapor from the closest asteroids, the Flamewind manifested itself as fluorescent and multi-colored bands of ionized gas millions of kilometers both long and wide that continuously shifted across the entire spectrum of visible light.
Accompanying the visual display were frequent static discharges between the system's asteroids and a constant barrage of radiation and particles, such as electrons. As a result, navigational, sensor, and life-support equipment was damaged, electronic communications between the asteroids and with the rest of the galaxy were made impossible, and the perception and behavior of sentient beings who were not protected by adequate shielding was affected.
==History==
===Luring Calrissian===
At some point between 3 BBY and 2 BBY,The Essential Reader's Companion dates the events of The Lando Calrissian Adventures novel trilogy, including Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon, between 3 BBY and 2 BBY. the sorcerer Rokur Gepta wished to exact vengeance upon the gambler and freighter captain Lando Calrissian, who played a role in the former's failure to acquire the Mindharp of Sharu artifact in the Centrality's Rafa system.The New Essential Chronology To that end, Gepta ensured behind the scenes that Calrissian constantly faced reduced profits from his freight-hauling operations, which effectively caused the trader to steadily lose money in his business ventures.
Finally, Gepta arranged for Lob Doluff, the Administrator Senior of the Oseon system, to send a message to Calrissian on the planet Dilonexa XXIII, inviting the gambler to come play the sabacc card game on Oseon 6845. Faced with a dwindling supply of financial resources as well as Calrissian's general dislike for interstellar trading, the captain and his copilot, the droid Vuffi Raa, departed the Dilonexa system for the Oseon system.
However, while Calrissian's starship, the Millennium Falcon, was still being refueled on Dilonexa XXIII, one of Gepta's agents planted a pair of bombs on the vessel. The first of the explosives detonated when the starship's hyperdrive was engaged several days before its arrival in the Oseon. The second bomb exploded upon the Millennium Falcon reverting from hyperspace to realspace near Oseon 6845, but the vessel emerged relatively unscathed due to the explosive being designed to destroy a ship entering the atmosphere and gravity of a planet as opposed to an airless asteroid. Vuffi Raa subsequently oversaw the Millennium Falcon setting down on the surface of Oseon 6845 in what was the inexperienced Calrissian's first starship landing under the droid's piloting tutelage.
===Sabacc on 6845===
In his first evening in the Oseon system, Calrissian played sabacc at the exclusive Hotel Drofo. After inspecting the damage caused to the Millennium Falcon by the second explosion, Vuffi Raa visited the gambler during his game to show him the remains of the ship's neutrino hybridizer and to inform him that, just as the pair had suspected earlier, the explosion had been caused by a bomb. After receiving the news, Calrissian retired for the night to his hotel room.
On Calrissian's fourth night on Oseon 6845, his sabacc game with Lob Doluff and his associates, which took place at a different venue each evening, was held at the Administrator Senior's estate. While the game was taking place, a message was sent to Doluff that relayed a false alarm claiming that the Millennium Falcon, docked at Oseon 6845's north polar spaceport, had caught fire. Believing the alarm to be genuine, Calrissian traveled to the spaceport, only to discover that there was, in fact, no fire aboard his ship.
===A turn of fate===
As the gambler prepared to return to his game, he was ambushed in one of the spaceport's service corridors by Colonel Kenow, a member of the Renatasian ConfederationThe Essential Reader's Companion—a group devoted to exacting vengeance upon Vuffi Raa, whom it wrongfully held responsible for the subjugation of the Renatasia system by the Galactic Empire. Kenow had been tasked with intercepting Raa on Oseon 6845. Acting in self-defense, Calrissian killed Kenow with his stingbeam pistol.
After Calrissian informed Doluff of the incident, Oseon Peacekeeper Captain Bassi Vobah—with whom Calrissian had played sabacc at Doluff's estate on that same night—arrived at the spaceport. The officer examined Kenow's body and placed the gambler under arrest, with Vuffi Raa subsequently being outfitted with a restraining bolt aboard the Millennium Falcon by the police.
===A sinister plot===
A few hours after Calrissian's arrest, while the gambler was still incarcerated in a local prison cell and Captain Vobah was writing up a report on the spaceport killing, the Flamewind phenomenon commenced in the Oseon system. By that time, Rokur Gepta had arrived at Oseon 6845 on his personal cruiser, the Wennis, in pursuit of the Millennium Falcon. Gepta arranged for Imperial authorities to order the arrest of Bohhuah Mutdah, a retired trillionaire industrialist and the wealthiest individual in the Oseon system, though making it appear as if Mutdah's business rivals were having him arrested to plot his downfall.
To that end, the Imperial undercover narcotics agent Waywa Fybot was dispatched to the Oseon system to make the arrest. As an added insurance, Doluff was pressured to ensure that the arrest went through. Gepta himself spent the time that followed Calrissian's arrest meditating in an artificial cavern close to the asteroid's core, while the Wennis was stationed some distance away with its crew performing a series of drill exercises. Also stationed at that time in the shadow of Oseon 6845, several thousand kilometers from the asteroid, was the squadron of starfighters making up the Renatasian Confederation.
===The deal===
Doluff eventually ordered Calrissian to be brought to his office, where Fybot and Vobah were also present. The Administrator Senior explained to the gambler that he was charged with carrying a lethal weapon, which was a capital offense in the Oseon system. However, the traditional Oseoni sentence, death by exposure to the vacuum of interplanetary space, would be exchanged for Calrissian being forced to participate in a sting operation.
The gambler was to transport Fybot and Vobah to Oseon 5792, Mutdah's private asteroid in the Fifth Belt of the system—a trip made extremely hazardous due to the Flamewind interfering with both living beings and the equipment of starships. At his destination, Calrissian would pose as a courier delivering Mutdah his scheduled supply of the illegal lesai drug, allowing the two law enforcement officers to arrest the trillionaire. In addition, Doluff, correctly suspecting Fybot of having been secretly ordered to kill Mutdah, explicitly ordered the agent to bring the industrialist back to Oseon 6845 to stand trial.
===Departing Oseon 6845===
The following day, as part of the preparations for leaving for Oseon 5792, Calrissian and Vuffi Raa outfitted the Millennium Falcon passenger lounge with a seating rack designed to accommodate Fybot's Quor'sav physiology. At the same time, the first officer of the Wennis surreptitiously met Fybot near a power transformer in the depths of Oseon 6845. The officer reminded Fybot of his secret orders in light of Doluff's interference with the intentions of their superiors and then departed for a meeting with Gepta in the asteroid's core.
Shortly thereafter, with both Fybot and Vobah in the Millennium Falcon lounge and Doluff observing the progress of the ship's departure via datalink in his office, Calrissian's freighter left Oseon 6845. Alerted by a missile sent as a signal by the first officer of the Wennis, who was colluding with the Renatasian Confederation, the squadron also departed the asteroid in pursuit of Calrissian's vessel. Eventually, Gepta, too, left Oseon 6845 aboard his personal starfighter, leaving his cruiser behind and instructing it to rendezvous with him in the Tund system after the Flamewind had passed. Gepta traveled to Oseon 5792, where he had Mutdah murdered and then assumed his appearance in order to entrap Calrissian.
Around 0 ABY, is set a few months after the Battle of Yavin, the several months immediately following which correspond to 0 ABY per The New Essential Chronology. Commander Maximillian Seerdon of the Imperial Security Bureau prepared a report on various elements of the galactic underworld that posed a threat to the Empire's stability. In the report, Seerdon included an entry on Calrissian, which listed several of the gambler's exploits and adventures, including his arrest on Oseon 6845.
==Inhabitants==
The entire Oseon system was inhabited by individuals of notable wealth. With that in mind, most of the establishments on Oseon 6845 were geared toward catering to affluent locals as well as attracting tourists from at least a million other systems of the wider galaxy. It was sometimes said that some among the pedestrians walking along the throughway known as the Esplanade were the wealthiest individuals in the known universe.
Among the patrons of Oseon 6845's locales were Galactic Basic Standard–speaking Humans as well as members of a variety of other humanoid and nonhuman species. Droids were also ubiquitous, being employed in both public areas and on private property.
Entertainment venues on Oseon 6845, such as Hotel Drofo, were frequented by nobility, active and retired businessbeings, merchants, freight haulers, military officers, media stars, and even criminals, including pirates and smugglers. High-stakes gambling was a popular pastime for the affluent beings on Oseon 6845. For approximately three weeks every year, all interasteroidal travel was forbidden during the Flamewind phenomenon. During that period, the Oseon locals and tourists enjoyed themselves at numerous public and private parties.
The government of the Oseon system, the Oseon Administration, was based on Oseon 6845. It was headed by the Administrator Senior and employed the Oseon Peacekeepers as a local police force. The Administration enforced the laws of the star system, such as the one forbidding the carrying of a lethal weapon, for which the sentence upon conviction was death by exposure to the vacuum of space.
==Locations==
===Underground===
Oseon 6845 was in its entirety artificially honeycombed. One such cavity was an artificial cavern deep below the asteroid's surface. The sorcerer Rokur Gepta at one point spent time in the zero-gravity cavern.
Somewhat closer to the surface of Oseon 6845, yet still deep underground, air, water, and other substances vital to living beings were transported from fission-powered machines to the various inhabited areas of the asteroid via pipes that were the size of a man in diameter. Also located in the area was a power transformer that was starship-sized and emitted a powerful humming sound. The air in the area containing the machinery was cold despite the equipment being in full operation. Only droids occasionally visited the locality while performing routine tasks, although shortly before leaving the asteroid, Wayva Fybot clandestinely met there with the first officer of the cruiser Wennis.
The interior of Oseon 6845 was filled with luxurious hotels, night entertainment venues, and palace-like residences. One such location was the exclusive Hotel Drofo, owned by the Toydarian Drofo the Third. Drofo kept an Akorec strike cruiser as protection against potential thieves. Since Oseon 6845's surface area was both limited and entirely covered by nightclubs and resorts,A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Third Edition, Revised and Expanded construction on its surface was costly as opposed to building into the asteroid's interior. As a result, while the entrance to Hotel Drofo was located on Oseon 6845's surface, the hotel proper was located throughout several floors below the ground, and the establishment's Grand Lobby was located on the bottom floor. Small, luxurious gambling salons lay next to the lobby. When Lando Calrissian visited Oseon 6845, he stayed in a room at Hotel Drofo that featured a bed that could turn itself down.
===Equatorial locations===
The surface entrance of Hotel Drofo opened out onto the Esplanade. A kilometers-long, domed pedestrian thoroughfare that stretched around Oseon 6845's equator and was constructed by Lob Doluff, the Administrator Senior of the Oseon system, it was lined with trees, sculptures, and elegant stores that catered to the wealthy inhabitants and visitors of the asteroid. One of the Esplanade's landscape elements, which were intentionally formed to be full of surprises, was a decorative pond inhabited by a species of fish as well as a small, many-jointed creature.
The Esplanade constituted the center of a small city located on Oseon 6845's equator. A prison suite decorated in cheery plastic colors was situated within a few kilometers of the city. It was outfitted with a barred-and-shielded skylight, a separate bathroom with a large mirror in it, and a speaker in the ceiling through which tasteless music was played. Lando Calrissian was incarcerated in the cell during his visit to the asteroid. During his stay there, the gambler was given a set of pajamas with a number printed on them in six languages. Calrissian later stated to Oseon 6845's Administrator Senior Doluff that he was given the best food he had ever had while imprisoned.
Elsewhere on Oseon 6845's equator, Doluff maintained his personal estate. It was located slightly further away from the small equatorial city than the prison suite in which Calrissian was held. In essence both a garden and a greenhouse, the estate was a relatively large dome on the asteroid's surface. It was filled with a thick jungle of tropical plants, and the air in it was moist. The dome featured a tiled walkway in its center, with a sabacc table placed on it and a fountain located nearby. In a semitropical area of the estate, a tree stump had a hidden compartment with a communicator in it. Doluff collected flowering plants, and a special section of his estate, filled with half a hectare of snow and ice, featured minuscule snow-flowers from a hundred different star systems.
===Other locations===
The Administrator Senior's office was essentially a miniature version of Lob Doluff's estate. It was a room featuring a pair of alcoves and a floor-to-ceiling window. The office was filled with flora, with a multitude of hanging, potted, aquatic, and flying plants scattered about the room, including a species of fern and a winged plant. Doluff had a pair of secretaries in an anteroom of the office. There was no desk in the office itself, but several chairs were present. A datalink was hidden in one the alcoves, while the other recess featured a terrarium. The latter housed a collection of unusual spongy growths and a lizard native to the planet Zebitrope IV, which Doluff used to obtain the lesai drug for personal use.
Due to the landing of starships being relatively easier on the north pole of Oseon 6845, a small spaceport had been established there. Leveled out of the rock of a huge natural crater many kilometers in diameter, the port consisted of a landing field positioned over a labyrinth of service corridors and passageways. Various pleasure yachts, company starships, and even a battle cruiser were parked at the spaceport. During Lando Calrissian's visit on the asteroid, his freighter, the Millennium Falcon, was docked above service corridor 17-W, with both the vessel and its owner's names being indicated in six languages at the site. A pneumatic tubeway traveling along a straight line beneath Oseon 6845's surface connected the spaceport to Doluff's estate. Entrance and egress portals for tube cars and various starships also perforated the entire asteroid.
==Behind the scenes==
Oseon 6845 was introduced in Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon, the 1983 second entry in The Lando Calrissian Adventures trilogy of novels by L. Neil Smith. On the original cover of the novel, an illustration by William Schmidt depicted several buildings on Oseon 6845. "Underworld: A Galaxy of Scum and Villainy," an article written by Ryan Kaufman and Abel G. Peña and published in Star Wars Insider 89 by July 28, 2006, introduced a shortened name for the asteroid.
"Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, How I Wonder Where We Are," a 1990 roleplaying game source article published in Voyages SF 13, placed the Oseon system, and therefore Oseon 6845, in the Zebitrope sector. Since that article was released outside of the Lucas Licensing process, its canonicity within the Star Wars Legends continuity was never confirmed. The 2009 reference book The Essential Atlas subsequently overrode the Voyages SF 13 placement by establishing that the Oseon system was situated in grid square T-8 as part of the Centrality.
==Appearances==
*Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon 
==Sources==
*Star Wars Encyclopedia
*A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Third Edition, Revised and Expanded
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*Star Wars Year by Year: A Visual Chronicle 
*Star Wars Art: Illustration 
*The Essential Reader's Companion 
*Star Wars Year by Year: A Visual Chronicle, Updated Edition 
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*Star Wars Year By Year: A Visual History, New Edition 
==Notes and references==
Category:Oseon system planetoids