Sector Q-26 Medical Tower 3

**Sector Q-26 Medical Tower #3** was one of the general-care medical facilities located in Sector Q-26 on Nar Shaddaa during the Imperial and New Republic eras. Commissioned reluctantly by the Hutt Cartel as part of a project to provide the crime-ridden moon with a basic medical infrastructure necessary for urban life, Tower #3 was—like the other facilities created by the program—perpetually under-funded and insufficient for the needs of its district. The hospital reserved the right to accept donations from patrons, though any large donations usually had to be hidden from the attention of avaricious Hutts overseeing their budget.

## History

While the Hutts generally care little for the health of those they consider squatters on their homeworld's moon, and charity is a vice by their standards, even they are inconvenienced enough to provide services for the public at times. One such occasion was just a century before the end of the Galactic Republic, when the moon of Nar Shaddaa suffered from a health crisis. Earlier hospital systems had been allowed to waste away, leaving a number of private corporate ventures the only source of health care on the moon. The prices charged by these institutions, however, who had come to Nar Shaddaa for the financial benefits of escaping Republic regulations, meant even the most basic services were out of the common inhabitant's reach.

Without workplace safety regulations, laborers regularly suffered broken limbs or worse injuries, which untreated sidelined workers—sometimes permanently. Without viral treatment, diseases spread quickly in the cramped and haphazard urban sprawl. Labor shortages resulted, and while immigration to the smuggler's moon helped relieve it, the reputation of the criminal haven for disease and destitution drove many corporate clients to competitors—interfering with the Hutt Cartels' bottom line. Thus, the Hutt clans dedicated funds to the construction of a series of cheap public medical facilities.

Assembled from prefabricated modules and instacrete, the Sector Medical Tower network buildings were an eyesore, but no more or less than any of the rest of Nar Shaddaa's skyline. Though spare for comforts, constructed by the lowest bidders and highest bribers, and equipped with cheap, often secondhand equipment, the towers went into service and were generally as successful as the Hutts required them to be. While the following century has taken a toll on some, including some condemned, demolished, or outright collapsed, Sector Q-26's Tower #3 still stood by the end of the Imperial era and offered services with the same diligence it always had.

## Facilities and Services

Like others of its kind, Q-26 Tower #3 serves as a general hospital, offering a wide range of services for most species of the galaxy. These include diagnosis and treatment of illnesses, surgery, and emergency trauma care, while providing referrals to outside specialists for cases they are not equipped to treat. They also serve as a terminal for a handful of repulsorlift ambulances which patrol their district of Sector Q-26, able to quickly respond to emergencies and ferry patients from accident scenes or other sites to the Tower.

Aside from the ambulance dock entrance and elevator, the tower can be accessed by ground entrances and skybridges to several adjacent arcologies, as well as a rooftop emergency landing pad. Several lobbies are used to welcome and prioritize non-emergency patients, with vid-screens displaying various Hutt-approved broadcast media stations for waiting parties. Once admitted, patients are brought either to private rooms, or an open-air Intensive Care Unit for observation and access by physicians. Patients may elect to stay in private rooms for the duration of their care, in return for an ongoing fee.

All floors were accessible by elevator, including an emergency elevator reserved for transferring patients in critical condition. Several floors were dedicated to various departments, with a variety of surgical suites, dedicated scan rooms, maternity and pediatric wards, and nurses' stations. Various floors also contained doctors' offices, cafeterias, break rooms, and supply closets.

Medical Tower #3 also made a small profit by selling medical supplies to the many enforcers, mercenaries, or even private citizens who sought care, as many were like to encounter violence regularly on the smugglers' moon. These items were available by vending machines or through the staff, at relatively standard rates.

## Personnel

* Dr. **Toril Nors Ketna**, Chief of Medicine
A yellow-skinned Twi'lek, Doctor Ketna is a perfectly adequate physician, but his rise to leadership of Medical Tower #3's medical staff has more to do with his people skills. Leaving the day-to-day treatment of patients mostly to his staff, Toril excels in exchanging pleasantries at business functions with Nar Shaddaa's Hutt rulers, securing the donations and fending off budget cuts which keep the Tower open and providing services. While his business decisions may seem cutthroat, selecting wealthy patients over poor for limited treatment slots, his choices have allowed Tower #3 to keep a pediatrics department employed. While he privately regrets having to choose one life over another, he outwardly feigns a pragmatic and cheery indifference to staff and patients.
* Dr. **Jul Acusic**, Chief of Surgery
While he was once a rising star in his homeworld's medical community, Doctor Jul Acusic's family was scapegoated and exiled after the Clone Wars as disagreements flared over the war reparations Skako Minor had to pay to the Republic. While a brilliant surgeon, the Skakoan doctor is perhaps too eager to recommend replacing limbs or organs with cybernetics, his own specialty. His push for the expensive prosthetics is overlooked by the Chief of Medicine, since it tends to bring more revenue into the hospital.
* Dr. **Cagill Rifta**, Head of Radiology
As Head of Radiology, the Mon Calamari doctor is responsible for operating and maintaining Medical Tower #3's large scanning machinery. This includes both medical droids and medical scanners which provide X-ray, CT, and various other imaging scans of patient's bodies without the need for exploratory surgery. The machines provided for the Tower, however, were out-of-date by their arrival, and have never been replaced, leading to frequent breakdowns Dr. Rifta is expected to fix with limited material and no budget. The intelligent Mon Calamari has thus far been up to the task, but is always looking for parts to buy cheaply or trade services for. Unfortunately, she's never been able to get the filters working for the methane surgical chamber; a necessary asset to help treat methane-breathing patients without their breathing apparatuses getting in the way.
* Dr. **Col-Ti-Gram**, attending physician,
A diligent and empathic doctor, the young Cerean could scarcely have found a worse place to practice medicine. Col-Ti-Gram felt driven to take up medicine as result of the suffering he witnessed secondhand through those displaced by the Galactic Civil War, and feels for every patient in his care. Unfortunately, the under-staffed and under-funded Tower #3 perpetually assigns him more cases than he can realistically manage, who often lack the ability to pay for the treatments his diagnoses recommend. Knowing his bleeding heart, his colleagues often dump the worst cases on him. Col-Ti continues to do his best, however; he's made connections in the Sector Q-26 community and often connects people with families of patients he's helped who can in turn help find other treatment for his cases. He frequently asks capable new patients or their relations for help on other matters in exchange for his limited pull in the hospital's treatment priorities. Having written his doctorate on degenerative disease, he was assigned to care for the former Clone sergeant Gambeson upon his admittance to Tower #3.
* **Kagan Callahan**, Head Nurse
Serving as a reserve medic in the Clone Wars more than prepared Nurse Callahan for a crime world emergency ward. Each day, she finds challenges not only in providing basic interfacing and treatment for sometimes-rowdy patients, but in quietly arranging paperwork and room listings so Dr. Toril or Phoelok don't find destitute patients being treated between the gaps of the hospital's budget. Most days, Kagan manages to help make ends meet for those in need, but just like in those long-ago battles, she knows you can't win every day. It hasn't stopped her fighting the good fight, however, and Kagan frequently collaborates with Dr. Col-Ti-Gram to ensure patients get the care they need.
* **Duk Haga**, Nurse
Most would consider an Aqualish ill-suited for the medical profession, but then most medical professionals don't have to deal with hostile gangers and Hutt enforcers demanding to be patched up for blaster burns daily. Even when Sskorss' security guards aren't on-hand, Nurse Duk is more than capable of punching an unruly patient in their wounds and shove them on a repulsorchair to cart to a treatment room.
* **Yollag**, ambulance dispatcher
With the whole of a three-dimensional city district to patrol, the ambulances of Hospital Tower #3 need a good dispatcher taking calls and keeping them evenly spread to get a vehicle on-station quickly for any emergency. Fortunately, they've got one in the Toydarian male named Yollag. A shrewd coordinator, Yollag's ever-alert on the job, though in part due to his use of stimshots, which he's since developed a dependency on. While he has yet to seek any treatment for the addiction, it's something of an open secret among the staff who interact with him.
* **Viri Tosek**, ambulance driver
Aspiring to one day be a spacer pilot like so many famous Mirialan pirates and smugglers, Viri Tosek today makes her rent by driving one of Tower #3's few repulsorcar ambulances. She's been thrice reprimanded for reckless flying en route to a patient pickup, though she's careful to keep her flight stable once a patient is onboard. Her hotshot tendencies chafe against the regulations and limitations of her run-down medical flier, but Viri's perhaps the best pilot on Tower #3's payroll. On top of her skill, she's always on-call and free of the addictions most flight jockeys come with. An offer to join a real spacer crew, however, would prove impossible for her to resist.
* **Jor Dakian**, Emergency Medical Technician
A Nar Shaddaa native, Jor's family didn't have the credits to send him offworld to medical school. But the young human did what he could when he decided he wanted to go into medicine; he took the classes required and passed the exams offered by the local education block for EMT certification, and applied for work at Medical Tower #3. With a stellar record for keeping patients alive and stable en route to the Tower, the only thing the human seems incapable of is admitting his crush on Viri Tosek, his frequent partner when on-call in the ambulance.
* **Phoelok**, Legal Department
As a relative species to the Hutts, Phoelok's t'landa Til family has worked for the Hutt Cartel for generations. Extensively educated in the political balance and established laws of the Hutts, Phoelok was less than pleased with his assignment to serve as legal advocate and liaison for a generic medical facility. Most of his days are spent collecting payment deflecting lawsuits against the hospital by unsatisfied patients, which usually takes little more than a recommendation to take it up with the Hutt clans. The rest of his time is absorbed by trying to please his Hutt masters with budget reports that are seldom positive, and he sees little prospect for his advancement from this posting. Fortunately, his species' ability to calm others with a subsonic mating call has proved beneficial for the hospital overall; when he hums to himself on a quiet day, the wards for floors above and below his office seem to run smoother.
* **Salog Sanaray**, Administrative Supervisor
Overseeing the proper filing of patient records, treatment reports, budgets, and payroll is Salog Sanaray, a Neimoidian expatriate. Driven from her world after the Clone War in similar circumstances to Dr. Acusic, Salog counts herself fortunate to find a position relevant to her skillset as a former corporate assistant. The downside is she must routinely play the villain in Medical Tower #3, reminding doctors of their limited funds and citing nurses for unauthorized treatment. Though per Neimoidian tradition, she is not above taking a bribe if a loss can be quickly recouped, she's not a miracle worker, and has provided information to Phoelok which has led to firings of well-meaning staff in the past. While she has learned some sympathy since moving to Nar Shaddaa, she knows at the end of the day the Tower can't indebt itself and continue providing care. If someone approaches her with an offer that could benefit the hospital's bottom line, she's quick to bring it to Phoelok.
* **Sskorss**, Head of Security
After an embarrassing failure in his first assignment as a Bounty Hunter on Bargos the Hutt's payroll, which cost Bargos a sum of credits, Sskorss was forced to find work somewhere less glorious by Trandoshan standards. While serving as Tower #3's security chief may not be as thrilling as the hunt, it has no shortage of brawls to throw oneself into. Despite his pride in being able to show off his combat prowess, Sskorss still nurses a wounded ego and a hatred of the Wookiee called Wulkhikk who tricked him. If he ever finds the Wookiee, he'd gladly pay to hang their pelt on his wall.
* **Vulk**, Custodian
No one pays much attention to an old Weequay, his pheremone sense ruined by the cleaning chemicals he deals with daily. But Vulk has quietly come to know the ins-and-outs of Medical Tower #3 better than even the Administrators or Chief of Medicine. As janitor and handyman, Vulk has access to all floors and rooms of the tower, from basements to rooftop, and has few qualms about taking a bribe so long as no one points the finger at him if someone gets caught. His scruples about this are few; whether it's Dr. Col-Ti or Nurse Callahan moving a patient around or a Hutt enforcer coming in to shoot a rival's bounty hunter in bed, he takes the credits over the pittance he's paid to mind the doors and refreshers.

## Behind the Scenes

This article was created for a game of FFG's Star Wars tabletop RPG, as part of the campaign setting on Nar Shaddaa. The location serves as a merchant and vendor for medical supplies, in addition to providing expanded medical care for specialized injury and serving home to several quest-giving NPCs for possible interaction.

1. ↑ i.e., book cost