Koru system (Earth-1140)

## Koru system

The **Koru system** was a star system in the Milky Way galaxy. It was the capital system of the Ecumempire, a vast empire controlling numerous fully urbanized star systems in the Beta Quadrant.

## History

The planet of Korunkant was first inhabited by a technologically advanced "Ancestor" species, who built sprawling cities on several continents. The Ancestors eventually wiped themselves out in a great nuclear war, destroying much of the cities and wiping out their entire civilization in the process.

Millions of years later, when the ruins of the once great metropolises were overrun with wildlife and vegetation, the Korunkantese evolved to inhabit them. Their tribes came to worship the towering skyscrapers of the Ancestor Cities, which inspired them to study their technology and create their own grand cities.

The Korunkantese felt it was their destiny to blanket the entire planet in a magnificent and holy ecumenopolis, a single global city that encompassed all of their continents.

However, the Kantians, a pacifistic culture of the Korunkantese who developed far away from the cities, thought differently. The first Kantian explorers who ventured inside the ruined cities returned weak and diseased from the lingering radiation left behind from the Great War. They took this as an omen, regarding the cities was cursed by the gods and the towering spires as warnings left behind by the last civilization who succumbed to the evil presence inhabiting them.

Of course, modern Kantians became much less superstitious about the nature of the cities, but they maintained a connection to the natural state of their world and opposed the increasing industrialized and urbanized lifestyle of the rest of their species. When the cities began to encroach on their territories, they became increasingly nomadic as they attempted to avoid the expanding ecumenopolis.

When the ecumenopolis threatened to take up the entire planet, the Kantians demanded a section of land to live in peace. The Empire granted them a continent-sized swath of land located in the center of the planet, labeled the Kantian Quarter. However, it was also treated as a tourist destination by the Empire, and the Kantians grew to resent the city residents who brought with them litter, arrogant superiority, and a blatant disregard for nature.

Eventually, the pollution of the heavily industrialized ecumenopolis began to effect the Quarter, slowly killing off the wildlife and the last remaining ecosystem on the planet, and the Quarter soon became an inhospitable wasteland. As it was no longer profitable as a tourist destination, the Empire declared the Quarter would be razed to make way for a new city. In response, the otherwise pacifistic Kantians revolted, fed up with centuries of oppression and viewing the pollution as deliberate imperialist ploy to colonize their last remaining home.

Over eight million died in the resulting "Kantian Massacre", as the Korunkant Guard crushed the rebels and bombed the Quarter to ashes. Even peaceful protestors were slaughtered in the massacre, as the dissidents were all declared terrorists and traitors by the Empire. The surviving Kantians left the planet and returned to their nomadic ways once more, searching for a new world to settle. The ones who remained on the planet faced bigotry by the Imperials, while others chose to work on distant agri-worlds, where they worked in harsh conditions for little pay, just for a chance to be around nature.

Soon the urban sprawl continued spread and enveloped the former Kantian Quarter, leaving only a thin strip of land to serve as the planet's only park.