Nar Shaddaa

Nar Shaddaa, nicknamed the "Smuggler's Moon," is the pickup point for the crew's transport job. It is a moon orbiting the planet Nal Hutta, its entire surface consumed by layered city — durasteel and permacrete stacked for kilometers, with no green or nature — wrapped in a choking layer of yellow-orange smog. Corroded, barely functional refueling spires reach up over the sprawl. Quinel contrasts it with Cloud City: where Cloud City "tries to hide its dirt," Nar Shaddaa "puts it on display."

The moon is Hutt territory. The Hutt Cartel controls the space and takes a cut of everything, while various criminal organizations control different sectors beneath them. Law enforcement is effectively nonexistent — at most a debatable "security force" — and violence is commonplace; orbital control's parting words are "Try not to get shot." It is described as an outlaw's paradise where everyone is running from something, and it is notorious for the spice trade, its streets full of addicts craving glitterstim and ryll. For Tammea, an empath, the moon is an unrelenting assault of fear, anger, desperation, and addiction radiating from the crowds.

The crew lands the Stray at Docking Bay Eighty-Seven in the Starport District's mid-levels after paying port tariffs, then is shaken down at the ramp by a Weequay and two human thugs demanding a "protection fee." The job's contact is met in a grimy cantina (booth thirteen), and the sealed cargo is later loaded aboard at the docking bay. A key anomaly emerges during the job: Nar Shaddaa is Hutt space, yet the employer is revealed to be Black Sun — a rival syndicate operating where the Hutts do not tolerate rivals, which the crew recognizes as a dangerous and unexplained situation.