Major Faction

Throne World: Nar Shaddaa

The Outer Rim in particular is rife with lawless planets and rampant criminal activity. Yet no region is perhaps so corrupt, yet controlled with such brutal authority, as the region known as Hutt Space. This region gets its name from a cabal of powerful cartels, who have banded together to form such a bond of self-serving vice as to have defined whole sectors of space.

The term “Hutt” is a title, which came to prominence among powerful criminal overlords on the moon of Nar Shaddaa, which orbits the planet Nal Hutta. The ecologically ruined planet long ago surrendered any semblance of civilisation, having been left as a shattered world worth little more than the maintenance of the many factories which were responsible for the scouring of its surface. The title originated from the most ruthless warlords who once ruled the planet. Long since relocated to Nar Shaddaa—which is known as the Smuggler’s Moon—a Hutt remains a significant figure across the Outer Rim, not simply within Hutt Space.

A Hutt is essentially the head of a kind of clan, or house, or tribe, of criminals. Each one rules its own cartel in a different way, but all of them respect a kind of underhanded code of honour which keeps them from eviscerating one another. The common cause for this strange unity of purpose is the nature of Hutt Space; it rests adjacent to the edge of the Galactic Empire. The Hutts know that no one of the cartels could hope to fend off even a modest Imperial Starfleet; therefore, they maintain an open peace—which, have no doubt, is never privately respected—in order to dissuade military adventures on the part of bold Imperial admirals seeking to make a claim for themselves.

There are only a specific number of Hutt titles—it has long been a closely-kept secret among the cabal—and in order to create an additional title, the entire congress of existing Hutts occasionally comes together to debate and trade threats and deals to determine whether another will be allowed among their fold. The cartels are enormously influential and incredibly wealthy organisations, and most of them would outstrip even the greatest grand aristocratic Houses of the Core Worlds.

Yet the other threat they all seem willing to unite against is that of Black Sun, the brutal syndicate which controls whole swathes of the Core Worlds, and which even the dreaded Imperial Security Bureau cannot keep on a proper leash. Essentially, the prime objective of Hutt Space and the notion of the cabal which controls the Hutt cartels is very simple: it exists to ensure their preservation. Friction between the crime lords is never allowed to reach the point where it might fracture the cohesion of their shared territory, lest more powerful adversaries take advantage and destroy them all.