VERDANT URBAN WORLD | CORE WORLDS

Features

Hyperlane. Serenno is connected to the Malast Arc hyperlane, providing it with a great deal of trade income.

Monitored. The local monarchs do not shy away from exercising their unilateral power, and thus show a great deal of interest in planetary security. Serenno is a planet frequented by some of the galaxy’s most well-heeled aristocrats and titans of industry, and the intense scrutiny of its approach vectors also enables both trade and tourism to more easily locate the planet.

Lush. Even from orbit, Serenno appears in all its verdant glory, covered with dense rainforests, sprawling forested plains and dotted by enormous lakes and seas. It is considered to be something of a paradise among those whose status allows them access to its surface.

Wealthy. Serenno has access to a hyperlane, and is considered by most to be an incredibly beautiful world. Nothing on Serenno comes cheap, and even visiting the planet for recreational purposes requires a multitude of documentation and approvals, not to mention fees and charges. The aristocratic gentry who dominate the planet—and whose ancestors have done so for millennia—have the means to enjoy perhaps the greatest luxury of all: a status unrivalled almost anywhere else in the galaxy outside Coruscant.

Corporate Controlled. While most assume Serenno is controlled by its nobility—which is one of the hallmarks of its fame—the actual legal council which rules Serenno has been constructed as a hybrid fiscal structure called the Serenno Grand Principality, Incorporated, often referred to as “the GPI”. In practice, this corporate entity merely reproduces the hierarchical nature of the hereditary monarchy which has ruled the planet since early in its history, and the "chief executive officer” of the planet holds the title of Grand Prince, supported by a strictly regimented “directors” who are in turn titled Grand Dukes, all the way down to the local Counts, who are explicitly and specifically defined within the corporate charter.

Locations

The High Court. The central legal authority on Serenno is a massive palace called the High Court, which was designed to meet the Old Republic’s statutory need for democratic process, but in reality was the seat of power for the reigning Grand Prince. The ‘board’ of the SGPI meets within the High Court and offers advice to the judicial appointees who sit upon the bench of the court proper. Few believe either artifice is anything more than a veneer of democratic integrity pulled across the same autocratic regime which has always dominated the planet.

History

The House of Doku. During the Clone Wars, Serenno became somewhat noteworthy as the centre of power for the faction of the Jedi Order known as Purity. Dominated by the stern but largely admired Count Doku, the head of a minor but esteemed aristocratic noble House on Serenno, the incredibly wealthy planet hosted a great number of Jedi from across the galactic spectrum, all of whom felt that the Jedi should be forced to remain above the fray of galactic politics.

That this effort was led by Doku—a landed aristocrat who, while of modest means compared to the great Houses of Serenno, was a figure possessed of incredible personal wealth in the scale of the average galactic citizen—was seen as a rank hypocrisy which underscored Doku’s otherwise eloquent opinions on the matter. Doku and the Purity faction believed that what they called “corporate lobbying”, which in practice was a reciprocal assistance of corporate interests in return for political funding, desecrated the oath of the Jedi and betrayed the Jedi Code. And yet precisely because Doku and many of his most fervent supporters happened to be materially wealthy, their own privilege blinded them to the demands which other low-born Jedi were forced to endure.

The Purity faction argued passionately against the notion of the Jedi becoming akin to mercenaries for hire, but often foundered when confronted with an alternative means of ensuring that all members of the Jedi Order were given not just financial support but equal access to the Jedi Council itself. Purity were in favour of galaxy-wide taxes and tithes, whether from the citizenry, corporations, or even the bureaucracy itself, that the Order might be more effectively supported. Yet none of these arguments spoke to the existing differences in resources which already existed between individual Jedi.

The wealthiest among the Jedi were capable of funding their own campaigns for Council seats, and while even the lowliest Jedi was granted land, property, and a level of subsistence many in the galaxy would consider almost excessive, they could hardly compete with the scions of galactic aristocratic houses. Naturally, any thought of surrendering personal fortunes as part of an adoption of Jedi into the Order were abhorrent to the Purity faction—most of whom came to their wealth by inheritance—and henceforth they maintained a degree of dissonance in regard to that element of the argument.

Phenomena

A standard day on Serenno lasts twenty eight standard hours, and the length of its solar year is three hundred and two local days.

Native flora is vast, both in terms of the native forests and junglelands which spread across impressive tracts on most continents, as well as a variety of exotic plants and trees imported by the incredibly wealthy great Houses. No few palaces are dotted with foreign foliage such as Dusk Oak or Chameleon Leaf, or some other wild and unusual plant life from off-world.

Similarly, fauna is also varied, though typically its many intertwined ecosystems are stable and placid. Just as with the planet’s flora, many introduced species roam the enormous gardens of gated palaces, carefully controlled and regulated by the GPI to ensure Serenno’s increasingly famous biodiversity remains intact.