The Galaxy was one of the billions of galaxies that existed in the universe. Composed of some 400 billion stars in a disk 120,000 light-years in diametre, the Galaxy was estimated to be home to between five and twenty million sapient species. In historical memory, the Galaxy had seen the rise and fall of the Galactic Republic, the Galactic Empire, the New Republic, and the religious orders of the Jedi and the Sith.
History[]
Formation[]
Some 13 billion years before the Battle of Endor, an immense cloud of gas and dust collapsed under its own gravity and coalesced to form a revolving disk, creating the Galaxy. Over many more billions of years, the stars and planets began to form. By 5,000,000,000 BBY, life had begun to evolve in the Galaxy.
Around 2,000,000 BBY, many of the Galaxy's most well-known species were evolving. The Oracle of Pelgrin, quite possibly the oldest artifact in the Known Regions, was believed to date from this period. By 200,000 BBY, the Zhell -- the ancestors of the Human and near-Human races of the Galaxy -- had established a presence on Coruscant and were waging war against the Taungs for control of their mutual homeworld.
Regions of the Galaxy[]
Known Regions[]
The Known Regions were located in the galactic centre. It was home to the Galactic Republic/Empire, Hutt Empire, Sith Empires, Corporate Sector, Centrality, Tion Hegemony, Hapes Consortium, Gree Enclave; and the various other familiar powers. The Known Regions were home to over 10 quadrillion sapient beings who lived in 480 million different systems.
Wild Space[]
Wild Space was the frontier of interstellar society, separating the Known Regions from the Unknown Regions. It was not a formal label, but was applied to the unsettled fringe surrounding the galactic centre and other parts of the Galaxy with negligible colonization or development. One of Emperor Palpatine's last acts was to open up much of the region to more extensive exploration. Wild Space differed from the Unknown Regions in that some of Wild Space had been explored, though not extensively, and the findings recorded in official logs; the Unknown Regions remained mysterious. The worlds of Wild Space largely ignored the central government, and were generally peaceful, but many acted as criminal hideaways.
Unknown Regions[]
The term "Unknown Regions" referred to those areas that had not been directly surveyed by scouts of the familiar civilizations. It was most commonly applied to the four arms of the Galaxy. However, the term also applied to the galaxy's halo of gas, dust and stars, as well as the satellite galaxies.
The ill-fated Outbound Flight Project was one of the first official attempts to penetrate the Unknown Regions, while the Galactic Empire's Grand Admiral Thrawn spent several years mapping portions of the area. Powerful species within the regions included the blue-skinned, red-eyed Chiss, the hive-minded insectoid Killiks, the clone enclave of the Dark Worlds, the slaver empire of the Vagaari, the illusion-spinning mollusk Crokes, and the religiously-fanatical Ssi-ruuk. Outside the galactic disc, in the satellite galaxy of the Rishi Maze, lived the Nagai and their rivals, the Tofs.
Normalization of Republican relations with the Chiss Ascendancy during the Swarm War led to the establishment of stable hyperroutes into the Ettarue Arm through the Utegetu Nebula, opening the arm up to greater exploration by the familiar races.