Prince of the Underworld
B L A C K - S U N - S Y N D I C A T E
W H E E T A - P A L A C E
- Intent: A fortified palace on Nal Hutta
- Image Credit: [HERE] [HERE] [HERE] [HERE]
- Canon: Wheeta Palace
- Permissions: n/a
- Links:
- Structure Name: Wheeta Palace
- Classification: Palace
- Location: Nal Hutta
- Affiliation: Black Sun Syndicate
- Accessibility: Wheeta Palace is far easier to find than it is to access. Being a historical site on Nal Hutta, knowledge of its location and how best to get there is relatively common. Thanks to Nal Hutta's sinking landscape and toxic marshes, travel to the palace is best done on speeder bike, skiff, or by landing in one of Lowtown's ports. Accessing Wheeta Palace is difficult for uninvited guests. A wide range of exterior traps and defenses make penetrating its walls a dangerous endeavor, and once inside, one must face armed Black Sun Guard units, battle droids, autoturrets, and other technological security measures.
- Description: Wheeta Palace stands like a flawed jewel in the slime-choked heart of Nal Hutta, juxtaposed against the rusting skeletons of old freighters and industrial pipelines. Drooping branches of willows hang over the edge of the muck, marking a natural barrier that encircles the marsh from which Wheeta Palace rises. Surrounding the palace walls is an embankment of Huttese buildings and shanties that have come to be known as Lowtown, an insular settlement with syndicate influence in every market. The palace itself is a rotund, cylindrical fortress built using the classic Huttese architectural profile that has come to dominate the horizon of dozens of worlds across Hutt Space.
Interior Points of Interest:
- Gallery of Worldly Delights: A large leisure hall with exotic dancers, narcotic vapors, and imported off-world delicacies used to impress high-value guests. Most of the galaxy's vices can fit within the Gallery, and those than cannot are promised through low whispers into excitable ears.
- Palace Kitchens: To provide exotic feasts for the palace's guests, several large kitchens with impressive larders are kept fully stocked on the lower levels. Staff prepare a wide variety of local and foreign cuisine, ranging from staples like mubasa hock served in a spicy sauce, to imported delicacies like Duradan soup.
- Pit of Bargains: A brutal underground arena where debts are settled in bloodsport and high-stakes deals are sealed through combat. The Pit is a circular chamber with ascending rows of seats that circumnavigate the arena itself, allowing large parties of guests to spectate events. Narrow corridors beneath the stadium connect the fighters' quarters to the main floor and is used both to send combatants out, and to drag their bodies away.
- Slimeways: Hidden tunnels crisscross in a labyrinthine network beneath the palace, threading through ancient Hutt sewage canals. The Slimeways are ideal for smuggling and secret exits, if one can stomach the smell.
- Spice Vault: A Hutt palace wouldn't be complete without a special chamber for storing spice. Sansanna makes up the majority of Wheeta's inventory, but Black Sun also runs andris and carsunum spice in the region as well.
- Treasure Vault: Hidden sublevels storing priceless artifacts, including Sith relics, stolen kyber crystals, and forbidden technology, guarded by droid sentinels and laser gates.
- Wheeta Throne Room: A vast, dimly lit chamber with reflective black floors and hanging chains, where Black Sun Vigos and their guests conduct syndicate business.
- Gravax Roost: The nearby hangar-barracks in Lowtown reserved for Black Sun's swoop bike enforcers and gunship escorts. Its walls are adorned with murals of past raids, many of which are painted over once the muck and sludge discolor the previous depiction. The Roost has all the amenities needed to keep the swoop bikes in shape, including a workshop where black market mods can be installed at cost for Black Sun and its affiliates.
- Lowtown Starship Ports: Scattered across Lowtown are roughly half a dozen ramshackle ports large enough to accommodate most shuttles and freighters. Traders and visitors to the palace made landfall here, where they can refuel their ships and offload cargo.
- Lowtown Slag Market: A chaotic sprawl of black market traders working from shacks, stalls, and grounded freighters surrounding the outer walls of Wheeta Palace. They hawk everything from exotic beasts to memory chips pulled from dead spies. If they don't have it on hand, most merchants are eager to acquire special items... for a nominal fee.
- Marshes: The Lowtown is surrounded by miles of toxic marshlands that make foot travel nearly impossible. Aggressive wildlife such as dragonsnakes hunt prey animals and sentients alike in the murky waters.
- Murgh's Wall: A district-sized, graffiti-tagged barricade built by a forgotten Hutt clan, now repurposed as a checkpoint and customs wall for Wheeta's domain.
- Old Shrine: Not far from the beaten path is a syndicate surveillance post tucked away in a crumbling Huttese shrine, manned by slicers and equipped with long-range scanners and intercept gear. From here, Black Sun monitors the causeway and the surrounding muckfields that wrap around Wheeta Palace like a toxic moat.
- Silted Causeway: The main path to Wheeta Palace is a flooded road leading right to its wrought metal gates, lined with sinking statues of former rivals, now half-submerged in Huttese muck. It's possible to trudge the causeway on foot, but most visitors know to take skiffs or speederbikes.
- Skiff Docks: Without skiffs, most people couldn't travel to and from the palace. Locals, merchants, and visitors alike shore up their skiffs at the docks white tending to business in Lowtown.
Maximum. High-walled and turret-crowned, Wheeta Palace is ringed with blaster emplacements and pressure-sensitive mines veiled beneath muck and moss, designed to vaporize intruders before they reach the gates. Walker barriers prevent large land vehicles from approaching the palace grounds. Inside, patrols of Black Sun Guard units monitor the grounds at all times, supported by H-TFU battle droids. Hidden autoturrets wired into every corridor deters wandering guests. The Pit of Bargains and other subterranean reaches of the palace are guarded by formidable gladiator droids. Surveillance feeds from the old shrine sweep the surrounding area with precision, while the palace's shield emitter hums with the threat of total lockdown at a moment's notice. Even the vaults and private chambers are rigged with dioxis countermeasures, biometric ray shields, and slicing-resistant alloys. Overhead, Elite Black Sun squadrons patrol the airspace in Z-95 Headhunters, posing extreme risk to enemy starships. To approach Wheeta Palace without clearance is suicide; to enter it with hostile intent is a death sentence.
- Autoturrets
- Biometric ray shields
- Black Sun gladiator droids
- Black Sun Guard units
- Blast doors
- Blaster neutralizers
- Dioxis countermeasures
- Door-fields
- Elite Black Sun squadrons
- Heavy Tactical Fighting Unit (H-TFU) battle droids
- Laser gates
- Mercenary patrols
- Land mines
- Quickfire speeder bike patrols
- Security scanners
- Security thumbpasses
- Tripwires
- Turbolaser emplacements
- Walker barriers
His kajidic was heavily involved with the Hutt Space Consortium in the 870s, and when it collapsed, Wheeta aligned himself with the Hutt Cartel. He believed it would be his golden ticket to expanding his influence beyond Lowtown, an easy path to consolidating power, but Wheeta was betrayed by Consortium loyalists who were working under a new banner, that of Black Sun. The Hutt was offered one chance to rebuke the Cartel and side with the new syndicate, and when he refused, sleeper agents within his ranks made quick work of the unsuspecting crime boss. With Wheeta out of the picture, Black Sun commandeered his palace and quickly established a foothold in Lowtown and the surrounding marshlands. Few members of the Hutt Cartel remained to oppose them, and those who might have were easily flipped in favor of the syndicate. By the mid-890s, Black Sun had complete control over the region. In 900 ABY, when
Velzari Tharn
began to wage an all-out gang war on the Cartel, Wheeta Palace was used as a stronghold for coordinating syndicate operations on Nal Hutta.Now that Black Sun holds complete control over Nal Hutta and much of Hutt Space, Wheeta Palace serves as a prominent meeting ground for bounty hunters, slavers, and friends of the syndicate looking for information or a place to unwind.
