Yaam Sector or Sector 1Y4F, the lower levels of which were known as the Blackpit Slums, was a district on Coruscant during the early years of the Galactic Empire.[1]
Yamm Sector was one of the oldest-established urban districts on Coruscant, but it had become peripheral to the planet's cityscape, located about five thousand kilometers to the west of central areas such as Zi-Kree Sector, and around four hundred kilometers to the north, placing it outside the densest belt of skytowers around Coruscant's equator, and away from the main hypertube mag-lev system. Visitors travelling to Yamm Sector by mass transit had to leave the high-speed hypertube at Ts'chai Station, and take a slower monorail connection northwards to Yamm Depot, though it was also possible to make a direct journey by speeder bus.[1]
The region was similarly distant from the Southern Underground.[2]
The Yamm Sector covered nearly eighty square kilometers, and principally consisted of cloudcutters, skyscrapers which topped out between 700 and 800 meters, with only a small number of the taller 1km-2km skytowers that were common in the equatorial belt. The towers were grouped particularly close together, a result of the sector retaining its ancient layout of narrow groundways, which formed a claustrophobic maze of irregular streets, pedestrian alleys and dead ends between the ancient bases of the towering buildings.[1]
While the upper levels of Yamm Sector's cloudutters were relatively salubrious, the dingy lower levels formed a notorious area known as the Blackpit Slums. The demarcation was given physical form, as the upper air was kept clear by air scrubber droids, but beneath the altitudes at which they worked there was a permanent layer of smog around Level 155, created by a combination of the smoky fires which slum-dwellers lit for warmth, and emissions from the generators which they used for power.[1]
Beneath the smog, the larger landmarks were often industrial - a mix of factories, warehouses, docking bays, power stations, and waste-disposal infrastructure. Machines known as wallcrawlers used vertical tracks on the sides of buildings to haul cargo to higher levels.[1]
With very limited airspeeder traffic, much of the slums' sentient activity took place at street level. Here the permanent twilight was illuminated by a random variety of different street-light technologies and a vast number of holographic advertising displays, some of them offering blatantly illegal products and services. The groundways carried a mix of street food, multi-species foot traffic, rickshaw droids, single-seat weavers and conventional ground skimmers, though in some areas these traveled at an altitude of about ten meters above the busy streets, and there were pedestrian balconies a similar height off the ground, accessed by repulsorlift drop-tubes.[1]
Typical of the street-level slums were hostels known as resicubes or resiblocks, sturdy ferrocrete structures containing windowless, cell-like rooms. One such building was the Coruscant Arms, thirty meters tall and located on a pedestrian alley known as Amator Avenue, where Jax Pavan had a micro-conapt measuring two meters by three, set against a solid exterior wall some ten centimeters thick. The cell which Den Dhur rented by the night while searching for Pavan was even smaller - a cramped cube barely two meters square within walls fifteen meters thick, equipped with a single bed, chair and table, which all formed part of the ferrocrete structure, with minimal furnishing such as the foamcast mattress for the bed, plus alcoves for a food unit and a primitive water-shower refresher.[1]
One ground-level location in the Blackpit Slums, Tangor Square, had a wider reputation on Coruscant as an entertainment district, including numerous holoparlors and a shronker salon.[1]
The lower levels also extended to locations higher in the cloudcutters. Gort's, located on Level 50, was a Mon Calamari restaurant serving good Quarren sulyet in its bar.[1]
Much of the lower city was effectively controlled by criminal groups, ranging from street gangs to Rokko the Hutt, who controlled the district's holoparlors in the early era of the Empire, and resided in an underground palace fifty meters below surface level, decorated with ancient vistas of Nal Hutta created by the Hutt artist Gorgo.[1]
According to a computer search conducted by Haninum Tyk Rhinann, in 19 BBY Yaam Sector was home to 8,675 Human males named Jax Pavan, one of them being the Jedi Knight Jax Pavan.[1]
Behind the scenes
Yamm Sector is a major setting in Jedi Twilight, the first novel of the Coruscant Nights trilogy.
A location to the west of uptown Galactic City is not explicitly stated in the novel, but implied by the statement that it is in an "earlier time zone" than the Zi-Kree Sector, and the system's primary has "not yet set" at an hour when the body-clocks of beings arriving from central districts expect the start of night.
Appearances
- Coruscant Nights I: Jedi Twilight (First appearance)
- Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows (Mentioned only)
- Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force
- The Last Jedi (Mentioned only)