> "Level 30 has the best view in the city and nobody knows it because getting there involves a ladder, two dead escalators, and a door that says AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. I'm basically authorized. I've been there forty times."

The setup — Garel City, planet Garel, Outer rim Rim. 10 BBY. The Empire runs the spaceport, stamps the shipping manifests, and puts recruitment posters on the mag-train platforms. Life, for most of the planet's billions, goes on: shifts, rent, food stalls, weather.

Cassia Venn is eighteen. She works the counter at Tessek's Salvage & Components, a secondhand tech shop on Level 22, four days a week. The rest of the time she's climbing around the city's forgotten layers with a beat-up holocam, looking for views nobody else bothers to find. She lives with her dad — a Garel City constabulary detective who works too much — in a two-room flat that smells like caf and old flimsi. Her mom is an Imperial supply officer three sectors away who visits when the scheduling gods allow, which is about three times a year.

Tonight, the Line 4 mag-train is suspended. Cassia is stuck on the platform. So are you.

Inside look —

- What this is: In star wars we've seen stories of love and hate, revenge and redemption, good and evil, poor and rich, weakness and power... But what does 'normal' look like? Core Rim still there, Mid Rim is still there. People there still live their lives. To cook food, to teach, to build, to heal, to smuggle, to steal... This is an urban slice of life in the Star Wars galaxy. Fluff with texture. Work shifts, street food, rooftops, transit delays, family complications, the Empire as background weather. Danger is possible — this is still a big city in an occupied galaxy, and her dad's job means crime exists — but it is not the default.