During the reign of the Naboo King Bon Tapalo, Damask Holdings, an entity within the InterGalactic Banking Clan, approached the Naboo with an offer of mining and exporting the plasma that was abundant in the planet's core. Despite trepidation at using primarily offworld businesses to jump-start the plasma industry, Tapalo agreed to the terms of Magister Hego Damask, as the Muun was planning to back the king's bid for reelection.
When construction commenced, existing parklands just east of the Royal Palace were removed, and the adjacent Solleu River was rerouted to make room for the triple domes of the new refinery complex and the hangar facility. Constructed by Outer Rim Construction and Assembly, the complex was eventually fully operational and began producing plasma at an incredible rate. By King Ars Veruna's reign, Naboo had become a major player in the interstellar plasma energy market. However, the planet's plasma exports became a source of dispute with the Trade Federation, and a strenuous relationship with Magister Damask began to take its toll.
Following the ouster of King Veruna, the citizens of Naboo and Senator Palpatine rallied behind a young girl named Padmé Naberrie and gave her the title Queen Amidala. The young monarch had just ascended to the throne when the Trade Federation invaded, blockading the system and taking the planet's populace hostage.
After fleeing, the Queen did return to the planet, where she and Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi led an infiltration mission to retake the planet. Amidala's forces used hidden tunnels to covertly enter Theed, emerging alongside the hangar building. While the security forces and the Jedi cleared the hangar, Sith apprentice Darth Maul stepped out of the refinery complex to challenge the Jedi. As the Queen and her loyal forces found another way to access the palace, the Jedi began to duel the Zabrak assassin, chasing him through the massive generator facility. After exchanging several blows, the Jedi forced Maul back through a series of laser gates and into the chamber housing the generator's core. However, unknown to the Jedi, Maul had been in this complex before; he had studied every service platform and checked the timing of the laser gates, while bringing them to the melting pit for the final part of their duel. In this small rotunda, Maul killed Master Jinn before being bisected at the waist by Qui Gon's lightsaber. But even as the Sith Lord fell into the melting pit below, he managed to survive this ordeal through the Force and his hatred, vowing revenge on Kenobi. He went down the reactor shaft and landed in water. He was then dumped into a container, which was taken via freighter to the junk world of Lotho Minor. He would not return to the known galaxy for twelve years.
Years later, the same site was the arena of another deadly lightsaber duel, this time between one of the Galactic Empire's highest ranking Inquisitors, Malorum and a former member of the now-extinct Jedi Order, Ferus Olin. During the duel, Olin was able to dislodge Malorum's lightsaber and send the Inquisitor down the melting pit to his death.
Theed Power Generator cross-section
A triple-domed structure located on the cliff face of Theed, the Plasma Refinery Complex consisted of several distinct areas which saw a variety of use and function. Built along the banks of the Solleu River and the Virdugo Plunge, the refinery complex was a model of Neo-Classical design and employed a simple but elegant form. Constructed from large sandstone-like stone covered by a ribbed roof, the stone was embedded with a high-tensile durasteel support webbing while the roof was lined with blast-proof green plates to protect the structure from attack.
Located alongside the complex was the city's main hangar, strategically placed within the same complex so that the plasma from the refinery could easily be pumped into the N-1 starfighters of the Naboo Royal Space Fighter Corps. While the hangar had a separate entrance from the rest of the complex, a hallway connected the main flight deck with the complex's extracting shaft.
Within the first of the three domed structures closest to the hangar was the seemingly bottomless extracting shaft. A hemispherical chamber with black paneled walls which constantly monitored and compensated for pressure changes, the shaft was crisscrossed by several rings of catwalks. A series of twelve evenly spaced acceleration shafts soared from the bottom of the pit and into the ceiling; a thermal carbon membrane containing the plasma which had been forced out of the core and upward through vacuum suction. On the other side of the shaft was the city's power generator, located under the first building's ground floor. Above it was the facility's main activator and purification chamber, which in turn were beneath a corridor of laser gates. These doors, inspired by a Naboo legend regarding the gates holding back chaos, would lock into position to hold back potentially dangerous quantities of power outputs. Beyond the corridor was the generator's core, a massive shaft plummeting into the depths of the massive reactor. Along the sides of the smooth shaft were high-energy particle coils which were employed when plasma slough needed to be curtailed.
The massive drum-shaped holding tank which occupied the central building stored mass quantities of refined plasma. The Naboo, cautious of shortages or double-crossing by Damask Holdings or the Trade Federation, held mass quantities of plasma in reserve in case of increased spacecraft use. At the top of the tank, a recirculation lid reduced the oxygen levels in the chamber to maintain the vacuum in the tank.
The Plasma Refinery Complex first appeared with the release of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. The layout of the facility changes between the film's 1999 video game adaptation, the 2000 video game Star Wars: Episode I Jedi Power Battles, and the 2001 video game Star Wars: Obi-Wan.
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