| Coruscant_Journal | Date: Wednesday, 30 May 2012, 11:13 PM | Message # 1 |
 Major
Group: Administrators
Messages: 98
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Thousands Feared Dead in Droid "Uprising"
The Senate District — The Imperial government of Coruscant has lifted the planet's curfew as it has been announced that a so-called "droid uprising" that has resulted so far in 5,000 to 10,000 deaths and the destruction of entire city blocks has been brought to an end. At this hour, rescue crews are searching for survivors in the remains of collapsed buildings in Imperial City and the Senate District in particular, where most of the "uprising" seems to have occurred.
The Imperial Palace was secured during the three hour "uprising," as was the Senate apartment complex. With the Senate having adjourned for the year and few Imperial senators remaining on Coruscant, few, if any, are believed to have been killed, though gunfire was heard from the Senate building itself, which was evacuated by Captain Orion Karath's company of the Empire's 5th Special Forces Group.
The Coruscant Journal has learned that the event was not, in fact, an "uprising," but rather a computer virus uploaded to a network that operates the Empire's EVS urban renewal droids, police cruisers, and automated defense grids throughout Imperial City, turning them against the populace.
The EVS droids, 200 meters tall and equipped with wrecking balls, a battering ram, and enormous hydraulic "arms" and "legs," were especially destructive—the 3,000 block of Uscru Boulevard was demolished, and the nearby Novaplex hotel badly damaged. An as-yet unknown number of buildings in the Calocour Heights sector were also destroyed, including the NullComm building, as Imperial forces struggled to respond to the estimated hundreds of near-simultaneous droid "attacks." The Coruscant Security Force was also overwhelmed.
Sources tell The Coruscant Journal that the computer virus is believed to have originated from the sub-orbital skyhook of Mr. Archa Sabis, the founder and former CEO of Sabis Technologies, Inc., who resigned from his company when Knowt's disease necessitated severe cybernetic modifications to his body, and who has rarely been seen in public since. Imperial forces—including Captain Karath's special forces company—boarded the skyhook and either captured or, according to contradictory accounts, killed Mr. Sabis.
Despite Sabis's apparent culpability, however, the people of Coruscant appear more likely to blame droids for the apparent "uprising," the deadliest event on this planet since the Battle of Coruscant a decade ago. Some on the holonet have referred to it, erroneously, as the "Second Great Droid Revolution," a reference to the so called Great Droid Revolution of 4,000 years ago, also on Coruscant.
There is no indication, however, that the droids involved in today's "uprising" chose to do so in any intelligent or pre-meditated manner, as they are believed to have done in the Great Droid Revolution. Rather, Mr. Sabis's virus appears to have altered the droids' programming—an event that Imperial authorities declared, today, "unrepeatable."
"The Clone Wars taught us to be wary of droids," read, in part, a statement from Rainier Brandt, the Moff of the Imperial Sector, which includes Coruscant. "We learned then and re-learned today a costly lesson, and one that we forget at our own peril." The statement also calls on droid manufacturers to hardwire stricter personality-inhibiting software into their droids, setting the stage for what is sure to be a period of increased anti-droid sentiment on Coruscant as a result of today's "uprising."
The Coruscant Journal cannot at this time verify reports that a similar uprising is taking place on Nar Shaddaa, in the Outer Rim Territories.
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