Ripples and Waves: Year 10

The last five years had seen further economic plans and initiatives, but whatever Palpatine tried, between the corruption uncovered periodically by the IOC, and the continued creation of new currencies, the credit seemed to refuse to rise again, though with all the effort the credit did not fall either. The largest contender by far now to the Republic Credit was the Trade Federation Marked Currency, commonly called Trade Marks, this leads to polarizing large and small businesses mainly along the line between Repulic and Trade Federation. The manufacturing of ships had only recently started to slow down as all the main companies had upgraded, the excess shipyard capacity briefly filled with servicing old ships, but projections of the need for such drying up in a matter of months. With the weakened credit and a large number of competing shipyards made in the manufacturing boom years of the previous decade, many of the banking clans were projecting an upcoming economic recession if something was not done. With the circling economic crisis compounded with complaints of Palpatine and his actions, the political sharks were circling, to keep office Palpatine had to do something soon, a good thing for him his plans were progressing apace.

Senator Amidala continued to be seen as a champion for the Republic and became the figurehead of the anti-Trade Federation faction, however, her stanch upholding of her beliefs meant that instead of being seen as an act of raving revenge obsessed lunatic like the Trade Federation tried to portray her as the public saw here as someone finally standing up to protect them from economic bullying and the corrupt shenanigans that plagued the Trade Federations public image every time a new scandal was uncovered by the IOC. As the years passed the Trade Federation tried escalating their campaigns to discredit Senator Amidala, throwing millions of credits at the problem in various tries to get rid of the annoyance and stumbling block to their plans. Eventually after "softer" measures failed time after time, the Trade Federation decided that more "aggressive" means would be worth the backlash to just get rid of her once and for all.

The Mall continued to be a hub of trade and commerce, those companies and planets that were more inclined to side with the republic while retaining their independent markets chose the picturesque station to put branch offices. The availability of connections to other like-minded, as well as the massive amount of available excess computing power on the station for ridiculously cheap prices, meant that even with longer transit times and associated costs to get there, operating costs were offset enough to be cheaper, as the station was able to put the giant computers of the droid controlling systems to use as computational farms to run the programs for a nominal fee. The computer cores that could control an entire invasion worth of droids were ideally suited to multitudes of separate processes running, some of them quite intensive and needing multiple processes working together. The computer architecture of the trade Federation designed for such business applications in the first place before being re-purposed for controlling droids was easily reused as a station computer mainly revolving around business deals, the expensive systems safe in the control section surrounded by the aquarium levels, the water also acting as a secondary means of cooling allowing for overclocking spikes of heavy data use.

The Serenno enclave had become a bustling centre for not only the new branch of the Jedi, but with all the rescued slaves, an entire local industry of highly trained and vetted psychological doctors and professionals came from all ov4er the galaxy of races far and wide to help deal with the trauma of those that were rescued. Count Dooku, on the advisement of several friends, allowed a few very painstakingly screened professionals take regular sessions with the force potentials found this way as well. The results of even a few sessions with the professionals having a marked increase with their performance in their studies meant that Dooku insisted that regular sessions should be tested with all initiates found in such a manner, and a request put out to the service corps if they had any professionals of their own to help out. The fact that there were many trained in the mind arts as part of the healing process meant that there were many technically qualified, but with the high standards of those at Sereno in the professional circles meant that even those trained needed to undergo specific training to get them up to the local levels of proficiency. This was a good thing as the training pointed out many of the potential problems, especially that rescued slaves could have, this meant that when the service corps trained members finally were able to help out, the extra empathy helped tremendously. At the effectiveness of this, Dooku even asked several knights and masters to try it out to see if it was of any assistance in their meditation and training, at first many were reluctant, but after a while, the ability to be able to talk about their thoughts and fears made it easier to confront, and overcome their fears. This seemed to calm the veil in the force somewhat, and lower the stress and blood pressure noticeably, the findings were relayed to the Jedi temple on Coruscant, and while the council took an interest, they decided to wait to see the effects of such a practice before implementing it.