Cloud City

Cloud City is a fictional floating city on Bespin, a planet in the Star Wars universe which appears in the film The Empire Strikes Back and in Return of the Jedi as a glimpse celebrating the defeat of the Empire.

Description

The city floats among the clouds with the aid of repulsorlifts and is home to Lando Calrissian and his aide, Lobot. It is a mining colony used to mine Tibanna gas, which is used for weapons and hyperdrives.

The city is patrolled by cloud cars, which escorted the Millennium Falcon on its entrance to Bespin.

Cloud City is the largest of the airborne Tibanna refineries, and it is also unique, doubling as a top-notch vacation resort and entertainment complex.

Cloud City was originally founded by Corellian eccentric Lord Ecclessis Figg, nearly 2000 years BBY. In the beginning, it was little more than a mining colony but it soon evolved into a cosmopolitan centre and a major resort complete with casinos and shops.

In the bowels of the station, Tibanna is frozen into carbonite blocks for transport, and in the uppermost towers, idle tourists win and lose fortunes in the Royal, Trest, and Pair'O'Dice casinos. The city features a large wind tunnel in the interior that helps protect it from the high velocity winds produced by Bespin's atmosphere. Cloud City has 392 levels.

The city is the setting for the famous line in The Empire Strikes Back in which Darth Vader informs Luke Skywalker that he is Luke's father, something Obi-Wan Kenobi had neglected to tell Luke. It is also where Lando Calrissian was forced to betray his friend, Han Solo, and the crew aboard the Millennium Falcon: Leia Organa, and Chewbacca to Darth Vader; and where Vader eventually betrays Calrissian.

After the Empire took over Cloud City, the new administrator, Captain Treece, brought back slaving practices causing the Ugnaughts to revolt.

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