| abstract | - The city of Ta'a Chume'Dan was the administrative capital of the Hapes Consortium. Despite being a small, neat city of only a few hundred thousand inhabitants, it still was the hub of governmental, commercial and legal activity for the entire Hapes Cluster, due to laws requiring all major business to be done on Hapes itself. There were movable landing pads throughout the city to fit in as many landing ships as possible. The name Ta'a Chume'Dan indicated "Queen Mother's Residence" in Hapan, and the most remarkable sight in the city was the royal palace, a fairy-tale castle perched on the black basalt crag that dominated the settlement, which served as a key symbol of the monarchy's grandeur and power to the administrators and bureaucrats of the population—as Ta'a Chume'Dan itself served a symbolic and administrative role for the worlds of the Consortium. Probably due to the isolationist policies of the Hapans, however, New Republic sources disagreed as to whether the palace overlooking the city was the Fountain Palace, or Star Home, a magnificent interstellar starship built as an exact duplicate of the royal seat. It is likely, however, that it was the original Fountain Palace which stood in Ta'a Chume'Dan, and it seems certain that the Lorell Hall was also set on the same bluffs.
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