Cloudflower Wall

"I'll escort you as far as the wall. I'm sure you were told it is planted with cloudflower vines. It may not surprise you to find that isn't the case. Like peace and justice on Romin, the name of the wall is just an illusion."

- Romin Citizens' Resistance leader Joylin, to undercover Jedi Anakin Skywalker and Ferus Olin.

Cloudflower Wall was a massive stone wall that surrounded Eliior, the capital city of Romin, a world that was, before 23 BBY, governed by an oppressive dictatorship.

Cloudflower Wall, ironically named for the planet's lovely native cloudflower, was a virtually impregnable security wall designed by tyrant-ruler Roy Teda to shut out the planet's impoverished worker-citizens from both its wealthy elite and its rich criminal refugee contingent who resided within the capital city. Rising hundreds of meters above the ground and reconnoitered by guard droids and security devices, including surveillance droids, Cloudflower Wall made of Romin's capital city a bastion or fortress for the wealthy, effectively dividing the planet into two parts—one for the privileged rich, the other for the wretched poor.

Outside the wall, worker hovels rose in concentric rings away from the city—which grew progressively worse in nature the further they extended from the capital. Passes were required of all workers who wished to venture beyond Cloudflower Wall into the city, and they were required to have a work reason in order to gain entrance. The wealthy, including "Great Leader Teda," living in the city's palatial villas and estates framed by lush gardens and sparkling fountains, rarely ventured outside Cloudflower Wall. Those who did usually were escorted under heavy guard in order to adequately protect them from the fierce backlash of such extreme social and economical disparity—desperate counter-movements embodied in the organized Citizens' Resistance, under the leadership of Joylin.

To conceal the truth about Cloudflower, visitors to the city were fed lies about the wall by the dictator's security officers, including Becka, who was responsible for Teda's grand palace complex.

In 24 BBY, for example, the Jedi Order dispatched a Jedi team to Romin on a mission to track down and capture an escaped criminal of the Republic, mad scientist Jenna Zan Arbor. Becka was the first to welcome the new arrivals, who came impersonating a captured criminal gang, the Slams, in order to gain admittance to the criminal-harboring world.

As Becka took the undercover Jedi on a brief tour of the capital city, he lauded the virtues of Eliior and of Romin, painting for the new guests a utopia of bliss that ostensibly was afforded all planetary citizens—both those within the capital and outside its walls. However, when Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi noted and inquired about the battered security bastion that was Cloudflower Wall, he was given a practiced rose-colored response by the security officer: it was built for those citizens who "preferred" to live outside the city in the beautiful countryside, giving them "the illusion that they live in wilderness. It is planted with cloudflower vines on the opposite side. Another great step of progression by Great Leader Teda! Truly, he is remarkable."

In extending his personal welcome to his new criminal guests, Teda became entranced and enamored with 'Valadon' (Jedi Master Siri Tachi), professing that her beauty would only add to the beauty of his planet, telling her that she was "prettier than a cloudflower." Later, when Tachi and the other undercover Jedi attended by invitation the dictator's reception for all of his wealthy criminal refugees, the couldn't help but notice that, unlike the real Cloudflower Wall, its small-scale replica (that encircled a miniature "world tableau" of Romin-representative Eliior) was actually fashioned out of cloudflowers.

Appearances

 * Jedi Quest: The Changing of the Guard