The planet Empress Teta has been known by many names throughout its long and ancient history, such as Koros Major or Cinnagar. However, the world's official name was given following the unification of the planetary system to which it belonged and in honor of its fabled unifier.
Roughly five thousand years ago, the planet's ruler, Empress Teta, launched a series of conquests of the Koros system, which would later become known as the Unification Wars. By her hand, the entire star system became united under the care and rule of Koros Major, which was renamed Empress Teta to celebrate its ruler's great undertaking. In the centuries that followed, the planet grew into a bustling ecumenopolis, even rivaling Coruscant, its growth and wealth fueled by the world's carbonite mines. Empress Teta became a planet known for its stylish fashion, lavish amenities, and affluent artistry and architecture throughout the ages of the Old Republic. Yet as the millennia passed by, other planets within the Core Worlds started to overshadow the glistening towers of Empress Teta, and the planet's renown and glory started to fade into history. As its residents moved to planets and systems with better possibilities, large areas of the global city began to be abandoned, and nature regained much of its ancient, lost land.
Today, a number of urban population centres remain on the planet, though nowhere near the size and scope of those of the distant past. The urbanscape has decayed and receded enough to reveal a small ocean around the equator of the planet, with various species of hardy crustaceans and molluscs starting to repopulate its heavily littered waters. The ancient jungles that once dominated its surface have made great haste in reclaiming their original domains in Empress Teta's western and eastern reaches, providing refuge to a variety of mammalian critters that once only lived off the waste and sewage of the grand city-world that no longer exists.