At the time of Episode I- The Phantom Menace, the Setnin Sector and the Star Wars universe as a whole are a very different place to where we leave them at the end of Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. 

In these pre-Empire days the Jedi Knights are still the guardians of peace and justice throughout the Republic.  Often they are dispatched on dangerous missions of peace to mediate disputes and settle conflicts.  The power of the Jedi Council and the Republic Senate is great and far reaching, although it doesn’t extend all the way to the Outer Rim Territories.  But the Mid-Rim is another matter altogether, specifically the vast and largely untamed Setnin Sector. 

In these days, thirty-two years before the historic Battle of Yavin, Glann Cipple has just recently completed his final job as a smuggler for the sectors pre-eminent ganglord Duze Jostenn.  Level twenty-five of the Chancai Trade Centre has been completed and Dessio D’Staan has made fast friends with Cipple. The Janos situation, a problem precipitated by the opening of Janos’ borders some eighteen years before, reaches boiling point with traders being killed upon landing on the red hot world.  Chancellor Valorum suggests dispatching Jedi Knights to settle the dispute before it can escalate into all-out sector-wide conflict, but this is offset by the most important and far-reaching political decision ever made by a Setnin Senator on the floor of the Senate.  Senator Gennata of A-desando argues that Setnin matters are best resolved by the denizens and politicians of Setnin themselves, and so just a few brief months prior to the events of Episode I - The Phantom Menace, the Setnin Sector pulls out of the Republic to take care of its own affairs.

This decision has a massive impact on the sector and the five decades that follow.  Without the influence and guidance of the Republic the Setnin Sector ran the risk of aimlessly drifting into a huge and scattered mish-mash of systems and organisations, held together only by the strong trade spine that ran through it – the Bordon Space Lane.  The underworld could have easily taken total control and the usual intervention of the Republic would no longer have been forthcoming.  But instead the major worlds of the sector band together, forming a Setnin Council based on the trade world of Zelon.  In a few short years the council is operating efficiently, in co-operation with the Trade Guilds and life continues much as it had before the withdrawal from the Republic. 

During these uncertain post-Republic, pre-Imperial days the Setnin Sector is going through a state of change.  The leadership of the underworld is about to alter for the first time in fifty years.  Pockets of rebellion will spring up after the Jedi purge and the fall of the Republic and trade will increase by a fantastic amount over the next decade.  All of these changes are precipitated by the events of Episode I – The Phantom Menace.