Jorj Car'das's fortress

Jorj Car'das's fortress on planet Exocron was built inside a mountain at the outskirts of Rintatta City. On the outside the house looked like a small, light blue building with half-finished additional wing, but it was only a facade with most of the fortress being hidden inside the mountain and accessible only by a quadrail car. The inner structure included a large indoor garden, a conversation room, and a huge datacard library as well as guest rooms. The fortress was built by Jorj Car'das, a retired smuggler and information broker. Car'das's former employee Talon Karrde, Karrde's bodyguard Shada D'ukal and protocol droid C-3PO visited him in his house when they were searching for the Caamas Document, an important historical piece of information.
==Description==
From the outside Jorj Car'das's fortress on Exocron—a planet in Kathol sector located near the Kathol Rift—appeared to be a small, unassuming light blue house, constructed against the mountain side at the outskirts of Rintatta City. It only had two small rooms and an unfinished additional wing. Car'das used this simple setting as a meeting place when he dealt with Exocron officials. In truth the small house was only a facade and acted as a starting point to a quadrail car, which connected it with Car'das's actual home. The outer building was purposefully left dirty and showing signs of decay and neglect.
The other end of the quadrail led deep inside the mountains, where Car'das had built his residence. Underground Car'das had constructed a large indoor garden, which was more than a hundred meters in diameter, and which had cultivated flower beds and a forest of tall trees as well as a small creek hidden between the trees—the sound of the running water, however, could be heard across the garden. Next to the garden, separated by a hidden door, Car'das had built his conversation room borrowing from classic High Alderaanian style. It was contructed from dark wood, with a sunken conversation circle, and decorated with plants, which gave it an air of expansiveness.
The heart of the fortress was a huge datacard library, a room that was constructed to resemble an amphitheater and was larger than the indoor garden. Most of the room was taken up by two meter high data cases, arranged into circles around the central data retrieval stations, and filled with thousands of datacards containing the information Car'das had accumulated during his career. This extensive collection included information about the destruction of the Mistryl homeworld, Emberlene, files covering most of Grand Admiral Thrawn's Imperial career, and data that allowed Car'das to piece together a special datacard for his former employee, Talon Karrde. Karrde was visiting Car'das when searching for the Caamas Document, an important piece of information, that revealed the identities of Bothan saboteurs who helped Emperor Palpatine to destroy Caamas, but Car'das did not have the information. Instead he gave Karrde the evidence he needed to reveal a plot by Moff Vilim Disra, con artist Flim and the clone of Grodin Tierce—a special clone created by Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn to combine his own tactical genius with qualities of a stormtrooper—to drive the New Republic into a civil war.
The doors in the fortress were designed to be opened with a Force trick Car'das had learned from the Aing-Tii monks, but for people unfamiliar with the technique there was a secondary method. A hidden panel was placed to the door frame, which could be identified with touch as it was slightly cooler than the surrounding material and if the pressure on the plate was kept constant for thirty seconds, the door was opened. When Car'das taught this technique to Shada D'ukal—a disgraced Mistryl Shadow Guard traveling with Karrde and acting as his bodyguard—she wondered if it was intended to be an extra layer of defense as any intruders would not have had patience to wait for a door to open.
==Occupants==
Despite his advanced age, Jorj Car'das was active, tending his large indoor garden with only little help. Having once been the head of a large and well organized smuggling organization, after his retirement on Exocron Car'das only had small number of people working for him as part of his household. Car'das himself cooked the food he offered to his guests, when Karrde and his companions visited in 19 ABY.
Entoo Needaan E-elz, more commonly known as Entoo Nee, was Car'das's closest assistant, helping him in the fortress as well as running errants for him outside Exocron. He had served Car'das long enough to call him by the first name, but had not yet joined him during the construction of the fortress and the datacard library. In addition to the man, Car'das employed several other people, who worked in the fortress and were considered to be part of his household.
==History==
The oldest part of Car'das's fortress was the light blue house, which acted as a facade to the actual construction. It had been built by a previous owner from whom Car'das acquired the house he arrived on Exocron. Entoo Nee believed that the house had once been built against the mountain side to give it extra stability against the seasonal winds of the planet. After buying the house, Car'das had began to construct an additional wing to the side of the house, but had given up on the project without finishing the work.
After his arrival to Exocron Car'das had started to build his real fortress inside the mountains, because the location would be easy to defend. Shada D'ukal, seeing the extensiveness of the construction, suspected that Aing-Tii had helped Car'das to build his fortress, but the old smuggler did neither confirm nor deny aliens's involvement. The datacard library—of which a large portion had been collected long before Car'das ever moved to Exocron—had found its place in the fortress before Entoo Nee came into Car'das's service.
==Behing the scenes==
Jorj Car'das's fortress first appeared in the Vision of the Future, the second novel of Star Wars: The Hand of Thrawn Duology, written by Timothy Zahn and published in 1998. In the novel Car'das simply calls it his home, but the Wizards of the Coast roleplaying game sourcebook Scum and Villainy uses the word fortress to describe it.Scum and Villainy
==Appearances==
*Vision of the Future 
==Sources==
*Scum and Villainy
==Notes and references==
Category:Fortresses
Category:Outer Rim Territories structures