Jakku

> Here we have the desert world of Jakku—worthless on its own but soon to live forever in history as the place where the Empire defeated the Rebellion once and for all.
>
> Grand Moff Randd

**Jakku** was a remote desert planet located in the system of the same name, within the Western Reaches of the galaxy's Inner Rim. Though considered by many within the galaxy to be distant and relatively worthless, Jakku was the site of important events that would shape galactic history. In 5 ABY, Jakku was the site of the pivotal Battle of Jakku, which ended the Galactic Civil War in favor of the New Republic. A generation later, the planet was the home of the scavenger Rey, who became involved in the events of the Cold War after helping the former First Order stormtrooper Finn and the astromech droid BB-8 escape offworld with a map leading to the missing Jedi Luke Skywalker.

## Description

> You brought your family here?
>
>
> I did. Wanted to take them as far away from the fighting as I could. A place where the war will never find us. The farthest-flung nowhere rock I could find on a star map.
>
>
>
> Well, you found it, buddy. You don't get more nowhere than here. War ain't got no reason to roll up on this rock.
>
> Ergel and Corwin Ballast

Jakku was the innermost planet of the Jakku system within the Western Reaches of the galaxy's Inner Rim. It hosted the Wheel Races in the north and mining operations dotted the planet. Buttes were located in the south in which lichen could be scraped off of to create the alcoholic beverage Knockback Nectar. One could become an Anchorite if certain vows were taken, while scavengers often used luggabeasts to carry supplies across the desert.

Owing to the planet's distance from populated space, it served as a jumping-off point for warships heading into the Unknown Regions in the final years of the Galactic Civil War. Nearby worlds to Jakku included Ogem and Ponemah Terminal, the latter of which was connected to Jakku by the Burke's Trailing hyperspace route, which also linked Jakku to Adrathorpe. Jakku's nearby space featured numerous navigational hazards and anomalies, with confidence in hyperspace routes below Bureau of Ships and Services minimum standards for safe navigation.

## History

### Double Planet

When Jakku was explored and settled by Force cultists from Jedha, Jakku was green and verdant, a hothouse jungle world with scant few shallow surface seas. These cultists set up a thriving colony with prominent temple complex meant to take advantage of what the Jedi considered a 'spark of life' at the center of the planet's core. This 'spark' was discovered to be a strange planet-creature, a geobiological being the size of a small planet with a crust of rock around it. This planet-creature was considered a twin to the Force Nexus found on Jedha, linking the two planets together in a double system connected through the Force. At first the assumption was that what happened on one planet would influence the other, with mystics on both sides of the conduit finding patterns in weather, animal activity, and spatial environs to support their idea of an entangled planetary pair. Time and testing seemed to confirm this entanglement, though later Jedi scholars doubted these conclusions.

Matching temples were constructed on the two planets, each referencing events and activities found on the other world. Even while the Jedi suffered their First Great Schism, the entanglement was maintained and reinforced, to the point of beginning to homogenize the two worlds. Jakku's climate grew milder, the steaming jungles more temperate, while Jedha's cold deserts began to bloom with warmth and encroaching grasslands as the colonists on both worlds grew protective and emotionally connected to their colonies.

### The Severance

After the Second Great Schism, a small group of Dark Jedi traveled to Jakku. Their goals were known only to themselves. Scholars on Jedha taught the Dark Jedi came to claim both worlds for the newly forming Sith and the Jedi defended themselves. Anchorite legend on Jakku claimed that the Dark Jedi came in a desperate attempt to parlay for an understanding and the Jedi attacked first. Archeological evidence collected by later Sith excavation on Jakku suggest what happened next was deliberate but does not identify who began the ritual.

The entanglement between the two planets was severed. The resulting backlash in the Force disrupted both worlds but as the ritual had begun on Jakku, that planet suffered the bulk of the effects. The calamity, known by the Anchorites as **The Severance**, disrupted the life on Jakku: flora, fauna, and sentient. The Force itself twisted through Jakku's geobiosphere, altering everything it touched. This represented an extinction level event as most living creatures did not survive such a total disruption of what they were. Those species that survived were less affected, twisted less from their original form and function or able to adapt into their new structures quickly. The jungles did not survive and the water cycle collapsed; without large ocean basins to keep water on the surface, the planet's water ended up locked into aquifers beneath the surface to be consumed by the planet-creature. Desertification of the entire planet took less than ten years.

### The Desert-Adapted

Jakku had not been abandoned at the time of The Severance. A population of approximately 5 million pilgrims, Jedi, Dark Jedi, and colonists lived in settlements on the expanding temperate zones at the edges of jungle temples. These people all suffered alterations at the hands of a chaotic Force, animals and planets and the planet-creature being forcibly combined in terrible synthesis. Multiple types of alterations were experienced by the populace, from the truly horrific to the relatively minor. Different species found themselves combined due to proximity, melded into twisted amalgamations that quickly went insane. Others found themselves altered to fit environments that made no sense. Still others were altered completely, all but transformed into animals or plants or stranger.

As the planet desertified, a cluster of lineages of Force-altered humanoids began to adapt to their new environment. These **desert-adapted** types displayed a number of non-standard traits that aided them on their dying world. They lost most of their ability to regulate body temperature, becoming mesotherms reliant upon their environment to maintain body heat. Many of them went blind while gaining the ability to sense vibrations through their skin, called a 'tremorsense'. Such traits led to a preference for burrowing or 'gliding' beneath the loose sands of Jakku's new surface as they followed the underground veins of water and learned to evade predators. Further adaptation changed how they processed water, rendering them capable of drinking otherwise lethal amounts in one sitting. But the Force did not leave, expanding out into the planet-creature and all those altered by its presence. This led to mild Force-sensitivity becoming nearly ubiquitous among the desert-adapted, most often displayed as the ability to move without producing sound or tremor.

Evolution continued for the next several thousands of years, allowing natural selection to blend the traits of various lineages. As of 0 BBY, most of the desert-adapted could pass for human with the exception of exceptionally lush eyelashes, an eerie style of movement, and the side effects of their lack of thermoregulation.

### Forgotten

By the time Jedha had recovered from their own backlash and sent aid to their sister planet, Jakku was unrecognizable. The first group sent to survey the damage came back with stories of a destroyed world. Subsequent groups all searched for groups of survivors they felt might be worthy of rescue but no such expedition found anyone. The colonists of Jakku had been twisted by the Force backlash, all but forgetting their former lives and forms. Instead, it was decided the new 'desert-adapted' natives of Jakku should stay there, a secret to be kept by the Jedi lest knowledge of what happened be used against the newly formed Jedi Order. Jakku was formally abandoned and most record of it stripped from the temples at Jedha.

After the Severance, Jedi missionaries periodically came from Jedha to help those left behind on the desertified Jakku. These missionaries rarely found themselves welcomed by the desert-adapted, instead focusing their proselytizing on new settlers, on the destitute, and on children orphaned or stolen from their family groups. Due to these missionaries and the lingering effects of The Severance, the Church of the Force never died out on Jakku. These Jedi missionaries inspired the Anchorites, hermits who retreated from society to immerse themselves in the study of the Force and the rediscovery of Jakku's original temples. After the missionaries stopped coming, the Anchorites continued the tradition of taking in children, orphans and those stolen from their family groups, all while attempting to uncover the secrets of Jakku's verdant past and it's dormant living interior.

Over time, the loss of infrastructure and the inhospitable environment made Jakku an attractive spot for smugglers and fugitives looking for a place to hide goods and deeds from both the known galaxy and the Unknown Regions. This led to Jakku's reputation as a 'night market' planet, a world where smugglers and slavers were allowed to operate in the open. Such a reputation attracted crime lords looking to turn Jakku into their own private worlds but whether a residual effect of The Severance or just because of bad luck, no one crime lord was ever able to control the planet.

## Galactic Civil War

### The Contingency

The desert-adapted boy known as Galli grew up on Jakku. He was raised at an orphanage run by the Anchorite Kolob, who lived a life of austerity and strict obedience. Galli chafed under Kolob's care and longed to travel to a better world. In 30 BBY, Palpatine and his Adviser Yupe Tashu traveled to Jakku to supervise an archaeological dig on the Plaintive Hand plateau. This dig unearthed an upward extending appendage of the Force Nexus creature that acted as Jakku's core. During that trip, Palpatine encountered the twelve-year old Galli, who had stowed aboard his yacht *Imperialis*. He took the young boy as a protege and tasked him with guarding the excavation site against any intruders.

Rax spent the next ten years guarding the Plaintive Hand plateau, which became the site for the Jakku Observatory. The Observatory was part of Palpatine's Contingency plan to destroy the Galactic Empire in the event of his death. Palpatine had no wish to leave his Empire to a successor and tasked Galli with executing the Contingency when the day of his death arrived. The Jakku Observatory was home to computers that projected paths into the Unknown Regions, a collection of Sith relics, and a narrow maw-like structure which led into the body of the planet-creature that comprised Jakku's core. Palpatine instructed Galli to use the maw to awaken the planet-creature, awakening it and destroying the remnants of the Empire. Galli adopted the persona Gallius Rax and later became a Fleet Admiral in the Imperial Navy.

At some point during the Age of the Empire, the Galactic Empire established a secret research base. Later, the Hutt crime lady Niima established a presence on Jakku and lorded over several slaves.

### Rax's Return

In the months following the Battle of Endor, war refugee Corwin Ballast headed to Jakku, believing it to be a worthless rock floating in space and thus of little importance to the galaxy-wide conflict between the New Republic and Empire. If there was any place to escape the war, he hoped Jakku to be it. After learning about Fleet Admiral Rax's connection to Jakku, Grand Admiral Rae Sloane and the rebel Brentin Lore Wexley traveled to Jakku to hunt down and kill Rax. Shortly later, Rax proclaimed himself Counselor to the Empire and led the remnants of the Imperial Navy to Jakku.

Counselor Rax established a base beyond the Goazon Badlands and the Sinking Fields. Claiming that the harsh, desert world would test the spirit and mettle of his Imperial forces, Rax implemented a harsh and violent training regimen on his stormtroopers and officers. For several months, the Imperials gathered their forces while waiting for the New Republic to launch their attack. In addition, Rax struck up a deal with Niima to guard the pass leading to the Observatory and to kidnap local orphans from the Anchorites. The former Commandant Brendol Hux trained these orphans into Rax's personal guard of child soldiers. Rax also settled scores with his former guardian Kolob and killed him as a sacrifice to the dark side of the Force.

While hunting for Sloane, the New Republic operative Norra Wexley, her son Temmin Wexley, Sinjir Rath Velus, Jas Emari, and the B1-series battle droid Mister Bones discovered the Imperial remnant forces above Jakku. Temmin and Sinjir escaped on their starship Moth back to Chandrila to warn the New Republic. Norra and Jas took an escape pod to Jakku's surface to continue their hunt for Sloane. Under the orders of Temmin, Mister Bones took another escape pod to Jakku to look after his mother Norra. Norra and Jas were captured by Imperial forces and separated.

Norra eventually escaped Imperial custody with Mister Bones's help. She then reunited with Jas, who had escaped Niima's custody, and the trio continued their search for Sloane. Meanwhile, Sloane and Brentin learned about Rax's origins from Kolob and later convinced Niima to take them to the Plaintive Hand plateau, which Niima believed held a weapons facility. However, Rax learned about Sloane's presence and bombarded Niima's convoy with turbolasers. Before Norra and Jas could catch up with Sloane, Rax's Imperial forces captured Sloane and Brentin and brought them to his headquarters.

### Battle of Jakku

> Our victory on Endor was just the beginning. Now over the barren world of Jakku, we stand against the Galactic Empire.
>
> New Republic soldier

After the New Republic's Galactic Senate voted to intervene on Jakku, the New Republic dispatched military forces to the planet. Several New Republic figures including Admiral Ackbar, Commodore Kyrsta Agate, Captain Wedge Antilles, Temmin Wexley, and Jom Barell would see action in the cataclysmic Battle of Jakku. The battle would take place one year and four days after the Battle of Endor. It became the last major stand of the Galactic Empire and last major battle of the Galactic Civil War. In secret, the Battle of Jakku served as a pretext for Rax to facilitate the final stage of the Contingency.

During the Battle of Jakku, Imperial and New Republic forces fought on both space and land. The Imperial fleet formed a tight defensive formation around the Super Star Destroyer *Ravager*. The New Republic Defense Fleet was unable to penetrate this thick wall until the Star Destroyer *Punishment* broke formation and rammed the Starhawk-class battleship *Amity*. This explosion created a gap which allowed the *Amity's* sister ship *Concord* to bombard the *Ravager*. Despite being crippled, the *Concord's* commander Agate used her ship's powerful tractor beam to drag the Super Star Destroyer down to the surface; turning the tide of the battle in the New Republic's favor.

Meanwhile, New Republic ground forces under Lieutenant General Brockway assaulted the main Imperial base and weapons facility. Many from both sides were killed or crushed by falling debris from the space battle. Mister Bones was destroyed during the battle after reuniting with Temmin. In an attempt to prevent New Republic forces from capturing her ship, Captain Ciena Ree crashed her Star Destroyer *Inflictor* onto the planet's surface. She was rescued by her lover New Republic pilot Thane Kyrell. Meanwhile, Norra joined forces with Sloane and Brentin to hunt down Rax.

After launching the battle, Rax traveled with Yupe Tashu, Brendol, his son Armitage Hux, and the child soldiers to the Observatory to initiate the last stage of the Contingency. While the Huxes and the child soldiers boarded a replica of the *Imperialis*, Rax and Tashu entered the Observatory to initiate the planet-creature's awakening. After performing a Sith ritual, Rax threw Tashu, who was wearing Sith relics, into the exposed maw. However, despite Palpatine's calculations, this did not awaken the planet-creature. Before he could leave, Rax was killed by Sloane with the aid of Norra and Brentin. She then joined the Huxes and the child soldiers on their journey to the Unknown Regions where they rendezvoused with the Super Star Destroyer *Eclipse*.

While the battle was taking place, the New Republic's Chancellor Mon Mothma and the Imperial Grand Vizier Mas Amedda signed the Galactic Concordance on Chandrila; formalizing the Empire's surrender and ending the Galactic Civil War. However, Imperial forces on Jakku and elsewhere continued fighting the New Republic for several months. As the battle turned against them, the Imperials locked tractor beams onto the ships of the New Republic Starfleet, crashing them into the surface below in a desperate gamble. New Republic forces eventually captured the base after fierce fighting. Due to the Battle of Jakku, the planet's surface was covered with wrecked starships and weapons. Niima established a black marketing operation based on selling recovered weapons, computers, and engines.

### Rise of the First Order

After the Battle of Jakku, wreckage from the battle was strewn across a region of desert aptly named the Starship Graveyard. Sometime after the battle, Niima the Hutt established Niima Outpost, in an effort to scavenge leftover wreckage from the destructive battle.

In 34 ABY, the up-and-coming First Order, successor state to the Galactic Empire, deployed the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer *Finalizer* to Jakku in an effort to recover a fragment of a map that led to Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, who had gone into self-imposed exile following a failed attempt at resurrecting the Jedi Order. The First Order forces, led by Kylo Ren, attacked the village of Tuanul, where the mystic Lor San Tekka lived and kept the map to Skywalker. However, San Tekka was able to give the map to Poe Dameron, who in turn hid it in his droid, BB-8, before Dameron was captured by Kylo Ren.

The attack led to the defection of stormtrooper FN-2187, who aided Dameron's escape from the *Finalizer* in a stolen TIE/sf space superiority fighter. Ultimately, FN-2187, nicknamed "Finn" by Dameron, would escape the planet with an unknowingly Force-sensitive girl named Rey.

## Inhabitants

Over several thousands of years of evolution, aided by the chaos of The Severance and the planet-creature at Jakku's core, the original human colonists of Jakku evolved to fit what their planet had become. These desert-adapted Jakkuans roamed the surface of Jakku in groups, following underground veins of water and tracking near-mythical storms across the planet's barren surface. Millennia of predation by Jakku's fauna and their children stolen by Anchorites left the desert-adapted mistrustful of the outsiders who fled to their world.

These outsiders collected into settlements, small semi-permanent enclaves clustered around the oases that broke the desert. These oases were often tapped, the springs that fed them routed through piping into a system of wells. Tuanul, Reestkii, and Cratertown were settlements on the planet, each built around a single well. The trading post Niima Outpost was considered the only major settlement on the planet, in control of several well systems, and was guarded by the humorless Constable Zuvio and his Niima Outpost Militia. Lacking a communications grid, spacers seeking to escape debts, create a new life or simply see the galaxy often wound up at Niima Outpost, owing to it having the only navigational beacon. Not all residents were scavengers, however, with the isolated villagers of Tuanul worshiping the Church of the Force, an underground faith of Jedi worshipers hiding from first the Galactic Empire. The settlers and war refugees who hid on Jakku cobbled together clothing from recycled material that they scavenged, as clothes were not something they could afford to waste money on when water and nourishment cost a premium.