Mustafar

**Mustafar** was a small planet located in the Mustafar system of the Outer Rim Territories, coreward of Rutan, between the Hydian Way and the Ninth Quadrant. Once a garden world nourished by the Bright Star artifact, its orbit was shifted when Lady Corvax unleashed the energies of the Bright Star in an attempt to return her husband to life. The resulting gravimetric duel between the gas giants Jestefad and Lefrani over Mustafar heated the planet's core, transforming the lush world into an imbalanced volcanic hellscape. Adapting to life on their devastated homeworld, the arthropodal Mustafarians evolved into two distinct subspecies that cooperated to ensure their continued survival. Legends of Corvax's search for immortality brought the ancient Sith to Mustafar, seeking the same secrets of eternal life. There, they built a temple over a locus in the dark side of the Force, above the buried ruins of Corvax Fortress.

A fiery volcanic world where lava was mined like a precious natural resource, Mustafar often served as a place to dispose of unwanted evidence, a quality which drew Black Sun to the planet. Mustafar also drew the Sith: it was here that Darth Maul began his training under Darth Sidious. Acquired by the Techno Union over three hundred years before the Clone Wars, Mustafar's lava flows were mined for unique and valuable minerals. It was also home to the Black Sun crime syndicate, whose headquarters was located near the mining town that became known as Zitontown after the Falleen Ziton Moj ascended to leadership of the organization. During the Clone Wars, the Mustafarians aligned themselves with the Confederacy of Independent Systems, who used Mustafar to produce battle droids for their droid army. Darth Sidious had a secret facility on the planet where he intended to turn "harvested" Force-sensitive children into Force-talented spies. However, the Sith Lord had the base scuttled when Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, arrived to rescue the younglings. Mustafar served as the last capital of the Confederacy of Independent Systems during the Clone Wars, thus becoming the site of the Separatists' downfall, an event that shaped galactic history. In a duel that followed, Darth Vader fought his former mentor, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. The fallen Jedi lost and was severely burnt after he was caught on fire by one of Mustafar's lava rivers, forcing him to wear a suit of dark armor to live. Mustafar then came under the ownership of the Galactic Empire after the Techno Union and its assets were nationalized. Sidious had new facilities built on the planet, where more Force-sensitive infants were taken and transformed into agents of the Inquisitorius.

During this era, Vader returned to the site of his greatest defeat and, with the help of the ancient Sith Lord Darth Momin, erected the massive monolith Fortress Vader to serve as his personal sanctum, built on the site of the former Sith temple. Throughout the Age of the Empire, Vader used the planet to fulfill his master's biddings, with the fiery world becoming the final resting place for victims of the Great Jedi Purge. In addition, Vader also undertook personal business within his new realm, attempting to wield the dark powers of Mustafar to bring his deceased wife back from the dead.

Following the Dark Lord of the Sith, the Empire took hold of planet. Resource extraction efforts on Mustafar were taken over by the Mining Guild, although strict Imperial travel restrictions on the system made it difficult for the guild to turn a profit and mining operations eventually ceased entirely. Black Sun also abandoned Mustafar for a more low profile world when the Empire established a garrison there. The Mustafarians resisted the Imperial occupation of their homeworld and attempted to drive them from Mustafar by launching multiple assaults on Fortress Vader.

Although it hosted one of the earliest rebel victories of the Galactic Civil War, Mustafar fell into obscurity following Vader's demise at the Battle of Endor. After the destruction of the Bright Star, the planet's ecosystem slowly began to heal from the devastation it had endured for centuries prior. Many devout pilgrims journeyed to the ruins of Fortress Vader, hoping to tap into the late Sith's dark power.

## Characteristics

Mustafar was a planet within the eponymous system of the Atravis sector, in the Outer Rim Territories. It was a small world situated in grid square L-19 of the Standard Galactic Grid, and it lay on the Tosste Spur trade route, off the Rimma Trade Route. A part of the Western Reaches, Mustafar was located 53,000 light-years from the galaxy's Core.

With an overlapping orbit, Mustafar was the third orbit of its system around the primary star Priate, completing a full rotation every 36 standard hours and a revolution around its sun every 412 local days, the equivalent of 618 standard days. It had a diameter of 4,200 kilometers, or 2,610 miles, and was a terrestrial world classed as a wasteland during the Imperial Era.

Nourished by the power of the Bright Star artifact, it was once a temperate and lush garden world that thrived with lifeforms that inhabited forests. Millennia before the Imperial Era, Mustafar became an unstable volcanic world with underground caves and lava constituting 35% of its surface, taking the form of lava seas, rivers, and pits interspersed with glens, molten rock plains, as well as obsidian mountain ranges and shores. Few areas were temperate enough to sustain life, and only a few landmasses were not fractured by tectonic disruption and magma flows; allowing lifeforms to evolve deep underground.

The tortured planet was powerful in the dark side of the Force, and, along with valuable mineral allotropes that surfaced from the planet core as well as its obscurity to the wider galaxy, attracted various off-world interests that exploited the molten planet. Mustafar remained a fiery world until the destruction of the Bright Star, at which point the planet was allowed to regrow. Such different states of the world led some to believe that spiritual forces were the catalysts to the changes in Mustafar's nature.

Deep underground, Mustafar contained lava lakes from which fumes drifted up to surface-level facilities; such fumes played tricks with the minds of organics who inhaled it, giving rise to what Lellis referred to as "shadows of the mind"—visions of fears and doubts that could manifest as ghosts of the past. Lava fumes were most potent around the vicinity of the Klegger Corp Mining Facility, and sustained exposure to it drove an individual insane. Repulsor vents were thus installed at the Mining Complex to prevent such toxic fumes from rising to indoor facilities and being inhaled by those within.

Mustafar was twinned with the gas giant Jestefad, which it closely orbited, being constantly pulled by its gravitational force; Mustafar was nearly captured by the larger world as its moon, an event that was only prevented by the counterbalancing gravitational pull from the more remote gas giant Lefrani. Mustafar nevertheless possessed a standard gravity. The influence of the massive magnetic field of Mustafar's larger twin, however, resulted in its hellish volcanic landscape, as the power of Jestefad's gravitational force caused massive tidal disruption that heated Mustafar's interior.

Along with being engulfed in a constant gravimetric battle, Mustafar housed an unstable core that caused groundquakes powerful enough to split the planet's continents apart, and its split tectonic plates allowed the planet's searing magma to push through to the surface, creating a volcanic hot spot visible as a bright red cluster from space.

While great portions of the planet were always in motion, one of the few constant features was the central volcano. Lava poured out of the spot at nearly 100,000 liters per second and pooled at the giant volcano's base. To the north was a region named the Burning Plains, which boasted heavy volcanic activity. Another region earned its nickname, the Smoking Forest, as smoke spewed from its tree-like rock chimneys. Mustafar's Berken's Flow was the largest lavafall in the galaxy, while Tulrus Island—which shared its name with the tulrus creature—was surrounded by tall mountains.

The young world's instability churned magma that carried ores with unique and valuable minerals to its surface, attracting business interests from various galactic mining conglomerates such as the Mining Guild to exploit the mineral wealth of the otherwise untouched world. Mining facilities were set up for minerals and metal ore, including dolovite, gold, and mirkanite.

The searing magma that bubbled beneath the surface flooded the planet, covering it in oceans and rivers of lava. Geothermal energy was the main power source of the Techno Union's mining complex on the planet, and the lava flows that coated the rocky terrain left behind traces of flood basalt. At 800°C (1500°F), Mustafar's lava, while still very hot, had a lower temperature than that found on other worlds due to unusual mineral allotropes that were molten at lower temperatures.

Mustafar's atmosphere was influenced by the breath of its volcanoes and Jestefad's massive magnetic field. Along with cyclonic-force updrafts and thermal currents, titanic lightning storms made up the planet's unfriendly skies. Turbulent and ash-laden, the atmosphere was also hot and chemical, consisting of thick clouds of black smoke and allowing for choking ash to fall like rain. Lava processing operations created toxic gas by-products, and a noxious air cast the world in a hazy fog. Thus, Mustafar was classified as a world with a Type II atmosphere, wherein the usage of a breath mask was recommended.

The frequent electromagnetic interference and lightning storms in the atmosphere respectively led to signal loss and noise, although the effects of Mustafar's hectic skies could be reduced through the use of dedicated dampers. The planet's magnetic field interfered with sensors installed on the surface, and electromagnetic interference also posed a significant risk for off-world arrivals and departures. Those caught in one such storm without the assistance of specially shielded surface-level landing equipment—which included energy-shielded landing pads and guidance and tractor beams—found, at best, their starship's scanners rendered useless and navigational equipment and control systems interfered with. In certain cases, a ship was torn apart as Mustafar was by Lefrani and Jestefad. Ships were additionally threatened by Mustafar's intense heat and incendiary ash, although any damage could be prevented should a vessel be equipped with sufficiently powerful energy shields.

Despite the hellish environment after its devastation, Mustafar was teeming with life, a home to fragile but determined organisms all connected through the Force energy field. All surviving lifeforms had evolved deep underground, in the few areas that remained temperate and with landmasses were not fractured: in the solid rock betwixt lava flows lived mammalian, reptillian, and insect species, although reptilian and insectoid lifeforms proved to be the most successful survivors, aggressive in nature and with tough skin or carapaces. The extremophile creatures of the planet had adapted to Mustafar's desolation and become indomitable. The sentient Mustafarians were insectoid, and were forced to live largely underground in Mustafar's north and near the equator.

Much like the planet itself, some of the creatures found on Mustafar were especially deadly. Highly aggressive creatures posed a significant hazard on the planet due to its scarce resources. The planet's apex predator was the scorpion-like Sher Kar, which lived deep in the nesting grounds of their tulrus prey. The fearsome darkghast, similar in some respects to the rancors of the planet Dathomir, was a multi-limbed carnivore that dwelled beneath the world's rocky surface.

The reptillian blistmok hunted in packs and were capable of pursuing their prey for days. The insectoid xandanks were well protected by their armor and hunted in packs as well. Tough, semi-sentient creatures named roggwarts hunted the planet's tunnels and lava tubes in search of xandanks, as well as for giant, human-eating lava eels. Despite the danger of roggwarts, they could be domesticated with the proper training and were imported to Mustafar to work in the planet's mines.

By 3 BBY, a roggwart named Kongo the Disembowler was employed to keep the dolovite mine tunnels free of xandanks and lava eels. Kongo was reputedly the last of his kind by between 0 and 1 ABY, although it may have been said in an effort to make the roggwart seem more mysterious and exotic.

The large insectoids known as lava fleas had developed a tough exoskeleton that protected them from the world's fiery devastation. They lived largely underground and ate away at the planet's crust, feeding on the surface's rich minerals, rocks, and dirt and were commonly used as domesticated mounts by the sentient Mustafarians. Lava fleas and Mustafarians thus had a close connection and were the only species that thrived on Mustafar.

The large, lumbering egg-laying tulrus had sharp tusks and bad temper, while the small jundak parasite attached itself to a host and eventually bursted out, killing the host and developing into a large adult. Lizard-crows occupied Mustafar's lava fields; these creatures were often scared away by what the Mustafarians referred to as "molten men." Spark-roaches and rodents called fire rats also called Mustafar their home, the latter of which gnawed on the lava crystals that formed on the planet.

Lava nymphs were winged creatures that inhabited the planet's caverns in hives. Considered to be vermin, the creatures' insides were filled with lava, which they were able to spit out when provoked. Feeding on minerals, hives of kubaza beetles lived near lava flows and were fierce defenders of their nests; starting life as a small larva, the creature developed a defense mechanism by the time it reached adulthood that allowed it to warn its brood by exploding. Burrowing quadrupeds known as krishels inhabited Mustafar's labyrinthine caverns and tunnels. Those strong, hardshelled creatures were hunted by the Mustafarians.

Although the lush vegetation that once covered the planet eventually disappeared beneath fire and ash, Mustafar was not devoid of fungal and vegetal life. Hidden away from the world's searing lava rivers, kahel cave fungi grew underground. These organisms were deeply symbolic to the native Mustafarians and served as the inspiration for their mushroom-like architecture. Following the destruction of the Aeon Engine during the Imperial Era, the muggy marshland of Corvax Fen developed near Fortress Vader, and life began to slowly creep back once again.

## History

Toward the end of the Galactic Civil War, Darth Vader was saved by his son Luke Skywalker's selfless compassion and in turn sacrificed himself to destroy the Emperor aboard the second Death Star during the Battle of Endor in 4 ABY. Having re-embraced his identity as Anakin Skywalker as he succumbed to the injuries inflicted upon him by his late Sith Master, Vader died leaving his fortress without a host. After the battle, pilot Wedge Antilles went on a scouting mission to suspected Imperial planets. He reported back to the New Republic when he was on Raydonia before going missing above the planet Akiva. Due to its proximity to Raydonia, Admiral Gial Ackbar sent a scout to Mustafar, as well as to Tatooine, Dermos, and Geonosis, while two scouts were sent to Akiva.

Following news of Darth Vader's death over Endor that was broadcast by the Rebel Alliance, Mustafarians gathered around the fortress' vicinity in celebration of the fall of the Empire. Lightning storm clouds and lava on Mustafar stirred around Vader's castle, howls sounded in the night, and cries echoed across the lava plains. The Mustafarian boy Giggek recognized that his kind were not truly free as long as they lived under the shadow of Vader's castle, and so resolved to rid the land of Vader's curse by bringing the castle to ruin. Along with Tuttel, Giggek acquired detonators from a store of equipment from the obsidian mines belonging to Tuttel's uncle, Lellis. However, the latter forbid the young boys from entering Vader's castle for the reason that it was lethal and evil, telling the story of how Vaneé came into servitude under Vader and further speculating that the young Mustafarians were only wanting to be figures of legends.

Nevertheless, Giggek led Tuttel into Vader's castle by way of lava flea, venturing in to find a pit trapping Vaneé, the servant of Vader and the self-styled "one true Acolyte of the Beyond" who was detained by Vader there some time ago. Rescuing the Acolyte in hopes of not bringing death upon anyone in the process of destroying Vader's castle, Giggek was at once betrayed by Vaneé, who dropped the boy down the pit in hopes of bringing death to those who sought to tarnish his master's legacy. However, after instructing his Mustafarian companion to flee, which Tuttel did with their lava flea, Giggek ignited his explosives through a remote detonator, and although the blast did not bring down Vader's castle, Vaneé was buried in black sand. However, the Sith servant survived. A voice familiar to Vaneé told him not to fear, and assured its servant that he could return Vader to the fires of Mustafar and be made whole.

A year later in 5 ABY, following the Empire's defeat over Jakku, Vaneé told the voice he believed to be his master that everyone in the galaxy believed that he was dead, which the supposed ghost of Vader replied to by saying that the Sith can never truly be killed since it was the will of the dark side. Vaneé then orchestrated a ritual in which Vader's ghost reached out across the galaxy to imprint nightmares upon others' minds. One such nightmare reached Milo Graf, brother of Lina Graf, in which Milo had a nightmare about undead droids and himself being taken to Mustafar by CR-8R, controlled by Vaneé.

At some point after the Empire's fall, Chattar Lal of the Sith Eternal moved into an abandoned Sith temple on Mustafar, making it the base of operations for his cultists as well as members of the Alazmec of Winsit who supported him. In public view, Lal was the Prime Minister of Dilonexa XXIII, being stationed at the agriworld and only appearing on Mustafar via hologram most of the time. That was until the bounty hunter Boba Fett, on Lal's trail, chased the Prime Minister off Dilonexa XXIII all the way to Mustafar, shooting down his shuttle and tracking him to the Sith temple. Fett was involved in a skirmish in the temple that resulted in him fighting and capturing Lal, and the temple being damaged by a flood created by the collapse of a large cistern during the chaos. Later, he fought and defeated the Sith assassin Ochi, who had come to rescue Lal. Fett went on to freeze Lal in carbonite at the Mensix Mining Facility, staying in Mustafar Apts for a time afterward. Right after these events, a group of the Acolytes of the Beyond touched down on Mustafar, discovering the Glove of Darth Vader, which had been worn by Lal and thought lost after his detainment by Fett. Sometime later, Fett traveled to Vader's castle, having been told he would find answers there by Lal prior to the cultist's freezing in carbonite. There, he listened to two tales told by Vaneé, and then told a tale himself. After this, Vaneé tried to plant a nightmarish illusion in Fett's mind, but the bounty hunter was able to resist and subsequently fought back. In the end, Vaneé was beaten and trapped with his nightmares for the rest of his life, and Fett departed Fortress Vader and Mustafar to deliver Lal's carbonite-frozen body to Indiana Jones.

Mustafar grew in obscurity in the decades that followed, and Vader's castle eventually fell into ruins. Thanks to the destruction of the Bright Star, Mustafar's ecosystem began to be healed. Several individuals from off-world also visited the planet, including the spy Vi Moradi as well as the historian and adventurer Eloc Throno, who wrote of the world in *Volcanic Planets: Your Guide to the Galaxy's Hottest Destinations*, one of the many travel guides he wrote throughout his career.