Planets - Y
Source List & Abbreviations
Yaga Minor
The location of a major group of Imperial shipyards, in addition to the
facilities at Ord Trasi and Bilbringi. All three shipyards were
extremely busy during Grand Admiral Thrawn's offensive against the New
Republic. The Outbound Flight program departed from Yaga Minor on 4/1/64
Pre-Empire date. [DFR, TLC]
Yag'Dhul
Yag'Dhul, a small dense planet with three moons, is the homeworld of the
alien species known as the Givin. The complex interaction of orbits and
rotations between Yag'Dhul and its moons means that the planet is
continually beset by massive tidal forces powerful enough to pull the
water and the atmosphere to different locations, exposing large areas of
the planet to hard vacuum. While some animals on Yag'Dhul survive by
traveling along with the tides, the Givin have evolved a hard, sealable
exoskeleton which allows them to survive in vacuum. The Givin inhabit
hermetically sealed cities built to withstand the strongest tides, and
their society is organized around complex mathematics due to the
importance of predicting the tides and the advanced calculations neces
sary to do so. Technology on Yag'Dhul is quite advanced, and the Givin
are respected starship builders. [GG4]
Yavin system
Far from the Galactic Core and major hyperspace lanes, the Yavin system
does not appear on many astrogation charts. The system's three planets--
Fiddanl, Stroiketcy and Yavin-- orbit a medium orange star. Formed over
seven and a half billion years ago, the system was first surveyed during
the Old Republic's Expansion Era, and was originally recorded as unfit
for human habitation. [GG2]
Yavin
Yavin, in the system of the same name, is an orange gas giant nearly
200,000 kilometers in diameter with a strong magnetic field. The planet
occupies the outermost position in the system and has dozens of moons,
three of which (designated four, eight, and thirteen) can support
humanoid life. Refracted light from the system's star causes the planet
to seemingly glow with an inner light. Yavin's atmosphere, almost 65,000
kilometers deep, is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, and the
windstorms at this level often exceed 600 km/hour. Throughout this upper
atmosphere live several varieties of floating gasbag creatures, which
breed once every century. Most are non-predatory and feed on drifting
algae, but two species (the floater shark and floater squid) prey on
their fellow animals. Yavin's metallic core is surrounded by a thick
layer of frozen liquids under tremendous pressure. Many species of
nearly two-dimensional "crawlers" live in this frozen layer, at
pressures that would crush most other lifeforms. The pressures are so
great that carbon and metallic hydrogen are compressed together to form
quantum crystals called Corusca gems. The gems, found only at Yavin's
core, glow with an inner light and are the hardest substance known in
the galaxy. Due to their uniqueness and rarity they are extremely
valuable. The Damarind Corporation, an enormous galaxywide consortium of
jewel merchants, had an exclusive contract with the Empire to harvest
Corusca stones from Yavin. Damarind Fishing Station, in orbit above the
gas giant, retrieved gems for several years until eventually going
bankrupt due to economic difficulties.
Immediately following the Battle of Yavin, an Imperial Salvage Station
was temporarily set up in the planet's orbit to analyze the debris from
the destroyed Death Star. Seven years after the Battle of Endor, the New
Republic attempted to dispose of the Sun Crusher by depositing it in the
planet's dense core, but it was quickly retrieved by Kyp Durron. One
year later, following an intense battle at Yavin 4, Admiral Daala's
Super Star Destroyer Knight Hammer plunged into Yavin's atmosphere and
was destroyed. Nineteen years after Endor, Lando Calrissian established
GemDiver Station in Yavin's atmosphere to retrieve Corusca gems from the
lower levels. The station operated by dropping a quantum-plated diving
bell via an energy tether down to Yavin's core, where the largest gems
can be found. Jacen and Jaina Solo were kidnapped from GemDiver Station
following an Imperial attack. [SW, SWN, DA, DLOS, YJK, GG2, DS]
Yavin 4
The fourth moon of the planet Yavin houses the temples and ruined
buildings of the now-vanished Massassi race, and once served as the
primary base for the Rebel Alliance. A hot jungle world, Yavin 4 has
four main continents separated by six oceans, and contains one
landlocked sea. (A scouting report for Wetyin's Colony tentatively named
the four continents Koos, Starloft, Swivven, and Wetyin.) Volcanic
mountain ranges and wide rivers can be found amid the thick jungles and
towering, purple-barked Massassi trees. The moon has both a wet and dry
season, and violent, unpredictable storms whip across its surface every
few months. Beautiful rainbow storms sometimes occur when the sun rises
past the limb of the gas giant Yavin and its light refracts against
prismatic ice crystals high in the atmosphere. Yavin 4's flora includes
sense-enhancing blueleaf shrub, climbing fern, feather fern, colorful
nebula orchids, blistering touch-not shrub, and explosive grenade fungi.
Indigenous life in Yavin 4's jungles includes semi-intelligent simians
called woolamanders, stubborn Yavinian runyips, mucous salamanders,
purple jumping spiders, lizard crabs, swimming crabs, whisper birds,
reptile birds, stinger lizards, crystal snakes, armored eels, stump
lizards, crawlfish, ravenous stintaril rodents, a six-legged, tusked
beast with tentacled eyes, tree ticks, spiderlike anglers, piranha
beetles, and flying, two-headed reptiles created during the time of the
Sith Lord Exar Kun. Several of the ancient Massassi ruins have been
given names, including the Great Temple, the Palace of the Woolamander,
and the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster, and almost all of the ruins are
connected via an extensive network of underground tunnels. The pyramidal
Great Temple lies next to a broad, branching river. The top of the
Temple houses an observation deck, and below that is the vast grand
audience chamber. Below the chamber are housing levels, and the ground
level contains the Communications Center, common rooms, and the
Alliance's former War Room. The Temple's hangars are located
underground.
Over four thousand years ago the Sith magician Naga Sadow, under a death
sentence from the current Sith Lord, fled to Yavin 4 with his followers
where he could practice his Dark Side alchemy in peace. Sadow hid his
starship and his alchemic equipment beneath the Sith Temple of Fire.
Sadow's alchemy helped create many monsters, including a warrior species
called the Massassi designed to guard Sadow's Yavin 4 legacy. The
Massassi, the mutated descendants of the ancient Sith, gradually
devolved into a primitive but dangerous people, using the Dark Side to
augment their archaic weapons. When the Dark Jedi Exar Kun arrived on
Yavin 4, he enslaved the Massassi and forced them to construct new
temples as focal points for Sith power. One temple dedicated to Kun s
greatness was built deep in the jungle in the center of a still lake,
and featured glittering Corusca gems and a towering obsidian statue of
the dark lord. During the Sith War, Kun brought twenty Jedi knights to
Yavin 4, where he infected them with the evil spirits of the ancient
Sith. Ordering them to go out and slay their Jedi masters, a terrible
Jedi holocaust descended on the galaxy. Soon, however, a united group of
thousands of Jedi, led to the jungle moon by the repentant Ulic Qel-
Droma, arrived to stop Kun. The Dark Lord ordered the Massassi Night
Beast into an isolation chamber as a surprise for his enemies, and began
putting his final plans into effect. Knowing he could not defeat the
Jedi fleet, Kun sacrificed thousands of Massassi lives to trap his own s
pirit within the walls of the temples. The Jedi attackers mistakenly
ignited the moon's jungles, devastating its surface and causing the
deaths of the remaining Massassi, but the Great Sith War had finally
ended. Before his defeat, Exar Kun had trapped the children of the
Massassi within a strange golden globe, and several desperate Massassi
traveled to Yavin 8 to seek assistance from the Melodie people. Four
hundred years ago, the Jedi master Ikrit discovered the golden sphere
containing the Massassi children located beneath the Palace of the
Woolamander, and stayed beneath it to await someone who could break its
curse. Centuries later, the Rebel Alliance constructed its primary base
within the abandoned temples after they evacuated their installation on
Dantooine. Under the command of General Jan Dodonna, Alliance engineers
cleared out the ancient structures and made them fit for habitation once
more, and also installed a turbolift and erected high lookout towers.
Dodonna sealed off the nearby Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster when an
eerie power crystal, containing what appeared to be trapped spirits, was
found inside its main audience chamber. The Sullustan naturalist Dr'uun
Unnh took time out from his Alliance duties to begin the first
modern-day studies of the jungle moon, cataloguing many of its plant and
animal species. Not long after, the first Imperial Death Star discovered
the secret base and moved into firing position as the Rebels
counterattacked with snubfighters. The battle station was completely
destroyed by Luke Skywalker (in what is now referred to as the Battle of
Yavin) as it attempted to shatter Yavin 4 with its superlaser. During
the fighting, an Imperial pilot named Qorl crashed his damaged TIE in
the moon's jungles and fruitlessly awaited rescue, while another
crashing TIE killed Dr'uun Unnh.
In the aftermath of the battle, the Empire blockaded the moon and
periodically attacked the Rebel base with TIE fighters. During one such
attack, a TIE bomber crashed in the jungle and awakened the Massassi
Night Beast, which had lain dormant for thousands of years in its
suspended animation capsule. According to the capsule's records, the
Massassi left the creature behind to guard their temples while they fled
the system to escape a war. The Night Beast (which could use the Force
to shield itself from energy weapons) laid waste to much of the Rebel
base until calmed by Luke Skywalker. The creature then took an Alliance
ship and left the moon, intending to search for its former masters among
the stars. The Alliance eventually evacuated Yavin 4, and much of their
food supply was destroyed in the process, which necessitated
negotiations with Overlord Ghorin of the Greater Plooriod Cluster. Soon
after the Alliance's evacuation, the Empire gave a permit to the
Fernandin Scouting Expedition to investigate Yavin 4 as a possible
homeworld for the displaced Wetyin's Colony. Eleven years later (seven
years after the Battle of Endor), the Great Temple was used as the
location of Luke Skywalker's Jedi Academy, and the long-trapped spirit
of Exar Kun reasserted itself. After nearly killing Skywalker, Kunšs
ghost was finally vanquished by the efforts of the new Jedi trainees.
Eight years after Endor, the Jedi Academy was targeted for attack by
Admiral Daala's fleet. After a long, destructive battle, Daala's forces
were defeated and her Super Star Destroyer Knight Hammer was demolished.
Eighteen years after Endor, Anakin Solo visited the Jedi Academy and
discovered a mysterious golden sphere hidden beneath the Palace of the
Woolamander. One year later, Jacen and Jaina Solo visited the Academy
and were held prisoner by the TIE pilot Qorl, still living in the moon's
deep jungles. [SW, SWN, DA, COTF, DLOS, YJK, JJK, GG2, CSW, DS, FP,
ISWU, TSW]
Yavin 8
The eighth moon of the planet Yavin is covered with vast brown and green
tundra plains, located between two polar ice caps and split by an
equatorial range of purple mountains. The moon has almost no large
bodies of water, though large reservoirs of groundwater lie beneath the
permafrost of the mottled tundra-- resulting in the formation of small
marshes and swamps during the summer months. The intelligent amphibious
humanoids known as the Melodies inhabit the caverns and lakes in the
warmer equatorial region near Yavin 8's mountains. Unlike most
amphibians, the Melodies begin life on land, then move into water as
adults-- their legs are replaced by tails and their lungs by gills. This
transformation into adult form, called the Changing Ceremony, happens
around a Melodie's twentieth year and takes place in a shallow pool
coated with a unique, air-supplying algae. The Melodies are unable to
leave their pools during the transformation (which can take weeks), and
are thus particularly vulnerable to Yavin 8's many land-based predators.
The young Melodies perform most of the necessary functions of their
primitive society, since the elders can no longer leave the streams and
lakes. Animal life on Yavin 8 is abundant, including silver- backed
fish, and also many species of herbivorous burrowers and their
carnivorous counterparts (such as the loper and moss-hopper). Seventeen
species of grazers, including the wolbak, dysart, dontopod, and songbuk,
inhabit the moon's tundra and mountain ranges. Yavin 8's predators
include snakelike reels, color- changing ursods, rodent-like raiths,
flying avrils, serpentine ropedancers, and arachnid purellas. Plant life
on the world is primarily made up of lichens, mosses, algae, and stunted
trees and bushes, and includes the edible trico plant. About 54 million
Melodies inhabit the moon.
Around four thousand years ago, members of Yavin 4's Massassi species
journeyed to Yavin 8 to seek help for their children, who had been
magically trapped in a golden globe by the Dark Jedi Exar Kun. When the
Melodie elders were unable to help them, the Massassi carved the story
of their plight in the rocks of the Sistra mountain in the hopes that
someone would eventually be able to break the curse. Eighteen years
after the Battle of Endor, Anakin Solo and the Jedi trainee Tahiri
traveled to Yavin 8 to take their friend Lyric to her Changing Ceremony
within the Sistra mountain. They had to battle an avril, a reel, a
purella, and a pack of raiths, but the pair uncovered the ancient
message of the Massassi and brought back a new Melodie child, Sannah, to
be trained at the Jedi Academy on Yavin 4. [GG2, JJK]
Yavin 13
The thirteenth moon of the planet Yavin is a desert world home to two
intelligent species of primitive aliens- - the Gerbs and the Slith. The
surface of Yavin 13 is covered with rocky mesas, forests of tall cacti,
and shifting walls of blowing sand. A vast ocean makes up most of the
southern hemisphere, which sends patches of fog and infrequent storms
across the arid desert. The nomadic Slith are intelligent serpents,
travelling the desert plains at night and hunting small animals with
their venomous fangs. The Slith communities of eight to fourteen
individuals are ruled by an alpha male (though females do all the
hunting), and members communicate with each other by rubbing their
scales along the ground. The rabbitlike Gerbs have metallic claws to aid
in burrowing, and enormous, sensitive ears. They live in underground
warrens of approximately ten families and tend their nearby farms with
primitive hand tools. The Gerbs and Slith have traditionally had little
to do with one another. Plant life on Yavin 13 includes the saldi bush
and korin flower. Animal life includes a vast array of insect species,
twilight lizards, solar-collecting burning snakes, and over 60 species
of scorpionlike tripions. Around 43 million Gerbs and Slith inhabit the
moon. [GG2]
Yetoom
Yetoom, located on the edge of the Senex sector, is the base of
operations for Fargednim P'taan, a moderately big drug dealer. [COTJ]
Ylix
A backwater world, Ylix was the home planet of Gallandro the gunman. An
ancient feud existed between Ylix and Goelitz (a planet a few systems
away) and Ylix was occasionally attacked by Goelitz revolutionaries. As
a youth Gallandro enlisted in the Ylix militia, and their forces
eventually defeated Goelitz after many devastating battles. [CSSB]
Yllotat system
Prior to the Battle of Endor, the Imperial Dreadnaught Dargon was
transporting Rebel and Bothan prisoners to the Star Destroyer Garret in
the Yllotat system when it fell under Alliance attack. [TSC]
Yrrna system
Located in the Outer Rim, the Yrrna system was the site of an Imperial
cargo transfer area. Following the Battle of Hoth, this cargo area was
attacked by the pirate leader Ali Tarrak, using her strike force of
stolen TIE Defenders. [TSC]
Y'Toub System
The Y'Toub system, located in the center of the galactic region known as
Hutt Space, contains six planets orbiting a yellow star. A massive,
radioactive gas cloud containing the hidden planet Ganath lies very
close to the system. Four of the system's six planets are habitable,
though the largest (and best known) is Nal Hutta, with its orbiting
"smugglers' moon," Nar Shaddaa. Consequently, it is sometimes called the
Nal Hutta system. [GG4, DESB, DE2, DS]
Yuga Two&127
A planet covered with dense rainforests and clinging trees, Yuga Two is
a popular tourist destination due to the Yuga Planetary Park. Alliance
historian Voren Na'al bought passage from Yuga Two to Tatooine on a
Galaxy Tours ship to begin documenting the histories of the Heroes of
Yavin. [MTS]