Hoth

Hoth was a frigid ice world in the Hoth system of the Outer Rim Territories, the sixth planet of its system and so cold that from space it appeared as a pale blue orb beneath dense snow and ice. Sparsely populated and far from the major hyperlanes despite lying close to the Corellian Trade Spine, it gained lasting notoriety as the site of Echo Base, a hidden command center of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. When the Galactic Empire discovered the base, the resulting Battle of Hoth handed the Rebellion one of its sharpest defeats of the Galactic Civil War.

Geography and environment#

Hoth orbited a single sun, with five planets lying between it and that star, and an asteroid belt surrounding the world from which meteors occasionally struck the surface. The naturalist Kell Tolkani observed that a viewer judging the planet only from orbit might reasonably conclude there was nothing to it beyond snow and ice. The temperature remained perpetually frigid and was known to drop to sixty degrees below zero Celsius after nightfall.

By the era of the Galactic Civil War the planet was passing through an ice age. The surrounding asteroid field hampered travel through the system and provided unexpected cover for anyone hiding there, since an asteroid striking the surface produced enough of a thermal signature to mask the heat traces of intelligent life. Notable surface features included the Icefall Plains, the Moorsh Moraine, and Shyloah's Crest, while creatures such as the fork-nosed ice worm, the Hoth hog, the Hoth spider, and the rayboo were adapted to its hostile cold.

Rebel base and the Battle of Hoth#

Sometime after the Battle of Yavin, Saponza's Gang, itself a rebel cell, established a base on Hoth, and various smuggling rings had earlier tried and failed to turn the world into a headquarters. General Jan Dodonna of the Alliance listed Hoth among his preliminary scans for possible Alliance bases. With far greater resources than the smugglers who had come before, the Rebellion eventually built Echo Base into the icy world.

The Empire's discovery of the hidden base led to the Battle of Hoth. Although Echo Base was evacuated in the eleventh hour, the engagement ended in a clear defeat for the Alliance after the elite Imperial Blizzard Force overran the position.

New Republic Era#

By the New Republic Era Hoth had returned to obscurity, its battlefields picked apart and long abandoned. In 5 ABY, the acting governor of Troithe, Fara Yadeez, heard rumors that the New Republic intended to repurpose Hoth as a prison for those who remained loyal to the Empire. Major Soran Keize dismissed the rumor's credibility, reasoning that Chancellor Mon Mothma had committed the New Republic to a pretext of justice over punishment, and that converting the very world where the Rebellion had been so badly beaten carried too much grim poetry to be plausible. The planet was later remembered in the Galactic Explorer's Guide, a survival manual that described it as little more than a footnote in galactic history.