Mustafar

Mustafar was a young, volcanic planet in the Atravis sector of the Outer Rim Territories, a world of lava seas and rivers whose molten surface yielded valuable mineral allotropes drawn up from its core. Lying on the Tosste Spur off the Rimma Trade Route, it was home to the native Mustafarians and was long associated with mining. Above all, Mustafar became infamous as the place where Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side and as the location of the brooding stronghold known as Fortress Vader.

A world of lava and minerals#

Mustafar was a young world whose surface was roughly a third molten lava, with valuable mineral allotropes, including dolovite, surfacing from the planet's core to be worked at sites such as the Klegger Corp Mining Facility. The volatile, shifting nature of the planet led some to believe that spiritual forces were behind the changes in its character. Among its hardy native life were fire rats, lava eels, and the great sher kar, while the Mustafarians made their home amid its fiery glens and plains.

The Clone Wars#

During the Clone Wars, the Mustafarians aligned themselves with the Confederacy of Independent Systems, though they were not fanatically committed to the cause and had joined chiefly to secure Separatist mining contracts; daily life on the world continued much as before. With the Jedi focused on the war, law enforcement in the infrequently patrolled Outer Rim declined and organized crime flourished. The Black Sun syndicate, led by Falleen nobles, established holdings on Mustafar, and after Savage Opress beheaded its leaders the survivor Ziton Moj brought Black Sun into the Shadow Collective, supplying it with weapons, soldiers, and materiel.

The fall of Anakin Skywalker#

It was on Mustafar that the duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker reached its end. Forced to fight across the lava streams, Anakin, consumed by hatred and heedless of his own limits, attacked without regard for his safety and fell to Kenobi's blade beside a lava river. As the dark side's corruption overcame him, his remaining limbs were severed and his body was set ablaze by the lava. Kenobi took his former apprentice's lightsaber and left him to die on the riverbank. Though charred and broken, Anakin was recovered by Palpatine, brought to Coruscant, and rebuilt with cybernetics, emerging encased in a suit of black armor as Darth Vader. For years afterward, Mustafarians told one another stories of a great Jedi duel on their world, though no evidence for the tales survived.

Fortress Vader and the dark side#

At the urging of his master, who told him to find the place where the dark side called to him and draw upon its energy, Vader returned to Mustafar and made it his own domain. He raised a castle on the world, built over a Sith cave saturated with the dark side and home to a being known as the Eye of Webbish Bog, and there both master and apprentice came to focus their meditation on the dark side of the Force. Black stone quarried from the planet was used to complement the construction of the Fortress Inquisitorius on the nearby moon of Nur, to which the Inquisitorius moved its headquarters in order to remain close to Vader. The Sith Lord returned to Mustafar repeatedly, drawn by the power he found in its cave, while the world itself remained under heavy Imperial guard and its mining operations eventually ceased.

A haunted world#

Even after the Galactic Empire suffered defeat at Endor and Vader perished, the planet remained a place of lingering darkness. The acolyte Vaneé continued to maintain the abandoned castle, refusing to believe his master had died and anticipating his return. The stronghold and the fiery world around it endured as one of the galaxy's most ominous monuments to the Sith.