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 necessary 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 spirit 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, Kun’s 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]

Yulant system

Located in the Core Worlds, the Yulant system contains one of the eighteen farming planets administered by the Salliche Ag Corporation. After the Battle of Endor, workers in the Yulant, Ruan, and Broest systems revolted against the Imperially-controlled Salliche Ag by burning fields and destroying hydroponics facilities. [SWAJ]

Yunkor IX

In an early test of the B-wing starfighter, a single B-wing was sent to destroy a TIE fighter staging area near Yunkor IX. [FP]

Yushan sector

Located in the Mid-Rim, the Yushan sector contains the planet Kaal. [SWAJ]

Yyrtan system

The Yyrtan system contains the yellow star Yyrta and several planets, including Kirtania. The system is positioned along a hyperspace trade route that has recently increased in popularity. [SWAJ]