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Yavin 4

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one of the many inhabitable moons of the gas giant Yavin, Yavin 4 had a lush, tropical ecology that supported an abundance of life. It was home to the extinct Massassi race, which was subjugated by Exar Kun some 4,000 years before the Battle of Endor. The Massassi built huge temples in the jungles to focus the Dark Side energies Kun commanded. During the Great Sith War, Yavin 4 was were Kun made his final stand, draining the life energies of the Massassi to preserve his spirit despite the death of his flesh. The resulting clash of Force energies sparked huge forest fires that ravaged the jungles. When Ulic Qel-Droma returned several years after the war, the jungles were still barren of life. Over the millennia, however, life did return to the moon, and its jungles flourished. When the Alliance built their first main base, they chose Yavin 4 as an out-of-the-way location. Following the destruction of Alderaan and Princess Leia's rescue from the first Death Star, the Empire discovered the base's location and tried to destroy it. The Alliance's starfighters, led by Luke Skywalker, destroyed the station before it could fire on the moon. However, debris from the first Death Star rained down on Yavin 4 for months, touching off forest fires and laying waste to vast portions of the planet. The destruction was much less than that resulting from the Sith War, and much of the Alliance base remained intact. Later, Mon Mothma and Leia Organa-Solo chose Yavin 4 as the site for Luke Skywalker's Jedi praxeum. The average day on Yavin 4 lasted 24 standard hours, and it circled Yavin three times every Coruscant standard year. The moon had four major land masses separated by six interconnected oceans. Note that I, Jedi indicates that Yavin 4 has its own moon. Also note that Yavin Four is described as the base of operations for the new government forming out of the Alliance, following the death of Emperor Palpatine at Endor, in The Glove of Darth Vader. The Lost City of the Jedi claims that, thousands of years before the Galactic Civil War, Yavin 4 was a barren, cold ball of rock. The ancient Jedi created the lush, tropical environment, with a 6-month dry/6-month wet seasonal cycle, by building a weather and climate control center in the Lost City. They Jedi then programmed the caretaker droids to maintain the weather programs until they are told not to. The moon was later burnt extensively by Trioculus, in an attempt to locate the Lost City of the Jedi. Yavin 4 remained untouched for several decades, until the Yuuzhan Vong invaded the galaxy. In an effort to wipe out the Jedi, the Yuuzhan Vong placed bounties on the heads of any being who was trained as a Jedi Knight. Many bounty hunters made the trip to the Yavin System, but none could locate the jungle moon and its temples. This was because Luke Skywalker and his fellow Jedi Masters used Fallanassi techniques of illusion to hide the entire moon from view. However, the illusion was eventually broken when a group of Peace Brigade ships managed to find it, and relayed its location to the Yuuzhan Vong. The alien invaders attacked Yavin 4 and seized control of the moon, reforming it to serve as a Shaper base.