Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/November 17, 2010

The Second Battle of Geonosis took place around 22 BBY during the Clone Wars, when the Jedi Order and Galactic Republic launched a full-scale planetary invasion of Geonosis to shut down several Separatist battle droid foundries that Warlord Poggle the Lesser had built there with funding from the InterGalactic Banking Clan and Trade Federation. Following Senator Padmé Amidala's discovery of the droid factories, the Jedi High Council dispatched a massive Jedi-led detachment of the Grand Army of the Republic to retake Geonosis and halt the facilities' production of battle droids. Tasked with the challenge of landing on the planet and establishing a staging area, the Jedi mounted a three-pronged attack on the Geonosian defenses, with Jedi Generals Ki-Adi-Mundi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Anakin Skywalker each leading an assault force. After rendezvousing at a site a short ways from the ray shield protecting the droid factories, the Republic army regrouped and eliminated the shield generator, making way for the rest of the clone trooper forces to safely land.

In order to eliminate Poggle's main droid foundry, Generals Skywalker and Luminara Unduli engaged the battle droids outside the factory in open warfare while their respective Padawans, Ahsoka Tano and Barriss Offee, sneaked into the facility via the catacombs beneath it. As their Masters battled the Separatist droid forces&mdash;including several newly designed super tanks&mdash;on the bridge leading to the factory, the Padawans' infiltration of the foundry was cut short when they were intercepted by Poggle and his tactical droid, TX-21. With their explosive charges stolen, Tano and Offee used a super tank to blow up the facility's reactor and collapse the factory from the inside. Skywalker and Unduli rescued their Padawans from the debris once the foundry had fallen. Despite the Republic's destruction of other key factories, Poggle remained at large, having escaped his primary foundry before its eradication.

As the Jedi undertook the cleanup of Geonosis, they launched a campaign to find and apprehend Poggle. Unduli spearheaded the search and followed Poggle to the abandoned Progate Temple, where she was captured by the warlord and taken to the lair of Geonosian Queen Karina the Great in the catacombs below. Tracking Unduli's last known location, Kenobi and Skywalker set out with a clone platoon to rescue her. Battling hordes of "undead" Geonosian warriors who were being reanimated by the Queen's brain worm parasites, the Jedi and their troops found Unduli in Karina's lair. Although Karina wished to induct Unduli and her comrades into her ranks of mind-controlled warriors, Kenobi, Skywalker, and their men were able to save Unduli and take Poggle into custody. The Jedi and their troops destroyed much of the Queen's lair during their escape, burying Karina the Great and her warriors beneath the temple.