Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/January 7, 2011

The Jedi Tower, also referred to as the Taris Academy, was a satellite academy for Jedi training built in Highport on the Outer Rim world Taris. It was used by the Jedi Order prior to and during the Mandalorian Wars, a conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders. Isolated from other structures by a skybridge, the Tower was a tall, tapering building with the Council chamber at its pinnacle. Adjoining the main structure was a smaller, vertical tower that contained a turbolift to access different levels of the Tower via walkways between the two. Surrounding the base of the Tower was a landing area staffed by labor droids.

In 3,964 BBY, the Tower was operated by the First WatchCircle of the Jedi Covenant who killed their students in the Padawan Massacre of Taris. Nevertheless, one of the Padawans&mdash;a Human named Zayne Carrick&mdash;escaped the Masters' trap and was forced to flee offworld with the Snivvian Marn Hierogryph after both were framed as the culprits of the Massacre. The Masters were recalled to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant when their efforts to track Carrick down failed, with the Padawan even contacting them to say that he would track down and kill each Master until his name was cleared.

The Mandalorians, led by Cassus Fett, later invaded the planet and took the Tower as their own. Carrick returned to Taris to assist Hierogryph and the Taris Resistance in their plans to assassinate Fett by blowing the Tower up with the Mandalorian inside. The Togrutan Raana Tey, one of the First WatchCircle and still wanting Carrick dead, provisionally cooperated with the former Padawan and Shel Jelavan in their planned role of infiltrating the Tower prior to detonation to determine if Fett was still inside. Simultaneously, however, the paranoid Tey intended to kill Carrick before he could kill her as he had warned. When the plan was enacted, Carrick discovered that the Mandalorian leader was not in the Tower, and was confronted by Tey. They dueled until Jelavan intervened, wounding Tey with her brother's lightsaber. Gadon Thek, a swoop gang leader helping the Resistance, and Hierogryph arrived to evacuate them on Thek's swoop bike, but Tey became stuck and used her lightsaber to free herself. Perceiving this as a threat, the Snivvian prematurely detonated preset explosives, and Tey was killed in the destruction of the Tower.