Bpfassh Uprising

"The Bpfasshi don't like Jedi. They had some trouble with Dark Jedi during the Clone Wars, and chased them as far as Dagobah."

- Leia Organa Solo, to Luke Skywalker

The Bpfassh Uprising was a Dark Jedi insurrection that wreaked havoc in the Sluis Sector in 19.75 BBY, while the Clone Wars were drawing to a close. It started when a group of Jedi from the planet of Bpfassh fell to the dark side of the Force due to the pressure of the war. To oppose them, the Jedi leaders formed a task force led by Yoda, the Grand Master of the Jedi Order himself. Thanks to his intervention, the insurrection was quelled, marking one of the first major victories of the Galactic Republic in the third year of the Clone Wars. The Dark Jedi from Bpfassh, however, had not spoken their last word.

In 19 BBY, the Clone Wars concluded, and the despotic Galactic Empire was formed. Shortly afterwards, the Bpfasshi Dark Jedi resumed their attacks in the Sluis sector, engaging in a large space battle. At the end of that battle, the last of the Dark Jedi seized the ship of the smuggler Jorj Car'das ship and took it to Dagobah. Ironically, that planet was the new residence of Yoda, who was hiding from the Jedi-hating Empire. Once again, the Bpfasshi dark sider was killed by the Grand Master.

Despite Yoda's victory, the Bpfassh Uprising was best remembered as a fiasco. Many years after the events, the Bpfasshi still had a deep-seated resentment against the Jedi, and the incidentn was still discussed in the Imperial Senate.

Prelude
"With the transmission of Articles of Secession to the Senate, Senator Corlissi Ludar made formal the withdrawal of the Sluis sector from the Republic."

- HoloNet News Report

In the last decades of the Galactic Republic, the planet of Bpfassh in the Sluis sector hosted a satellite training facility of the Jedi Order. However, that chapter house had a long history of rebeliousness to the High Council, the governing body of the Order. In the third month of the year 13 post-Great ReSynchronization, the Sluis sector officially seceded from the Republic to join the Confederacy of Independent Systems. A few months later, the Clone Wars broke out between the Republic and the separatist Confederacy. Due to their superior combat experience, the Jedi were led to play a pivotal part in the conflict, becoming the generals and commanders of the new clone army of the Republic. However, there were Jedi who doubted the war and refused to receive their martial promotion from the High Council. Those dissidents formed an informal movement that was also joined by those who invoked the Right of Denial, a tradition that allowed Jedi to protest against a decision made by the High Council. The whole Jedi academy of Bpfassh ended up joining the movement too.

The uprising
"It wasn't just Bpfassh, either—some of those Dark Jedi escaped and made trouble all throughout the Sluis sector. One of them even got as far as Dagobah before he was caught."

- Leia Organa Solo, to Luke Skywalker

However, as the Clone Wars went on, the Sluis sector went trough continual fighting. Because of its affiliation with the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the sector was being pressured by the Republic forces based on Eriadu, in the neighboring Seswenna sector. Additionally, the Republic privateer Zozridor Slayke and his men, the Sons and Daughters of Freedom kept raiding the sector. Ultimately, that situation provoked a spike of martial zealotry among the Jedi of the Bpfassh academy. Although they had initially refused to get involved in the ongoing conflict, the Bpfasshi Jedi gave in to their anger and fell to the dark side of the Force. They set themselves against Slayke's men and were responsible for a rampage of terror and destruction throughout the Sluis sector. Eventually, the High Council sent a task force of loyal Jedi to quell the Bpfassh uprising. Yoda, the Grand Master of the Jedi Order himself, was part of that force. Yoda

Eventually, the Grand Master duelled the leader of the Dark Jedi and defeated him.

A few months later, the Clone Wars were brought to an end, but the Republic was replaced by a tyrannical Galactic Empire. Shortly thereafter, a resurgence of Dark Jedi activity occurred in the Sluis sector despite Yoda's earlier victory over their leader. The smuggler Jorj Car'das was accidentally caught up in the middle of a space battle between a group of Bpfasshi Dark Jedi and everyone else in the sector. One Dark Jedi killed all the crew aboard Cardas's ship and forced him to take off. They set off for the backwater planet Dagobah, in the solar system of the same name. While the Bpfasshi had expected to be safe on that uninhabited planet, Yoda himself had elected Dagobah as his new home following the end of the Clone Wars and the replacement of the Republic by the tyrannical Galactic Empire. Yoda and the runaway Dark Jedi dueled for nearly a day and a half, until the former Grand Master of the Jedi Order got the upper hand.

Aftermath
"We were still getting echoes of the whole fiasco in the Imperial Senate when I was serving there."

- Leia Organa Solo, to Luke Skywalker

Although the uprising had been brought to an end, the inhabitants of Bpfassh remained wary of all Jedi. Many years later, echoes of the incident were still heard in the Imperial Senate, the ruling council of the Galactic Empire. In 9 ABY, nearly three decades after the events, the former Imperial senator Leia Organa Solo still remembered what she had heard about the Bpfasshi fiasco during her years of service.

While remembered, the Bpfassh Uprising was conflated with that of a similar event that had involved Master Jorus C'baoth. Indeed, when Luke Skywalker, the first of a new generation of Jedi, searched the Galactic Senate's records on Jorus C'baoth in 9 ABY, he read that C'baoth had fought the Dark Jedi on Bpfassh, while he had in fact defeated dark siders in the Elrood sector at some point before the Battle of Naboo.

Origin
The Bpfasshi insurrection was first mentioned in the 1991 novel Heir to the Empire, the first entry in Timothy Zahn's so-called Thrawn Trilogy. In the novel, Luke Skywalker was advised to stay away from Bpfassh, as some of that its Jedi "went bad" during the Clone Wars. He also learns that the cave in which he confronted a vision of his father was first tainted with dark energies years before, when Yoda killed a powerful Bpfasshi Dark Jedi on Dagobah during the Clone Wars. According to Princess Leia, that duel occurred thirty to thirty-five years before the novel's present time, which would put it between 26 and 21 BBY. In Dark Force Rising, the second entry in the Thrawn Trilogy, it was mentioned that Jorus C'baoth was part of a taskforce assembled to oppose a Dark Jedi insurrection on Bpfassh.

In 1998, Zahn published Vision of the Future. In that novel, the reader was told how the smuggler Jorj Car'das was kidnapped by a Dark Jedi who took him Dagobah, where the dark sider got beaten by Yoda. According to Talon Karrde, those events took place 45 years before the novel's present time, which would still be 26 BBY.

Retcons
However, the release of the prequel trilogy between 1999 and 2005 compromised the course of ancient events invented by Zahn for his trilogy. Initially, the Clone Wars were supposed to have taken place thirty-five years before Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, but the prequels showed they only started in 22 BBY and ended in 19 BBY. Because of that, all the dates featured in the Thrawn Trilogy are off by sixteen years.

Morever, the script of the 2005 movie Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith specified that Yoda had never been on Dagobah before his exile at the end of the Clone Wars. The reference book The New Essential Chronology, which was released a few months after the movie, included a retelling of the Bpfassh insurrection. While omitting the problematic endgame on Dagobah, that new account established a connection between the uprising and the Jedi dissident movement that appeared in other sources such as Jedi: Mace Windu.

In 2008, the canonicity of the Bpfasshi uprising was brought up in the 98th issue of the Star Wars Insider magazine. Lucasfilm official Leland Chee stated that Yoda's battle against a Bpfasshi Dark Jedi as described in Zahn's novel was no longer part of continuity. However, Chee that "a mortally wounded darksider made it to Dagobah after a confrontation with Yoda, but the battle did not take place there." The problem was solved a few months later, when the roleplaying game sourcebook Scum and Villainy retconned the incident with Car'das, the Dark Jedi and Yoda to have happened after the Clone Wars. Since they do not contradict each other, the present article considers that Yoda fought Bpfasshi Dark Jedi both during and after the Clone Wars.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Rebellion
 * Heir to the Empire
 * Vision of the Future