Despayre

Despayre, originally named Horuz, was a penal/slave world in the Horuz system and the place where the first Death Star, after being relocated many times to avoid Rebel saboteurs, was completed. It was a center of suffering and death long before its demise at the hands of the Death Star; the first planet to be victim to the superweapon's terrible legacy.

History


The shipyard that created the Galactic Empire's ultimate weapon became the center of the Imperial war machine. Components from almost all major corporations of the galaxy were sent to this planet, and labor was found on the penal and slave colonies below. Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin visited the system on many occasions to oversee the construction, bringing with him Imperial enslaved Wookiees from the Kashyyyk system.

Despayre's death knell was sounded with the arrival of Darth Vader. Dispatched by the Emperor to accelerate the construction process, Vader personally oversaw dozens of executions to push forward the process. The Imperal Navy severely restricted starship traffic in the Despayre system: only official military vessels, prison ships and armed commercial freighters from corporations supplying starships components could enter. Separate governing administrations operated the surface penal colony and orbital stardock facilities.

From the moment the decision was made to begin construction in the planet's upper orbit, there would have been no scenario in which the Imperial convict labor force would have been spared a terrible end. When the Death Star was completed, the construction process left behind a shroud of industrial debris in orbit, making passage to and from the surface virtually impossible. This was anticipated and provided for; Despayre was intended to be declared off-limits, and the prisoners and slaves would have been expected to fend for themselves, either until their supplies ran out or until the jungle came in. But the convicts never did endure this slow form of death; after repeated and costly mistakes, Tarkin concluded that they made for a terrible work force. They were not trained, they were physically challenged, and they were mentally unstable. Rather than hope for an improvement, Tarkin decided to cut his losses and ordered the immediate execution of the entire work crew. From then on, mostly Wookiee conscripts were used in the construction.

The Destruction of Despayre
Despayre itself would also be, in a sense, "executed." Tarkin decided to celebrate the completion of his battle station by testing its superlaser weapon on Despayre, destroying the planet. One of his close advisers and officers, Admiral Conan Motti, attempted to point out the potential political fallout from such an action. Tarkin refused to hear it; to him, the population of the planet consisted of nothing more than condemned criminals sentenced for life, none of whom would ever be returning to civilization, and all of whom constituted an unnecessary burden on Imperial troops and resources, as well numerous Imperial alien slaves. In any case, he would not take his station into battle without knowing what his biggest weapon would do when he needed to use it. "Nobody," he told Motti, "will mourn the murderers or the filthy planet on which they lived." Motti made no further objections.



At the time Tarkin gave the order, the superlaser was not yet functioning at full power; in fact, it was at a mere one third of its total projected power. But the first shot was still sufficient to kill every living thing on it. The very atmosphere ignited and created a chain reaction that damaged and sterlized the entire planetary surface. Physical surface damage was extreme; ground quakes and volcanic eruptions joined with great waves caused by the shifting of tectonic plates on the ocean floor. This was the effect of the first shot, fired at a fraction of the total power the superlaser could bring to bear.

The second shot (fired an hour and fifteen minutes after the first to allow the capacitors time to recharge) caused massive kilometers-wide cracks in the planet itself. The molten core rushed to the surface through a myriad of new volcanoes. While the weapon spent another hour and nineteen minutes recharging for a third volley, the chain reaction continued, leaving the planet little more than a cinder. The third and final shot blew that cinder into billions of fragments. The gravitational alignments within the Horuz system itself shifted as the source of one of the gravity wells, the planet Despayre, was erased.

The Rebellion, having just learned of the Death Star's location from the captured frigate Priam, dispatched corvette group Ethar to investigate. They arrived to find only the remnants of the former slave planet and a trap set by Imperial forces. Both corvettes were captured by the Empire.

Biosphere
The surface of Despayre consisted of one large continent and one considerably larger ocean body. The land mass was mostly covered in jungle and the planet was home to an abundance of species. The planet had a low gravity of less than 0.75 standard gravity; and an erratic orbit which created tidal forces that set the conditions for harsh seasonal gales. This in turn influenced the evolution of life on the planet, creating a harsh ecological system. These species presumably became extinct when the planet was destroyed.

Flora
The jungle flora responded to this environmental challenge by producing large, close-knit growths that stabbed roots deep into the ground, creating completely impenetrable patches of rain forest in some places. The majority of plant life on Despayre had poisonous thorns, barbs or burrs. Specific known species include:
 * Knobblypear

Fauna
The animal life on Despayre had adapted by becoming sinuous and serpentine, as this allowed better motility through the tightly interwoven vines and boles. Species representative of the animal life on Despayre include poisonous crustaceans, small winged lizards and a manta-like creature that had an interesting life cycle that began in the ocean and ended in the jungle. Generally, most creatures had fangs and were venomous in some way. Specific known species include:
 * Flit
 * Ratbat
 * Scorpion slug
 * Virevol

Behind the scenes


The Rebellion Era Sourcebook erroneously refers to Despayre as the planet "Horuz", a simple conflation of the system's name.

According to Leland Chee, early drafts of Revenge of the Sith had the Death Star being built over a planet; had this appeared in the final draft, the world would have been identified as Despayre.

The planet remains erroneously intact in the PC game Star Wars: Rebellion, which begins the day after the Battle of Yavin.

Geonosians also worked here

Despayre's name is obviously inspired by the word despair.

Appearances

 * Coruscant Nights I: Jedi Twilight
 * The Last of the Jedi: Secret Weapon
 * The Last of the Jedi: Master of Deception
 * The Last of the Jedi: Reckoning
 * The Force Unleashed novel
 * Star Wars: The Force Unleashed comic
 * Death Star
 * Interlude at Darkknell
 * Star Wars: Lethal Alliance
 * Star Wars: X-wing
 * Star Wars: Rebellion
 * The Last Command
 * Darksaber