Groundquake

"Groundquakes and meteor storms! Sounds cataclysmic."

- Captain Rae Sloane of the Ultimatum comments on the effects that destroying Cynda will have on Gorse

Groundquakes were a type of geological event that occurred regularly on the planet Gorse when its moon Cynda approached during its elliptical orbit. During a quake, parts of the planet's surface would violently shake and rock, often causing damage to buildings. The quakes occurred as a way of releasing the energy that built up through the gravitational pull of Cynda and the Gorse system's star on Gorse. Droid workers would occasionally fall into the acid baths used by Moonglow Polychemical on Gorse during groundquakes, and when Lal Grallik&mdash;the manager of Moonglow&dash;was murdered in one of the baths by Count Denetrius Vidian, it was claimed she had accidentally fallen in during a quake. When Vidian later planned to destroy Cynda, the science officers on board the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Ultimatum predicted that the loss of the moon would cause increased groundquakes on Gorse.

Behind the scenes
Groundquakes first appeared in the Star Wars Legends novel Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu, which was written by L. Neil Smith and released in 1983. They were confirmed to be canon by their appearance in the novel A New Dawn, which was released in 2014 and written by John Jackson Miller.

Appearances

 * A New Dawn