Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/Week 39, 2014/0

Nathema, originally known as Medriaas, was a fertile agriworld located in the Nathema system of the Outer Rim Territories' Chorlian sector during the time of the Sith Empire. The planet's Sith ruler, Lord Dramath, was deposed in 5,103 BBY by his own illegitimate son Tenebrae at the age of ten, and the child received the title of Lord Vitiate and rulership of Medriaas from the reigning Dark Lord of the Sith, Marka Ragnos. Renaming the planet Nathema, Vitiate kept his world isolated from the power plays of his fellow Sith over the next century, and his isolation spared Nathema from the Great Hyperspace War in 5,000 BBY. The following year, Vitiate summoned the eight thousand remaining Sith Lords to Nathema in order to save the crumbling Sith Empire, but the powerful Vitiate dominated their minds instead and proceeded to use their strength in a complex ritual of Sith magic that granted him immortality while stripping the Force from the entire planet.

Every living thing on Nathema was instantly killed by the Ritual of Nathema, and the planet became a barren wasteland devoid even of droids and technology as Vitiate, now known as the Sith Emperor, hid his past and the hyperspace routes to Nathema from his newly reconstituted Empire. Nathema's rediscovery and the revelation of what he had done to the world sparked a plot among the members of the Empire's ruling Dark Council to unseat their Emperor and prevent him from repeating the ritual, but the destruction of the conspiracy once again erased knowledge of Nathema from the mind of the Empire. However, the memory of Nathema inspired the Sith Lord Scourge to betray the Emperor over three centuries later, causing him to ally with the Jedi Knight known as the Hero of Tython in order to stop the Emperor from repeating the ritual on a galactic scale.