Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/Week 11, 2013/0

The Argazdans were a green-skinned near-Human species native to the planet Argazda in the Kanz sector. The species developed from a stock of mainline Humans who colonized Argazda when the Galactic Republic was still young. They brought the Vianist faith with them and spread the religion among the other species of the region. The Argazdans became infamous in the galaxy for seceding from the Republic under the leadership of Governor Myrial. The actions of Myrial's supporters&mdash;the Myrialites&mdash;taken at a time when the Jedi Knights and Galactic Republic were preoccupied with other conflicts, ignited the Kanz Disorders in 3,970 BBY. The Disorders were a 300-year period during which the Argazdans enslaved their neighbors, formed an independent navy, and refashioned the Kanz sector as a dictatorship known as the Argazdan Redoubt. Their control of the area wrought profound changes; for example, when Argazdan slave owners forbade the enslaved Human inhabitants of the planet Lorrd to speak to one another, the Lorrdians compensated by developing non-verbal, kinetic communication. Meanwhile, the Argazdans enlisted the aid of an alien scientist who had turned up in the Redoubt. Under her command, the Argazdans ordered enslaved Lorrdians to construct the Slave Pits of Lorrd, a vast structure that housed a biological superweapon. The project came to a halt when Jedi Knights led by the Lorrdian Jedi Mari-Elan Nora attacked the Argazdan Redoubt and won it back for the Republic.

Although millennia later, the Argazdans had come to view the Kanz Disorders as a black mark on their reputation, outsiders still largely viewed them as cowardly and self-interested by the time of the Galactic Civil War. At least one member of the species, the academic and scientist Doctor Raygar, showed no compunctions about wearing the garb of an Argazdan slave lord, even among former slave species, such as the Lorrdians. Raygar earned a reputation in scholarly circles as an eccentric quester after artifacts he believed to be imbued with power. On one such mission, Raygar sought the weapon hidden in the Slave Pits of Lorrd, while on another he searched for the Sunstar kept by the Ewoks of Bright Tree Village on the Forest Moon of the planet Endor.