Ione/Legends

Ione was a thriving spaceport world lying along the Corellian Trade Spine in the remote Anoat sector, within the Greater Javin region of the Outer Rim Territories. Originally settled by the Galactic Republic centuries before the Galactic Civil War, Ione occupied a critical intersection point on the Trade Spine that made the planet the sole hyperspace entry point to the region's four Mining Worlds. The Figg Excavations mining company used Ione as its staging point for operations throughout the surrounding area. Years later, during the height of the Galactic Civil War, Imperial Star Destroyers from the Dark Lord Darth Vader's personal Death Squadron likewise used the Ione system as their staging point for launching reconnaissance Viper probe droids to neighboring planets in search of the secret Rebel Alliance base.

Description
The planet Ione was the namesake of the Ione system, located in the Anoat sector of the larger Greater Javin region of the Outer Rim Territories. Ione, a thriving spaceport world, lay at the heart of the sprawling Ivax Nebula, at a strategic intersection point along the far end of the Corellian Trade Spine hyperlane. Ione's location made the planet the sole link between the Trade Spine and the four Greater Javin planets known collectively as the Mining Worlds: Burnin Konn, Allyuen, Tokmia, and Isis.

Ione featured a primarily terrestrial surface of urban development, seas, and plateaus, and offered a temperate climate. A day on Ione lasted twenty-three standard hours, and a year 390 local days. The planet had standard gravity and a Type I atmosphere breathable for Humans.

Republic settlement and FiggEx mining headquarters
A thousand years before the onset of the Galactic Civil War, the planet Ione lay in a largely uncharted region of space beyond the Mid Rim, which was considered then to be a part of Wild Space. Only scouts and the most daring traders traversed this imperfectly charted frontier region of the galaxy.

Efforts by hyperspace explorers to chart the region surrounding Ione were long hampered by the dominating presence of the giant Twin Nebulae gas clouds, which proved a great impediment to navigation. Eventually, following a brief, one-sided war between the Galactic Republic and the region's native Mugaari, the Republic was free to colonize the region, and a host of planets running Rimward along the Corellian Trade Spine, Ione included, were settled. Republic cartographers, staging from these newly settled planets, then continued to search for a hyperspace shortcut through the Twin Nebulae, although it would be centuries before the entrepreneur Ecclessis Figg succeeded in finding a route. Figg's success turned Ione and the Greater Javin into an economic powerhouse.

As the Figg conglomerate established its economic stranglehold on the Greater Javin, Figg Excavations, the mining subsidiary of Figg's Outer Javin Company, began using Ione as its entry point for mining operations throughout the Ivax Nebula, including the four systems known as the Mining Worlds branching off from Ione. Figg Excavations, a less-than-loyal member of the Mining Guild, represented the public face of the Figg conglomerate in the area around Ione.

Galactic Civil War
During the Galactic Civil War, a once-secret hyperroute connected Ione with the one-time Rebel Alliance safe world Isis. Later, in 3 ABY, the Ione system served as the staging point for the Imperial II-class Star Destroyers Avenger and Stalker, temporarily detached from the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader's Imperial Death Squadron, as they launched reconnaissance Viper probe droids to the surrounding planets Allyuen, Tokmia, and Hoth in search of the secret Rebel headquarters. Ultimately, the probe droid dispatched to Hoth led to the Imperial discovery of the Rebels' Echo Base and the subsequent Battle of Hoth.

Inhabitants
Ione boasted a mixed-species population of one billion inhabitants. The population was evenly distributed among Humans, Lutrillians, Nothoiins, and Ugnaughts. Ione's populace was governed by a corporate entity.

The planet's primary imports included technology and foodstuffs, and its exports included ores and gems.

Locations
Ione, regarded chiefly as a port world, featured two stellar and three standard spaceports.

Behind the scenes
The planet Ione was first created for the 2004 Wizards of the Coast online Star Wars Roleplaying Game supplement Galactic Gazetteer: Hoth and the Greater Javin as one of the many worlds of the Greater Javin region. Hoth and the Greater Javin established Ione's backstory and provided the planet with geographical and societal data for roleplaying adventure scenarios.

Ione also received entry in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia in 2008 and The Essential Atlas from 2009. The Essential Atlas provided unique information for the Ione system, establishing it as the setting for the opening scene of the film Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back, in which an Imperial Star Destroyer launches the probe droid that discovers the Rebel base on Hoth.