Aridus

"If there were two suns, I'd swear I was back home on Tatooine!"

Aridus was a desert planet in the Expansion Region and the homeworld of the reptilian Chubbit species.

Geography[]

IronTower-TheReturnOfBenKenobi — The Iron Tower.

Aridus's surface was largely covered by sprawling deserts, though this terrain was dotted by volcanoes with lava pits and some small bodies of water like lakes and oases. The planet's few settlements, like Aridus Trade City, were located near any body of water and mines. Aridus's sole sentient species were the dimunitive reptilian Chubbits which were oppressed under the Galactic Empire which established mining operations on the planet. Other lifeforms included the reptilian droffi steeds and the Aridusian lava beetle.

History[]

ChubbitResistance-TheReturnOfBenKenobi — Chubbit resistance fighters during the Galactic Civil War

During the Clone Wars, Aridus stayed loyal to the Republic.^[3]

Aridus was first scouted by Imperial scouts during the early years of the Galactic Empire. After valuable natural resources were found on the barren planet, various mining conglomerates including Yutrane-Trackata set up operations on Aridus. However, Aridus's ionized atmopshere damaged the mining equipment. Unwilling to waste credits by scrapping all operations on Aridus, the sector Moff authorized the construction of a massive power transformer and signal amplifier—the Iron Tower. The operations resumed and Imperial Hover-trains transported workers to dig sites. In a bid to prove its loyalty, Yutrane-Trackata offered the Empire sole use of its mining vehicles and other heavy equipment.

Unfortunately, the Iron Tower's ultra-strong frequency waves crippled the nervous systems of the native Chubbits, thus killing many of the species. The Chubbits had already been disenfranchised by the Imperial colonization and were forced to wage a guerrilla war on the Empire. However, several Yutrane-Trackata workers surreptitiously supplied Chubbit resistance fighters and members of the Alliance to Restore the Republic with repulsor tanks^[4] and crawler tanks.

In 0 ABY, the Iron Tower was destroyed by an impersonator of Obi-Wan Kenobi as part of a ploy by Darth Vader to lure Luke Skywalker into a trap at the Iron Tower.^[5]

During the Yuuzhan Vong War, Aridus was conquered by the invaders.^[3]

Behind the scenes[]

Unused entries in the mastertextfile_english.dat^[6] of the 2006 LucasArts computer game Star Wars: Empire at War^[7] refer to the "liberation of Aridus" from the Galactic Empire. The entries mention a Nebulon-B frigate, X-wings, Y-wings, an Imperial space station, a Star Destroyer and a long range scanner as the participants, though a reference to a planned ground invasion is made. The briefing states that the Imperials are using the citizens of the system as slave labor in the Imperial munitions factories.^[6]