Quarzite

"Why do we have to travel by subtram? Wouldn't it be easier just to land at our destination?"
"You'd think so. The atmosphere of our planet is completely pressurized, leaving all aerial travel impossible. If we attempted to land on the planet's surface, our ship would immediately implode."
"Subtram it is, then."

―Boba Fett and Major Rigosso^[4]

Quarzite was a small planet located in the Quarzite system of the Inner Rim whose high atmospheric pressure rendered its surface uninhabitable. However, the planet's crystalline caverns were capable of supporting life and were home to the warring Belugans and Kage.

Description[]

Situated in the Inner Rim,^[1] not far from the Colonies region, the small planet Quarzite was located in the Quarzite system, at grid square M-13 on the Standard Galactic Grid. Flanked by the two super-hyperroutes, the Corellian Trade Spine to the west and the Hydian Way to the east, Quarzite was located along the Shipwrights' Trace hyperspace route. When viewed from space, Quarzite appeared a tranquil world covered in a greyish layer of clouds with violet flashes, but in reality, the planet's surface was unreachable as a result of its thick atmosphere, lightning and heavy rain, which was unable to sustain any form of society as the planet's high-pressure Type IV atmosphere was nearly impossible for most organisms to survive in.^[2]

Quarzite was a naturally cool world.^[3] With a hollow crust,^[2] the underground of Quarzite was filled by turning caverns and sparkling crystals;^[3] those underground caverns were filled by the fields of crystals and crystalline structures. The crystal emanated a violet light that was the key to evolution on the planet, together with the oxygen-rich Type I atmosphere found within the caves. The violet light glowed perpetually and the subterranean realm had its own underground water basins, lakes, fungal growths, and lichens.^[2] The Belugan and Kage species both evolved on the planet.^[8]

History[]

The Kage came to wage a^[9] nearly-never ceasing^[8] war on Quarzite against the Belugan.^[9] It was the Belugan who first made contact with the wider galaxy, which granted them the ability to gain the rewards of trade.^[8]

During the Clone Wars, Quarzite was ruled by the Belugan dictator Lord Otua Blank. When the Belugans kidnapped the Kage girl Pluma Sodi so that Blank could marry her, Major Rigosso hired a group of bounty hunters to defend a subtram, the primary method of travel on the planet, that would deliver the girl to Lord Blank. The hunters traveled to Quarzite in the Hound's Tooth and took a massive turbolift, which, due to the overwhelming atmospheric pressure, was the only way to reach Quarzite's surface.^[4]