Planet Profile: Onderon

[directly from the Dark Side Sourcebook:]

The Demon Moon of Dxun

It orbits the world on Onderon, giving rise to the most terrible legends - and even more terrible truths. The moon Dxun, called the demon moon, houses all kinds of monstrous creatures. A dense jungle covers the moon, but the place is far from pleasant. it rains almost constanly throughout the endless jungle, and a thick, sminoxious fog clings to the horizon like the obscuring webs of some giant spider. Frequent quakes rock the demon moon, and volcanoes regularly spew molten lava and clouds of hot gas.

This enviroment, combined with pockets of dark side power, has created some of the toughest, most brutal life forms in the galaxy. Even the plants developed potent natural defences in order to survive. Some became poisonous. Others grew wicked barbs. Many became carnivorous, hunting and killing prey as efficiently as predators from the animal kingdom.

In the ancient past a planetoid entered Onderon's orbit and increased the number of the world's moons to four. The new celestial bosy altered the orbial paths of all the moons. Dxun's new path allowed it's atmosphere to brush against Onderon's for a few weeks during the planet's summer weaon. Over the millennia, this periodic meeting has had two notable effects. First, the atmosphere of Onderon has become slightly noxious, while Dxun's atmosphere has become slightly more tolerable. Second, Dxun's largest flying predators have been able to migrate from the moon to the planet during these periods to find more plentiful food on Onderon.

As civilization developed on Onderon, the humans gathered in one huge walled city to defend themselves against the predators from the demon moon. It was in this city, called Iziz, that the darksider Freedon Nadd would eventually rise to power.

While the demon moon was hellish and its inhabitants were savage, the place was not inherently evil. not originally. When Jedi master Arca Jeth decided to inter the remains of the evil Sith Olrd Freedon Nadd and his descendants, King Ommin and Queen Amanoa, on the demon moon, things changed. Of course, the plan was that the natural dangers inherent in the ecology would serve as a natural defence for the Sith tomb.

Nadd's tomb was built from Mandalorian iron, a nearly indestructible alloy that repels lighsaber energy. This not only prevented interlopers from invading Nadd's resting place (and stealing the Sith artifacts also interred there), but protected the tomb from the massive tidal shifts that racked Dxun. Arca did not forsee the consequences of his actions, however. The evil residue of nadd's dead body (as well as the dark side auras of numerous Sith artifacts) began to twist and alter the very life od Dxun itself. The orbalist, a deadly, predatory parasite, became capable of feeding on dark side energy. Plants that grew around the tomb changed, becoming even more deadly. Many different types of predators inhabited the area surrounding the tomb, changing into creatures of the darkness. Seekers of dark knowledge - including Exar Kun, instigator of the Sith War, and Darth Bane, saviour of the Sith - faced such monsters as they fought to enter the wellspring of Sith knowledge contained in the Mandalorian iron vault.

By the time of Darth Bane the entire moon became a dark side site. The dense jungle is considered to be a mino dark side site. There are also a few major sites scattered throughout the jungle and at least two extreeme sites: Freedon Nadd's tomb and the well of darkness.

The iron tomb that houses the remains of three powerful darksiders has contained a wealth of Sith artifacts over the centureies, and some of those items probably remain locked away well into the New Jedi Order era. This extreme site radiates with the presence of a dark side master and his descendents. Although Exar Kun destroyed Freedon Nadd's spirit, the dark lord's presence can still be felt, even if he can no longer manifest and influence the actions of any visitors who may come to pay their respects - or loot his final resting place.

The well of darkness is a great pit located within a cave filled with orbalisks. For some reason that may never be known, the dark side power that seeped out of Freedon Nadd's tomb seems to have pooled in the fissure that looks like an open wound in Dxun's rocky flesh. Thouse who enter the cave claim to hear the whispered voices of long dead Sith lords calling to them from deep within the well. Too soft and indistint to hear clearly, the voices nevertheless fill visitors with fear and dark images on unnamable horrors. It is believed that if a visitor can overcome his fear and absorb the horrors projected at him, he can learn dark side secrets lost to the depths of time. Of course, those who fail to embraice the specters of the well are often lost to madness.

Wild life of Dxun:
Orbalisk
Lord Kaan's aborted assault on the Republic left one incompletely trained Sith Lord alive: Darth Bane. To save the Sith from extinction, Bane instituted his most important legacy: the rule of two. After that day the Sith would consist of a master and an apprentice, "no more, no less." Since Bane's own master had been killed at Ruusan, he journeyed to Dxun, the legendary demon moon of Onderon, to find what knowledge he could at the tomb of Freedon Nadd. Despite his best efforts, Exar Kun did not have sufficient time to strip Freedon Nadd's tomb of all the Sith artifacts and mysteries it contained.

As Bane entered the Onderon system, the spirit of his former master, Lord Qordis, appeared to the Sith warrior. The dead man taunted Bane and accused him of cowardice, despite Bane's claim that he acted for the survival of the Sith. Not satisfied with this answer, Qordis used the dark side to knock Bane's ship out of the sky. Darth Bane barely survived the impact by using all of the Sith power at his command. Goaded on by Lord Qordis's ghost and that of the mad Sith Lord Kaan, the evil genius who had detonated the suicidal "thought bomb" on Ruusan, Bane hacked his way through the poisonous foliage and razor-backed predators guarding the crypt - and approached his destiny.

Darth Band found the tomb of Freedon Nadd much as Kun had left it. However, since Kun had destroyed Nadd's spirit on Yavin 4, the entity no longer lurked in his crypt. Bane quickly spotted an ancient Sith holocron that had eluded Kun's hasty search. As soon as he set foot inside the tomb, he realized he'd been triocked. With a wet slurp, two mollusk like creatures dropped from the ceiling onto his body. Bane felt his entiore body twist with the most potent pain he'd felt in his life. Trying depserately to remove the parasites, Bane slashed at one with his lightsaber, but the blow bounced off the creature's hard shell. The pain of the poison the creture injected was so great that Bane tried to slice off his own flesh, hoping the creature would come off with it. Instead, the wound healed before Bane's very eyes.

The ghostly Dark Lords demanded that Bane ignore the pain from the "orbalisks" (as they called them) and take the Sith holocron. Bane lost himself in the device and learned what the creatures were, and why Qordis and Kaan had tricked him into becoming their host. These hard-shelled parasites injected their host with deadly venom. As a Sith warrior instinctively fights back with the power of t6he dark side, the creatures welcome that energy and feed off it. Furthermore, the venom they inject into their host - provided he survives - grants the victim enhanced strength, vitality, and accelerated healing, as well as an armored covering that is especially resistant to lightsabers. The orbalisks had lived and died over thousands of generations infused with the dark side residue of Freedon Nadd, and continued to crave that energy.

As the orbalisks bred and hardened quickly, Bane continually fought back against their venom with the strength of the Force. Within a couple of weeks Bane was almost completely covered head to toe in nearly indestructible bioarmor. The exoskeleton surrounding him consisted of well-fed parasites that thrived on the dark side of the Force. Each day Bane could feel his strength increase as the orbalisks reproduced and grew strong from his dark side presence. After it dawned on Bane that these parasites were going to grow over his face if he wasn't careful, he placed a helmet frame over his head.

In the wilds of Dxun, orbalisks are kept in check by specialized predators and an incredibly unforgiving enviroment. Many of Dxun's beasts have developed immunities and even antidotes to resist the parasites. When unable to attach to a living animal, the orbalisks crawl slowly over trees and other forms of plant life, drawing what little sustenance they can. They cannot reproduce or harden their outer shells while sustaining themselves on plants. Like most species that evolved on the moon of Onderon, they have no other natural checks on their reproduction. A single orbalisk would be harmless to anyone but it's host, but if a few mated pairs were ever removed from Dxun and escaped into, say, the Coruscant sewage system, the consequences would be dire.