Cilona Cartel

The Cilona Cartel was a crime syndicate associated with the Black Sun that specialized in the trade of ixetal cilona, which was the primary psychoactive ingredient in death sticks. They owned a multitude of facilities on Balosar, the home of the balo mushroom, from which ixetal cilona was extracted.

History
The Cilona Cartel first appeared as early as 300 BBY, and was rumored to have been founded by a gang of pirates who occupied a number of balo mushroom farms across the planet Balosar. Despite constant raids by Republic Judicial Forces, the Cilona Cartel remained active though called upon the Black Sun for defense against both the law and the Hutt Cartel, the Black Sun's rival, whose pirates constantly prayed upon the Cilona Cartel's smugglers. During the Imperial era, infighting caused the Cilona Cartel to disband and collapse into many smaller cartels that continued independently distributing ixetal cilona to death stick manufacturers. The Imperial Military conducted several raids on balo mushroom farms on Balosar and surrounding worlds, forcing the Cilona Cartel's remnants to begin cultivating the fungus elsewhere in the galaxy or creating artificial variants of ixetal cilona.