Slyka

Slyka was a jungle planet in the Tingel Arm of the Outer Rim. A hot and humid world covered in forests, jungles and swamps, the planet was perhaps best known for being the farthest Republic military holding before the return of the Sith Empire in 3681 BBY.

Terrain
Slyka was a thick jungle world, with a close balance between water and land, though most of this water was in the form of thick swamps and rivers that fed the many jungles and forests. It was a relatively flat planet, with very few areas of extreme mountains and hills, though some did still exist.

Flora
The jungles of Slyka were home to a wide variety of plant life, mostly in the form of sprawling trees that stretched higher than skyscrapers and a dense underbrush of thorny bushes and poisonous flowers. Roads were notoriously hard to build on Slyka, as the local flora was quick to grow back during construction, or simply swamp over the roads once they were finished. As a result, transportation around the planet was also difficult. Even spacecraft weren't viable for transport, as the dense trees prevented them from safely landing in most areas.

The plantlife on Slyka was also known for its danger in argriculture. The majority of plants found in the jungles were poisonous, and many travellers and early scouts of the planet were killed by trying to eat the plants. When the Republic military controlled the planet, it was mandatory for every active soldier or worker to go through a rigorous course warning them what could and couldn't be eaten. Despite the danger, the vivid biochemistry of the planet caused numerous different medicines and vaccines to be developed that were utilised galaxy-wide.

Fauna
The wildlife of Slyka was equally as varied as the plantlife. The jungles were infamous for the many predators that roamed them, to the point that some military patrols were wiped out by beasts that roamed them. Due to this, the planet attracted immense scientific interest as researchers investigated the animals found on the planet and how they had evolved to survive the rigorous heat and poisonous plantlife.

Disease was a major issue on Slyka. Combined with the mass of insects and the intense heat, many soldiers of the Republic military fell ill while serving on the planet. When SpecForce began training its new recruits on Slyka, the recruits were often purposefully left to survive in the jungles, combatting wildlife and disease in order to toughen them for any future scenario of the sorts. The phrase "I was born on Slyka" became a joke among SpecForce soldiers, showing their experience and toughness.

Early history
The planet was first colonised by the Sith Empire shortly before the Great Hyperspace War as a supply dump, though when the Sith began to lose the war, they abandoned the planet to return deeper into Imperial Space. Following the end of the War, the Republic found the planet after investigating Sith star charts. While originally allowing settlers to colonise the planet, a quarantine was put in place following numerous casualties to the harsh wildlife and intense heat.

Republic control
Shortly after the quarantine, the Republic military entered the planet to create a foothold on the fringes of Republic territory, potentially acting as an emergency supply depot or fall-back point in the worst case scenario of an attack on the Core Worlds. As time went on, the planet's purpose changed as Republic commanders began sending recruits to the planet to train, seeing its near-inhabitable climate as the perfect training ground for the Republic's finest.

Around a century before the Great Galactic War, SpecForce (Republic Special Forces) gained administration of the planet, and based many of their elite units there, training their advanced combat units on the planet. Many commanders believed that the harshness of Slyka would prepare the soldiers for any potential war, as well as weeding out the weak from the strong for repurposing. Being sent to Slyka as a recruit was often seen as a death wish, especially as rumours spread through the military of accidental deaths in the jungles and the stories of heat exhaustion and disease reaching recruits in the Core Worlds.