It's a calm place. Balanced and peaceful. A good place to call home.
—Benjamin Lambert.
Farrow was a temperate world of vast woodlands and meadows in the Unknown Regions that was first settled by rogue members of the Sith Empire after they fled the Great Hyperspace War in 4998 BBY, led by the self-proclaimed "Darth" Taer, and crash landed after an incident in orbit.
By the time of the Great Galactic War, the population of Farrow was composed exclusively of the Human descendants of the original Sith refugees, all of whom lived in various separate tribes spread out across the planet. These Humans were largely similar to their counterparts on other Human worlds, with the exception of their significantly higher fertility rate, and lingering genetic markers of their ancient Sith ancestry. Native wildlife on Farrow included adapted breeds of fathiers, oggdo, graul and flutterplume, all of which were believed to have been imported – intentionally or otherwise – by travelers in millennia past, or possibly by the Sith colonists themselves, as Darth Taer was known to have been a Sith beast master.
Farrow had no large settlements or industrial sites by the end of the Third Galactic War, save for the tower colony of Farrow City, and it was was one of only a handful of worlds which provided funding and relocation schemes for the Makeb Wildlife Preservation Society, a charity established to ensure the survival of the endangered species of Makeb following the devastating conflict which had triggered a steady gas release that would ultimately render the world uninhabitable. As such, Farrow was home to several thousand specimens of makrin creeper and vrake.
The name of the planet was chosen by Benjamin Lambert – the founder of the colony and its eventual governor – and was selected to honor the smuggler who discovered and documented its existence, a Chiss privateer named Gretta Farrow. In 66 ATC, Darth Salvharroh performed a complex dark side ritual on Farrow's moon Merot while his forces attacked Farrow City as a distraction. The ensuing battle ended with deliberate, widespread hypermatter contamination that poisoned the area around the city for several hundred miles, forcing the survivors to relocate to Shimka's Well and leaving Farrow a sparsely populated tribal world once again.
Description[]
A normal day on Farrow lasted 27 standard hours and a local year lasted 329 local days. Farrow had two large continents. One was mostly in the northern hemisphere, while the other was mostly in the south, though both continents were close to one another and had once been connected by a thin strip of land which had sunk beneath the ocean due to prehistoric seismic activity.
Covered in thick forests, rolling meadows, dense grasslands and hazardous mountain ranges, Farrow was well-suited for colonization, though its distance from the Core Worlds ensured it remained unspoiled by urbanization. Farrow had two moons, Merot and Idlanna, both of which were barren until 29 ATC, when Benjamin Lambert used the Celestial Orbs to terraform the latter.
Farrow had small pockets of tribal civilization spread out across the northernmost continent. The largest population center on the planet was Farrow City, a tower city which was home to a select group of Force users and refugees escaping the Third Galactic War. In 66 ATC, the forces of rogue Sith Lord Darth Salvharroh attacked Farrow City, with many suicide shuttles deliberately unleashing stores of hypermatter to poison the land out of spite.
History[]
Pre-History[]
At some point in the ancient past, the Force-wielding Zeffo visited the planet. They remained long enough to create an undersea temple, which would remain hidden until 73 ATC when it was discovered and explored by visitors from Farrow City. This temple was protected by one of the Zeffonians' Tomb Guardians, an ancient mechanical sentinel programmed to attack intruders.
Post-Great Hyperspace War[]
Towards the end of the Great Hyperspace War in 5000 BBY, distinguished alchemist and sorceress Taer convinced a number of her fellows in the Sith Empire that the Galactic Republic were going to win the war and destroy their civilization, and that the best option to avoid such a fate was to disappear while their peers unknowingly bought them time to retreat into the unknown.
Taking a number of ships and gathering up a menagerie of specimens for future experiments, the self-declared "Darth" Taer and her allies embarked on their journey into the Outer Rim, wandering through uncharted territory until they detected Farrow and its moons in 4998 BBY.
Unfortunately for the Sith, they did not anticipate the erratic orbit of Farrow's moon Merot. Most of the vessels were damaged or destroyed after a glancing blow with Merot's atmosphere, causing them to enter Farrow's atmosphere on a dangerous trajectory, damaging the surviving vessels severely and forcing them to make a controlled crash landing in one of the planet's mountainous regions.
Darth Taer sealed her ship and left her "allies" to fend for themselves while she worked in isolation, causing division among her peers that ultimately split the survivors into three rival factions. Each group went their separate ways and spread out across the continent, beginning decades of independent experimentation on their subordinates in an attempt to gain an edge over their rivals – and ultimately allow them to begin the new Empire Taer had promised them.
Dejected, exploited and losing faith in their masters, the servants of the three Sith leaders eventually overthrew and executed them, beginning a tenuous period of peace during which the groups were ruled by a form of governing council. Over the century that followed, the separate factions devolved into simple tribal groups whose technology and history was little more than distorted legends.
Galactic War Era[]
By 4200 BBY, the tribes of Farrow knew nothing of the Sith; the crashed battleships and the sealed summit entrance that led to Darth Taer's sanctum became known as the Black Mountain of Kutahhroht, within which were the Cursed Steel Caverns, a location that was was believed to be haunted.
Those born with a connection to the Force were exiled, made to live out in the wild lands away from the protection of their tribes. Due to the presence of dangerous predators outside the villages, most outcasts perished quickly, yet some did manage to master the wilds and live for many decades unsupported.
The most established of the tribes was the Yhjanda Tribe, a peaceful hunter-gatherer community whose culture emphasized living in balance with the environment and one another, having large families and earning prestige through hunting and providing for the tribe. In 5 ATC, 6 year old Aaellu was exiled from the Yhjanda Tribe in the middle of the winter season for her use of psychometry, after which she was presumed dead.
Forces from Zakuul arrived on Farrow shortly before the Eternal Empire's invasion of the galaxy, a scouting expedition who had detected the fallen Sith vessels and wanted to investigate, looking for artifacts or data that was of value. Aaellu, a young adult by this point, monitored their progress and observed as they activated an ancient security system that released all of Darth Taer's mutated beasts into the wild and awakened her lingering spirit.
Taer possessed the Zakuulans and began a campaign of terror against the locals, determined to track down the Command Rod, a mind-control device that her spirit was bound to. Ultimately, thanks to Aaellu's heroics, Taer was stopped, her creatures killed and the Command Rod destroyed, allowing the tribes to rebuild and the ecosystem to recover. Within five years the planet had returned to normal.
Fauna[]
- Bolotaur
- Fathier
- Furred reek
- Jotaz
- Krayt dragon (at least one known)
- Kell dragon (at least one known)
- Flutterplume
- Oggdo
- Phillak
- Scazz
- Tooka
- Makrin creeper (imported)
- Vrake (imported)
Behind the Scenes[]
The world of Farrow is loosely inspired by the representation of Earth as depicted in Horizon Zero Dawn; a natural environment littered with the remains of an ancient, advanced civilization and populated by tribal communities.