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The Foundry's specifications match those of three other space stations known by history. Each of these legendary stations could manufacture technology on a massive scale. One xenoformed planets; another built fleets of ships... —Darth Malgus to Lord Kallig — Listen (file info)[src]
Mure orbited the North Star, an F-type main-sequence star that had at one point been a member of a binary star system in the heart of the Deep Core. A close encounter with Galactic Center, a supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy, devoured its larger sibling and sent the star careening off into the outer edges of the galactic bulge at an angle perpendicular to the galactic plane. The Celestials were the first to visit Mure in their attempts to slightly adjust the North Star's positioning to lie directly over Galactic Center. Though the planet's core was believed to have accreted naturally in its system's protoplanetary disc, the Celestials were responsible for artificially shaping the planet's outer surface in a manner similar to that used on the Five Brothers.
Mure was first properly settled by the Kwa, a Celestial client species who established a colony on the world due to its status as a potent Force nexus. Dangers posed by the system's high levels of extragalactic cosmic radiation, gamma radiation from the Core, and multiplicity of free-floating asteroids necessitated the construction of the Monolith by the Celestials. This world-encompassing space station took the form of a hollow trucated icosahedron frame equipped with powerful ray shields and particle shields capable of resisting radiation and disintegrating asteroids.
The Celestials returned to Mure during the Celestial-Rakata War. The world's proximity to the Mortis Line, a wall of hyperspace turbulence barriers erected west of the Core Worlds to keep out the RakataInfinite Empire, made the planet a strategic defensive stronghold and forward observational position. Mure was one of the last Celestial fortress worlds along the Mortis Line to successfully keep the Rakata contained in the western Unknown Regions. Its fall to the Rakata after several successive failed assaults marked the war's turning point in favor of the Infinite Empire, allowing the Rakata to circumvent the Mortis Line and spread unmolested into the eastern galaxy.
The Rakata took possession of the Monolith in 34,129 BBY and razed the surface of Mure via an extended orbital bombardment, purging it of the Kwa and their burgeoning civilization. The Empire subsequently terraformed Mure from a barren rock to a verdant paradise via the joint application of the Rakatan xenoforming station and terraforming space station, a pair of orbital platforms considered to be among the wonders of the Rakatan civilization. As a monument to their victory, the former Celestial fortress world's landmasses and continents were deliberately constructed to closely resemble those of the Rakata homeworld of Lehon.
The Five Deaths system became an important crossroads in the Empire, serving as a trade nexus and waystation for Rakata ships carrying soldiers east to contested Celestial worlds and tribute west to Lehon. By travelling over the Mortis Line to Mure and slingshotting back down to the galactic plane, the Rakata were able to descend upon their enemies from above rather than seek passage at the north and south extremities of the galaxy. Additionally, travel through the barren Intergalactic Void to and from Mure was a considerably safer route than conventional intragalactic passages in an era before advanced navicomputers, mitigating the risk of hyperspace collisions with planets, stars, and nebulae.
Several centuries after the failed Rakatan Invasion of Korriban and death of the Red SithkingAdas[1], the planet came to host a large number of Red Sith slaves of the Zuguruk caste taken from conquered Sith colony worlds. These slaves, whose caste was known for its artistry and engineering prowess, were commissioned to oversee the construction of structures and facilities on Mure. With the fall of the Infinite Empire, these Sith turned on their masters in pursuit of their emancipation, engaging in a slave uprising and protracted cold war with the Rakata remnant that lasted some twelve millennia.
Evolving into a distinct subspecies called the Murese over this twelve thousand year dark age, the Zuguruk residents of Mure eventually defeated the Rakata remnant and established a spacefaring society of their own, colonizing their system and spreading out into the Rakatan Archipelago. Armed with ancient Rakatan technology and empowered by the Force, the Murese resisted the outside influences of a number of successive governments, including the True Sith Empire and Galactic Republic. Their policy of armed neutrality, remote and heavily protected location, and history of successfully resisting foreign invasion eventually empowered them to establish a banking empire catering to the galaxy's criminal elite that persisted long into the Golden Age of the Old Republic.
Mure was a small terrestrialplanet with a chemical composition unique to terrestrial worlds. Despite its small size, the planet possessed the surface gravity of a standard sized terrestrial planet due to the density and chemical makeup of its core. Unlike most terrestrial worlds, which usually possessed Iron(II) sulfide metallic cores primarily composed of Iron with trace amounts of sulfur and nickel, Mure possessed an inner core that included above-average percentages of denser metals like tungsten, cobalt, platinum, and gold that contributed to a higher density and associated higher surface gravity.[2] Mure's outer core was composed primarily of molten, highly conducive iron with small percentages of the aforementioned dense metals. The electric convection currents produced by this layer were responsible for generating the planet's magnetic field and magnetosphere.
Mantle and crust
Sitting atop the core, Mure's mantle was primarily composed of high iron content silicate rocks rich in magnesium, and its crust consisted of dense sodium potassium-aluminum rocks like granite with a mean thickness of 1,500 kilometers. Roughly 11% of the crust rock content was composed of Force-sensitive stone, a rare black substance that was likely imported or created by the Celestial architects who constructed the planet. In the lowest levels of the crust, the planet possessed an extensive subterranean ocean of water kept in a liquid state by both heat emanating from the mantle and planetary plate tectonics produced by convection currents in the mantle. In this ocean, microbial organisms, including a Midi-chlorian population, were observed. These two factors were responsible for the planet's high Force-sensitivity and made transit to the system via Rakatan Force-powered hyperdrive technology possible.[3]. The Infinite Empire relocated much of this water content above ground during their own terraformation of the planet, filling the former ocean's cave system with both extensive subterranean facilities.
Mure was a verdant paradise following its successful terraformation by the Rakatan Infinite Empire.
The Rakatans saw the world as a suitable test subject for the recently completed Rakatan xenoforming station and terraforming space station, a pair of platforms of the same caliber as the Star Forge and Foundry.[4] Transformed from a barren, dusty rock to a verdant paradise, Mure hosted a vibrant, lush ecosystem and oxygen-rich atmosphere suitable for habitation. Its landmasses and continents were intentionally constructed to resemble those of the Rakata homeworld of Lehon and provided later researchers with a reasonably accurate depiction of how Imperial-era Lehon looked prior to the Rakata Civil War.
Native fauna and flora
With the end of the Celestial-Rakata War, the Rakata established several military science colonies on the planet surface. These colonies focused on the development and testing of advanced Force-sensitivebiological weapons for use in pacifying the populations of conquered worlds in the eastern galaxy. The Rakata released several of these species into the Murese wild during the War for Liberation in the hopes that these would aid in quelling the Red Sith slave rebels.
The Metye was a Force-sensitivesemi-sentientfelinesmilodon species developed by the Rakata as a biological weapon capable of hunting through the Force. Though capable of running at high speeds, these nocturnal creatures were natural persistence hunters. Hidden in the treetops of Mure's dark forests and jungles, these hunters were observed by their Rakata handlers to follow prey for hundreds of miles without interruption, waiting for their quarry to tire before pouncing from the tree for the kill.
The Metye were partially responsible for the Murese species's evolution into a Force-sensitive species. Non-Force using Sith did not last long in the wild against these hunters, and were thus unable to propagate their own genetic distinctiveness to the greater tribe. Only those Sith capable of using the Force against the Metye were able to survive and reproduce, leading to a predisposition towards Force-sensitivity among the population. As the Murese developed a unified industrial society, well-equipped bands of Sith warriors began hunting the Metye to extinction. By 12,000 BBY, no members of the species remained on Mure.
Another Force-using Rakata biological weapon, the Flower of Lehon, was a large carnivorous planet that possessed a unique set of abilities that rendered it an ideal hunter in its own right. The Flower could camouflage itself by imitating the appearance of nearby plants, manipulating its cellular substructure to resemble the coloration of its neighbors. It drew unsuspecting prey, non-sentient and sentient alike, into its maw and pincer arms via a mild version of the mind trick, a Force-aided siren call that only the strong-minded could successfully resist. Like the Metye, the Flower of Lehon was partially responsible for the development of the Murese into a Force-using species. Non-Force using Murese were unable to resist its siren calls and were regular prey for these plants.
The Flower became one of Mure's chief exports upon its entrance into the galactic community. During their isolation, the Murese discovered that the plant's poison glands used to incapacitate unwary prey could be applied to the development of everything from neuropoisons to hallucinogenic recreational drugs. The development of such compounds gave birth to a lucrative industry, as such composites were frequently in high demand in the galactic black market. Further, the plant itself was often used as an interrogation tool. Crime lords found that the Force whisperings of multiple plants placed around a restrained prisoner were enough to break even the most strong-minded of individuals.
Mure first accreted from the protoplanetary disk of its home system roughly four billion years prior to the Battle of Yavin. Unlike most terrestrial worlds, its inner core contained high percentages of dense metals like tungsten, cobalt, platinum, and gold in addition to iron. The Rakata scientists who studied the origins of the Five Deaths system posited that the metal-rich nature of Mure's composition was due to the chemical consistency of its system's primordial protoplanetary disk.[5]
The Five Deaths system contained a vast asteroid field, the remnants of the system's former planets.
As the Five Deaths system was originally located at the heart of the Deep Core prior to its star's expulsion from the galaxy, its disk was rife with metals denser than iron. These were the drifting remnants of a series of Type II supernovae that occurred during a particularly volatile period of starburst in the Core,[5] an event that occurred every half billion years on average.[6] It was believed that Mure first accreted in a particularly metal-rich portion of the disk. Because of this, it was not readily able to cultivate higher percentages of lighter elements like carbon, oxygen, phosphorus, and hydrogen necessary for a conventional terrestrial atmosphere. Such elements had likely been blown far from the nebular cloud from which the protoplanetary disk drew its raw materials by the supernovae winds, thus making them unavailable for use in the accretion process.[5]
Exodus from the Deep Core
Though the modern Five Deaths system possessed only a single star, a bright F-type main-sequence star later known as the North Star, the Rakata believed that the system had previously been a binary star system located close at hand to the Galactic Center, a supermassive black hole that was believed to lurk at the center of the Deep Core. The North Star was believed to have been the smaller sibling of a more massive B-type main-sequence star. At some point during the system's orbit about the Galactic Center, it drifted too far into the gravitational pull of the black hole. Caught in its gravity well, the system began to experience an increased orbital velocity about the black hole, approaching a significant fraction of the speed of light. The larger of the two stars was the first to be devoured by the black hole, its stellar mass slowly stripped away by the intense gravitational forces.[7] As the North Star remained gravitationally tethered to its larger sibling, it was unable to escape, and its own stellar mass began to enter the early stages of stellar decay.[8]
As the larger star's last vestiges of matter passed beyond the event horizon and were consumed by the black hole, the North Star suddenly found itself untethered from its gravitational anchor. Like a pebble released from a sling, it was flung out of the Deep Core at an angle perpendicular to the galactic plane, becoming a hypervelocity star and escaping the gravity well of the supermassive black hole.[7][8] However, it was unable to achieve escape velocity necessary to completely shake off the gravitational pull of the greater galaxy. It finally came to a stop some 15,000 light years directly above Galactic Center in extra-galactic space, making the star one of millions of intergalactic stars that lay outside the plane of the galaxy.[9] The North Star's near perfect positioning directly above the galaxy's center made it a useful navigational tool for the nascent civilizations that arose in the galaxy and earned it its name.
Intergalactic world
The North Star had not made its miraculous escape unaccompanied. The planets of its star system had continued to orbit it during its hasty exit from the Core, though the encounter with the black hole had torn apart the outer worlds and left only their ruined crusts and mantles in the form of an extensive asteroid field. Only Mure had emerged largely unscathed. Though it had lost its crust and mantle to Galactic Center's gravitational pull, Mure's core remained intact and continued to orbit the North Star at a distance of 3 astronomical units.
The system's newfound position above the galactic plane, however, meant the nascent world was subjected to the dangers of galactic cosmic radiation at a level greater than that experienced by systems protected by the magnetic fields of the galactic plane.[10][11] Furthermore, two gigantic spherical bubbles of high energy gamma emission existed to the north and south of the core, with diameters of nearly 25,000 light years.[12] Believed to be the magnetized outflow of star formation in the central regions of the Deep Core, these gamma emissions bathed Mure and its moon in radiation every second, a fact which made initial colonization efforts difficult.[13]
Discovery
The North Star was long known to the ancient Kwa astronomers as a useful navigational index that assisted in completing the specific calculations needed to link their Infinity Gates. Extended observations of the star's occasional lapses in luminosity seemed to indicate the present of a planet passing between Dathomir and the star, though no efforts to visit the system were made by the Kwa to confirm this theory for some time.
Instead, the first galactic civilization to visit the Five Deaths system was that of the Celestials, a race of Force users who ruled the galaxy in its earliest days. A mystic and enigmatic race, the Celestials were known by future generations for their megastructure artifacts and their seemingly impossible feats of astroengineering that involved the construction of planets and the moving of star systems.[14][15] They first came to the Five Deaths system around 100,000 BBY, intent on enhancing the North Star's usefulness as a navigational aid by shifting its positioning to lie directly over Galactic Center's maw.
Celestial astroengineering project
Encountering Mure in its unfinished state, the Celestials artificially completed the planet in the ensuing millennia. Mure was one of seventeen cataloged planets artificially constructed in part by the Celestials, including the Five Brothers and Vultar.[16] Though worlds like Corellia were believed to have undergone more intensive construction efforts,[15] Mure owed the presence of its outer mantle and crust to Celestial construction efforts.
Artistic representation of what Mure may have looked like after its reconstruction by the Celestial astroengineers.
According to contemporary Kwa accounts, the Celestials preferred to make use of the raw materials already present in the Five Deaths system to reconstruct the planet rather than import rock and mineral content from the galactic plane. Though the ruins of the Five Deaths system had floated listlessly in orbit around the North Star since the system's relocation, the Celestials collected and consolidated them at Mure's Lagrangian points of L4 and L5 for ease of access and convenient storage. Rocks and metals were shuttled over as needed from these storage locations to points L1 and L2 immediately outside Mure's geocentric orbit zones, close at hand to the Celestial astroengineering engines. From here, they were manually maneuvered as needed into the planet's gravity well. These two Lagrangian asteroid fields continued to orbit the North Star at their designated positions for the rest of the system's existence, and eventually hosted a number of Rakatan and Murese asteroid bases dedicated to the defense of the system.
To complete the accretion process, the Celestials began by feeding Mure's gravity well a large supply of iron that expanded its outer core significantly and generated a powerful magnetic field capable of handling large amounts of radiation. Magnesium-rich silicate rocks were passed to the expanding world next and coalesced to form its molten mantle. This layer was covered with a sodium potassium-aluminum rock outer crust. Research undertaken by Rakata xenogeologists indicated that this rock content was not imported by the Celestials but rather originated from the world remnants that made up the Five Deaths' outer asteroid field. The similarities between these world remnants' and Murese mantle and crusts' modal magnesium oxide to iron(II) oxide ratios (defined as MgO / (MgO + FeO)[17]) and titanium isotope ratios (defined as 50Ti/47Ti[18]) indicated that Mure shared a close chemical profile with these asteroids and was likely built from their resultant rock content.[19][20]
The crust's high percentage of Force-sensitive stone, likely created by the Celestials or imported from worlds in the galactic plane, and its vast subterranean ocean teeming with midi-chlorianmicrobes were believed to have been artificially injected by the Celestials to make the world a potent Force nexus. The specifics of the planet's landmasses and continent configuration on the surface were lost to history by the time of the Rakata occupation of the planet, though contemporary Kwa records claimed the world was primarily oceanic with a dozen large islands scattered across the surface.
To ensure the stability of the planet's axial tilt and to introduce tidal zones to the planet's surface,[21] the Celestials completed their reconstruction efforts with the creation of a Murese moon, thereafter known as Lune. Similar comparisons made between the modal oxide and isotope ratios of the Murese and Lunec mantles indicated that the moon was similarly constructed from the ashes of the Five Deaths system, though its inner core was significantly less dense than that of its parent planet and composed primarily of iron rather than heavier metals. Thus, its surface gravity was a fraction of Mure's, necessitating the installation of artificial gravity generators in the bases of Lunec settlements. As the Celestials had likely never intended for Lune to serve as anything but a cosmic anchor for Mure, they made no effort to make the moon habitable by any of their client species.
Kwa settlement
It was unknown to the Rakata and Murese researchers whether the Celestials possessed any long term plans to seed Mure with a sentient native species of its own. However, the world was initially leased to the Kwa, a saurian client species of the Celestials native to Dathomir that were known for their use of Infinity Gate technology to traverse and settle the galaxy.[22] Though their numbers on Mure were never great due to the world's distance from their holdings, the Kwa of Mure established a few cities on the world's islands. The only artifact of theirs that persisted into the era of the Rakata was the world's Star Temple, originally used to store the planet's Infinity Gate but later converted by the Rakata into a palace for the system's Predors.
Within a few generations of settling the planet, the Kwa began to experience extreme rates of radiation-induced cancer caused by extragalactic cosmic rays, gamma radiation, and solar radiation from the North Star.[10][11] Mure's natural magnetic field, though strong in comparison to other terrestrial worlds, was unable to fully block the extreme radiation levels present in the Intergalactic Void. The Kwa petitioned the Celestials for assistance in this matter, claiming that continued exposure would necessitate their colony's removal from the system.
To address these concerns, the Celestials began construction of a large inhabitable space station around Mure capable of both protecting the world from radiation and serving as a waystation for ships travelling across the galaxy. Taking the form of a hollow truncated icosahedron frame, the station, called the Monolith, possessed hundreds of levels arranged in a radial layout to take advantage of Mure's natural gravitational pull and Force aura. With a diameter of 9,000 kilometers, the station was home to vast city complexes capable of housing millions of residents of all known Celestial client species. Its thousands of docking bays allowed for easy unloading and storage of goods from across the galaxy.
The Monolith was a labyrinth of passageways and hallways that stretched for miles.
To guard against radiation, the Monolith employed ray shields capable of resisting cosmic rays that filled the hexagonal and pentagonal gaps in its superstructural frame when activated. Its half-kilometer thick outer hull, built from metals harvested from the system's asteroid field, was further coated with a hydrogenatedboron nitridenanocompound capable of resisting both galactic cosmic radiation and the resultant secondary radiation.[23] The presence of the Kwa on the planet below necessitated the addition of a series of particle shields to disintegrate incoming asteroids capable of destroying Mure's ecology.
Rise of the Infinite Empire
In 35,000 BBY, the Rakata of Lehon, a Force-using Celestial slave species, threw off Celestial rule and established an empire of their own in the western Unknown Regions.[24] Fueled by the dark side of the Force and empowered with reverse-engineered Celestial and Kwa technology, the Rakata expanded outward from their homeplanet, seeking to conquer the galaxy and usurp the hegemony of the Celestials. This led to the several thousand year conflict known as the Celestial-Rakata War, which ended in the unexplained disappearance of the Celestials and the birth of the galaxy-spanning Rakata Infinite Empire.[16]
Early in the war, in an effort to keep the Rakata contained in the Unknown Regions, the Celestials erected a hyperspace barrier immediately west of the Deep Core,[16][24] extending from the Mortis Monolith in the north to the fortress world of Terminus in the south. Comprised of artificial hyperspace anomalies moving at speeds greater than that of light, this barrier, called the Mortis Line, was intended to force the Rakata to funnel their invasion forces through the north and south extremities of the galaxy at specific bottlenecks. This would enable the Celestial forces to confront the Rakata at fortified locations of their own choosing and turn the balance of the war in their favor.
As Mure and the Five Deaths system sat atop the hyperspace wall and close at hand to the Infinite Empire's eastern borders, the world saw military service as a forward observation post for the Celestials. The Monolith, already a convenient defensive structure in its own right, was converted to military use via the implementation of external turbolaser batteries and improved deflector shields. Its internal facilities were gutted and renovated to house a large contingent of military units composed of Celestial client species from across the galaxy. As the Celestials were well aware of the Force-powered hyperdrives of the Rakata that enabled them to travel between Force-sensitive worlds,[3] the Monolith also hosted a large Celestial navy in its docking bays.
The Rakata did not find the Five Deaths system at the war's start. Their initial efforts focused on punching though the Mortis Line itself in search of a route that would allow them to bypass the Celestial-held passages at the galactic north and south. In 34,557 BBY, a Rakata scout ship probing the Mortis Line stumbled upon the Five Deaths, led to the system by a Force Hound. Its above-average connection to the Force made it the perfect target for the Force-powered hyperdrive technology of the Rakata.[3] Its position above the galactic plane allowed the Rakata to bypass the Celestials' turbulence barricades entirely by traveling above the galaxy to Mure before descending back down into the east. As it appeared to the Rakata to be an ideal point d'appui for incursions into the eastern galaxy, the Rakata made a concerted effort to take the system.
The Rakata attempted a series of consecutive sieges of Mure and the Five Deaths. The system's increased importance to the Celestials' policy of containment necessitated the stationing of a large Celestial army of Kwa, Gree, and Killik forces on Mure and the Monolith. After many unsuccessful attempts, the Rakata were eventually able to take the Monolith in 34,229 BBY despite heavy losses. Faced with the prospect of a costly armed invasion of Mure, the Rakata instead reverted to the use of a sustained orbital bombardment, a common Imperial tactic,[25] to defeat their enemies. The Rakata razed the planet, wiping away all trace of the Kwa and Celestials' influence and reducing the surface to ash. The only structure spared in this assault was the star temple, the Museren, whose pyramidal walls were believed to shield a Kwa Infinity Gate. Though the Kwa destroyed the Gate when a Rakata victory seemed certain, the Temple was preserved and converted into a palace for use by the Rakata Predors.
The conquest of the Five Deaths proved to be a Pyrrhic victory for the Rakata. Though control of the system enabled them to circumvent the Celestial barriers and move unmolested into the rich eastern galaxy, they had lost many ships and soldiers in the preceding sieges. They were forced to consolidate their forces and slow their momentum for several decades, which bought the Celestials and their allies time to regroup and reinforce other fortress worlds in the eastern galaxy. Historians posited that the origins of the Star Forge, a fleet-producing space station commissioned sometime prior to 33,598 BBY, lay in the need for a rapidly mass-produced fleet that could replace the losses sustained in the invasion of Mure.
Mure-Lehon Bypass
Mure's position made it a strategic crossroads in the nascent Infinite Empire. For long transgalactic journeys, the Rakata discovered that traveling through the empty Intergalactic Void to the Five Deaths system before slingshotting back down to the galactic plane was a safer approach than conventional passages through the galactic plane, where hyperspace collisions with stars and cosmic debris were common in an era before advanced navicomputers. Thus, despite the increased travel times, many Rakata ships bringing troops to the eastern front or carrying slaves and tribute west from conquered worlds passed through the system. This approach came to be called the Mure-Lehon Bypass and was an important trade route in the days prior to advanced hyperspace navigation technology. It remained the primary transgalactic route of choice for the Rakata until the last days of the Empire.
Terraformation of Mure
The increased importance of the system to the Empire paved the way for its permanent settlement by the Rakata. As a result, the Rakata began experiments in terraformation on the planet around 34,200 BBY. In an attempt to make the world once again suitable for habitation, the Infinite Empire tested two of its newly constructed megastructures on the planet, namely the Rakatan xenoforming station and Rakatan terraforming space station, a pair of orbital platforms considered two of the ancient wonders of the Infinite Empire.[4] Their joint application transformed Mure from a barren world to a verdant paradise awash in flora from across the galaxy.
They began with the reconstruction of an atmosphere and outer ozone layer, with the importation of greenhouse gases and hydrocarbons like methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and sulfur hexafluoride to assist in raising the temperature of the planet.[26] Once global temperatures had reached acceptable levels, the Rakata began the importation of oxygen-producing flora from terrestrial worlds in the Empire, artificially altering the genetic substructure of these plants to make them more conducive to growth in the artificial soil the Empire had designed to cover the surface of the planet.
Terraformed Mure was home to vast dark forests designed to emulate those on Lehon.
As a final poke in the Celestials' eye, the landmasses, continents, and oceans of Mure were deliberately designed and precisely placed to resemble those of Lehon. The image seen from space of the Monolith superstructure protecting a perfect replica of the Rakata homeworld was intended to serve as a permanent illustration of Rakatan triumph over their former masters. Even into the era of the Galactic Empire, that image persisted as a lasting monument to the Infinite Empire, providing xenoecologists and historians with a representation of what Lehon may have looked like prior to its devastation during the Rakata Civil War.[27]
Planetary growth
The terraformation of Mure was completed towards the end of the Celestial-Rakata War. By this time, the Empire had grown in size, encompassing a sizable percentage of the known galaxy and occupying worlds as distant from Lehon as Tatooine and Kashyyyk. As the crossroads of the burgeoning Empire, Mure was a nexus of trade, boasting a constant influx of merchant galleys carrying tribute and slaves bound for the capitals of the Empire. The Predorship of the system was considered a prestigious appointment for high-ranking Rakata, who grew wealthy and politically influential as a result of their system's strategic positioning. Much of this was translated into the construction of vast palaces, temples, and monuments on Mure glorifying their creators' careers.
The successful terraformation of Acrolis, its varied verdant biomes, and its strong Force connection made it the perfect Rakata science colony. It hosted a variety of experiments in biological warfare created to ensure uncontested Rakata rule on subjugated worlds. These experiments resulted in the creation of predatory flora and fauna like the Flower of Lehon, a Force-using carnivorous plant, and the Metye, a Force-enhanced feline with similar properties as the Vornskr. The forests and jungles of the planet were rife with the results of such projects, imported to test their effectiveness in an actual habitat before being mass-produced and shipped offworld for use in the Celestial-Rakata War.
End of the Celestial-Rakata War
The specific end date of the Celestial-Rakata War was a commonly debated point of contention among Golden Age historians, though all agreed that the Celestials unexpectedly disappeared at some point without a trace. While some stated The Celestials were last reportedly seen in the galaxy around 33,600 BBY,[28] most posited that the Celestials remained in the galaxy until 30,000 BBY at the latest.[3][16]
Slaves were responsible for the construction of many of Mure's Rakatan monuments, including the pictured Murese Temple of the Ancients.
Despite the war's end, Mure found a renewed purpose as a military installation during the golden age of the Infinite Empire. Its heavily protected location made it an ideal repository for the storage of sensitive Imperial secrets, technology, and weapons. Deep beneath the verdant surface, a vast network of subterranean bunkers riddled the crust of the planet, containing vaults ceaselessly guarded by Rakatan guardian droids and automated defense systems.
Similarly, Mure was one of several Imperial fortress worlds included in Rakatan continuity of government contingency plans as a defensible redoubt from which the Over-Predor and his council could govern during a galactic crisis. The world's seat of power, the Meseren, was thus outfitted with the most advanced holotransmitters and holotransceivers available in the pre-Republic era, allowing the Imperial high command to direct the course of a war from far above the galaxy if necessary. The Monolith was further converted and reinforced with additional turbolaser batteries and a large contingent of the Imperial fleet in preparation for a royal occupancy of its planet by the Over-Predor.
Slavery capital of the Empire
As the slavery capital of the Empire, the system traded in slaves of all known species. Though the Mure housed a varied slave population for sale including representatives of the Human, Wookiee, and Selkath species, the vast majority of the slaves on Mure were of Red Sith origin, specifically the Zuguruk engineering caste. Though the Red Sith had successfully repulsed the 27,700 BBYImperial invasion of their homeworld, they had lost their king Adas to the Rakata.[1] Without his guiding hand, the Sith descended into chaos and war, with many Sith fleeing Korriban to start anew on other planets in the Sith Worlds and the Outer Rim.
Many of these small colonies were handily picked off by the Rakata, their residents killed or enslaved by the Empire. The Kissai Sith were viewed as dangerous Force users possessed of arcane powers even the Rakata did not fully understand. They were generally enslaved and used as fuel to power Rakatan Force-powered hyperdrive technology, the Forcedrive.[3] The Massassi were perceived as being little more than useful manual labor. The Zuguruk Sith, on the other hand, were viewed more positively by the Rakata, who were impressed with their talent in structural engineering, art, and architecture, as evidenced in the design complexity of their colonies's temples and tombs.[29]
As a result of their natural abilities, a great many of these Red Sith ended up on Mure, overseeing the design, development, and construction of Rakata installations related to the world's newfound status as a redoubt. Despite their status as slaves, the Zuguruk Sith were treated better than most other slaves in the Empire and enjoyed many freedoms unavailable to other slave species on Mure. Instead of engaging in manual labor like their Massassi cousins, these Zuguruk usually served in the capacity of architects, overseers, and foremen, supervising the nonstop development of new Rakata structures on Mure. Zuguruk art produced on Mure became a luxury export that lined the pockets of the Predors. Some Zuguruk Sith even rose to high positions in the Empire as the adjutants and personal assistants of their Rakata masters.
Rakata Civil War
Over the next two millennia, the Infinite Empire entered a period of decline. Far removed from its glorious period of unchecked conquest and expansion, the Empire had become complacent and bureaucratically bloated. Many upstart Predors from across the realm strove with each other for possession of the Over-Predor's Imperial throne, a conflict that came to be called the Rakatan Civil War. As their steel grip on their empire began to slip, the Rakata experienced constant regional slave revolts within their holdings to which they were increasingly unable to answer. As such, they resorted to more desperate attempts of maintaining their hegemony, frequently relying on extended orbital bombardments to quell local insurrections.[25]
The Rakata Civil War brought conflict to Mure, resulting in the destruction of many monuments.
On Mure, more and more Rakata began to abandon the system for Lehon and worlds closer to the safe heart of the Empire.[3] As fewer building projects were commissioned, many slaves were offloaded to other worlds, shipped to the mines of Lune, or simply executed as unneeded surplus. By the time of the Empire's fall in 25,200 BBY,[14] the planet was occupied by fewer than two billion residents, most of them Red Sith.
A Force-based, Rakata-targeting plague allegedly created by an unknown slave race swept across the Empire in 25,200 BBY.[3] Suddenly bereft of their Force-sensitivity and unable to use their own Force-powered technology, the Rakata found themselves facing countless concerted slave revolts across the galaxy to which they could not answer. Forced to rely on substandard alternative technology, the Rakata abandoned most of their empire and embraced a policy of total war, bombarding worlds to dust from orbit and committing the mass genocide of slave species.[25] Most retreated to Lehon, which was soon consumed by civil war as the Rakata strove among themselves for supremacy in the ruins of their empire.
Red Sith revolts
The news of the Empire's inability to counter rebellions did not go unheeded among the Zuguruk, nor did their masters' sudden lack of Force-sensitivity go unnoticed. As the numbers of Rakata settlers on the surface had dwindled over the years, the Predor of the Five Deaths, Bala'zar, soon found himself with a Red Sith insurrection on his hands. Bereft of support from the fracturing Empire, the Rakatans were unable to answer to Sith slave uprisings. United under the banner of a slave-turned-warrior named Asmenys, the Sith revolts became more organized than previous rebellions, coordinating multi-prong attacks on isolated Rakatan outposts and taking no prisoners.
Though he had hoped to ride out the Empire's fall behind Mure's impregnable defenses, Bala'zar decided to cut his losses and risk a return to Lehon, making preparations for a withdrawal from the planet. As the Rakatans required many Force-sensitive Sith slaves and prisoners to fuel their starships for the duration of the voyage,[3] Bala'zar recalled the planet's remaining garrisons to the Temple of Inexorable Victory and consolidated his hold on the Sferastotazisiv, the plain upon which the Rakatan capital was built. Systematically putting down the local rebellions, the Rakatans extracted what able-bodied slaves they could, executing those Sith who were too sickly or aged to serve as suitable fuel sources. These slaves were shipped up to the Monolith, where the remaining Rakata fleet was docked and undergoing repairs for the journey.
Within weeks, Asmenys and his followers converged on the Sferastotazisiv, intent on enacting revenge. Coordinating an extensive nighttime invasion of the Rakatan capital, the Sith carved their way through the city's automated defenses and encircled the Temple itself. Personally fighting his way through the startled defenders, Asmenys engaged the Predor Bala'zar in single combat and slew him and his chief officers upon the steps of the Temple, though not before suffering a mortal wound from the Predor's ownForcesaber. Their morale shattered, the remaining Rakatans scattered in fear from the city and were systematically hunted down by the Sith over the next few weeks. Rather than renew their efforts on the ground, the remaining Rakatans in orbit elected to withdraw from the system and attempt the perilous journey to Lehon with the slaves they had. To prevent the Sith from claiming a victory and in keeping with conventional Rakata military doctrine,[25] several ships of the fleet undocked from the Monolith and coordinated an extensive orbital bombardment intended to reduce the planet to the barren rock it once had been.
However, the Sith insurrection had not been solely restricted to the planet. Sith uprisings spread to the Monolith and the Rakata ships docked therein. Before long, the slaves held for use as fuel freed themselves and the surplus slaves of other species and ran loose across the station. Though the Rakata were successfully able to destroy a large part of the Sith army encamped on the Sferastotazisiv, as well as a handful of other slave population centers around the planet, their skeleton crews were unable to maintain control over their ships and were soon overwhelmed by their Sith fuel sources.
Aftermath
Though the sacrifice of the Sith in orbit had successfully prevented the complete destruction of the planet's ecology, Mure had sustained heavy damage during the initial phases of the bombardment. A large portion of the Rakata capital city occupied by the slave rebels had been razed to the ground, along with much of the surrounding plain. Elsewhere on the planet, known rebel outposts and large population centers alike had been specifically targeted, leaving few survivors on the planet. Though some Zuguruk Red Sith tribes had survived to repopulate the planet, the vast majority of the non-Force-using slave population, along with the Massassi clans, went extinct within a few generations of the Empire's expulsion.
With the fall of the Empire in 25,200 BBY,[14] Mure and the Five Deaths system were forgotten by the greater galaxy. Though the North Star remained a useful navigational aid into the modern era, the recorded weak points in the Celestial hyperspace cage used by the Rakata to travel outside the galaxy were lost, rendering the system unreachable by the rising galactic civilizations of the Core Worlds. For the next twelve millennia, the Red Sith Zuguruk remnant on Mure scratched out a living in the forests and jungles of the planet, utterly isolated from outside contact.
Due to the planet's long year, which lasted close to five standard years on account of the planet's 3 AU distance from the North Star, the Murese were forced to engage in tribe-based ranging practices, just as their ancient Korribani ancestors had in ages past.[29] As winters lasted years, the migratory patterns of the Sith took them around the planet as they moved across continents in search of sustainable regions unaffected by the cold. The Sith frequently interacted with faraway tribes from other continents and developed a shared social structure, language, and culture that extended across the planet. As they had not been a spacefaring species for millennia and had no access to the genome-locked Rakatan technology on the surface,[27] the Sith of Mure were left undiscovered for ages.
Evolution of the Murese
During this time, their species experienced a significant evolutionary paradigm shift as survivor colonies were forced to adapt to the conditions of their world. Though the species' characteristic bright red skin tone served to camouflage the Sith from predators in the red wastes of Korriban, it stuck out in the black forests, dark jungles, and gray mountains of Mure. Mutant survivors with darker, more subdued skin tones survived longer than their bright red skinned cousins and were more likely to disseminate their genetic distinctiveness to the greater population. As a result, the Sith, thereafter known as the Murese, lost their traditional red complexion[30][31] in favor of a black charcoal coloration, which gave rise to their sobriquet, the Black Sith. As traversal through treacherous forested terrain became the norm, those few Zuguruk Sith who did not already possess that caste's distinctive five-digited hands[29] found themselves at a disadvantage, leading to a disposition towards five dexterous digits capable of climbing and gripping such terrain with ease.
As a Murese year lasted nearly five standard years, winters were long and cold.
Mure itself evolved significantly over the millennia. Though originally an alignment-neutral Force nexus prior to the Empire's arrival, the countless millennia under the yoke of the dark sided Rakata had profoundly affected the world's Force balance. Like Lehon, Mure was awash in dark side influence,[32] which affected both its population and its ecology. Millennia of experiments in the creation of Force-using biological weapons had resulted in a native flora and fauna evolved to hunt with the Force. The dark forest treetops were the haunts of the Metye, who preyed upon weak and Force-blind Sith. The forest floors were no safer, as the Force-enhanced Flower of Lehon possessed the ability to alter its cellular substructure to match that of surrounding plantlife. It could exert a subtle mind influence over its prey through the Force that only the strong minded could resist. Those Murese survivors bereft of Force-sensitivity did not last long against these predators, leading to an evolutionary predisposition towards Force-sensitivity among the surviving clans.
By 13,000 BBY, the Murese's evolutionary development had cemented their hegemony as the apex predator of their world, empowering them to build a civilization of their own. It was during this time that the unique culture known as "Murese" came about. Prevailing Sith culture was a mix of tribalism and feudalism which reflected their society's social structure. Though some clans continued to engage in their traditional wandering tribal ways throughout the northern and southern hemispheres, many groups of Murese had consolidated their numbers around certain particularly potent Force nexes at the moderately warm planetary equator. Eschewing their peripatetic ways, these Sith built towns and cities in a Neo-Rakata architectural style that grew into powerful city-states as more Murese settled on the outskirts.
Feudal government
Murese culture embraced a modified merito-magocraticfeudal federation system of government that placed heavy influence upon the importance of merit. Each city was generally ruled by a powerful Force user titled grafas (from the Murese Sithgrafas literally meaning "count" or duke"[33]), who possessed a seat on the Qabbrat (derived from the Old Sith qabbrat meaning "meditation chamber"[33][34]) and who governed his city-state with absolute authority.
However, as merit was important to the Murese, the title of grafas frequently changed hands as more qualified and powerful individuals arose to replace the presiding rulers. Any Murese could challenge a ruler to a duel to the death in single combat, the outcome of which decided the occupant of the city-state's throne. To discourage cheating and foul play, these duels were held publicly in sight of unbiased witnesses and overseen by members of the Murese priesthood. Such duels often generated great public interest, providing presiding rulers an opportunity to demonstrate their strength to their constituents and upstarts a chance to make a positive first impression. Over time, such events were held in specially designed amphitheaters before thousands of spectators, proceeded by weeks of press and media coverage.
The collective realm was itself ruled by a daritha (from daritha meaning "emperor" borrowed directly from ancient Rakatan[35]), who too was subject to the same expectations regarding merit as his vassals. Ruling from the Murese Star Temple, the daritha exercised absolute control over the Murese people, but could be replaced by any powerful grafas on the Qabbrat at any time, provided the contender possessed a significant powerbase. Single combat duels for the Imperial throne, similar to those that decided the rulers of city-states, were events of the season for the Murese population. Spectators converged on the Sith capital from across the planet for such events.
City-state conflicts
Like their Korribani ancestors, the Murese believed war and conflict were as much a part of the natural order of life as peace and serenity.[29] Feuds and attempted power-grabs were not uncommon among the grafasikut, which led to frequent wars between city-states. However, as with single combat between rulers and upstarts, wars were expected to be public affairs held before many noncombatant witnesses. As such, battles were not fought in the furtive, asymmetrical styles of warfare common in the galaxy at the time, but rather took the form of pitched battles held on Mure's plains and fields. These battles were spectacles for the populations of uninvolved city-states, who often made day trips out of such events and bet on their outcomes. Many military leaders from foreign city-states observed these battles to gather intelligence on the strengths and weaknesses of their potential enemies.
Murese participants in these battles were seasoned citizen-soldiers clad in bronzium battle armor. Apart from their lanvarok polearms, these warriors did not make use of ranged weapons in these fights, believing the use of melee weapons was both a challenge to the warrior and a more honorable weapon of choice. They preferred to rely on their sacred Forcesaber pikes, weapons inspired by those once wielded by their Rakata masters. The close combat tactics used for such battles favored the use of the phalanx formation, a close clustering of warriors armed with pikes and durasteel shields. Phalanges engaged each other in a violent pushing match, desperately seeking to maintain their own forward momentum while pressing through the enemy ranks. Once formations were broken in the close quarters phase of battle, warriors engaged each other in single combat.
Sacred pitched battles between city-states persisted even into the Murese Postmodernity with very little variation or change. The introduction of advanced weapons and tactics used by the military of the Third Predorate to defend Mure from outsider threats did not affect the manner in which planetary conflicts occurred. For many veterans of the state military, single combat in the city-state wars, gruesome and hectic as it was, proved to be valuable experience that produced hardened warriors fully capable of engaging outsider invaders and adversaries.
By 9,443 BBY, the Murese had largely come together as a single panplanetary cultural entity, united by the same societal norms, language, and government. Their civilization had become advanced enough for them to engage in advanced genetic engineering. Extracting DNA samples from preserved Rakata corpses found on the blackened plains of the Sferastotazisiv, the Murese sought to unlock the genome-coded Rakata technology found on the planet and gain access the Imperial subterranean facilities.[27]
With the expulsion of the Rakata, many of Mure's Imperial structures were abandoned for millennia.
Though their initial efforts were complicated by their inability to understand the Rakatan language, their concerted attempts were eventually successful at forcing entry to the vaults. While some facilities remained unreachable due to cave-ins, the Sith were able to recover much information pertaining to the history of the Rakatan occupation of Mure as well as the blueprints for experimental Rakata weaponry and hyperdrive technology.
Early space travel
Armed with recovered Rakata knowledge and technology, the Murese turned their eyes to the stars, looking first to the superstructure that stood watch over their world. Their first extraplanetary voyages were made to the Monolith. Maintained by Force-enhanced automatic repair systems of an ancient Celestial design, the Monolith had continued to automatically defend the planet from the dangerous radiation of extragalactic space and the asteroid field of the Five Deaths for the planet's twelve millennia of isolation. In its hasty abandonment by the Rakata, the Monolith had retained a sizable garrison of starfighters, battleships, and slave transports in its hangar bays. Though some had decayed in the intervening millennia, these vessels formed the basis of the nascent Murese fleet, enabling them to explore and colonize their system.
The moon of Lune was the first planetary body visited by the Sith. An inhospitable world devoid of an atmosphere, Lune's Rakata settlements, little more than glorified mining colonies, were located deep underground in the moon's subterranean caverns and rifts. Its only surface colony was its deflector shielded spaceport, which was connected to the subterranean facilities via a network of industrial elevators originally designed to transport slaves to the mines. Unlike the Monolith, this spaceport was of Rakatan design and had not been built to automatically repair itself over the centuries. By the time of the Murese colonization effort, its shields had long since collapsed, leaving its structures exposed to space weathering. These were restored by the Sith as a precursor to their occupation of the moon's underground colonies, and in subsequent centuries, Lune became an important jumping-off point for Sith vessels bound for the system's outer asteroid colonies and the galactic plane beyond.
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Charting the hyperspace cage
By 11,000 BBY, the Murese had mostly restored their system to its previous state under the Empire and had begun making trips to the galactic plane in an attempt to break through the Celestial hyperspace cage that encompassed the galaxy. However, as the specific exit points used by the Rakata to travel to the Five Deaths were unknown to the Murese, these voyages ended unsuccessfully. Many ships were lost to the eddies and whirlpools of the hyperspace disturbance, though Sith efforts continued unabated for many centuries despite the dangers.
Over time, the Sith began charting the hyperspace barrier in detail, traversing the length of the galactic plane from Zakuul to Kesh and probing the cage for weak points and gaps. Over the course of tens of thousands of such expeditions, the Murese discovered a handful of exit points, including those, like the Crispin system, eventually discovered by intragalactic civilizations like the Mandalorians.[27] A large holoprojection of the galaxy showing such routes from Mure to the galactic plane was stored in the main room of the Star Temple, with a series of backups housed in the underground Rakatan vaults. Such knowledge proved invaluable to subsequent Murese scouting expeditions to the Unknown Regions and the eastern galaxy, which began circa 8,000 BBY.
Journeys to the galactic plane
By 8,000 BBY, the Murese had begun making clandestine voyages to the galaxy. As they had been isolated for so long, they had no knowledge of the events that had unfolded since the downfall of the Infinite Empire some seventeen millennia before and had made their initial furtive voyages to the galactic plane under the assumption that the Rakata still ruled the galaxy in part or in full. They were intrigued by the sheer variety of spacefaring species and civilizations they discovered in the galactic plane, from the Galactic Republic to the Hutts to their Korribani cousins in the Sith Empire.
Records from the time period indicated that the Murese visited Lehon during their journeys and noted with amusement the reduced primitive state of the Rakata. Many unsuspecting Rakata tribesmen were abducted by the Murese and returned to Mure during this time. These were sold to wealthy Murese nobles as exotic slaves or displayed in "species zoos" that housed representatives of species taken from their homeworlds by Sith expeditions to the galaxy.
The Murese equipped their Rakata ships with solar sails for extragalactic travel.
Despite their interest in galactic culture, the Murese Sith had little desire to join the greater galactic community as it existed in 8,000 BBY and made little effort to make themselves known to the Galactic Republic or their genetic Sith Pureblood cousins in the Sith Empire. Fearful of discovery and outsider intervention, they augmented their system's defenses, expanding ancient Rakata asteroid bases, restoring orbital long range scanners located in the outer fringes of the system, and building a large navy of ships of a modified Rakatan design. The Murese made frequent voyages to the galaxy in an effort to keep abreast of current events but went to great lengths to avoid detection.
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Search for the Rakata wonders
In the aftermath of the Sith Empire's defeat in the Great Hyperspace War, a Sith Lord by the name of Vitiate withdrew with his followers from Sith space to Dromund Kaas, there establishing the True Sith Empire in exile.[36] Over a millennium, the Sith Empire gathered its strength and engaged the Galactic Republic from afar, employing proxies to test the Republic's strength and probe for weaknesses.[37]
In an attempt to strengthen his empire for the inevitable war with the Republic, Vitiate sought to acquire all four of the ancient wonders of the Infinite Empire.[36] The Star Forge he found over Ada in the Lehon system, courtesy of Darth Revan.[36]The Foundry, located in an asteroid in the remote Nanth'ri system,[28] was also discovered by Revan during the Jedi Civil War but not revealed to the Emperor until several centuries later.[38] The Rakatan terraforming space station and Rakatan xenoforming station, however, came to Vitiate's ears as naught but nameless rumors and whispers, and his agents searched desperately for any trace of their existence.
Search for the Five Deaths
In the search for these missing stations, Vitiate's scouts discovered ancient Rakatan records mentioning the successful terraformation of Mure. Though the North Star was known to the Sith, the Five Deaths system had long been forgotten by the galaxy since the knowledge of extragalactic passages had passed from memory. It took many years before Vitiate's scouts were able to successfully discover the location of Mure from astrogation data recovered on Lehon. This data also made mention of Mure's status as a highly defended repository of Imperial secrets and redoubt for the Over-Predor in case of crisis. Certain that the planet's subterranean facilities housed a wealth of information that he could use to gain an edge over the Republic, Vitiate doubled his efforts to gain access to the world.
However, due to the Celestials' hyperspace cage, all of the Sith Emperor's extragalactic expeditions ended with the loss of his fleets. Many centuries passed before his scouts learned of a way to bypass the barriers successfully. The True Sith Empire's Mandalorian allies had long known about the Crispin system, an Outer Rim system that contained a safe extragalactic passage devoid of any hyperspace eddies or whirlpools. This route had first been discovered by members of Clan Ordo during a training exercise in the last days of the Mandalorian Wars but had not been explored further than the galactic edge.[27] Vitiate's scouts took the route during their first visit to the Five Deaths, unaware that the passage was well-known to the Murese and frequently patrolled.
Rediscovery of Mure
This scouting mission into the heart of the Five Deaths revealed the Red Sith ancestry of its denizens and the presence of the Monolith, which the scouts originally mistook for the Rakatan terraforming station itself. They were discovered by the Murese before they could acquire confirmation, however. The Murese accounted the presence of the scouts' Harrower-class dreadnought in the system a precursor to an armed invasion. In response, the Murese Daritha Noretivas panicked and mobilized the entirety of the Murese navy in a matter of hours. Faced with an incoming fleet of hundreds of Rakatan ships, the dreadnought fled the system and returned to Dromund Kaas.
Vitiate's proxies intended to force entry to many of Mure's underground bunkers in search of Rakata secrets.
Vitiate was intrigued by the presence of pureblooded Sith in the system but chose not to act outright. Since the system was too heavily guarded to take without a protracted siege and the potential danger of revealing the True Sith Empire prematurely was too great, Vitiate chose not to initiate further contact with the Murese until the start of the war with the Republic.
Proxy expeditions
Instead, he turned to the use of proxies to achieve his ends. Masquerading as underworld artifact smugglers, Vitiate's agents organized a series of small expeditions to Mure aimed at clandestinely recovering all data regarding its terraformation from the Rakatan facilities. However, they were unable to gain access to the planet's surface or escape detection by the Murese.
Attempts to bypass the Monolith resulted in their ships' disintegration by its particle shields, and attempts to land on the station resulted in their capture by the Murese garrisons contained within. Even armed with the latest weapons and technology of the modern age, Vitiate's agents had underestimated the ferocity of the Murese and extent of the power they wielded. Though technologically primitive by comparison and armed with obsolete Rakatan and Red Sith weaponry like Forcesabers and lanvaroks, the Murese were heavily Force-sensitive and highly motivated to defend their world. Believing the surface of Mure was sacred, the Murese accounted the attempts of santuris (pejorative Murese Sith term for "non-slave non-Murese outsiders"[33]) to land on their world as blasphemy. Each of Vitiate's expeditions were unsuccessful in forcing entry to the planet's surface and and all participants were either killed or enslaved and forced to work in Lune's mineral mines.
The reveal of the True Sith Empire to the galaxy led to the start of the decades-long Great Galactic War with the Galactic Republic. Though Vitiate considered an armed invasion of the Five Deaths in pursuit of the information he sought, the ferocity and level of preparedness the Murese had displayed in defense of their homeworld, in conjunction with its remote and heavily protected location, convinced him to focus his efforts through less costly diplomatic channels while remaining primarily engaged with the Republic.
In an effort to win over the Murese to the Empire and gather information pertaining to the lost Rakatan space stations, Sith Pureblood members of the Imperial Diplomatic Service[39] were dispatched to the Five Deaths in 3678 BBY bearing gifts of technology superseding anything previously encountered. Daritha Noretivas and many high ranking grafaskut of the Qabbrat were invited to tour the True Sith Empire as guests of honor and see all the Emperor had wrought.
Reactions to Sith culture
Though impressed with the Empire's level of technological sophistication and the refined Force abilities displayed by the Sith Lords, the Murese took issue with much of the Empire's pageantry and nomenclature. The use of the word "Sith," meaning "perfect" in Old Sith[29] and used to denote the Sith'ari or "perfect being,"[29] bordered on sacrilege in the eyes of the Murese. The sith'ari concept was a divine archetype of perfection unattainable by most Sith, and the application of the word to the mostly Human Force-users in the Empire was akin to blasphemy.
As such, the Murese referred to the True Sith as krevasbrolisikut, a Murese Sith compound word loosely translated as "impostors" or "pretenders."[33] Though 97.8% of the Sith Empire's population had some degree of Red Sith blood,[38] with many still possessing the red skin and bone spurs of their ancestors,[4] the Murese considered them to be mongrels polluted with human blood from experiments in Sith alchemy.[40][41] The Murese believed they alone were the rightful descendants of the Red Sith of Adas's empire, pure and untainted by outsider corruption, and referred to the True Sith Empire as stotazt valdias ant tashaskut, loosely "the kingdom built on lies."[33]
Growth of Lune
Lune's caverns came to host a vast subterranean city to which offworlders were confined.
However, despite their distaste for Imperial culture and desire to retain a policy of armed neutrality, the Murese were not unwilling to sign a non-aggression agreement and trade alliance with the Empire, believing they could gain much from a profitable relationship with the superpower. As the Murese restricted non-slave santuris from setting foot on sacred ure, the vast cavern cities and mining colonies of Lune instead came to be occupied by a wide variety of traders, diplomats, and merchants from across the galaxy. As its population swelled and its network of underground cities expanded to accommodate these residents, the moon became a minor center of commerce.
Reputable businessmen and diplomats were not the only personalities to establish a presence on Lune. The moon's isolated location and the sovereignty of its parent system made it an ideal shadowport for both political refugees seeking asylum from the war and criminals on the run from the galactic underworld. The moon was also the haunt of spies from both the Sith Empire's Imperial Intelligence and Galactic Republic's SIS. The former continued to search for ways to gain access to the planet surface, while the former, who came to learn of the Five Deaths from embedded operatives in the Empire, sought to play upon the isolationist fears of the Murese regarding their Pureblood cousins in an effort to drive a wedge between the powers.
Cold War
After decades of warfare, the Great Galactic War ground to a halt with the Sacking of Coruscant and the subsequent Treaty. Granted a brief respite from conflict, the great powers of the galaxy settled into a state of cold war and turned inward to nurse their wounds.[42] Though the Sith Emperor's central focus at the time was prying the location of the Foundry from the captive Revan's mind, he maintained a passive interest in uncovering the secrets of the terraforming and xenoforming stations, as well as an interest in the Rakata secrets possessed by the Murese.
Noretivas, the longtime daritha of the Five Deaths, was wary of the Emperor's requests for information on the lost Rakatan space stations, believing that the information represented the only leverage her people had over the Empire in preventing a hostile invasion of the Five Deaths. As such, she hesitated in providing the Imperial diplomats with anything more than cursory information relating to Mure's terraformation and the Monolith's associated history. Making the educated guess that the previous outsider expeditions seeking access to Mure's Rakatan structures were in some way related to Vitiate's interest in the space stations, Noretivas tasked her most loyal subjects with removing the relevant sources of information from the Imperial residence at the Star Temple, hiding incomplete extracts underground and in remote asteroid vaults across the Mure.
Proxy war
Though not supportive of the Republic, Noretivas believed she could mitigate the danger posed to Mure by the True Sith by involving the Republic in the affair. She sought to play upon Republic fears by spreading the rumor to SIS operatives on Magna Luna that the True Sith desired Mure's strategic positioning over the Republic Core Worlds. Possession of its astrogation data related to hyperspace barrier exit points would enable the True Sith to launch attacks from above on important Republic worlds, bypassing the demilitarized zone that lay in the Mid Rim.
Noretivas sought to prevent the Sith Emperor from gaining access to Mure's extensive Rakatan structures housing ancient secrets and forbidden knowledge.
Eager to prevent the Sith from acquiring a forward base above the Core Worlds, the SIS dispatched increased numbers of agents to Lune. Fighting a proxy war, the SIS and Vitiate's Imperial Intelligence operatives clashed throughout the underground cities of Lune in a bitter competition to place their chosen proxies in seats of power. Despite support from the Murese citizenry, who continued to look upon the True Sith as upstarts and heretics, Noretivas and her party were wary of angering the Empire and made no public attempts to associate themselves with the Republic. They continued to espouse a policy of armed neutrality, warning both superpowers not to attempt hostile invasions of sovereign Murese territory.
Galactic War
The violation of the Treaty of Coruscant led to the re-ignition of hostilities between the Empire and Republic. Relieved that the Emperor's attentions were once again diverted elsewhere, Noretivas and the Murese continued their under-the-table attempts to involve the Republic. However, the unexpected death of the Emperor at the hands of the Jedi Knight known as the Hero of Tython[43] emboldened the Murese to take outward action in support of their sovereignty. With the True Sith temporarily blindsided by the loss of their leader, Noretivas took the opportunity to sign a non-aggression agreement and trade alliance with the Republic, pledging not to intervene in Republic operations and ensuring a continued policy of armed neutrality.
The Five Deaths were judged too remote and inconsequential to merit an invasion by the Eternal Empire during the latter stages of the war. With the eventual fall of the True Sith Empire, the Five Deaths saw an influx of Sith Pureblood Force users and former Imperial military personnel fleeing from the conflict in the Sith Worlds and seeking asylum. Though these were initially restricted to Lune, the Murese eventually permitted some Force-sensitive Purebloods and Humans to settle on Mure, leading to occasional non-Murese grafaskut and darithas.
Military reforms
Over the course of the war, the Murese retreated within their own little empire, hesitant to engage in the affairs of the greater galaxy. Though they continued to support trade with the outside galaxy, they contented themselves with solidifying their rule over their system. Replacing their reliance on local city-state feudal levies raised from the planetary citizenry in times of war, the Murese established an elite standing army of professional soldiers, applying the military organization and structure they had glimpsed within the True Sith Empire to the particulars of their own unique culture. Equipped with ancient Sith warmasks and armed with Rakatan Forcesabers and lanvaroks, the Murese military became a force with which to contend, despite its small size. These so-called "Kovoti reforms," named after the Daritha who instituted them, solidified Murese supremacy over their system.
Isolation
For the next few millennia, the Murese made little effort to be a part of galactic politics, maintaining their status as a neutral state. Though individual Murese and occasional mercenary parties traveled the galaxy during the Golden Age of the Old Republic, the vast majority were content to remain safely in their corner of the galaxy, undisturbed by the troubles of the time. Very few Murese ended up leaving Mure during their lives, and most of those who did generally traveled no further than Lune, in whose bars, casinos, and shopping malls they could content themselves with a glimpse of galactic culture.
However, in the years following the defeat of the True Sith Empire and Eternal Empire, the system inadvertently became a force in the banking industry for a number of reasons. Its policy of armed neutrality, its isolated and highly protected location, and its proven ability to resist the outside influences of galactic superpowers made it an ideal free port, a place wherein valuables of great importance could be safely stored, and an ideal corporate tax haven for the galaxy's elite. By virtue of being a sovereign state with an isolationist bent, the Five Deaths were able to operate outside the restrictions and regulations of the major galactic governments. It perfectly encapsulated the requirements many of the galactic upper classes had regarding banking secrecy, allowing them to obfuscate their transaction history and legally refuse account details to Republic, Sith, and Huttese auditors.
During the Golden Age of the Republic, Murese banks served as tax havens for a wide variety of clientele, from legitimate Republic politicians and businessmen to Sith warlords and Huttese despots. Though the Republic often protested the Murese government's refusal to crack down on stolen art trafficking, money laundering, and other criminal enterprises that went on in Murese banks, it could do little to solve the problem. As a self-contained, fully self-sufficient star system, the Five Deaths were unaffected by external sanctions, and their extensive military and fortified planet made invasions infeasible. Even into the days of the Galactic Empire, the Five Deaths remained neutral and enjoyed a privileged position in galactic banking.
Inhabitants
Citizenry
During the Pre-Republic era, the planet's population was composed of several major spacefaring species. The Kwa of Dathomir were the first to properly settle the planet following its lease to their civilization by the Celestials. The fall of the planet to the Infinite Empire during the Celestial-Rakata War saw an influx of Rakata and their slave races to Mure, following its successful terraformation by the Empire. By 27,000 BBY, the planet's population was primarily comprised of Zuguruk
and MassassiRed Sith imported from across the Empire to oversee Rakata building projects.
From the Empire's fall in 25,200 BBY onward, the planet's population was almost entirely Murese, the direct descendants of the Zuguruk Sith who had successfully driven the Rakata from the planet. Those not of Murese ancestry were slaves taken from their homeworlds by Sith slave raids. Due to Murese xenophobia, non-slave outsiders were forbidden from living on the planet's surface, and were only permitted to visit in certain circumstances requiring sponsorship by a member of the Murese species and an extensive background check.
Rarely, non-Murese, generally Force-sensitives, who had proven their worth to the species in some tangible way, were permitted temporary residence on Mure. This included the occasional historian, xenobiologist, or researcher from the Jedi and Sith Orders seeking to document the planet's unique flora and fauna or its ancient Rakatan ruins. However, these residencies were almost always met with controversy. Such individuals were provided with large security details to protect against assassination attempts by Murese vigilantes seeking to "cleanse" their world of outsider taint.
The official language of Mure during its time as an Infinite Empire predorate was Rakata, which was spoken by both the species of the same name and by their Red SithZuguruk slaves. However, the Red Sith also spoke Old Sith in private, though this dialect eventually came to incorporate a great many cognates derived from words in the Rakata language.
This particular dialect of Old Sith evolved further during the dark ages that followed the Red Sith's expulsion of the Rakata from Mure. By the Murese classical period, the language had moved beyond its Sith and Rakata roots and become a distinct language in its right, called Murese Sith. This language was refined further with the influx of outsiders to the Five Deaths system. These traders, merchants, and criminals brought with them languages as varied as Huttese, Mando'a, and Galactic Basic, from which a great many Murese cognates were derived. This language remained the official tongue of the Murese Predorate from its founding until its dissolution.
Government and politics
Main article: Murese Predorate
Little was known about the specific government of the Kwa, the first residents of the planet, except that they owed their ultimate allegiance to their Celestial masters. When the Rakata took possession of the planet during the Celestial-Rakata War, the planet was the seat of power of the Five Deaths system's Predor. A direct vassal of the Rakata Over-Predor, the Murese Predor exercised complete control over the system, delegating the responsibility of governing continents and cities to lesser officials. This feudal-esque system of governance came to influence the system which replaced it.
The Murese too embraced a feudal system of government that required loyalty of its subjects and accountability of its rulers. Though subjects were expected to show devotion and respect for their leaders, they were also encouraged to rise up and replace them if they believed them too weak and incapable of representing the interests of the people. Consistent with the sith'ari concept, the Murese believed only the strongest had the right to rule and thus encouraged ambition and rivalry, but differed from the Red Sith and Sith Order in terms of the nature of the resultant responsibility. Unlike the Sith, the Murese expected their rulers to view their power and position as a burden and sacred responsibility, not as a means of exerting one's will upon one's constituents. Rulers were expected to represent the living will of the people and act in such a way as to advance their interests as a collective whole.
The Qabbrat served as the legislative branch of the Murese state and was composed of members of the nobility.
In terms of foreign affairs, the Murese were notoriously isolationist and xenophobic for much of their history. The Murese considered Mure a sacred site due to its high connection to the Force and its place as the species' homeworld. They believed that the presence of unworthy outsiders ("santuris"[33] or "balazaarikut"[44]) constituted sacrilege of the highest order. As such, most non-Murese visiting the Five Deaths system were restricted to the moon of Lune or the asteroid bases. However, the Murese occasionally made exceptions for certain non-Murese outsiders they deemed worthy. Generally important figures with a strong Force affinity who had proven themselves in some way to the Murese, these outsiders were permitted to seek sponsorship from a resident of Mure to journey to the planet's surface. Illicit landings on the planet constituted a crime punishable by death.
Entertainment and sports
Blood sports and gladiatorial games were the primary means of entertainment on Mure during the rule of the Infinite Empire. In specially constructed coliseums capable of seating thousands of spectators, slaves of many different Rakata client species, from Selkath to Red Sith, were pit against each other in extended fights to the death. Wealthy Rakata frequently bet on the outcome of such games, and the publicity preceding such fights gave rise to a large fight promoting industry. The games remained a part of Murese culture even into the days of the Murese.
Like their former masters, the Murese were equally interested in gladiatorial fights. Though slave-based combat remained a significant part of these games, duels between Force-sensitive Murese were even more highly anticipated. In accordance with meritocratic Murese culture, warriors only ascended to positions of power by successfully defeating their current occupants in single combat. Public duels conducted in front of multiple witnesses were essential in proving the legitimacy of such transfers of power and were eventually held in gladiatorial arenas as interest in such displays grew. Fights deciding the occupant of the imperial throne were considered the events of the season and attracted thousands of Murese from across the planet.
Locations
Murese Star Temple
Main article: Murese Star Temple
Arguably the oldest structure on Mure, the Murese Star Temple was the sole surviving structure constructed by the planet's pre-Rakata Kwa civilization. This pyramidal temple, like all Kwa Star Temples, was originally designed to house the planet's Infinity Gate, an ancient teleportation device designed to facilitate travel between worlds in the Kwa holdings. Though the Kwa destroyed the Temple's Gate when a Rakata victory over the Celestial defenders looked certain, the structure was spared the subsequent orbital bombardment. It was converted to a palace, occupied first by the Rakata Predors of the Five Deaths and later by the Darithas of the Murese.
Murese Temple of the Ancients
Main article: Murese Temple of the Ancients
The other pseudo-religious structure of note on Mure was the Rakata temple, itself based on the original Temple of the Ancients on Lehon. This structure was among the first Rakata buildings constructed after the successful terraformation of the planet. As it sat on the Sferastotazisiv, the temple was eventually surrounded by the Rakata capital city as subsequent structures were constructed around it. Along with the planet's Star Temple, this temple was the primary residence of the system's Rakata Predor.
The building was famous for serving as the site of a duel between the last Predor of Mure, Bala'zar, and the Red Sith slave-turned-emancipator Asmenys. During the last days of the Infinite Empire, the Red Sith slave uprising besieged the Rakata capital, forcing the Predor and his officers to withdraw to the temple. In a duel to the death immortalized in the Murese epic Karzanuowonosa, Asmenys overcame his enemy and slew him with his own Forcesaber upon the steps of the temple before dying himself. The subsequent Rakata orbital bombardment leveled the Rakata capital and reduced the Sferastotazisiv to a blackened plain. The ruined temple remained untouched even into the days of the Empire of Mure, visited only by Murese researchers, archaeologists, and historians.
One of the most distinctive regions on Mure was the Sferastotazisiv, a vast plain stretching over the better part of a continent in the planet's northern hemisphere. This location was the site of the planet's Rakata capital city. In ancient pre-Republic times, this city extended across the plain and, at its height, was home to half a billion denizens. The city was the final holdout of the Rakata during the War for Liberation, the Red Sith rebellion that occurred during the Infinite Empire's fall in 25,200 BBY. Congregating around the Temple of the Ancients and the city center, the remaining Rakata were besieged by the Red Sith under the slave-turned-warrior Asmenys and were eventually routed with the death of their Predor, Bala'zar, at Asmenys' hands.
Believing the planet lost, the remaining Rakata in orbit on Imperial ships performed an extended orbital bombardment, a common Rakata military tactic,[3][27] on the Red Sith forces still in the city. This attack destroyed a large percentage of the Red Sith population and reduced the Rakata city to dust. The Sferastotazisiv remained an uninhabitable blackened plain for the rest of the planet's history, visited only by later Murese researchers and archaeologists investigating the ruins of the city.
Behind the scenes
So they're Romans...in space...but with James Bond? —A college friend of the author's on Mure, 2011
Mure was created by Sebolto as a revised take on his previous flagship fanon culture, the Acroyali of Acrolis and Magna Luna. The planet and moon and their inhabitants, culture, location, and history have evolved since the continuity's inception in late 2010 as the author has become better versed in Star Wars Expanded Universe lore. An attempted revision on Christmas Day 2017 was the basis for the current incarnation of the Mure story and was originally published on the Acrolis and Magna Luna articles, overriding their previous content. However, as the story had drifted far from the initial sources of inspiration, the content was further developed and moved to a separate article on Independence Day 2018.
Nomenclature
The name "Mure" was chosen for two reasons. Its (admittedly obsolete) meaning in English is that of "wall" or "enclosure," which made sense within the context of the narrative due to its location near the Celestial hyperspace wall and its use as a fortress world capable of preventing the Rakata from spreading into the eastern galaxy. However, its second meaning was derived from its use in French, particularly in reference to the French town of La Mure. This commune was so named after the fortified hilltop upon which its medieval castle was built, [45] As Mure was in many ways a fortified stronghold built atop the galaxy, this seemed a reasonable name for the world.
General narrative elements
The planet and its inhabitants, culture, location, and history have evolved since its inception in late 2010 as the author has become better versed in Star Wars Expanded Universe lore. Though the names, locations, and details have been changed to more closely align with the author's artistic vision, the basics of the story have remained the same. In all versions, the planet, a small world with a single satellite (moon or space station) of its own, was always the sole planet of its system, with the other previous worlds reduced to a system-wide asteroid belt. Its isolationist inhabitants, generally jet black-skinned near-Humans with a predisposition towards both art and warfare, forbade most outsiders from living on their planet for religious or superstitious reasons, restricting them to the moon. The associated society was devised to share many similarities with the culture of the ancient Greek city-states, such as Athens or Corinth, augmented with elements from Roman and Naboo culture.
Original version
In the first version, the planet was called "Acrolis," occupied by the near-Human "Acroyali" (derived from the Yanni song of the same name). Though in-universe the name meant "rock world," the name "Acrolis" was formed from the Greek "ἄκρος" meaning "summit" and πτόλις meaning "fortress." It was originally located in the Chommell sector and served as the capital of a sovereign state, the Acrolian Star Empire, that spanned the sector and a good portion of the Mid Rim and Outer Rim. This empire was formed when its parent system seceded from the Galactic Republic during or prior to the Clone Wars and took part in the conflicts and events of the Prequels era, persisting through the era of the Galactic Empire and into the "Legends" Legacy era.
However, with his return to Star Wars Fanon after a period of several years, the author became disenchanged with certain parts of the narrative. The idea that the Galactic Republic would simply roll over and accept the secession of a member world and turn a blind eye to its subsequent conquests of Republic systems strained belief. Furthermore, the claim that such an empire smaller than the Corporate Sector Authority could fight and win a war with the Galactic Empire in the heart of Imperial space and persist through that regime's reign beggared belief.
Subsequent rewrites
Thus, the author scrapped the original version in favor of an updated, revised version in late 2017. Heavily influenced by the author's concurrent play-throughs of Star Wars: The Old Republic, this version moved Acrolis, now renamed to "Azarac," from the Mid Rim to the Tingel Arm's Wild Space region, placing it high above the galactic plane. Its Acroyali residents were retconned and made into a dark-skinned subspecies of the Red Sith called the Tsis, descendants of those who had sought to colonize the world during its tenure as a RakataInfinite Empire member world. The "overpowered" Acrolian Star Empire of the previous version was reduced to a smaller loose confederation of independent and insignificant worlds, the Tsis Worlds. However, despite his renewed interest in the planet's history on account of these changes, the author was dissatisfied with this revamp of the story, coming to believe that it had evolved the storyline too far from the original.
As such, the author began a rewrite of the story in May 2018, removing elements that had fundamentally changed the course of the original story. In order to make the planet more Legends-friendly, the idea of the world's inhabitants forming a region or sector-spanning empire of galactic significance was scrapped in favor of a single system empire. The author liked and retained the idea of a system located above the galactic plane. This provided a worldbuilding challenge as to the manner in which a society might successfully colonize an intergalactic world bathed in three different types of cosmic radiation. The system was moved to a position directly above Galactic Center to better explain the origins of the star's position in extragalactic space. Due to the system's location above the galaxy and the planet's status as a Rakata fortress world, the author saw fit to rename the world to Mure, due to that word's appropriate meaning as discussed previously.
