Lore and History - discovered

"If you were to face an ancient Sith Lord in combat, you would learn that we are as children playing with toys compared to the prowess of the old masters."
   ―Kreia, referring to Hord's prowess in lightsaber combat




History
Lord of Hate

A Force-sensitive male, Tulak Hord was a student of the dark side of the Force and a pupil of the early Sith Empire. Rising through the ranks, Hord was feared by his rivals even in his early days, having mastered the art of lightsaber combat and manipulation of the Force. During his early years, Hord fought an honorable duel against a Dashade named Khem Val, who later became his most faithful ally. Assembling a massive army of followers, Hord and Val led a campaign of terror against rebellious militants on the planets Yn and Chabosh, crushing them. While on the campaign, Hord was approached by a Sith known as Aloysius Kallig who sought to serve him; however, Hord dismissed him. Kallig refused to accept dismissal, however, and challenged Hord's best general and beat him. After Kallig's victory, Hord decided to accept him, and he led Hord's troops to numerous victories. During the battles, Hord employed his knowledge of Sith rituals, draining the strength from his opponents and feeding off of it. Earning the titles Lord of Hate, Master of the Gathering Darkness, and finally, Dark Lord of the Sith, Lord Hord went undefeated, slaying all who dared to challenge his might. While Kallig's military prowess gained Hord enormous success, it also intimidated the Dark Lord, who feared that Kallig could become a very dangerous rival. Hord decided to deal with the situation by having Kallig assassinated, with his family subsequently being sold into slavery to the Hutts.

Lord Hord continued his endeavors into the arts of Sith sorcery, authoring many tomes of knowledge and crafting his personal holocron. Rumored to have known the secret to eternal life, Hord scattered much of his teachings in hidden and hard to reach locations to ensure only the worthy could obtain his knowledge. Discovering and conquering the Dromund system, it was believed that the Sith Lord conquered over a hundred worlds for the Empire. One who did prove worthy during Hord's life was his only known apprentice, Ortan Cela, who came to learn much from the great Sith.

Appreciating his relationship with the honor-bound Khem Val, Lord Hord placed his servant and ally in suspended animation inside a stasis chamber deep in the heart of what would later serve as Sith Lord Naga Sadow's tomb on Korriban. Ortan Cela would kill his master not long afterwards by stabbing him through the back, and Cela's Dashade servant Veshikk Urk consumed the dying Sith Lord's Force energy.

At some point following his death, his loyal minions constructed a massive tomb for their fallen master in the Valley of the Dark Lords on Korriban. Entombed with him were several tomes of his writings, his holocron, and his mask.

   «Insects, from a poisonous world. They do not praise their skills or accomplishments, and they are difficult to surprise. They have the instincts of prey, yet are predators—it is strange.»
   ―Vossk, a former bounty hunter on Nar Shaddaa, to Meetra Surik[src]

The Gands, or Gand (pronounced /Gănd/), were a sentient species of humanoids that xenobiologists believed to have evolved from an insect genus that inhabited the ammonia-gas planet of Gand. Several physical varieties of the species existed, differing from one another in the structure of the head and the texture and color of the exoskeleton, but the species was usually divided into two main subspecies: those with lungs and those without. Gands with such organs were adapted to their homeworld's atmosphere, but like Kel Dors, required specialized breathing gear if they wanted to leave Gand to manage potentially poisonous offworld gas mixtures. Gands without lungs, however, did not respire and were immune to poisonous gases; thus they could venture offworld without worry of suffocation. Both races possessed an exoskeleton and regenerative properties.

Gands were considered by galactic society to be a very humble species, a trait resultant of their culture, which dictated that an individual's identity had to be earned. Accordingly, most Gands were self-deprecating and polite, and usually referred to themselves in the third person. First-person pronouns were reserved for the most legendary of Gands, as the usage presumed that one was so renowned that everyone knew one's name. However, an accomplished Gand often responded with humility if praised and even downplayed his or her achievements.

Within Gand culture was one of the species' more notable professions: the findsmen. Shamanistic bounty hunters, these Gands tracked their quarry by divining omens sent to them via rituals based around the religious worship of the thick ammonia mists that covered their homeworld. Although their methods were sometimes viewed as arcane, the accuracy of the findsmen was considered unsettling to the casual observer. Zuckuss, a bounty hunter, and Ooryl Qrygg, a pilot in Rogue Squadron, were two notable Gands.

   "But sir, the Hoth system is supposed to be devoid of human forms."
   ―Captain Firmus Piett, to Admiral Kendal Ozzel

Located on the fringe of the Ivax Nebula in the Anoat sector of the Greater Javin along the Ison Corridor, Hoth orbited the blue-white star Hoth on a wide elliptical orbit. Beyond Hoth was voluminous band of planetesimals, known as the Hoth asteroid field, from which small asteroids regularly broke off, crashing onto Hoth's surface as meteorites.  The planet was the sixth in the Hoth system.

The planet consisted of a molten metallic core with dichotomous crust. Its surface was entirely covered by a frozen ocean, except where volcanic fissures opened up steam vents, depositing rock and minerals in darker patches on the glacier plains. A few mountain ranges pierced the permanent ice shelves, some being geologically active. The tidal pull of Hoth's three nameless moons caused fissures in the ice-layers, sending jets of ocean water into the freezing Hoth air. The intense cold froze these jets into spires of ice, suspending primitive ocean algae within these tall columns and glaciers. Massive oceanic currents beneath the southern hemisphere caused regular seismic activity, resulting in a constantly shifting landscape of caves and tunnels. Buried deep in Hoth's equatorial region was a fissure, reaching hundreds of meters towards the core of the planet. In this area never exposed to Hoth's blue-white sun was a cache of lumni-spice, a rare fungal growth.

Its orbit and axial tilt resulted in consistently icy weather patterns. Daytime temperatures reached levels unbearable to most species and rarely rose above freezing, even in the planet's relatively mild equatorial regions. The gale force winds and intense snowstorms that regularly wracked the windswept surface magnified the extreme cold of Hoth.



   "There isn't enough life on this ice cube to fill a space cruiser!"
   ―Han Solo

Hoth was the sixth planet of the remote Hoth system. A desolate world covered with ice and snow, located in the Anoat sector, a rarely-traveled portion of the Outer Rim Territories, it became famous as the one-time location of the Alliance to Restore the Republic's Echo Base during the Galactic Civil War. The base was discovered by the Empire in 3 ABY, precipitating the Battle of Hoth, a major engagement during which the Rebels suffered heavy casualties and lost Echo Base.

"The hypergates were constructed by our progenitors (The Prime). They allow immediate egress from one sphere to another, but not in reverse."
―Gatemaster Beltek'k.

These devices were constructed countless millennia ago in a time known to the Gree as "the most ancient and forgotten days" (enslavement to the Prime). In time, a number of these devices were spread across the space of the Gree Enclave with dozens once connecting the myriad of Gree worlds. In the aftermath of their creation, other forms of personal interplanetary travel became obsolete though starships were still used on occasion. As Gree society declined, their ability and willingness to duplicate their technology atrophied. The secret of building hypergate technology was known only to Gree masters, who operated their remaining constructor devices. After centuries of neglect, only ruins of them remained behind and their existence was a closely guarded secret. A major hub of the hypergate system was the Grand Hypergate on Asation, but due to the Asation gatemaster's inability to use it, it was essentially little more than a historical monument. [source?] By this point, not even the Gree were able to fully understand the mysterious hypergate technology. On Tython, the early Je'daii Tythans discovered the Old City that had been long ago abandoned and rumors persisted of a working hypergate present in the settlement but none had been discovered.