Aldhani

Aldhani was a terrestrial planet located in a sector. It featured Highlands with rolling hills, tall mountains, and lakes and rivers. The planet also had its contrasting Lowlands. With a type I atmosphere breathable to humans, Aldhani saw much cloudy weather. Every three years, to the thousandth of a second, Aldhani would pass through a belt of billions of crystals, which would swarm the atmosphere and cover the sky with a blanket of meteor showers.

Centuries prior to reign of the Galactic Empire, the Aldhani Highlands were covered by hundreds of settlements. The Dhanis there celebrated the tri-yearly meteor shower, a sacred event which they called the Mak-ani bray Dhani "Eye of Aldhani," at the Nasma Brani temple in the Highlands valley of Akti Amaugh. In 18 BBY the Empire arrived at Aldhani and liberated the Alkenzi Air Base fifty-two kilometers west of Akti Amaugh. Drawn by the world's exposure to orbital micro-crystal deposits, it was not long before they discovered the sensor-disrupting geological qualities of the caverns at Akti Amaugh. The land was thus claimed for the Emperor, Sheev Palpatine, and the river there, Nasma Klain, was blocked by a new dam that headquartered as the Imperial garrison. The dam became a depot for supplies, weapons, and the payroll for Aldhani's sector in pre-packed high-density aurodium ingots.

Upon its occupation of Aldhani, the Empire established an Enterprise Zone in the Lowlands with newly built towns and factories. Despite the Dhanis valuing certain areas for sacred rituals, the Empire turned the territory that they took over into tactically advantageous positions for their base and prohibited the Dhanis from settling there. Over the course of thirteen years, 40,000 Dhanis living in the Highlands were driven from their settlements in the sacred valleys and relocated to the Enterprise Zone down south, leaving only a scattered few shepherds and wanderers up north. With the Dhani population primarily working in the factories, Aldhani became an established distribution hub.

The Dhani's continued to make a ten-day pilgrimage to the Akti Amaugh valley every three years to see the Eye of Aldhani. While the attendance initially numbered 15,000 at the start of the Imperial occupation, the Empire made measures to whittle their numbers down, placing a series "Comfort Units" along the pilgrimage route like shelters and taverns to siphon off Dhanis. Knowing the Dhanis would refuse, the Imperials offered them transports to save them the ten-day walk. In the meantime, an Imperial viewing festival of the Eye of Aldhani was promoted in the Enterprise Zone over the decade that the clearances took place.

From 12 BBY, the Imperial officer Lieutenant Gorn was assigned to the dam serving under the garrison's commanding officer, Commandant Jayhold Beehaz. Gorn at some point fell in love with a Dhani woman, but was then reprimanded by his superiors and lost a promotion, as well as the woman. Between 6 BBY and 5 BBY, Luthen Rael, a rebel spy who was building up a network of anti-Imperial groups, helped put together an infiltration team led by Vel Sartha, the cousin of the Imperial Senator Mon Mothma, in a plot to rob the payroll stored at the Aldhani dam. The team comprised of Sartha, Cinta Kaz, Taramyn Barcona, Karis Nemik, and Arvel Skeen, all apparent rebel idealists. The team also liaised with Gorn, who had lost his taste in the Empire and chosen to be there inside man.

Over the next five months, the rebel team operated from a camp posing as Ghoat-herders. Over that time, they snuck up to the dam to scout the Imperial base, on top of meeting with Gorn and receiving a detailed plan of the garrison and how it operated. With their reconnaissance, the team formulated a heist plan, which used the upcoming iteration of the Eye of Aldhani as their cover, and prepared by learning the details to great accuracy and training to pose as Imperial guards and shoot. Nemik made an accurate model of the dam itself and the vault to help visualize their plan.

Rael kept contact with Sartha and grew worried that the team would not quite be able to pull off the heist. In 5 BBY, he recruited the fugitive Cassian Andor and paid him to join the team, hoping that his skills in piloting and more would raise the team's odds. In the meantime, plans had arisen for a relocation of the air base to the Akti Amaugh valley from Alkenzi as the next step of the Imperial occupation. Colonel Soden Petigar, an Imperial engineer from the galactic capital of Coruscant. Was set to arrive at the Imperial dam ahead of the Eye of Aldhani to begin his survey of the area. As a result, TIE fighter patrols from Alkenzi became more frequent across the Highland valleys.

Upon recruiting Andor, Rael took his new associate to Aldhani to meet with Sartha. Having barely gotten the message for a meeting, Sartha was unaware of the new addition, who took on the alias "Clem" upon Rael's request.

The team invaded on the night of a Dhani celebration of The Eye, a natural phenomenon that lit the sky once every three years. Following the heist, every single Aldhani that attended the ceremony and beyond was rounded up and detained.

Aldhani was inhabited by the Dhanis, a group of primitive, prideful humans that lived a simple life. As said by Commandant Jayhold Beehaz, the Dhanis were unable to hold multiple ideas simultaneously leading to them being vulnerable to manipulation. However, they had a deep sense of tradition with them doing a ten-day trek from the lowlands to the Akti Amaugh to see the Mak-ani bray Dhani, or the Eye of Aldhani, a celestial event that occurs once every three years.

Aldhani first appeared in "Aldhani," the fourth episode of Andor, which aired on September 28, 2022. The planet was first pictured in the form of concept art in the sizzle reel for the series, which was released on December 10, 2020. It was first mentioned in a costume reveal at San Diego Comic-Con. In the production brief, the planet was called "Al-Dhani."

There were originally going to be six or seven thousand Dhanis in the valley on Aldhani, but this was made impossible due to COVID-19 and an economic hardship. To solve this, the Dhani culture ended up being wound down, which became the dominant aspect. This led to a monologue, the concept of the engineer Soden Petigar, and a new approach to the planet's shabbiness. Concept artist Chester Carr created concept art of Cassian Andor and Vel Sartha Scenes hiding from TIE fighters on Aldhani. Carr also created concept art of the Aldhani dam and Sartha's team looking at a model of the dam in their camp. Scenes on Aldhani were filmed at the Cruachan Dam and the surrounding mountains in the Scottish Highlands. According to Faye Marsay, the actress who plays Sartha, scenes on Aldhani were filmed during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. The actors had to follow COVID guidelines.

Production designer Luke Hull and his team were intrigued with building a planet around the Scottish Highlands. Hull was interested in finding a tangible landscape that could be used a different version of a planet. He found the Cruachan Dam in Scotland. He thought the location was perfect because the dam looked like Darth Vader's mask, suggesting that the Empire was a blight on every landscape. Scenes in the Aldhani dam were filmed in the Cruachan Dam. For the scenes filmed in Pitlochry, Scotland, Diego Luna and the other actors walked for hours up a mountain to set up one shot. The episode "The Eye" originally started with Jayhold Beehaz's speech, but there was too much bad weather during filming, so the crew ended up embracing the look. The crew felt that the scene of Karis Nemik telling Cassian Andor he could not sleep could not go after the speech, so the two scenes ended up getting swapped.

Costume designer Michael Wilkinson and his team spent a long time establishing carefully curated palettes of textures and colors for Aldhani to make the information clear for the audience. The Aldhani shepherds' costumes were made from natural fabrics, and Wilkinson made the costumes dark, textural, and organic. The costumes were then shipped to Scotland. Wilkinson worked with many local background performers. A team of people was sent there to fit and create the background characters, uniforms, and nomadic mountain culture of the Dhanis. For the sequence showing the Dhanis, Wilkinson's team fitted a large array of people. The principal characters were fitted and prepped in the London studios.

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